Summary: By Marjorie James Read by Dr. John Cmar Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by Marjorie James — including EP007– The Trouble With Death Traps and EP224– The Ghost In The Death Trap. All stories read by John Cmar Rated 13 and up for language Springtime for Deathtraps By Marjorie James The building sat in a small clearing in the jungle, its stone walls radiating solidity and the midday heat. Giant statues of warrior-gods crushing skulls beneath their feet flanked the doorway. Xnab looked from the ornately carved keyhole to his customer and back again. “And the key is where, exactly?” he asked. “In the treasure chamber,” the big man said in a small voice. “We had just finished putting everything away and, well, it had been a long day. I think I must have put the key down on the altar or something. The problem is, the place locks automatically, and our entire fortune is in there. We had a few locksmiths out to work on it, but they didn’t get very far.” Xnab nodded. He had already noticed the blood spatter around the keyhole. “So that’s why we called you. Everyone said that if anybody could get in there, it would be you.” Xnab accepted that, not as a compliment, but a statement of fact. He was a specialist the design and construction of booby traps, deadfalls and other, largely fatal, security options. He was a small man, thin and wiry, his shaved head still smooth and unwrinkled despite years of working in the sun. Despite making a very good living, he wore a plain tunic and no adornments at all. In his business, he considered it a bad idea to have anything extra hanging around, and he was very good at his business. In fact, anyone who knew anything considered Xnab the best death trap designer alive. Which typically would have been reason enough to turn down a job like this, but in this case it was actually why he was there. “How long have you owned the temple?” he asked the man, who had introduced himself as Tuak. “Just a couple of months, actually,” Tuak admitted. “It’s not really a temple. I think the statues of the gods are just there for show. The family who used to have it used it to store their treasures and they spared no expense on the security.” He sighed heavily and stared up at the tiers of stone vanishing into the jungle. “It seemed like a good idea when we bought it.” Xnab’s apprentice, Qualenizmunetil (Qual to anyone who couldn’t be bothered) came back from where he had been examining the walls of the entrance and joined them. “They’re perfectly smooth, sir,” the boy said with something close to awe. “I can’t even find a tool mark.” “And you won’t,” said Tuak, pride of ownership momentarily overcoming his embarrassment. “There isn’t another building like this anywhere in the eighteen kingdoms.” “No,” Xnab said. “There isn’t.” He spent a moment staring down the apparently open and inviting corridor, then turned back to his customer. “You mentioned the previous owners. How did you come to own this place?” Tuak smirked. “Well, a treasure house isn’t much use if you don’t have any treasure left to store. You know, all these the aristocrat families are the same. They go on for generations, saying they’re the cousins of the wind gods, making everyone lick the stones in front of them. Then one day they lose a couple wars and the next thing you know the last of the line is blowing through the money like he doesn’t know what saving is. The storehouse was the last thing he had to sell.” None of this was of much interest to Xnab, so he listened with half an ear as the man turned his attention to Qual, his earlier embarrassment apparently forgotten. “I say it’s about time,” Tuak went on. [...]
