by Ren Cummins
Rom nodded. “Go now,” she said. “I’ll meet you inside.” She swung herself up onto Yu’s back and they lifted off, a momentary blast of air surrounding them. As soon as they’d disappeared into the sky, Cousins nodded towards the two doors. “Let’s go be polite,” he said, his cheerful smirk faintly visible in the shadows.
* * * * *
Yu alighted softly on the rooftop, the pads of his feet finding silent purchase on the flat surface. There was a tall lip around the rooftop, giving adequate cover to whatever guards Favo might have up here, as well as a trapdoor access point in the very center. No guards were posted here tonight, however. That likely suggested they were all inside the building, Rom supposed – unless Favo was the sort of crime boss who liked to let his men have their nights free. Rom figured he wasn’t.
She approached the trapdoor – it was too narrow for Yu to fit. “I’m sorry, my friend – it looks like I’ll have to go in by myself.”
He shook his head. “It will be dangerous,” he whispered back.
“Oh, I know,” she said, scratching his mane. “If there’s a big enough hallway in there, I’ll bring you back.” Not letting him argue the point further, she slid her finger across the gem, causing him to return to the spirit realm for which it was the physical focus.
She moved her hand to her bracelet, and paused there. What form did she want the shepherd’s crook to take? She smiled, tapping the black stone. She twirled the parasol in her hand. This would do nicely.
* * * * *
Cousins held the SteamShot Mark III in his right hand. Kari had shown him how to load the five compressed rounds into the loader cartridge – giving him five quick shots with the rifle, whereas all additional uses would require a manual charge of the compression cylinders. She’d gone on more than that, but the rest was all highly technical, and in the end, he just asked her to clarify which buttons to press and which levers to pull.
No guards were stationed outside the door, but he could see dark shadows moving behind the facing panels to each side of the doorway. Ian patted him gently on the back, leaving behind a small piece of encoded paper. “This will give you five minutes, more or less.”
“More or less?” Cousins asked, whispering back over his shoulder.
“It depends on how closely they pay attention,” came the reply. Cousins simply shook his head. It wasn’t much, but it should be enough.
He stepped up to the doors. “Evening, gentlemen - - I believe Favo is expecting us.”
“He asked not to be disturbed,” said the gruff reply to his left.
“Yes, I realize that,” Cousins say cheerily, “but as I said, he’s expecting us. If you’d like to let us in while we wait, I’m sure he’ll understand. Or,” he added in a tone he hoped sounded effectively helpful, “feel free to send out a watch commander, and I can talk it over with him.”
He could hear a bit of commotion behind the doors – no doubt they were sizing him up and determining how much a threat the two children and the tall individual could pose – eventually, the double doors opened.
Ian waited until the large thug had the door completely opened and snapped his fingers, causing the paper on Cousin’s back to dissolve in a puff of smoke. The thug stood a moment, blinking, and then fixed his eyes on Ian and Kari.
“Well, what you want?” he asked curtly.
Cousins slipped unnoticed past the man and stepped inside. Kari stepped beside Ian, who patted her paternally on her shoulder, and she, too, faded from the guards’ perception, while Ian spoke vaguely about late appointments and valuable time. He waited until Kari, too, snuck inside, and then he lifted a third Concealment card from his hand and snapped it between his fingers.
The guard shook his head. Who had he just been speaking to? He turned back around to look inside the room. A handful of other guards stood there staring at him, confused. He shrugged and closed the door behind him. This was going to be a long night, he thought, and he was already feeling pretty tired.
* * * * *
Rom burst through the reinforced wooden panel and dropped low to the floor, parasol unfolded in front of her. She spun quickly around to take in her surroundings: she was in the center of a long hallway, filled with a dozen guards with moderately matching brown uniforms, all with shocked expressions on their faces. The outfits seemed mildly padded with a variety of protective accessories, from hardened leather helmets to rounded eyewear and breathing masks. They all held weapons of various types, from clubs to a random assortment of projectile weapons. If they were expecting an invasion, they clearly had not anticipated it to arrive in the form of a twelve year old girl in a black dress and holding a parasol.
That moment of confusion was all the opening Rom needed. She folded the parasol as it swung, cracking soundly against the heads of the nearest four men, dropping them all in a large heap into the men behind them. Springing from the floor, she vaulted herself against one wall, angled herself along the ceiling to the opposite wall, coming around behind the men who’d been behind her when she’d dropped from the trapdoor. She needed to move quickly; surprise had given her an initial advantage, but it wouldn’t last forever.
Not giving them enough time to fire, she swung the parasol again, clipping two of their steamshots from their hands. She snapped it open and drove it hard against two others, forcing their shots to fire harmlessly into the ceiling.
Once her initial attack on the entire group of guards had a moment to sink in, chaos exploded around her. No longer was she surrounded by all of them, however, so she only needed to focus on the three or four who could try and engage her. Shoulder to shoulder in the hallway, the rest of the men who were still on their feet following the first few swings of her weapon were forced to hang back and hope for an open shot.
Rom, meanwhile, stepped in with her parasol in a combination of open-parasol parries and closed-parasol thrusts. Adding randomly interspersed broad swings, she made short work of the men. They, for their part, had no idea how to confront her. In spite of their comrades dropping to the floor like sacks of grain, they struggled to wrap their minds around this little girl being such an efficient source of violence.
But not all of them were so constrained. At the end, Rom stood against two of the hardier men, who had at last realized the error of their now-unconscious fellows. Neither one favored long-range confrontations, however: the one on the left held a large club with a metal cap on the end, and the other appeared to prefer using his bare hands in a conflict.
“Come on, girl,” he growled at her. “Let’s see what you can do against a man what knows how to give back.” The other man laughed at this, as did Rom – which stopped both men’s laughter entirely.
She reached up and tapped her forehead. In a purple flash of light, Yu appeared beside her.
“Don’t kill them,” she scolded.
The two men turned and ran. They didn’t run far.
Chapter 12: Honor Among Thieves
Two floors below her, Ian, Cousins and Kari rounded the top of the stairs to see the waiting area empty, the doors to Favo’s office open. Ian placed his hands on the two children’s shoulders, and shook his head.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of cards – one he flicked into the opening of the doors, the second up into the ceiling. Both vanished in faint puffs of smoke. The doorway, however, burst into flame.
Kari jumped back. “Why did you do that?” she whispered sternly.
Ian didn’t immediately answer; instead, he turned and threw a third card down the stairs, filling the stairwell with a thick block of stone. “The flames weren’t mine, it’s the trap that was set for us; we would have tripped it had we walked in.” The fire dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, leaving blackened scorch marks across the wood.
Cousins pointed to the spot on the ceiling where the second card had dissolved. “And that one?”
Ian continued to look around the room until he was satisfied. “It is something of a passive spell, it
lasts an hour but only takes effect if…” Ian stopped, taking a step backwards from the closet he had been looking into. From within the doors, Molla stepped out, pistols drawn. She was wearing the same outfit she had been wearing the night they’d first met her, complete with the mask which covered the top portion of her face.
She motioned with the barrel of one of the guns for Ian to stand with the two children, and Favo walked out from behind her. He closed the doors, but not before the three could see a small hidden stairway rising up from inside.
Favo laughed softly. “That’s one of the amusing facts about magicians,” he said. “They think that because they rely so much on the arts that everyone else does, too.”
He stepped around Molla and looked at the doorway which had held the fire charm. Carefully avoiding the soot-covered parts of the frame, he entered his office and walked out a moment later with a wicker basket.
“I’m sure your nimble friend will be along soon – no doubt she is responsible for all the excitement among my guards upstairs. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to wait until she arrives before we deal with her pet.”
From inside the box came the muffled retort: “I’m not a pet.”
Favo set the basket on one of the tables and gestured for the other three to sit down in some of the nearby chairs. “It is an interesting dilemma in which I find myself. Clearly, your little pet” –he put emphasis on the last word as an obvious annoyance to Mulligan – “is of some kind of magical nature. And he has the stone somewhere on his person, according to the tools we’ve been using to track them.”
He patted the top of the basket. “Now, Molla here has somewhat uniquely direct way of accomplishing her objectives. She feels that the simplest solution to this is to kill it, skin it, and gut it, and fish the stone out from wherever it’s hidden it.”
Kari gasped softly, but Ian and Cousins remained intent on their host.
“Contrarily, I abhor violence. Now, don’t look at me like that, Cousins,” he said, responding to the boy’s disgusted expression, “I’m just not that kind of thief, regardless of the sort of reputation I allow – or, rather, encourage – to remain. The truth is that a reputation for the sort of unflinching violence which has thus far become my calling card, I have found, is a necessary evil. If people do expect a certain escalated level of response from me, then I find they are much more… amenable when it comes to negotiations. Simply a fact of life, I’m afraid.”
“You talk a lot,” came a voice behind him. Molla fired an instinctive shot with one pistol, but it ricocheted harmlessly off Rom’s parasol.
Rom stared curiously at the parasol itself, then back at Molla.
The older woman sneered from behind her mask. “Nice toy,” she said.
Favo winced. “Molla! No bullets! I was very clear about this.”
She shook her head, sighing. “Favo, I’m really sorry.”
A winkle creased his brow. “For what?” he asked, turning his back on Rom to look inquisitively at his subordinate.
“For this,” she said, pulling the trigger again. His body lifted off the floor and flew backwards several feet, landing limply in a heap right in front of Rom.
She returned the barrel to fix upon Rom and her three friends, who all stood, shocked at the sudden betrayal.
“What’s wrong with you?” Rom yelled.
Cousins raised a hand, gesturing for her to be calm. “Clearly, Molla has not truly been working for Favo – I am correct in this?” he asked. He already knew the answer, but his mind was still trying to discern just who was pulling the strings on this woman.
Molla laughed. “Please – he was just the most convenient criminal in the area. He’d never be able to afford my standard rates back in Aesirium,” she said derisively.
Cousins could tell even without looking at them that Ian and Kari both were focused on the moment at hand – he could sense Ian was considering potential spells available in his jacket, while Kari was examining Molla’s guns to see potentially how many more times she could pull the trigger. He got the impression that Molla still had enough bullets for each one of them, several times over. In the span of a single breath, he had already calculated every possible contingency he could imagine, all with less than desirable outcomes. A fight was not going to be possible, he realized.
She gestured for them to move over by Favo’s body and Rom, giving herself the chance to move closer to the table with Mulligan’s basket.
“You,” she said, gesturing to Rom, “Umbrella girl. You tell your pet to give me back the stone.”
Rom glanced towards Cousins, who slowly nodded. To Mulligan, she said, “Mully, give her the stone.”
“No,” came the muffled reply.
“Seriously, Mully, do it. I really think she’ll shoot you if you don’t.”
Molla nodded in agreement.
Finally, after a long moment of silence, they could hear a retching, coughing noise from inside the basket, followed by a low thump against its floor.
Kari whispered to Rom, “Did he just--?”
Rom grimaced and nodded.
“Ew.”
Molla holstered one gun, leaving the other trained on the four of them, and unlatched the basket lid with her free hand. She reached into the basket, felt around for the stone – while keeping her attention focused on them, and at last wrapped her hand around it – she looked down for just a moment…
…and caught Mulligan’s headbutt square in the center of her mask. The suddenness of the impact caused her to drop the stone and her pistol onto the floor, reaching up to straighten the mask and take a step backwards from the flailing little creature.
Rom was already halfway across the room, parasol swinging down in a vicious arc. “Mully, MOVE!” she called out. Mulligan dove for the floor as Rom struck Molla’s mask with a sickening crack – the mask burst into three pieces, and drove her backwards onto the floor. Rom spun in the air, landing behind but facing Molla. The woman pulled her remaining pistol free, but Rom was already striking her across the wrist. Another loud crack echoed across the room, and the pistol slid across the room to stop beneath the sole of Cousin’s right shoe.
Molla, her face red with rage, spun around on her back, sweeping Rom’s legs out from under her. Before the others could react, she scrambled across the floor and grabbed the gently glowing stone from the floor and… vanished.
Rom hopped back up on to her feet and ran over to pick Mulligan up while Ian and Cousins explored the space Molla had inhabited a moment earlier.
Mulligan was blinking rapidly. “That hurt a lot more than I thought it would,” he whined, shaking his head and instantly wishing he hadn’t.
Ian snapped another card and watched as a faint wisp of smoke coalesced around a small central point of the room, swirling into itself and vanishing.
“What’d she do?” Cousins asked him.
“I’m not sure,” Ian said, rubbing his chin. “It wasn’t entirely magic – at least, not a school of magic I’m familiar with.” He stood back up and looked over at Favo. “But we should deal with this one now,” he said.
Kari made a face. “I want to leave,” she said.
“Do not worry, little smith.” Ian walked closer to the Favo’s prone body. “He is not dead.”
Favo took a deep breath, and sighed. He rolled over slowly, raising his hands into the air. “I was rather hoping you hadn’t noticed.”
Ian crouched beside him, looking at his brilliantly-colored vest. A small hole was torn in the right breast, but no blood could be seen.
“I suppose I have you to thank for this?” he asked Ian.
Ian nodded, pointing towards the ceiling and a barely-visible grey smudge. “I suspected there could be violence, I wanted to make certain no one died here today.” In response to Cousin’s confused expression, he winked. “One of my own special creations; I call it a Fatalterator. It’s a simple enough spell to pass undetected, and it doesn’t activate until the moment a person under its prot
ection is going to die.”
Favo rubbed the center of his chest, wincing. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but it might have been nice to have protected me an inch or two sooner.” He poked a fingertip into the hole. “I rather liked this vest.”
Cousins clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve a fine and velvety way of paying a compliment, sir. Truly a marvel.”
“My regrets,” Favo grimaced. “I am grateful, truly. You are a very handy little assembly to have around.” Looking directly at Ian, his eyes narrowed. “You seem very familiar – have we met before?”
Ian shook his head politely and changed the subject by reaching down to pick up the pieces of Molla’s mask.
“This was crafted by someone well-versed in the Arts,” he observed, obviously impressed.
Cousins looked more closely at it. “What is it?”
“It’s a perception filter – it allows a person to avoid being seen, heard, or having themselves Read – say, through Geomancy or somesuch.” He looked back at Favo. “But it also bears the crest of the Queen. Were you aware of this?”
Favo shook his head. “The Queen is a mercurial noblewoman, it would take up too much of my valuable time to keep up with her whims of fashion.” In spite of his affected disinterest, however, he did look more closely. “Would that piece be…worth anything?”
Ian tossed him the pieces. “Not any longer,” he replied.
A loud rumbling noise came from the bottom of the stairs, and a few more of Favo’s guards burst into the room from behind them, weapons drawn.
Favo waved them away. “We’re no longer under attack, Jeome. Find the shift captain and tell him to have all patrols stand down. These people are no longer the enemy.”
Sighing, Favo ran one hand through his hair. “This entire job has been more trouble than it’s worth,” he groaned. “I don’t know why I accepted it in the first place.”