by Logan Jacobs
I took one last look at myself in the mirror, brushed a lock of hair back into place, and then walked downstairs to the sitting room where Aerin, Lena, and Emeline were already waiting. The three women looked exceptionally beautiful in their gowns, and as they stood to greet me, I kissed each of them.
“You all look incredible,” I said.
“So do you,” Aerin told me as she sat down next to me on the couch and leaned against my shoulder. “Maybe we should be infiltrating fancy parties more often.”
“You’re just saying that because we didn’t have to pay for the outfits,” Lavinia said as she came down the stairs. The ladona woman looked intimidating and gorgeous in her dark dress. She joined Aerin and me on the couch and traced her long nails over my knee.
“I don’t know,” I admitted with a laugh, “I’m starting to think I’d rather stay here.” Spending the night surrounded by all these amazing, stunning women was certainly more appealing than trying to chase down bandits in a cave, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that there’d be plenty of time for fun after we’d dealt with Cygne and the others.
Yvaine and Dehn came down then, and I heard the marchioness trying to convince the halfling to store his weapons in Aerin’s pouch with the rest of the guild’s.
“I don’t trust magical storage,” Dehn insisted as he tromped down the stairs in his dark green suit. “What if I try to grab my axe, and it comes out as... as, I don’t know, a rabbit?”
“It’s perfectly safe,” Yvaine said. “And dear, an axe just isn’t an appropriate accessory for what you’re wearing, I must say.”
The halfling snorted and jumped the last two steps down to the floor. Yvaine followed with measured steps, her heeled shoes clicked on the wooden stairs.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if this ridiculous suit had some spikes on it,” Dehn groused. “Maybe a little more leather, and some blood.”
“Blood doesn’t work with the color of that fabric, my dear. The aesthetic would be off.” Yvaine rolled her eyes as if the small man should have known that, and then she came over to perch on the arm of the chair where I sat. “We’re just waiting on Maruk, then?”
“I’m coming!” the orc called from up the stairs, and he appeared a moment later in his own costume. It was immediately clear what had taken him so long. He’d rebraided his long, pale hair with little silver clasps to match the silver accents of his costume.
“About time,” Lavinia said as she stood. “We can’t risk being late for this, you know.”
“We’re not going to be late,” the orc insisted. “And we never get to dress up like this, can’t you just let me enjoy it? I’m wearing Delafose, for goodness’ sake.”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s your idol, you can’t believe you’ve been given the honor, I heard you the first twelve times. Our carriage is here.” Lavinia nodded out the window, and I turned to see that she was right.
We had decided for the sake of both our own comfort and to avoid unnecessarily damaging our borrowed costumes that we would hire a carriage to take us most of the way to the Sunken Caverns, though we’d have to go on foot to the entrance itself, and as promised, Yvaine had covered the cost. We packed ourselves in and then we were off, just as the afternoon faded into evening.
The ride was, fortunately, fairly short since our destination was only a few miles outside the city. The driver was confused about why we wanted to be dropped off on the side of the road, dressed up as we were, but an extra gold coin from Yvaine encouraged him to keep his questions to himself. The bandits who would be arriving would no doubt have their own secret roads and means of reaching the Sunken Caverns for the masquerade, and I didn’t want us to draw undue attention to ourselves by rolling up to the caves in a large, expensive carriage from the city.
The sun was low in the sky when the driver took off again without us, and we crossed the empty fields in our finery toward the edge of the forest where we knew we would find our entrance to the Sunken Caverns.
I’d never been to a secret party slash heist meeting headquartered in an abandoned cave before, so I didn’t really know what to expect as we walked down the shadowy forest trails. Would there be traps to deter intruders? Signs to guide the participants? I kept my eye out for both but discovered neither, and within a few minutes, the rock formation that stood above the cave entrance on the map we’d found was in sight, the only feature of an otherwise empty clearing. There was no one else around.
“Are we all ready?” I asked as I looked around at the others. The light was fading fast, and we looked like participants in some sort of bizarre photo shoot. Couture in the wild.
“Ready,” Aerin confirmed, and the sentiment was echoed by the rest of the group.
“Let’s do this,” I replied with a nod, and then I lit the torch we’d brought and led the way down into the cave.
We had only gone a few dozen yards or so, however, when there was a glow up ahead, and the earthen tunnel around us was studded with sconces and torches to light the way. I extinguished my torch as we continued down the slope toward the cavern, and between the snap of the torch flames and the echo of our footsteps, I caught snatches of conversation, laughter, and music. My stomach fluttered with anticipation.
After another few dozen yards, we came to a door guarded by a tall ladona man in a red costume. His mask was fashioned to resemble a skull, and he held up a hand as we drew near.
“Name and invitation?” he asked.
“The Crows,” I answered. I made my tone confident and met the bouncer’s eyes behind his mask as I took out our forged invitation and passed it to him. I knew that acting like we belonged was more than half the battle when it came to sneaking into a place like this.
The bouncer’s eyes flicked down as he looked over the paper, then he passed it back to me without a word and opened the door for us.
I had known that the Sunken Caverns had been famous as a hiding spot for bandits in the past, before the cave-ins that had blocked off so many of the entrances, but I had always envisioned a typical cave. A few chambers, maybe, and a half dozen or so tunnels from them to various points on the surface, nothing more. What I found, however, was more akin to a subterranean palace. Someone had clearly gone to some great efforts to make this place into not just a convenient hideout for criminals with a couple of escape routes, but an actual thief’s kingdom. In fact, if we hadn’t just come from the surface, I would have had trouble believing that we were even underground.
From where we stood in the doorway, a staircase carved out of the rock led down to what could only be described as a ballroom. Chandeliers in the ceiling illuminated the vast ballroom from above, the stone walls had been cut and molded like many of the finest buildings in Ovrista, the floor was shining marble, and there was even decorative wallpaper. Tables laden with food and drink had been set along the far wall, and more attendants in red with skull masks like the bouncer stood nearby like this was an actual party. There were even musicians. It reminded me of Yvaine’s estate far more than any of the numerous caves I’d been in. Wooden doors on hinges separated this chamber from the others, so I couldn’t glimpse what the rest of the Sunken Caverns were like, but it was clear to me now that this was no random meeting place. Someone had made this into a home.
The floor was already full of other bandits in costume. Some had taken to the idea of the party and danced with one another in the center of the floor, but most others stayed on the fringes, everyone with their own gang, and eyed one another suspiciously. I supposed that wasn’t so strange, given that they were all bandits. I wondered what it must be like to work with people you couldn’t trust, and how we might exploit the various bandit gangs’ distrust of one another to our own advantage.
I guessed that there were about one hundred people in all, which was at once encouraging and worrying. Encouraging, because we would have an easier time blending in with a larger crowd. Worrying, because if our cover was blown, and the bandits attacked us, we were severely outnumbered.<
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As I started slowly down the steps, I scanned the crowd for mages and Cygne in particular. There were about seven in total among the bandits, going by the brightness of their mana, but none of them seemed to me to be the mastermind behind the heist. I set my jaw. It was still early, he might not have arrived yet, but I wanted to act as quickly as possible to stop him. We would have to ask around and see what the other bandits knew, then.
As we reached the floor, I drew the rest of my guild aside.
“Let’s split up,” I said. “Mingle, see what information we can find about Cygne. We need to find him and get him alone before he can address the group.”
Since the bandits who had taken to the dancefloor seemed like the most agreeable and least likely to be overly suspicious of the present company, I started for the crowd of dancers and inserted myself among them just as they began another dance. It wasn’t one I recognized, and it seemed to me to be something folksier than the sort of dances I remembered from Yvaine’s party, but the steps weren’t complicated, and I was able to pick it up fairly quickly.
I forced myself to appear relaxed as I matched the steps of the woman across from me, and when I caught her eye behind a mask that resembled a butterfly, I smiled at her. She smiled back, and as the steps brought us closer together, I decided to try to start a conversation.
“Some party, isn’t it?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” the bandit woman replied. “When I heard there was supposed to be a costume party, I thought perhaps our leader had gone mad, but it’s fun!”
I was thrilled that she’d already provided me a decent segue to bring up Cygne.
“I thought the same thing,” I told her and I made my expression sympathetic. “That Cygne seemed like a strange one.”
The bandit woman nodded emphatically, but she made no comment.
“Where is he, anyway?” I asked as casually as I could manage while I made a show of looking around. “Shouldn’t we be getting started soon?”
“Haven’t seen him yet,” the woman replied.
We finished the dance, and I gave the woman a small bow before I excused myself and scanned the crowd again for another person to question. I wondered if anyone here had seen Cygne yet, or if asking any of them would be a waste of time. Perhaps it would be better just to search for him. There couldn’t be that many other chambers here, and we’d have a better chance at getting him alone than if we waited until he made his appearance in the ballroom.
I rounded up the rest of my guild again and told them what I’d found out. “I think we’d better just go and look for him.”
“Good idea,” Lavinia said. “I don’t know about you, but the guy I was talking to did not like me asking questions.”
“There are all those guards in red,” Emeline pointed out. “What if they stop us?”
“Say you’re looking for the bathroom,” Aerin suggested.
“All seven of us should say we’re looking for the bathroom?” Lavinia raised her eyebrows.
“Well come up with your own thing if you don’t like it,” Aerin shot back.
Lavinia made a good point, though, it would look suspicious for us to all try to leave the ballroom as a group.
“Let’s go in pairs, and we’ll look around and see what we can find,” I said.
“Excellent suggestion,” Yvaine said, and she looped her arm through mine. The others all paired off, Lavinia with Maruk, Aerin with Emeline, and Lena with Dehn, and then we each started for one of the doors that led out from the ballroom.
Chapter 15
Yvaine and I wove through the crowd to one of the doors of the ballroom. One of Cygne’s red-clad, skull-masked guards stood by the door, but to my relief, he said nothing and made no move to stop us as we passed. That made things easier, but I suspected we would have to go somewhere off-limits eventually to find Cygne.
The hall we entered then was just as lavish as the ballroom, with marble floors and gilded candelabras on the walls.
“How did he build all of this?” I wondered aloud as Yvaine and I started down the hall. It seemed like we had enough trouble finding good contractors to work on our guild hall most of the time, so I couldn’t imagine how a criminal would have found someone who would install marble floors and chandeliers inside of a cavern known for having been the secret hideout of thieves in centuries past.
“It is not as strange a request as you might think,” Yvaine replied. “You would be surprised by the things people with much more money than they know what to do with will spend it on. I knew a contessa who decided to have a personal resort built on a network of floating platforms in a lake near her summer home. She had a lovely swimming pool put in with a mosaic floor, and the bathhouse was exceptional.”
“She had a swimming pool built over a lake?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little... redundant?”
“Perhaps, but she could afford to be redundant,” Yvaine answered. “Her father left her a sizable inheritance.”
So, whoever Cygne was beneath the mask, he was obviously wealthy. Why organize a heist then? If he could afford all this, he didn’t seem to need a few vases and jewels from the nobles of Ovrista. Or, perhaps that was how he’d come by his wealth. I tried to imagine him making off with some prince’s chandeliers or a duchess’ table runners.
There were no guards in the next room, which seemed to be a sort of antechamber. Some stairs led downward on the right, and there was another door on the left. I tried the door. It opened onto a kitchen, and I came face-to-face with a startled looking man holding a pot. He was dressed in the same red robes as the guards, but he had no mask and wore an apron over his clothes.
“Can I help you with something, sir?” he asked in a timid squeak.
I was about to say no when I realized the cook might be able to help us after all.
“We were wondering where Cygne was,” I said. “I thought he was supposed to come down to the ballroom already.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know where he is, sir,” the man replied, and he did seem to be sincerely afraid of Yvaine and me. “I’ve been here all evening. I’m sure he’ll be there soon.”
Damn. I wondered if it would be too suspicious to ask more about the layout of the palace. Probably.
“Thanks,” I told the cook, and I closed the door. We’d try the stairs, then.
“This place is not at all what I anticipated,” Yvaine remarked as we crossed the room to the staircase and started down, deeper into the underground palace. “Although,” she admitted, “I have not spent a significant amount of time around bandits.”
“They don’t usually hang out in places like this,” I told her.
We came to another long hall, complete with a plush rug that spanned the length of it and several doors on either side. Since none of them stood out in particular, I just went up to the first and pushed it open. The room was a study, with a few shelves of books, a writing desk, and a few armchairs. Again, I found myself wondering how anyone could have managed to build and furnish a palace like this without drawing attention to themselves.
“Well, that’s strange,” Yvaine said suddenly.
“What is?” I asked as I followed her gaze to a statue of a hound on the desk.
“This statue,” the marchioness replied. “An acquaintance of mine in the city had one exactly like it. He was at my party, actually, you may have met him. His name is Lord Adler.”
That was the councilor I’d spoken to. I picked up the statue and studied it. It was crafted of silver, and the hound stood tall and proud on the base.
“Cygne or one of his band must have stolen it,” Yvaine went on with a note of sadness in her voice. “Perhaps after we complete our mission, we’ll be able to return everything here to the rightful owners. I know Adler will be missing this, it was a gift from Lucius Previn. They were good friends before Lucius’ death.”
“They were friends?” I asked as a new thought suddenly came to me.
“Yes,” Yvaine loo
ked surprised by the urgency in my tone.
“Yvaine, was Lucius Previn a mage?”
“No.” Then the marchioness frowned slightly. “Well, there were rumors. Gossip about private tutors and bribes to the Mage Academy, but that sort of talk abounds at parties, no one really takes it seriously.”
“You said no one ever found Lucius’ body, didn’t you?” I went on. “There was no funeral.”
“Yes, but he was lost at sea. He drowned.”
“According to some sailors,” I said. “What if he just paid them off to tell everyone he was dead so that no one would look for him while he went into hiding?”
“Gabriel, I know you want to figure out who Cygne is, but Lucius is dead. The team that investigated his disappearance was extremely thorough, they wouldn’t have had the wool pulled over their eyes by a few sailors.”
“Maybe the sailors believed he was dead, too, then,” I suggested, unwilling to let go of the idea, especially now that I knew there was a chance that Lucius Previn had been a mage. I reconstructed a possible sequence of events in my head.
Lucius escaped prison following charges of embezzlement. He was last seen trying to get away on a ship where he reportedly drowned at sea. Whether the sailors who reported his death were lying or if Lucius had somehow tricked them, too, it didn’t really matter. He returned to Ovrista and assumed a new identity, bought the land above the Sunken Caverns and constructed this place, and roped the resident bandit gangs into a heist. The swan stamp wasn’t accidental, or even a tribute to Lucius Previn’s seal. It was his actual seal.