The Palace Job

by Patrick Weekes

"For example," Hessler mused, "I'm walking here with you, and your face is known by that justicar and the helmsman, so there's a chance that we could be seen. I am essentially trusting your ability as a career criminal to avoid detection."

  "Stop, Magister, I'm blushing."

  Archvoyant Silestin and his associate stopped at a four-story building whose vivid murals and expensive illusions marked it as a temple of Tasheveth, the only goddess who would be caught in the pleasure district. Tern and Hessler caught a glimpse of rich red carpets and gilded bronze columns in the entry room, and then the great door slammed shut behind them.

  "On the other hand, as a career criminal, you—and any of the others—would likely leave me behind if need be." Hessler nodded in triumphant calculation. "Thus, my level of trust for any of you is logically a case-by-case examination of the current threat level measured against your perceived need for my abilities."

  "Weren't you shackled in a cell when Loch found you?" Tern stomped on a nobleman's foot as she and Hessler started back the way they had come.

  "Only because I was framed!"

  "So, like I asked earlier, non-criminal, do you trust the death-priestess?"

  "Why is she any different from the rest of you?" Hessler asked bluntly.

  They paused a fountain of a frolicking water nymph. "Well, I don't raise zombies from hell on behalf of a daemon-god who consumes souls," said Tern. "I mean, how do we know what she's saying about that hammer is true? How do we know that it isn't some poor guy whose mortal essence was enslaved?"

  Hessler considered this option. "I don't really see Desidora as the type of woman who would want a magical talking warhammer."

  "She sacrifices victims in obscene rites to fuel her horrific, world-shattering enchantments!"

  "Which we haven't seen," Hessler noted, "and only know through secondhand anecdotal evidence from unreliable storytellers. Really, Tern, it's almost like you have some built-in prejudice against Desidora."

  "She's a death priestess!" Tern said in a voice that made onlookers pause and stare at them. "Can't you feel the weight of her evil stare?"

  "She used to be a love priestess, and her eyes are actually quite attractive," Hessler said, followed by, "Ow! That was—"

  "Look, he's back," Tern said quietly as the Archvoyant came outside with a wrapped package tucked under one arm. "Now that's a lot sooner than I expected to see him come." She heard the cough behind her and added, "Outside," archly. "Come on. Let's see where he's headed."

  She stalked off into the crowd, and Hessler followed, limping slightly and muttering to himself.

  "This," Pyvic Pyvic said while nibbling on Loch's neck and helping her out of her blouse, "is a massive mistake."

  "Mmmm-hmmm," Loch agreed, working her hands under his shirt and raking her fingers across the taut muscles of Pyvic's back. She'd already flung his jacket over the door handle and tossed her own coat over the small chair that, aside from the bed, was the only furniture in the room they'd rented.

  "I should be hunting," Pyvic murmured into Loch's hair as his strong fingers slipped beneath her undershirt and traced hot patterns across her skin.

  "Mmm-mmm." Loch tugged his shirt free from his pants—but not off. She liked the look of it, rumpled and unbuttoned but still hanging over his broad shoulders. "For your thief?"

  "For the truth, Isafesira," he said, and her heart pounded hard against her chest for a moment. Why had she told him her real name? Stupid, stupid, stupid. "I should be..." His wonderful warm hands came up to rest on her shoulders. "...hunting for the truth."

  She felt the moment pass and took one selfish second to feel the warmth of him against her before she let him push her away.

  "Well, then," she said, and drew a finger along his arm as he stepped back, "good hunting."

  His breath was shaky as he grabbed his jacket and stalked out.

  So was hers, damn him.

  Twelve

  Kail approached the Lapitemperum early the following morning, wearing the lavender robes of a lapitect and carrying a thick ream of paper. He was sweating and grouchy and dimly aware that Cevirt's free bar might not always be his friend.

  The guards outside the big brick building were grumpy as well. People always thought that grumpy guards were harder to talk through, but, well, people were stupid.

  He jerked his chin at the one on the right as he stomped up the steps. "Hey."

  The guards gave him a sour look. "Badge?"

  Kail grimaced, shifted the ream of papers to his other hand, fumbled in the robe pocket, and then dropped the ream of papers between the two guards, scattering them everywhere. "Son of a bitch!" Kail dropped to his knees and began grabbing papers. "Dammit! Dammit! Da... hey, come on, man, could you help me out here?" A gust of wind, sent helpfully by a small white dove across the street, swept the remaining stack of papers down the steps. "Oh, that's just what I need! Jackass guard needs to see my badge..."

  "Right, right, don't get your knickers in a twist," one of the sour-faced guards growled and bent down to help gather the papers. In an audible undertone, he added, "Bunch of pansy fiddlers..."

  "And... hell, what was I thinking?" Kail sighed and shook his head. "I don't even work at this station. I don't even have a badge that would work for you."

  The security, as explained by Tern, was top-notch, using some of the oldest and most powerful magic the Ancients had had. It included a verifier ward that would fire a warning glamour on anyone who knowingly told a falsehood.

  As such, Kail was being completely honest when he said that he didn't work at that station and didn't have a badge.

  "You don't have a badge?" the first guard said with a sour look. "We're not supposed to let you in without a badge."

  "Well, fine," Kail said shortly. "Would you like to present a dissertation on ablating the magnification-decay ratio in null-source thaumaturgic enchantments, then?"

  That was a question, so it wasn't exactly a lie.

  Also, that had been the entirety of Kail's knowledge of ancient magical artifact terminology as patiently repeated to him by Hessler.

  "Gods." The other guard shook his head. "S'too early for this crap. Here. We'll drop it for you. Just get inside and remember your damn badge next time."

  "Thanks, man. I really appreciate it." Also entirely true. Kail ducked his head while the guard reached inside, put his palm to a blue crystal panel just beyond the door, and shut his eyes in concentration. The panel flashed green, and the other guard jerked his chin toward the doorway. Kail muttered his thanks again and hurried inside.

  Kail stepped into an airy entryway lit by beautiful magic chandeliers and pristine windows. A matronly woman sat at the lobby desk, and busy lapitects, all in lavender robes like Kail's, marched to and fro with folders and crystals and wands and notepads.

  "Hey!" one of the guards called sharply behind him. Kail considered running, opted not to, but did make a fist inside the pocket of his robe as he turned around.

  The guard held out one crumpled sheet of paper. It was muddy and had a dirty boot print on it. "Missed this one," the guard said with a smirk.

  Kail snatched it, made a good show of wiping it off before tucking it back in with the rest of the papers. "Thanks again," he said with a brisk nod, and hurried into the complex itself.

  Kail walked purposefully until he saw a set of stairs, and then he headed up to the second floor and walked some more, giving brief, distracted nods to anyone who made eye contact with him.

  When he saw a white-haired old guy with a rumpled robe and some papers of his own step out of an office on the window-side of the hallway, Kail angled toward the man. The man shut his office door, locked it carefully, turned to start walking, and ran directly into Kail. There was a brief explosive tangle of flying paper and lavender robes.

  "Second time this morning, dammit!" Kail said, which was, again, not a lie, as he helped the other man up and also removed the man's badge and keys from his pocket. "Here, this paper is yours, I think
, and so's this one. Man, that was my fault."

  "You should watch where you're going," the old man said severely, and stalked off. Kail spent a good long while adjusting his papers and the hem of his robes, and when the old man was around the corner, Kail unlocked the man's door and stepped inside.

  After many hours of brainstorming and planning and expletives, Tern and Hessler had concluded that there was no way that Kail was going to be able to find the lapisavantum, which was apparently something he was supposed to find, and pull the energy matrix records for Archvoyant Silestin's palace, which Tern had finally dumbed down enough for Kail to understand by saying that it was like a sketch of a lock showing you where the tumblers were.

  And even if Kail could find it, there was no way he was going to access it. That just wasn't his thing. It was Tern's thing, but Tern couldn't very well smuggle herself in, and it was Hessler's thing, too, but the illusion magic he'd use to get inside would apparently set off all kinds of alarm bells.

  And so Kail had a different partner. He glanced briefly at the old man's office, which looked a great deal like the office of any old man with a lot of intellectual power. Then he moved aside a pile of books that was half-blocking the window, threw back the curtains, coughed at the dust he'd kicked up, and eased the window open.

  The street below—a small side street, pretty much empty this time of morning—shone bright and clean in the pale sunlight, and the building across the street was a tall brick office. Icy Fist stood on the roof, also wearing borrowed lapitect robes. He had a pole, perhaps ten feet long, in one hand, and he waved with his free hand when he saw Kail.

  Kail attached the security badge to a handy paperweight with a bit of twine, hefted the package to get the weight of it, took two hopping steps to the window, and hurled it out and across the street. Icy leaped, caught it in his free hand, and then turned and ran out of view.

  Icy had seemed confident when describing this aspect of the plan. Kail didn't know if that was just an Imperial fearlessness or what, but the physics the little Imperial described when explaining why a pole would let him jump across the street were more of the Tern-and-Hessler variety than the Kail variety. Because Icy was on his team, now, Kail said a quick prayer to Gedesar.

  A moment later, Icy Fist flew from the edge of the tax building like he'd been hurled by a catapult, flying across the street with his pole trailing behind him.

  But he wasn't going to make it. Kail leaned out the window with his arms ready to grab hold, maybe catch Icy by the arm...

  A moment later, Kail regained his senses. Primarily his sense of touch, which was telling him about the desk lodged in his back and the Imperial who had just slammed into him harder than anything had ever hit Kail, ever, including the ground when they'd leaped from the airship last week or from the Spire a couple weeks before that.

  "I calculated the distance carefully," Icy said.

  "Mrf." Kail was going to have some wonderful bruises.

  "I appreciate the sentiment, however." Icy rolled off him, and Kail, now unpinned from the desk, crumpled slowly to the floor.

  When he opened his eyes a moment later, wincing, he saw that Icy still had the damn pole in one hand. One end was sticking out the window, and he pulled it the rest of the way through, angling it sideways so that it went from one corner of the small office to the other.

  "Are you prepared to continue?" Icy asked, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. "Our timeline is flexible."

  "What, me?" Kail pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his back. Judging by the indentations in the carpet, he and Icy had knocked the desk a good couple feet, and it wasn't a small desk. "I'm fine." A flare of purple radiance lit in the air over Kail's head.

  "That would appear to be the ambient ward that detects falsehoods," Icy said politely.

  "Stupid ward's probably just misfiring." Kail snorted. Another flare of purple radiance lit in the air. "Let's hit it."

  He didn't think of himself as a proud man, but he was damned if he was going to limp as he opened the door and ushered Icy out into the hallway.

  "Which way?" Kail murmured, and Icy turned confidently to the right and started down the hallway. Kail fell in behind him.

  They walked down some hallways and up another flight of stairs. Icy walked without hesitation or pause, and Kail, who got lost after about three turns, just walked alongside him staring at nothing.

  "Hold on just one moment!" Kail blinked and looked at the portly lapitect who stood in their path. "I don't recognize you two! What are you doing here?"

  And then Kail was back in charge.

  "Oh, come on, man," he said indignantly as Icy began to stutter out a response. "What do you think we're doing here?"

  The portly man turned to Kail and raised a finger. "Security is a vital part of maintaining the Lapitemperum, and it is not only the right but the responsibility of all staff to verify—"

  "Sure," Kail cut in, "so if you saw a couple of white technicians coming in to perform a, a, a..."

  "Time-curve analysis of energy dispersion for the Spire's levitation field," Icy finished.

  "Right, if you saw white technicians coming in to do that, you'd ask them the same thing? And you've recognized everyone else you've passed in the halls today?"

  "I..." The portly lapitect flushed. "It's simply a matter of—"

  "Oh, afraid to answer the question?" Kail crossed his arms indignantly. "Maybe afraid you'd get a little flare of purple over your head?"

  The lapitect glared. "That's the most... I don't have to stand here and listen to this!" He brushed past them and stomped away.

  "I am impressed," Icy said after a moment, "by your ability to dissemble within such limited parameters."

  "It's not so hard," Kail said. "Most people, you ask questions at them, they just want to get rid of you as quick as they can. You learn to work that, you can get a lot of doors opened."

  Icy started down the hallway again. "It is as though your body is entirely motivated by kaj energy..." Seeing Kail's blank look, he added, "We of the Empire believe that the body is made of two energies, the jar, or receptive, quiet, female energy, and the kaj, or aggressive, loud, male energy."

  "So I'm, like, more male then most men?" Kail asked with a hint of pride.

  Icy pursed his lips. "That is certainly one way of interpreting my statement," he said, and glanced briefly overhead before continuing. "And you seem almost to transmit this disharmony to others by your speech and attitudes, such that your very presence disrupts the balance of their spirit."

  "You're saying I get them mad and confused?" Kail asked.

  "I... yes." Icy stopped at a door marked "Primary Lapisavantum Chamber—Authorized Personnel Only".

  "I can work with that. We here?"

  "We are."

  Kail studied the door. "Just like Tern said. Mechanical lock, no crystals or anything." He pulled Iofecyl from her special case (which he'd sewn into his sleeve last night) and got to work on the lock. "Come on, baby, let's make this fast..."

  "Tern theorized that the ambient magic of the lapisavantum would preclude... are you anthropomorphizing your lockpick?"

  Kail squinted, trying to feel the tumblers. "You know, she really works better when it's quiet."

  "Tern often says the same thing." Icy shrugged, went back to keeping a lookout. "Although she does not, to my knowledge, anthropomorphize her lockpicks."

  A few moments later, Kail felt the tumblers click as he raked his one true love gently across the grooved surface. He gave a quiet "Hah!", pulled the door open, and darted inside with Icy close behind.

  It could have been a broom closet, except that one entire wall was made of glowing blue crystal, and the blue crystal had hundreds of sparkly lights in it, some blinking in different colors. "All you, Icy. Do your thing."

  Icy nodded and stepped up to the rock. He touched one glowing thing, then another. Some of the lights changed colors. He touched another glowing thing and moved
his finger across the crystal's surface, and the lights started flashing crazily.

  "Hey, are they supposed to do that?" Kail asked.

  "Tern did not mention that particular pattern," Icy said absently, "but then, I was instructed only to follow a specific course of action."

  "Right, but if they're not supposed to do that—"

  "I memorized the specific pattern of actions Tern described," Icy said, "and interrupting me in mid-application is unlikely to prove beneficial."

  "Oh, fine." Kail leaned against one of the side walls, which was blank except for a lot of narrow slots that might have held levers or extra crystals or something. "I'll just sit here and shut up, then."

  "Thank you." Icy pressed a final glowing thing, and there was a plink noise, and a crystal popped out of one of the little slots in the wall. "I believe that this should be what Tern wished us to retrieve."

  Kail grabbed the crystal, opened the door, and ushered Icy out. "So, are you two...?"

  "We are simply friends and partners," Icy said. "Much like you and Loch." He coughed. "Actually, I may be seeing someone as of yesterday. "

  "And just what are you two doing in the lapisavantum chamber?" came a sharp voice from around the corner and out of Kail's view, stuck as he was behind Icy.

  There was a brief and hopeful silence.

  "What do you think we are doing in the lapisavantum chamber?" Icy asked carefully.

  Kail made a mental note to spend some time discussing the importance of delivery.

  "Right, the two of you just stay where you are!" the sharp voice declared. "I don't know who you are, but you're not going anywhere until—"

  "Hey, come on!" Kail pushed into the hallway and saw an ascetic-looking man whose lapitect robes had some little stars on the collar. "We're trying to work, here! Do I go down to where your mother works and push the sailors out of her bed?"

  The thin man stiffened in outrage, and Kail cold-cocked him, caught him as he fell, tossed his body into the room with the big blue crystal, and shut the door firmly. A few lapitects down at the end of the hall were moving their way with concerned looks.