CHAPTER FOUR-HUNDRED TWO

Jana

The timing needs to be perfect, but it’s not something she can simply rely on a clock for. She has to watch the Head Maid, but not look like she’s watching her. With someone like that, it’s far easier said than done.

Luckily for her, she’s not on her own. Even better, she can rely on Gerlfi’s group to be vigilant, and so have fewer ties back to herself. Learning three more signals was annoying to do, but when a mark is as wily as the Earl, caution is the only way to avoid disaster.

And so she sits in her room, subtly hidden by shadows as she watches the window. The sounds of the Earl’s carriage have faded, so it shouldn’t be long now. Sure enough, a wisp of smoke drifts past her window, Veids’ signal, and she springs into action.

Or to be more accurate: casually strides into action. Illusion is a subtle affinity, and capable of tricking far more than the eyes. The more she uses her affinity, the more she thinks it was a deliberate decision of the old illusionists to show off faking sight, so as to more easily hide faking the other senses.

Pure invisibility is possible, but tricking the other senses at the same time is much more difficult than most would expect. So she walks the halls of the guild, and once she is alone, she casts her disguise. The others weren’t only watching the Earl, but also the various servants and cleaners. Veids is watching one of the cooks, who will sometimes deliver a meal to the Earl. With his smoke, the cook is occupied, so she’s free to take the guise of a tall elf, heavy with the scent of a kitchen about him, and continue to the Earl’s room.

Thankfully, it’s on the top floor, so nobody should intrude upon her snooping. She can’t help but smile as she sees the door, knowing the next challenge is upon her. It’s enchanted through with enough protections that even Driough was impressed. The complexity didn’t stop him from teaching her how to get around them all, at least. At their core, security enchantments look for something, and raise the alarm if they don’t see it. Some are hoping to see nothing, so if they see something, they go off. But fooling senses is fooling senses, whether they actually belong to someone or not.

The illusion is complicated, as she even has to replicate a few sending and receiving senses, but not beyond her. The lock is another interesting challenge, designed with all manner of traps to trick a picker into ruining the lock. Often it’s better to keep something secure behind a lock that can’t open, rather than to let it be stolen. But she can trick her own senses, too.

She always has to fight vertigo when allowing her sight to flow into a lock, but she is mostly used to it by now. She can even peer through the tiniest cracks to spot the traps, and to see just how she needs to set each tumbler as she works. Even with being able to see, it’s an exquisite lock, requiring her to practically juggle the tumblers to keep the lock working as she sets it. Twenty seconds isn’t very slow, but in a situation like this, it feels like ages.

Finally, she sets the final tumbler and the lock turns, and she silently slips into the room. The casual opulence is immediately on display, the walls covered in tapestries and paintings, the floor thick with shaggy carpets. A bottle of brandy sits next to a chair ornate enough she’d probably need to delve for a year to afford it, and that’s if someone would even be willing to sell!

She shakes her head and focuses, ignoring the riches to focus on what she’s actually here for: evidence. Something to tie the Earl to the thieves. She’s disappointed, but not surprised, to not see anything incriminating just laying out in the open. It’d be nice for something to be easy for once, but if it was easy, they wouldn’t have needed to send her.

Every rogue has their own trick for finding hidden goodies, and it often depends on their affinity. Metal affinity can detect metal, so coins and other common objects are easy to spot. Earth affinity can feel gemstones, which makes them easy to locate, too. But she doesn’t have those affinities. Which is fine with her. They are good at their niche, but her own little trick lets her find anything, even if it can be disorientating to use.

Just like with the lock, she tricks her eyes into seeing more. But instead of narrowing into a keyhole, she sees the entire room from her vantage. Then she sees the entire room from all vantages, seeing under and around everything. She spots a few decoys or other traps meant to either satisfy a burglar without losing anything of true value, or things to mark them for easy identification to deal with later.

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She takes a deep breath to steady herself, then raps a finger against the table, her ears perked. It took her a long time to learn how to do this trick, first inspired by a batkin with thunder affinity she once knew. He said he could practically see with sound, and even tell if things were hollow. Her ears aren’t as sensitive as his… but she can trick them into thinking they are. The difficulty was getting them just sensitive enough. She listens as the sound echoes around the room, and smiles as she hears something odd.

She drops the illusion and focuses where the oddity is, on the bookshelf by the bed. While there is the classic secret passage behind it, that’s not the oddity that stood out to her ears. She wonders if the Earl has had to deal with that particular trick before, and how many would notice the strangeness of this specific book. It sounds more solid than it should.

She checks the spine and nods at the title ‘Bilge Management’. If there’s any book she doubts someone would pick to to peruse, this would be among the last. Opening it, it seems like an ordinary book detailing not only ship construction and how to properly design a bilge, but also the best ways to pump the water and many other small details that are probably important, but simply hold no interest for her.

Instead, she tricks her ears to hear more, and quickly flips the corner of the pages, sending a satisfying zip sound through the room. There… about two thirds through it. She turns there and goes more slowly, before finding the secret. She has to admit, it’s a clever one. While hollowing out a book to hide something is a classic hiding spot, it seems the Earl got creative.

The page itself is hollowed out and spatially expanded, allowing for several things to be tucked into the page. The expansion must make the book sound more dense, she supposes as she looks closely at what she’s uncovered.

Noynur is going to be even more paranoid than usual once he sees this. Thedeim mentioned the possibility of forged rings in a message from one of the foxes, and it looks like he called it correctly. There sit three rings, with conspicuous room for a fourth, that’s missing. She reaches for one, but freezes as she hears a voice.

“I wouldn’t touch them, Jana.”

Slowly, she turns to face the burly elf closing the door behind himself, Guildmaster Jondar Helmsplitter himself. Before she can try to explain, he continues. 𝘙𝘢ΝọᛒЁŞ

“If he doesn’t have them rigged in some way to kill anyone but himself, I’ll actually believe Thedeim’s only a year old.”

She subtly cloaks her fingers as she draws one of her many knives, but Jondar holds his hands up in a placating manner, like he can actually see through her illusion. “There’s no need for violence. I won’t tell. But you should leave those there for now. Unless you’re ready to act on what you’ve found right this moment, it’s better to leave them there and come back when you are ready.”

She narrows her eyes at him and lets the illusion fall, but draws a second dagger to ensure he doesn’t get the wrong idea. “Why?”

“Because right now, I’m Guildmaster in name only. The Earl makes all the decisions. When I thought it was going to just be a way to make coin, I was happy to sign on. But he’s been shady from the start, and this whole town feels like a trap. And it feels to me like the Mayor vanishing is the bait to lure the Earl in. Whatever he’s about to fall into, I want out of it.”

“What makes you think I’m involved in any of that? Stealing the Earl’s stuff would earn me a lot of coin myself.”

The broad elf shakes his head. “You wouldn’t betray Noynur with something like that, and he wouldn’t send you into the Earl’s room without a very good reason. That orc knows a lot more than he lets on, I know. I’ll work with you, if it means whatever the Earl is doing doesn’t get on me.” He tilts his head like he hears something, before returning his attention to Jana.

“You’re probably not making too many of the decisions, but tell whoever is what I told you. The Earl is going to be back soon.”

Jana’s eyes widen as she realizes how long she’s been in the room. She hurriedly puts the book back and puts back on her cook illusion. She doesn’t let Jondar get away free, though. “How do you know?” she asks with a suspicious glare.

He smirks and turns back to the door, opening it and even holding it for her like a gentleman. “Tell Noynur I can hear an ego like the Earl’s from almost literally a mile away. He can figure it out from there.”

Jana scowls as she walks out, knowing he’s not going to give her any other details, just as she knows he was right about leaving the evidence there until they’re actually ready to act on it. Jondar even has the nerve to lock the door with the proper key once she leaves, and heads off on his own.

Much as she’d like to beat some answers out of him, she probably couldn’t even if she had the time and the privacy to do so. He might be a figurehead of a Guildmaster right now, but he’s easily strong enough for the position. Rumor is, he even did it delving solo. She silently fumes as she heads back to the room, knowing Noynur is going to be able to put things together once she tells him.

It’d be infuriating if it wasn’t so useful… and a bit endearing.