Chapter 869: No Question Over Who It Was (Patreon)

Greenstone was divided into two sections. The smaller portion of the city, although still large, was an artificial island. It was the domain of the nobility, adventurers, and those with the wealth and influence to keep such company. In a stunning failure of imagination, the artificial island had been named ‘The Island.’

The larger and older part of the city showed creativity in being named ‘Old City.’ It hugged the coast where the magically fed Mistrun River created a sprawling delta. Old City was raised up on thick foundations and secured behind a massive wall. Numerous inlets fed the city with the magic-infused water on which much of its infrastructure relied.

Old City had been run by a trio of crime families since the wealthy and powerful all moved to the Island. So long as the trade kept moving and the money kept flowing, the noble houses and merchant barons were satisfied to let them. The situation had gone unchanged for more than a century until the last few years saw sudden upheaval.

Two of the big three crime families had been eliminated. The leader of the third had been legitimised and installed in the newly formed office of mayor of Old City, answering directly to the Duke of Greenstone. It was part of a wave of change, following a number of events centred on the Adventure Society.

In the Old City, crime obviously hadn’t been eliminated. But with the legitimisation of the last crime family standing, much of what had been shady business was brought into the light. The darkest corners of the city were cleared out; the worst depravities quietly eliminated before they could embarrass the new mayor.

The famously corrupt city militia were disbanded as protection rackets became security services. They still took the money but offered actual protection, and no longer clashed over territory. Gambling houses and brothels were no longer subject to conflicting crime families and corrupt militiamen, but now they had to pay taxes.

The most recognisable landmark in Old City was the Fortress. A holdover from Greenstone’s early days as a colony, it had long been the place where old money and Old City sleaze came together. Even as the city changed, the Fortress did not, remaining the place where the reputable of Greenstone could slake their less reputable appetites.

Former Magic Society director Lucian Lamprey had been shameless enough to maintain a large and highly visible office amongst the stands for the Fortress’ fighting arena. Such brazenness had led to his downfall, however, and his successor was not so careless.

Pochard Finn had been Lucian Lamprey’s long-time deputy. He had done the actual work during Lamprey’s famously corrupt tenure. Pochard was a man who understood the value of discretion and the consequences of failing to maintain it. He did maintain an office in the Fortress, like his predecessor, from which to conduct his less savoury business and occasional indulgences. Rather than being used for garish displays of power, however, it was hidden away from prying eyes.

It was also well guarded, relative to the city it was in. The essence users of Greenstone were famously weak, and good thugs were getting harder to come by. The once atrociously corrupt Adventure Society was getting cleaned up alongside Old City, and there were fewer dropouts with every passing year. Those that did were quickly snapped up by the noble houses or the mayor of Old City for relatively honest work.

Pochard had a few of the scarce bronze-rank criminals as guards, although it was more to secure his affairs in his absence than through any need for protection. Pochard’s silver rank, though gained through cores, made him one of the most powerful people in the city.

That held true right up until some adventurer came waltzing into town, usually a Geller. Fortunately, the Gellers mostly kept to their compound in the delta and stayed out of local politics. When they didn’t, things could change drastically, however, as the last few years had shown. The city was still settling into its new normal after the last time adventurers had thrown their weight around.

Pochard realised they were throwing it again, in the form of one of his guards. The door to his office in the Fortress exploded as the guard flew through it, sending splinters of wood raining down. The guard didn’t slow down until he flew across the office and crunched into the wall.

The man didn’t move from where he fell in a heap, although a whimpering moan said he was still alive. That kind of force only came from a silver-ranker, and one with proper aura training if Pochard hadn’t sensed them.

When a large man stepped through the now-smashed doorway, it was inevitably a Geller. It could have been worse, Pochard reflected. It could have been Danielle Geller, rather than her son. What trouble he would be was yet to be seen, but there was no way he was as much trouble as his mother. That woman had walked into the heart of the Magic Society campus and thrashed the director half to death in his own office.

Pochard remembered her son from various high society events. Polite, forthright and a little lacking in confidence, given his background. He had always been a large boy, but seemed smaller, almost shrunken in his hesitance. Years had clearly hardened him up as he strode through the doorway like the chiselled image of a god, needing to turn a little to fit his broad shoulders.

Pochard got up from behind his desk, ignoring the moaning guard as he stepped around him to greet Humphrey Geller.

“Lord Geller,” Pochard said. “It’s been some time. I didn’t realise you were back in the city.”

“I’m not, officially,” Humphrey said. “That’s why I’m here in the Fortress. It’s the place for illicit affairs. It’s my first visit, actually, although my fiancé is more familiar with it.”

“Your fiancé?”

“Surely you remember, Mr Finn? You’re the one who brokered the deal to have her handed over to your old boss. To be used in service of his depraved appetites.”

“I have no idea what—”

“Don’t lie to him,” a female voice cut him off. Pochard turned to see a woman standing behind him. There was only one doorway to the office and he hadn’t seen her use it. He recalled that her powers were focused on speed, not stealth, which was rather disturbing. She’d gotten inside too fast for him to see, without kicking up so much as a breeze.

She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered. The chocolate skin, contrasted by silver hair and eyes was as striking as ever. She looked little different, despite ranking up, as there had been little to improve upon. The changes were subtle; the sheen of her hair and the lustre of her skin.

“Sophie Wexler,” he said, realising he’d stared a little too long. “Are you here seeking recompense for your treatment at the hands of my predecessor?”

“Are you going to claim you had nothing to do with it?” she asked.

“That would be an obvious lie,” he said. “It was no secret that Lucien Lamprey would have accomplished very little on his own. A dire lack of discipline. So, I will admit that certain arrangements were facilitated by me.”

“I grew up around people like you,” she told him. “Slime clinging to the walls. I don’t blame you for your part in my unpleasant days here. You were doing your best to slink towards the light, and I understand that. But Humphrey is a good man who never waded into the muck like you and I have. He has ideals, and those ideals take a certain view on people like you. So don’t lie to him, Finn. And don’t try to keep from us what we’re here to take. Otherwise, you might find out just how intolerant he can be of your kind. Especially ones who have done things to me.”

“He’s not going to cross the line,” Pochard said. “He’s an adventurer, and quite the upstanding example of one. I remember his mother making quite sure of that. He’s not going to sully the Geller name.”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “He is a Geller. Old Greenstone nobility. And here in the Fortress, Greenstone aristocrats do the things that they don’t talk about after they leave. Like putting their hands on either side of your head and slowly squeezing them together.”

“Sophie, I’m not doing that,” Humphrey said.

A look of annoyance crossed Sophie’s face.

“Humphrey, I’m intimidating here. Just stand there looking large and handsome.”

“I’m not going to slowly and painfully kill anyone,” Humphrey insisted. “I’ll do it quick and clean. It’s easier to get rid of the body that way.”

“Oh, like you know how to get rid of bodies,” Sophie said.

“I’ve spent a decent number of airship rides sitting next to Belinda,” Humphrey said. “She told me all about the best ways to discreetly eliminate corpses in Greenstone. No matter how many times I asked her not to. I don’t think she’s really killed as many people as her stories implied, though.”

“She hasn’t,” Sophie said. “She used to do cleanup for the Silva family when they killed people. You remember the Silva family, don’t you Finn? Your boss teamed up with them to go after our friend and, as a direct result, that family and your boss are both gone.”

“What do you want?” Pochard asked.

“We want your archive code sequence sheet,” Sophie said.

Pochard’s eyebrows shot up.

“You’re after the archive vault?”

He looked from Sophie to Humphrey and back.

“You’re a thief,” he told her, “so that makes sense. But him? Does your mother know what you’re up to, Geller?”

“Talk about my mother some more and see what happens,” Humphrey said. “Where is the archive code sequence sheet?”

“There’s a safe in my office on the Magic Society campus. It’s secured in there.”

Humphrey stepped forward but stopped at a gesture from Sophie.

“That’s the last time I stop him when you lie, Finn,” she warned.

“It wouldn’t matter, even if you got it,” Finn said. “There are numerous failsafes on the archive vault and that code is just one of them. If I give you my code sequence, it would still take two more sequences from directors in other branches to open the vault in my branch. The code is constantly changing, so they need to be communicated simultaneously. Might I remind you that the water link system is managed by the Magic Society, and has alarms set up if it’s used to transmit vault code sequences outside of scheduled times.”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “Assuming that we had friends dealing with other branches, we would need an alternative to the world’s only long-range mass-communication system. So, there’s nothing to lose in handing your code sheet over, and a head to lose if you don’t.”

“You know that if you do this, the Magic Society won’t let it go,” Pochard said. “Even if you fail. Even if they can’t prove it was you, they can’t be seen to have let you walk over them. They’ll come after you.”

He turned to look as a new person entered the room. Unlike Sophie, ranking up had made generous changes to Clive Standish. The awkward, gangly researcher Pochard had known was now lean and handsome. His old perpetual nervousness was nowhere to be seen. If Standish was involved, Pochard had no doubt the vault would be successfully breached. The man had always been frustratingly thorough.

“Has he handed it over yet?” Clive asked.

“Not yet,” Sophie said. “The relay towers for communication?”

“In place and tested,” Clive said. “All we need is the last sequence fragment. Strip him and scrape him down. He always liked to hide things on his body with false skin.”

Pochard failed to hide his surprise, drawing a smile from Clive.

“Yes, Deputy Director,” Clive said. “I’ve always known about your inept little tricks. Did you really think no one would see through them at the Magic Society of all places? It makes sense, I suppose. The society is all politicians now. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have to do something this drastic.”

“It’s Director now, Standish,” Pochard said, mustering what he could of his dignity. “I haven’t been deputy director for several years.

“Really?” Clive asked. “You’re in this situation and you’re being fastidious about a title? This is a reflection of a much larger problem. But you don’t have to worry, Director; I don’t think they’ll let you keep the position. Not after your part in publicly releasing the archive vault research. Centuries of hoarded secrets, open and available to all. Aside from the restricted content, obviously. If we’re going to make an enemy of the Magic Society, best not make one of the Adventure Society as well.”

“They’ll never let you go for this, Standish.”

“Then I suppose you’ll feel vindicated when they string me up. Hand over the sequence sheet, Director.”

Scowling, Pochard lifted up his shirt and peeled the false skin off his abdomen and placed it on his desk. One the opposite side of the fake skin side was a sheet with a row of coloured splotches, as if dabbed on with paint.

“That’s it?” Humphrey asked.

As they all watched it, the colours all changed. Clive took a crystal from his pocket and waved it over the sheet. The colours glowed for a brief moment and Clive put the crystal away.

“That’s it,” he said. “I was worried he’d have a dummy sheet, but this is the real thing. I guess he’s not as smart as I thought.”

“No, he’s smart,” Sophie said. “It’s trying to fob a fake off on us that would be stupid.”

“True enough,” Clive agreed.

He opened his dimensional space, a small portal ringed with floating runes. From it he pulled out a hand mirror. He tapped the face of the mirror and a three by three  grid of symbols appeared. He tapped on the symbols in sequence and they vanished, replaced with an pulsing light. A humming sound rose and fell in time with the pulses. After a few moments, the light and sound stopped. In their place, an image of Belinda appeared in the mirror. She looked to be holding one similar, and a large steel door was behind her.

“You’ve got it?” she asked without preamble.

“We’ve got it,” Clive told her.

“Okay. Before you tell me the sequence, wait for the next sequence shift to give us the most time. These sequences change every minute.”

They waited for the colours on the sheet to change again and Clive read off the colour sequence.

“Blue. Red. Indigo—”

“What in a god’s wet crevice is indigo?” Belinda asked.

“It’s a darker purple than violet,” Clive said.

“Then just say purple.”

“What if there’s another shade of purple later?”

“You’ve got the sheet. Is there another shade of purple?”

“Not right now,” Clive admitted, “but the colours change.”

“Then just say purple!”

“There’s nothing wrong with being precise.”

“There isn’t going to be another shade of purple, Clive.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because no sane person wants a conversation like this! Look, we’ve wasted too much time. Wait for the next sequence.”

“Fine,” Clive grumbled.

Humphrey, who had moved next to Sophie, leaned in to whisper.

“How confident are you in this burglary plan?”

“It’s called a heist, honey.”

“How confident are you in this heist plan?”

“Just trust in Lindy,” she told him, a smile teasing at her lips.

“Look, can I go now?” Pochard asked. “I think my part in this is done.”

“Head for that door and it will be,” Sophie told him.

The colours on the paper shifted again.

“Go, Clive,” Belinda said. “And don’t you dare say chartreuse or I will come over there and smack the ability to see colour out of you.”

Clive rolled his eyes but read off the new sequence.

“Okay, we’re in,” Belinda said. “You can pack it up and get out.”

She vanished from the tablet as she cut communication.

“That’s it,” Clive said. “we should go.”

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” Pochard asked. “So I don’t tell them it was you.”

“We don’t need to kill you,” Clive said. “Frankly, I take no small delight in what you will face from the Magic Society after this. And as for knowing it was us…”

Clive let out a chuckle filled with uncharacteristic malevolence.

“…with what I have planned, there will be no question over who it was.”

Clive strode out, putting Pochard behind him, and Humphrey followed. Sophie kicked Pochard square in the crotch and he fell over, hands clutched over his groin as he let out a whimpering moan. She bent down to speak amiably into his ear.

“This is why adventurers say training is important,” she told him. “A silver-ranker should be able to manipulate their body so no part of it is as vulnerable as that.”

Clive returned to the doorway.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “We need to go.”

“I owe this guy one,” Sophie said, then kicked Pochard hard in the stomach.

“And that’s for sleeping with Clive’s wife,” she added.

“Wha…?” Pochard asked as Clive rolled his eyes.

“Really?” Clive asked. Sophie flashed him a grin and then was past him in a blur of movement. Clive shook his head and followed.

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