The ruling seat of the Sahelians was called the Empyrean Palace. Pretentious fucking name really, even if it was probably as fancy as it sounded, but no one had asked me. Not that it’d ever stopped me from sharing my thoughts before, or in this particular case. Strangely enough, Akua disagreed with me. The palace’s foundations were the oldest in the city, and though it’d begun small over the centuries it had turned into a real behemoth of a place. That was an advantage in the sense that it was difficult to entirely prevent entry into it, as there were simply too many entrances and too many people using them, but the rulers of Wolof had seen to their defences with characteristic thoroughness. Akua drew at knifepoint in the dirt of our quarters’ floor, first outlining three squares in a loose but noticeable curve.
“The Empyrean Palace is divided into seven different wings,” she said. “These three are the outer section, the easiest to access. The central wing contains greeting halls, but the rest is places of little importance – servant quarters and stables, courtyards and gardens.”
“We’d planned to go through the eastern wing, right?” Archer asked, crouched over the drawing.
With her unstrung bow kept on top of her knees, she looked like she was crouching by a campfire instead of a loose plan.
“We did,” I agreed. “And odds are we still will. It’s heavy on gardens, so it’ll be easier to sneak through.”
“The difficulty begins when we are inside the western wing,” Akua said.
She drew small lines connecting the three squares, standing for open paths and halls.
“Getting into any of these wings from the outside is achievable, but movement between the wings is strictly limited,” Akua elaborated. “Each of them has its own largely independent staff, largely to prevent infiltrations like ours – unknown faces are simply not allowed through. Which leaves us only one direction to go in.”
She drew a rectangle vertically, nestled against the squares like a hammer’s handle, and the deftly connected the three squares to it by single strokes.
“This is the Grand Gallery,” the golden-eyed woman said. “It is the sift through which sneaks and agents are removed before they can reach the vital sections of the palace. It bears the great hall where formal banquet are held. Adjoining it are both the public kitchens and a set of private parlours. No guard or servant can enter the Gallery without holding an enchanted token, given out by the steward of another wing. Being caught without one means arrest if you are lucky, but most often summary execution.”
I went fishing through the bag where the last two vials of the water breathing potion were and produced three small copper amulets. Detailed engravings were around the rim, and at the centre a single pearl bore a small enchantment. I set them down besides the plan.
“Scribe obtained these tokens for us,” I said. “They’re imitations, but very good ones. Eyes of the Empire have used them with success in the past.”
The enchantments usually changed every few months, I’d been told, and Sargon had kept to that pattern. In the wake of his chaotic ascension to power, however, the Eyes had been able to subvert people in a few key mage cadres. The fakes were current, as even though Scribe had lost control of the spy network in Praes to Lady Ime she still had… contacts. Favours for call in that she’d kept for a rain day.
“That gets us into the Gallery,” Akua agreed. “But not forward. To leave the Grand Gallery and move deeper into the palace, one must pass through one of the three threshold-gates. Each is warded, and there is no enchanted ward key: the only way not to be affected is to be keyed in with blood at the appropriate ward stone well beyond the corresponding gate.”
She drew three small arcing slices above the rectangle, then a square facing each. The moment she finished, she cut through the left square with a decisive stroke.
“Issa’s Garden has served as the personal quarters to the ruling Sahelian and their direct family for the last century and a half, but it was where my mother made her death-grounds,” Akua calmly said. “Even after years of ritual purging, there are still motes of taint and so the ruins remain unused.”
She drew a stroke through the centre square.
“The Empyrean Hall is the heart of the palace,” she continued. “It holds many of the wonders my kin have accumulated over the years, including the enchanted ceiling for which the palace is named. Sargon will be using the old formal living quarters that were raised there and it is also where the treasury vault.”
“We had an in there,” I said. “I have a bottle of blood from a servant who is keyed into the wards, and I’ve learned a Night-trick that could exploit that to sneak us in with a little help from my patronesses. The trouble is that right now that place will be fucking packed to the gills. Forget the wards, it’s the guards that would be a problem.”
Akua withdrew her dagger, smoothly rising to her feet. As if to distance herself from the entire mess, she even took a step back to lean against the wall and arc an eyebrow at me.
“So you want us to hit the last wing,” Archer nodded, looking at me.
“The Vaults,” I said. “It’s partially a mage village, partially a large library and underneath are all the artefacts the Sahelians believe too precious to see the light of day.”
“Or too dangerous,” Akua pointedly said. “If Sargon succeeded at binding Insipientia again, its artefact-prison will be there. The Weeping Snares he used when he came to parley are kept in a vault there, and so are over a dozen other makings in the same league.”
“So we what, release all these beasties into the library?” Indrani asked, frowning. “I guess it’d be a kick in the guts – Hells, if they get loose it’ll bring the city to its knees – but it doesn’t sound like your usual plans. Gonna be a lot of dead servants to go with the dead soldiers and the dead mages.”
A lot worse than that, should a demon be loosed in the city once more.
“No,” I said. “We’re going to steal the library, Indrani. All of it. And then, to make it clear I’m in a foul mood, we’re going to rob the artefact vaults too.”
Indrani laughed, openly delighted, but this was a more calculated move than she might think. I’d be holding two knives at High Lord Sargon’s throat by clearing those out, though he wouldn’t realize quite how bad it was until we sat at the negotiating table again. Akua cleared her throat.
“I have no opposition to such a plan in principle,” she said. “But in practice, I have a question: how are we going to get past the ward?”
She pointed at the threshold-gate leading into the Vaults. You know, that gate we didn’t have a handy blood vial for that’d maybe allow us to trick the wards. Servants never got keyed into two wardstones, presumably in case of this very sort of situation.
“I don’t have a way to get us past the ward,” I bluntly said.
The admission took them both aback.
“But,” I continued, “I know some people who can get past them.”
The Eyes of the Empire had people in the mage cadres that enchanted the tokens for the outer palace, and those mage cadres lived in the Vaults. Meaning that the Eyes had an in. And, as it happened, we knew where their safehouses in Wolof were – it paid to have the woman who’d first set them up in your service.
“And how are you going to get them to help us?” Akua skeptically asked.
“I am going to use,” I toothily grinned, “tact and diplomacy.”
Night sunk deep into the wood, spreading out in wavy cracks, and a heartbeat later the floor shattered.
We dropped down in a rain of shards and broken floorboards, landing in the middle of what looked more like some tavern’s common room than the spy hideout it was. I landed on the table, swallowing a moan of pain – Gods but I wished I could have brought my staff into Wolof – while Archer threw herself on a surprised man and knocked him down. Akua already had a knife at the throat of a second when I checked, which left me the two seated at the table on which I now stood. Wait, no, only one. The woman in the dress had been knocked unconscious by a falling floorboard. That left only the bearded man in front of me, who was currently gaping and bleeding from the face where a wood shard had flown into his cheek.
“Good evening, Eyes of the Empire,” I cheerfully said. “Who’s in charge here?”
The young woman – barely more than a teenager – that Akua had a knife on began tearing up. She was shaking, obviously terrified.
“Please don’t hurt us,” she hurried out. “We’ll be Eyes if you want us to, I’m sure you’re right.”
“I curse you to be silent,” I spoke in Crepuscular, and Night flared.
Her mouth kept moving, but not a sound followed. The flash of horror in her eyes then was significantly more genuine than the previous theatrics. The man at my feet had his hand on the handle of a knife, but he stopped short of unsheathing it when he saw I’d caught him.
“So not her,” I said, cocking an eyebrow. “Did she seriously think that would work?”
It wasn’t like we’d picked this place out of a hat.
“She is young,” the bearded man sighed. “Good evening, Your Majesty. For the sake of this conversation, you may consider me to be in charge.”
Meaning he likely wasn’t. I glanced at the unconscious woman to his left and then at the poor bastard that Archer had in an absent-minded stranglehold, then decided there was no point in pushing for someone else to speak.
“Name?” I asked.
“I am Ekon, Your Majesty,” he said.
I met his eyes with mine.
“If I have you a choice between doing me a favour and having your soul fed to Sve Noc, Ekon,” I said. “Which would you end up leaning, d’you think?”
He swallowed drily, but his face remained admirably calm. He must have been his forties, I thought, but his age was not wearing hard on him. Spying must pay well.
“All things considered, Your Majesty,” he said, “I would be inclined to the favour.”
“Good man,” I smiled, and moved to easy myself down the table.
I dropped down the floor by the unconscious woman, studying her in passing just to be sure she wasn’t faking. No, it looked quite genuine: her head was swelling where she’d been struck, which would be very difficult to fake, and her hand was not clutching a knife but a… pipe? I leaned in close and sniffed. Well, I’d be damned. For the what, probably the third time now? Still, Below was smiling on me tonight. I snatched up the pipe, which was already filled with wakeleaf, and offered my good friend Ekon a smile.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m not asking you to turn on Malicia,” I said. “Nothing quite so troublesome.”
“I am glad to hear it,” the man cautiously ventured.
I passed a hand over the pipe, fire flickering in its wake, and grinned around the mouth of my pipe as I breathed in deep of my vice. Ah, that hit the spot.
“Now,” I said, “let’s talk about how you’re going to get us into the Vaults.”
Huh, I’d never seen a spy freeze in horror before. That was probably a good sign, right?
Ekon had been most helpful, for a man who was going to betray us before this was over.
Under cover of dusk we crept through the gardens, weaving through pools and flowerbeds laid out intricately under the shade of old, twisting trees. Stretches of lilies in pink and pale, delicate orchids in beds whose every rock was sculpted, hibiscus and hyacinth and candelabra flowers. Among them were more… exotic breeds, flowers whose petals slowly changed colours or who moved without need for the breeze. Some even had veins of light, or sweated droplet of mist-like purple instead of dew. We steered clear of the menagerie, for it was well-guarded and there were creatures within that even we should stay wary of, and past a curving pool whose waters were full of nenuphars we took a servant’s entrance into the western wing.
The pair of guards by the door studied us as we came in but said nothing. We wore servant’s livery, after all. I had discarded my eyecloth in favour of a painted stone replacement from the bazaar for my missing eye, knowing it might get me recognized otherwise, and a touch of cosmetics had seen Indrani and I pass as vaguely Taghreb. The days out in the sun had tanned my skin deeper than usual, it was more the cheekbones than the colour that gave me away as being of Deoraithe extraction.
Once we were inside the western wing proper, not the outside part, we hugged the length of the servant quarters as we headed deeper in. At this time of the evening they were mostly empty, save for the children and the kinsmen raising them, so simply looking like we had a purpose was enough for the few servants we encountered to steer clear of us. Twice we encountered patrols, a handful of soldiers in Sahelian livery who lost interest in us immediately the moment Akua showed them a fake token. I was too on my guard to truly allow my gaze to drift around, but I did get glimpses of our surroundings. Tapestries were common and colourful, with complicated patterns whose motif changed from corridor to corridor. Painted wood was used as a sort of gilding along walls, and we had yet to encounter a single torch: it was all magelights.
It was almost bafflingly easy to make it into the Grand Gallery. We showed our tokens to the guards manning the hallway leading to it, faked smiles when a young man tried a joke about our ‘coming here often’ – he was eyeing Indrani pretty hard, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of inspection we should be worried about – and were sent in. Within half an hour of having set foot in the Empyrean Palace, we we’d reached the Gallery. Akua had only described it in passing as having statues of her ancestors, but she’d undersold it significantly. The Grand Gallery was at least half a mile long and maybe half that in length? More than that, the ‘statues’ were in full armour and almost eerily lifelike. They were on tall pedestals, and a quick glance at the names under them told me what I was looking at: former High Lords and Ladies of Wolof.
I didn’t dare linger, moving across the white and pink marble floor as quickly as I could without drawing attention. There were more people here, but the Gallery itself wasn’t really bustling: it was the side parlours and the kitchens that were alive, swarming with people. I leaned closer to Akua, eyeing one of the statues wearing colourful scale and a short sword that looked like a decent fit for me.
“Think we could grab from those before we head into the Vaults?” I murmured.
We’d had to leave behind arms and armour, which had me feeling very naked at the moment. The servant livery was pretty nice, red and white cloth with black accents, but it wouldn’t stop so much as a kitchen knife – much less good steel.
“It is all cursed,” Akua replied in a murmur of her own. “Every single piece. It is a rite of passage for any Sahelian capable of magic to devise a curse of their own and replace one of the fading ones when they are fifteen.”
Of course it was all fucking cursed, I sighed. Mildly curious, I cast a look around.
“So who’d you curse up?” I asked.
“One of my namesakes,” she smiled. “The third of that name, and most distinguished – she held Wolof against foreign armies in the wake of First Crusade.”
“So what’d you put in?” Indrani asked, looking enthused. “Is it rot? It’s always rot with you Praesi types.”
“Partial bone liquefaction,” Akua replied, sounding proud. “And I tweaked the curse so that the most common counter-spells would work, but then trigger a second curse that liquefies the skin instead.”
I wrinkled my nose even as Archer let out an impressed noise. Nasty stuff. Definitely a no on nabbing weapons. We got stopped five times. The first was a simple token check, the second a warning by a pair of guards to avoid the Green Parlour – noble guests were using it – but the third almost outed us. Not because of an interrogation, but because an older servant ordered us to help him and another man carry a large wooden table into a parlour. The weight on my bad leg was atrocious, and though I kept the pain from my face the older man complained of our slow place several times. Akua begged us off as needing to report to the Master of Ceremonies as soon as she could and we made a getaway.
Twice more we were asked to show tokens, and I noticed we were being asked more frequently than the people coming and going. I pointed out as much to Akua, who nodded.
“Our guards are trained to ask the token the moment they do not recognize a face,” she explained.
Made sense, and so far the deception had held. We could only hope it’d continue to. It was near the end of the corridor, by the statue of High Lord Nassor, that we waited. Archer asked, and so we learned that the man was Akua’s great grand uncle, whose daughter had been assassinated and usurped by Akua’s own grandfather. Amusingly enough, Sargon was related to the man through his own mother and so it could be considered that their branch had somewhat returned to power. Sahelian family politics were like a rolling wheel of murder, it sounded like. I caught sight of someone passing through the threshold-gate to the Vaults from the corner of my eye and stiffened.
“That’s her,” I said. “Green stone necklace and grey robes, like our friend said.”
Taiwo Bauna was a stout and respectable-looking woman into her middle age, with pale brown eyes that often saw her taken as more highborn than she actually was. By all reports, she was a fairly skilled enchanter with a good position among the enchanting cadres of the Sahelian vassal mages. She also liked losing a dice games and racking up debt doing it, apparently, which had been how the Eyes got to her. There were two guards by the door, and neither spoke a word as she passed them. She found us without difficulty, having been told of where we would be waiting. Her face was blank as she took us in, not bothering with greetings.
“You’ll be bringing treats the kitchen I ordered,” she said. “Honeybread, which they don’t make in our own. Follow and be silent. I can only buzz the wards for three heartbeats before it triggers one of the deeper alarms, so you’ll have to cross quickly.”
“Understood,” I simply replied.
It must not have been the first time she did this, I thought, for the wrapped and warm honeybread was waiting for us when we arrived in the kitchen. My leg complained of having to double back halfway through the Grand Gallery, but I kept myself under control. We were close, now was not the time to whine. She led the way as we returned to the threshold-gate, where we slowed. Moments before she crossed the gate, colourful lights began to swirl in the open air. The guards glanced at each other, then her. Taiwo sighed.
“I’ll talk to Lord Luba,” she told them. “It’s been happening too often for it to be happenstance, the anchor patch must have been flawed.”
“Please do,” a tall man said, voice smooth. “I apologize for the delay, but you will have to wait until the lights fade before crossing.”
None of us argued, and moments after the last splash of colour faded we followed Taiwo past the threshold. There was no smell of ozone, no movement of power, not a damned thing. We were in. We walked quickly, hurrying down an ornate hallway until we’d reached a great antechamber that Akua had described as the beginning of the Vaults. Taiwo turned towards us, snatching the wrapped honeybread out of Archer’s hands.
“Tell Alazi that this settles the debt,” she said. “And if she hasn’t arranged someone to take the fall, I’ll be selling you all out before I’m even thrown in a cell.”
“Of course,” I replied. “She’ll be in touch.”
“She better not,” Taiwo Bauna darkly said, and walked away.
Well, I thought, it was a good thing we already had someone who knew her way around here. I unwrapped the honeybread, biting into the warm loaf and feeling it crunch under my teeth pleasantly. I grimaced a heartbeat later, though: way too much cinnamon and honey. Too sweet for me. I passed it to Archer, who took a bite of her own and let out a little moan of pleasure. We hadn’t had time to eat, so I really wished Taiwo had picked up bowls of stew or something instead.
“Let’s get moving,” I said. “Akua, you know the way to the library?”
“In my sleep,” she drily replied.
Not exactly a surprise. Much like Masego she was a natural talent in matters of magic, but talent wasn’t enough – to become as good as she had been, when she’d still had magic, you needed to work. We followed her. Archer ate the entire honeybread, purely to avoid question being asked she assured us, and I let my gaze wander through the empty halls of the Vaults. Most of the mages would be eating around now, or out on duty: it was some time before we encountered another soul, and even then it was another servant.
There were no tapestries here, the walls adorned instead with mosaics and steles in a style I did not recognize – it wasn’t from the Free Cities, there was no paint, but it was strikingly vivid anyway – while the ceiling above us arced gently into what appeared to be the night sky. It was a lesser form of the enchantment covering the ceiling of the Empyrean Hall, Akua told us, one that changed only between night and day. It was used by younger mages as a practice before they were allowed to work on the real masterwork. How long was it before we reached the library? I wasn’t quite sure, I was tense enough time was hard to parse without focusing. Whatever the truth, we eventually came to stand before great iron gates. Twice as tall and tall as a man, they were sculpted with the figures of twisting devils offering knowledge to men and later being made to kneel to them. I remained at a wary distance, remembering how I’d once nearly gotten myself killed by mouthing off at the Tower’s front door.
“And our way in?” Indrani asked. “I’m not seeing knockers or a lock.”
“It requires a spell,” Akua said. “A variation on a formula taught to all who have the right to enter this hall, and which changes twice a day. Fortunately, there is a trick to it.”
She laid a ghostly hand against the iron door, near a grinning devil’s face, and closed her eyes. Her arm became as dark fog, flowing gently along the iron. The fog narrowed into small tendrils that went along certain lines of the sculpture – a face there, a staff or horns or a tower – and after a long time she breathed out.
“There,” Akua Sahelian said, smirking a moment before a small click was heard at the gates unlatched.
I breathed out, rolled my shoulder.
“All right,” I said. “Archer, you know what your job is.”
“Clean-up,” she grinned.
That was one way to put it.
“Akua, with me,” I said. “I can’t hold the entire thing in the Night, and there’d be no point. It’s not the common works we’re after, it’s those that aren’t in anyone else’s library.”
“I know the sections,” she agreed.
And their defences too, which would be important. There was simply no way that the gates were the entire set of protections on something as essential to the Sahelians as this library. I’d bet they even encouraged young mages to sneak it past this door to sharpen them up a bit. The good stuff, though, would be kept away from where people could easily get at it.
“Then let’s go,” I ordered.
Archer took the lead, opening the door just enough we were able to slip through. I wasted half a heartbeat to the wonder of what I was looking at – this was large as a cathedral, and most of it books! – before focusing on the immediate. Which was a handful of white-robed scholars congregating around a great table near the entrance and paying us no attention, while a squadron of twenty guards kept watch from a raised platform to our right. Those did notice us, but the initial alarm at the sight of us somewhat faded at the sight of Akua following us in: she had changed her appearance to be matching the white robes of the scholars here. We still got a pair of guards coming down our way, frowning.
Akua and I moved towards the scholars and Indrani towards the pair, pace brisk. I scanned the room around us, taking in the tower stacks in the middle of the great hall and the upwards layers on the walls – almost like the inside of a ship – but I found no one looking at us from there. So far our only witnesses were the people I’d seen. Four scholars, I saw, and as we approached one of them turned to us with a cocked eyebrow. He was looking at Akua, trying to place her face and failing. I was, meanwhile, looking at the table. Not the books but the rest. I found something suitable, a paring knife for quills next to an inkwell. Less than a dozen feet between us and the scholars now. From the corner of my eye I saw Indrani pass behind tall stacks, the guards catching up to her there. There wasn’t a sound, but a few heartbeats later she moved out quickly and with a sword in hand. The guards above hadn’t noticed a thing, and likely wouldn’t until it was too late. Only a few feet away from the scholars now, and another one was looking at us with similar confusion.
“My apologies,” the first man said, “but why did you bring a servant here? You ought to know they are not allowed, save with a Sahelian. What is your name?”
Ah, the poor fucker. He’d handed her a line and not even known it. Akua met his eyes and smiled, that pretty little number she liked to pull out when she was about to ruin someone’s day.
“Akua,” she said, hand coming to rest on the neck of a scholar with her back to us, “Sahelian.”
Fear flooded the man’s face, even as the shade idly snapped the scholar’s neck. Calmly, I snatched the paring knife and flicked my wrist after taking a heartbeat to aim – it went right into the man’s eye, and he fell down twitching. Well, at least it’d spare him the embarrassment of admitting that Akua had technically been allowed to bring us here. Talk about awkward. One of the survivors squawked in terror, the other one tipping as he backed away from the table hastily, but we were already moving. Akua flowed over the table smoothly, dropping down on the one who’d tripped, while I claimed a silver inkwell and smashed it into the side of the squawker’s head.
He tried to ward me off with raised hands, but a jab in the stomach had him dropping his guard and I finished the job with another blow on the temple. He was unconscious, not dead, so I went to get the paring knife and finished the man off with it while Akua strangled the last one. I allowed myself one breath of relief after it was done, only then turning to look at the platform above. There’d been no alarm raised while we killed the scholars, which was a good sign. As if prompted, Archer appeared at the edge of the platform with a sword in hand – and going through a guard’s stomach. The man slumped and tumbled over the railing, falling below with a dull metallic bang. I winced at the noise.
“Go hunting,” I said. “We can’t afford being caught too early.”
I was not yelling, but she was Named: she’d be able to hear me anyway. She nodded, vanishing behind stacks.
“Can you hide the bodies?” I asked Akua.
“I suppose,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve never had to dispose of my own kills before, dearest, much less someone else’s.”
I rolled my eye at her.
“I’m sure you’ll manage somehow,” I said.
“And people wonder why we build tiger pits,” Akua muttered.
I hid my amusement, instead closing my eyes and finding my calm. I began murmuring prayer in Crepuscular, Night flowing freely through my veins. I could feel the attention of the Sisters, their eagerness and their hunger. Good.
Now it was time to rob this place blind.
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