“You realize that every time I’ve tried, she just goes with him?” Edvard whispered back in exasperation. “I’m not sending Broden. No point in even trying.”
Broden had to bite back a chuckle. “How about Amber? Lass has a good head on her shoulders, she should be able to round a few people up and do some fine skulkery.”
The brother kings exchanged glances, found that the other had no objection, and turned in unison to Broden. “Send her,” they said in one voice.
“Playing twins, boys?” Ashlynn drawled.
Tierone grinned, not that she could see it, and retorted: “I blame you and Ash. Bad influence. Who wants to tell her the mission?”
“Now as to that, it be best I go,” Broden volunteered. “Being as I know the lay of the land a mite better than the pair of ye, as well as a few spots that be suited for chicanery.”
“We’ll leave it to you.” Edvard puffed out his cheeks in a clear sign of stress and strain. “I do wish we had more of a plan than that, but we’re too tightly stretched in our resources to do much more. I wish those rumored Overan mercenaries were real. I could certainly use them right now.”
“Perhaps our anonymous benefactor will send them on the next shipment,” Tierone joked with a grim smile. “But in the meantime, let’s do what we can to stay alive. Do we all know what needs to be done? Yes? Then let’s stop talking about it and go do it.”
Amber Bragdon took the news of this assignment with a feral smile that sent a shiver up Broden’s spine. “Sounds like a fine idea to me.”
Eyeing her askance, he said slowly, “Ye seem a mite…enthused at the idea?”
“I absolutely hate being on the defensive,” she responded with perfect loathing. “Some offensive tactics will make me much happier. Who do I get to take?”
Since she by and large had the most dangerous part of the plans, Broden did not see the sense in being stingy. “Ye take who ye’d like, lass. Try no’ to yank someone away from a mission critical task, that be all I ask. And keep yer party small.”
“No sense in bringing a lot of men with me,” Amber agreed in perfect accord. “Just makes it harder to sneak around with. I’ll take five, is that alright?”
“Bless ye, lass, that be fine. Have ye a notion on who to take?”
She stopped and stared absently at the army hovering outside their gates. Broden had caught her at the end of her shift, meaning she’d been on lookout at the top of the wall since daybreak that morning. She did not seem at all tired, however. Likely the thought of beating up a few enemies had pumped new energy into her. “Tant, Marissa, Konrath, and Seth,” she rattled off.
Broden blinked. That was exactly the people he had drawn on to do a rescue mission not so long ago. Seeing the mischievous glint in her eyes, he grinned at her. “Aye, lass, we know for a fact they be good people to take along on an adventure.”
“Aye, that they be,” she riposted, bouncing on her toes. “Can I have them?”
“As far as I am aware, they be free of any heavy responsibilities. Ye should be able to. When do ye want to leave?”
“I want to question our pirate messenger first, get some more details from him,” Amber started ticking points off on her fingers, “and of course sit down with you and get an idea of where we can set up ambushes and traps. Gather up our own supplies, get a full night’s rest—we’ll need it later—and such. Tomorrow late morning?”
Even that seemed like not enough time, considering they were late in the afternoon now. But he trusted her to get the job done. “That be fine. Go contact yer people, I’ll round up our messenger,” and his payment, “and meet ye at Troi’s office.”
“Which one, city office or castle?”
“Manor house. Likely more quiet.” Not to mention more spacious. The city office for the spymaster was chock full of people, so much so that squeezing a louse in there took considerable skill.
Nodding agreement and understanding, she bounced down the stairs and headed off, searching for her people. Broden watched her go with a shake of the head. It might be astronomical odds stacked against her, but it was not her he felt sorry for.
Those poor Iyshian soldiers would not know what hit them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I could not have heard that right,” Ash declared, eyes threatening to bulge out of his head. “You want us to do what?”
“Try breaking into the treasury again,” Woelfel repeated with an understanding smile on his face. “Hear me out, I have good reason.”
Riana pinned him with a Look. “For this, you’d better have amazing and outstanding reasons.”
Woelfel had hit them with this as they sat down to breakfast, and Mrs. Pennington gave him quite the glare for interrupting the meal, even as she sat a plate in front of him. Just like a child being scolded, Woelfel defended himself. “I know, Penny, but this is important! And we don’t have a lot of time.”
“You can spare five minutes to eat properly, Master Cyr.” Still giving him that reproving look, she went back to the buffet and prepared plates for everyone else.
How many years had she been with Woelfel? The way these two acted, it was more like mother and son. Riana did wonder sometimes. Perhaps she’d find a moment to pry a little. “Thank you, Mrs. Pennington, that looks grand. Alright, Woelfel, tell me why you want us to risk life and limb breaking into a place that we couldn’t actually enter the first time?”
“It turns out it was a bad night to attempt it,” Woelfel explained, carefully swallowing before speaking and with a weather eye on Pennington as he did so. “I learned this morning that they were moving money in and out of the treasury when you two went in. They do this at night to prevent witnesses and for safety precautions. On a regular night, you wouldn’t see near as many guards and even the palace patrol wouldn’t be as hefty.”
While all of that sounded reasonable, it did beg the question: “And why are we attempting this again?”
Grimly, Woelfel reported, “I received a pigeon last night from Troi after you two went to bed. Maddox has appeared north of Ganforth with a thousand troops.”
Ash swore aloud and buried both hands into his hair, gripping it strong enough to rip strands out of the roots. “Tell me they stopped him.”
“Yes, fortunately, they were able to manage somehow. Troi warns that all it did was buy them time. We must find a way to stop Maddox in his tracks. Unfortunately, there’s only one of two ways to stop an army that is already deployed: you either defeat it or you bankrupt it.”
“No funds, no supplies, and a soldier cannot fight,” Ash agreed. “We can’t defeat them. Our only option is to bankrupt them.” A wash of exhaustion swept through him.
Riana felt the same, for they had been fighting uphill a long time without any real relief. Still, they couldn’t falter now. To her, it felt like the twelfth hour. In fairytales, it was always at this point, when things were bleakest, that the situation would take an unexpected turn for the better. Surely the evil spell would be broken soon, they just had to persevere. ::Ash. Are you taking the world onto your shoulders again?::
He peeked at her, mouth quirked up on one side that might have been a sorry attempt at a smile. ::Trying not to, but…Riana. Truly, what are we supposed to do in this situation? ‘Storm the treasury’ isn’t really a viable option.::
::Then we come up with one. But do not slump in on yourself so. We’ll manage fine, as always.::
“Are the two of you seriously having a telepathic conversation in front of me?” Woelfel demanded incredulously. His eyes bounced back and forth between them, jaw dangling.
With a wink, Riana answered, “If you’re desperate enough, you can do anything.”
“Desperate enough?” Woelfel pounced on that with open glee. “Oh, do tell me the story. Does it have romance? Action? The best stories have a combination of those.”
Sighing, Ash tried to redirect him. “Shouldn’t we figure out what to do first?”
“No, absolutely not,” Woelfel
denied with a somber countenance that didn’t fool a single person in the room. “This is vital information that I absolutely must have. Our whole mission might depend on it.”
Ash gave up and went back to eating, letting Riana tell the story. She did so with flair, having had many years of story-telling practice, as it was the only past-time in Cloud’s Rest during the winter. It didn’t escape her notice that most of the staff found reasons to either be in the room or linger in the hallway as she told the tale. Then again, she wasn’t surprised. Her joke to Ash about them becoming legendary with their partnership had a solid base of truth to it after all.
Woelfel stayed glued all the way through the end and he had a smile stretching from ear to ear. “Wonderful. Truly. She’s right, though, you have no sense of romantic timing, Fallbright.”
The wizard gave him an amused look, shrugged, and went back to eating.
“Now that you’ve broken through that barrier, you can speak casually to each other?” Woelfel pressed more seriously. “It’s not straining or taxing in any way?”
“Not really,” Riana responded, and realizing that she needed to eat before the food got cold completely, picked up her fork again. “It takes a mite of concentration, is all.”
“It’s more like we’re mentally switching from one track to another,” Ash sought to explain. “Say, if you were speaking in a foreign language, you would phrase the words in your head first, correct? Because it’s not completely natural to you. It’s similar to that.”
“Ah. Yes, that makes complete sense. I assume that with enough practice, you’ll not even need to concentrate.”
“Perhaps,” Riana agreed.
“Although we’ll have to be careful,” Ash warned casually. “The few records I’ve read from partners that were as close as us had a few warnings to pass onto the next generation. Most of them all said the same thing—that eventually, our thoughts would just bleed over to the other without any real intention. If we don’t keep some kind of guide on it, it’ll become very confusing.”
Now there was a thought. Riana tried to imagine what that would be like and made a face. “I don’t much care for that idea.”
“Right? My head’s confusing enough without your thoughts mixing in. Let’s try and prevent that from happening.”
“Agreed.” Riana stabbed her last sausage and asked Woelfel, “Can we go back to the original subject? We need to bankrupt Iysh. How do we do so? Raiding the treasury will not be an easy task for two people.”
“And we don’t dare risk my position, so I can’t go in with you,” Woelfel agreed in perfect agreement. “You’re right. I thought, the best we could do is perhaps buy Estole the help it needs. Can you break in and steal the funds needed to hire those mythical Overan mercenaries that everyone thinks we have?”
It really wasn’t a bad thought. “It sounds viable to me but how much money does that take?”
“I think we should just take as much as we can,” Ash disagreed. “That way we can hire as many as possible and if—heaven bless us—we have extra money left over, we can send supplies home.”
She didn’t even have to think over this suggestion. It was a good one. “Let’s do it. Tonight?”
“We might as well,” Ash concurred. “The truth is, we don’t have a lot of time to play around with, and we’ve already done our reconnaissance on the place, so we know what we’re getting into. Woelfel, we’ll need to come up with some method of hauling large amounts of money out with us. I don’t like the idea of us clinking about as we’re trying to scale walls.”
Woelfel chuckled at some inner vision. “Wouldn’t that be a sight to behold. But point taken. Let’s devise something today while we’re waiting for night to fall. I take it that you’ll want to leave in the bird hours of the morning again?”
“Not at four o’clock,” Riana denied, mentally mapping out logistics and timelines. “Perhaps two o’clock instead. We need more than five minutes inside the treasury after all.”
“Good point. Then let’s plan for two o’clock.” Woelfel rubbed his hands together briskly. “In the meantime, let’s do some planning before you take a nap. You’ll need the rest for tonight.”
The break-in onto the palace grounds was worlds different this time. There were only half as many guards on patrol, to start with, and the silence of the main courtyards could have put a graveyard to shame. It actually spooked Riana. She felt like an ambush waited for them. She became hyper sensitive to every sensation around her, so much so that even a change in the wind had the fine hairs on the back of her arms standing up.
::I don’t think there’s an ambush here,:: Ash reassured her as he slipped further away from the side gate. ::Though I admit the silence is oppressive.::
::That be an understatement.:: Riana hated every second of this. And if it was just for Edvard’s whim, she would have turned around on the spot and marched right back to Woelfel’s house. Only the direness of the situation forced her to go on.
The path seemed shorter this time. Perception and memory was strange that way. They reached the corner that led toward the treasury far faster than they had last time, and Riana paused, peeking around carefully to canvas the area.
No one.
Frowning, she asked Ash, ::I know that Woelfel said the night we were here be a bad one, that there were more guards than usual, but is it not strange that there is not a single guard at all?::
::Strange is an understatement.:: Ash frowned, cuddling in close to her back like he had before. ::Let’s pause and watch for a while.::
Riana felt better about waiting for a moment to see if a guard was just temporarily out of sight. She couldn’t help but question, ::Why do ye keep cuddling up like this?::
::I’m cold.::
Snorting, Riana decided to let that one pass.
They waited more than a few minutes and still no trace of movement or sound from the treasury building. That sent Riana’s already taut nerves singing. Something was very, very wrong with this picture. ::Let’s edge in closer.::
::Riana, I don’t like the look of this.::
::Ye be telling me? This smells.::
Ash stepped out and led the way, moving from shadow to shadow. He paused right behind the treasury building, not within its shadow, but close to it. Riana hovered right at his back, looking at every angle, hearing strained. Nothing. No, she didn’t like the look of this at all.
::I hate to say this, but there aren’t even any traces of magical protection up either. I can see where the spells used to be, but they’re all disabled now.::
Riana gave the back of his head an incredulous look. ::Ye be jesting.::
::I wish I was.:: Ash turned his head just enough to meet her eyes, barely visible in the wan lighting of the moon overhead. ::Your call. Do we try the doors or not?::
As much as her instincts said to run for it, they couldn’t afford to. If it really was an ambush, she and Ash would simply have to fight their way out. ::We have to try.::
::I was afraid you’d say that.:: Taking in a breath, he skirted around another elongated shadow and made it to the back of the treasury.
Security dictated that a fortified building like this only have one door to guard. So they had to walk around the front of the building, in plain view of the whole courtyard, in order to get in. Riana was sure her heart would fail before they actually reached the front, but somehow it managed to keep thumping. It threatened to leave her chest altogether because of the strain.
Ash took another breath, then sidled up to the door and grasped the handle. ::Ready? One, two, three!::
Riana was mentally ready for the door to just jangle, locks keeping it secure, but instead the door opened on noiseless hinges. What? Brows compressed, she slipped inside the building right behind Ash. Once inside, she paused, eyes adjusting to the total darkness.
::Wait,:: Ash directed. ::I can see with my glasses.::
Those fancy bespelled glasses of his were useful in more than one circumstance, fortu
nately. With them on, Ash had the eyes of a cat.
She heard him slip them on, then he cursed aloud in the foulest language she had ever heard from his mouth. ::ASH!::
“You can talk, Riana. There’s nothing in here.”
Almost afraid to ask, and truly not sure she wanted to hear the answer, she pressed, “What do you mean, nothing?”
“I mean nothing. No ambush, no people, and absolutely no money. The treasury is completely empty.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Empty?!” Woelfel parroted in complete bafflement. He kept shaking his head, as if he didn’t believe his ears and was trying to clear them out a little. “I’m sorry, what do you mean by empty?”
“I mean exactly that, empty.” Ash flopped into a chair next to the fireplace, taking a moment to get off his feet. Riana joined him, just as tired and cold. It neared dawn now, and she was feeling the effects of being up multiple nights keenly. Ash silently made way for her in the oversized wingback chair, an arm around her waist even as he tried to elaborate. His voice was heavy and laden with exhaustion, words slower than normal. “Empty shelves, empty chests, empty desks. The room is completely wiped of all funds. I believe the first night we were there, what we were seeing was not a transfer of money into the treasury, but from.”
Woelfel dropped into the chair across from him, still stunned. “A government’s bank is completely empty?”
“We really should have tried to get a better view of the front door that first night,” Riana observed to no one in particular. “If we had, we’d have seen the transfer ourselves and not be blind-sided like this.”
“Or we’d have been caught,” Ash disagreed, not sounding bothered by the possibility. “It was difficult enough getting out as it was.”
True. Riana was too tired to debate the point and let her head drop onto his shoulder. Cushioned between the fire and Ash, she was warming up nicely, comfortable enough that her eyes started to droop closed.
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