by Queen, Nyna
They really were tiny windows, Alex thought uneasily as her gaze followed the flow of the energy fields in front of her. Sweet Jester, this was crazy!
Under any other circumstance, she would have insisted she needed at least another week of training to attempt this dance, better two, but they didn’t have that time. So tonight was the test drive, and it would show if she would hit the wall head first.
Her stomach churned. Alex refused to accept that it was fear. This was the moment of truth. Too many lives depended on her, so she had better get this right.
She closed her eyes. Darken’s face appeared before them, all dashing, aristocratic angles and deadly charm, smiling his roguish smile at her. She missed their squabble. She missed the warmth of his body pressed against hers, missed the deep sound of his voice that caressed her soul like soft velvet gliding over bare skin. She missed everything about him, and every day, the hole inside her grew deeper and deeper.
Her hands curled into fists.
She could do this. For Darken.
Alex inhaled.
Breathe. Calm, deep breaths.
Her true skin rose to the surface, completely replacing her human skin, the subtle, dark patterns unfurling underneath the suit. The black claws slipped from their beds, replacing her human nails, and her fangs slid out of their canals, filled to the brim with venom. It had been a long time since she’d relied entirely on her shaper senses, but right now she needed every bit of her shaper strength and abilities. She needed to be the spider.
One.
She absorbed the sounds and movements around her, sensed the ground through the thin soles of her shoes stretching below her, the softest gusts of wind troubling single grass blades. She sensed the energy of the tactilis fields sweeping the air like huge invisible sails, felt their movements tugging on the threads of energy that made up the intricate pattern of the world.
Two.
Power flooded her limbs, suffusing her entire body with a dizzying rush of energy. It made her feel keenly alive and, at the same time, aware of how quickly that life could end. She was a shadow, the night sowed into a dark creature of legends. She was the human spider. The hunter. And she was ready to strike.
Three.
Her eyes snapped open and she dashed forward, exploding from her crouching position like a rocket missile. Her feet pelted the ground. Six yards, jump to the left. Run, run, run. Ten yards. Freeze. She felt the field coming, swooping down on her like a bird of prey with extended talons, its precursor raising the tiny hairs on her skin. She dropped down and rolled to the side, coming up in a fluid motion and raced on, never stopping. Twenty yards. To stop in once place was to be caught. Move, move, move. Jump, spin on the toes. Forty yards. She dove to the left and rolled over again, came up on one knee, paused for a split second, then sprinted forward like a streak, covering the last thirty yards in the blink of an eye.
Alex pressed to the ground, catching her breath, feeling the tactilis field swoosh over her head.
The fence towered in front of her, appearing impossibly high when looking up from the ground. One nip and she would be deep-fried.
Not tonight. Rolling to the right, Alex gathered herself, waiting for the moment when the fields above her detached for a millisecond.
One, two—
Alex crouched, looked up, and jumped. It was a difficult jump without any run-up or room to maneuver. She shot up into the air before the fence and cleared its top, tucking her knees tightly to her stomach but still just barely missing the ward’s edge. She dropped on the other side, overbalanced, got caught on the top of a small tree with her foot, lost control and fell to the ground, slamming it hard. The air woodshed from her lungs in a chocked puff.
No time to check if anything was seriously injured. Alex surged up, ignoring a jabbing pain in her left foot, dove to the side and hid behind some bushes. She froze and held her breath. Her heart was thundering like a haywire drum.
Two guards appeared only a moment later, pointing their magic torchlights to the area where she had landed just a few seconds ago.
Alex tasted the copper of adrenaline on her tongue. Her skin tingled, and not just from the magic energy in the air.
But the guards weren’t overly concerned. They casually flicked their flashlights around a couple of times and returned to their assigned posts to continue their rounds, talking easily amongst themselves. Apparently, they trusted the ward to do its job.
Alex allowed herself a soft exhale. A quick inward check revealed that her left ankle was bruised but not too badly. Her pride was a little more scratched, though. Being brought down by some stupid plant! Oh well, she would survive.
When she’d scanned the structure with her binoculars from the ravine, she’d spotted a half-open window on the second story. That was her entrance card.
Alex waited patiently until the guards had passed her hideout once more before making her move. The moment the vibrations of their steps faded away, she dashed over to the house, jumped and grabbed the top of the balcony rail. She pulled herself over it in a fluid motion and landed soundlessly in a crouch behind it, then quickly backed away from it until she was pressed against the wall between the balcony door and a window, completely hidden from sight.
Alex leaned against the brown stone and dug into her backpack. Out came two less than palm-sized black spheres with a blood-red crystal embedded in their backs. Alex turned one of the devices to its belly, manipulated the little dials located there, and activated it with the tiniest spark of her magic. It shivered on her palm before eight slim, segmented legs slid out from the body, turning it into the semblance of a big spider. In the army, they were called Black Widows or spider jammers. These little babies weren’t from Rachel’s treasury. She’d gotten these from Stephane who, on his part, had taken them from Darken’s vault in the townhouse cellar where he had stored a range of military devices from the Order. Alex particularly liked these little gadgets.
She set the first one against the wall to her left and let it go. It immediately scurried away on its black legs, moving eerily reminiscent of the animal it was modeled after. It was programmed to hide, evade, and move in a certain range.
Alex repeated the same procedure with the other spider jammer, and it crawled away in the opposite direction, vanishing in the darkness within a blink.
The Widows were designed to send out a jamming signal that would disrupt the ward around the estate and make it penetrable without alerting the security system. The security personnel might notice tiny fluctuations and interferences, but since the Black Widows were constantly in move and only their combined signals were strong enough to cause the disruption, they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint a jamming source. This was high-grade military technology, and its use by civilians was severely punishable. Well, Alex figured, if you broke into the dragon’s lair and already faced a death sentence, the least you could do was doing everything in your power to really deserve it.
Alex produced a pair of thin, black gloves and slipped them over her hands. She preferred naked skin contact, and her senses worked better when not covered in tissue, but leaving compromising fingerprints was out of the question.
All set, she slunk to the right edge of the balcony. The open window had been here somewhere. Let’s see… Ah.
If she was correct, it led to the drawing room where they’d had coffee with the politicians the other night.
Listening to the movements of the guards below, she waited until the coast was clear, then climbed the wall of the mansion, scuttling along like the spider she was. When she reached the window, she grabbed the top edge of the decorative arch above it, swung her legs to the side and up so that they fit through the window’s top, then let go and dropped down into the gloom of the room, coming up in another silent crouch. A small smile tugged on her lips. Apparently, she hadn’t lost her touch.
Well, don’t uncork the champagne yet, sugar. The trickier part was yet to come: finding the proverbial needle in this haystack of a
house—something that was hard enough when you actually knew what said needle looked like.
Leaving the drawing room behind, Alex slunk down the stairs to the ground floor, following the plan of the building stored in her head.
She tiptoed along a wide corridor like a silent shadow, her feet making not the slightest sound on the soft carpet, when steps suddenly vibrated through the floor behind her.
Oh shit!
Alex jumped straight upward, changing her center of gravity in a heartbeat, and clung to the ceiling of the corridor like a lizard.
Bright lights flared in the hall, blinding Alex for an instant. She froze like a deer caught in the headlights.
A disgruntled looking, middle-aged woman with curly ginger hair, waffled into the corridor, slightly dragging her slippered feet, the edge of a long, white nightgown peeking out from below a lopsidedly buttoned dressing gown.
Not daring to breathe, Alex held her position, fitting herself as tightly against the ceiling as possible. It would only take one fleeting look up and the woman would be in for a hell of a nightmare. Alex could already imagine the screams.
The woman’s low mutters met her ears, “…next time … can get his own damn pills…” She passed right below Alex, keeping on muttering to herself about men and taking things for granted, then took a sharp left.
The building’s layout snapped up before Alex’s inner eye. The kitchen. The woman was headed for the kitchen. To get pills for whomever and probably a glass of water. It wouldn’t take her long to come back this way. Time to move.
Carefully monitoring the vibrations of the woman’s steps, Alex soundlessly dropped from the ceiling and vanished in another corridor, quickly creating some distance between them.
Prized paintings, statues, and vases flashed by her on both sides, the sale of which would probably feed the entire Trash Bin for a month. Alex almost regretted that she wasn’t here to steal anything.
Two more intersections, and she stopped in front of a shiny wooden door. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold, forming the ancient arcane glyph of the combined male and female: a six pointed star, comprised of two overlapping triangles. The one with the tip pointing upward was the stylized version of a male’s privates, while the triangle with the point down symbolized a woman’s womb.
The door led to the guest bathroom on the ground floor, which she’d used a couple of times during the night of the dinner party.
Alex gently pushed against the door, stepped in, and closed it behind her. Soft lights automatically flared inside, golden and muted. A small antechamber separated the men’s and ladies’ restrooms. You really had to have a lot of space if you felt the need to build separate bathrooms for men and women in a private house.
Alex entered the ladies’ room and waited for the automatic lights to ignite. A marble washstand with two oval basins was flanked by two potted plants. The marble was beige and shot through with gold. A stack of neatly folded, fluffy hand towels rested between an ornate soap dispenser and an empty wicker basket where you could throw the used ones. Small scented candles, although not lighted at the moment, perfused the room with the smells of vanilla and lilies. The floor leading towards the toilet cabins was a rich russet marble. Roukewood certainly liked for his guests to pee in style. Not at all like her bathroom in the Bin, where there had barely been enough space to step out of the shower without tripping over the toilet bowl and getting everything completely wet.
Alex slid her backpack off her shoulder and set it on top of the counter, opened the zip and pulled out a worn old teddy bear, which looked so well-loved that it didn’t have much of its stuffing left. Two neat patches covered rips in the seams, the brown terry-cloth fur was balding in places, one leg was notably thinner than the other, and one beady, gold-brown resin eye must have fallen off at some point and been replaced by a not entirely equal one, giving him a look of cute but not-so-bright curiosity.
Alex held him with both hands and stroked the plump, furry rump with her thumbs. It strangely—painfully—reminded her of Bobble, the stuffed white bunny she’d used to drag around everywhere as a toddler. Her best childhood friend.
She realized with a pang that she had no idea what had happened to him after Aunt Sheila had sent her off to the orphanage. Bobble hadn’t been with her then, so she supposed he’d stayed at her sire’s mansion and ended up in the trash faster than anyone could have said the word ‘spider’. Alex pressed her lips together and swallowed back a trickle of grief. This was a bad moment to go to pieces over a cuddly toy.
Pulling herself together, she glanced once more down at the teddy in her hands. He looked back at her with an innocent question in his dissimilar eyes.
Oh well, a promise was a promise.
Gently, so as not to damage him any further, Alex placed the bear on the marble counter, positioning him halfway behind the towel box like some deliberately added deco object where he wouldn’t stick out too much on a cursory glance. The teddy did his best to fit in.
“Stay,” Alex told him, then picked up her backpack and left the bathroom.
The corridor was clear, so she moved on, slinking through the dark, silent mansion like a hunting spider on the search for prey.
Next stop: Roukewood’s study.
Since she didn’t exactly know what she was looking for and where to look for it, the study was her best bet. While Roukewood had been extremely obliging about showing off the house, he’d merely allowed them a tiny glimpse into this particular room—and only because Bonny had specifically inquired about the Rhinoux which happened to be in this room—declaring it ‘of little interest’ otherwise, unless they wanted to be bored with how much paperwork a politician had to do. This had elicited good-natured chuckles from the other senators. Alex had laughed too, but she’d filed his reaction away for later. It also hadn’t escaped her notice how his eyes had quickly swept around the room, focusing just a second too long on the master desk before he’d hurriedly closed the door and herded them to his next attraction.
Where better to keep some compromising papers than in a room full of, well, papers?
Of course, there were other rooms and parts of the house they hadn’t seen, like the cellars. If she drew a blank up here, she’d go down there next. One of the invited politicians, a Lord Henley, had mentioned rumors according to which Roukewood was supposed to have an Iron Dragon Security Vault in his house. Judging by the reaction of the other guests, it was quite a big deal, though the term had told Alex nothing.
Roukewood had smiled indulgently and said, “People gossip a lot of things about me. I heard quite a few rumors about you too, Alfred. Should I believe all of those as well?” But he hadn’t denied it either.
If it was true, the vault shouldn’t be hard to detect. Alex had looked up the basic design the moment she got home. They were huge, massive things, the kind they used in money institutes where the trueborn royal elite stashed their riches. Not something one could hide easily.
Alex reached the end of the carpeted hall and turned the eagle-shaped knocker. Locked. She raised one eyebrow. To keep out nosy servants, perhaps? Why would he lock this room at night if there wasn’t anything worth hiding in there? A spark of excitement pulsed through her.
Fishing out her cherished lock picking kit from her backpack, Alex selected her tools. It didn’t take long before there was a satisfying click, and the door opened into the room.
Alex entered on soft paws. The room was bathed in shadows, but her true eyes pierced them as if they weren’t there. She gently closed the door behind her and examined the room, using her visual as much as her sensory senses.
A huge desk on the left, couches and bookshelves on the right, all dark and masculine in style. The scents of cigar smoke, mint oil, and cognac clung to the furniture in addition to floor polish and male aftershave. Alex could almost see Roukewood lounging on those couches with his co-conspirators, boozing and smoking cigars while planning how to get ahold of more shapers for their sick mac
hinations.
There was also a faint buzz of magic in the air, although Alex couldn’t really pinpoint the source of it.
She slowly circled the master desk, flipping through the neat stacks of papers and taking inventory of the other items on the surface: a holographic printer; a couple of things she wasn’t sure were either decoration or magical devices; something looking like a pretty old dagger—for whatever reason the senator would have an antique dagger on his working desk.
She rifled through the content of the drawers, working diligently, afraid to miss something important, but all she found was boring election-related stuff: official province accounts, petitions, invitations and so on. She closed the final drawer with a bit too much force, frustrated by its lack of helpful content.
Damn! She’d really thought that Roukewood’s strange behavior had been a broad hint…
With a soft sigh, she moved on to the couches and walked around the glass table. Stopped. Froze.
Taking two steps backward, she turned her head to the side and leaned toward the bookshelf.
A memora in a black frame glared back at her from the lower shelf. Why, hello. Alex reached over and picked it up, raising it to eye level. It showed three men in their twenties in full military dress uniforms complete with ensigns, medals and badges of honor.
The one in the middle was unmistakably Prime Gerald Beauchamp-Mareille, fair and handsome with his gold crown of hair, grinning his youthful, disarming smile at the recordare.
To his left, a younger version of Cassius Roukewood jauntily leaned on a flash pike.
On his other side, Arlington Shinner, visibly a little older than the other two, stiffly stood at attention with his slightly sardonic smile, a ceremonial rapier belted at his side.
Now, wasn’t that sweet? Three army buddies without a care in the world. Hand them all an instrument, and they’d make a great trio rock band.
From the way the shot was taken, the picture reminded Alex a lot of the memora of the three Dubois brothers she’d seen on Stephane’s desk. Glancing around, Alex noticed that there were no other pictures in this room, and she didn’t remember seeing any on their tour through the mansion either. No pictures of his parents, no stupid children’s photos, no pompous family gatherings, nothing. Just this memora of him and his brothers in arms.