Scamps & Scoundrels: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure (The Bad Guys Book 1)

by Eric Ugland

  “Nadya,” Cordia repeated, “of course. I never thought you would be one to—”

  “Thanks,” Nadya said.

  “No time to waste, I see. The guard will ask for a flower, tell him it’s a hyacinth today.”

  “Thank you, Cordia,” Nadya said, and she grabbed my arm and pulled me along.

  We went back to the foyer and practically ran up the three sets of stairs. We paused for a second at the top, and Nadya looked from one side to the other, picking her direction, then opted to go around through the ballroom. I noticed that the orchestra had changed over, that there was a second group playing while the first group lounged in the sitting area next to their stage. I wondered if the two would just trade off all night. We got to the guarded doors that marked the private residence, and the guard was a little surprised to see us.

  “Hyacinth,” Nadya said before the guard could even ask for the passphrase.

  “Yes, my lady,” he replied and opened the door for us.

  Nadya pulled me inside.

  It was a completely different atmosphere inside the private residence, much calmer, and significantly less ostentatious. There was a set of stairs leading up as if we had entered a normal home.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in here,” Nadya said. “I doubt she’s moved rooms, but if you’ve got any spare points, might want to put them in luck.”

  I did. I had two points. I put them in luck. Both. Why not.

  Nadya took the lead, going upstairs, and to the right. There was a short hallway there, and Nadya opened up the second door on the left of the hallway.

  A drawing room.

  Which apparently was what Nadya expected to find because she walked right through it, and opened a door in the wall I hadn’t even realized was there, and there was a bedroom on the other side.

  “Ta-da,” she said, gesturing to the room, “Cordia’s bedroom.”

  In seconds, I was standing in front of the bed, and Nadya was pawing through the wide variety of what I’d call ball gowns filling up the three wardrobes of Cordia’s chambers.

  “Maybe a blue one?” I said.

  “What is her size?” Nadya replied, ignoring my color request, which, to be fair, was probably for the best since blue seemed to be one of Cordia’s least favorite color.

  “I don’t know, taller than you.”

  “Okay, well, we’re a bit sunk there, Cordia is not exactly tall. Or thin. Is this girl thin?”

  “A bit? I don’t know. She’s, I mean, she’s someone Montelbuam chose to, you know—”

  “Imprison in a colored glass room suspended above the elites of the empire?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So whatever we get will probably need some adjusting.”

  Nadya opened up drawers and pulled out small boxes of safety pins, and tossed them my way.

  Then, she snatched an armful of gowns and dresses, then looked at me.

  “Wait in the other room,” she said.

  “Wha—” I started, but she just gave me the look that said I’d be better off doing and not asking questions.

  I waited in the drawing room.

  She emerged a moment later, her own gown looking like it was slightly more ruffled and sizable on the bottom than it had before.

  “Where is this girl?” she asked.

  “Upstairs,” I said, then thought about the stairs we’d taken to get where we were. “I mean, what floor are we on?”

  “On the fourth floor.”

  “She’s on the fourth floor. In the map room.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s easy to get there from here?”

  “I don’t think it’s hard, there’s, uh, I mean, there’s a staircase—”

  She walked back into the hallway, and she started opening doors.

  Drawing room.

  Drawing room.

  Bathroom.

  Closet.

  Library.

  Billiards room.

  A door that led to a hallway.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Through here.”

  This time, I led her. It took me a hot minute to find my way back to the meeting room, and we had to duck a set of guards by going into a darkened room until we heard them walk on by. But then we were at the door.

  I opened it slowly and looked up. There was a single lock of blonde hair curling down over the edge.

  “Back,” I said softly, ushering Nadya in, and closing the door behind him.

  “My hero,” came a voice, followed by a face that peeked over and frowned at Nadya. “Who’s that?”

  “Friend,” I said. “And someone who’s more equipped to help you with a gown than me. Nadya, meet Shae. Shae, Nadya.”

  Shae hopped down from her hiding spot on top of the bookshelves, landing with almost preternatural grace.

  Nadya looked at Shae appraisingly, then turned me to face the door.

  “Keep watch.”

  I heard the two muttering, and then there was some rustling, more rustling, some grunts of exertion, a little ripping, a little more rustling and exertion. And then I got tapped on my shoulder.

  Turning around, I tried hard to keep the smile on my face. Cordia and Shae had very different body shapes. One was more, well, spherical, and one was more hour-glass. The hourglass body in the spheroid dress wound up looking a bit odd, especially because she was showing a bit more leg than, well, you’d want.

  “Is that the best option?” I asked.

  Cool Beans, you’ve the skill Fashion Master. Now you can recognize good fashion. And see you have none.

  Stupid game world.

  “See,” Nadya said.

  “I’m worried we are going to run out of time,” Shae countered. “You said he’s planning on coming here.”

  “He is,” I said, “maybe we just get to another room for another try?”

  “Lead on,” Nadya said, clearly not happy with the situation, though I don’t know who could be.

  I peeked out the door into the hallway, and then Nadya gave me a shove out into the hallway.

  From the right side, the side we needed to go in order to get back to the ballroom, I heard the familiar nasal voice of Lord FancyPants Tollendahl making terse comments to his guards about keeping his wife in check, and how the wife had no more cause to ask after him that night.

  “This way,” I hissed, and we went the other direction. Away from FancyPants. Quickly. Basically running down the hall. As soon as we turned the corner, I saw a door, and practically dove for it, wrenching it open.

  It had to have been an office for someone, but, thankfully, considering the time of day, it was just a desk and a bunch of shelves. And not a whole lot of room. We squished into the room, and I stood on the desk.

  For a moment, we all held our collective breathes.

  “Quick,” I said. “You gotta get changed on the double, he’s going to realize you aren’t there, and we need to be gone.”

  “Shit,” Nadya said and started pulling at the dress. “Help me.”

  I had no idea what I was doing, but started in on the dress anyway, doing my best to help Shae shimmy out of it. The next dress was marginally better, but it was the third one, a brilliant red one, that fit well enough to go out in public. Shae, who had more than a little natural appeal, actually made the dress look pretty damn good.

  “Okay,” I said. “We good?”

  Nadya nodded.

  Shae looked at the dress and held it out. “Red isn’t really my color.”

  Congratulations! You’ve completed a QUEST!

  A Dress, My Kingdom For A Dress

  You found a gown Shae Cushing can wear to the ball.

  Reward for success: Undying loyalty of Shae Cushing, 150 XP

  “The quest completed,” I said, “so shut up, and let’s go.”

  And we started the long trip back to the ground floor.

  73

  We made it out of the private quarters cleanly and walked down to the second floor. At that point, I heard s
ome doors slamming behind me, and since I knew that was likely Tollendahl about to be angry, I grabbed the two girls and steered them onto the balcony overlooking the ballroom.

  We stood at the back, under the bit of shadow from the third-floor walkway, trying to be as innocuous as possible.

  “Seems like he realized you’re missing,” I said, watching guards scurry past us.”

  “The orb,” Nadya said.

  “That’s not important,” I snapped, peeking out the door.

  “You somehow finagled your way into this party, and you’re going to give up this close to it?”

  “I’m going to get killed trying to get her out of here,” I said. “The orb is just foolish.”

  “Is it?”

  I frowned at her. Mainly because she was kind of right. I didn’t want to give up on the orb. I wanted to get it. Now more than ever. I wanted to grab it, and I wanted to throw it in the faces of the Biscuit’s Union. And I wanted to make Tollendahl suffer. I wanted to bring the pain to him, the pain that the was obviously willing to use out in the world. And I had another reason to hate him: because he was part of the White Hand. If I could hurt him, I’d be hurting the White Hand, and even before I knew the depth of the slavery the White Hand engaged in, I wanted to stop them. To bring the hurt to them as well.

  “It’s foolish,” I said, “but I still want it.”

  “You want the orb of leeching?” Shae said.

  “That’s the main goal, yeah. You know about it?”

  “I might have gotten a forced tour of the vault when I arrived.”

  “And he told you about it?”

  “He did.”

  “Anything that might help?”

  “Don’t touch it with your bare skin. It steals your mana. Forever.”

  “Okay, important safety tip. Does anyone have a glove?”

  Nadya frowned and pulled a silk handkerchief from her décolletage, then presented it to me.

  “That work?” Nadya said. “Should I take your complete lack of preparedness to mean getting into the party was the extent of your plan?”

  “I wouldn’t say it was the extent of my plan, but sadly, I feel it may have been the bulk of it.”

  “Clyde,” Nadya said. “You are a fool.”

  “It’s odd how often I hear that from our boss, too.”

  “You two work together?” Shae said.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “No, it’s not,” Nadya replied, “yes. There. That’s it. End of story. And Clyde Hatchett, you need to start planning these things out if you’re really going to do this thievery thing seriously.”

  “He’s a thief? Like for a job?” Shae turned to Nadya to ask: “Are you a thief as well?”

  “No, thief is his side gig. He’s a pit restorer.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was sarcastic or polite. Regardless, I stopped listening to the girls' talk, and I moved towards further towards the edge of the balcony. I wanted a better view of what was happening on the floor of the ballroom. The dancing was still going on in most of the area, but there were also quite a few guards moving through the dancers. Lots of guards in blue. They surrounded someone, then pushed their way through the crowd leading that person off the floor and into the garden. A tall man, one I’d seen before that very evening. Something had happened that got the attention of the Imperial guards.

  Walking quickly, but in a way I thought would appear completely normal and not at all in a way where I would need to be watched, I hurried towards the display area. There was only a single guard at the door right now, and he wasn’t paying attention to me in the slightest, his eyes were roving over the various women who were walking around the place, and not in a dude-who’s-enjoying-looking-at-butts sort of a way, this was a guard attempting to identify someone. I had to wonder if there was a connection between the Imperial guards hurrying away Valamir and Tollendahl having his guards searching for Shae.

  I didn’t bother going into the display area, because I knew what the two girls would likely be doing, which was, following me and seeing how they might help. So I turned right around and ran into them coming around the corner. I almost fell over, but, instead, I forced them back.

  There was a minor scuffle, but as soon as they realized it was me they were scuffling with, they went along with it, and we tumbled together into the shadows at the back of the second-floor balcony, once again out of the view of most everyone.

  “What was that?” Nadya hissed.

  “One, did you know the Emperor’s brother was here?”

  “Of course I did,” she said.

  “I think he just got hustled out.”

  “Interesting but I don’t see how that applies to what we’re doing.”

  “Okay, how did this become a ‘we’ thing? I was doing it, now we’re doing it?”

  “She’s definitely tied to you,” Nadya said, pointing a finger at Shae. “I’m trying to help because I thought we were friends, and this is the type of stupid stuff friends do with each other.”

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” I said to Nadya, “but what do you normally do with friends?”

  She gave me a mean look.

  “Bigger issue,” I said, “I’m pretty sure the Tollendahl guards have been told to be on the lookout for Shae here.”

  “They probably won’t recognize me in this,” Shae said.

  “Yes they will,” Nadya and I both said at once.

  “You stick out a bit,” Nadya said.

  “And,” I said, pointing to the other end of the party where a group of Tollendahl guards were walking along the balcony peering at each and every woman they passed, “I think maybe we are out of time.”

  “Then what’s the plan?” Nadya asked. “Better think fast, or we’re all headed to jail.”

  “If they get to halfway, and we’re not moving,” I said, “you are leaving the two of us here, got it?”

  Nadya shook her head.

  “Yes,” I said, “or I’ll never give you a corpse again.”

  “Fine,” she said, fairly spitting it out at me.

  “What kind of friends are you?” Shae asked.

  I closed my eyes and cycled my mana around my body. The pain sometimes helped me think. I had some new spells I hadn’t used, and there was, in theory, a room the guards might not think to check too closely, also a room I needed to get into. But I needed to get in there quietly, and I needed to be in there quietly. And I had an idea.

  “Okay,” I said, “this might be a dumb idea—”

  “The best ones are,” Nadya said.

  “Sure, but anyway, just, uh, I need to cast a little spell, and then we’ll be moving quickly, okay?”

  Before doing anything, I looked at my character sheet to make sure I still had the attribute points saved up. I had two. I put all the points in luck because the rest of the night, and likely my life in Glaton, kind of depended on things going right for a while.

  Then, I took the best mental picture I could of Shae, and I walked to the doorway between the foyer and the entrance to the second floor of the ballroom. As calm as I could be, which was not particularly, I leaned against the doorway, and I cast silent image.

  An illusory Shae walked around me, looked right at the guard, and then dashed up the stairs.

  The guard was startled for a moment, and then he rushed after her, leaving his post unmanned.

  I gestured behind me, the universal follow signal, but I didn’t bother to look. Instead, I speed walked across the second-floor landing, and into the display room.

  74

  All the guards inside the ‘museum’ were gone. My guess: they’d been pulled off to look for Shae. I could see the shadow of one guard standing outside the entrance to the room on the library side of things. Carefully, I drained virtually all of my mana to send satisfaction his way, and his shadow relaxed as the guard’s tension left him.

  I pulled out my stiletto of sile
nce and held it up to my arm.

  Shae and Nadya were in the room, and standing up against the wall. Both of them had eyes wide as I stabbed myself in the arm with the dagger. But they didn’t say anything. It hurt, a lot, and there was also this weird whooshing sound before everything went quiet, then returned to normal.

  I tapped the floor with the dagger.

  No noise.

  I jumped up and down on the floor.

  Still no noise.

  I used the stiletto to break open the glass over the rings.

  No noise.

  I scooped the rings up into the assassin’s pouch, then used my foot to sweep the glass away and under a table of books, which I casually slipped into my pants.

  It was time for the orb. I stood in front of it, looking at the thing and wondering how bad it would be if I lost all my magical powers. Was it the worst thing in the world? Probably not. Would it suck? Probably a lot. My hands were shaking as I pulled out the handkerchief. I wrapped the silk handkerchief over the orb and the carved hand, and tied it tight. As tight as I could make it, and then I tipped the whole thing into my pouch. I looked around the room and saw Nadya gesturing as Shae peeked around the doorway.

  Nadya was pointing at a suit of armor.

  It had a blue Imperial tabard and a heavy helm. It was a suit of full plate. I’d seen a few fully armored soldiers around the party, mostly standing right behind people I’d assumed were important. But it was a pretty brilliant idea.

  I ran over, and I grabbed the whole heavy thing and tipped it over.

  The look on Nadya’s face was priceless, but the magic of the dagger held, and there was no sound as it crashed to the floor. I snapped the wooden arms holding the armor on the stand, and we grabbed Shae.

  Here’s the thing about armor. It’s actually a pain in the butt to put on. Even if you have helpers, the helpers really need to know what they’re doing. I did not. Nadya had zero clue. And Shae was actually less than helpful. But after a few minutes, when I was sweating and shaking and getting really close to swearing, we got it so the armor looked like it was supposed to be on her. Mostly. It wouldn’t hold up in a fight, that’s for sure, but hopefully, it’d last long enough for the three of us to get out of the estate.