“Remember that little village in the eastern reaches?” he asked Gary.
Gary looked at Rufus in surprise.
“The one with the flour mill?”
Rufus nodded and Gary burst out laughing.
“Am I missing something?” Jason asked.
“There was this flour mill,” Gary said. “Farrah wasn’t always so accurate with her unruly volcano powers and she blew up a flour mill. The explosion did kill the monster, though.”
“What kind of storytelling is that?” Rufus asked Gary. “You jumped right to the end.”
“If you want to tell it properly,” Gary said, “then tell it.”
“I will then,” Rufus said. “This was a few years ago, when Farrah and I had just hit bronze. Gary had been bronze for a few years when we met him, but he’d been slacking off.”
“I was focusing on my forge-craft, not slacking off.”
“So he claims,” Rufus said. “The three of us took this contract, way out in the eastern reaches. It was a long way and there weren’t a lot of takers, but it was a low-magic zone and we could go without supervision, so we accepted the contract.”
“I thought you told me coming out here was your first chance to take contracts without a silver-ranker over your shoulder.”
“Well, there was this one instance,” Rufus said. “It didn’t go very well.”
“They made us go back and deliver a bunch of food,” Gary said, “on account of having blown-up their flour mill.”
“What did I just say about jumping to the end?” Rufus asked. “So, we set out for the eastern reaches, and the mission seemed plagued from the start. One of the heidels went lame in the middle of nowhere, and none of us were healers. That was when we found out that heidels don’t respond well to healing potions…”
113
You Need to Work on Making Enemies
The cloud palace was not only the largest magic construction in Greenstone but it was also the most sophisticated. This was demonstrable in ways large and small, from its ability to take multiple forms to the amenities incorporated throughout the structure.
In Belinda and Sophie’s guest suite, there were several cooler cabinets, each with a front of translucent mist. Belinda went to the one specifically for non-alcoholic beverages and reached directly through the veil, her hand feeling the chill. She retrieved a frosty pitcher of fruit punch and took it back to the terrace table where she and Sophie had been spending their idle days.
“This is so strange,” she said, sitting down in a meltingly soft patio chair made of blue and white mist. “Did you ever expect to experience something like this?”
“No,” Sophie said, taking the pitcher and pouring out drinks into crystal tumblers. “It scares me.”
“You’re wondering that if it’s this good now, how wrong will it go later?”
“I am. I don’t know what game Asano is playing or how he intends to use us.”
“It can’t be worse than handing us over to Silva or that Magic Society guy,” Belinda said. “Look around. The director of the Adventure Society doesn’t dare come get us. If this is the company Asano is keeping, what does he care about Silva or even the local Magic Society? What would he possibly need us for?”
“Lots of things. None of which are good for us.”
“Jory thinks Asano is doing this to help us,” Belinda said.
“You don’t seriously believe that?”
“I believe that he believes it. So does Clive.”
After Asano and Bahadir had departed, Clive had periodically appeared to visit Belinda, the two spending hours going over the various tools and tricks she employed in her career as a professional thief. They also toured the cloud palace and its myriad wonders. The palace was enormous, with multiple wings in all directions, connected to a central building by cloud pathways. The palace was unaffected by floating on the exposed water, with neither wind nor wave causing so much as a shudder.
There were dining rooms, ballrooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, ritual rooms, parlours, terraces, kitchens, studies, training halls, libraries, art galleries, it just went on and on. In the lowest levels, below the waterline, there were lounges with walls of translucent mist, allowing occupants to see out into the water. Very few places seemed out of bounds, with the major exception being Bahadir’s personal suite. It occupied the top four floors of the central building but almost all other areas were open to them. The other restricted areas were secure rooms containing various valuables. The two thieves naturally thought of robbing the place but were not foolish enough to try.
Experimentally, they went to the cloud path that led to the shore. None of the people Emir left behind attempted to stop the two women as they stood just inside the palace, looking out. The bridge to the shore was anchored directly in front of the Adventure Society reception building, beyond which were gardened paths leading deeper into the campus.
“I really don’t think they’ll try to stop us leaving,” Belinda said.
“They don’t need to,” Sophie said. “Do you really think we’d get out of the Adventure Society grounds without being snatched up?”
Rufus held out his glass.
“To Farrah.”
Gary and Jason touched their glasses to his and they drank. The trio was in an open-air bar in one of the wealthier parts of the city of Boko. It had been a day and a half since they arrived and they had been exploring the city. It wasn’t a port city like Greenstone, or as large. As such, the population wasn’t as diverse, being made up almost entirely of humans. They were very dark-skinned, like the Ustei, but the cultures were clearly very different. The hairstyles in Boko weren’t wild and crazy, and the clothes weren’t a patchwork mess. The local fashion was loose and breathable, like that of Greenstone, but in more subdued colours. Earthy browns, yellows and reds dominated, compared to the kaleidoscope of colours the Greenstone populace preferred.
Gary and Rufus shared more stories about Farrah, while Jason brought them up to speed on his activities in their absence.
“You want to make this thief girl an adventurer?” Rufus asked. “What was her name again?”
“Sophie Wexler. She’s a celestine, no family ties in Greenstone, from what little I was able to get out of her.”
“It’s a creative solution,” Rufus said. “At the very least it would prevent her from being quietly handed off to Lamprey in some backroom political deal. The society would never allow that for a member.”
“Lamprey’s fixation on her is the key,” Jason said. “It’s the lever Arella is tugging on. If we can definitively remove Wexler from Lamprey’s reach, that lever goes away. Her political value vanishes, and she goes back to being just some woman from Old City.”
“The problem is her fugitive status,” Rufus said. “Until that gets resolved, you won’t be able to get her Adventure Society membership.”
“What if we did it here?” Gary asked. “She’s not a fugitive here in Boko, and they have an Adventure Society branch.”
“I thought about that,” Jason said. “There’s too much chance of Arella finding out and interfering. One communication to the branch director here and everything comes unravelled.”
“Then what’s the plan?” Rufus asked.
“The key is the service agreement between the Adventure Society and Greenstone,” Jason said. “The right to her indenture is clearly mine. So long as the Adventure Society legal advocate doesn’t roll over, there won’t be an issue. Which means we either need leverage on the advocate, or leverage on Arella.”
“The thing with her father being a crime lord isn’t enough?” Gary asked.
“I very much doubt it,” Jason said. “Rising above her criminal past to become an anti-corruption crusader is a narrative she can use to her advantage. It does make it harder for her to make any blatantly corrupt moves, though.”