12 #2
“Righto. Well, an alchemist could whip up something like that,” said Cassia.
“And I met one, in Halcyon. He used something similar to blast out his neighbor’s orchestral charms one night.”
“And they put him in jail for that?” Leo snorted.
“Only on remand. Besides, he accidentally scuppered half the West Carintheum supply along with it.”
“Man after my own heart. Well, that leaves the grid. I don’t imagine it’d be hard to find a map of the substratum. Cassia, reckon you could sabotage the supply?”
“If no one minds us digging up a public road in broad daylight.”
“They won’t,” said Myria. “Put out traffic poles and orange tape, and you can get away with anything.”
“You were very bored in Halcyon, weren’t you?”
“Still, that only sees to the shields,” Leo went on. “What about the tracking furies?”
“They track arcanic imprints. I don’t have one, yours isn’t on the prefecture trace-base, and Cassia . . . I imagine your arcana’s so unstable that your trace is never the same from day to day.”
“Right you are,” said Cassia.
“Still, breaking in is one thing. Getting Lysander out of the eternity cells and safely away into the city . . .”
“Yes. There’s more to it,” said Myria, “and I’m afraid it involves no small amount of vomit. A little flirtation with the night soil run, too. I daresay you’ll despise me by the end of it, but with enough nerve . . . it will work.”
She knew no such thing, but Hadria had never let doubt inflect her voice. She had no better guide than imitation—for despite their questions, she could see it. Her friends were following her now.
As though on cue, Leo drew a deep breath and nodded. Cassia did likewise. Then, at another flick of her gauntleted fingers, her features steadied. The black merged into dark brown skin, and bright eyes opened in the void.
Myria took her hand by instinct, focusing all her memory on her old friend’s features.
She felt Cassia’s arcana seize the image, pulling it nearer like a mariner hauling rope.
By slow degrees, the darkness faded, painted over by a human face.
It wasn’t quite there, wasn’t quite right—but at last, it was recognizably her.
“There,” said Myria. “We’re going to win.”
They passed the dark hours in the thick of plotting. Cassia and Leo left near dawn; they each had appearances to keep up outside the silver lining. She’d best show her own face at the Althion, come daylight, in case Aurelias wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed.
Still, she felt no need of sleep. Myria spent the intervening hours making their hideout fit for habitation. That vague sense of familiarity scratched at her memory all the while.
It was an eerie place. The little-trodden reaches of the silver lining dissolved over time, like a garden slowly overrun by weeds. Sound and light grew dimmer, and the walls faded into soft gray smoke.
Soon, though, she’d pushed the steel tables to the wall and sorted out the therical tools that might be useful to Lysander.
Leo was right—the place looked like an old harvesters’ shop.
There were the tanks for extracting arcana, the vials for holding memories, even surgical equipment designed to extract bloodier prizes.
A weight lifted from her shoulders when she stepped out into the dawn. She hitched a ride to the Althion in a covered supply wagon and disembarked a pace from the servants’ door. An hour later, plain and virtuous again, she struck out into the city.
Within twenty minutes, she was at the door of a respectable West Carintheum terrace. The curtains were drawn, but she could hear the chink of porcelain from near at hand.
A sudden silence followed her knock, before the door swung open on the chain. The stink of pepper and vinegar assaulted her at once. A young man flopped into the gap, his cravat undone and his golden hair in a flyaway mess. He looked her quizzically up and down.
“Good morning, Mr. Galvius,” she said sweetly. “Donna Rosara. I don’t know if you’d recall me.”
“Yes. Yes!” he exclaimed, distraction morphing into recognition. “Well, well. If it isn’t the good influence.”
“Oh, dear, is that what they called me?” she said, setting a conspiratorial twinkle in her eye.
“Well, you always were a Goody Two-Shoes,” the young man answered with a chuckle.
“Oh, pish. It was only to convince the headmaster to let me out of class early.”
“Did he?”
“Three months.”
“Sterling stuff.”
“How’ve you fared since? Left your wicked ways behind?”
“I walk the paths of righteousness.”
For a man keeping company with seraphs, though, he’d struck a curiously obstructive pose across the door, and she’d wager that smell wasn’t his breakfast. Must’ve been working all morning, she thought, amused. Inured to the pong.
He’d never been a proper criminal. The man had crafted viruses like a virtuoso worked his lyre. Art for art’s sake, he’d said. She respected that.
“Must say, though, I didn’t expect to see you here,” he went on. “What’re you up to?”
“Oh, still finding my feet. I’ve taken lodgings nearby,” she said, turning her countenance grave. “The neighbors, though . . . dashed noisy. You see, I’m that far from . . . blowing a fuse.”
If the heavy emphasis and dead-on stare didn’t deliver the message, the gold coin that flashed from her palm certainly did. His lips parted.
Myria glanced past him through the doorway. Galvius was too slow to block her, and she glimpsed the kitchen before he moved. Rack upon rack of teapots steamed atop the counter amid a tangle of alchemical equipment.
Someone’s been brewing. Oh, you poor young thing. What a cunning disguise.
“I say. Didn’t know you were a collector!” she said with a jovial smile.
“Collector?” He looked over his shoulder. “Oh, yes. Teapots. Wholesome creatures, don’t you think?”
“Most certainly.”
“Attractive little bijoux. Round lines, earthy glow . . .”
“Quite so. Actually, I . . . don’t suppose I could come in for a cup? For old times’ sake?” she asked; and as she did, a thick roll of lyrin peeked out from her cuff. His eyes fixed upon it like a magpie spying a gleam in the grass, and he answered with a brilliant smile.
“I’d be delighted, Miss Rosara.”
Myria left with her very own flask of tea and a purse somewhat less burdened with lyrin.
There was no sign of Aurelias when she returned to the Althion.
Nonetheless, Leo took the precaution of collecting her through the silver lining the next morning.
After all, it’d be difficult for a proper young lady to explain to the prefecture why she was carrying lockpicks, wearing workman’s clothes and hiding a copying charm inside her glove.
They stepped out of the gateway into a pleasant inner-city office. Cassia lounged behind the kind of desk that bankers used to intimidate the poor, her feet crossed on a stack of papers.
“I say. Is this yours?” asked Myria, sizing up the tasteful decoration and neat rows of files.
“My office,” Leo sighed, looking about the place as though it had put an anchor on his soul.
“You’ve done well for yourself, old boy.”
“Mmm,” he said glumly. Then he looked at her sidelong, and the spark returned. “Finance. It’s a great deal more fun when none of it’s true.”
“I met a few bankers in Halcyon who had the same philosophy. Now, did you find the necessaries?”
“Pinched them off a construction site,” Leo said. He flicked his feather down the air, then drew the gash back like a curtain to reveal a stock of traffic cones, shovels and tasteless orange vests.
“No one saw you?”
“Of course not. What do you think I did all that time at Christium?”
“I didn’t think it polite to say.”
“Well, that too, but there’s nothing like finishing duck-race night by redirecting all the Chrysius Circuit traffic to the sewerage plant.”
“I’ve evidently lived a wasted life. Cassia, you’ll be stable enough to manage a short spell as an alter ego?”
“Reckon so,” she said, swinging to her feet. “I’ve been practicing all morning. Managed my worst yet.”
She grinned and spun a gloss of Leo’s face across her own. He tossed a scrunched-up ball of paper at her.
“Excellent,” said Myria, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s go and disturb the peace.”