Devan looked at the ground to hide a smile. "It's good to see you too, Tolem."
Tolem looked up at The Spire and the hazy yellow sky above it. "Nice day...as days go, hereabouts," he said in his resonant grumble. "How would you like to spend a little more time outside The Tower with your uncle?"
Devan's eyes went wide. "You mean…” He stopped a moment to compose himself, tamping down the wild grin that threatened to run across his face. Ever since he was old enough to walk, he'd wanted to Walk, to travel the distant lands, seeking out lost and forgotten wisdom like his uncle Tolem. But he wasn’t about to let on that he’d never let go of that fascination. “You mean…” he started again with a practiced casualness, “...go Walking with you?"
Under his bushy, graying beard, Tolem smiled. “Why, does that still interest you, boy?”
Without planning to, Devan glanced over his uncle's shoulder to where Zella was sitting, pretending she wasn't watching them.
Tolem turned, following where his eyes had lingered for barely a moment. "Zella. Right?" He waved at her; she blanched and hid her face with her book. "She's good. You should've seen her the other night. She handled Winny’s chambers like a Twenty-Year Man. Better, in fact. Her first try didn’t work, so she adapted on the fly. Most of the Twenty-Year Men I know can’t do that."
Devan cocked his head to one side. "What do you..." he began, then trailed off. What is this?
"Oh, aye," Tolem said. "I was there. I'm surprised your pit fighter friend over yonder didn't smell me out. She's got some wolf in her, doesn't she?" Breigh eyed the grizzled old man as she jogged past. He watched her go by with a smile. As if to answer his question, she curled up her lip and bared her teeth. "Got quite a profile on her, too." He shook his head, as if trying to physically scatter a mind full of filthy thoughts. "Ah, to be young and..." He chuckled dryly. "...fit."
Devan’s expression was fixed, impassive. His eyes watched, but his face gave away nothing.
"Your two mates there," Tolem said, pointing to where Allister and Nalan sat in the grass. "Not quite as steady as your women, but smart. Sharp as roofing nails, those two. Getting better each job you pull, I bet." He looked back at Devan.
Devan gave a small smile and hoped Tolem couldn’t see how tightly he was gripping the head of his cane. “You can’t prove anything.”
Tolem folded his arms and smiled. “I don’t have to prove anything, kid. I’m an instructor, remember?”
Devan’s mind spun. He’d planned for this scenario. He’d gone over it a million times in his mind. Backed into a corner, accused, trapped...but in his mind, it had always just been him, shut up in a classroom or the headmaster’s office with a fuming mad teacher. Never with the rest of his crew there. Never in public. Never with Uncle Tolem, for Kroham’s sake.
“Didn’t plan for this, did you, lad?”
Devan’s face fell, at last. “Fuck,” he muttered.
Tolem gripped the boy’s shoulder and shook him firmly. “Call your friends over here. Let’s all have a talk.”
Devan turned and waved, doing as Tolem asked. Tentatively, Nalan and Allister rose from where they were sitting and made their way over. Breigh and Zella got there first. "Ladies. Men. This is my uncle Tolem,” Devan said, making eye contact with each of them in turn. He hoped they couldn’t hear the building rage in his voice. “He's a Walker and an instructor and he's got something he'd like to say to all of us now."
Tolem kept his eyes fixed on Devan, shaking his head gently from side to side. At last, he looked around at each of his nephew's crewmates in turn.
"Hello, all," Tolem said, smiling. "I got something to ask you five. And you can answer however you like. But know this: there's a right answer, and there's a wrong answer. If you choose wrong, there's no punishment from me or any other man alive; you just have your own regrets to answer to. If you choose right, though, well..." He looked hard at his nephew then at each of the friends in turn. "...you can pick your heart's fondest wish and make it real."
Devon shook his head. Oh, grand, Devan mused. The inspirational speech about the golden beacon that is The Collegium. It’s not bad enough he’s caught us. Now he’s going to bludgeon us to death with cliches.
"So here's the question,” Tolem said. “All these silly games. These pranks you pull. These stunts, where you pretend to be burglars…”
He paused. He folded his arms again, reached up, and scratched at his beard.
“...how would you like to do it for real?”
Devan’s eyebrow shot up.
“Excuse me?” he heard Zella say.
“How'd you like a chance to do this burgling business for real? How would you like to help me pull the biggest job ever there was, and walk away with more gold than you can spend in a dozen lifetimes? How would you like to be thieves, children?"
The question hung in the air until, at last, Allister broke the silence. "Wait..." he said, screwing up his face as though what Tolem had said was making his head hurt. “What…what is this?” He looked around the circle at the others. “You…want to hire us to rob a place? Us?"
"Oh yes," Tolem said, grinning broadly now.
"Why? Why us?" Zella asked. She was smiling politely, as she always did when speaking with instructors, but Devan could see it on her face—she wasn't buying it.
Tolem pointed out toward the horizon, then turned, his hand sweeping out a panorama around them. Rolling sand dunes and low scrub plants were all anyone could see in any direction from the top of The Collegium. "What you see out there, that's what the world is like now. Desolation. Even in greener lands. Even in the Last Cities. And it's not just the look of things, either. Without the Empire's law, people are scraping just to eat. More schools have shuttered than not. Each winter, whole libraries burn to keep people warm. And the new kings of the world aren't smarter than the rest; they're just more vicious."
Tolem pointed around at the five of them. "You five. You're good. You're brilliant, in fact. You have,” he slapped Allister on the chest, nearly sending the thin boy sprawling, “a magic user! You know, there are whole tribes out there who have never even seen a mage?”
“You have,” Tolem touched Breigh lightly under the chin, “a trained field warrior. With the knowledge of tactics in your head and your experience fighting in the arena, do you have any idea what you could accomplish?” Under her platinum locks, Breigh’s eyes narrowed and that dangerous smile stretched across her lips. “My dear, there would be statues of you in the Legend Square of Thermodynus inside of a year. A year."
Breigh closed her eyes and shuddered at the thought.
"A machinist…” Tolem clapped Nalan on the back. Nalan rubbed his neck uncomfortably.
“…A mentalist..." He brushed a wisp of hair off Zella’s forehead. She grimaced once he’d passed her by.
"...And a strategist.” He stood before Devan and folded his arms. “A leader." Tolem stepped closer to his nephew, and lowered his voice. "Dev, my boy...I'm surprised this tower has held you for this long.”
Devan wanted to stay impassive. He wanted to maintain his cool facade. But his eyes gave him away. A giddy, lightheaded anticipation began to bubble up through the suspicion and the anger.
Tolem looked him in the eyes and winked.
The graying instructor turned back to the group as a whole. “What I want you to think about, right now, is what you would do if these walls disappeared tomorrow. Because I have an idea. And,” He chuckled warmly. “It's a big one."
Devan looked to his friends. Allister was bouncing on the balls of his feet. Breigh’s eyes flashed back and forth at things only she could see. Nalan looked uncomfortable. Too everyone else, Zella was smiling, but her eyes gave her away too.
Devan looked back to his uncle. "So what is it?" he asked. "What's this…job?"
Tolem grinned and cracked his knuckles.
---
Tolem kept them in suspense the rest of the day, making them agree to meet him in his chambers that evenin
g for dinner. The day went tortuously slow for Devan. The meal somehow went slower still. By the time Tolem ushered the five of them into his parlor and got them to sit down around the hearth, Devan’s good knee was bouncing up and down uncontrollably.
Tolem’s features were shadowed as the fire behind him glowed. He watched his whiskey as it swirled around in the bottom of the glass. Without looking up, he asked his young guests, seated on the pillows around him:
"What do you know about The Palace?"
Allister’s expression fell, and he let out a dismissive snort. Breigh's posture stiffened. While Zella smiled as ever, Devan saw the scorn written across the rest of her face when she looked his way.
As for Devan, he could feel a small smile begin to draw itself across his lips.
Nalan raised his hand.
Amused, Tolem pointed at the lad. "You there. First row."
"Ah…which palace, Instructor Tolem?" Nalan asked.
Allister swatted his friend in the back of the head. "’Which palace’," he echoed him, scowling. "The Palace. Capital T, capital P."
"Oh..." Nalan’s voice trailed off.
"It's a coliseum," Devan said, as if narrating a story from the next room over. "The coliseum, really. The biggest and wealthiest in all the worlds. It's like a city all by itself, with gaming rooms and concert halls and gardens and a huge resort that puts the finest castles and keeps to shame." He looked over at Nalan with a smirk. "And it flies."
“The few magic users left in the world climb over each other's broken corpses to get a commission at The Palace,” Allister said. “It takes fifty of the best mages in the world to keep the place in the air.”
“And to keep the security wards lethal,” Zella said with an acerbic sweetness.
"On a light day, half a million gold pieces might pass through The Palace's coffer room," Tolem said, before polishing off his whiskey in one gulp. "On a good day, it might take in two million. On a great day? Five. And I happen to know when The Palace is due to have its best day in decades."
Setting her drink down, Zella rose to her feet. Meticulously, she smoothed out her skirt, looked to Tolem, smiled, and said, "You are full of shit." Then she started walking toward the door.
Devan rolled off his pillow, clamored to his feet, and, hopping on one foot, put himself in front of her. "Z, come on, just hear him out."
"The Palace?!" she asked. "Seriously? What, did he think we wouldn't bite for 'Let's steal the Hellmouth Canyon back from the Khemens'?" Devan thought she actually did a pretty good impression of Tolem's voice.
"What harm would it do to listen?" Devan asked, holding her back by the shoulders. "Worst case scenario, it'll be funny."
Zella pursed her lips.
Over Zella’s shoulder, Devan glimpsed Tolem pouring himself another glass. His uncle’s beard was scruffy. His instructor’s robes had holes under the arms.
<…slipping unnoticed into the treasure hold…>
<…making off with the biggest score in the history of the six worlds, something they’ll tell stories about for centuries to come…>
Zella gritted her teeth and looked away. She shook her head. Devan knew it; he had her on the hook now.
Her mouth dropped open.
But, Devan knew, there was a difference between realizing you’re being worked and keeping yourself from being worked.
Zella looked over at Tolem, waiting patiently by the fire. He raised his glass to her.
she said.
For a long moment, Zella’s eyes seemed to go somewhere else. When they came back, she shook her head and let out an exasperated sigh. Eyes narrowed to slits, Zella returned to her seat on her pillow.
"So," Tolem continued at last. "Here's what I have in mind."
Zella
In the century or more since the last Imperator was murdered in her throne room, the populace had turned decisively against the wielders of magic. Largely cloistered away in their monasteries, practitioners of the Art made convenient scapegoats for demagogues looking to sway a frightened people to their side.
Nowhere was this practice more common than in the city of Kauleth. Without the Empire to keep the trade routes running, food shortages gripped the city, and as they did, so too did a wave of anti-mage hysteria. The nights became violent. Neighbors turned on neighbors. Government buildings toppled and burned. When new leaders were chosen, they were selected based on their stance on the question of what to do with local sorcerers—that question being, "Following the summary execution of local sorcerers, how much corpse desecration should be permitted under the boundaries of good taste?"
In purging its borders of wizards, witches, imps, and other magic-wielding folk, the residents of Kauleth became very good at finding ways to negate protective incantations, deflect offensive spells, and so on. The art of killing mages became Kauleth's chief export, and the money that began to flow into the city funded research into refining that art into a science.
It was that reckless research which led to the Calamity.
One moment, the world was humming smoothly along. The next, over a million practitioners of the Art burst into flames and perished. The invisible magic field that fed all workings everywhere was practically destroyed, and what was left was now slowly sputtering out. There were areas that were unaffected—the wastes where The Collegium stood, for example—but in the majority of the six worlds, magic was either dead or dying. And in Kauleth, there was no magic to be used at all.
So when Tolem told the crew, "In six months, The Palace will be floating in to dock at Kauleth," it didn't bolster Zella's confidence in Devan's uncle one bit.
"Kauleth," she repeated flatly. "And what's going to keep it in the air? Positive thinking?"
"Aurium," Nalan piped up. Tolem looked shocked. When Tolem asked Nalan how he knew that, Nalan looked sheepish. "I was guessing. Last anyone here heard, Kaulethi science wizards were still working on it."
"And what is this Aurium?" Breigh asked.
"It's a metal," Nalan answered before Tolem could. "Imbued with special energy. It boosts the magic field for a certain distance around it. If they had enough of it, they could just drape it over The Palace's hull and...and there you are. A self-contained magical field."
"So, the assheads in Kauleth made a fortune off inventing ways to wipe out magic as we know it..." Allister said, piecing it together in his head, "...and now they're going to make another fortune by selling mages their magic back to them?"
"Yes. In a nutshell," Nalan said.
"The world can go fuck itself," Allister said, tossing his whiskey glass onto a pillow.
"So, even if they can get The Palace into the city, why would they want to?" Devan asked. "Why risk flying a magic coliseum into a city full of anti-magic extremists who invented the magic-destroying bomb?"
"Why else?" Tolem replied. "Money. The Palace is bleeding it in rivers and streams. They're burning through every cent they make hiring mages to keep the place afloat. But the time is coming when the number of mages won't matter. The worlds’ magic field is ge
tting too thin to support the immense energies it takes to levitate a whole coliseum. Now, the Kaulethis offered to loan The Palace a load of Aurium for this one visit, but if they're going to survive, they’ll need that Aurium long term. And that'll cost them dear."
"It just needs one great day—the best day they've had in decades—and The Palace can use the gold to buy all the Aurium it needs." Devan smiled and held up his empty glass to his uncle. "Assuming, of course, that the gold makes it to the Kaulethis."
Zella rolled her eyes.
Tolem looked deep into Devan's eyes. "I know where that gold is going to be," he said earnestly, filling his nephew’s glass as though he were issuing a sacrament. "Now I just need the five of you."
"Are we leaving tonight?" Already on her feet, Breigh bellowed in defiance of the solemnity of the moment. "I just need to arrange to have my war goats fed and cared for. Devan, swear you won't let him leave without me."
"Wait," Nalan said, feeling like he'd missed a step somewhere. "Are we doing this? I'm...I need to say goodbye to my grandparents."
"You don't need to panic Meemaw and Pop-pop," Zella said. "This isn't a real thing.”
The room fell silent except for the crackling of the fire.
“Z…” Devan started to say.
Zella cut him off. “This,” she said, eyeing Tolem from her seat on her pillow, “is the part where 'Instructor Tolem' here says he just needs to collect a hundred golds from each of us for traveling expenses then disappears into the night."
Breigh thrust a small drawstring pouch into Tolem's hand. "Here's twenty now," she said urgently. "I can have the other eighty in half an hour. Less, if I have the element of surprise."
"You didn't hear a thing after 'a statue of you in Legend Square,’ did you?" Allister asked.
“Fine, fine…” Breigh said, glancing fleetingly over at Allister. Then she paused, as if her brain was taking a moment to catch up. “Wait. What?"
"I'm not here to take your money," Tolem announced over the rest of the talking. "And I'm not here to run a scam on any of you. The only money I intend to take are the ten million gold pieces in The Palace's coffer room, six months from tonight. The only question is, do I do it with this crew, or do I keep looking?"
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