Rogomil pointed his pistol at my head. “Decide. Now.”
“Well, then.” I gave him my sunniest smile. The blood in my teeth likely made it look ghastly. “Let’s go break into the Wisconsin State Capitol.”
Chapter 8: Improvising
“One condition, though,” I said.
Anton spat. “You are in no position to demand conditions.”
I ignored him and looked at Rogomil, folding my arms over my chest. “I want a mask and a hat.”
“What?” said Rogomil.
“A mask and a hat,” I said. “There are probably cameras still functioning out there, and I’m pretty sure the Duke or Homeland Security has the Capitol under surveillance by now. I’d really prefer not to get executed on a Punishment Day video once this mess is over.”
Rogomil snorted. “That is not my concern.”
I shrugged. “Then you had better shoot me now. See, I want to live through this. I just came here to steal this,” I waved the bracelet on my wrist, “from one of the Duke’s knights, and I had no idea you guys were here. I intend to get away, sell this, and retire in comfort. But if my face turns up on camera, I can’t do that. And if you don’t give me a mask, you’re as good as shooting me. So either give me a mask, or save me some time and shoot me right now.”
I stared at him, fresh sweat trickling down my back. I had just given him a very good and logical argument for shooting me and cutting his losses. On the other hand, he had ordered his men to find me, and if he had any other way of getting into the Capitol, he would have used it by now. A mask and a hat was a reasonable request.
I saw Rogomil reach the same conclusion.
“Very well,” he said. He crossed to the sandwich counter, reached behind it, and handed me a hat and a bandana adorned with the sandwich shop’s bright gold-and-black logo. I shrugged, wrapped the bandana around the lower half of my face, stuffed my hair underneath the cap, and pulled it low over my eyes. There was a black cloth coat hanging from a hook next to the kitchen door, likely part of the workers’ uniforms. I grabbed the coat and pulled it over my blazer. The coat’s owner was much taller and much fatter than me, so the coat hung down to my knees. Yet between that and the bandana and the hat, it did a good job of concealing my appearance.
“Well then,” I said. “If we live through this, maybe Homeland Security will wonder why a sandwich shop worker broke into the Capitol.”
It was a joke, but Rogomil did not laugh.
“Because even the lowliest worker can see the tyranny of the Elves," he said. "Even the lowliest worker can rise up and become a member of the Revolution. Together we shall overthrow our oppressors and their corrupt allies and bring an end to the High Queen’s tyranny.”
“No matter how many unarmed women and children you have to kill?” I said, before my brain could rein in my tongue.
“Yes,” said Rogomil. “If we have to kill ninety percent of the human population so that the remaining ten percent can live free of the Elves, I would count that a worthy sacrifice.”
His eyes remained cold and dead as he spoke, but that eerie fire blazed within them. I knew with absolute certainty that he was not exaggerating. If Rogomil had been able to get his hands on a pre-Conquest nuclear bomb, he would have detonated it in Madison without the slightest hesitation. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of people he would kill, and the hundreds of thousands more who would die of radiation poisoning and cancer. He would do it, and he would enjoy it.
Sick bastard. I didn’t like the High Queen, and I detested Morvilind. Yet the Rebels made our Elven rulers look like saints by comparison.
“Enough talk,” said Rogomil. “We move. Anton, keep watch on the side streets. You, you, you.” He pointed at several of his men. “Listen on the radio channels. If Homeland Security or the Duke moves, we will need to abandon the operation and depart.”
Anton glared at me through his sunglasses. “What about her? If we need to abort, what will we do with her?”
“If I give the order to abort,” said Rogomil, “shoot her.”
That brought a smile to Anton’s face. “With pleasure, Commander.”
I almost offered a rude gesture to Anton, but decided that I had pushed my luck enough for one day. Hell, just this morning I had probably used up two or three lifetimes’ worth of luck.
Rogomil led the way to the square. It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be. I saw maybe thirty dead people scattered before the stairs to the Capitol, most of them wearing suits and expensive dresses. That was horrible enough, but after all the bombs, I had expected to find the steps to the Capitol carpeted in corpses. Fires burned here and there, and I saw Rebels manning the barricades. Some of them wore Homeland Security uniforms, some of them civilian clothes, and a few looked like paramilitary enthusiasts with too much money and time. One man had a bandoleer with a dozen grenades, and another had an honest-to-God rocket launcher, the sort of thing that looked as if it had been designed to take down helicopters.
A few scraps of shredded cloth caught my eye. It was the remains of my courier bag, which I had dropped in the chaos. It had been torn apart, and if I hadn’t pulled Alexandra with me into the Shadowlands, we both would had been shredded along with the bag.
As we drew nearer to the Capitol, I saw the steel plates that had slid down to seal off every single window. Charred craters in the white stonework marked where Rogomil’s men had tried to blast their way inside. The ornate wooden doors to the Capitol rotunda had been destroyed in the fighting, and grim slabs of steel now sealed off the entrance to the rotunda. Even grenades would do little to those massive doors. To judge from the debris and the damage to the stonework, that hadn’t stopped Rogomil’s men.
I stopped a few feet away from the steel doors, staring at them as I thought.
“Can you open it?” said Rogomil.
“Let me look at it for a minute,” I said, thinking.
Rogomil pointed his pistol at my face. “Can you open that door?”
I glared at him. “It’s hard to examine the door with your gun in my face.”
“Answer the question right now,” said Rogomil. “Can you open that door? Yes. Or. No?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I need a minute to think.”
“She is lying to buy time,” said Anton. “Shoot her.”
“No, I’m not, moron,” I said. “I can open the doors, but if I screw it up, the locks will jam and even the High Queen would need a high-yield plasma torch and a week to get through those doors. This isn’t like building a pipe bomb to blow up a bunch of toddlers and pregnant women. This actually takes, you know, skill and intellect and talent.”
Anton said nothing, but his expression promised all the horrible things he would do to me if the opportunity ever came his way.
“So you can open the doors,” said Rogomil. The bore of his pistol looked like a bottomless pit.
“Yep,” I said.
“How?” said Rogomil. “Answer the question right now, or I shall abort the operation.”
Actually, opening the doors would be easy. The doors hadn’t been warded from magical attack, and their locks, while massive, were a relatively simple mechanisms. The spell Morvilind had taught me for releasing locks would work on the doors. Rogomil might have learned dark magic from the Dark Ones or whoever this Forerunner guy was, but apparently his lessons hadn’t including spells on releasing locks.
Except Rogomil didn’t know I could use magic. I wasn’t about to let him on that little secret, not when that secret was my best hope of getting out of here alive. So I needed a distraction, a big, flashy, impressive distraction…
“Plastic explosive,” I said. “Do you have any?” Rogomil nodded. “That seam there, along the center of the door? It’s a flaw in the design. Some Italian company makes these. Hit it with enough force, and that steel plate will roll back like aluminium foil. There are five tumbler pins inside, and I can release them in about forty-five seconds. Easy as pie.”
&nb
sp; I kept my expression blank. I had just told Rogomil a load of steaming nonsense, and anyone who knew the slightest thing about security doors would spot it at once. No one built seams in the middle of security doors. If Rogomil realized that I was lying to him, he would shoot me on the spot.
Instead, he bought it.
“Who had the explosive?” he said. One of the Rebels in paramilitary gear stepped forward. “You. Apply it over that seam. How much do we need?”
“Uh,” I said, my mind racing. I had one chance to do this right. “Enough to cover the seam. So, a lot.”
“Move it,” said Rogomil, and the Rebel in paramilitary gear ran forward, producing a tube of something that looked a bit like gray bathtub putty but wasn’t. “The rest of you take cover. As soon as the doors are open, we shall storm the Capitol. Focus upon Rimethur. Any targets in our way are considered expendable.”
Right. That meant the minute I opened the doors, he would shoot me and stride over my corpse. Assuming Anton didn’t shoot me first. I felt Anton’s eyes digging into me like knives.
“Take cover,” said Rogomil, waving his pistol at me. I moved away from the Capitol’s doors, taking deep breaths as I cleared my will and summoned magical power. Rogomil kept his pistol in his right hand, but with his left he pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and began jabbing text messages into the screen. Likely he was summoning the rest of his men for the attack.
The paramilitary Rebel finished placing plastic explosive over the seam, jabbed a wireless detonator into the stuff, and then pulled out his phone. For a moment he fiddled with his phone as he synced it to the detonator as Rogomil alternated between glaring at him, glaring at me, and thumb-stabbing more messages into his phone.
“Ready!” said the paramilitary Rebel, running to join us.
I took one more deep breath, gathering my will and my magic for the spell. I had never tried something like this before, but I thought it should work.
I hoped it would work.
“Clear!” shouted the Rebel, tapping a command into his phone. The other Rebels ducked and covered. I started to follow suit, and as they did, I straightened up and cast a spell, making sure I wasn’t looking at the doors.
The plastic explosive blasted apart with a flash of light, a plume of dust, and a thunderous cracking sound. It didn’t do much to the door. It did, however, distract the Rebels long enough for me to cast a Masking spell around myself.
As I did, I started to scream at the top of my lungs. All the Rebels looked at me as the Mask flared to life. I didn’t Mask myself as a Rebel, or as an Elven noble, or even as any living thing.
Instead, I Masked myself as the sun.
It worked more spectacularly than I could have hoped. The Rebels reeled back, shielding their eyes, and as they did, I summoned power for another spell even as I held the Mask in place. I cast the spell to release locks at the doors, my will focusing into telekinetic bursts of force, and I heard the clang as the locks released.
There wasn’t a moment to lose. I sprinted forward, my heels clacking against the paving stones.
A bullet whined off the wall next to my head. I glanced back and saw Rogomil sprinting after me, lining up for another shot. I ducked, and his bullet went wild, ricocheting off the ground. Rogomil was bigger than me, but he was also faster. If he caught up to me, he wouldn’t need his gun to kill me. He was strong enough to snap my neck without trying hard.
Frantic, I cast another spell, and as he drew closer I whirled and drove my hand at him. He sneered and caught my wrist with his phone hand…which made it easy for the globe of lightning I had conjured to slam into his chest. There hadn’t been enough time to put something powerful together, but the jolt of lightning still knocked him backwards, eyes bulging, legs jittering. Something dropped from his hand and I caught it, thinking it was his gun, but it was only his phone, the screen still flashing with incoming messages.
I whirled and ran like hell for the doors. They had only opened a little, but I wasn’t large, and I thought I could slip through. Behind me Rogomil staggered to one knee, and a mob of Rebels came up the stairs, guns leveled. I threw myself forward and slipped through the doors and into the Capitol rotunda just as the Rebels opened fire. The rotunda was gloomy, lit only by a peculiar blue light, but I didn’t have time to focus on that.
The roar of bullets bouncing off the security doors drowned out everything.
I grabbed the crash bar and pulled backwards with all my strength, and the heavy door swung shut with a resounding clang. The locks clicked into place, and I stumbled back, breathing hard, a hysterical laugh threatening to bubble up in my throat. I had gotten away from Rogomil. Despite all the odds, I had gotten away from Rogomil.
There was something heavy in my hand, and I blinked at it. It was a rectangular black smartphone from a cheap manufacturer in the Chinese Imperium, and the screen kept flashing with messages…
I didn’t laugh, but a wild grin spread over my face.
Rogomil’s phone. I had Sergei Rogomil’s phone…and he hadn’t locked it again before he dropped it. I hit the home button with my thumb, and saw all kinds of neatly organized files – maps, contact lists, spreadsheets, photos, inventories, all kinds of useful information for the leader of a Rebel cell. The Inquisition could take remote control of any cell phone, listening through the microphones and watching through the cameras, though no doubt Rogomil had disabled that feature.
It still had network access, though, and the Inquisition had an email address where informants could anonymously send tips.
When Alexandra had given me her phone, I could have destroyed her life with a few emails. I hadn’t done that to her…but Rogomil seemed like a more deserving candidate.
Grinning, I configured the phone to send its entire contents to a specified address, entered the Inquisition’s anonymous inbox, and hit the SEND button. The phone chimed and began emailing every single file in its storage to the Inquisition. I wiped down the phone with the hem of my sandwich coat to remove any prints and then set it next to the doors, the sound of gunfire drumming against the steel security doors.
“Enjoy running from the Inquisition,” I muttered. Even if Rogomil fled Madison right now, all the information I had just emailed to the Inquisition would make it all the harder for him to run. I hated Punishment Day and I hated Punishment Day videos, but if the Inquisition caught up to Rogomil, I would make an exception to watch his execution.
I had gotten away from the Rebels. Now all I had to do was steal the Ringbyrne Amulet, escape back to Grayhold, free Alexandra, and return to Morvilind.
Looking around, I realized that might be even harder than I thought.
Chapter 9: Enemy Of My Enemy
Ice filled the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
I had never been inside the Capitol before, but I had seen it plenty of times. Criticizing the High Queen and the Elven nobles might get you lynched for elfophobia or a visit from the Inquisition, but neither Homeland Security nor the Inquisition cared what people said about human politicians. The governor and the state legislature were often the target of ferocious criticism on social media and the news, and so long as nobody criticized the Elves, the Inquisition turned a blind eye to it. I had seen lots of articles about the state government on the Internet accompanied by pictures of the Capitol, with captions like “HEROIC GOVERNOR OFFERS BOLD NEW VISION FOR WISCONSIN” or “IMBECILIC GOVERNOR REACHES BOLD NEW HEIGHTS OF INCOMPETENCE”, stuff like that. Consequently I knew that the rotunda was a big octagonal room built of shiny green and yellow stone, with a bunch of paintings and statues meant to represent freedom and the people of Wisconsin. The net result made it look like a fancy round church, which I thought was a bit excessive, given how often corrupt politicians got flogged and sold into slavery on Punishment Day for bribery and extortion and the like.
The rotunda didn’t look anything like a church at the moment.
A layer of crystalline ice covered the walls, giving off a faint blu
e light. More of the ice spread across the floor, glimmering beneath a veil of pale white mist. Four grand staircases rose up the sides of the rotunda, and they too had been sheathed in ice. It looked strangely, eerily beautiful, but it was a dangerous sort of beauty.
Like the Shadowlands, come to think of it.
Belatedly I realized that it was cold, horribly cold, yet the chill did not seem to touch me. At first I thought it was because I was wearing a blouse, a blazer, and the sandwich worker’s long coat, but all three garments were light. Besides, I was in a knee-length skirt, and the chill ought to have been blasting up my legs. Objectively I knew I was cold, I knew that I should have been freezing, yet I felt…comfortable.
The answer came to me, and I pulled up my sleeve. The twisted bracelet of silver still wrested against my left wrist, and the pale blue gems shone with a harsh azure glow. I gestured with my right hand, summoning power and casting the spell to sense the presence of magical force. At once I felt the power surrounding me and surging through the Capitol. Rimethur and his guards had summoned tremendous amounts of elemental magic, wrapping the Capitol with it. Likely they had done so to defend themselves from any Rebels that broke inside. Yet I also sensed powerful magic within the bracelet. Warding spells, I thought, to defend against elemental magic. Without it, in my light clothes I might have frozen to death in a few minutes.
The Knight had told the truth about that much. The bracelet did indeed defend from elemental magic.
Was that why the Knight had given the bracelet to me? Did he want me to live long enough steal the amulet so he could claim it for himself? The Knight had said this was an audition.
An audition for what?
Between the Rebels and the Knight and the frost giants, I was caught in some sort of game I did not understand. I wondered if Morvilind had known about it. Maybe he had, and he simply had not cared. Maybe he though it some sick way of making me stronger and more capable and therefore a more useful servant for him.
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 28
