“Yes, imagine Rellin Pratt with real irionite,” reminded Rondal. “He’s almost obsessed with getting it – obsessed enough to steal Tyndal’s. He’s the nephew of the Mad Mage,” he emphasized. “And he’s likely not the worst the Brotherhood has to offer.”
“There are others, too, who would be eager to have some of those things,” Atopol assured his friends. “If there are respectable houses of magi in Alshar, there are plenty of less reputable ones, as well. And some individuals who would leap at the opportunity, for dire reasons of their own.”
“That’s not good,” Lorcus frowned. “Then I suppose it’s not merely an issue of revenge and pure vindictiveness to break into the Tower Arcane and steal the Censorate’s toys, it’s a matter of righteous security!”
“It would be a crime to break up a collection like I’m certain the Tower Arcane has,” Rondal nodded.
“I love fighting warmagi!” Tyndal nodded, enthusiastically.
Lorcus clapped his hands together. “Boys, I think we’re going to have a whole lot of fun in Falas!”
The Tower Arcane was a spectacular feature as they rounded the bend in the river that revealed its glorious spire. Built on a motte, itself on a hill, the Tower jutted out into the river defiantly, and seemed far taller than its six stories from the riverbed. Originally it was a Sea Lord fortress built far inland in the early days of Enultramar, when the Sea Lords contested with the native tribes for control of the river up to the great falls.
But since those early days the Tower had been expanded and improved upon. The original tower, a great windowless keep four levels high, had six supporting turrets that reached from the square base all the way beyond the peaked roof. The Tower had been rebuilt during the Magocracy to include two more stories and a watchtower at the peak of the spire. A platform next to it held an imposing-looking trebuchet of ancient design but sufficient size to hit any point along the river. The uppermost level was roofed at a steeply-pitched angle and tiled in bronze.
The Tower’s more modern upper stories were replete with windows and arrow slits, and the topmost story was machicolated, though the defenses had been converted to stained glass windows in the absence of a real foe. Those were the private apartments and laboratories of the Ducal Court Wizard, Atopol explained. The entire keep was whitewashed, though it was streaked with verdigris and rust where the rain washed down.
The Tower Arcane lay within a walled district called Old Falas, Atopol reported as they came near the docks. Old Falas was where many spellmongers, enchanters, and magi of many stripes gathered.
“And my family has a townhome here,” Atopol added, as they disembarked. “No monks’ habits and flea-ridden inns, this time.”
“Galvina? Solashaven?” Rondal asked, skeptically. “Those were palaces, compared to Mysteries of Duin!”
“Yes, you’re terribly manly,” Tyndal dismissed, crossly. “I, for one, would not mind enjoying our friend’s hospitality. Hopefully one day we can return the favor at the Rat Trap.”
“The what?” Atopol asked, curious.
Tyndal spent the rest of their journey walking through the streets of Old Falas explaining the bit of wonder he and Rondal now lived in, back home in Sevendor. He was just getting to their innovative defensive construct when they came to the door of a stately, well-kept home along a street of such fine houses.
The servant at the door was wary, until he saw Atopol’s face . . . then he broke into a grin and welcomed the four of them inside.
“Your cousin is away for the evening, Master Atopol,” the old man said, as he shuffled through the old house. “Business over in Falas, though he’s likely seeing his mistress while he’s there. You and your friends are staying? I’ll prepare the guest chamber.”
It turned out that the place had a vacant chamber the four of them could live in while they investigated the Tower’s security. Indeed, the edifice loomed outside of the house, dominating the skyline and providing a spectacular view on the rear balcony, which had been fashioned as a kind of place of meditation.
“We’ve had this place for over a century, now,” Atopol said, as he settled into the chair on the balcony. “I’ve always favored it. But this should provide the perfect spot from which to consider how to enter and leave the Tower.”
“What about your cousin?” Rondal asked. “Will he mind?”
“Onnelik? Not at all,” dismissed Atopol. “He’s not Talented, so the House lets him stay here and act as a caretaker. He does some translations on the side. He’s also a first-rate forgery artist. He’s not a thief, precisely, but he doesn’t mind helping out. But I have full use of the place,” he bragged. “Journeyman’s privilege.”
The house was as pleasant on the inside as it was stately without, and included a small but rich library suited to the needs of the family’s magi. Atopol ordered the servant to fetch a meal for them from a nearby inn, and while he was gone he took a thick folio hidden in a cache behind a wardrobe and showed it to the others.
“Basic plans for the Tower Arcane,” he announced. “They’ve been kicking around the family for years, but no one has bothered with them, in recent memory.”
“Why would your family have floor plans to the Tower?” Rondal asked, suspiciously.
“We’re very thorough,” Atopol replied, as he unbound the folio and spread out the parchment drawings. “We have similar folios on most of the major buildings in Falas. And elsewhere,” he added. “You never know when you might have to steal something, and it’s best to be prepared. For that matter, I’d better start the book on this heist,” he added, drawing a blank sheet of parchment to him.
“What book?” Tyndal asked, confused.
“Whenever a thief is preparing to rob a place,” Atopol said, quietly, “one of the first things he should do is write down everything about it. You never know what details are going to be important. It helps keep things organized, and afterwards you can include the information in your records, in case you have to go back.”
“That’s terribly organized, for a simple robbery,” Tyndal frowned.
“Burglary, not robbery,” corrected Atopol, as he began to fill in the blank parchment with a quill. “Robbery implies the threat of violence to get what you want. What we want to do is burglary.”
“Speak for yourself,” snorted Tyndal. “Those are Censors in that Tower.”
“We don’t have the best of relationships,” agreed Rondal.
“The loot is the goal,” reminded Atopol, firmly, looking at each of them. “Killing a couple of Censors isn’t. Those are the priceless treasures of the duchy that the Three Censors are stealing. Recovery of as much of it as possible is the goal,” he stressed.
“If you say so,” Tyndal agreed, sullenly. The thought of crossing blades with the checkered-cloaked warmagi was very enticing to him. The thought of losing such a contest never occurred to him. “How does this challenge the Brotherhood of the Rat, again?”
“Aside from keeping their grubby paws off of priceless treasures of the duchy?” Lorcus asked. “You know, that is a good question. Cat, any idea if our friends have an installation in Falas?”
The shadowmage snorted. “Just one? Falas is the capital,” he reminded. “There are plenty of Rats here, nosing around court. Why? What do you have in mind?”
“Oh, just an idea I’m toying with,” Lorcus said, grinning. “The gods are whispering good tricks in my ear, today.”
They continued working until the servant returned with a fat capon and bread, cheese, and new potatoes boiled in milk. They were just finishing up when someone else entered . . . in a nun’s habit.
“Atopol, if you think you’re going to do anything as audacious as rob the Tower Arcane without me, you are mad,” Gatina, the Kitten of Night, declared as she removed her disguise. “I’ve traveled for two days, day and night, to catch up with you, only to find out you’re planning the biggest heist of your life? Without me?” she demanded. “Hello, Beloved,” she added, purposefully, to Rond
al’s pale face. Tyndal delighted in the way his partner squirmed under Gatina’s gaze.
“’Beloved?’” Lorcus said, with a guffaw.
“Long story,” Tyndal muttered.
Is that the girl who has her cap set for Striker? Lorcus asked, mind-to-mind.
Yes, that’s her: Gatina. What do you think?
The boy could have done worse, Lorcus admitted. She’s pretty.
Pretty? She’s pushy – just watch!
“Hello, Gatina,” Rondal replied, quietly. “Glad you could join us.”
“Are you?” the girl asked, frustrated, as she shrugged out of the voluminous habit, revealing close-fitted leather traveling clothes underneath, including tight-fitting leather breaches. “Because it looks to me like you boys were perfectly willing to plunge into that fortress of death and defeat without even consulting me!”
“You know, I am a journeyman shadowmage and thief, now,” Atopol reminded his sister. “I can plan my own heists!”
“Against a couple of gangsters? Sure. But against the most heavily protected arcane tower in the duchy? I wouldn’t trust you to steal a horseshoe!” she accused. “You’re sloppy, and reckless, and—”
“It’s not horseshoes we’re after,” Rondal replied, patiently, interrupting the girl. “It’s irionite. And ancient books. And other valuable stuff.”
Gatina rolled her eyes expressively. “It doesn’t matter what you’re stealing, silly boy, it’s a matter of how hard it is to get it. And this one is going to be hard. I can’t believe you’d want to cut me out of it. If anyone has the skill to break into the Tower Arcane, it’s me,” she said, boldly, but confidently.
“Oh, I like this one,” Lorcus said, grinning. “Atopol’s sister, I presume?”
“Gatina, the Kitten of Night,” Tyndal introduced. “Kitten, this is Lorcus, a warmage on assignment with the Order for the moment.”
“I specialize in skullduggery, deception, and pissing people off,” he said, with a bow.
“And I steal people’s stuff,” Gatina bowed, in return. “Until I get married, that is, when I’ll go into semiretirement. So I can have babies,” she added, matter-of-factly.
Tyndal profoundly wished he could have preserved the expression Ron’s face made at the declaration. To aggravate matters, Kitten gave her intended bridegroom a perfectly innocent kiss on the cheek as she took a seat around the table and began sorting through the pages of the folio. Ron looked like he’d eaten an entire lemon, and was desperately trying not to show it.
“Now,” she said, as she settled in and began to survey their work in Atopol’s heist book, “I can see you’ve already started this entirely wrong . . .”
Chapter Eighteen
The Three Censors
The precinct around the Tower Arcane was visibly different from the towns of the Great Bay of Enultramar in many respects; the architectural styles were quite different, with an emphasis on timber post-and-beam construction, with clay tile roofs. Brickwork was used in place of stonework, and many of the tidy little houses had iron gates on their garden walls.
But Tyndal figured the lack of trash and refuse in the sewers and the absence of hundreds of hungry orphans was part of it. Old Falas was just cleaner and more affluent than the busy seaports in the south, and there was both civic pride and government expenditure to ensure that it remained that way. For over five hundred years this had been Alshar’s sparkling capital, he knew, and the residents clearly intended on keeping it looking that way.
Most of the big houses surrounding the Tower dated back to the first big wave of development, after the Magelords came to make Falas the capital of the new province. They were large and spacious, in eastern style, with red brick foundations topped by two or three stories of exposed-beam dwelling space. Each house had a bit of garden in the front, surrounded by a decorative fence, and some sort of sedate token or badge to tell it apart from its neighbors. They were as big as burghers’ homes in Castal, Tyndal decided, each one a massive testament to the wealth and power of its lord or family.
Yet as impressive as the high-peaked homes were, they were dominated by the Tower Arcane, overhead. In the daylight, especially, this was true, as the black and white checkered pattern on their banner flew from the top, casting a pall of watchfulness on the town.
Tyndal was surprised to see so many spellmongers and adepts practicing in light of the regulators in their midst, but half the shops ringing the square in front of the Tower were practitioners of magic of one form or another. The others were services in support of the arcane community, from scribes and translators (something in which Atopol’s cousin Onnelik frequently engaged) to merchants specializing in sorcerous supplies, parchment and book sellers and vendors of rare and special arcane ingredients. But no one, Tyndal was able to surmise after an afternoon’s strolling about the square, keeping his ears open, was particularly happy with the instruments of professional regulation entrenched so firmly in their midst.
The first time a pair of cloaked Censors passed him in the street, Tyndal shivered involuntarily. He had a tumultuous relationship with the Order, stemming from their attack on the (defenseless) family of Master Minalan, just before his wedding. And then another pair of them who attacked during his wedding. And then there was the time he’d rescued his master from a small force of them, at Chepstan Spring Fair (which he was, alas, missing this year) using a small bag of silver and a bunch of swordplay contestants to bluff them away.
Tyndal hated the Censorate, although he had to admit being decent enough friends with some of its former members. Landrik of Honeyhall was a decent fellow, as was Master Hartarian, the Order’s former Censor General. But the institution as a whole tended to attract the most brutal and fanatical warmagi to its ranks with the promise of absolute power and very little accountability. That was a privilege the Order enjoyed for four hundred years, and from the arrogant way the men in the checkered cloaks walked around Old Falas, they were unwilling to give it up.
The individual Censors Tyndal spied around the town that morning were all wearing mail under their distinctive cloaks, and most also wore spangham helms of bright steel and mageblades. While they were not overtly bullying the magi they saw in the street, they were certainly intimidating just by their presence.
A fulfillment of that promise was prominently on display outside of the main entrance gate to the Tower Arcane: a yard full of gibbets, stocks, and other restraints designed to display magical miscreants who ran afoul of the checkered cloaks. Tyndal was happy to see only three residents thus imprisoned – a slender woman with a battered face who was locked in the stocks, bent over in a terribly cramped position, and two men who were in a gibbet and in irons, respectively.
The woman’s punishment bore the legend INSULTED A CENSOR, while the men were labeled ATTACKED A CENSOR and USED MAGIC TO STEAL. None of the prisoners looked like they were doing well, though Tyndal was careful not to attract attention to himself by speaking to them. Clearly the Censorate was trying to gain the respect of the people through the only means it knew: threats and punishment.
The Tower itself was full of the buggers, he knew; three warmagi guarded the gates to the fortress, while others patrolled the battlements and kept watch in the spire, just as a real military organization would. Despite the rumors that the leadership of the order held irionite, Tyndal could see little evidence of that in the spellwork. The wards around the exterior wall, he soon found, were strong but crude. They were classic examples of Imperial form, he noted scornfully – he and Rondal’s wards were far superior, to his mind.
But they were sufficient to prohibit any real scrying too, they discovered that evening as every attempt to peer beyond the Tower’s walls they made was in vain.
It was frustrating – after the relatively easy successes they’d had in Solashaven, Galvina and Reunus, having their spellwork turned back so adeptly made filling in the basic information they had on the Tower Arcane difficult.
But not impossible. Th
e next morning Gatina conspired to visit the Tower in disguise, ostensibly to request a book from the library for her fictitious master. While there she was able to easily set the dahman into place where it wouldn’t be noticed. After she left and returned to the townhouse, Rondal was able to activate the construct. By moving it along the ceilings and rafters of the old castle, where it would not be perceived, they had a much better idea of who was living where, and where the valuables were.
“It appears as if most of the treasure in the place was moved to the top floor,” Rondal reported, after he and Gatina spent an entire day coaxing his creepy little toy through the Tower Arcane. “The rooms you indicated were offices on the ground floor have been emptied for barracks space – except the bathing facilities, which are as decadent as I’ve ever seen. All of the items of value once displayed there are now in the Censor Captain’s office on the sixth floor.”
“That is problematic,” Lorcus sighed. “I guess we’re facing fighting our way through four floors worth of foes to achieve it, then.”
“Only if we plan on going in like a bunch of idiots,” Gatina dismissed. “Honestly, it’s like you boys have never even heard of magic. The loot is on the sixth floor, right? Well, there’s more than one way of getting there.”
“If you’re looking for someone to fly you to the roof,” Tyndal said, skeptically, “you picked the wrong pair of Master Minalan’s apprentices.”
“Why not get in the same way your dahman does?” she asked, a well-shaped eyebrow raised over her undisguised violet eyes. “Just have Atopol go up the side of one of the supporting towers, like a spider.”
Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series Page 27
