“The royal guard didn’t kill anyone close to him, but he’s a man of god. Prevention of giant hellmouths sounds like part of the job. I imagine he’d be here beating down your door on his own if he could do it without arousing suspicion.”
Xavier swiped the bottle of fine roseberry liqueur from the table between him and Adriano. “He has a point.” A snap of his fingers produced another glass, then he filled it to the brim and extended it to Rosalia, posing as the very model of elven hospitality. She took it gratefully.
“Agreed.”
Her friend grinned. “Hoped you both would feel that way. So, what’s it going to be? Will you meet with him, Rosalia?”
“Of course. Where do we meet?”
“When we return to the city, find him in the eastern garden behind the abbey. That’s where he takes his morning tea.”
Adriano spoke for a while longer, sharing other discoveries he’d made while performing his duties at the naval command. The king had them preparing for war and had sent out a trio of ships to search for the Noble Sword under orders to destroy it rather than leave it in the hands of the enemy.
Rosalia snorted. Any of those elven naval vessels could outmaneuver and likely outshoot an Enimuran ship before they had a chance to load their cannons.
“I will return during daylight in the future to shake any suspicion. The Silver Dagger won’t be seaworthy to join the search efforts until a mechanic has repaired our sail mechanisms. That’s my official reason for visiting you tonight. Emergency. Our best naval engineer said he’d need more than a month to rebuild the furnace. Admiral Brigaria said that isn’t acceptable. He wants us to ship out in a week when I return.”
“Ah.” Xavier stroked his chin. “Will I be expected at this very moment or morning?”
“Morning is fine. Check in at the usual port office, and a seaman will escort you down to the ship.”
Her stomach tightened into knots. Xavier would have the Silver Dagger seaworthy within the week. “Does this mean you’ll be leaving Enimura again as soon as you return?”
“Afraid so.” Adriano’s humor faded, mouth flattening into a tight line. “I’d hoped to remain here as someone on the inside to bring you new developments, but my hands are tied.”
Xavier stroked his chin. “What if I can guarantee your ship won’t be seaworthy for weeks longer, regardless of the mechanic hired for the repairs?”
“How so? While I’d appreciate any intervention, I’d prefer if you weren’t dragged before the courts, or worse, executed for crimes against the crown.”
“Nah. I’ve got another plan in mind, a little discreet sabotage no one can trace back to me.” Xavier’s mouth widened into a handsome grin. “Have you ever heard of a gremlin?”
12
More than a Metaphor
Torn between holding a grudge against Xavier forever and forgiving him to continue their working relationship, Rosalia chose to rise above her pettiness. Not that she saw him often enough for it to matter.
Obligations to the King’s Navy meant he spent the hours from sunrise to sunset at the docks, and he spent longer afterward performing house calls for his regular clients and searching for a gremlin.
Gods, she missed him.
If he slept, it wasn’t in the treasure pile, and if he ate, it was on the run while out in the markets.
During the first two days of Xavier’s absence, Rosalia claimed a spot on the floor in the middle of the study and surrounded herself with books about the Last Dynasty—the age when the five great kingdoms of Saudonia, Ilyria, Nairubia, Oceania, and Utopia each belonged to a great temple under the rule of a high priest. Despite reading several enormous books, she uncovered nothing new.
When studying grew tiresome, she crossed over to Valanya and checked in on her fellow Enimuran thieves in the Undercastle. Most had taken up residence in the underground sleeping quarters. Aside from a few complaints related to learning the language and customs, even the surliest pickpocket appeared happy.
Then again, the grim alternative to expatriating in Ilyria had been harvesting coal from Heridian mines until the day of their deaths. The pitifully short lifespan of inmates at the prison camp meant a constant turnover in slaves, and a never-ending source of profit for Nairubia and Linradesh, who dealt in the trade of indentured servants.
And by abolishing the Enimuran Thieves Guild, King Gregarus effectively neutralized its leadership and any splinters of the Saudonian chapter in other cities would be a snake without its head. Toothless and at his mercy. From there, any remaining thieves would run scared, either abandoning the lifestyle or risking execution or enslavement.
The bastard. Gregarus and his spymaster had planned the absolute destruction of the guild down to the finest detail.
Thoroughly creeped out by that revelation, Rosalia entered the Undercastle’s training room to find Jabari crouched before a chest secured by a trio of padlocks. The tip of his tongue peeked between his front teeth, deep concentration on his face while he unsuccessfully finagled the picks into a keyhole.
She knelt beside him. “How do you like it here?”
“Ah!” The boy screamed and fumbled his tools, snapping the pick when he yanked it out and fell on his ass. “Moritan’s Breath! Do you always have to sneak up on people, Rosalia?”
She grinned and didn’t chastise him for the swearing. “Sorry. But what did I tell you about tuning out everything when you work?”
“Not to do it,” he grumbled.
Rosalia cradled the lock in her left palm and worked the shattered piece of his pick from the mechanism. “You’re too hard on your tools.”
“Wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t appear out of the blue to traumatize me. I think I peed a little.”
Smiling, she offered him another pick. She kept several to spare. “You did not. Stop exaggerating. Anyway, you’re not holding enough tension on the cylinder before you try to level the pins. Watch this.” She fished her tools out of her satchel with her right hand and slipped it into the keyhole. Click, click, click. One at a time, she popped the remaining pins while the younger thief beside her stared in wonder.
“How are you so fast?”
“Practice. After a few years of working on padlocks like this, you’ll be doing it in your sleep. Now, this is where it gets complicated. This is a trick lock. You have to apply pressure to the shank here and give it a little twist to release the hidden catch inside while turning the cylinder.” Once she showed him where he’d gone wrong, Jabari sat back on his heels and stared at her with open reverence in his brown eyes. She clicked the lock shut again then gestured toward it. “Now you try.”
Jabari balanced the lock on his open hand and followed her instructions. On his third try, it popped open. “I did it!”
“Sure did. So, how are you liking it here?”
“It’s great. Valrond said he’ll teach me to work on enchanted padlocks if I solve all twelve locks on this wall.”
“Well, the rest are bound to be more difficult, but you’re definitely on your way. I’ll leave you to it. Remember that it isn’t always as straightforward as sliding a pick into a keyhole.” Some were guaranteed to be trickier locks of the more complex variety with phony holes, a poor man’s way of discouraging amateur lock picks.
“Thanks.” When he glanced up again, a crease lined his brow. “Have you gone to Clovera yet for Enrikos?”
“Not yet. Tell him I plan to do it soon. Once it’s safe.”
He nodded.
Leaving Jabari to his practice, Rosalia sought Annowen in the Undercastle’s main hall. If she couldn’t unearth any information about the Legacy of the Divine Order in Xavier’s study, her time was better spent fattening the new bank account she’d opened in Valanya.
Annowen reclined in a chair behind a desk covered in stacks of documents. Red and gold pins decorated the map of Ilyria behind her, indicating work to be completed and jobs not yet assigned. Rosalia knew the system for requesting paid jobs from the fixer, eve
n if she’d lacked the time to try it herself in the week since joining their number.
“Got any work for me?”
The elf tipped her head to one side. “About time you visited. I was beginning to wonder if you were too good for all of this thieving stuff.”
Rosalia laughed. “Far from it. Just busy handling a mad king, his megalomaniac spymaster, and a—” Shithead dragon, she wanted to say, though it wasn’t fair to speak ill of Xavier or put him in the same sentence as those murderers.
Annowen chuckled. “I’m only teasing. We all know what you’re doing in Saudonia and the importance of it. Kick their asses. Anyway, I’m actually surprised to see you at my table when so many other matters require your attention. Do you have the time for a job?”
“I certainly have time for a distraction.” When the elf raised her fair brows, Rosalia continued. “I need to clear my mind, and nothing works better than going on a job and putting my attention elsewhere. There’s a mystery troubling me, and no matter how I attack it, I can’t solve it.”
“Ah. I’ve been there. You need something easy and fun to take your mind off the shit in Enimura, I take it. Then…one moment. I know just the thing.” She rifled through the stacks of parchment on the desk, scanned one, and rose. “Oh, yes. Definitely perfect.”
“What is it?”
“Easy,” the fixer replied, spreading a map over the hardwood table. “Not sure how your people operate in Saudonia, but here, we elves are a petty lot. Some of what we’re paid to do is absolute mischief for a price.”
“Oh?”
Annowen’s chipper smile could light a shadowed alley. She wore her dark hair short and spiked every strand pointing in another direction but perfectly suited to her slender face. “Yes. These are my favorite type of jobs, to be honest with you, and if I had time, I’d take this one myself.”
Rosalia leaned forward. “So what is the job? Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“So, Countess Velanni has caught on that her dick of a husband is unfaithful. He purchased several gorgeous pieces of art for his mistress’s collection. Practically priceless, each of them.”
“Oooh. I like it! A revenge job?”
“She hired us to steal anything we can remove and to ruin what we can’t. Leave a message. There’s a bonus promised to you if you take her dog, too. He imported a pup for her from Utopia a month ago.”
“And what’s to happen to the dog once I take it?”
Annowen shrugged. “Fancy yourself a dog owner?”
That was how Rosalia found herself riding inland to a little town named Villisië in elvish wine country where the lush hills rolled green and verdant for miles in every direction.
After a day of travel and an overnight stop at a small inn along the way, she arrived the next evening and enjoyed supper at the local tavern before riding up a grassy hill to the estate of the vintner Lady Felosia.
Emboldened by her new surroundings, she used her anonymity to knock on the door and played the part of a traveling saleswoman from Enimura peddling rare herbs and tonics from the desert.
“No solicitors,” a stern-faced butler told her in Elvish. At least, she thought that was what he said before slamming the door in her face. But those moments of peering past him into the main hall provided all the information she needed to know about the estate’s entrance hall and minimal security. There wasn’t a guard in sight.
The doors were not warded. She didn’t sense even a buzz.
On her way off the grounds, she peered at the estate with her goggles and saw enough of the property to know exactly how to bypass its sparse magical security.
After darkness fell and the staff retired to bed, Rosalia entered through the cellar where she poured out every bottle of aged wine but three she wrapped and slid into her satchel, lacking room for more. From there, she ventured into the manor and used a fine razor to slice portraits and oil paintings from their frames. Rolling them up tightly, she slid the most valuable and beautiful into protective tubes designed to guard them from inclement weather if a storm swept through during her travel.
No one planned to steal priceless art without coming prepared for the occasion.
After that, Rosalia slashed the pictures she couldn’t carry. Damn, it hurt. Good art was good art, but she couldn’t possibly take everything with her and as the contract requested, it all had to go.
Hopefully, Count Velanni’s punishment also fit the crime. It seemed unfair to discipline only the mistress and not the man dicking around on his mate.
When she finished with the halls, she poured a corrosive substance over the marble busts, figurines, and anything else of valuable appearance in the art gallery she couldn’t swipe. She wrapped ancient books with cloth and loaded herself with tomes to start a new collection in the library, mourning that she hadn’t yet replaced her bottomless bag. She’d have taken the entire library if she could. If Rosalia loathed anything, it was the waste of a good book. This job required her to waste dozens.
What got her through the task was reminding herself, that if it were her—if she were the countess—she’d want the entire manor burnt to ash. At least this way, no one lost a job or a home.
By the time she left just an hour prior to dawn, concluding the longest solo thieving spree of her career, she’d plucked even the rings from Felosia’s fingers and taken her little fluffy white dog from its silk pillow in the woman’s bedroom.
It was a cute thing. The name etched into the round tag on its teal collar said Naïse. Cloud in Elvish.
Hopefully Xavier wouldn’t eat it.
“Mind if I leave the puppy here until I know if my benevolent dragon host eats canines for breakfast?”
Annowen laughed. “I have no problem with it. Pass the wee blighter here for a cuddle then. I love dogs, especially Utopian fluffers. Take as much time as you need to convince him.”
Rosalia plucked Naïse from her messenger bag and passed him over—refusing to rename the little pooper until she knew if Xavier would allow her to keep him. The moment Annowen had her arms around him, he burrowed into her chest.
“What a cute little guy you are. We’ll take good care of you.”
Leaving the pup in Annowen’s care for the moment, she made her way from the central chamber and approached the northern ladderwell that would take her to the surface just south of the Pleasure Gardens. She needed a few more days to learn all of her routes around the city.
The manhole cover slid aside and sent a beam of moonlight to the mossy ground at Rosalia’s feet, capturing her within the silver circle. She stepped aside for the two thieves to descend and greeted them with a smile.
Soraya and Luca glowed with happiness. The latter carried an enormous bag beneath his cloak, and Soraya’s purse swelled.
“Profitable night?” she asked.
“Fuck yes,” he replied. “We’re not even finished.”
“It turns out burgling the homes of rich elves is not too much different from crawling in and out of windows in Saudonia. Luca always picks the best houses. He has a knack for smelling wealth, this one.”
Rosalia smiled at the quiet look exchanged between the two. Definitely in love. Definitely hiding it. She wondered why they weren’t in the open but knew neither well enough to ask. “Glad to see you two are healing well.”
Luca snickered. “We visited the Temple of Moritan and paid a tribute to the priests for a little expedited healing.”
“Ah. Are they better than the quacks in Saudonia with their leeches and candling?”
“Much better. It’s no surprise the elves live for so long when they have such excellent care.” He shrugged. “Almost everyone is on their feet again. Such friendly and knowledgeable priests.”
Priests. The answer to Rosalia’s most recent conundrum barreled into her thoughts.
“I have to go. Take care!”
She had an elvish temple of Arcadian to find.
The devout elves of Valanya dedicated an entire block to the worship o
f the five great divines, and they gave two smaller lanes to the three dozen or so minor deities followed across the kingdom.
These shrines devoted to the lesser gods varied depending on the deity and its followers, some contained within grandiose structures, others left open beneath the starlit sky for anyone to approach. Rosalia couldn’t decide which she liked most, the humble altars and roofless chapels or the magnificent elven architecture of the great temples.
A priestess in white and silver robes greeted Rosalia when she entered the Bastion of Peace, practically bee lining across the floor to meet her. Prepared for trouble but hoping for the best, she plastered a smile to her face.
“Arc veras min. Nundaï—”
“I’m sorry,” Rosalia blurted, crossing her fingers that she’d encountered yet another elf fluent in her tongue. “I don’t speak your language well, though it’s a failing I plan to remedy at the earliest convenience now that I hope to live in your kingdom.” She glanced around over the gilded edge of the polished pews. “I’m new to Ilyria.”
“Ah,” the priestess said. “Then allow me to welcome you to both the Bastion of Peace and our beautiful elven homeland. I am Priestess Florisse, servant of Arcadian and humbly at your service. What may I do for you?”
“I…” How in the Void could she get the help she needed without sounding like a crazy person ranting about forbidden mirrors and magical stones? Deciding not to stray too far from the truth, she widened her smile. “I guess you could consider me to be something of a scholar when it comes to ancient lore. I recently spent time with an elvish friend, and he has the most gorgeous library. Some of the stories were originally elvish but adapted to Ancient Saudonian, which I consider myself a bit of a novice scholar in. Yet I worried there may have been some passages lost in translation.”
Florisse’s smile didn’t fade. “Many come to seek wisdom regarding our tales and stories. Which did you read?”
Fool's Gold: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 2) Page 10
