Chapter 27 Fifteen Years Ago
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Fifteen Years Ago
When the boy from the woods was six years old, two Bloodmoons died on a heist, and Lorissa Rezaran narrowly escaped with her life.
The night of the funeral—grim pyre still smoking, though there had not been much left of their bodies to burn, let alone turn into jewels—the boy from the woods overheard his mother and father talking over steaming cups of spiked ambertea.
“…can’t help but think that if I’d had a better weaverwick, I might have been able to wind back the clock further,” Lorissa murmured, almost inaudible over the howling gale outside. The wind blew the scent of charred flesh through the cracks in the windowpanes. “To before we even started the raid.”
Lyrian shifted in his creaky chair. “You think you’re only able to weave for a few minutes at a time because the wand isn’t strong enough?”
A short, terrible silence. “Are you calling my own power into question?”
“No, my love. No, of course not.”
“Because if you’re doubting me, Lyrian—”
“Never. I have never doubted you for a moment. One day, I will be the king to your queen. I believe that with my full chest.”
The second silence was less perilous, but still charged with something raw and expectant.
“I’ve heard a rumor,” Lorissa said. “A rich courtier has a weaverwick wand stored in a private bank vault in Almere. An old family heirloom her ancestors refused to give up during the Great Purge. I’ve been looking into the bank’s security measures, and—”
“My love—a major bank?” Lyrian sounded aghast. “Perhaps a small, family-run institute in Lunes or Sorvel, but Almere is Bellandry’s second city. Their defenses will be great. We cannot afford to lose more mages. The ashes of our recent fallen are still warm, and already—”
“Very well.” The chair legs scraped along the floor as Lorissa stood. “I’ll go alone.”
Lyrian did not argue any further. Even the boy from the woods, tucked snugly in the bed next to his older brother, sensed the finality in the words, in his mother’s indomitable will.
Well—almost indomitable.
The next night, Lorissa Rezaran made good on her promise.
The boy from the woods, eternally restless, followed.
Earlier that morning, Lorissa had paid Vogolan, their best Brewer, a visit.
He’d scraped together the ingredients for three single vials of invisibility tincture, and she demanded one of those vials for a solo mission.
Vogolan obliged, though not without a wretched scowl and some choice words muttered under his stale breath.
A few hours later, her almost-son compelled Vogolan into handing over a second vial.
He employed only a light touch of command, given the deminite bracelet, and when he left the Brewer’s cabin, Vogolan found himself remarking upon what a wonderful little boy the swaddled baby was turning into—reflecting, in a manner not entirely authentic, that he would quite simply do anything to make the child happy.
Once dusk settled over the woods in an indigo haze, Lorissa slipped out of the cabin and into the twilight.
The boy threw the blankets off his small body, shrugged a black cloak and scuffed boots over his pale blue pajamas, and padded after her.
His brother did not stir, but when Lyrian stopped him at the front door with a thunderous expression, the boy calmly told his father not to worry, and so his father did not worry.
The boy stepped out into the woods, then retrieved the invisibility tincture from his cloak pocket.
Gulping it down in one, he watched in awe as his form blurred and vanished, then hared after his mother, who strode in the direction of the portari gate with her jaw thrust high, her scarlet cloak billowing, and her fallowwolf trotting at her heel.
A feeling of excitement fizzed through the boy as he tailed her.
Finally, a real adventure.
Almere was another world.
These buildings were not the rotting teeth of the Rezaran shacks, but rather tall, elegant structures with bottom halves built of dark gray stone, their tops cream-painted wood with swoopy brown detailing.
They were arranged in grand, winding streets colored with green-and-gold awnings, snaked through with a series of narrow streams and rivers.
Balustraded stone bridges with mossy ashlars arced over clear, babbling water.
The city arranged itself among the forest, trees clustered together between buildings and in the middle of boulevards, leafy canopies shading the slate rooftops, cobblestones warped from rising roots.
A gaggle of black-cloaked mages stumbled out of a tavern, arms flung over booze-slumped shoulders, bellowing a folk song in an unfamiliar tongue.
The sound of the foreign language gave the boy a peculiar thrill, as though he had stepped right into that weathered map he and his brother spent so long poring over.
A fine rain misted the air, and Almere’s dark stone shone white-gold beneath blurry lamps.
Lorissa Rezaran’s crimson cloak skimmed the glistening cobbles, until, down a narrow side street, she plunged her pale hands deep into her cloak pocket, extracted the invisibility tincture, and drank it down—offering a small sip to Rasso, who blinked out of the world beside her.
Tailing them became an exercise in strained ears and tentative forward steps.
The invisibility was not absolute, however, thanks to a shortfall in certain active ingredients, and so every ten feet the boy would spot a swish of red, a slice of pale cheekbone, a dark braid bouncing between shoulder blades, a shock of spectral white fur.
The strange party stopped outside a vast building at least triple the size of the structures all around it.
Dark stone base, cream and brown wood, with silver archivolts and a gilded sign that read Banq T’el Almèrue.
Two stone columns flanked the huge double doorway, each topped with a vulpine gargoyle—the blackfox was the national animal of Bellandry, native to the Forest of Lost Souls in the deep north.
Between the gargoyles stretched a shimmering sheet of magic-spun warding.
To destroy such a ward, one must cast a stripping spell with more force than the cumulative power of all the wardholders combined. For an important bank like this, there would be at least a dozen, which meant Lorissa would have to exert more force than twelve other mages together.
Achievable, for an organized heist crew, but alone…
Back at the camp, his mother had donned her ascenite vambrace with a somber smile.
The vambrace was a beautiful piece, originally belonging to the Nyr?thi military, with a series of built-in ascenite shards.
There were several ruby buttons notched up the inner panel, and with a single press, one shard would plunge through skin and flesh right to the bone.
The surge of pain was useful in battle, since it required no magic to inflict but granted the wearer a powerful boost. The ascenite acted as a sort of conductor on the wand arm, amplifying every spell by a factor of ten. It hurt, but it worked.
For anyone else, this still would not be enough to overpower a dozen wardholders. But Lorissa Rezaran was not just anyone.
The boy listened to the telltale hiss of pain as the Rezaran heir deployed shards of ascenite straight to her ulna. Then, beneath gritted breath, “Sen exuan.”
The ward shuddered and then dropped.
Immediately, a high-pitched shrieking noise erupted from the mouths of the gargoyle blackfoxes, as shrill and sharp as the top note on a violin.
Lorissa’s invisibility tincture flickered, and the boy caught a glimpse of a scarlet figure staggering from the sudden expenditure of massive power.
Moments later, one of the vast brass door handles turned seemingly of its own accord, but the door was, of course, locked. The magical wards were but one defensive measure against intruders, and surely, surely Lorissa was too depleted to—
“T’avunier donte nor,” came her agonized murmur.
The doors flung open at the sound of the password.
The blackfox gargoyles shrieked louder still.
The boy followed the sound of her footsteps over the threshold.
Inside, the Bank of Almere was awe-inspiring.
Four stories tall, the cavernous interior was ringed by mezzanine floors with ivy-twined balustrades.
The atrium was topped with an emerald glass dome, through which hazy moonlight filtered, green and fragmented, over a vast wyrmwood planted at the center.
Dark flagstones concentrically circled the tree, alternating with rings of hammered silver, and a series of streams and fountains was built into the ground, connected by low stone bridges so that the whole place felt like an extension of the city outside.
Around the outer edge of the ground floor, hundreds of mahogany tellers’ desks stood on raised daises, though their little bankers’ lamps had been extinguished for the night.
Lorissa’s footsteps were long, dragging, a sure sign of exhaustion.
They overlapped with the fallowwolf’s soft patters, sharp claws scraping against the flagstones.
The boy followed the twin sounds up a sweeping central staircase to the third mezzanine level before stopping outside an arched wooden door with a small gold plaque reading Vault 426.
Hardly daring to breathe for fear of being too loud, the boy heard the subtle swish of a cloak, then the grating click of a key into a lock—how did she have the key?
A turn, the sliding of bolts, and then the door sighed open.
The boy’s chest lurched. Surely it could not be this easy.
He entered the vault behind her, sliding nimbly through the crack of the closing door. The rich courtier’s vault was like a dragon’s lair. A plain enough room, with dark stone on the floor and walls and goldencandle lamps bolted to the walls, but its contents…