It was funny, Lillet thought as she looked up at the statue of Athena, that there was nearly as much art depicting classical mythology, which no one believed in, as there was concerning actual religion. What was it about these gods that did not exist that so attracted people?
Idly, she wondered if it would be possible to summon Athena as a familiar. After all, Charon came from the same myth-cycle. Then again, the Grim Reaper, the Angel of Death, was a more universal concept. The shadows of that entity summoned by necromancy might use the form of Charon, but that was just the shape given those shadows by the magician upon summoning.
The fact that she was letting her mind wander over such topics had everything to do with it being quarter past three and there being no sign of the crow. The Royal House of Magic had been buzzing all morning over the intrusion--luckily, it wasn't Lillet's job to help with the investigation, or else things could have gotten really confusing--and here Lillet was standing around with the stolen goods in her pocket.
Belatedly, she wondered if maybe that was the point: to have her disgraced and arrested, Could she have a personal enemy who wanted that? She didn't think any of the other magicians had that kind of feeling towards her, though she knew there was some envy towards her skills. The idea of the Archmage's former followers again occurred to her; they'd certainly be motivated towards revenge.
Well, if a squad of palace guards appeared, she'd know the theft was just a set-up. She wouldn't be able to defend herself, either--not with Amoretta's life on the line.
A rustle of wings changed things, and the black-feathered bird descended out of the sky to perch atop Athena's owl. It looked as tousled and unkempt as it had the day before, and leered at her with obsidian eyes.
"You kept me waiting."
"And what if I did? You serve at my master's pleasure, Lillet Blan. Ten minutes, an hour, a day, you will wait as long as I happen to want to keep you. Did you get it?"
"Of course I did. Doesn't your master know that?"
"When you resorted to such a clumsy and inelegant method as the use of brute force? Who knows if you did the job right when that's the best you can do?"
Lillet smirked.
"Your master ought to teach you better, crow. Sometimes brute force is the subtlest approach, particularly if you don't want your adversary to know that you're capable of finesse."
The crow flapped its wings, scattering a couple of black plumes, and cawed raucously.
"Don't think that just because you've done one job that you can start feeling smug. You'll dance to our tune, Lillet Blan, until you've done what we want, or else that laboratory-made whore of yours will--"
Lillet snapped her fingers and a bolt of light shot from the shrubbery. It burst like a firework just above the crow, creating a field of sparkling, crackling energy. The familiar twisted and writhed under the assault before collapsing into a shower of black ash.
The shrubbery rustled, and a strange creature walked out. It had an oddly rolling gait, because it looked as if it had been stuffed head-first into an alchemical flask from which only its hands and feet protruded. This was not actually the case, though, for its orange-furred body and catlike head had actually grown inside the flask and it had only poked its limbs out so it could move around. The creature was a homunculus, not entirely different from Amoretta but lacking in one significant point: without the angel's spirit within her it was an incomplete form of life, unable to leave its life-sustaining flask. Though odd-looking, they were faithful servants to alchemists, and as the crow had found out could be made quite powerful by the design of a skilled master.
"Did I do it right, Creator?" the creature asked in a high, chirpy voice.
"Exactly right." Lillet had arrived early for the scheduled meeting and secreted the little creature in case of treachery that demanded an instant response. She folded her arms across her chest and looked around the clearing. "Well?" she called. "Are we going to talk this over, or what?"
"You are lucky that your lover's flask was not shattered for your insolence."
This time it was a rat, small and black. There was a hint of scarlet in its dark eyes, and its tousled fur announced its kinship to the crow. The rat perched on a stone bench off to Lillet's right, glaring warily at her.
"From what he's done so far, I didn't think that your master was stupid," Lillet said.
"And you were correct, which is why we are talking now. Don't try any more surprises, though. I'm nothing like that feathered pawn."
"I can see that." She could, too; as a magician she could tell that this was a much different order of devil than the crow, hardier and with more tricks up its metaphorical sleeves.
"Why did you destroy the messenger?"
Lillet met its gaze without blinking.
"I won't have Amoretta talked about in that way."
The rat wrinkled its nose.
"Even at the risk of her life?"
"Your master wants something from me, or he wouldn't be going to all this trouble. Whatever it is, it's worth theft, kidnapping, extortion, and murder to him. If he wants to get it, then he can deal civilly with me. If he can't find messengers willing to hold their tongue, he can keep summoning new ones."
The rat twitched its nose again.
"That suits me. This is all too theatrical, anyway. From now on, you'll deal with me."
"What shall I call you?"
"Tempell," the rat hissed. "Now let's get to business. Give me the amulet."
Lillet took it out of her pocket and flipped it at the bench. The rat caught the scarlet thong in its front paws, the foreclaws moving about like tiny hands. Lillet watched, sickly fascinated, as it reeled in the medallion and sniffed at it. Who knew, maybe it could sense the amulet's magic like a natural animal could scent food.
"Good, this is it. We already know of your work on the break-in. I'm glad you had the sense to cooperate."
"You have Amoretta's life."
"Why that matters to you is your problem."
Lillet gritted her teeth but said nothing. She'd made her point once already and to take on the rat would not only require a magical battle but put Amoretta at serious risk. Besides which, Tempell's curt manner suggested that it had not meant the comment as an insult but merely an observation, that the devil-rat genuinely believed that to care about another person was a character flaw.
"So what do you want from me next?" she contented herself with asking.
"Direct. That's good." It paused, its eyes going curiously blank, and Lillet realized that it was in silent communication with its summoner. "We'll do this tomorrow, then. Do you know where the Grand Cathedral used to be?"
Lillet thought about it. She didn't know the city all that well, but the name rang a bell from when she and Amoretta had gone sightseeing during their first month living in the capital.
"Is that the ruin on the west side of Alder Square?"
"Yes. There's a crypt underneath it. Meet us there at half past nine. Take care; there are alarm wards on it to keep out the riff-raff."
A sarcastic reply leapt to mind, but Lillet was able to hold her tongue.
"All right, then. I'll be there."
"Good." Tempell hopped off the back of the bench and dashed away into the bushes, vanishing with nary a rustle of leaves.
The homunculus looked up at Lillet and said brightly, "Life certainly is exciting outside the bottle."
Amoretta was waiting eagerly when Lillet returned to the palace.
"Did it work?"
"Perfectly! That crow showed up again and started running its beak about you, so I blasted it to ash. Like we figured, the magician had a second familiar monitoring things, one that was much more powerful than the crow, and we had a relatively straightforward talk." She told Amoretta about Tempell. "They want me to go to the crypt under the ruins of the Grand Cathedral tomorrow night for the next step, so I also think we were right about the first job being a test. Best of all, though, is that the rat took the amulet without doing more than making sure it was the right one. I think we have them, Amoretta."
Her lover smiled happily.
"There! I knew you'd think of something."
"I'm going to go down to the lab and take a look at things right now. Once we've established who has the flask and where, I'm sure we can think of a plan before tomorrow night."
Lillet had come up with the idea as soon as she'd seen the amulet; it was why she'd thought it was the key to finding Amoretta's flask. In a way, the extortionists had given her the idea. Their note had warned her not to try and use scrying magic to find the flask because it was under ward, and the flask was the only thing she could scry. This form of magic required a piece of something to be able to seek out the remainder--hair, nail clippings, or blood from a person, for example, or a few straws from a broom, a corner torn from a sheet of paper, or a homunculus for the flask that contained her life. The flask might have been warded, but the amulet would not be, not yet. A ward had to be stationary, anyway, and an inherently movable object meant to be worn would not be kept in a fixed location.
The brass medallion was out, of course; even shaving a few filings from it might be enough to disrupt the spells in it, which Lillet hadn't been willing to risk. The red thong, though, was different. Lillet had untied it, clipped a short piece from one end, frayed up the stub so the cut wasn't obvious, and retied it. The clipped piece she'd put into a vessel filled with liquid wax through which a wick was threaded, then once it was cooled left to steep in a solution of herb-laced water for a minimum of four hours. Once completed, the scrying candle would allow Lillet to view the amulet, and more importantly its location and the people who had it. Because it was centered on an object, it could push past protections against magical observation that shielded a particular place. Lillet had actually had a couple of long talks with Armand Tanqueray about how to configure a warding Rune that would block both general and specific scrying over a particular area, but they hadn't quite solved the problem yet, for which she was now glad.
She found the ward expert in the lab, looking frazzled. His long beard was a tangle from him pulling at it in frustration and the tip of his star-speckled, conical hat was drooping as if it, too was fatigued. Lillet felt a little guilty, since it was the investigation into her burglary that no doubt had left him in that state. He would have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what had been done to bypass the guardians and if any clues had been left, and more time dodging questions from people who were really only venting their indignation over the fact it had happened in the first place.
No, she really did feel sorry for Master Tanqueray, so she readily forgave his rude greeting.
"Ah, Miss Blan. Come to pester me for details about last night's offense, no doubt," he snapped upon seeing her.
"Um, no, actually, I just had a scrying candle to pick up."
"Well, that makes you the first person I've met all day who isn't. Pestering me, that is. Thieves breaking into the Royal House of Magic! It's absurd, if you think about it. How could a magician get into the palace without leaving a trace, then suddenly have to resort to brute force to get into the Artifact Room? It doesn't make sense." He tugged at his beard. "Let me tell you, even the Chamberlain is fit to be tied. One of our jobs as Royal Magicians is to keep Her Majesty safe from a magical attack by the kingdom's enemies, and it doesn't exactly inspire confidence when we can't even protect our own possessions!"
"That's not fair. It wasn't even the vaults. The Artifact Room is like...a storage closet. If we were the Guard, it would be like someone stealing the wooden practice swords."
Tanqueray chuckled at the thought.
"More like one wooden practice sword, at that. It's the damnedest thing about it. Never mind how the thief got into the building without leaving traces, or why he or she decided to switch over to the direct approach. Why, then, just take one item from one case? Why not clean out everything of value? At the least, why not take whatever else was in that one case the thief did open? There was a perfectly good wand there, and four bottles of Reynard's Solution."
"Really? Orange or blue?" Lillet asked, succumbing to the urge to talk shop. She hadn't even noticed when she'd been pilfering the amulet.
"Blue--the enhanced version, nonetheless. How would anyone who is magician enough to get by wards Ms. Absinthe and I set not want that?"
"That's a very single-minded thief."
"Quite the strange character, whomever it was."
"Well, I'll just pick up my candle and get out of your way, then, Master Tanqueray."
Tanqueray snorted.
"Master, indeed! You're the last person who should be calling any magician, 'Master,' Lillet. Everyone knows you're the best of us all, even if some dried-up sticks can't bring themselves to admit it."
"Master Tanqueray, that's just not true."
"Oh, isn't it? You're one of only two people here I can hold a decent conversation with on the subject of ward spells and not lose you halfway through the talk, and it's not even your specialty. You tell me that isn't talent to be proud of."
"It's...not talent." she said hesitantly. Just decades--maybe centuries--spent falling through the loops of time. Anyone would be a great magician with that kind of time to practice. She only carried the memories of five trips through the five days, but knew there had been countless others in which she'd gone from complete beginner to master.
Tanqueray snorted again.
"I suppose that modesty is more becoming than some people's puffed-up pride. Well, don't let me keep you from getting--oh, blast, did you say that scrying candle was yours?"
"Y-yes. Is something wrong?"
"Just another in the series of irritants and disasters that have been going on in the past day. I hope you have more of the original sample, because the candle is ruined."
"Ruined?" Lillet yelped. "What happened?"
"What happened is some idiot managed to upset a whole rack of caustic alchemy reagents on the table next to yours. It took out the cauldron, the candle, a chunk of the bench, and Johann Pabst's research into elf-shot arrows. Of course, your work and Pabst's were both glamour magic, so I suspect the chemicals had already been partially enchanted before the accident, alchemy being especially effective against glamour and the magic enhancing the damaging effects of the reagents. And whatever idiot did it didn't even have the decency to apologize or even clean up after himself. I suppose to be fair, he might not have known who it was he was supposed to apologize to, but after the day I've had I'm not inclined to be fair!"
Lillet wasn't inclined to be fair, either, but for another reason entirely. It was absurd to think it was a coincidence. Somehow, her enemy had learned what she was up to and very effectively ruined her plan.
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NOTE: Johann Pabst's name comes from Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
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