The Child Prince (The Artifactor)

by Honor Raconteur

“He will choose you,” Sevana said without a shadow of a doubt. “He has no love of the palace, Hana. You know that. He does what he does for the whole country and for his father’s sake. He will retake the throne because duty and familial obligation drives him to do so. But the reason why he’s working on this with such a cheerful attitude is that he knows that if he can succeed, he can stay with you. That is his and Aren’s understanding.”

  Hana’s eyes fell to the floor, her face a whirlwind of different expressions as she tried to process all of this. Sevana felt the distinct urge to go track down Bel and start shaking sense into him. Why were men so categorically incapable of telling women the things that truly mattered? Well, no, maybe she shouldn’t be so hard on the boy. After all, he had no relationship experience—not even by example. He’d been locked in that room for ten years, after all. All things considered, he’d done rather well with Hana.

  Alright. She’d only shake him hard once.

  “You should trust him, Hana,” Sarsen repeated patiently, a kind smile on his face. “But you should also sit on him until he answers all of your questions. The two of you are not truly communicating. You’re assuming too much. He’s not telling you enough.”

  Hana’s eyes rose back to his. The confusion had disappeared. Now she nearly shone with determination. “Do you mind if we leave for the village right now? I want to get there and back quickly.”

  So she could sit on Bel and start dragging answers out of him, no doubt. Smart girl for planning the majority of the evening around that. Bel had a lot to explain to her. Sevana had a brief, fleeting moment of charity and thought about tracking Bel down and warning him of an impending storm. Naw. Much more fun to watch the fireworks.

  Sarsen stood and offered Hana a hand, as if escorting a fine lady. “It’d be a pleasure.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The nap revived her enough that Sevana had no desire to go to bed. She normally didn’t keep normal hours anyway. She worked when she wanted to work, and she slept when she felt like it, and she ate whenever the mood struck her. So what if she ate breakfast at midnight? Or she slept the day away? Baby and Big didn’t care if she didn’t adhere to a human’s idea of a ‘regular schedule’ after all.

  With so many humans living here, her days had become more consistent simply because she needed to be. But that didn’t stop her from staying up through the night working on projects. Actually, working at night had become a necessity—it was the only time she found that she could work uninterrupted.

  The small clock on top of her bookshelf chimed out the midnight hour. She hummed along with the tune—a favorite of hers—as she continued to carefully mold the clay in her hands. Doing fine detail work like this took concentration, but she enjoyed the creative energy flowing and the instant gratification of seeing the clay form into the right shape.

  A soft knock came at the door. She could tell who stood on the other side. Everyone knocked differently from each other, after all. “Come in, Sarsen!”

  He entered with a languid, quiet stride, shutting the door with a soft whump behind him. “Oh? Miniature Callers?”

  “I thought they might come in handy later.” She lifted up one so he could see it better. “I think the spell on these can be tweaked so the non-magical can use them as well.”

  “Hmmm?” he hummed, intrigued. Then his eyes went vacant, as if he were focused on something inside of his own head. “Yes, you might be right. I think I see a way to do that as well.”

  Not a surprise. They’d both studied under the same master, after all. “Isn’t this a little late for you?” Far from being a night owl, Sarsen preferred dawn risings. (Why, Sevana had never been able to understand. To her, mornings were evil and were best slept through.)

  “I’m used to being up all night, now, thanks to a certain king.” Sarsen’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Although, tonight he chose to stay in. He says he needs to sort through the information he has before he can plan best what to do next.”

  “Ah.” Made sense to her.

  “He’s half-afraid, though, that they’re still short on information. He mentioned they might have to raid the palace archives soon.”

  All of that information that Hana gathered, and they were still short? Just how much paperwork did it take to run a country, anyway? Then again…considering how much paperwork she had to do on a yearly basis to renew all of her licenses, maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise. “But doing that will tip off the Council, surely, that someone’s investigating them and has easy access to the palace.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said,” Sarsen nodded wisely. For some reason, a hint of mischievousness tweaked the corners of his mouth up. “He said, ‘Think of some creative chaos to unleash to hide our theft.’”

  Her ears perked at this and she abruptly stopped molding. “Oh?”

  “Nothing too destructive, of course,” Sarsen added warningly. “But I thought it only fair to invite you in on the fun.”

  Sevana put a hand to her heart, looking at him with mock-tearful eyes. “Sarsen. You’re a true friend.”

  “I knew you’d want to play too.” His grin became downright wicked. “They’ll probably need to move in the next few days. What do you say we put our heads together and do some plotting and scheming?”

  She instantly set the Caller aside, wiping her hands free of wet clay with a cloth. “I’m all in. But let’s define what it means to be ‘too destructive’ first. I think anything goes as long as the palace is still standing, right?”

  This truly had gone smoothly, exactly as planned. Sevana paused for a moment and rocked back on her heels, looking around to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything in her preoccupation.

  The Great Archives of Lockbright Palace were a sight to behold. The room stood two stories tall, with floor to ceiling shelves, every inch of space crammed with bound files and transcripts. A person of normal stature barely had room to squeeze through between the rows, with every available inch of floor space dedicated to shelving. Sevana just praised the cleaning staff that this room, unlike some parts of the palace, had been kept scrupulously clean—even the topmost shelves. Otherwise, they would have kicked up a lot of dust in their mad search for old files, which would have led to a lot of sneezing.

  The party of information thieves came just after sunset, and had been steadily working all the way to the witching hour. The original plan had been to leave well before then, but of course, when they got in here they found the task to be more mammoth than anticipated. Sevana went back and forth with different groups, activating her clocks, helping them to carry everything through. After the umpteenth trip, she got tired of it and handed that role off to Sarsen, instead choosing to go up to raid the king’s old laboratory.

  “Are you really sure about this?” Aren asked her, crouched nearby in front of one of his inventions. “I’ve never actually tried powering these on before.”

  “That’s because you didn’t have a power source,” she responded, going back to the matter at hand. “And besides, you were the one that said I couldn’t do anything too suspicious.”

  “I didn’t say suspicious, I said damaging,” Aren corrected with a shake of the head. “Some of the ideas you proposed—”

  “—were genius,” she interrupted, still a little put out that she’d been so thoroughly reined in. She and Sarsen had proposed a plethora of different tactics, all with the intent to disguise the theft of course, but Aren’s eyes had bulged over most of them. The one thing they’d all agreed on were the inventions, as those could (feasibly) have gotten loose from the laboratory and do the same amount of chaos as any spell.

  Aren, after a decade of tinkering with the things, could draw their designs by heart and had actually done so for the Artifactors to look at. Sevana knew that in theory, these should work perfectly. She’d even come prepared with a few different devices to make them move if necessary. But now that she had one in hand, it didn’t seem to be an issue. Aren had the heart of an engineer.
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br />   She bent and looked at the metal compartment more closely. This one had a steam pump inside of it, which she had carefully poured water into. The smell of oil, polished metal and grease filled her nose as she nearly put her head inside of the interior, trying to find the igniter. Ah, there it is. Nothing more than wick connected to a bottle of oil, but it didn’t need to be complicated to work. With a whispered spell, the wick lit in a small puff of flame. Pulling out, she shut the small oval door with a slight squeak and snapped it back into place. There, that should do it. Leaning back, she gave the top of the cylinder body a small pat, the metal cool against her hand. “Now, this lever will start it in motion?”

  “It should,” Aren acknowledged absently, also focused on getting his machine started.

  Sevana flipped the lever on the far side up, then stood back as far as she could before the edge of the shelves bit into her shoulders. The machine gave a small whirr as it started building up steam, a steady jet escaping the top like a tea kettle with boiling water inside. Then it started to roll forward on the tiny wheels at its base, four spider-like arms coming up and moving in steady motions, yanking everything off the shelves in its way with the forearms, the back arms taking a rag and dusting every inch of the wooden surface.

  The Dusting Machine—otherwise dubbed as The Cleaning Disaster. It worked perfectly for surfaces that had nothing on it. But it was programmed to move anything in its way, so of course it would whizz off any object it encountered. Sevana smiled as it cleared a whole shelf in a minute flat, polished it to a shine, and then moved on to the shelf right above it. “How far can this thing reach again? Ten feet?”

  “A little over sixteen, actually.” Aren stepped back as his machine started building up steam as well. “The arms can extend quite some distance and the base can move up as well, although it’s not as steady when it does that.”

  “Hmmm.” She looked at the other machine, watching as it started puffing its way along. This one was tasked to organize anything, although Aren admitted it didn’t do much more than pick up what was on the ground and put it up on the first available surface. As the Cleaning Disaster continued to destroy the organized filing, it’s cohort picked everything up and put it within the first flat surface it could reach—which just happened to be on the opposite shelf. It crammed things in, too, making files fit in at every angle and double-stacking where it could.

  “Those poor Council clerks,” Aren said with some sympathy. “This will be quite the mess to unravel.”

  “It could take them years to put this place back to rights,” Sevana agreed with evil glee. “But that should be more than enough time to suit your purposes.”

  “Indeed.” Shaking his head, Aren turned and headed for the door, snagging the last bag of records as he went and hefting it over one shoulder.

  Sevana lingered a moment longer, enjoying the scene of chaos as the machines merrily went along the shelves, then reluctantly left as well, closing the door behind her. She yawned as she walked. Without any windows handy, she had no idea of the time, but it felt like dawn to her. In two hours or so, people should be coming in to work, but who knew how long it would take for someone to notice the state of the Archives. Regardless, at the rate the machines worked, the whole room would be in a state by the time two hours passed by. Their theft would be covered and go unnoticed for years, likely.

  Pleased with a good night’s worth of work, she hummed her favorite lullaby as she headed home.

  When she reached the clock, however, she noticed that neither Axelrad or Bellomi were waiting there. Confused, she looked about. “Where’s the other two?” Sarsen had already gone through on the other side, leaving people trapped here until she came.

  Aren, with an unhappy set to his mouth, answered sourly, “Axelrad and my son informed me that they had a plan to enact upon and that they were going to do so later tonight. They also informed me that they would be spending the day in the city gathering information after they were done.”

  “Oh did they now?” Good-o for them, because she certainly had no intentions of waking up at some bird’s hour of the morning to transport them back to Big. “And what is this grand scheme?”

  “We discussed earlier the possibility of stirring up the council members even more by faking several assassination attempts.” Aren let out a long sigh. “I set Axelrad on the task of taking a few shots at two of the more corrupt members. I’ve no notion how Bellomi got involved.”

  He’d likely heard the plan and demanded to be let in on the fun. Sevana certainly would have, if she’d known about it before this. Scaring the willies out of two pompous Councilmen sounded like loads of fun.

  “Let’s return,” the king requested wearily, waving at the clock.

  Sevana obligingly connected the portal but she made a mental note to impress it upon one prince and captain that the next time they went about skulking, she would join in.

  ~ ~ ~

  Councilman Cavan Bauwens habitually hosted a dinner party outside during the warmer months of the year, always held within the enclosed garden at his townhouse, and always attended by the right people.

  The habit made him a ridiculously easy target.

  Bellomi and Axelrad had gone straight to the townhouse, a brick building that stood a grand four stories tall, and then climbed onto the neighboring rooftop. (Another Councilman’s house, actually, which just made the situation better.) There they sat for a quarter hour, watching as the dinner wound down and the guests started to disperse and gather in different corners to converse. From their lofty rooftop vantage, they were concealed from view by the elaborate trim work around the roof’s edge, giving them a good hiding place. But it also blocked part of their view, so that they could clearly hear the councilman’s voice but could not see him sitting at the long, rectangular table as he dined. They’d been forced to wait until he stood and left the table, making the circles amongst his guests.

  He’d never done sharp shooting like this before, although Axelrad had been giving him daily lessons on archery. Still, he’d picked up a few tricks here and there. As they waited, he sniffed the air and got a feel for how the wind blew. On this warm night, the wind couldn’t be described as more than a breeze, carrying the sounds of conversation and the scents of food. He could barely detect the hints of fall on the wind, scents of encroaching cold weather and falling leaves. The wind wasn’t strong enough to effect his aim, though.

  “There he is,” Axelrad murmured. “He just stood up.”

  Ah, indeed he had. Bauwens walked steadily toward a pocket of people, glass in one hand, moving slightly forward to avoid the elaborate latticework of climbing roses behind him.

  Bellomi shifted slightly, reaching for the small compact bow on his back.

  Axelrad laid a restraining hand on his shoulder and shook his head. The prince looked back at him, puzzled, as he couldn’t see one reason to pause at this juncture, not with the Councilman giving them such a beautiful opening.

  “It’s best if I do the shooting, Your Highness,” Axelrad breathed. “You don’t have a lot of experience in archery yet.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Bellomi breathed back, “I’m an excellent shot, Captain, which you should know very well. I can certainly see better in the dark than an old man’s eyes.”

  Not insulted in the least, Axelrad’s eyes sparkled at the challenge and a feral smile teased at the corners of his lips. “Would you care to wager on that, Prince?”

  Bellomi returned the smile with a wolfish baring of the teeth. “Name it.”

  “I’d lay odds that I can get closer to yon target than you without actually hitting the man.”

  Without saying a word, Bellomi reached for the quiver at his side and extended an arrow toward the man, generously offering him first shot. Axelrad outright grinned as he accepted the arrow. In a smooth notion, he knocked it, pulled back, and raised up just enough to aim.

  Axelrad paused two seconds before letting fly. The arrow flew through the air, whistling
, going straight and true. It thunked into the wall a scant inch away from the Councilman’s neck, quivering slightly as it embedded itself into the wood.

  For a moment, the man froze, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened. Then his bodyguard slammed into him, throwing him roughly to the ground and under cover. The nobleman screeched, his voice warbling higher and higher in his panic as he started gibbering out orders. Chaos ensued as everyone seemed to spring into action at once, running around in different directions.

  “You got quite close,” Bellomi praised, impressed the man had pulled that off in such weak lighting.

  Axelrad smiled, dipping his head to accept the compliment, but the expression on his face silently said, You can’t beat that.

  Several guards were running about below, looking for the assassin. The bodyguard hauled his employer up off the ground and shoved him into a corner in the wall, which did a better job of shielding him from view. It was a good decision—or it would have been if Bellomi had been sitting on a roof instead of the decorative half-balcony that jutted out from the side of the house. Actually, this new location gave him a better line of sight on the target and helped eliminate the possibility of him accidentally shooting someone else.

  Drawing another arrow from his quiver, he put a knee underneath him and levered himself up just enough to be able to fully draw the bow. Knocking the arrow, he took in a deep breath, held it, and sighted the target. There. That clump of hair dangling near his cheek should do nicely.

  Breath in again, hold, release. The arrow released with a twang, string vibrating in its wake. Bellomi ducked back down again as the arrow flew forward, hitting exactly where he intended. The shaft brushed the Councilman’s hair before embedding itself solidly between the cracks of two bricks.

  Screaming like a wounded banshee, the man sank instantly to his knees, arms up over his head, curling up in a defensive position. The bodyguard threw himself between the Councilman and the outside world, blocking Bellomi’s view of the man almost completely.