by Garon Whited
“What are the next steps?”
“You think about it. I have to set up the closet and do some preliminary work on the barn.”
I left her to consider my lies. True, I was actually trying to establish some trade relations with the tribesmen, but only for my own purposes. Lying—or half-lying—might keep me out of trouble, though. The Empire really was hemmed in and stagnant. It could use a good shaking.
The closet went quickly. Tuning it to the closet in the tower was no trouble. I have a shift-closet!
The barn was trickier. I initially picked the house because the barn was a tall one, with a hayloft I knocked out to get more ceiling height. It wasn’t quite long enough for my purposes—to have an interior space large enough to match the one they built in the valley—but it only needed a framework add-on in the back to define the space, not an actual enclosed area. Still, it needed some of the front converted into taller doors and some of the back knocked completely out.
Renata felt comfortable enough to stay with the house. I took the car into town, traded it in on a pickup truck, and brought back food, a necklace, lumber, tools, and a bit of furniture. I also bought some furniture and paid for delivery. All she would have to do was sign for it.
I walked her through the electric stove and oven, then we ate. Afterward, Renata practiced her signature while I enchanted the necklace with a translation spell. The trickiest part was to let her talk. Normally, a translation spell works by taking in what the speaker says and conveying the meaning the speaker is broadcasting. It’s sort of a psychic spell. It does the same thing in reverse when the wearer speaks. When it’s actually cast on someone, there’s no problem. Wherever your attention goes, so do your words. But in an object? It doesn’t pay attention to anyone. It just sits there.
My solution was to have Renata talk to me while I sorted out some of her psychic emanations. We went through a lot of vocabulary while I worked on the necklace. When she spoke, it would transliterate, switching words for her in her own head, so she would actually say English words anyone could hear. Her vocabulary was somewhat limited and her syntax distinctly Tautan, but it would only make her sound as though English was her second language.
She elected to return with me, so we stepped into the closet and shifted back.
“And that’s how you come back whenever you need to,” I told her. She looked around the stone room and nodded.
“It seems simple enough. All right. I can be your agent there.”
“Thank you. This solves multiple problems for me.”
“You mean it solves me as a problem.”
“Look,” I sighed, “I’m dealing with a valley full of people who are under siege. House Sarcana wants you to give birth to their heir—or Naskarl wants to keep you from giving birth, or something. There’s a blocking force sealing off my valley and possibly more troops coming up to support them for an invasion. I have wizards watching everything they can lay eyes on, spying on us, and occasional special-forces actions to kidnap or steal things.
“I recognize and acknowledge you’re a warrior, okay? You’re skilled, you’re deadly, and you’re loyal. I’m delighted to have you. But you are, effectively, on the wounded list because of Palan’s multiple stabbings. You’ll recover and go back to full duty—but I want you to recover so you can go back to full duty. In the meantime, yes, you’re someone being protected instead of someone doing the protecting. I’m doing my best to make you useful while you’re on the sick list, but if you don’t like that, you’re not required to stay. You give me the word and I’ll discharge you from my service. You can go back to Sarcana and let them do… whatever it is they plan to do with you. If you choose to stay, you can suck it up and tough it out.”
Renata gazed at me with a deadpan, expressionless face. She blinked twice before she answered.
“Is that your final word on the subject, sir?”
“I have spoken.”
She smiled, ever so slightly.
“I’ll stay.”
“Good. Go pick someone to take with you. You asked earlier and I agreed.”
“Yes, sir!”
She took off down the stairs and I headed for my bedroom. I also promised Leisel.
While a gentleman is not supposed to kiss and tell, I will say this: Leisel knows what she likes and isn’t shy about asking for it. I don’t know if that’s just how she is or if it’s normal in this culture. Either way, it makes things pretty simple. I think it helps that she’s somewhat playful, not serious. If she behaved more seriously, more coldly, I might feel I was being used. Maybe I am, but I get something out of it, too. She seems to like me, and the illusion of affection—if it is an illusion—is a pleasant and welcome one.
Part of it is the little things she does. Without going into the more sordid details, take for example the snacks. Leisel handles the schedule on when and where, as per our agreement. She makes sure we have a pitcher of water on hand and a fruit of some sort. This is more than just a quirk or a kindness on her part. It’s also a bit of a tradition. We unceremoniously drink the water, obviously, but the fruit—it varies, depending on what’s on hand—we share in little nibbles.
As I understand it, there’s some sort of symbolic thing going on when she takes a tiny bite, passes it to me so I can take one, and back and forth until it’s either gone or down to the core. I’m not sure, exactly what it’s supposed to symbolize, but it does lend weight to the impression she actually likes me.
I still have the impulse to open my mouth like a snake and take half the fruit in a single bite. I don’t do it, but the impulse is always there.
After sunset, I let Leisel sleep and went off to do other things. I needed a charging rack for the scryzapper, for one thing, and some bits of green glass for a charge indicator. The craftsmen also finished my local barn, so I made sure it was all prepped and ready to be a shift-booth. An extra jumbo large shift-booth, but the principle is the same regardless of the size.
Bronze and I went out to check on what would become the western trade fort. It was coming along nicely. People kept stacking stones, so it grew slightly faster than they could supply rocks. We burned across the valley and checked the eastern bridge fort, as well. It now had a twenty-by-twenty wooden door mounted at the front. They were still working on a winch system to raise and lower it, but it made a nice-looking wall in the meantime. True, it cut off all access to the bridge, but we weren’t using it anyway. I set the stone-shaping spell on the nearer half of the bridge to start reshaping the rock. In a few days, the only practical way across would be to lower the new drawbridge.
Bronze and I, however, did not use the bridge. After putting my personal touch on each fort, we ran back to the tower.
Yes, I could have done it all through scrying devices and physically sticking a hand through a small gate. I didn’t have to go there personally, but I know she likes to run.
I set up a wire gate inside the new barn and used it as a departure point. Rather than pick our way through the mountains, circumvent the roadblock, and travel along the road, we simply skipped from the valley straight to Sarashda. Since it was a point-to-point gate, rather than an interuniversal one, I went ahead and made it a brute-force terminus, letting us out on an unoccupied stretch of road.
We trotted the last mile or two into Sarashda.
Boss?
“What’s up?”
Just wondering about the plan.
“We go to the Sarcana estate and I play ninja vampire. I have a couple of things to do inside, but I’m hoping to make off with all the wealth Sarcana has, crippling their ability to wage war.”
And if we can’t?
“Oh, I’ll happily run away. I’m not out to kill them all.”
You’re not?
“Not at the moment,” I amended.
Sometimes you’re no fun at all, Boss.
“But I have a sunny disposition.”
Bronze snorted and I laughed. I felt more cheerful at that moment than I could
recall for some time. She dropped me off and moved to a position opposite the nearest gate. I fired up my stealth spells and headed in.
The Sarcana estate was a collection of buildings surrounded by a wall. The main house was more central than not, with paths and gardens around it. Temporarily disabling the magical alarm at the wall was tricky, but going through the wall was easy. After all, I had a silvery cloak of phasing. I stepped through the grey, misty thing and pulled it after me on the far side. I found myself standing between two large, raised planters full of flowers and long, green leaves.
The garden wasn’t booby-trapped or covered in alarms. Presumably, people liked to walk through them without setting off umpteen alerts. It had guards at various points and a few walking patrols, but they all glowed brighter in my night-sight than the plants. Avoiding them was no trouble.
The house, once I reached it, was another story. The doors were all bolted for the night and the glow of life was obvious even through the doors. There were no guards standing outside the doors, but there was a guard stationed inside each. If someone came along, they couldn’t slug a guard and take their time about breaking in. They would have to break in and alert the guard.
Fortunately, I wasn’t planning on going through a door. I plastered the silvery cloak on one wall and stepped through into the crystal room I spied earlier. It wasn’t a large room, but it centered on a low stone pillar with a fist-sized crystal mounted at the top.
The nine-faceted crystal was the enchanted object shielding the entire estate from scrying and similar magics. Standing in front of it, I had the opportunity to examine the spell in some detail. It radiated a field rather than simply erecting a barrier, filling the entire volume with a blocking spell. It had a perimeter setting so it didn’t waste its energies outside a certain radius. It was like a light source surrounded by a spherical mirror. Everything inside the sphere was brightly illuminated, but it left everything outside the sphere in darkness, only in this case it prevented seeing instead of facilitating it.
On the other hand, I spoke with Naskarl through a mirror. Channels existed to allow communications. Therefore, it should be possible to either alter the enchantment or cast a spell to temporarily influence it. Altering an enchantment is difficult and complicated, almost on the order of re-enchanting the object. It’s like replacing the stock engine and drivetrain in a car with a bigger, stronger, better version. By the time you’re done, it might be simpler and cheaper to buy the car you actually wanted. A spell, on the other hand, is more like a temporary patch in the code, if I may mix my metaphors. Instead of rewriting a program, I can give it a subroutine to suppress certain bits on command.
I reminded myself not to whistle while I worked. It’s a bad habit when I’m trying to be stealthy.
With the crystal suitably hijacked, I checked my work by scrying on the vault. When I activated the secondary channel in the scryshield, my scrying spell worked perfectly. I took the opportunity to examine the vault in detail for the first time. There was a room on the ground floor with a heavy door. Two guards waited inside, at the head of the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs—wood-covered masonry stairs, I noted—was an iron door set in what looked like concrete. Magically-melded stone of some sort? Or did they know how to make concrete around here? Either way, it was a good, solid vault and I wouldn’t want to have to kick it in. Sadly, the stairs were too narrow for Bronze.
The spells on the vault were varied. Alarms, anti-penetration spells, detection spells for the locking enchantment, repair spells to keep it intact, even a couple of evocations—lightning and fire, so no surprises there. I doubted I could use the silver cloak to walk through the wall—or, if it worked, I doubted I would enjoy the results. The vault had a minor warping spell built into it, no doubt for exactly that sort of phasing. If I tried it, I’d be half-man, half-stone. I might survive such treatment, but it would be inconvenient and doubtless set off all sorts of alarms. Unfortunately, the defenses also effectively prevented me from using a gate to get inside or even look at the interior. Taking it down, but, again, it would set off all sorts of alarms.
I decided to leave it alone for now. I already rigged a bypass on their primary security system. If I simply left, they would have no reason to check on it. Plus, we were still tracking down House Sarcana’s money trail. Simply emptying the vault was looking less appealing as a stand-alone blow to the House. Stealing their cash reserves was one thing, but how much more devastating is it to both steal their savings and choke their income?
Maybe I should have stolen their money right then. I keep thinking of refinements, though. Sooner or later, I have to quit coming up with “better ideas” and actually do something.
I left the same way I came in. I slapped the silver cloak against the wall and stepped through. The wall would never be the same, but as long as no one actually leaned on it exactly there, no one should be the wiser. I crept through the garden, dodged a bit to avoid guards, and exited through the same weakened patch of wall.
Bronze picked me up and we went off to find a butcher.
Tauta, 24th Day of Milaskir
As long as we were in the city, I bought a wagon and loaded it with meat. Most of our supplies in the valley are things we can grow, but it takes longer to raise animals than radishes. We brought home a ton of protein and turned it over to the kitchen crew.
Since all my scrying told me things were pretty stable, I also shifted back to my supply-Earth to finish up the barn. I wanted to stack a lot of cargo in it and simply shift it. Opening a gate and driving through would take even more power. Again, it’s a trade-off between using lots of power each time or going to considerable trouble to set up something more efficient. Once you get past the wedge and the lever, all technology is like that.
I’m sort of pleased to see magic is no different. At last, something in common with the technology I understand.
I shifted back through the booth and did some work on the maintenance micro-gate setup. Eventually, I planned to put Renata on Earth—suitably provided for—and completely disconnect. If I made random spot-connections, her timeline would eventually hop forward. When she finally had the baby and was ready to come back, she could step into the shift-booth and do so.
I also had an idea for a few thousand weapons, but getting it set up and in process would burn a lot of daylight on Earth. I wanted to make sure I had everything sorted out in the valley before disappearing for a few days.
So I waited through the sunrise and cleaned up. Leisel woke up and joined me as I was disposing of the mess.
“When is the water going to do its thing?” she asked. “You have a lot of it going up into the tower. Does it come down?”
“Sorry. It should finish soon.”
“How’s it work, this water you’ve got?”
“Water comes out of the river—there’s an underground pipe, now, sort of—and gets pumped up to the tanks inside the tower walls. I got the spell from a place called Zirafel. They used it in their Imperial Palace. The pumping spell, I mean. The tanks were my idea. Someone tries to walk through the wall into my workshop or bedroom and they’re likely to drown.”
“No doubt. Is that all it’s for? It isn’t, is it?”
“You know me. The two closets aren’t for clothes. One will eventually have a small waterfall I can turn on and off. Lower down, the kitchen won’t have to fetch water in a bucket. Horse troughs, bathing, cooking, cleaning—water will be available without someone having to carry it.”
“But your waterfall closet is first?”
“Smell that?” I asked. She sniffed and nodded. “Yes, my waterfall is first.”
“Maybe you have a point. By the way, you have Marissa wandering around with these lenses over her eyes and pointing a stick at the sky.”
“Ah. Yes. I should have kept you in the loop and I’m sorry I let it slip my mind.”
“I accept your apology. What is she doing? She looks like a madwoman and will only say you told her to.”
“She doesn’t really understand why,” I admitted. “I only told her what to do and how. Also my fault.”
“So explain to me.”
So I explained to her. She frowned deeply when I told her we were destroying the surveillance devices.
Damn. I need to put surge protection in my sand table. Mental note.
“So, they’re still watching us?”
“Constantly.”
“And how soon will they stop? Or, how soon will we force them to stop?”
“They can watch until they run out of enchanted scrying devices,” I admitted. “Of course, I understand the things are expensive.”
“They won’t like that.”
“Then they can raise their prices or quit,” I shot back. “Any joy on tracking down money trails for Sarcana?”
“Probably. I found several people willing to use your mirrors.”
“Good. I’ll need you to get with the watchers and operate my sand table, marking the locations of Sarcana contributors on a map of Sarashda.”
“That could take a while.”
“I know, but I think we have time. I brought in a wagonload of meat last night, so we have some additional supplies. Next shipment should be huge—possibly weeks of food. I also plan to kidnap some barbarian tribesmen so we can force them to understand what we’re offering in exchange for food.”
“I beg your pardon?”
So I explained about the general attitude of the tribesmen. Leisel sighed.
“I told you.”
“Yes, but I had to see for myself. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have the idea on how to trade with them.”
“Force them?”
“Sort of. They’re a distrustful, hidebound, narrow-minded bunch of bastards. They’re also greedy, self-centered, and vicious. On the other hand, if I can stuff their faces into the obvious, I think they’ll come around. We can demonstrate one of the heavy plows—the ones with the blade and moldboard—and the horsecollar. If he’s a barbarian farmer, he’ll see the difference, especially if we point it out to him. We can show them the ceramic jars we use for making the really good steel. I can enchant a few for them and they can pay through the nose for one. Or we can simply sell them steel implements—bracers, greaves, maybe some other partial armor, knives, short swords, hunting arrowheads—for fixed prices.”