The safe in Lord Surveyor Vane’s private quarters was half-embedded in the back wall of the stone hearth, secured by four forged iron strap-bolts driven directly into the granite stonework of the cliff.
The face of the safe was cold-rolled steel, four inches thick, blackened by decades of woodsmoke and pine soot. Around the central brass keyway, deep, jagged gouges in the iron showed where Vane or his clerks had attacked the gearwork with a cold chisel and a sledgehammer before fleeing. The broken stub of a brass key was wedged deep in the lower barrel, twisted sideways and jammed against the main locking pawl.
Tomas knelt on the cold hearth flat stone slabs.
He unbuckled his leather satchel, laid out his clean linen cloth. Then he pulled out his set of flat steel lock-probes and an eight-ounce copper-headed tap hammer. His left hand, held stiffly inside the calfskin wrist brace, supported the tension pick. At the same time, his right thumb guided the slender steel probe into the narrow slit above the broken brass stub.
“Don’t force the tumbler,” Nessa warned from behind him. She held a brass oil lamp close to his shoulder, shielding the flame from the draft with her oilskin coat. “Royal treasury safes from that era use glass shear-pins. If you drop the backup bolt without tripping the posture lever, the pins shatter and the deadbolts drop into blind mortises.”
