by K. M. Shea
“He’s not wrong.” Gabrielle winked, then took Elle’s place in embracing Angelique while Elle hugged Quinn farewell.
While Gabrielle hugged Angelique, Puss butted his head against Angelique’s cheek and purred deeply.
Angelique smiled and hugged Gabrielle back, then noisily kissed Puss on the top of his head despite his yowls of protest. “Then we will have to report in—to both Loire and Arcainia.”
“Good,” Gabrielle said with great satisfaction.
“I knew it wasn’t a mistake to talk Elise into giving Loire the funds necessary to buy and enchant the mirrors.” Puss licked his chops and happily quirked his tail.
Elle backed up so she no longer stood in their way. “Be careful.”
“That goes for both of you.” Gabrielle stood with Elle, her hand straying to caress Puss.
Angelique scrambled onto Pegasus’ back, settling into the saddle with the ease that comes from long practice. “You both be safe, as well.”
Quinn climbed into her saddle and patted Fluffy’s neck, then smiled at their traveling companions. “And do your best to stay warm.”
“Yes,” Angelique shivered. She still wasn’t wearing her dress—and wouldn’t as long as they were in Mullberg. She wanted to avoid any Conclave mages, and her dress had practically become a brand for her.
The charms in my dress must be excessively well made—I’ve got two heat charms, and I still don’t feel as warm.
Angelique tugged her charmed mittens on tighter, then picked up Pegasus’ reins—though she held them so loosely, they were more ornamental than anything else. Pegasus would go where he pleased. “Thank you, again.” She met first Elle’s gaze, then Gabrielle’s, and ended with Puss. “From the bottom of my heart. Until next we meet.”
Pegasus turned in a tight circle, then immediately shifted to a trot. The clattering of his hooves was almost deafening in the protected courtyard, and Fluffy’s strangely cleft hooves only added to the cacophony.
“Goodbye!” Gabrielle shouted.
“Good riddance,” Puss said.
“I’ll come find you again!” Elle promised.
The trio shouted some more, but their words were lost to the howl of the wind when Angelique, Quinn, and their mounts left the relatively protective huddle of the manor, following a shoveled path that led out to the dirt road.
They joined the road, following it north.
Angelique flexed her fingers in her warm mittens, and Pegasus—sassy from his weeks spent at his home in the night sky—pranced along the road and trumpeted loud enough to echo across the snow-covered land for miles.
She patted him once he impatiently slowed back to a trot, snorting at Fluffy as the somewhat terrifying animal quietly trotted along.
We’ll ride north, into Verglas, and then east into Mullberg.
The more direct roads traveled from east Loire, through a tiny bit of Arcainia, and then cut north into Mullberg. Those roads were the most traveled, as they were used by most mages leaving the Veneno Conclave and heading out on assignments.
But Angelique wanted to avoid Veneno Conclave mages and attention in general.
A painfully bright emotion stirred in her chest. Not just hope—it was something lighter than that—but something dangerously akin to it.
She’d found information on Evariste; her friends had helped her, and even now she wasn’t alone.
For the first time in a long time, Angelique felt happiness.
“Fluffy is warmed up,” Quinn called above the howling wind. “Are you ready to pick up our pace?”
Angelique planted her rear more firmly in the saddle and laughed as Pegasus tossed his head. “Am I ever!”
Chapter 14
Angelique tested the lid of a wooden crate. Finding it loose, she pried it off and peered inside. “Oh. Just two books on black magic, a scroll in what I think might be elvish, a pair of spelled boots and…a paperweight. Quite the assortment.” Angelique replaced the lid, then set her gaze on a barrel, which had been packed so sloppily, the lid rested on the floor in front of it.
The barrel was stuffed with straw, which made her sneeze as she pawed her way down to the bottom, unearthing a very large porcelain pot. “This doesn’t even have any magic in it. I suspect it’s illegally obtained artwork.”
Angelique continued down the line, inspecting the illegal/stolen goods with a lot less shock than she used to, given how commonplace it had become for her.
She stopped at a small chest that was knocked on its side.
“Really. This is the sloppiest hold-out we’ve found yet. We’re in the docks, and they keep all of these illegal goods heaped around all casual-like? Mullberg needs more shipping restrictions if they can operate so blatantly.”
Angelique crouched by the chest and nudged the lid—which wasn’t even fastened—up a bit so she could get a look at the goods it held. “What’s this? We’ve got some illegally mined jewels here.” She squinted in the dim light as she checked her magic senses to make sure the jewels hadn’t been enchanted before prodding a few of them. “The Chosen must have finally realized Nefari was captured since these are here and most likely getting shipped out by sea instead of being sent south.”
“It’s been over a month since Elle sent word that they’d apprehended him,” Quinn said, finally responding to Angelique’s judgmental assessment of the place. “I imagine his extended absence—or silence—raised some alarm.” She sounded a little muffled since she stood outside the dilapidated warehouse. She was supposed to be standing watch, but Angelique had fetched her the logbook when they first arrived, and given there was almost no likelihood of the Chosen employees assigned to man the warehouse returning anytime soon, it was safe enough for Quinn to stand outside under the sputtering light of a torch and try to make out entries.
Though judging by the packing job they’ve done here, I’d be surprised if those entries have more than the day—and probably not even the right day.
Angelique peeled back a magic carpet that was pinned to the wall, checking that nothing was hidden behind it.
It’d been fairly obvious that none of the storage containers in the warehouse was big enough to hold a mirror—at least a mirror big enough to hold a man.
But the warehouse was the last spot they had to check on Mullberg’s east coast, and she was going to be thorough!
“Do you want me to head back to the inn and buy the workers another round of mead?” Quinn asked. “They were exuberantly toasting the inn’s portrait of Queen Faina and Princess Snow White. They might have tossed back all the drinks we bought them in advance by now.”
“Nah. I’m almost done here—and you already had them drunk as skunks when we slipped out of the inn to sneak in here. I’m pretty sure they’ll pass out there for the night.”
That was how life had progressed for Quinn and Angelique.
When they first started breaking into Chosen strongholds, they had gone through great efforts to sneak in and out of hideouts. Without Elle’s skills it had been much harder…until they realized the Chosen workers in Mullberg were a great deal less intelligent and cautious than those in other parts of the continent. It was an easy thing to stake out their usual drinking holes, lure them all there, and get them roaring drunk. Their inebriation gave Quinn and Angelique the chance to take their time in their searches and be a great deal more detailed about it.
It didn’t always work, but more often than not, it did.
Angelique shook her head as she opened a barrel—and found it empty.
“Considering how far ahead of us the Chosen are, it’s shameful how sloppy and relaxed their bases in Mullberg are.” Even knowing the warehouse workers were halfway across the city, she kept her voice on the quieter side—Quinn would be able to hear her regardless, and there were some sense of caution even experience couldn’t override.
Angelique frowned at the half-packed goods mounded around her. “They should be more alert here than anywhere else given that the Veneno Concla
ve is here. But considering how we could barely find Chosen camps elsewhere before they’d disappear like smoke, they are ridiculously easy to infiltrate here. Lovelana did say there may be three to five Chosen spies in the Conclave’s ranks. Perhaps that’s why they don’t need to be so careful here—a spy might be directly ordering their movements.”
Angelique’s frown morphed into a scowl as she moved from one row of packed crates to the next and stepped in an icy cold pile of slush.
She held the starfire crystal she’d been using above her head, revealing a hole in the ceiling where snow drifted in. It looked like the workers had tried to temporarily patch it with canvas, but one of the heavier snows from earlier in the season weighed enough to break through it.
Charming.
“It is a curious thing,” Quinn agreed. “But typically a spy would avoid meeting with cohorts to avoid suspicion. Maybe it’s not that these Chosen employees don’t fear the Conclave. Maybe it’s that the royal family isn’t doing much of anything to address the Chosen, much less the monsters that are running around the country. Besides, most of the employees we’ve encountered and boozed up don’t have a lick of magic. To them, it’s just another unsavory job.”
Thinking of the docks and the lack of regulations Mullberg imposed on its ports, Angelique slogged her way down the aisle. “The lack of regulations sounds most probable. All other countries have struggled against the Chosen from the onset. But Mullberg was the only country—besides Zancara, of course—who refused to send a representative to the Summit. That should tell you exactly how in-the-know they are when it comes to the Chosen.”
“Which, I imagine, would eliminate the need to be so discreet,” Quinn said.
“Yeah. You find anything about a mirror in the logbook?” Angelique asked. “Or is it coded?”
“If by coded you mean that it is so spattered with what smells like alcoholic beverages and,” Quinn loudly sniffed, “gravy, I believe, that it is hardly legible, then yes, it is coded in a very unique way that works irritatingly well. But no, they didn’t bother to use a code or anything besides shorthand in their entries,” Quinn reported. “I’ve found nothing about a mirror—or a large caravan.”
“I expected as much. When we started moving east, any mention of that caravan dropped out of the logbooks,” Angelique said.
For the first month together—during the worst weeks of winter—Quinn and Angelique had zig-zagged across the southern-most Chosen encampments. They’d found mentions of the caravan with the mirror and decided to travel north—where Mullberg was less settled and the Chosen had a greater chance of operating unnoticed. But searching those strongholds revealed nothing, so they had then opted to make their way to the east coast.
It seemed like the most plausible direction given that east was away from both the Veneno Conclave and Juwel, the capital of Mullberg and home of Glitzern Palace.
“It seems like they must have dropped Evariste somewhere northwest in the country rather than putting his mirror on a ship as we thought,” Angelique said.
“At least our searches on the coast have not been a total loss,” Quinn said. “We thought they’d come here to put Evariste’s mirror on a ship, given that we’d assumed they had at least a few vessels under their control because they move quickly around the map. From our searches, we found there is not a single ship that belongs to them, and instead that they ship out meager amounts of goods hidden among larger Mullberg merchants so as to not raise attention.”
“Yes.” Angelique studied a harp, which almost certainly would have been ruined from being left out in the damp but icy cold temperatures if not for the preservation spell she could feel that had been cast deep into the old instrument. “Which begs the question—if they don’t have a boat, how are they moving goblins and black mages so easily around the continent? Evariste’s magic isn’t conducive to moving large groups. A portal for a handful of people, certainly. But there’s no charm in the world that would be able to hold enough magic to move armies of goblins.”
“Our search has raised more questions than it has answered,” Quinn lightly said. “But at least we are narrowing down the possible locations Lord Enchanter Evariste could be hidden.”
“Indeed.” Angelique pinched her nose as she passed what looked like a bag of spoiled potatoes—which stunk enough to eclipse the scent of sour alcohol that the place seemed to be infused with.
“I’m finished with the logbook—could you put it back?” Quinn slipped the logbook through the cracked door.
“Sure. I’m done here, so we can leave.” Angelique took the logbook and trotted back to the three-legged, unstable table that was made out of balancing several rough timbers of wood on rickety stools.
She carefully replaced it exactly as she had found it—flipped open to the last page—then retraced her steps to the front door.
“I imagine we’ll head due west, then?” Quinn asked. “Since we’ve searched all the dens on the coastline?”
“Yes. We’ll need to consult our notes, but I think there are two encampments we haven’t searched near Juwel. We’ll go there next.” Angelique paused when she stepped past a sword. It radiated magic, a deep kind that was steeped with bloodlust.
She briefly considered taking it. It’s undoubtedly dangerous, and if they’ve got more war mages like Acri, they can do some terrible things with it. But even the most slovenly worker would realize it was gone, and we don’t want anyone knowing we’ve uncovered so many Mullberg outposts—particularly since Queen Faina of Mullberg keeps ignoring Severin’s request for an audience. Better to let them stay slack so we can catch them when we finally get through to the queen.
Angelique pressed her lips together and made herself leave the sword behind and slip through the door, casually flicking the death spell—black mage magic at its finest—that had been set around the warehouse as a guard, restarting the dangerous trap.
“Everything is set,” Angelique said.
Quinn stepped away from the barrel she’d been casually sitting on. “Excellent. Let’s find our boys, then. We’re leaving as planned, yes?”
“I think it’s still a good idea to leave, even if they are stinking drunk. There’s no point in sticking around, and I’d rather put some distance between us and this city,” Angelique said. “One of the workers had a tiny bit of magic. It’s unlikely, but he may be able to tell that I poked around.”
“Very good,” Quinn tugged at the shoulders of her gray cloak so it settled around her better. “In that case, let’s be off.”
The two strolled through the city, doing their best to look casual—although Angelique knew they weren’t nearly as convincing as Elle would have been.
It was near the midnight hour, so the city gates were closed and guarded, but that didn’t stop Angelique and Quinn, who had become questionably skilled at scaling walls and buildings.
“You know,” Angelique casually tossed a rope into the air, then tapped a tiny sliver of her magic, using a little spell she knew from sewing magic to guide the rope up the salt-crusted city wall and tie itself securely around a merlon—the stone cube that jutted out of the crenelated wall. “I would have thought that as a soldier, you would have been more opposed to all of this breaking and entering.”
“What is there to oppose?” Quinn motioned for Angelique to scoot up the rope first.
For the first week of their…adventure, Angelique’s arms had ached from dragging her carcass up and down a rope. But now she hefted herself with ease, quickly reaching the top of the wall—which wasn’t even taller than the two-story mercantile that created the alleyway they’d been standing in.
“It’s illegal.” Angelique peered down at Quinn before flipping the rope to the other side of the wall and scrambling down, then using her magic to toss it back over to Quinn.
In record time—Quinn’s arms had never suffered as Angelique’s had given that the soldier was more fit than her—Quinn appeared at the top of the wall. “Perhaps. But we’re not
stealing anything.”
Angelique snorted. “No. We’re just sneaking in and out of cities without permission.”
Quinn slid down the rope and landed next to Angelique, nearly soundless. “If we’re talking about surprises, I must confess I never thought you’d be legalistic.”
Outside the city, it was dark—with only the stars and moon to light the sky, though the snow that still drifted across the land reflected that light and made it much brighter. Just bright enough, in fact, that Angelique could see the thoughtful set of Quinn’s mouth.
“Legalistic? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Instead of looking at everything through the scope of a moral compass, ‘what is doing the right thing verses what would be harmful to others,’ you focus on what you are allowed or not allowed to do.” Quinn tugged on the rope, reminding Angelique to unknot it.
When the rope slithered down the wall, Quinn coiled it up and hung it over her shoulder. “For example, you worry about the illegal activity of breaking into a city without passing through the proper channels rather than recognize that you’re doing so because we’re fighting against a sect of black mages that have wreaked havoc across the continent and seem to be running free without a care here in Mullberg.”
“Well…” Angelique trailed off, not quite sure what to say in response. “It does sound silly when you say it like that.”
Quinn shrugged as they began to pick their way across the countryside.
The snow, thankfully, was less deep this close to the coast, and it only leaked through Angelique’s boots instead of also soaking her trousers.
“You’ve proven that you’re willing to forsake rules in order to save others,” Quinn continued. “But you question yourself so much over it, it becomes an emotional ordeal. Things like breaking into a Mullberg city don’t bother me because my entire career is about protecting. By tracking the Chosen, I’m attempting to protect the continent. As long as I don’t do harm to others, I frankly don’t care what snooty and useless-against-the-Chosen law I have to break to accomplish it.”