An hour later, the three of them stood in the estate's lower library—a vast, stone-walled chamber built into the bedrock beneath the main floor. It smelled faintly of aged paper, beeswax, and dried cedar. Tall mahogany shelves lined the walls, packed with leather-bound volumes, hand-drawn maps of mountain ranges, and brass navigation instruments polished to a mirror shine.
In the center of the room sat the two heavy oak-and-iron chests that Grayson had brought back from the smugglers' mill the night before.
Grayson was kneeling on a thick velvet cushion in front of the larger chest, holding a tiny brass oil can in one hand and a soft linen cloth in the other. He was applying a micro-drop of oil to the heavy iron hinges with the focused, obsessive care of a surgeon performing a delicate heart operation.
"Look at him," Chloe whispered to Mailah, leaning her shoulder against a nearby bookshelf. "He looks like he's performing last rites on a bucket of old bolts."
