Chapter Three-Hundred Thirty-Four

    Zorro

    The fox scion thanks his luck that he is spending his time outside rather than in right now. The tree is awe inspiring, but the amount of work involved makes him very glad to be more involved with the subtler details of setting up an information network.

    He’s even lucky enough to not need to try to figure it out all on his own. It seems odd to learn from a scion of Thedeim’s protege, but the fungal spymaster absolutely knows his stuff. He’s also more than a little unsettling, but Zorro hopes he’s gotten over that in his efforts to learn from the other scion.

    And learn he has.

    There are broadly two methods to infiltrate a place: be utterly unseen, or simply be unnoticed. They may seem to be similar or identical, but there are worlds of difference between them. Cappy is an expert in being unseen. He seeps his mycelia through the cracks and crevices, making his home in the dark places nobody ever thinks to look into. Even a room magically warded to allow no sound to escape will still have furnishings to hide within. Magical sweeps for divination magics won’t pick him up, since he’s not using any magic. Even more mundane checks will have trouble spotting his mycelia as he withdraws them, not even hinting to the staff that they may have mold to worry about. His existence is known to the ODA, and though it would be a tenuous leap to guess he’s spying, it’s still a leap that could be taken.

    Being unnoticed, on the other hand, is what Zorro and his foxes will be doing. He’s already had his fur cut short, a sacrifice he’s glad to know Thedeim appreciates, to make it easier for him to disguise himself to be a stray cat. His other foxes and mischeifs have had the same, and spent the week preceding the tree’s creation inserting themselves into the town’s alleys and other places to build their credibility. The process went surprisingly smoothly, in his opinion.

    The cats that would be territorial and hostile quickly learned they were no match for the denizens of Thedeim, and so fled, while the more confident felines were content to let the foxes stay, so long as they don’t try to claim all the good scraps for themselves. He still assigns a couple foxes to play at being upstart rivals to the established rulers of the alleys, but even that is just to maintain the act. Cats are always trying to find new homes, claim new territories. Some fit in, while others try to take over. It’s just the natural flow of things, and will probably be good practice for later.

    Today, he might be pretending to be subservient to a scarred and confident tomcat, and in a decade he may be acting the quiet servant to some pompous noble. He understands they both have a similar commitment to their pride.@@@@

    That certainly threw them all off, though they’re working to fix that problem. Zorro had over a dozen foxes already situated in the area, as it’s the perfect place for strays to congregate. Unfortunately, Cappy will need a lot more time to be able to send his own infiltration, so Zorro is on his own for now. Luckily for him, the Earl is a bit of a cat person. He’s hardly adopting them all, but he lets them stick around, for the most part. He really doesn’t seem to like rats. Zorro is pretty sure it’s a seaman thing. Whatever the reason, there’s plenty of ordinary strays around for him and his foxes to blend in.

    Zorro studies the people as they move, keeping to his shadows and even casting a subtle illusion to help keep himself concealed. Invisibility while moving is difficult, but doing so while still is much easier. So... why not simply keep a watch for magic, instead of keeping everything out? Could it be cheaper?

    Looking at all the people and their weapons, Zorro finds it difficult to accept. Runework isn’t cheap, but surely it would cost less to do the enchantment and occasionally maintain it, compared to keeping so many guards. Maybe the runework is easier to spot? He feels like he’s closer with that, but still not quite there. He spotted the patrolls, so they’re not being as subtle as they could be.

    Think, Zorro. Why wouldn’t thieves trust in runework warding? The answer comes quickly, and it seems so obvious once he realizes it. They’re thieves. Their job is to get around just that sort of warding. Of course they wouldn’t trust it to keep their stuff and themselves safe. So... what does the Earl if’Gofnar want with a bunch of thieves?

    He can only guess. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that they’re not even just a thieves guild. They may just be a criminal guild in general. There’s all kinds of things he might want them to do, from buying information to maybe even assassination. He simply doesn’t have enough to go on to do anything more than wildly theorize. He tries not to grumble as he slinks back, putting a couple blocks worth of distance between him and the criminal area before he calls his foxes together.

    He needs to know what’s going on in there. While he knows he’s not getting much more tonight, he can still make plans for the future. For now, he charges his foxes with determining the exact perimeter, and to look for possible routes in from the surface. They are not to enter yet, however. He has two sources to check in with to see about other options.

    The first is Cappy and Violet, though mostly Cappy. He hasn’t yet managed to spread himself through the entire sewers, but he should know the layout by now. The thieves may have blocked off their section of the sewer, or they may simply have sealed any entrances. Either way, he needs to know. The sewers could easily be the best way to get in and be able to listen to whatever nefarious deeds are going down in there.

    The other he needs to talk to will be Teemo. Not because the Voice would know anything. Not even because his shortcuts could possibly get them a route inside. No, he needs Teemo to talk to someone else. Thedeim trusts Karn, so Zorro will trust him, too. He needs to ask the retired rogue turned guild leader how he would secure an area, and how to get around those same precautions.

    Who better to get past a thief than a thief?