“A thief with certain talents,” said Boccand. “Well. Thief is such a harsh word, isn’t it? I really prefer to think of myself as a collector of tasteful and beautiful items.”
“Then you’re here to rob Castomyr?” I said. Maybe this wouldn’t be a problem. If he wanted to rob Lord Castomyr, he was welcome to it. In fact, that might be helpful. I could use him as a distraction to get away.
“Well, yeah,” said Boccand. “I thought that was obvious.” He grinned and pointed at me. “And you are, too. Don’t deny it. I thought you were a certain kind of woman when I saw you…”
“And what kind of woman is that?” I said.
“The kind who puts on cargo pants full of tools under an expensive dress,” said Boccand. “I was worried that you were with Homeland Security or the Inquisition, but no, you’re just here to steal stuff. Which is wonderful, by the way.”
“Why is that?” I said.
Boccand grinned. “Because you can take the blame for what I’m about to do.”
He plucked up the cuneiform tablet from the pedestal.
“Give me that,” I said, my heart beating faster.
“Afraid not, dear,” said Boccand. “Isn’t it funny? We’re both here to steal the same damned thing! And I don’t even want it that much.”
“Give me that tablet,” I said, stepping closer. “You can have anything else you want in the vault. I won’t stop you. But give me that tablet.”
“No,” said Boccand. “I kind of need it. I think it will go well with my living room furniture. The colors match.”
“Give me the tablet,” Little blue-white sparks danced around my fingers as I prepared to cast a lightning globe. Something buzzed inside his coat, likely that watch of his.
“Actually, I really am glad you’re here,” said Boccand. “You can take the blame for me. I am sorry about this, I truly am.” He looked regretful. “I’m sorry they’ll kill you for it, but I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.”
“Last chance,” I said. “Give me the tablet or I’ll kill you.”
Boccand smiled. “No, you won’t, dear.”
He snapped his fingers.
And then he simply vanished, taking the tablet with him.
There was a flash of grayish light and a swirl of dark smoke around him. When that little pyrotechnics show ended, he was gone. For a moment I gaped in astonishment, and then my brain caught up with my surprise. He could clearly use magic, and he must have just cast a Cloak spell. That meant he was still in the room with me.
I cast the spell to detect the presence of magic, hoping to locate him. Again I felt the aura of the various magical items scattered around the room. But I felt no trace of an illusion spell, and the tablet’s dark aura had gone. I felt a peculiar distortion near the empty pedestal, like the beginnings of a rift way spell, but it faded and vanished a few second later.
Armand Boccand was gone. He had used some kind of spell or magical ability I had never encountered before, and he had escaped from Baron Castomyr’s mansion.
Worse, he had taken the tablet with him.
This was incredibly bad. Lord Morvilind would be furious, so angry he might stop casting Russell’s cure spells.
A hooting alarm started going off in the distance, and I realized I had much more immediate problems.
Boccand had said he hoped to pin the blame for the theft on me…which meant the bastard had tripped the alarm. If Baron Castomyr’s security men captured me, they would hand me over to the Inquisition. Either they would torture everything I knew out of me, or Morvilind would realize what had happened and would use the vial of heart’s blood to kill me before I could share his secrets.
I had to get out of the mansion, and out of La Crosse, right now.
I sprinted out of the vault, trying to think of a plan.
Chapter 3: An Old Annoyance
I managed to escape.
It took three days and I almost froze to death a few times, but I managed to escape.
I knew there was no way I could simply walk out of the mansion. Boccand had already set off the alarm, and Lord Castomyr’s men would seal the exits. If they failed to find me within the first few minutes, they would get serious, questioning the guests and cross-referencing the invitations with the database. In short order they would figure out that “Anna Rastov” was a fake and would double down on their hunt for me.
The mansion had become one giant trap.
So. The first step to escaping a trap?
Tricking those who had set the trap into thinking that I wasn’t in it.
I sprinted from the library and down the hallways of Castomyr’s private apartments. From the sliding wooden doors I heard the sounds of consternation as the alarm roused the Elves from their private celebrations. Fortunately, the alarm drowned out the sound of my running footsteps.
I slid open a wooden door and closed it behind me, returning to the sitting room I had entered earlier. I opened the window again, reaching into my pack to pull out a coiled length of slender rope with a grapnel. The grapnel opened with a click, and I jammed it into the window sill, letting the rope fall to the frozen garden below.
Then I climbed onto the sill and cast my levitation spell, floating to the mansion’s roof. With luck, the rope would throw off any pursuers for a couple of minutes, forcing them to make sure I had not escaped. By then, I hoped to have concealed myself.
Fortunately, none of the security cameras pointed at the roof itself. A bit of an oversight, really.
I reached the roof and pulled myself onto the icy tiles, scrabbling for a proper grip. It’s a bad idea to have a flat roof in a place that gets as much snow as Wisconsin, so all of Castomyr’s roofs were sloped, though not at a steep angle. I hurried along the rooftops, my breath steaming in the cold, and came to the roof of the great banquet hall. I heard music rising from below, the light from the windows streaming into the night. Evidently Castomyr had not yet locked the place down.
Equipment for the air conditioning system stood on the roof of the banquet hall like a row of silent steel monoliths. Right now the AC wasn’t in use, but a hall that size needed a lot of air conditioning, so the AC units were the size of small houses.
They would make a perfect hiding place.
I pried open the grating on a duct, climbed inside, and closed the grate behind me. It was really cold in there, and the chill from the duct sank into me. But with the grate closed, no one could see me unless they pulled open the grate, and the duct would be safe enough unless someone turned the air conditioning on, which was unlikely in the Wisconsin winter. I made sure all my electronics were switched off, since I didn’t want a cell phone signal leading anyone up here.
And then I waited.
I used magic to keep from freezing to death. The Knight of Grayhold had taught me a spell to protect myself from the elements, and I could have used that to walk naked through the snow in perfect comfort, assuming I was dumb enough to do something like that. But I would have to draw continually upon my power to maintain it, and any Elf who cast a detection spell would find me at once.
Instead, I used a simple spell of elemental fire, cupping my hands to hide the light from the flame, and poured a gout of fire into the wall of the duct until the metal glowed red-hot. Then I sat back, soaked up the radiant heat for a while, and repeated the procedure a few hours later.
I waited. Fortunately I had packed a few energy bars and two bottles of water in my bag, and I rationed them carefully. It was enough to keep the hunger pangs from becoming intolerable and serious dehydration from setting in. When I needed to relieve myself…well, let’s just say I felt bad for the HVAC guy who have to investigate the unpleasant smell the first time the air conditioning came on in the summer.
Twice search parties of Homeland Security officers walked over the roof, led by a scowling Knight of the Inquisition in a long black coat with silver insignia of rank upon the collar. I remained very still, but I realized they were not looking for me. They were looking for any evi
dence or traces that the thief had left behind. Fortunately, I had left none on the roof, and they didn’t think to look inside the air handlers.
Three times I felt the stabbing pain as Morvilind cast his location spell. Likely he realized that something had gone wrong. Maybe he would decide to cut his losses and kill me rather than risk losing any of his secrets. If he used the vial of heart’s blood to kill me, at least it would be a quick death. I would fall over dead in the duct, and that would be that. My corpse would lie in the duct until that increasingly unfortunate HVAC guy found it come summer. Russell would die, too, once Morvilind stopped casting the cure spells.
Yet the death spell didn’t come. Maybe Morvilind assumed I could still get away. Maybe he thought this was all part of my plan.
I spent two days in that cold duct, trying not to freeze to death, forcing myself to stay awake. At last, at 2 AM on the second day after Thanksgiving, I decided to risk it. I slipped out of the duct, my legs and arms aching, and crawled across the roof. Below I saw Castomyr’s security men patrolling the grounds, all of them armed to the teeth. It looked as if they were guarding the mansion in case the thief returned.
They didn’t seem to have realized that the thief was still inside the mansion. Well. The patsy for the real thief, anyway. Nor did I see any Elves among the guards, and I doubted Castomyr had any human wizards on his security staff. All humans with magical abilities were required to register with the Wizard’s Legion, swear an oath of fealty directly to the High Queen, and serve in her campaigns in the Shadowlands.
Of course, I hadn’t. I suspected Armand Boccand hadn’t, either. It was entirely possible Castomyr quietly maintained a human wizard in his employment. Yet I couldn’t stay on this damned rooftop forever. I was out of food and almost out of water, and sooner or later I would make a mistake and get killed, or worse, caught.
It was time to take a risk.
I watched the guards’ patterns, then swung off the roof, hanging from the edge by my gloved hands. I summoned magic and worked my levitation spell, floating to the frozen ground below. As soon as my shoes touched the ground I released the levitation spell and cast another spell.
Specifically, I cast the Masking spell, and I used it to make myself look like one of the security men – male, tall, muscular, and equipped with body armor, night vision googles, and a M-99 carbine with a laser sight. I had spent a lot of time practicing the Masking spell, and I was really good at it. Unfortunately, the spell meant I had an active magical aura, so if there was a wizard nearby, I was in a lot of trouble.
The Cloak spell would have been better, but I wasn’t skilled enough or powerful enough to walk around while Cloaked. Not yet, anyway.
I crossed the ground in haste, cradling my illusionary rifle with one arm, my other hand raised to my ear as if I was listening to orders on my illusionary earpiece. My heart thundered in my ears, my legs tense and cramped, and I expected any moment to hear shouting, or the sound of gunfire.
But the trick worked. I crossed the grounds without being challenged, jumped over the wall, and once I had gotten out of sight, I ran like hell. After two days of hiding in the cramped duct, the effort of running felt wonderful, but I kept myself at a quick jog. I had to think this through. One mistake and I was dead.
Once I was clear of the road leading to Castomyr’s mansion, I slowed down and got off the road, keeping to the trees, the snow crunching beneath my shoes. There wouldn’t be anyone out at night. Some Elven nobles decreed curfews for their lands. Castomyr wasn’t one of them, but that might have changed after Boccand and I had robbed his vault. For that matter, a woman as oddly dressed as me wouldn’t have any good reason for being out at night, and if a Homeland Security patrol spotted me they would insist upon asking questions.
Best to avoid that.
My tired mind replayed everything I had done as I trudged through the woods, trying to find where I had gone wrong. What had I missed? Had Boccand known that I was a thief the entire time, and planned to cast the blame on me from the beginning? Or had it simply been bad luck? Had I walked into the vault at the wrong time, and he had seized the opportunity to escape?
I didn’t know. For that matter, I didn’t know how he had escaped. I had never seen a spell like that. As far as I knew, magic couldn’t permit someone to travel from one place to another in the blink of an eye…but there was quite a lot I didn’t know about magic.
The infuriating thing was that I couldn’t see anything I could have done differently. No matter what I had done, no matter how thoroughly I had prepared, I hadn’t known about Armand goddamn Boccand and his abilities, and he had blindsided me. I wanted power, I wanted to control my fate and save my brother…but no matter how carefully I prepared, it could still be all swept away in the blink of an eye.
And I was really frightened, and not just for the immediate dangers. How was I going to explain this to Morvilind? He hadn’t killed me yet, but that might change once I told him what had happened.
It took me about two hours to walk to my motel, and I watched it from across the street. As I expected, Homeland Security had backtracked “Anna Rastov”, and I saw four blue-painted SUVs sitting outside the motel. The door to my room had been kicked open and sealed off with yellow tape. Homeland Security was surveilling the place, and I was pretty sure that a Knight of the Inquisition or two would be there. I wondered if they realized that Anna Rastov could use magic…or that Armand Boccand could do so as well.
I didn’t dare go to the motel. Thank God I had possessed the foresight to prepare for disaster. I hadn’t left anything that would link Anna Rastov to me in the motel room, and I had hidden my van at a storage yard a mile and a half away. Homeland Security shouldn’t have been able to track it…but all it took was one witness at the wrong time, and I was screwed.
Only one way to find out.
By then it was close enough to dawn that the more dedicated exercise fanatics were out, so I cast another spell, Masking myself as a plump elderly woman in a purple tracksuit with bright white walking shoes. With this disguise, I made my way across town to the storage yard where I had hidden my van.
And, to my immense relief, my van was untouched. I cast a quick spell to check for magical traps, but found none. I looked it over for microphones and tracking devices, but found nothing. My personal phone was still in the van, and it had an antenna that let it detect the signals from tracking devices, but it came up clean.
I slumped in the driver’s seat, closing my eyes. For the first time in two days, it seemed as if luck was going my way.
Then the pain exploded through me.
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, riding out the stabbing feeling, the nausea, the waves of pain that started in my temples and rolled down my spine. Once again Morvilind had cast the location spell, but this time he had added enough pain to it to make it a summons. He wanted me to return at once, and if I didn’t show up, he would assume that I had been captured and would kill me.
After the shaking stopped, I unlocked my phone and sent a text message to Rusk, asking him to tell Morvilind that I was on my way. By then it was seven in the morning, so I started the van, pulled into the street, and joined the morning traffic as people went to work and school.
No one stopped me, and soon I got on the freeway and left La Crosse behind.
###
Ever drive across Wisconsin after staying awake for two and a half days?
I don’t recommend it.
I was twenty years old and could still do that kind of thing, but it wasn’t fun. I stopped at the first gas station on the freeway, bought a thirty-six ounce mug of coffee and two bags of beef jerky, and ate and drank as I drove east with the air conditioning on and the radio blaring music. Specifically, I set it to public radio, which as part of the Thanksgiving holiday played an endless series of patriotic songs praising the High Queen for her wisdom and firm hand. It was annoying, but it did keep me awake.
I finally pulled up in front of Morvili
nd’s mansion at one in the afternoon, my head buzzing from too much coffee and my hips and shoulders cramping from too much time spent driving and huddled in that duct. I needed a bath and a change of clothes, but I knew Morvilind would not want to be kept waiting.
Rusk awaited me at the doors, immaculate in his red servant’s livery. He looked me up and down and raised an eyebrow.
“Do you really think,” he said, “you are in a fit state to meet his lordship?”
I grunted. I was too damned tired to argue. “Do you think he wants to be kept waiting? I smell bad, but to Morvilind all humans are stinking animals anyway.”
I expected a rejoinder, but Rusk only sighed and gestured for me to follow him.
Morvilind awaited me at his usual spot in the library, standing before his work table and its monitors, the wintry expanse of Lake Michigan visible through the windows. I sank to my knees behind him and swallowed, waiting for him to speak. On his monitors I saw what looked like classified Homeland Security reports, and I realized that he was reading about the events at Castomyr’s mansion.
I might die in the next five minutes.
I wondered if Russell knew how sorry I was. I hadn’t been strong enough in the end.
“Miss Moran to see you, my lord,” announced Rusk.
“Thank you,” said Morvilind, still gazing at his monitors. “Leave us.”
Rusk bowed and departed, leaving me to my fate.
I knelt in silence for a while, trying not to shiver.
“It seems,” said Morvilind at last, “that you drew a great deal of attention to yourself.”
“Yes,” I said. Part of me wanted to explain, to excuse, to rationalize, but I kept quiet. Morvilind detested incompetence, and the only thing he hated more than incompetence was rationalized incompetence.
“You did escape, and you nonetheless managed to elude detection,” said Morvilind.
“Yes,” I said again.
At last he turned, his gold-trimmed black robe whispering against the marble floor, the crimson cloak of an Elven noble hanging from his shoulders like wings of blood. In his right hand he held a crystalline vial filled with dark fluid. It was the vial of heart’s blood he had taken from me fifteen years ago.
Cloak Games: Shadow Jump Page 5
