Chapter 5
We dragged the dazed sorceress into the alleyway that we had been hiding in. We couldn't find anything else to use, so we had to rip up Viria's black cloak and use that to tie up both her and the big guy, using metal pipes that were embedded into the wall a few feet off of the ground to anchor them. Then, at my behest, Kir snapped his fingers and made the coils of light retract so that they were only wrapped around the arms, legs and torsos of both of the thugs. Almost simultaneously, both of them blinked their eyes and their heads snapped up in shock.
"What is-"
"How dare you-"
They both stopped and whipped their heads around to stare in shock at each other.
"Conrad!" Viria choked out, surprise evident on her face.
"Viria," the big guy replied, with a nod. Oh, this was getting interesting. I had assumed they were working together, but if they weren't that meant of course that Cario and Byars were both gunning for me, as I suspected. Fantastic. I cleared my throat, hands going to rest on my hips. Both thugs snapped their attention back to me, anger clear on their faces.
"Look," I started, matching their glares with one of my own. "I know one of you was hired by Cario, and the other one was hired by Byars. I don't care who is who, really. I just need to know how many more of you there are."
Viria looked visibly startled, and Conrad spat out a curse, turning to glare down the alleyway. I started tapping my foot, impatiently.
"One way or another I'm going to get the information I need, so you might as well spill it before I have to make things ugly," I threatened. Conrad just laughed.
"You don't have the time to make me talk, girlie," he replied. I narrowed my eyes at him, but Viria started to talk.
"Truthfully, I'm not sure which of them hired me," she started. I blinked in surprise, but directed my full attention to her. "This was a personal favor for another member of the Flame Guard. I only know the basics." she said. I believed her.
"What were you asked to do, exactly? Stall me? Kill me?" I asked.
"I was to attempt to knock you out and capture both of you. Failing that, I was to stall you for as long as possible, but not permanently harm you unless it was necessary, and to absolutely not harm him," she replied, nodding in Kir’s direction. I nodded. This information on its own wouldn't be much help, but I could be reasonably sure that Viria was working for whichever man that Conrad wasn't. I turned to him with a menacing grin.
"Well?" I asked.
"Just because she's a fuckin' blabbermouth doesn't mean I'm gonna talk," he replied. I casually unsheathed my short sword and used it to prod none too gently at his wounded and blackened palm. He winced, making a sharp, pained sound.
"I don't really want to do this," I told him, pressing the sword's tip in a little harder as I said it. He set his jaw and glared up at me, not talking. I eased up on the pressure a little bit, finally pulling the sword fully away from him. He relaxed, visibly.
"She said your name was Conrad, didn't she?" I asked, turning abruptly to walk a few paces down the alleyway, bringing a finger up to tap thoughtfully at my chin. "Working as hired muscle in a place like Kiiren. And if you're coming after me tonight, that means you couldn't get hired by the Curadon...or you didn't want to. Either way, that means your options are pretty limited in these parts." I paced back and forth, giving Conrad deliberate and theatrical looks. He just continued to glare, silently. I came to a stop in front of him again, facing him.
"It'd be a shame if you somehow got your hand permanently damaged," I said, with a malicious little grin. I leaned closer, brandishing the sword at him. "That would make it almost impossible to get work, now wouldn't it?" His face didn't change at all, and he didn't say a word. He was calling my bluff, and it was time for me to act. Without changing my expression in the slightest, and maintaining eye contact the entire time, I stabbed the short sword directly into his hand, right on the cut, and drove it through his hand and a few inches into the brick wall. It took him a second to register what had happened, eyes going wide with shock and pain. It took Kir and Viria a few more seconds than him to realize it, Kir gasping audibly, and Viria going white.
To his credit, Conrad didn't start howling in pain. He broke eye contact, bowing his head and squeezing his eyes shut as he breathed steadily and heavily through clenched teeth. He was good at managing pain, it seemed.
"Tell me who hired you," I started, my voice cold and flat. "Tell me how many others he has. Tell me what he hired you to do."
"Fuck you," Conrad swore, not bothering to even look up. I calmly tugged on the sword, wrenching it out of the wall and out of his hand. This time he did make a pained noise, but he didn't look up. I waited for a couple of moments until his breathing became steady, and then without warning I stabbed the sword into his other hand. This caught him by surprise and he jerked his head up with a sharp intake of breath. I left the sword in the wall this time, leaning over him.
"If you don't get this healed soon, it's going to be permanent," I hissed at him. "Tell me."
"I ain't telling you a thing, bitch," he swore in return. I reached again for the sword, and Kir put a hand on my wrist. It wasn't a threatening gesture, but he flinched a little when I turned to glare at him. He pushed my hand down to my side, not forcefully, and I let him. Then, he turned to address Conrad.
"If you tell us what you know, I'll heal your hands," he offered. Conrad hissed in annoyance, but finally raised his head to look at us and nodded.
"All right," he said. "Heal me first." Kir nodded and immediately took up a casting stance. I reached up and removed my sword, wiping the blade on his pants. He didn't look amused. Small healing spells were designed to be cast very quickly, so in no time Kir was done, pale blue light washing over both of Conrad's hands. The wounds closed abruptly, leaving behind only pale lines. He even went to the trouble of healing Conrad's burn.
"Okay, now talk," I prompted, pointedly not sheathing my short sword. Conrad nodded.
"Byars has seven others that I know of. Three low-pay grunts calling themselves the Deadly Trio of something or other, I didn’t care to get the full name and I don’t care now," he said, rolling his eyes before continuing. "Two more mercenaries like me, and two mages."
I sighed. It could have been worse. At least three of them were already taken care of.
"And what were your exact orders?" I prompted.
"I was supposed to wait for an opportunity to ambush you outside your apartment. Knock you out if I could, kill you otherwise, but I wasn't supposed to hurt the man you are with. And if I ran into any of Cario's thugs, I was supposed to try to take them out too."
I nodded. Just like I thought.
"Well, you've both been major pains the ass, but also very helpful," I said. Then I turned to Kir. "Knock 'em out." He nodded, snapping his fingers. The light from Kir’s earlier spell closed around their necks, and they returned to their previously dazed states.
"We're not going to leave them here, are we?" Kir asked. I shook my head.
"Nope. We'll drag them out into the street and then make sure the police know where they are," I replied, busying myself with untying the makeshift ropes from the water pipes. It added a little to our time, but soon we had them out on the street, slumped against a wall. Judging by the shrill whistles every few seconds, the police knew something had happened here and I didn't want to stick around for that, so we bolted. I grabbed Kir’s arm and ran for the apartment building as fast as I could once we had both thugs clear of the alley. If there were any more hired goons around—and I was sure that there were—they wouldn't be attacking us at the moment for fear of being caught by the police.
Safely inside the lobby of my apartment building, I hovered by the entrance for a few moments longer just to make sure that the police found the two thugs. They did. I motioned for Kir to follow and pulled a ring with three keys on it out of one of the pouches on my belt. I used the biggest of the three keys to open the door to the stairwell, and we hurried up to my apartment. Fortunately, we didn't have to go far as I lived on the third floor. I was fairly certain that there wasn't anyone lurking in the building, but I was still cautious as I approached my apartment, number 317, and unlocked the door with a different key. I flipped the light switch out of habit and peered around suspiciously. Nothing was out of place, and I didn't get the sense that anybody had been inside. Satisfied, I stepped in, shutting and locking the door behind me once Kir was inside. Then I went to the large windows that had a spectacular view of the city and looked around warily before shutting the curtains. Satisfied with the safe state of my apartment, I pulled off my cloak and draped it over my left arm, a reflexive action I wouldn't have normally noticed, except that the fabric brushed against the burn on my wrist. I winced.
"Your apartment is...normal," Kir commented, still standing in the doorway. He looked like he didn't have any idea what to do with himself.
"What were you expecting?" I asked, and then motioned at the big tan sofa in the middle of my living room. He hesitated for a second.
"It's small. I guess I was expecting someone who was casually carrying seven million bullion around to live a little more extravagantly," he answered, crossing the space to sit down on the couch, stiffly. I shrugged, and made a beeline for my bedroom.
"I leave that sort of thing to the rich," I replied, tossing the cloak on my bed and crossing to a set of shelves on the wall. I pulled a white box off of the bottom-most shelf. "I just prefer to live comfortably."
The box was my emergency medical kit and contained standard wares of one: bandages, painkillers, various salves, herbs, medical tape, a few potions, and, after a few minutes of digging, some burn-relief salve. I greedily snapped open one of the capsules, pushed up my left sleeve and smeared the green gel over the burned stripe of skin where the armlet had been. It stung, but I'd had worse, and soon enough the stinging was replaced with a nice, cool sensation. I broke open another capsule and repeated the process, glancing over at a clock on the wall. I only had about an hour to meet the Curadon's deadline, so I needed to get moving. I fished a roll of gauze out of the box and wrapped it gently around the burn, managing to cut the gauze, secure it, and then repeat the process with a cloth bandage, all with one hand. Damn I'm good. It wasn't like I made a habit of getting injured, but in my line of work it was a career hazard, so I'd gotten pretty good at bandaging myself up.
Satisfied with that I made my way over to the wall beside my bed and groped at the wall for a few seconds. I finally found a small section that was slightly indented and pushed down. A rectangular panel seven inches wide and three inches tall fell away. Behind where the panel had been there was a padlock, which I unlocked with another key and extracted a metal plate from the wall, which I set aside carefully. I hooked a finger into the metal loop that the padlock had been fastened to and pulled, carefully pulling a long metal box out of the wall. I lugged it over to the bed and got to work opening it. There was another lock on the top of the box, this one a numerical lock, which I entered almost as easily as I breathed. The top of the box popped up, now a lid, and I opened it. Inside there were neat stacks of golden coins and a bunch of magical artifacts and trinkets, valuable and invaluable alike.
I drew out stacks of gold coins, counting them carefully and setting them on the bed as I went. In no time I had counted out four million, and I divided them up into neatly manageable piles. I grabbed a few more gold coins and a handful of silver ones, shoving those into a pouch on my belt. I pondered over the trinkets in the box for a few minutes before plucking several amulets and a bracelet out of the box, and then closing it and putting it back in the wall.
It had taken me the better part of a week to plan it, get together the supplies, and then construct and install this entire setup, but it was totally worth it. Robbers were common in this day and age, and while the police were better about patrolling the area nowadays there were still break-ins and robberies around here all of the time. In fact, my apartment had been broken into at least three times and not once had the robbers actually managed to find anything of value. That was part of the reason I didn't live 'extravagantly', as Kir had put it. Not because I was worried about losing valuable things, but because I took great pleasure in knowing that no mere robber would ever be getting anything of value out of breaking into my apartment. Imagining their disappointment and frustration gave me life.
With the money counted, I turned a contemplative eye on my closet. If we were going to get to our destination in time, disguises were necessary. I also had no idea what challenges were going to be facing on the way there, or for that matter on the way back. It had been necessary to change my name and address after I'd bought Koreo ten years ago, after all. It would take a little longer, but it couldn't possibly hurt to be prepared.
I reached into my closet and, with some effort, dragged a platter-sized purple bag out of my closet and heaved it onto the bed. This was far and away the most valuable item I owned. It was called a Mimosa Infinity Bag, and only maybe a few dozen of these existed in the world. This was mostly because only one person in the world had ever figured out how to make them. She was a Master Seamstress by the name of Mimosa, and it took her the better part of six years at a time to make them. They were priceless, and any attempts at buying one had been rebuffed time and time again by Mimosa. It was thanks to my old mentor that I'd gotten one at all, as he was a close friend of Mimosa's. And, honestly, even though he had taught me almost everything I know, I still considered the bag the most valuable thing that I had left his mentorship with.
It wasn't just called an Infinity Bag for show. It could literally contain anything that was small enough to fit through its opening. When it was closed it was small enough to hold in both hands. Inside, however, I was storing countless amounts of books, clothes, dishes, artifacts, and a ton of other knick knacks. Since settling into this apartment I had been increasingly using it as bonus storage. Perhaps that wasn't not the original intention, but it was really handy. It was also really heavy, and it was all but impossible to try to organize it in any meaningful way, so there were limits on how useful it was.
There wasn't time, so I just started shoving stuff into it. I could sort everything out later, right now I would just deal with it being really heavy. In went the medical kit, too, and about a dozen other things and a few changes of clothes. I put the four million in coins into a different bag, but this one was just a normal cloth bag. That went in last, and with some difficulty I lifted the now heavier Infinity Bag and settled the violet leather strap across my right shoulder, settling the bag by my left hip. I tossed on the blue cloak I'd been wearing before.
With all that in place I made my way back into the living room. Kir was still sitting on the sofa, though on closer inspection it turned out he was asleep, slightly slumped against the arm of the sofa, open newspaper in his lap. I glanced at the clock - no time for an interrogation.
"Hey," I said, poking him in the shoulder. He startled awake, eyes darting around the room in panic and confusion before settling on me.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep!" he exclaimed. I chuckled, and motioned for him to get up.
"Come on, we're running out of time.” He rose, frowning, and followed me to the door. I reached over and opened a small storage closet beside the front door. Inside were a bunch of hanging cloaks and coats, with a shelf above them full of a bunch of odds and ends. I reached behind the coats and pulled out a long, thin silver sword in a white leather sheath. There was a strap near the hilt of the sword, which I used to tie to my belt on my right side. The weight of the sword was familiar and made me feel about a zillion times better about my general outlook on surviving the night.
I gave up on trying to pick out a different cloak and just tossed half a dozen of them into the Infinity Bag, Kir watching with a comically flabbergasted look on his face. I also reached up onto the shelf and fumbled around a bit before triumphantly pulling out a bunch of wool hats, similar to the blue one I was currently wearing. I tossed them into the bag too, holding out a dark green wool hat to Kir. He took it with a nod, copying me by shoving his hair under it and settling it onto his head. He had considerably shorter hair than mine, so the hat was a little loose on him, falling down to just above his eye level.
I locked the door behind me and we set off for the stairs. I checked around every corner nervously until we got there, and once we did I opened the door only a little bit and paused, listening for any sounds coming from inside the stairwell. We were, miraculously, still in the clear. With that I entered the stairwell, Kir behind me, and I promptly turned and started ascending the stairs.
"Wait, what are you doing?" Kir asked, bewildered. I didn't stop, and he just started climbing the stairs behind me.
"Goons are going to be expecting us to come out of one of the ground-level exits," I replied.
"Well, yes, but..." he returned, and I could just hear the confusion in his voice. I smiled.
"Naturally, that means we can't take a ground-level exit without a fight," I explained.
"So there's another way out?" he asked. I rolled my eyes.
"Of course."
My apartment building, blessedly, only had eight floors. The owner could have built more, sure, but he was incredibly superstitious, so instead he had focused on making the existing eight floors the best damn apartments ever, and by Hecatus they were. So we only had to ascend five more flights of stairs before reaching the door to the roof. Technically nobody was supposed to be able to use this door, but the building's owner liked me and he knew I liked to come up onto the roof sometimes, to stargaze or meditate or exercise. So after the fifth or sixth time I had picked the lock to the door he had just given me a key and express permission to come up here whenever I wanted to. Tonight I definitely wanted to. The door locked behind us, and it was a sturdy door with a really good lock. Sure, thugs could follow us if they really wanted to, but that was only if they even suspected that we were up here. It wasn't like the roof of the building was some great secret, but why in the world would I come up here when I was so pressed for time? I was sure that Kir was wondering that.
The building was only eight stories high while all of the rest of the buildings nearby were much taller, built and owned by presumably heathens that didn't share the superstition over the cursed number nine. This was to our advantage, however. Nobody would be looking for us up here, and even if they were, chances were very good that they wouldn't even be able to see us. Thugs would be waiting at the exits of this building, but they would have no reason at all to watch the exits of any of the other buildings, and that was exactly where we were going.
"Follow me," I told Kir. I headed for the building to our left, a towering square hotel that rose high up into the sky. I knew that their entire seventh floor, or at least the sections that faced the street, was a huge open space filled with clusters of tables and furniture, sculptures, fountains, and peppered with booths and service desks. There was also an open-air balcony area that jutted out from the building at all sides, covered by a sturdy stone roof. The nearest section of the balcony was only a short leap away. I pointed it out to Kir and stepped up onto the cement wall that fenced in the rooftop of my apartment building, only a few feet high but designed to keep people from accidentally falling off. It was just a hop, really, and I was over onto the balcony. I turned to find Kir staring at the distance to the ground, concerned. He followed suit, however, stepping up onto the barrier and jumping across with a terrified look on his face.
"Afraid of heights?" I asked.
"You could say that," he answered, cheeks red. I grinned.
"Don't lose your balance, then!" I replied, and took off at a swift jog, moving along the top of the balcony carefully. It was a few seconds before I heard hasty footsteps on the stone behind me. After only a couple of minutes we reached a part of the balcony that intersected with a sky bridge that connected this hotel with another building, crossing over a busy street below. I effortlessly crouched, grabbing onto the underside of the bridge, and was able to swing down and into the bridge with no difficulty. Kir looked pale and terrified when he swung down after me. I patted him on the shoulder.
"That should be all of the heights you have to deal with for now," I assured him, and started off across the bridge. At the end of the bridge was the entrance to another section of the same hotel, which we did not enter, and a spiraling staircase that went all the way down the ground, which we did. We made it down in no time and I paused a few feet up to look around carefully. I didn't see anyone suspicious, so we descended the rest of the stairs. I led us around to the front of this section of the hotel, cheerfully lit with what seemed like a billion golden lanterns. We found a carriage almost immediately, just like I thought we would. The driver looked surly and suspicious until I handed him money, prompting the old geezer to smile politely and ask where we needed to go.
"It's a hotel in northern Kiiren, the Crystale. I'm sure you know where it is," I told him, and he nodded. I glanced around once more time just to make sure we really hadn't been spotted, and Kir and I climbed into the covered back of the carriage. It was one of those carriages made for couples, only room enough for one person to sit on each side with the two benches facing each other. It also had curtains on the windows, which I drew closed as the driver nudged his horses to move. There would undoubtedly have been people waiting to ambush us at the train station, but hopefully a carriage would go unnoticed. The trip was going to take a significant portion of my remaining time, but there wasn't anything I could do about that, so I tried to make the best of it. I knew that between the sounds of the wheels and horses and the other traffic the driver wouldn't hear anything that wasn't being shouted, but just to be safe I leaned forward a bit and made sure to speak in hushed tones.
"We have a little while before we get to where we're going," I started. Kir nodded, also leaning forward. "I need to know about that tattoo on your shoulder." Kir looked surprised, instinctively reaching up to cover the tattoo even though it was already covered by two layers of clothes.
"What about it?" he asked, defensively.
"How you got it, where you got it, why you got it, what it means. Anything," I elaborated. He shook his head.
"I can't tell you anything," he answered. I searched his eyes for a moment, trying to detect a lie, but I couldn't find one. I frowned.
"You don't know anything about it?" I asked. He shook his head.
"No, I mean that I can't tell you anything," he answered. I folded my arms and glared.
"Can't or won't?" I prompted. He sat back against his seat with a frustrated noise.
"Can't," he said. My frown deepened. If he knew something but couldn't say anything...
"Is it some kind of compulsion, or curse? Do you know the information but literally cannot physically speak it?" I asked. He stared at me, blankly, but I could see frustration in his eyes. He wasn't denying it, and likely couldn't actually affirm it. I sighed, disappointed. Another dead end in the search for the meaning of that tattoo. A ten million bullion dead end.
Well...perhaps not completely dead. There might still have been clues, but right now there were more pressing issues at hand.
"All right then, tell me why you were being sold," I asked. He exhaled a long, long sigh and sat back in his seat, shrugging.
"I'll tell you what I can... it's the least I can do when you literally bought me out of potentially becoming a sex slave," he continued with a pained little laugh. I nodded.
"I'll keep your secret. What is it?" I asked.
"My name is Rashaga Krauze," he replied. I stared at him for a second, shocked.
"Krauze. You're a member of the Krauze family? THE Krauze family?" I asked, and he nodded. I narrowed my eyes.
It was hard not to know about the Krauze family, especially if you’d done literally any research into the Hecatus stones or followed recent Astorian politics at all. Ictus Krauze had been the man that had bought the Serpentarius from the Itagaria auction fifty years ago, after all. The whereabouts of the stone, naturally, were no longer known, but if anybody had the knowledge it was surely the Krauze family.
Details were fuzzy, but the current leadership of the family was Obsidia Krauze, also known as "Obsidia the Whirlwind", prominent mage and all around badass crazy bitch. Her parents, along with most of the other elder members of the Krauze family, were now dead. They’d been killed at the end of the more recent Astor-Xian War. Now all that remained of the Krauze family were Obsidia herself, some distant cousins that didn’t even share the last name, and if rumors were to be believed, a younger brother, though there were no official records of him. I narrowed my eyes.
"You're saying that you are the rumored younger brother of Obsidia Krauze?" I asked. He nodded. "You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you. Your existence is kind of a conspiracy theory, and a crazy one at that." He shook his head.
"I’m the real deal. My family kept my existence a secret, and I was in hiding," he corrected.
I frowned, mulling over the information.
"But that doesn't explain why the Curadon were auctioning you off. Surely they wouldn't have neglected to mention that you're a Krauze, unless they didn't know," I replied. He nodded.
"They never knew. If they had, they probably wouldn't have been selling me in the first place," he confirmed. I nodded.
"In that case, how in the world did you end up with the Curadon? Did they just randomly kidnap you?" I asked. Rashaga sighed, folding his arms.
"It was the Astorian government, of course," he replied. I could tell from the way he said it that 'government' was a word he hated saying. "They have been trying for decades now to find the Serpentarius. They seem to think my parents hid it somewhere, and that my sister and I know where it is. They can't even touch Obsidia, and I’d been living with a different identity for years at a university in Kyrens in the south of Astor. That worked really well until they found me."
"Go on," I prompted, leaning forward. This was finally getting interesting. He nodded, stopping for a second to hesitate, and I saw him starting to shake a little.
"They did things to me," he said, voice going as shaky as his hands were. "Lots of things, to try to get me to talk. But I can't say a damn thing about this tattoo or about the Serpentarius." I nodded. That was frustrating, but nothing could be done about it. Yet, anyway.
"After they determined that they weren't going to get any useful information out of me, they sold me to the Curadon without telling them who I was. I think they expected me to escape the Curadon and lead them to the Serpentarius, or eventually give the information to whoever bought me or…something," Rashaga continued. I nodded again.
"So what you're saying is that it is very possible that the Astorian government is also sending thugs after us," I finally said.
"Definitely," he confirmed. I sighed. Chances were very good that there had been a representative of the Astorian government at the auction, or at least watching the auction house. They knew what I looked like. By now, they probably knew where I lived. I'd have to lay low and stay away from my apartment for a while. I was now very thankful that I'd brought along the Infinity Bag. Speaking of...
"In that case, we're definitely going to need disguises," I said.
"Disguises?" Rashaga asked. I tugged on the drawstrings and pulled open the Infinity Bag, peering inside for a second. Rashaga gasped as I shoved my hand into the bag, nearly all the way to the elbow and seemingly through the carriage below it.
"What the?" he stammered.
"Infinity Bag," I answered, groping around inside the bag before pulling out a black coat from somewhere in the depths. I tossed it at him without preamble, and he just let it hit him, goggling at me as I plunged my hand back into the bag.
"How are you doing that? I thought it was weird when you put all the coats and hats in the bag, but I figured they were just enchanted to shrink or something," he stammered.
"Magic," I replied, and then frowned, pulling my hand back out and leaning over the bag to inspect a faraway corner of it. "It's bigger on the inside. Anyway, I don't think I have the pants to match that, so you'll just have to go with the coat and wear what you've got."
"What are you talking about?" Rashaga asked, bewildered. He held up the coat to inspect it. It was an old thing from a few years ago. Koreo had hosted a themed party at her tavern in honor of the fifth anniversary of the tavern's opening day. The only rule had been to "dress up as something you're not". I'd come dressed as a "proper gentleman", complete with a pompously big curly hairdo, oversized hat, and a black and white suit that was all boring straight lines and angles. It had been ridiculous and hilarious, and I was now sure, looking back on it, that I'd gotten rid of the hat and pants. The coat had stuck around, though, and for once I was thankful for my inherent packrat tendencies.
I felt around inside the bag some more, and came out with a mass of purple fabric and tulle and an amused smile on my face. This would be perfect.
"There are going to be thugs waiting for us when we get out of the carriage," I explained. I reached into the bag again, this time returning with a pair of leather boots dyed to match the dress in my lap. "Or rather, they're going to be looking for a woman wearing all blue with purple hair under a hat, and a guy with long black hair wearing mostly green."
"Right," he said, examining the coat again. "But why something so fancy?"
I just grinned.