Crownsmith Chronicles

Castor accepted the ring with the solemnity the occasion deserved. It represented the king's authority, a power he had already used since taking over the office of investigation. He pretended to be humbled, though privately he admitted to himself he had long enjoyed exploiting the king's power to accomplish delicate errands. He slipped the ring onto his second finger. If he were to keep Bartholomew for another month, maybe he could use it to pawn him off on his superiors somehow.

Instead of going back to his office, he and Key decided to pay Delina a visit. They were already in the castle, after all. They found her with a manic air, meticulously poring over a stack of papers.

"It's finished!" She shouted, slapping the papers on her desk. Usually, it would be uncommon for her to have a single hair out of place, but now, it was uncertain whether one was in place. "I kept feeling like something was missing. But last night I couldn't sleep. I think I drank char leaf too late in the afternoon. I have all my best ideas at night, and I was up for every single one of them last night."

Key sighed. He had already been practicing the prank they would play on Jory, and now she was changing the plan again? He started regretting ever wanting to work with her. He could have played fifty pranks by the time she figured out just one.

"So we're changing the plan again?" Key asked, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice. The question still came out wryly.

"Not too much for your part, no," Delina replied, reordering the stack of papers. "Come over here and look. Not you, captain. You'll have to pay for your seat like everyone else if you want the experience."

Key held his hand to his captain while asking the obvious question. "What do you mean by pay for your seat? What does that mean? There's going to be seats that people pay for?"

Castor stepped past Key's upraised hand and held out the ring on his own. "Do you see this? As Sealbearer of the King, I demand to be included in all further dealings with you and my sergeant. Furthermore, what do you mean by seats? As my sergeant has so keenly asked."

Delina stopped fumbling around with papers and approached the ring for a closer inspection. "Is that real?"

"His Majesty took it off his finger and placed it on my own just minutes ago." It was only a partial truth. The king didn't literally place it on his finger, but he did so figuratively enough.

"Can you seal letters with it?" Deling asked with the wild energy they had found her with.

"I hadn't thought about that," Castor looked down at his hand. "I suppose I can."

"Perfect!" Delina flipped through her papers, pulled one off the top, and scribbled over some words on a page. "That fixes that problem."

Castor folded his arms. "It won't fix any problems unless you tell me what you're up to."

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"Fine, fine," Delina relented, spreading her papers on the desk. She pointed at the first in the order. "Have you ever been to the theater? Of course you have. They sell tickets to a performance, and then cry in your piles of gold when people don't like it. So, I got the idea of selling tickets to this event..."

"I don't think the prank will work if everyone is standing around watching us," Key said, not liking the idea of working surrounded by gawking crowds.

"You're not thinking big enough," Delina lifted up a paper on her desk. "Where's my tea?" She left the room and came back with a ceramic cup. "I'm going to put them on the rooftops."

It was Castor's turn to express his doubts. "How are you going to do that?"

"I worked it all out last night. Come look," She pointed to the first page. "I casually mention how I'm working on the conclusion to The Great Key and Jory Feud. When they ask me what I'm going to do, they always ask - I tell them they can see for themselves. If they ask me to tell them, I don't, and when they want to see for themselves, I charge them. Then on the day of, I send out correspondences with instructions on how to dress and where to be to see the action."

She pointed at the next drawing, "To draw Key and Jory out, you will use your ring to make an official summons ordering them to Greyson Hall."

"Who's going to be waiting for them at Greyson Hall?" Castor asked, not liking any of it.

"No one! That's the point, but I'll get to that," Delina said, picking up and unrolling a map on top of her papers. "In order to get to Greyson Hall, they will have to take this route. Here," she tapped a big X between intersecting streets. "This is where it all starts."

"Are we still doing the cursed coin and carriage wheel?" Key asked, still worried that all his efforts to memorize the old plan would be wasted.

"As far as you are concerned, everything is the same." She looked at Castor. "I will need you to contact our friends and find me a good pickpocket." She tapped a circle on the map and then pulled the map away to access her papers. "There, we do the cursed coin, the wagon wheel, toss some water out of the window, and add a reverse pick pocket."

"You have mutual pickpocket friends?" Key asked dubiously.

"You need one of our mutual friends to put something in Key's pocket?" Castor ignored Key, wishing he hadn't forced himself into the center of the mad woman's plans. He was feeling terrific about life up until this point.

"Yes, but we'll put the cursed coin into Jory's pocket. We're going to give Jory a coin he can't seem to get rid of," Delina explained, snatching a coin out of thin air. She placed it in the center of her hand and rubbed her hands together as more coins fell out, clinking against her desk. "They'll keep duplicating."

Castor walked closer to inspect Delina's duplicating coin trick, "Is she hiding them in her sleeve?"

"No, she keeps them behind her hand tucked between her fi-"

"Don't tell Charles anything!" She put the map back on the table. "As I was saying, you will go here and here. The first place is going to kick you out. They aren't going to want any part of Jory's curse. The second place will offer a solution to his dilemma, but it will be wonderfully humiliating."

"I still think it's a bad idea to have a bunch of people watching from the rooftops," Key expressed his concern to Castor's agreement.

"What's the wagon wheel about?" Castor added.

Delina tore the map away, ripping it slightly, to revisit her notes. She then walked each of them through the plan, step by step, until there was no doubt that she should give up the char leaf tea. The plan was truly diabolical.

"When are we going to do it?" Key asked, impatient to get it over with.

"All I have to do is sell some of the proverbial seats and get Castor to send me a pickpocket."

If Castor's frown indicated his thoughts, he didn't like the idea. "Don't you think this is all getting just a little out of hand?"

Delina only smiled. "Out of your hands, maybe. Be ready in seven days."