~
“This is one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had,” Heremon muttered as he knelt down below a window near the service entrance to the Melinkov keep. “I can’t believe that you convinced me to go along with it.”
“Come on,” Sofya replied. She was crouched beside him, her hand on the windowsill. “I saw the looks you were giving that woman. You are more excited about this than I am.”
“She was quite rude, but that doesn’t justify theft.”
“The AFC stole the Arm from the ir-Dyeun. The Empire stole it from the AFC. And then the Melinkovs stole it form the Empire. We’re well beyond justified at this point.”
Heremon frowned. “I don’t think that’s how it works.” Ever since Sofya had suggested breaking into Melinkremlin to take the arm, Heremon had voiced his concerns. But she knew the truth. Heremon was beside her for a reason. He wanted to take the Arm from the Melinkovs as much as she did.
The plan to retrieve the Prophet’s Arm was relatively simple. Because the Melinkremlin keep was built after the Fey reactors, the entire structure was dependent on Fey-powered electric lights. There were no fireplaces, no torches, and surprisingly few windows. At night, the only thing that could illuminate the corridors were the neon lights that lined the walls.
Very few would-be burglars would be able to take advantage of this particular design feature. Disabling Fey power to the building would require destroying or disabling multiple transformers across Volgrad, some of which were as heavily guarded as the keep itself. Sofya, however, had an advantage.
“Any luck?” Heremon asked.
“There’s a pipe in the wall a few feet from here,” Sofya replied. She pulled her hand down from the windowsill and began to creep towards where she felt the Fey energy pulsing through the wall. All magic—even magic pulled from a rift to power gaudy lights in a human castle—left a signature that Sofya could sense if she concentrated. And sensing it wasn’t the only thing she could do.
“And you’re sure this is going to work?” Heremon asked. “Do you know what happens to most humans when they break a Fey energy pipe?”
“I survived an entire reactor exploding. Trust me.”
“Maybe I trust you. But I don’t trust your magic. Just because you keep living through things that should kill you doesn’t mean they’re safe.”
“Using my glamours should kill me. Sensing the arm should kill me. After long enough, it starts to sound like a hollow threat, especially when this keep is full of people who might actually do the job if we get caught.”
Heremon’s eyes went wide. Before he could reconsider the plan, Sofya pressed her hand against the wall where she felt the Fey energy pipe. Her fingertips went cold. Frost began to spread across the wall as she focused her magic down into the center of the wall.
The pipes used to carry Fey energy through Human cities varied in quality, but they were all generally sturdy enough to withstand the elements. Fortunately, Sofya didn’t need to break the pipe. That’s just what she’d told Heremon so that he would go along with the plan. But that wasn’t enough to cut power to the keep, with all the redundancies throughout the building. He would have never agreed to let Sofya do what she really intended. She needed to reach inside. She needed to connect with the energy inside. Once she did that…
A surge of adrenaline rushed through her body as Sofya’s ice sorcery began to mingle with the pure Fey magic in the pipe. It was stronger than she expected. It didn’t just connect her with the lights and heating elements in the keep. The magical energy stretched back, through the transformers, all the way to the Volgrad Fey rift. And for just a second, it found something similar in Sofya.
She could feel the Fey pouring into her, like it had a mind of its own. It was as if it was trying to form a circuit, with her body as one part of a loop that had to be closed. She thought it should hurt, but instead if just felt warm. It felt welcoming.
“Sofya, what are you doing?” Heremon asked, panic edging into his voice. He was beginning to realize her true plan. “Tell me when we need to run.”
“It’s not going to explode.”
Before Heremon could respond, the lights inside the keep went dark. Then the lamps illuminating the courtyard were extinguished. And finally the spotlights along the wall flickered out. The entire castle was enveloped in darkness.
“What in Dyeun’s name–”
“I’ve done it before,” Sofya interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Done what before?”
“I overloaded the transformers in this part of the city.” Sofya said. She removed her hand from the wall. Her skin no longer tingled. She couldn’t feel the Fey energy flowing through the pipes any more. “Now, come on. They’ll reset soon. We only have ten minutes or so.”
Sofya could tell he wanted her to elaborate, but there was nothing more to be said. She understood her power even less than he did. At least he was raised around magic, learning to use it from a young age. The only things Sofya knew were what she’d managed to discover through experimentation.
The guards patrolling the Melinkremlin keep were now in complete darkness, but so were Sofya and Heremon. Fortunately, Leshin could see exceptionally well in the dark. As soon as they crawled into the service entrance window, he took Sofya’s hand and began leading her through the hallways.
Heremon served as Sofya’s eyes, but Sofya was the one who knew where the Arm was being held. She pressed her finger into his palm and pointed him in the direction where she sensed the artifact. This was a system they’d devised shortly after they met, when they were in hiding from the Empire and the Leshin while Sofya recovered from her injuries. For the first few weeks, she was almost completely blind and Heremon had to lead her everywhere.
The first few hallways were easy. The only people in the back of the castle were the servants and they were too distracted by the power outage to notice anything. But as they approached the foyer and the stairs leading to the second floor, Sofya could hear the sound of the Melinkov’s guards trying to secure the building. In the center of the keep, where there weren’t even windows to provide ambient moonlight, the guards were completely blind. They stumbled towards the edges of the building, where they could find at least some dim light, leading them away from Heremon and Sofya’s objective. A few of them tried to illuminate the space in front of them with the soft glow from their pistols, but it fortunately wasn’t enough for them to see Sofya or Heremon as they slipped into the foyer.
Going up the stairs proved even more difficult. Heremon carefully guided Sofya upwards, but she kept hitting her feet against the stairs as they ascended. The sound was mostly indistinguishable from the keep’s inhabitants stumbling around blind, but each bit of noise made her heart jump in her chest.
Sofya hadn’t really thought through what she would do if they were caught. Heremon would never approve, but a cloud of ice crystals could potentially provide an escape. That was the closest thing she had to a plan, since even if it failed he could take responsibility for the magic. Most Humans didn’t know how specialized Leshin mages tended to be, and no one would ever be able to prove Heremon was unable to create an ice spell.
When they reached the second floor, Sofya guided Heremon to a hallway to the east. As soon as they approached, Sofya saw the soft green glow of a pistol raised in front of a guard’s face. He couldn’t see them. Not yet. But he was getting closer. She clenched Heremon’s hand and they ducked into a closet on the left.
“Is anyone there?” the guard growled. Sofya held her breath. She and Heremon were wedged in a space that barely had room enough for one of them. The guard stopped briefly outside the closet. Sofya had never been more relieved that Heremon stopped wearing Leshin perfume. If the smell didn’t give them away, her coughing would have.
After the briefest moment of hesitation, the guard moved along. Heremon slowly opened the door and they stepped outside. Sofya pushed her finger up against his palm, directing him towards a door on the far end of
the hall.
As they approached, Sofya could feel the magical energy from the Arm even more acutely. It was strong and distinctive in a way that Sofya had never quite sensed before. Even though Heremon said it could no longer possess any real power, Sofya couldn’t help but wonder.
Sofya reached out and touched the door. It was locked but it didn’t feel particularly secure. The Melinkovs weren’t keeping the arm in a vault. This seemed like more of a bedroom or office. Fortunately, breaking open a locked door was one of the easiest things for Sofya to do with ice magic. She placed her hand on the doorknob and chilled the lock until it was brittle.
Just as the lock was about to snap open, Sofya heard the hum of the neon spotlights outside. The Fey transformers had been reset and power was returning to the keep. They had to hurry.
Twisting her wrist, Sofya popped open the lock. She and Heremon quickly stepped inside just as the lights in the keep flickered on. The hard part was over, or so she figured. Getting into the second floor of the mansion was harder than getting out, especially when she and Heremon could both use magic to soften the fall from a window. There was just one complication that she didn’t account for.
When Sofya turned around, she gasped. The first thing she saw was the Prophet’s Arm—a spindly steel limb held together by a flexible metal pipe that spiraled around it from the shoulder. But that was expected. What wasn’t expected was the man it was attached to.
Wearing the Prophet’s Arm was a tall, blond Leshin man. His hair was slicked back and he was dressed in an embroidered green tunic that looked quite expensive, though it had seen much better days. There were dark circles under his eyes, though otherwise his face seemed quite calm for a man who was clearly a prisoner.
“Well, look at you,” the Leshin man said. “I suppose you are the rescue party.”