The Palace Job (24 page)

Cevirt nodded again, then paused. "You're not suggesting—"

"With the aura of the grandfather," Desidora said, smiling winsomely, "I can duplicate the aura of Silestin." She went just a touch pale and added, "Would
that
be suitably useful, Loch?"

Loch glanced at Ululenia. "Any chance of you getting the Archvoyant to open it himself for us?"

I would need to test his defenses,
Ululenia broadcast, whickering and nosing Dairy.

"Do it. Desidora, visit the mausoleum and check the defenses. You're our backup plan." Desidora smiled, and Loch turned back to Tern. "Next?"

"Last order of business," Tern said, "is the lock itself, which uses a combination that changes every few seconds. It seems to use a code that relies on two very large prime numbers to..." She trailed off as Loch made a get-on-with-it gesture. "Okay, short version: I've got no way to crack it—"

"Kind of a pessimistic team you've built, here, Captain," Cevirt observed.

"—unless
we can steal a matching encryption crystal," Tern finished. "Get me that crystal, and I think I can figure out the combination from that."

Loch nodded slowly. "Cevirt?"

He frowned. "It will be on him," he said after a moment's thought, "or with his secretary, at best."

"Good." She turned to Kail. "Set up a watch on him. Find me a weakness. He's a Voyant, so he'll have a lot of public speaking events. Up here, security will be lighter. Maybe a short con." She took a sip of her wine, finally, which was damn good wine after all that. "So what does that tell us?"

"That I should have stayed in my damn cell," Hessler muttered.

"I believe," said Icy, "that this information necessitates a change in plan. We were prepared for a short investigation of the palace security followed by a break-in utilizing our skills as necessary. Instead, we must now target Archvoyant Silestin specifically."

"Exactly," said Loch. "This just ceased to be a grab-and-run. It's an
operation
now."

"When does it become too dangerous?" Hessler grimaced. "Not that I'm not grateful, but there have to be better jobs out there, if you examine the profit-to-risk ratio."

Loch bared her teeth in a hard grin. "Magister, if you see me running past you, that'll be me telling you that it's time for us to get out."

The captain knew to halt the ship's descent when he saw the telltale gleam of black crystal coming up toward them from below. He waited, of course. Archvoyant Silestin encouraged displays of initiative in very limited ways.

But when the Archvoyant gave the order, the captain had merely to nod his head, and the navigator followed the captain's pre-arranged orders and brought the airship to a halt, hovering in the sky hundreds of feet below the Spire.

Their steady presence allowed it to approach.

It was all black, and the captain thought it was made of crystal, though it did not glitter in the late afternoon sun. It seemed to suck in the light, and the air around it rippled. It was shaped like a broad "V", or like a pair of outstretched bird's wings.

It sliced cleanly through the air and came to a halt before the captain's ship.

"One moment," said Silestin, as he always did. "And if you don't mind, rd appreciate a bit of privacy," which he always added.

Once, a crewman had snuck close to listen. He'd been found dead in his bed a few days later, his chest covered with stab wounds that formed the words "too curious" in his lacerated flesh. The captain did not have to order his men away after that.

He watched as the Archvoyant stepped to the black crystal ship. A hole opened in its side, and in the deeper darkness the captain could see something. A ripple of black on black, nothing more. He looked away.

He looked up again when the Archvoyant stomped noisily back his way. "Excuses," the Archvoyant said with a sniff. "Like assholes, Captain. Everybody has one."

"And they all stink, Archvoyant," the captain ventured. The black crystal ship was gone, but the air near the ship still rippled.

The Archvoyant rewarded him with a smile. "Indeed, Captain. Now let's get this boat moving, shall we?"

Eleven

A few days later, Archvoyant Silestin walked down Voyancy Street. He wore a military uniform that glittered with medals. Dairy looked until his eyes hurt.

"Gedesar's fingers, kid, you don't need to stare that hard." Mister Kail elbowed Dairy. They were sitting at a table outside a kahva-house, which Mister Kail had said was a good vantage point on account of its good view of the street and its excellent kahva.

"I thought we had to look hard so Ululenia could get the picture from our minds," Dairy said, risking a quick glance back up. There were two men with the Archvoyant, but he couldn't see them through the crowded street.

"Sure, but not so hard that the mark sees us, right?" Mister Kail looked over at Dairy, then sighed. "Mark, kid. It means the target, the guy you're trying to rob. Or, well, murder, but we're not murderers. We're thieves." He said that proudly.

"Mister Kail, do you ever read the Book of the Four-andTwenty?" Dairy took a sip of his milk and honey.

"Um... sure, kid." Mister Kail shifted in his seat.

"Doesn't the Book say that stealing is wrong?" Dairy asked plaintively. This had been troubling him for some time.

"Well, yeah, but you have to figure that this isn't exactly stealing, is it?" Mister Kail looked over at him, nodding hopefully. "I mean, Silestin is a bad guy. He stole the book from Loch. But because he's got so much power, we can never arrest him. What we can do, though, is hurt him for all the bad things he's done. It's sort of like we're doing justice very quietly on our own."

Dairy thought for a moment. "The world shouldn't be like that, Mister Kail."

"Damn right it shouldn't, kid."

The men walking with the Archvoyant came into view. They both wore robes. One of them, a small man, tittered along nervously behind the Archvoyant, but the other wore a shimmering black robe and had skin that flickered in the light. Dairy felt the world go still around him, as though everything else had paused.

"Mister Kail," he said softly, "who is that man?"

"Damn," Mister Kail murmured. "Silestin's got one of the Glimmering Folk with him. I heard about that in the puppet show. There are some nasty old Urujar folktales..." He looked over at Dairy with some concern. "You okay, kid? It's... well, it's
really
okay to be scared of him."

"I'm not scared, Mister Kail." The Glimmering Man looked around as though searching for something, and Dairy quickly looked down again.

"Well, I am." Mister Kail took a big drink of his kahva. When Dairy glanced back up, the Glimmering Man was walking away.

"He makes me feel sort of tingly," Dairy said, frowning as he tried to explain it. "Like something deep inside me is trying to say something important."

"Huh." Mister Kail pursed his lips. "Uh, do you feel that kind of tingly feeling when you look at your unicorn friend, Ululenia? Or maybe Desidora?" Mister Kail sipped his kahva and smiled. "She's got those big dark eyes and that dangerous death priestess thing going on, huh?"

Dairy frowned. "I don't think so, Mister Kail. I've never felt it until I looked at that man."

"Maybe you should ask Hessler about this," Mister Kail said, coughing. "I'm sure it's, you know, perfectly natural, but... yeah, you should really talk with him about it."

"Do we go back and report to Loch now, Mister Kail?" Dairy asked as the Archvoyant and the two men with him turned and walked up a bunch of steps into the Hall of the Voyancy, a big white building with guards out front.

Mister Kail looked at his kahva. "Let's finish our drinks, make sure the Archvoyant doesn't come back out. Have to be thorough and all that."

"Thanks for helping me learn how to be a good thief, Mister Kail." Dairy sipped his milk.

"My pleasure, kid."

Pyvic found found Orris in the Cleaners, sitting at one of the guard stations. "Good morning, Orris."

Orris looked up at him blankly, then went red-faced. "You. Hope you're happy, you son of a bitch."

"Orris, Archvoyant Silestin has ordered me to speak with you about Prisoners Loch and Kail. He'd like me to get a description to help with conducting my investigation."

"So it's your investigation now, is it?" Orris sniffed, and Pyvic simply stood there for a long moment, counting in his head as his old superior had taught him, until the former warden ducked his head again. "Fine. Whatever gets you out of my face. You've done enough already."

Pyvic took Orris to a private room and took notes for the better part of an hour until he had a decent idea of the appearance of both prisoners. Kail was easy—by the end of the interview, Pyvic was certain that the Urujar guard who'd thrown the first punch when the young guard had given away their ruse was Prisoner Kail.

Loch was harder. Orris said she was bony, then said she had arms like a man's, which didn't sound bony at all. In one of Orris's tirades, she was an ungainly stomping monster who'd kick you if you called her a woman. In another, she became a sly seductress who probably convinced Alms to help her with what Orris called "her animalistic wanton ways". Orris was screaming obscenities about her by this point.

By the end of it, all Pyvic really had to go on were the eyes. No matter his other inconsistencies, Orris always yelled that they seemed to look right through him, hard and sharp and alert, always measuring.

Pyvic had seen eyes like that on an Urujar woman recently. He wished he hadn't.

Icy Fist watched as Archvoyant Silestin strode through the main gate of his palace and shook hands with visitors who had come to take a look at the palace gardens. By proud tradition, the gardens were open to the public except during emergencies or parties, and so the cultivated hedges and sparkling fountains were surrounded by businessmen trying to impress their associates, young nobles visiting on vacation, and those few common folks who could afford the travel fees and security inspections necessary for a trip to the Spire.

Just past the hedges and garden paths and behind a wrought-iron gate whose presence indicated that it was
not
part of the public tour lay the impressive bulk of the Archvoyant's mausoleum. Its marble columns were pale in the afternoon light, even the parts sculpted with a fake ivy pattern.