12 #3
They said Carintheum never stood still. If the interminable construction works were anything to go by, they were right.
She could’ve thrown a paper bird off any given building and hit a crew of council workers tearing up the street.
She chose the morning’s target using scarcely more scientific methods—the first one composed entirely of distracted young men ogling everything in skirts.
As such, when a curvaceous woman in a low-cut gown strolled past, they were as good as hypnotized. Myria slipped behind their phaeton lorry and charmed the padlock in a trice. The back was sealed with a half-hearted curse; she walked through it with barely a prickle.
The place was well organized, bless them, and it was the work of a moment to find the schematics for the arcanic grid.
She unfolded the copying charm sheet, pressed it over the map and snapped the string.
The sheet blazed rust red for a moment, then faded, leaving a perfect replica of the schematics in her hand.
She was out and away before Cassia had tottered fifty feet in her impractically high-heeled shoes.
Three hours later, the midday heat was melting through Carintheum.
The crowds began to pulse like a frantic heart, the office workers streaming out for lunch and the laborers trudging in for the shade.
No one paid any mind to the two workers chalking out lines at the edge of St. Aubrius’s Park, nor the prim councilwoman fussing around them as they began to dig.
After all, they had traffic cones and offensively orange vests.
Better than invisibility, Myria thought with glee. Besides, who’d bother fooling about with the grid under the midday sun if the Praetorium hadn’t paid them to do it? And once the paving stones were back in place, no one would know that they’d left a little something behind.
Not until it was far too late.
Once they’d taken the first step, the rest followed as fast as falling cards.
Myria watched from the rooftops at dawn and twilight as the night soil phaetons chuntered through Carintheum.
By day, she marched on with the righteous army, smiling to the workers who carried in Haideum’s supplies and memorizing each wagon that came and went.
She counted days in threes, marking each visit of the luminium cart.
She watched her back, unsure if Aurelias haunted her or if her own fears had taken over the duty.
Every moment, her mind was at work. She felt like a woman pedaling one of those amusing velocipedes about the city; keep the whole thing careering along fast enough, and perhaps it wouldn’t fall over.
Leo and Cassia limped from bloodshop to bloodshop, leaving their donations. Myria’s flask of tea ran lower with each trip. Then they paid a late-night visit to a certain luminium distillery in Veneum Lane, and the last drops disappeared.
Come the final night, they gathered in their hideout.
The walls shifted like fog, and the steel tables glinted coldly at the edges.
They’d cheered the place with rugs and amber lamps, though, and purple arcanic flames danced in a bowl between them.
They settled down on cushions, and Leo conjured a bottle of wine from a cut in the air.
“Decent vintage?” Myria asked, handing around the glasses.
“Straight from the Elementis cellars. Robust notes of caramel and decadence. All subsequent headaches . . . entirely worth it.”
“You can save those for tomorrow. We’ll meet back here at the sixth hour,” said Myria.
“Six?” Leo protested, with the look of a man who’d never seen two six o’clocks in one day before.
“Your comprehension’s keen as ever, my gallant darling.”
“Well, pish to that. The old man can stay in Haideum,” he said. Cassia snorted and gave her glass a demanding waggle.
“If Hadria heard you say that, she’d pull your innards out and shove them into your lungs.”
“Mmm,” Leo murmured, his expression turning wistful as he poured the wine. “Pantheon, I miss her.”
“Yes,” Myria said quietly. A whiplash of memory struck her unbidden—her teacher pinned to the vault wall, double-crossed and soaked in blood. Rage scattered sparks across dry tinder in her heart. With a wrench of will, she suffocated them before they could catch fire. It wasn’t the time.
“We’ll make her proud,” she said instead. “Haideum Castle. We’ll be the first in history to manage it.”
“We always joked about breaking in there,” Leo said with a crooked smile, staring into the flames.
“And she always told us not to be such splitwits,” said Cassia. They all grinned and raised their glasses. A pause.
Oh, pox.
They were looking to her. They were waiting for her to call the toast.
Not ready—
“To the devious,” she said. “To the dead. To Hadria.”
They clashed glasses, and Myria drank a hundred lyrin in one mouthful. The alcohol sped through her, bold and warming. It flooded over the nerves drawn tight and trembling, the anticipation stirring like a summer storm, and the hope that bound it all together.
We’ll make her proud, she thought, and then, we’ll settle her last score.