A Heist of Scoundrels

1

Come the dawn, they’d be the richest thieves in Carintheum.

Or you’ll all be killed, thought Myria. It was that sort of business.

She stood at the summit of Elysius Tower, two inches from the edge.

A hot wind carried smoke and curse fumes over the carousing city.

Phaetons roared along the highways half a mile beneath her, and a hundred thousand streetlamps glimmered out to the horizon.

Carintheum thrummed like an idling engine even at the stroke of midnight.

Oh, tonight’s the night.

Light flared beside her as an amber archway carved itself into the dark. The figure of a man resolved inside it—lean, tawny haired and rakish. He stepped onto the rooftop in a trail of sparks, spinning a quill between his fingers. At a flick of the feather, the gateway vanished.

“Leo,” said Myria. “Took your time.”

“Can’t rush art,” he replied, brushing ash off his scarlet coat. Myria grinned. An evening suit straight from Astrius Lane, and he still looked scruffy.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Is he on his way?”

It was the kind of he that needed no elaboration. Among the wayward of Carintheum, that only ever meant one man. The master of the grayside. The lord to whom every crew of thieves and tricksters in the city owed their dues.

Vixius.

A chance to lead your first venture, Myria, came his voice in her memory. Impress me.

“I’ve cut the gateway,” said Leo. “He says he’ll come once we’ve cracked the vault, and not before.”

Thank the Low Gods. A twist unwound in her stomach. If a needle of disappointment pricked at her too, she ignored it.

“Splendid,” she said. “Come along. Hadria’s waiting. Lysander and Cass have started on the locks.”

Myria set out across the roof in a sweep of white skirts. Leo thrust his hands into his pockets and loped after her.

“Time we charged to the aid of the rabble?” he said.

“Don’t let Lysander hear you call him that.”

“Gods forfend. He might civilly reason me to death.”

“I’ve heard that man in the oratorium. Don’t invite it,” she said, then turned behind the chimney stack and stopped before an ascension column. Beneath the thin glass platform, the shaft disappeared into darkness.

Leo winced. “Mercy. That’s a long way down.”

“Your fault, old boy. You couldn’t draw us a doorway into the vault,” said Myria.

Nonetheless, she softened the words with a smile.

It didn’t pay to vex the crew’s silverwalker.

It was precious rare to find a thief with the power to pull aside the theater curtain of the world and take a backstage shortcut.

“The day you can cut through patrium spells a foot thick, old girl, I’ll allow the slight,” he muttered, stepping warily onto the platform.

Myria sighed and flexed her fingers. Not a spark. Also precious rare, though rather less natural. Her hand wandered to the faint scar on her chest.

“The day I could cut toast with arcana, I’d be satisfied,” she said, following him in.

She pulled the lever, and the platform glided down into a world of dust and groaning rafters. Insulation charms hummed on the air, and nesting pigeons rustled in the dark. Then, the roof cavity gave way to the echoing marble vastness of the Elysius Academy.

A university at night was a strange place; it felt unlawful to be there, even when it wasn’t. Floor after floor of libraries, laboratories and lecture halls hushed by in the darkness.

“Good grief. What a lot of books,” Leo murmured.

“Must be novel for you, setting foot in a seat of learning.”

“I’ll have you know, I left Christium with a top-class degree.”

“Really? Whose?”

“Dashed if I know. Looks jolly fine above the mantelpiece, though.”

“You’re an ass, old boy.”

“Twelve years, and you still say it as if you only just found out.”

Myria grinned and elbowed her companion. He ruffled in feigned affront, straightening his coat.

“Behave yourself, young lady.”

“That’d defeat the object,” she said. “Now, quick march. We have a vault to sack.”

Another patrium curse blocked the corridor before her in a trembling black veil. Not bad security, for a university; she’d only turned it off five minutes ago, and it was back already. It would’ve made tobacco out of any arcani who touched the surface.

Myria drew breath and stepped right into it.

The curse crawled buzzing hot across her skin. She could feel it tasting her, nosing about like a blind hound, ready to bite. Next came the familiar feeling—the spell wavering, perplexed, unable to catch the scent of hostile magic. She passed through, and it slid off her like oil on water.

“I still say that’s cheating,” Leo muttered, keeping a careful distance.

“Thought you approved of cheating.”

“Not when you’re the only one in the republic who can do it.” He sniffed and shot her a sidelong look. “Powerless plebeian.”

Myria only smiled and pulled a lever on the wall.

The curse parted, and her friend crossed after her.

Blessed be the industrial safety code, she thought.

It’d been mandatory for those off-the-shelf curses to open from the inside ever since some unlucky praetor had ended up trapped in a wine cellar for a week, back in ’28.

They turned to the way ahead, where a tunnel stretched out in one seamless glassy black expanse.

At least, it had been seamless, before they’d unleashed Cassia with a screwdriver and a short temper.

Now, sparks flared from loosened panels, and tangles of copper wire hummed every twenty feet along the wall.

Myria took Leo’s arm and set off down the tunnel.

The curses chittered to themselves on either side, the warning signals looping back to their own beginnings.

Leo whistled as they went, until, a hundred paces in, a higher whistle sounded in reply.

They took a sharp left turn, straight into what should’ve been a solid wall.

Arcana swept past her like the rush of the sea as she stepped through the illusion. Her mouth filled with an ocean tang. Typical academics—a plain old door wouldn’t do. Then the darkness cleared, and they emerged into the chamber beyond.

It was a gentlemanly tableau of burgundy leather and books, all wrapped in soft light. It could’ve been another of the cedar-paneled studies above ground, but for the vault.

The door was immense, a circular slab of teak and brass that covered one entire wall.

Lysander stood before it, running elegant gloved hands across the clockwork wheels on either side.

Cassia lay on her back to his right, squinting through a mess of black curls at the wires snaking out from the frame.

“’Ello, you lot,” she called through a mouthful of screws. “Anyone dead yet?”

“Give it time,” said Leo, sidling over to examine Lysander’s work. “You missed a spot.”

Lysander stared into the mechanisms, spinning turquoise dashes of arcana through the cogs. “Go forth and multiply,” he murmured, his gaze not flickering from his work.

“Don’t encourage him,” said Cassia. “And you, you blighter, don’t distract him.”

“Heavens, no. He might get dark arcana on his cuffs,” Leo said. “Jolly nice cuffs they are, too. Where’s the opera?”

Myria hid a smile. That was Lysander all over. Even for a little light vault cracking between friends, it was emerald silk tails, mirror-polished boots and lace cuffs that teetered on the brink of dandyism.

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing in a thousand-lyrin frock coat,” Cassia put in.

“A philosophy you evidently share,” said Leo, eyeing her attire. It did much to restore the sartorial balance; her brass-and-leather mechanist’s garb might charitably have been described as practical. The bruised and bloodied knuckles didn’t help.

“Punched anyone nice lately?” he added.

Cassia glanced at her hand in mid-retort, then paused. Arcana rippled down her Isran-dark skin, and the wounds vanished beneath a layer of illusory color.

Mercurials, Myria thought with a twinge of envy. She’d have saved herself a great deal of powder and costumer’s wax over the years if she’d been able to redraw her own looks at will.

“Button it, or I’ll donate your body to the sixth science,” said Cassia, turning back to her work.

“I don’t believe our laboratories are quite that desperate, my dear,” said Lysander, threading arcana like spider’s silk across the clockwork.

Myria fought the urge to lean in and watch.

The therical arts still fascinated her. The sixth science, they called it—that strange new craft where magic met mechanistry, usually to the vexation of both.

She could see those tendrils of arcana twisting into the tumblers of the lock, learning their shapes and testing their limits.

Hadria forbade them to bring consultants into their ventures. Fastest way to get sold out, she said. Lysander was the sole exception; the precision that’d made him one of the best therical surgeons in Carintheum had also made him an excellent criminal. Speaking of which . . .

“Is Hadria on watch?” she asked.

“Always,” said a husky voice from dead behind her. Lurking. Myria hid a grin as her teacher stepped from the shadows.

Hadria set a hand on her shoulder, and the hummingbird wings in Myria’s pulse began to slow. There it was—that assurance, deep as the ocean, that had steadied their little crew for as long as she could remember.

Myria looked sideways at her teacher for any telltale flickers of anxiety, but there was nothing.

Just that familiar face, all warm and earthy brown, from smiling eyes to curling Xanthian hair.

Those eyes might be edged with crow’s-feet now, and the ringlets threaded with gray, but little else had changed in twelve years.

“It’s all gone to plan down here,” said Hadria. A one-sided smile crossed her face, and she lowered her voice. “Enjoying holding the tiller so far?”

Performing for the master? Free rein to indulge in mischief? Yes. Yes, a part of her liked it. Mercifully, she had other, wiser parts.