by Logan Jacobs
As I scratched out some of the notes I’d made on a scrap of my own paper in frustration, Lena came up on my right and peered at the bandits’ paper, so I passed it to her.
“Think you can make anything out of it?” I muttered. At least she’d grown up in this world, she’d have better luck than me, probably.
The alchemist caught her lip between her teeth as she frowned down at the page. I noticed that she held it carefully and just pinched the edges with her turquoise-painted nails, so as not to smudge any of the writing accidentally, I guessed. The ink had seemed dry enough to me, though, so perhaps she had another reason.
“It means nothing to me, I’m afraid,” she answered, and she did sound truly sorry that she wasn’t able to help. “But I know a woman, a fence in the black market, who has a talent for this sort of thing. Perhaps when we return to the city, we can visit her, and she could help us.”
Better than us wasting anymore time trying to figure out the code when we could be putting a stop to the whole operation.
“That’s a good idea, we’ll talk to her. Thanks, Lena.”
Lena smiled and brushed back a lock of her dark honey blonde hair as she handed the paper back to me.
“I recognize those houses, anyway,” Emeline said as she came up on my left. “Etienne and I used to go to this banquet the governor would hold once a year for the city’s orphans. It was mostly just a publicity thing, a bunch of nobles would come together and wring their hands around us all for one night before they went back to their mansions and forgot that we even existed.”
“I don’t really see how it’s our problem,” Lavinia put in. “Who cares if someone swipes some rich asshole’s golden chamber pot or whatever? Let’s just hand it in to the city guard and pick up another bounty we can actually get paid for.”
“I’ll tell you why,” Aerin said in a lecturing tone. “Because if this goes through and those bandits do steal... whatever it is they’re trying to steal... the guards are going to head straight to the black market and arrest anyone they can just to make it look like they’ve accomplished something. That’s a whole lucrative subset of the city’s economy that’s going to collapse, and we’d all suffer for it. What’s more, the city would be crawling with guards for days, maybe even weeks, and we don’t need them sniffing around Gabriel. Besides, if we bring this straight to the governor and city council instead, I bet I can convince them to hire us to stop it or at least pay us for the information. We’ll need to have Lena’s friend decode it first, though, if we want them to take us seriously.”
When we finally reached Ovrista, we started straight for the black market, tucked away in a corner of the city that had fallen into disrepair. Maruk was still uncomfortable visiting this area, but he was slowly coming around to rubbing elbows with the underbelly of society.
Most of the buildings in this district, if you could even call it that, had been abandoned and fallen into disrepair, home only to rats, stray animals, and the occasional squatter. So few prying eyes made it a good location to buy and sell contraband or stolen goods, and a little square between some dilapidated apartment buildings had been the designated meeting place for illicit exchanges of all sorts long before the black market as it existed now grew into being.
Now, the black market was also home to the sort of vendors who didn’t quite fit in amongst the merchants of the true market. Usually, these were fortune tellers, like Lena had been, or artisans and farmers who had been pushed out by the heavy competition, but the majority of what was bought and sold here was still illegal to some degree, and everyone was ready and able to pack up their wares and disappear into the alleys at a moment’s notice should the need arise.
The city guard rarely patrolled here, however, and when they did, they tended to be some of the black market’s best customers. The thing was, Aerin was right. The black market had become a cornerstone of the city’s economy, though officially, it didn’t exist. The guard, the council, even perhaps the governor himself, were all willing to turn a blind eye to the activities in this forgotten corner of their fine city if it meant they got steep discounts on their imported spices or access to beauty potions that hadn’t been approved by the Mage Academy.
So it was that when we ducked through the dim alleys and entered the black market, the square was almost as busy as the shops along the main street on a good day. There were a few permanent shops built into the old apartments, owned and operated by those with the least to lose should a particularly uptight guard or someone from the Mage Academy come around. Ostensibly, they sold more or less the same things you could get anywhere else in the city, just lower-quality and a bit cheaper, but I knew that at least some of them were fences.
Aerin and I had come here occasionally to sell loot from bounty missions that we’d smuggled in but had no use for ourselves. We were supposed to report magical contraband, such as illegal books or enchanted items, that we were turning over to the Mage Academy at the gate, where it would be checked and processed, after which we’d be given a receipt to collect the reward from the Academy. Sometimes that was what we did, just to keep up appearances. But of course, a lot of those illegal books were useful to me, and as for the rest... Well, a fence could often give you a better price than the Mage Academy was willing to pay, and we had a guild to run.
No one paid us much attention as we wove between rickety stalls with their shelves full of everything from fruit, which was almost overripe, to shrunken goblin heads, which were definitely overripe. Windchimes made with bits of iron and glass that purportedly deterred wisps and other pesky fae creatures tinkled gently amid the harsher cries of vendors plying their wares and customers haggling with them.
As Lena led us through the crowd to her friend’s shop, I realized someone had brought orrans to sell. Though I couldn’t see the cart with the deep purple, spiny-skinned fruits, their smell was unmistakable, at once sharp and cloyingly sweet, like someone had mixed ammonia with caramel. It was because of the fruit’s strong odor that they were banned from the true market, but apparently, the rind was a key ingredient in many potions, so they sold pretty well here, and I made a point of breathing through my mouth until Lena led us inside the store.
The blonde elf took us back to the smallest of the old apartment buildings, and a bell on the door tinkled as we entered the cramped little shop on the ground floor. It was an alchemy retail shop, judging by the shelves stocked with jars of powders with neat labels, thin bars of various metals, and other, less pleasant things, like pickled lizard’s eyes and beetle carapaces.
The shopkeep, an old elven woman with round spectacles that made her eyes look as large as saucers, looked up expectantly at the sound of the bell, but Lena only gave her a polite nod as she stepped around a table crowded with bottles of iridescent oil and headed for a narrow staircase tucked away in the corner of the room. The old elven woman grumbled something I couldn’t make out and went back to the book she had spread out over her desk.
“Up here,” Lena said as she waved us after her. “My friend is on the top floor.”
The staircase creaked as the six of us ascended, and we had to pass through another shop on our way up. Or, at least, what I figured was a shop. Assortments of bones, from what appeared to be an entire weasel skeleton to a massive troll skull in the far corner, were set out on every available surface. Along the back wall were shelves with little vials arranged in rows and a sign above them that read “Pre-powdered for your convenience.” The shopkeep was nowhere in sight, so we continued on to the third and final floor.
Of the three, this last room looked more like an old apartment than any of the previous rooms had. There was a low coffee table in the center of the room, its blue paint beginning to chip off from years of use. There were no couches or chairs, just heaps of pillows piled up on the frayed and faded rug, but I glimpsed a bed around the corner, covered by a gauzy canopy.
A single window was open to let in the sounds and smells from the market below, and I could se
e at least two other rooms, one that appeared to be a kitchen, and another that was more like a repurposed closet, barely large enough for two people to be in at the same time. A beaded curtain was drawn back from the empty doorframe of this last room, and there was a scarf spread out on the bare floor with tarot cards arranged on it.
“Zarina?” Lena called out as we crowded awkwardly into the apartment. “It’s Lena.”
At first, there was no response, but then I heard a scuffling sound on the roof, and a moment later, a young elven woman climbed in through the window and brushed her hands off on the front of her shirt. As soon as she saw Lena, she rushed over to the alchemist and wrapped her in a tight embrace.
“Lena!” Zarina cried. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”
“I’ve been keeping busy,” Lena replied. She smiled. “I’ve joined a guild, the Shadow Foxes. This is Gabriel, Aerin, Lavinia, Emeline, and Maruk.”
Merlin emerged from his favorite napping spot in my pack and poked his head over my shoulder with an annoyed chirp.
“And Merlin,” Lena added apologetically. “Everyone, this is my old friend Zarina.”
As they stood next to each other, I noticed that Zarina had the same enthusiastically curious look in her eye that Lena did, but that was more or less where the resemblance ended. Zarina was tall and willowy, with rich brown skin, eyes that were nearly black, and dark brown hair that hung in neat braids down to her waist. Her pointed ears were pierced in multiple places and glittered with gold and green jewelry. She wore leggings and a long-sleeved tunic of light, jade-colored fabric that flowed around her graceful arms with every move she made. She was stunning, and her smile was infectious as she looked around at our group.
“It’s good to meet you!” Zarina’s greeting was directed at all of us, but her attention was devoted almost entirely to Merlin as she scratched the puca beneath his furry chin. “Isn’t this one a sweet little one?”
“Careful,” Lavinia warned. “It has sticky fingers.”
“Oh, yes, pucas have to be kept busy,” Zarina replied. “I’ve got just the thing.” She turned and took down a box from a shelf nailed into the wall and rummaged around in it for a moment before she produced what appeared to be a frayed cotton ball. It glowed slightly as the elven woman brought it over.
“Imitation wisp,” she explained in answer to my curious look. “Floats around just like the real thing.” She held the false wisp in front of Merlin’s nose, and the puca sniffed at it curiously. When Zarina let it go, the little glowing ball floated in place a moment longer before it suddenly drifted away as though caught in a gentle gust of wind. Merlin leapt eagerly after it and began to chase it all around the little apartment.
“That ought to keep him busy,” Zarina said confidently, her hands on her hips.
“We’re not interrupting, are we?” Lena asked.
“Oh, no, not at all.” Zarina glanced to the window. “A gargoyle’s been trying to nest on my roof, so I have to keep putting up enchantments to keep it away. You haven’t happened to have invented a better gargoyle repellant than that garbage Varela sells downstairs, have you?”
“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Lena promised, “but my guild and I were hoping we could get your help with something.”
“I’d be glad to lend my assistance,” Zarina replied. “Got some contraband you need to move? Or a tarot reading?” She gestured to the tiny room with the beaded curtain.
“Actually,” I said, “we were hoping you might be able to decode something for us.” I pulled out the folded bit of paper we’d gotten from the bandit leader’s corpse and held it out. “We think it’s a list of houses that some bandits are planning to rob.”
Zarina frowned slightly as she took the paper and looked it over.
“Do you recognize the code?” Lena asked hopefully after a few moments.
“It’s not one I’ve seen before,” Zarina replied, “but I bet I can figure it out if you give me a day or two.”
Lena exchanged a nervous glance with me.
“We might not have that long,” I said.
Zarina caught her lip between her teeth and nodded. “Right. Well, I’ll do my best, but I expect it’s going to take a few hours, at the very least. It doesn’t look like a simple cipher.” The elven woman swept over to her coffee table where she produced a sheet of her own paper and a pen and made a copy of the sheet, down to a sketch of the swan stamp. Then she returned to us and handed the original back to me.
“I’ll contact you when I’ve decoded it,” she said. “I’m sure you have other business to attend to, and not to be rude, but I really work better in private.”
Just as she said it, there was a crash as one of the shelves broke away from the wall and spilled several books and a very surprised puca onto the floor. I whistled sharply, and Merlin slunk back with his ears pressed against his head and jumped back onto the safety of my shoulder while the false wisp floated lazily above the coffee table.
“I’m sorry about him,” I started, but Zarina waved the rest of my apology away.
“That shelf comes loose every time Varela closes a door too hard downstairs, don’t worry about it.”
With that, we said our goodbyes for the moment and left Zarina to her work while we returned to the market below to sell the rest of the loot we’d picked up from the bandits and our latest bounty.
We wandered through the market without any rush as we looked for buyers for the old jewelry and other assorted trinkets that we’d gotten from the goblins’ den and browsed the merchandise. As always, I kept my eye out for any useful magical texts, but even here, such things weren’t readily displayed. I did find an old history book which gave a more objective account of the civil war than the Mage Academy’s propaganda, and that was almost as good, so I bought it. By the time Zarina called us back, I had my book, Lena had picked up some potion ingredients, and Aerin had sold all of our goblin jewelry. The redheaded elf had even managed to get a good price for a few jugs of the farmers’ cider, as well.
Anticipation coiled in my gut as I ascended the stairs up to Zarina’s little apartment for the second time that day, with Lena in front of me and the rest of the guild following behind. I was certain we’d stumbled across something big, but we’d need more than my intuition to convince the governor and the council.
Open books and loose papers covered the coffee table where Zarina sat, and the elven woman had even more papers and notes spread out on the floor around her. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not, but it was clear Zarina had been hard at work.
She jumped up as soon as she saw us and stepped lightly over the papers scattered around her workspace. Her dark eyes glittered with excitement, and she smiled broadly as she came over to us. My heart skipped a beat, though I couldn’t say if it was due to anticipation regarding the bandit code or the elven woman’s gorgeous smile.
“It was complicated,” Zarina told us with a small shake of her head, “one of the most complex codes I’ve ever come across, actually. Whoever came up with this really didn’t want it getting into the wrong hands, but fortunately for you, it came into my hands, and there isn’t a code I can’t crack.”
She smiled proudly and produced her copy of the bandits’ note with a little flourish, her translation written above each line in an exacting hand.
“The first part was actually pretty standard. It’s a unique cipher, but consistent. Here on the left are symbols of some nobles’ houses in Ovrista, and on the right, some rather pricey heirlooms and other valuables, as well as their locations in the house, and the security measures that are in place.”
That was more or less what we’d expected, but Zarina hadn’t mentioned the note at the bottom of the page, or the swan stamp.
“What about the rest?” I prompted.
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Zarina replied. “They used a different code than the first part. The best I can figure, it’s only a partial message. They left most of th
e letters out, and the only full words I could make out were “cavern” and “moon.” I’ve seen something similar before on a treasure map. Four copies, but each one had a piece that was incomplete, to see the whole thing, you had to have all four pieces together. All these other symbols are probably other bandit groups that are in on this. Did you find any more of these notes?”
I shook my head. “That was the only one.” So we’d need to find the rest of the bandits involved to complete the message. Would we have time to do all that before this heist was to take place?
“Moon,” Lena echoed thoughtfully as she leaned over my shoulder to get a better look at the paper. “I wonder if that has anything to do with the blood moon in a few days.”
Zarina’s eyes widened. “I didn’t think of that,” she said.
“It would make sense,” Maruk put in, and we all turned to the orc in surprise.
Maruk’s cheeks darkened in a green blush.
“What are you talking about?” Lavinia demanded.
“Well, among pirates, at least, blood moons are supposed to bring good luck for thieves,” Maruk explained. “Perhaps these bandits adhere to the same superstitions and intend to act then.”
“When is this blood moon, exactly?” I asked Lena.
“In six days,” the alchemist responded with a slight frown.
That meant we had less than a week to find the other bandits, decode the rest of the message, and put a stop to this heist.
“We’d better go warn the city guard,” I said. “If they won’t hear us out, we can go straight to the council. It looks like a few of them are on this list, so I’m sure they’d be willing to listen.”
