The Paladin Caper (26 page)

“I do not doubt your sister’s ability to counter any threat she is aware of,” Icy said, helping Loch drag the guard into a small sitting room nearby, “nor do I discount her essentially selfish nature. You are aware that paladin bands are being sold for their health benefits. What if becoming a paladin could restore her sight?”

Loch dropped the guard behind a large vase, checked his pulse to make sure he’d live, and stepped back. “I was planning to get a message to her, Icy,” she said, and headed into the room where the guard had been posted.

“I am glad to hear it,” Icy said, following Loch.

It was Westteich’s study. Unlike in the Dragon’s library, only half of the wall space was covered in books. The rest was home to stuffed animal heads and pictures of more old nobles, some of whom had a passing resemblance to Westteich.

“Ululenia?” Loch asked. The large table was bare of everything but rings from where glasses had been left on it.

“The magic of the wards remains present, though not as close,” Ululenia said, her horn flickering fitfully. “I fear that to stretch my senses would alert them.”

“Right. Eyes only, then. It’ll be hidden somewhere in here. There’ll be a hidden button or a lever or a crystal panel or something.” Loch started on one of the bookshelves, carefully moving through the books and checking for fingerprints in the dust or signs of recent use.

“Why would he need such a thing?” Ululenia asked.

“Because his family’s been guarding the secret of the ancients for centuries, and he’s an entitled asshole with nothing else going for him,” Loch said. “Believe me, there’ll be something that makes a noise and reminds him he’s a very important part of a secret society every time he uses it.” A small bronze bust slid unnaturally as she touched it, as though it were fastened down somehow. “Like so.” She pulled the bust, and it slid to one side.

In the corner of the room, a painting of Heaven’s Spire split in two, revealing a small space behind it. A large gold-bound book sat in the hidden space. Loch reached in and grabbed it.

A spark of energy spat out from the painting as she did, zapping her hand.

“Little One.” Ululenia’s eyes went wide.

“Damn it, I know.” Loch wrung out her hand. Little coils of energy crackled along the painting. “Lightning trap? Not much of a punch.”

“No.” Ululenia reached out slowly as the coils of energy sparked out from the painting, little twisty ribbons sliding their way down to the floor. “It is not lightning.”

Loch looked at the ribbons of light as they hit the ugly green carpet. The carpet smoked, and green began to bleed into the coils of energy, like paint dropped into water.

“Daemon trap?” Icy asked.

“Looks like.”

“You left your daemon-ward charm outside to—”

“Yes I did, Icy.”

“LLLLLLOKKKKKKK,” hissed the coils of energy as they pulled themselves into a vaguely humanoid shape.

Loch sighed as an alarm squealed out in the hall, readied her walking stick, and hoped to Gedesar that Tern and Desidora were having an easier time of it.

The Iceford River flowed down from the mountains of the Empire and cut across the eastern half of the Republic before it dumped, warmer and much dirtier than the name suggested, into the sea to the south. The port city of Rossle-Nesef straddled the Iceford like an old woman hiking her skirt up to leg over a velvet waiting-line rope. A vital trade center, the city had been fought over by dukes and earls until a collection of merchants had decided that oaths of fealty could stuff it and hired their own soldiers, at which point Rossle-Nesef became the first lordless port city in the Republic. In the early days, when a city owing fealty to no lord had been unheard of, the guilds of Rossle-Nesef had cracked down sternly on any possible scandal that could suggest the city was unable to govern itself and needed the guiding hand of a noble lord again, and that respectability clung to the locale like a fashionable but high-necked dress even today.

The Rossle-Nesef
Lapitemperum
was an old-fashioned white-stone building on the riverfront, its spell-washed columns and preening gods and goddesses greeting the morning with glittering politeness. Multicolored crystals glittered in the hands of the deities, a little hint of sparkle on an otherwise pristine building.

“The crystals are new,” Tern muttered as she walked toward the building, her lapitect robes swishing around her. “Bet it was a tight vote to get those guys slapped on.”

“It’s very white,” said Desidora. “And the carving of Tasheveth is fully clothed.”

“Yep. You remember the deal with the
Lapitemperum
, right? The verifier ward that puts a little purple glow thing over your head if you lie?”

Desidora smiled. “I’m aware, yes.”

“That originated here, not on Heaven’s Spire. Originally, they wanted it to catch rudeness too. Good morning!” Tern said to the guards at the front door with an apple-cheeked smile. “How’s the weather treating you?”

She waited. The guards blinked.

“It’s good,” said one of the guards, a young Urujar woman who seemed a little more awake than the man next to her.

“I’m so glad to hear it!” Tern said, and she
was,
because the guard responding meant that she was more likely to be willing to get into a conversation with Tern, and that would result in Tern getting inside and gaining access to the
Lapisavantum
Chamber, which was where she and Desidora could find out what the ancients were doing and, hopefully, how to kick them in the shins. “Listen, I don’t have an entry badge, but I work up at the
Lapitemperum
on Heaven’s Spire and I’ve got a badge for there. I was told if I came in, someone could make it work here?”

Technically, Tern was on extended leave from her work up at the Heaven’s Spire office, never having formally quit, and she
did
still have the old badge. She also
had
in fact been told that if she came in, someone could make it work . . . by Desidora, about five minutes ago.

The Urujar guard ran a finger through tightly braided hair and sighed. “All right, that’s not how it’s supposed to work, but if you’ll go to the check-in desk, they should be able to take care of you.”

“Thank you, that is super!” Tern said. “I like your hair!” She headed inside with Desidora trailing in her wake.

“You’re . . . very enthusiastic,” Desidora said.

Still smiling and without looking back, Tern said, “Kail gets angry. I get very chipper. Nobody wants to say no to someone who’s cheerfulling at them.”

“Cheerfulling isn’t a word.”

“It is in Rossle-Nesef,” Tern said, and as Desidora glanced over, added, “Yeah, that’s right, no little purple
she’s lying
light. That was me being dead serious. Good morning!” she chirped at the matronly woman behind the counter, who wore lapitect robes like Tern’s and glared down at the alchemist through spectacles not unlike the ones Tern herself was wearing. “I was told that I should bring you my badge from Heaven’s Spire, and you would make it work here?”

“That’s not how it works,” the woman at the counter said, glaring.

“Oh my wow, nobody told me that wasn’t how it worked?” said Tern, turning it into a question. “Um, I guess if you wanted, you could contact the Heaven’s Spire
Lapitemperum
and tell them that I don’t have the right access to scan for thaumaturgic leakage due to improperly calibrated matrix enhancements like I did in Ros-Oanki, and that the Voyancy report proving the safety record of lapitect practices won’t make it into the proposal for enhanced crystal production facilities on the East Bank as a result?”

If the counter lady
wanted
to do that, she could. Tern wasn’t sure why she would, given that none of it was true, but it remained an option, and thus not a lie.

“First this Mister Lively running all his checks, and now this.” The counter lady glared over Tern’s head, then sighed. “You have a badge?”

“I totally do!” Tern fished it out. “Thank you so much, I am so sorry for causing you trouble, and is there like a different thing I should do next time so that it’s easier for you?”

“It’s fine.” The counter lady squinted through her spectacles as she held Tern’s badge next to a pane of crystal that hummed for a moment before chiming and turning green. “Here you go.”

“Thanks again!” Tern took her badge back. “I really love your glasses!”

With Desidora behind her, Tern headed up the stairs, her badge pinging happily as she crossed into the secure area.

“I’m still a little offended that cheerfulling is a word,” Desidora said. “Who
are
you?”

“Is this a trick question?” At the top of the stairs, Tern went left and headed down a long, cold hallway whose floor clicked beneath her heels.

“I’m used to the safecracker and alchemist version of Tern,” Desidora said.

“Says the woman who goes between dating advice and wrenching the souls of the unliving into dread service.”

“True,” Desidora said, smiling. “And how is Hessler these days?”

“Still worried about protecting me. I’m working on it.”

“Good. Now, I
can
move between love priestess and death priestess. I have never seen you become this—”

“Person who talks like a wealthy merchant’s nice but basically clueless daughter?”

“I would not have said it like that,” Desidora said. A purple flare of light glimmered over her head for a moment, and other men and women in the hallway stopped and looked at them. “Well, not
precisely
like that,” Desidora amended, and looked over her head again. This time, no purple radiance interrupted her, and the other lapitects all went back to what they were doing.

“Being a guildsman’s daughter isn’t like being a noble,” Tern said. “I mean, far as I understand, the nobles expect their kids to keep ruling and bringing power to the family and all that, but also, there’s this kind of loyalty to the Republic, like they have this heritage they have to honor, you know?”

“All right,” Desidora said.

Tern turned at an intersection, smiled and waved a little at an older man who looked confused but waved back as Tern went by, and said, “Yeah, we don’t have that. The guilds are a couple hundred years old, and the families know how quickly money comes and goes. What matters is making money and taking power back from the nobles. So by the second or third year of dancing with boys at guildsman parties, every girl has to look at herself and make a choice. Either you’re willing to handle the money and the nasty guild politics, and you sit down at the
suf-gesuf
table and get dealt into the family business, or you’re not willing to do it, and then you still end up at the
suf-gesuf
table, but as a card instead of a player. Or you look at all that and go, holy crap, screw this, and you run.”

“I keep looking over your head,” Desidora said, “hoping to see a flare of purple light.”

“You see why I don’t like coming back to Rossle-Nesef?” Tern said irately. “And you know the worst part? There’s this tiny part of you that every once in a while thinks, why didn’t you stay? You had the brains. You might not be pretty enough to be make a trophy wife, but you would have been
good
at the business, and your parents might actually talk to you.”

After a moment of silence, Desidora said, “I think you’d be a perfectly lovely trophy wife.”

Tern forced a laugh, then looked back and blushed when she saw that there was no purple light over Desidora’s head. “Shut up.”

They turned a corner, walked down a hallway, and nearly bumped into a man a little older than Tern as he left his office. He had the looks of a guildsman, the face that said wealth if not ancestry had dealt him a good hand growing up.

“I don’t recognize you,” he said, smiling as he stepped out to block their way down the hallway. “Can I help you find something?”

“No, thank you, we’re good!” Tern said cheerily.

“I’m not sure,” the man said, leaning in a little. “Two lovely ladies walking around up here might be a little lost. Why don’t you let me show you how to get where you’re going?”

“We’re really fine,” Desidora said, smiling politely.

“Come on,” said the man, leaning in some more, “I think you should come with me.” He looked up over his head and smiled. “See? No purple light. Just being honest.”

“Awww.” Tern lifted a hand and twirled her hair through a finger. “No.”

With her other hand, she triggered her cufflink and put a sleep dart into the man’s throat.

“Wow,” said Desidora.

“Could you just take my word for it that, as somebody who grew up here, I am positive it was going to get creepy?”

“As a love priestess, I can confirm that it was already creepy.” As the man staggered, surprised and offended, Desidora gently lowered him back into his office. “Sleep well.” Desidora shut the door as he collapsed. “Do we have a new plan?”

“It’s basically the same plan as before, but faster,” Tern said.

“Right.” Desidora sighed, flipped back hair that was suddenly raven black, and said, “I hope the boys are having an easier time.”