Liv watched the elevator doors separate, opening onto the third-floor lobby. The clerk was still there, sitting behind the desk, and when he saw Thelemule, he almost fell out of his chair.
The old wizard strode forward, twirling his cane. “I don’t suppose,” Thelemule slammed the cane down on the floor with a reverberating, much too heavy not to be magical, thud, “he’s in?”
“He who?” the clerk stammered out.
Thelemule let out a sigh dripping with sarcasm. “That’s how you’re going to play it? Really?” The lights flickered. “Really?”
“I’m afraid he’s away today, at his residence…”
“We were just there.”
“Maybe a different residence?” the clerk squeaked out.
“They said he was here.” Without breaking eye contact, Thelemule lifted his top hat, spun it down his arm, and handed it to Liv.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just leave.” Thelemule pointed to the elevator.
The clerk got up and, shaking as he passed them, pressed the call button.
The old wizard eyed him for an uncomfortable moment before the bell dinged. The doors opened, the clerk slipped inside, and Liv heard the sound of a button being pressed repeatedly.
Once the door closed, Thelemule asked, “What do you think the odds are of us exploding the moment we walk into that office?”
“More than I’d like.” She took a cautious step back.
“Fine, you want to help Scaggs? You go first.” He snatched up his cane and made a little shooing motion toward the office.
Liv eyed him, then the door. At first, she thought, At least a young girl’s less likely to get blown to pieces than an angry old mage, intentionally anyway. Then she remembered what Thelemule had said about Lord Parris and women.
She nodded and tiptoed toward it. The handle was brass. It had a lock. She pulled on it. It didn’t budge.
Readying a shrug, Liv was glancing back at Thelemule when she spotted a keyring dangling from a nail under the receptionist's desk. Although half a dozen keys were on it, only one was big, and brass, and scared the Bastard out of her.
It slid easily into the lock and, with a double click, turned. As the door moved the tiniest bit inward, Liv clenched her teeth, readying to explode. When she did not, she pushed it the rest of the way open.
Inside was a very neat, very tidy office. Bookcases lined the walls, leather chairs sat out for guests, the curtains were drawn, and a stone desk, a giant piece that dominated the room, lay on the ground, split in two.
“Hello?” she whispered, now a little curious, but still expecting to detonate.
There was no reply.
Liv crept in for a closer look. The cut in the desk was perfect, but the edges, where it had evidently hit the ground, were chipped, though there was no stone dust or other marks. No chair sat behind it, and the blue and gold carpet on which it sat also had a neat split down the middle. Had whatever happened here happened a while ago, and then been cleaned up?
“What do you think this means?” Thelemule rasped from behind.
The elevator dinged, the doors opened and, as the two spun around, inside Drake was just standing up from what looked like the lotus position.
He looked at the two, then at the desk. “It would have been much too large to move without drawing attention.”
“What’s going on? Where’s Lord Parris?” asked Thelemule.
“In. The. Basement. Come on,” Drake spoke with a hint of playfulness as he held the elevator door.
Liv looked at Thelemule. Thelemule looked at Liv. They shared an uncertain nod and got on.
Pulling a silver key from his pocket, Drake slid it into the control panel and turned it. The elevator went down.
The basement was everything you’d expect from the word: Dank with a musty odor, dimly lit with only a few spark lights, a low ceiling with bare floors, and crates upon crates upon crates stacked everywhere.
Drake stepped off, beckoning them to follow.
They didn’t have far to walk. Around a single wall of stacked crates sat a palette. Something was on it, and that something was covered by a sheet.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“Lord Parris, first of mages, you have visitors.” Drake pulled the sheet off a corpse, split in two.
The body was dry, not quite mummified. The split, diagonal down one shoulder, finished just above the opposite hip. His face, long and drawn in, was frozen in an expression of abject terror.
“I found him like this almost… eight months ago. Just before summer. We had an appointment first thing in the morning to discuss, what was it?… Some guild members overindulging in the complimentary libations… the booze.”
“Who else knows?” asked Thelemule.
“Polance, the fourth, I found dead that afternoon in his bathtub, drowned. Volge, the second, fled to Orleasia the next day. I’ve not heard from him since. Otherwise, just me, you, and…” Drake nodded to Liv, “you.”
“And the clerk?” Liv asked.
“He knows about the desk.”
“So, you’re the first then, of mages?” Thelemule asked.
Drake looked taken aback. “Bastard’s no. Not as long as people don’t know about this.”
“What killed him?” Liv asked.
“Parris? Well, either magic or someone spent a very long time constructing a guillotine in his office, and then hid it rather effectively. Tiamore, incidentally, was poisoned by the Church, so I rather suspect them.”
“What about Scaggs? Did they arrange that?”
“Who, the Church?” Drake gave a thoughtful nod. “It’s possible. But I daresay her current predicament is her own doing. I mean, what did she think would happen?”
“What about Stephan?” asked Thelemule.
“What about him?”
The old wizard spoke in a rush, “We both know about Eliza and her delusions. I saw her make a boat load of sailors think that if they didn’t get to land, abandon ship, their dicks would fall off.”
Drake gave a scoffing laugh.
“I’d be willing to testify. She must have used one on him. He’s innocent.”
“What?!” Liv choked on a cough.
“And I’ve seen her do other things— She tried to defraud at auction. She helped a vampire escape— I have a witness who saw her chasing neighborhood children for Verse’s sake!”
“You bastard!” Liv couldn’t believe it.
Thelemule snorted. “Sorry girl, but that’s always how this was going to end.”
Drake eyed Thelemule like the old wizard was mad. “And what am I supposed to do about Stephan, exactly?”
“Get him released. Eliza threw herself under the wagon. Don’t let her pull the rest of us down with her.”
“Released? From where? I’m sorry…”
“Actually…” Liv raised her hand. “He’s fine. He’s at home now.”
“Oh?” Thelemule stooped to her eye level. “You just told me that so I’d…”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the explosion…
“Well played.” He stood up straight and turned to Drake. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“So, you’re just going to let her die?” asked Liv.
“I’m not going to let her take me down with her. What you let her do—to you—is up to you. I’ll just show myself out then?”
Drake nodded. “Fair enough.”
Thelemule snatched up his cane and headed back the way they came. Before disappearing behind a row of boxes, he turned. “And I suppose this is yours.” He flipped a gold sovereign through the air, and by the time Liv caught it, he was gone.
Drake shrugged. “We’re probably better off without him anyway.”
“He knows about Parris?”
“True, true.” Drake gave a smirk. “You want to kill him, or should I?”
And then, suddenly realizing she was alone in a basement with a very strange man, Liv took a step back.
“Kidding. Look. I’d never kill him, for the same reason I’d never kill you, and the same reason I’ll help Scaggs if I can… Someone is murdering wizards, and I’m on the very top of that list. I need as many allies as I can get.” He pulled the sheet back over the corpse, the one that had been the first of mages. “Now, let’s get out of this basement. He gives me the creeps.”
After a ride in the elevator, Drake led her out the back door of the guild hall, to a stone path that wound around a garden of cherry-blossomed trees with a fountain pool in the middle. Snowflakes flitted lazily through the air, dissolving to rain by the time they hit the grass.
“Quick question, you wouldn’t happen to actually be Oliver Grey, would you?” he asked.
Liv tensed up, thinking of Thelemule’s words back when he, Oliver, was a cat, ‘I’d not bring him to Drake’s with you. Transformations are a rarity. He’s likely to vivisect the boy.’
“I was,” she whispered, readying to run.
Drake smiled at her unease like it was a joke. “I won’t turn you in. I just needed to be sure. It’s nice to have another witch around, or excuse me, ‘wizardess.’”
“So wait, about that, if Parris has been dead this whole time? Then who’s been giving Ms. Scaggs such a hard time about being a woman?”
Drake smiled sheepishly. “What better way to keep Parris alive? He’s been a right bastard to everyone since his, shall we say, ‘accident.’ Such a bastard, in fact, that no one has come to see him, voluntarily… until you.”
Liv groaned, now understanding why Ms. Scaggs didn’t like him. “So, what now?”
“Now we need leverage. The king’s not going to let a witch who kidnapped the princess go, not without a reason. We need to give him something he wants. Ideally, if we could get Scaggs working on her project again, then that would require her being alive.”
“I don’t think she’ll do that. It’s why they took her in the first place.”
“Then I don’t suppose you know how to make flame blooms?” Drake asked.
“Me?”
“You did work with her a long while, and I hear you’re a talented mage. If you could make them, I could convince the king to let Scaggs live, and you could tell your stepfather, well, any manner of obscenity, because you’d be more important than him.”
“The only thing I know about the bloom is how to clean up the blast chamber afterwards,” Liv said, freezing up as she realized there were fifty of them sitting in a locked chest in the river.
“But?” Drake asked.
“Nothing,” said Liv, her stomach fluttering.
“Are you sure?”
She held her mouth shut, thinking. Scaggs hadn’t destroyed the blooms because she said Noria might need them, and if it did, she was planning on giving them to Drake.
“Something’s occurred to you, something big. I can see it. Take your time, and decide carefully whether or not to tell me.”
Liv looked at her toes and, finding no answers there, took a deep breath. “I can’t give them to you, but Ms. Scaggs finished the first shipment.”
Drake blinked in shock. “All fifty of them?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me for asking. But why can’t you give them to me?”
“Ms. Scaggs said she was only going to turn them over if Noria actually needed them.”
“And you’re not willing to fudge a little to save her life?”
“She wasn’t.”
“Yes, but she’s annoying. How about a bribe then? Ten thousand sovereigns… you’ll be rich and she won’t be executed.”
Liv shook her head.
“Bother. Well, my door is always open.”
“You’re just going to let me go?”
He looked at her sideways. “And why wouldn’t I? I think you’ll change your mind. I would if I were you.”
https://discord.gg/fQtFt2sYdf
Who has the best sense of style?
