Lisa laughed, long and loud, lounging on the love seat in this languid larcenist’s… lounge? Did that count as a repeat?
Seth chewed his alliteration over as the breakfast nook’s conversation continued its silly vapid circling over the Necropolitans and the Northern Plainland freeholds and the relative tax rates being levied therebetween. What good fortune that he was disguised as a young gentleman of leisure, and didn’t even need to pretend to care.
“What do you think, Mr. i’Lynnok?” the pinch-faced matron of the house inquired, and then again: “Mr. i’Lynnok?”
Oh, right. That was Seth. He looked up from the murky whirlpool he was making in his coffee del tiempe and blinked. “I’m not sure, Madame Luka. What did you say?”
“My braying has deafened my poor nephew.” Lisa squeezed his arm and laughed again; Luka il Molacq did not join in. “Oh, Seth, your pardon I beg. He has such saintly patience with me.”
“My wife was just inquiring about the Legion.” Marston held his glass up and his creaking butler filled it from a glass carafe in the shape of a swan. “Whether the taxes they levy on us really justify themselves.”
“Evidently, your aunt has opinions,” Luka muttered.
“Of course—” Seth glanced Lisa’s way and did his best to read the tea leaves. “Not.”
Lisa nodded a vigorous agreement. Phew. “I don’t mean to make light or poke fun, but honestly. They take our children, they take our heads, our hexis, our food… and, well. The deathspell, of course, sure. But the rest?” She rolled her eyes. “The Necropolis is the sphincter of the continent. All our delicacies arrive there, and what does it put out?”
“Nothing mentionable in polite society, I’m sure.” Luka glared down the point of her nose at her husband. “You will please pass the ham.”Marston slid the tray of rose-folded cured meat to his wife, giving her a good-natured pat on the knee as he withdrew. She crossed her legs and nibbled.
Seth squeezed a wedge of lemon into his coffee del tiempe and stirred it with a clatter of ice. Here was a luxury he’d actually tasted, a coffee with ice in it. Rohan had served it to him once. When your fancy stuff had a shelf life, you were more likely to break it out for your lessers, he supposed.
“The artery is lovely, of course.” Marston scraped butter across his coca bread, navigating around the dried apricots. “You can’t say they’ve given us nothing, can you. Not when those trains roar through.”
Seth mirrored his gesture—perhaps the coca would be made less grainy with a hearty smear. “Surely the artery takes away more than it gives.”
Marson shrugged. “In pure tonnage, perhaps, but what you learn as an importer is the things of true value are often quite light. One simply requires a discerning eye and a sense of…”
He paused. His knife froze halfway back down to his plate. His wife rolled her eyes.
“Timing,” he cried, and Lisa jumped, hand on her chest, letting out a perfectly vacant titter.
Seth managed one himself as he scanned the drawing room. The conversation pit in which this farce unfolded was cornered into a picture window out to the garden. What light made it through the smothering wall of begonias landed on a hodgepodge of fine wood-carved furnishings and antique decor that screamed old money at a volume only new money would ever reach for.
A pair of crossed black-powder pistols, a portrait of Luka with a stripy felis on her lap, a slug of pitted metal like magma runoff which Marston had smugly introduced as the work of a sarkani artist from Sektorbrav—one of the dragon people, he’d said. Melted it into shape with his breath. Gimcrack displays like this would normally tickle the larcenist-in-residence within Seth’s brainstem. But he wasn’t here for this stuff.
He’d been charged with something beyond the swinging saloon door and up the marble stairs that lay beyond it. And as his vision returned to the beautiful woman who needed his talents, an encouraging bump of her threaded brow told him he’d given these hosts long enough for the lulling.
He scooted his chair out from the sea of lacy tablecloth. “Which way to the bathroom, may I ask?”
Marston pointed past the half-mummified butler in repose by the exit. “Across the vestibule, round the left corner and it’s your first left.”
“Seth, your cravat.” Lisa affected a look of disapproval. “Come, come. Before you go.” She gestured him in. “Try to leave it as you found it,” she whispered, as she undid his peach-colored cravat. “I want them in the dark so they don’t skip town when we roll in again. Saints speed you, my brilliant little thief.”
She tied the knot again and cinched it snug to Seth’s neck. Like she’s putting a collar on you, an unwelcome voice whispered. She eased back and gave him a light tap on the cheek. He climbed from the conversation pit and slipped out of the room. Another fluting Lisa laugh sounded behind him, at whatever inane thing their host was saying. He did not like how real that laugh sounded. He didn’t want to wonder which of the ones she’d gifted him were so poorly earned.
Out from the light and laughter, he excused himself past the il Molacqs’ other servant, a broad-shouldered gentleman’s gentleman with a head as bald and lumpen as a potato and eyes almost as small. Mr. Potato was standing at the base of the steps. Well, that was fine. Seth was a second-story guy.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He headed for the bathroom and—while he was there—took a quick leak to soothe some of the pre-lift tension. Always helped.
His cheek tingled where Lisa had touched it as he washed up. He wondered if that was some sort of side effect, if the soul drawn close to the surface by its proximity to an unlit lent the nerves some sort of frisson. He splashed some water on his face, as if there were some stain on him that needed washing. As if he wasn’t pining to feel that palm again. He looked at himself in the mirror. He leaned in, close enough to see his pores. He’d miss the color in his cheeks, but the eyes. The white on black. He might look handsome with eyes like that.
It was tragedy. Unlit was unclean and undead. But Annalise was so vividly alive. Tiago and Ofelia had chosen it, had snuffed their own lights to stay close to her. Was it so mad to consider? Would he take the fear and hatred of the entire continent for the love and friendship of the al Ydrises? Would he truly miss the touch of the Rumia al Morinas of the world, if every night could be like those few minutes in the hotel room, drowsy and sheltered in the Verdugo’s big warm arms? What would his Darkness be? What miracle would rush in to replace the spot his soul would vacate?
He’d been with them a bare week. He was putting the spooky black carriage before the horse. And he had a job to do. He splashed another bracing handful of water onto his face and got back to work.
He strolled to the backyard. A covered back porch overlooked the tousled flowerbeds, the lintel bowing in its center with the crawling vines that had crept over and around its trellises. He moved to the porch’s outside and scanned the neighboring windows, seeking faces or backs, None were in evidence. He’d heard of this phenomenon in the abstract—of how little the Plainland wealthy cared about their neighbors—but it satisfied the juvenile, jealous piece of him to see it bear out.
The manor’s walls were conscientiously packed brick and mortar. He could climb something like this, but it’d take time, and he had to be quick. He flattened himself against the porch trellis instead, felt the creak and the give. He shut his eyes, felt the sway, imagined what it must be like to be a spider in its web, stretching its nervous system through the inert organic matter.
Not magic, this. Just extensive bone-deep training and the perks of being a short, light fellow. He slid the vamp of his boot into the criss-crossing trellis wood and climbed.
Up to the top of the porch’s archway. The molded lip of the second-floor window before him. A leap would cause this thing to creak like nobody’s business. The trick, for Seth, was to treat it more like a fall, fingertips stretched forward. A brief surrender to the sky and an allowance of its great forces to act on him.
His well-trained fingers crimped on the windowsill. He tucked in, caught the brickwork with his feet, flexed to take the momentum in the hewn fibers of his core. Seth hadn’t been built to master much in this world—too slight for soldiering, too poor for the academies, too hungry for the cloth. But in matters of thievery, he trusted himself. The only sort of trust Seth had ever liked the taste of.
The window was locked; nothing else for it, he’d have to leave a trace here. He slipped into the thieves’ tools he’d secreted into his jacket, right up against his heart, and found the glass cutter. He’d paid obscenely for this, hated himself as the braces changed hands, asked himself why tossing a damn brick through the glass wouldn’t do. But the first circle he’d sliced quiet and clean from a second-story window had reassured him the expenditure was one of those rare decisions he’d never once hate himself for.
Out it came, glinting in the afternoon light, and it carved a crescent just large enough for Seth’s slim fingers to creep in and flick the latch. The window opened. He slithered through, and crept down the hall. Bedroom, guest room, and then here it was—office.
Sandwiched between teakwood cabinets, beneath a hanging corpselight chain-lamp, sat a writing desk whose surface was hidden by a locking drop lid. When in doubt, you go for the locked thing first.
A mere second of waggling with a rake clicked the pin-tumbler. Seth slid the articulated wood panel up from the desk’s surface and rifled through the neatly stacked papers beneath, breath coming faster now as he sought. There, on an import/export record sheet: Prossimo pickup with il Agante in the VENDOR column.
Shit—the entry in the buyer column was scratched through. Seth traced the length of the row with his finger, seeking something to use. Under PAYMENT, where the other entries had monetary values (eye-popping ones; Seth was in the wrong line of crookery), the Prossimo pickup instead read C-3.
C-3, C-3. Seth’s eyes darted around the office and settled on the left-hand cabinet. Its drawers were labeled, he saw, with minuscule bronze plates. A matrix of them, from A to E and 1 to 5. He yanked C-3 free.
The drawer held no money, to Seth’s quiet disappointment: its only contents was a cigar box with a little silvery lock on its catch. Seth’s pick was in his hand again. Marston would miss the box, surely; but to open it, take whatever was inside, and put the box back, that would keep him in blissful ignorance.
Seth reconsidered with its tip an inch away from the keyhole. This was a rudimentary padlock for the eldritch bullshit you’d expect, presented with the payment for a Verdugo’s magic head. He sat on the floor, the box in his lap, and squinted. There was the flickering outline of the real lock, like threaded corpselight. Enchanted, and not joking around with it to boot. It looked third-ring, but its leylines were… corroded, somehow. Very old, perhaps? Seth hadn’t seen an enchantment break down like this before, but he’d heard it could happen with age or damage. Either way, it was nothing he couldn’t crack. A third-ring infusion was just on the edge of Seth’s ability if he took it seriously enough, and he was serious today.
He swallowed as his hands got to work. The cravat knot bobbed against his neck. My brilliant little thief, she’d called him. And as artificial as she was with their host, Seth wanted, harder than he could remember wanting anything, for her to have meant it.
A pinch on his knucklebone told him he was close. Focus back in, Seth. You could lose a finger doing this bit. He trapped his tongue between his teeth as he eased the invisible infusion open. It broke with a muffled snap of displacing air. Seth hissed his held breath out in victory. Only the mundane lock now, and all it’d take for that was—
The lock pinged from the box like a pressure-gun cartridge. The lid burst open hard enough to tear a hinge away. A chitinous, scythe-clawed arm snapped outward from the uncovered interior, fast enough to nick a notch in Seth’s brow if he hadn’t thrown the box across the room and scrambled back from it.
The beast burst forth with a buzzing shriek, unfolding like a cautionary tale from the dimensional impossibility of the box’s interior. A cicada brood’s seasonal allotment of calls, condensed into one shrill, cataclysmic second. And then a mastiff-sized thing was in the room, looking like a fly’s night terror of a praying mantis. Two scythe-bladed arms, four legs, two slavering pedipalped mouths. What sparse feathers clung to it were in ersatz, piebald patches like it had scuttled through a gamefowl slaughterhouse. Sitting in its malformed skull were two fist-sized balls of human eyes, rolling and blinking and bloodshot.
The clustered eyes focused as one on Seth. The corpselamp above the desk sputtered and strobed.
A seraph, Seth had time to think. Saints fucking save me—it’s a seraph in a box.
And then it leapt at him, claws outstretched.