That was assuming, of course, that the protective circle etched into the marble around the case didn’t extinguish Zella’s soul the moment she crossed it. Because that’s precisely the reason it was inscribed in the first place—so that no one other than Instructor Winselle could approach the idol. As his two friends stepped nearer and nearer to the circle, Allister never took his eyes off that inscription. That was the real test. And it was coming closer, step by agonizing step.
Behind him, Allister heard Breigh make a soft sound and catch herself on the door frame. She sounded like she was having trouble breathing. “Oh shit…” Allister whispered for the hundredth time. He hunched his shoulder and turned his face to wipe away the torrent of sweat that was pouring into his eyes. Breigh coughed a little. Soon, he knew, she’d start gagging. You’re fucking this up, said the voice in Allister’s head.
Zella’s toes came, finally, to the edge of the inscription. She paused there, as if taking a final inventory. Nalan put his hand on her shoulder. Zella bowed her head. Come on, Allister screamed at her in his mind. Come ON!
Breigh coughed again. And again. She was starting to choke. You’re completely fucking this up, said the voice in Allister’s head.
Zella raised one foot, began to take a step into the circle, and quickly withdrew her foot, as though she’d be bitten by a snake. All around them, the hall’s gas lamps flickered, then came back up.
Nalan looked back at Allister, for a moment. His face was suddenly ashen and slack.
Before Allister could think about panicking, the cantrips lunged, both at the same time. They did it again. And again. They were beginning to work together.
Beyond them, he could see Zella cock her head to one side. She rubbed her hands together. Her shoulders rose once, then fell sharply. She tried again.
This time when she withdrew her foot, she took several short, hopping steps backward. Allister could see a wince of pain on her face, hear her suck wind between her teeth. Trickles of sweat glistened on her face. She bit her lower lip. She exchanged glances with Nalan—his face was nearing panic. Hers was approaching anger.
Another combined lunge. And another. And on the third, Allister’s heel slipped; his feet scrambled for purchase, found it, lost it again, and Allister began to slide. Fast.
Zella turned back to face the circle, squaring her stance, running both hands through Instructor Winselle’s hair.
Nalan glanced over his shoulder and his eyes went wide. Allister was sliding straight toward them, drug by forces Nalan wasn’t able to see.
You’re fucking this up! cried the voice in Allister’s head.
Nalan patted Zella on the shoulder.
You’re fucking this up! screamed the voice in Allister’s head.
Nalan patted Zella’s shoulder again, harder.
Allister kicked his feet out hard in front of him, trying in his wild panic to remember if there was a god of friction, a god of inertia, a god of rubber-soled shoes. The spheres unfolded, opening apertures that looked like mouths lined with thousands of needle-like teeth.
Zella raised her head and nodded smartly. Allister blinked, and the image of Instructor Winselle was gone, leaving Zella in her place. He blinked again, and Winselle was back, the illusory image more vibrant and distinct than it had been before. She lifted a foot and stepped forward onto the inscription stones...
...and nothing happened.
She paused there, for a second, as if to savor her moment of triumph. Then Nalan shoved her by the shoulders the rest of the way across. He stepped over right behind her.
You lucky little shit! said the voice in Allister’s head. Allister released his bonds and the pair of cantrips took off, veering hard and wide around the protective circle, careening out in two different directions. Allister scrambled to his feet and ran, closing the distance to the display case in a handful of heartbeats. He reached out and took Zella’s hand, then leapt across the circle and onto the platform beside her.
In unison, all three of them collapsed against one another and slumped to the floor. Nalan grinned stupidly and wiped the sweat off his face with his free hand. “I…” Zella whispered as quietly as possible, “...I couldn’t stop picturing Instructor Tevill’s ball sac.”
Allister just squinted at her counterfeit face.
She mouthed to him: “Don’t. Tell. Devan.”
Allister shook his head and turned away. He looked back out to the hall. The two cantrips were circling them like sharks with blood in the water. Past them, he saw Breigh take a deep breath, like she was just coming up from a deep dive. She fanned herself with one hand and looked over at Allister. Her eyes asked furious questions, but she was fine.
Allister put his head between his knees. He wanted to puke. And cry. He wanted to puke until he cried.
Zella put her hand on Nalan’s back, freeing his hands to work on the case’s lock. Allister didn’t know anything about locks, but it looked complicated to him, so he assumed Nalan would probably spend the evening fantasizing about it in his bunk. Beneath his tools, ancient brass gears moved like puzzle pieces, finding paths from order to entropy to order. Nalan helped them on their way until the bolt was ready to slide open. He moved to release the final lever...
...then stopped short.
Allister watched as Nalan cocked his head to one side, as though he were listening to the machine whisper something only he could hear.
Leaving his picks wedged into the mechanism where he'd inserted them, Nalan reached into his breast pocket and produced a small glass eyepiece. He fitted it around his eye and began running his hands over the outside of the lock housing. He crouched down, following the smooth metal shell back to where it met the smoky black onyx of the display case. Allister crouched down and followed his gaze. There, in a seam, was a small mechanical counter comprised of round numbered tumblers. Currently, the counter was at 0003. This lock, he assumed, had only been opened three times.
Nalan looked back over his shoulder at Allister. Allister puckered his lips and pantomimed a low whistle. That had been a close one.
Standing upright again, Nalan made a final adjustment in the mechanism, released the final lever, and the bolt popped free. He caught it and moved it gently to the side, which was good, because the bolt looked to Allister like a noisy one. Nalan stepped aside; the display case door hung open.
Peeking out at them from inside the glass enclosure was the idol—an abstract swirl cast in gold and roughly the size of a man's head. It glowed a perpetual, pulsating red. Allister could feel its warmth on his cheeks. The rest of his body could feel its proximity too. It felt like a mixture of being really angry and having an extremely unsatisfying orgasm. He wondered distantly if the others could feel that too.
He looked over to Zella and Nalan and smiled. Zella bowed graciously and motioned for him to proceed at his convenience. Allister hitched up his sleeves one more time and rubbed his hands together. As he did, he cocked an eyebrow seductively across the room at Breigh, who was shaking both fists in the air in a traditional warrior's salute.
He placed his hands on either side of the idol. His hands began to glow. And then they began to shake.
“Uhm…” Allister breathed, suddenly far less concerned with the Listening Circle. “Something...something’s wrong…”
Devan
On the other side of the recital hall, Instructor Winselle jumped to her feet. Finally, Devan thought. My turn.
Winselle leaned down and talked frantically to the instructors next to her, then, when they didn’t make way for her fast enough, she began to push roughly past them on her way to the stairs. Devan knew what this meant; Winselle had at least three different kinds of protection spells set up in her chambers that she’d be able to “hear” go off, even from ten floors away.
But even so, something seemed off. Devan looked over at the clock.
No answer. Devan cocked an eyebrow.
He wa
lked through the steps of the plan in his head. Eight bells had just rung…what had it been, ten minutes ago? Less? Where would that have put them in the schedule? They had rehearsed every step meticulously, each move and maneuver perfectly timed and mapped out. Twelve, thirteen minutes in—Nalan should still be working on the lock, he thought. And the lock didn’t seem to have any indicators of enchantment but…
He frowned.
The link was still down. If he assumed that it took longer than expected to navigate the receiving room, that would mean maybe Zella, when she got to the enchantment circle…
Instructor Winselle finally made it to the aisle, with one hand on Instructor Hamil’s shoulder, the other hand on Instructor Pince’s knee. As she took the handrail, Devan got a good look at her face for the first time since she stood. He’d expected it to be twisted into a rictus of pure, hilarious rage, but it wasn’t. She was frantic, panic-stricken, afraid.
What is this? he thought to himself. This can’t be right. The plan was perfect.
He retraced the route in his head—each step, each individual footfall, each potential complication. One by one, the safe, sensible reasons why Zella hadn’t reported in yet began to fall away.
What did Winselle do? he thought, his blood suddenly like ice beneath his skin. What was in that room that I didn’t know about? He tapped his thumb and forefinger over and over, waiting, listening for a familiar voice in his head.
We had this, he thought. We had it. Every night for a week, he had made his way up to the walkways above Instructor Winselle's quarters—“casing” the room, as Bellit called it in his stories. He would crouch there on the roof of the Tower, peering through the translucent sections of her stained glass dome with a simple telescope, frantically sketching every detail he could observe. He would work for ten minutes then hide, work then hide, as the rooftop guards sauntered by with whiskey-lidded eyes and stumbling, awkward footsteps.
He spent at least another forty hours in The Collegium's vast library, hunting out any mention of the things he'd sketched: the lock on the display case, the physical features of the idol, the icons and inscriptions that maintained the room's cantrips and incantations.
Based on Devan’s sketches, Nalan and Allister paced out and built a full-sized replica of Winselle’s chambers in the storage tunnels beneath the school. There in the tunnels, the five of them spent more hours than he cared to count plotting out exactly the right sequence of events that would bring them to just this moment, just now.
We. Had. This. he thought.
He gripped the handle of his cane so hard he thought it might crack in his fist.
Finally, the silence said something back.
If the students sitting around weren't all either half asleep from boredom or half dead from food poisoning, they might have noticed Devan’s entire body unclench. He felt suddenly light headed, like he could pass out right there on the spot.
It was then that he realized he’d lost sight of Instructor Winselle. He sat up straight as a rod; frantically, he searched the crowd with his eyes. No, no, no… he mumbled to himself in his mind. You can’t be gone. We can’t have gotten this close, and…
But she wasn’t gone. Out of the corner of his eye, Devan caught a glimpse of her up at the top of the stairs. She’d stopped there and pulled aside two senior members of the faculty.
For the second time in sixty seconds, Devan breathed a sigh of relief. He’d come that close to missing his shot, his part of the scheme. That close to blowing five months of preparation. It was nearly his turn. It was nearly time for the only part that really mattered.
After a moment of frantic discussion, Winselle’s colleagues darted out into the hall and were gone. Before turning to leave herself, Winselle paused.
This is it, Devan thought. This is it. Have to time this just right.
Instructor Winselle looked back down at Devan one last time, her squat little frame silhouetted in the doorway. Their eyes locked.
And Devan flashed her his biggest shit-eating grin.
He thought her head would burst into flames on the spot.
With a flourish of her cloak, she turned and stormed down the hallway toward her chambers. As soon as he was sure she was gone, Devan threw both fists up into the air and held them there for a very long time.
---
At Devan’s request, Zella had packed three important things in her satchel, and one of them did smell like the inside of a sick, old dog.
The first thing was for Allister: a smart-looking replica of Instructor Winselle’s idol. On the one occasion Allister had snuck up on the roof with Devan, he’d sworn left, right, and sideways that there were no displacement wards set up in the display case, which meant he could just remove the idol and replace it with a simple illusion spell. Devan wasn’t about to second guess his teammate in his area of expertise—Cliven the Clip himself had gotten burned more than once doing that—but he wasn’t about to let his team go into a dangerous situation without a just-in-case.
Later, Zella would tell Devan that it worked like a charm. When Allister placed his hands on either side of the idol, lo and behold, he did, in fact, detect a displacement ward. So, one mild panic attack later, Zella had him float the original idol out of the case, then slipped the replica in, smooth as a babyskin rug. It came close enough to matching the general size, shape, and weight of the original that the ward relaxed.
The second important thing in Zella’s satchel was, technically, a pair of things: a slingshot and a small black stone. These represented the team’s other just-in-case plan—just in case Instructor Winselle added something at the last minute that Devan hadn’t anticipated. Something like replacing her benign little patrolling cantrips with a pair of Furies.
(“Because Krist and Kroham,” as Allister would say later, “what kind of a fucking psychopath thinks a pair of invisible fire demons is a reasonable response to a child trespassing in her living room?”)
So, with the idol securely stowed and the replica situated perfectly and the display cabinet safely locked, Zella drew back the rock in her sling, took aim, and let it fly. It struck perfectly, shattering a small panel of the great stained glass dome above them. And as broken shards rained down onto the marble slabs below, Zella produced the third important thing from her bag: a dead cat that Devan had found in the storage tunnels. She gave Nalan the honors of tossing the feline carcass into the circle of falling glass—evidence that the only thing that set off the enchantments was a stray tom who’d wandered onto the roof and fell through a weak spot of an ancient glass skylight.
Instantly, the Furies were on the thing, tearing it to ribbons between them, singing out a warning cry to their mistress. Which was Zella, Nalan, and Allister’s cue to run like buggery fuck.
---
Devan opened the channel again.
Devan grinned.
Devan put his feet up on the bench in front of him and crossed them at the ankle.
Nalan’s voice came through next.
Another long silence. Then, finally…
The force of her thought through the link nearly toppled Devan from his seat. The others’ voices mixed and jumbled over one another as they shouted at each other. It was all Devan could do to keep from joining them.
The link went wild again, then shut off abruptly as Zella closed the connection.
With a relaxed sigh, Devan leaned back, putting his arms up casually behind his head. He wanted so badly to laugh, to punch the air, to jump up and down on top of his seat, to howl at the moons. He tamped all those urges down, but he couldn't bring himself to stop smiling.
Instructor Winselle
Instructor Winselle couldn't stop scowling. Her head was pounding. She'd barely slept. She'd been up all night, pacing, fretting, drinking, inspecting and re-inspecting the idol through the glass of the display case, and otherwise going over the thing in her mind.
Then, this morning, she was greeted at the front door of her quarters by Maestro Olgi, head of The Collegium's music conservatory. In his characteristically clipped and condescending manner, Olgi informed her that never in his eighty-four years as head of the music program had he been made to endure such a brazen and shameful display during one of his students' performances as the one she had put on during the fourth movement of Terraevorda's Wind Cycle last night. Threats were made, regulations were cited, sabers were rattled, and doors were, finally, slammed.
Proper Thieves Page 5