Two-World Traders (progression fantasy)

Plan A was simple: walk up to Adelbury City Hall, open the front door like they belonged there, stroll inside, and find that record book. Alas, plan A was promptly abandoned.

"It's locked," Briley confirmed, shrugging. "Always worth a shot." She had reasoned that one should never attempt breaking into a place before first checking the front door, especially in a city like Adelbury, where crime was low and security lax. In Sailor's Rise, the city guard had men stationed around the House of Merchants all day and all night. Elias and Briley scanned the block and saw no one save for a few passersby, probably headed for the pub.

"Onto plan B, then," Elias confirmed.

"This one's all you," Briley replied as they casually distanced themselves from the front door. "Good luck. I'll keep watch and… make a sound if I think we're in trouble."

"A sound? What sort of sound?"

"I don't know. An owl?"

"Do you even know how to make a convincing owl noise?"

"I'll figure it out."

"What if there's an actual owl nearby?"

"Just go. It'll be fine. Be quick."

"I need to find a way in first." For this part, Elias relied on his sight, giving it clear enough instructions. One of these windows had to be unlocked. Unfortunately for him, while there was indeed an unlocked window—a green line circled its frame like a date on a calendar—it was located on the second floor.

As an ascendant collector, Elias could jump higher than any normal man, but not quite that high. He searched for something else. A tree. Yes, he could climb the tree, maneuver carefully along that branch, and—it was still a bit far. But that was a jump he could make, assuming he caught himself on the window ledge. He was strong. He would cling to it like a clamp.

And so Elias climbed the leafless hardwood—situated along the shadowy side of city hall—and tiptoed down a thick branch that nonetheless bent under his weight, fresh snow falling with every judder. He employed his sight once again, then confidently made the leap. The branch bent even more as he launched himself from it, diminishing the distance he ultimately traveled. He missed the window ledge, bounced off the building's brick facade, and landed in the snow. Elias also possessed a higher pain tolerance than any normal man, but even still—he massaged his tailbone, cursing.

He matched eyes with Briley standing across the street. He could hear the suppressed laugh that escaped through her nose.

He tried again. This time, Elias caught the window ledge. He pulled himself up with one hand while opening the unlocked window with the other. Headfirst, he climbed inside and bashed his knee. Elias had successfully infiltrated Adelbury City Hall, more or less unharmed.

He did not require his sight for the second step in their master plan, for he had already glimpsed the location of the record book that afternoon. He closed the window behind him and slunk almost silently through someone's messy office, floorboards groaning loudly despite his best efforts. He was quite sure the building was empty.

Elias headed downstairs. Upon returning to the familiar entrance hall, he stumbled through the dark corridor, abandoning his catlike efforts to stay quiet, and quickly found the glossy desk containing the record books. A worried thought entered his mind: what if she had brought the books home with her or locked them away somewhere more secure? Luckily, this was Adelbury. He felt a hefty leather spine, thicker than a brick, and heaved the heavy book onto the desk's surface.

Obviously, he could not read a damn word of it in his present, blinding environment. Hasty schemes often left out simple details. There was an unlit oil lamp resting on the desk. Elias hesitated before concluding that he had no choice, that he'd only use it for a moment before blowing it back out.

He retrieved a tinderbox from his coat pocket and, striking flint against steel, produced a small fire, followed by a bigger one inside the oil lamp. With the speed of a Silver Sanctum collector, he flipped through page after page of the record book, searching for the right date. Seeing only wrong ones, he grabbed another volume from below the desk. He found them in the third book he stacked on top of the others.

The Two Worlds Trading Company, the row read. A quarterly import of cobrium. Payment per delivery: 1,000 relics. Date of contract: 17th of spring.

Unlike a candle, a quill and ink pot he had remembered to bring. Or rather, he'd already had the items on his person, though the thought had crossed his mind. Starting with the top tip of the seven, Elias drew a careful, angled C. It looked—if not perfect, convincing enough. He knew he would only mess it up if he put quill to paper again, and so Elias waited for the ink to dry, oil lamp still flickering. He blew on the page.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

And then he had an idea. It was something Briley said back at The Peddler's Compromise: "Presumably they have the original contract stowed away somewhere." He had initially dismissed her concern, citing the secretary's stubbornness and religious devotion to her record book, but now that he'd already broken into the place, perhaps the hard part was over.

And so, without a single word spoken, he asked the question. A green line beckoned him down another set of stairs, leading into the building's even darker basement. Elias considered it, still waiting for ink to dry. It would only take him a minute or two, he reasoned.

* * *

Briley was getting cold, and standing still was not helping matters. She waited behind a cart along the side of the road that she would pretend was hers if any inquiring person asked. When orange light first appeared through a paned glass window by the front door, she nearly made an owl noise. And then Briley quickly realized, or hoped, that it must be Elias, needing light in order to see what he was doing. They had forgotten about light.

Unfortunately, light was not meant to be emanating through any window of Adelbury City Hall after regular business hours, and Briley was not the only one to take notice. The tall, slender man nearly kept walking down the cobblestone street—back to the menagerie of drunks gathering along Maple Avenue—but then he stopped, almost contemplatively, staring at that lit window, taking another step before stopping and staring again.

Briley recognized his purple coat, black tricorne, and of course the musket hanging from his shoulder. He was a city guard. She swore under her breath, but it was another sound she needed to be making right now, and not so quietly.

It should be mentioned that Briley Soren had never made an owl noise before. She had never had an occasion or quite frankly the inclination. When she'd suggested an owl ten minutes earlier, it had not seriously crossed her mind that she might actually have to impersonate a bird. Hasty schemes and all that.

As the guard approached the front door, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a jingling ring of silver keys, Briley inhaled deeply and—

"Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo," she said, for it sounded exactly like a woman saying "hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo" and not so much like an actual owl.

Briley ducked behind the cart beside her as the guard whirled around, silver in hand. Through a crack in the wood, she observed him searching the intersection to no avail before eventually turning back toward the door. The light inside went out, though that probably only added to the mystery. Elias's only mercy now was the tremendous amount of time it took the man to find the right key.

* * *

Elias suddenly understood why the secretary placed so much faith in her record book. The basement of Adelbury City Hall was an absolute mess. He had carried down the oil lamp from the desk with him, as not even the ambient light of streetlamps shone into the windowless basement, though only a Serpent Moon collector could have found anything in here, light or no light.

A long wall of identical drawers was a mausoleum for paperwork. There were rows and rows of these drawers, but his sight easily led him to the right one, which was when he noticed the contracts inside were, as far as he could tell, entirely random. They were not alphabetical. They were certainly not chronological. He found The Two Worlds Trading Company's contract wedged upside down between another contract, dated roughly a decade ago, and a three-month-old agenda from a city council meeting. He checked a few more drawers to confirm what he suspected: years and years of official contracts, documents, agendas, notes—they may as well have been tossed into an ever-growing heap.

Elias was half-tempted to leave the contract as it was.

He retrieved his quill and changed it anyway. Afterward, he put the contract back exactly as he'd found it, not that it would have mattered, and closed the drawer tightly shut. As he swung around, clapping his hands in the manner of a job well done, Elias heard footsteps. They were directly above him, floorboards creaking, then knocking down the wooden stairs—coming into the basement.

Frantically, he blew out his borrowed oil lamp, abandoning it on the ground. He could tell from the stranger's movements that they were not Briley's. Speaking of which, why hadn't he heard the hoot of an owl? Had she been spotted? No. He was underground, in a windowless basement. He would not have heard her warning signal.

The steady drum of footsteps changed tone on the stone floor. Elias slowed his breathing. The only way out was up the single set of stairs the stranger had just come down. The individual was carrying their own oil lamp, a beam of light grazing Elias like a missed shot. On the tips of his toes, the latter man bolted behind a bookshelf, careful to stay out of sight.

As he circled the room, gradually making his way toward the stairs, Elias caught a glimpse of his pursuer from behind. An armed city guard. He would have preferred the secretary. He would have preferred a record book to a musket.

When opportunity presented itself, he headed for the stairs, resisting the urge to run. It was not that he doubted his ability to escape, only that he desperately did not want to be seen. He conducted business with Adelbury, and he wasn't willing to kill an innocent city guard for doing his job. Another item he wished he had brought with him: a mask.

His movements mechanical, Elias snuck up the stairs without making a discernible sound. Back on the main level, he thought he heard a distant noise that might have been a very desperate owl.

And there it was: down the wide hall, past the secretary's stately desk, waited his easiest exit, the front door. Before he could make it through, however, someone else opened it first. It was another city guard. Elias spun around before he could be identified. The floorboard beneath him, like so many floorboards in this tired, old building, creaked in alarm. He knew in that moment that stealth was no longer an option.

Elias sprinted up more stairs, returning to the second floor where he'd first entered the building, as boots clomped behind him and one of the city guards yelled, "Halt! Stop! You there!"

He did not stop. He instead relied entirely on his gift, though not in the usual manner. Two years ago, in a desperate fight for his life, Elias had learned another way to channel the sight—a faster if slightly less accurate way. You need only follow the serpent's path, Jalander had once written to him. Alas, it had taken Elias a while to discover that serpents carve their own paths. And so when instinct tugged him down one hallway, he did not question the direction, nor the second last door it told him to barge through, green lines trailing his movements the way a child draws wind.

He almost questioned what instinct told him to do next, though Elias did it anyway. He cracked open the room's large window—rather literally, breaking the lock with a strength he sometimes forgot he possessed—climbed onto the windowsill, and hurled himself into the cold night air with all the faith of a bird.