Chapter 79: Visitors

Chapter 79: Visitors

The Leotide City headquarters of the Stonemasons' Guilde looked exactly like Eli expected. Four stories of ornate stonework behind a cleverly-wrought stone fence. With carved stone lintels and columns rising above stone statues and fountains in the courtyard.

The flagstone courtyard.

"Welp," he told Lara, strolling past on the street outside the wall. "That's a lot of stone."

She scuttled alongside him, dressed like a maid. "Maybe give me a few more details?"

"There's a carriage drive in the front, beyond the gate, with huge double doors. Smaller doors on the side facing us, for staff or servants. A lot of stonework on the walls. There's what looks like a guard station just in front of the gate. It's four stories with--"

"I can see how tall it is."

"Oh. Right. Uh, there are barred windows on the lower two floors."

"Stone bars?"This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

"No, they look like metal."

She straightened the collar of his footman uniform as his sparks roamed inside the walls. "So untidy!" she scolded, when a few pedestrians strolled past.

"Looks like there's a coal cellar," he murmured, as he led her around the corner. "There are no doors, no nothing below the level of the perimeter wall, except a few benches and a drying line."

"Keep walking," she said.

He kept walking. She knew more about this kind of thing than he did. After all, she'd noticed him scouting for Chivat Lo back in Rockbridge.

"Buy me a sweet," she said, a few blocks later.

He did as she told him. "So now we don't look suspicious?" he said, when they stepped away from the rock candy stall.

"So now," she said, flashing a smile, "I got candy."

He snorted a laugh and they took the long way home. He watched for followers with sparks that ranged farther from him than ever before. Every time he improved any aspect of his control of the sparks--power, finesse, distance--the other aspects all improved as well. Which surprised him, even though it made sense. When he strengthened his core, he strengthened everything about his sparks.

He and Lara didn't scout the Guild the next day, or the day after that. Lara insisted that they avoid the area as much as possible before they struck, for fear of raising the alarm.

So their training continued almost uninterrupted. Until one afternoon, when Eli was meditating crosslegged in the training room, a sixth spark emerged.

Gently, softly. As quietly as opening his eye.

"Ah," Elsavet said, looking up from her knitting.

Eli laughed. "I didn't feel anything. The last time ..."

"Was with the Bloodwitch?"

"Yeah. And it hurt."

"We usually Flare in response to trauma," she told him. "Not always, but usually. However, that's not usually how we grow. We grow from within."

The weight of the new spark swirled in Eli's core. He felt himself expand and he sent a spark across the room--over five yards away--and lifted Elsavet's skein of yarn.

"Very nice," she said.

"Thank you. For everything."

"Don't waste your thanks on me, Mir Meek. I am Lady Brazinka's. Thank her. Or better yet, serve her."

"I'm not much of a servant."

"Neither was I, until I found someone worth serving."

He placed five of his sparks onto the floor, in a circle around himself. "You started as her instructor?"

"Mm."

"How did you become ..." He pressed on the sparks and lifted himself, still crosslegged, six inches off the floor. "Whoa!"

"True," she said. "But what may prove more enjoyable is watching you attempt the same victory whilst using your sparks balance bowls in the air without spilling the contents."

He struggled with increasing numbers of bowls for a fiveday, while Lara bribed and flirted for more information about the guild and guildhall. And eventually, Brazinka was granted another audience with the guildmistress.

So Eli took the opportunity to break into her house.

The guildmistress's townhome was a narrow building that backed onto the river. The exterior walls boasted extravagantly-carved windows and bas relief sculptures: the work of her guild, according to Brazinka, from hundreds of years earlier.

Eli took note of the expensive glass windows on the uppermost floor of the three-story building and of the hint of greenery on the rooftop. Maybe a garden; despite his improve range, his sparks couldn't rise high enough to see.

Well, not from street level.

He strolled down the long side of the rectangular building toward the river, checking in all directions with his sparks. Then he lodged two sparks on a windowsill and three on the ground beneath him. He pushed and pulled, and climbed the wall in a matter of seconds.

He caught the lip of the roof, using four sparks to take most of his weight. He scanned with the other three. The rooftop looked more like a terrance than a garden. A handful of chairs stood around a table beneath an awning. There were a dozen small fruit trees in terracotta pots. There was nobody in sight, so he hopped onto the roof and plucked a kumquat as he slunk toward the door.

He checked the handle as he chewed. Locked tight. With a fancy lock, too. He'd expected a bolt, drawn from the inside, but not this.

Still, it didn't bother him. Not anymore.

He pressed a spark to the keyhole. He closed his eyes and ... didn't force anything. He just waited for the spark to soften. To turn almost liquid, almost vaporous.

Then he eased it through the keyhole.

When it reached the other side of the door, Eli slumped against the wall. That was pretty exhausting for him to pull off.

He took a few seconds to recover while the spark solidified inside the house. Then he sent it to the limit of his range--six yards, more less, which was far enough to see around the corner and into a bedroom. Sadly, it wasn't far enough to open the third-story window from the inside. Hm.

With one spark following him inside the building, he stayed low and crept around the edge of the roof. Checked all the windows on the third story. Locked. Cautious woman. He could break a pane of glass, then open the window and pull himself inside.

He didn't want to leave a trace, though. Not yet.

Probably easier to go through the front door, if he could be sure nobody would take note. Dress in livery, maybe. Or wait until a few hours before dawn, and then--

A door opened inside the building.

A teenaged boy stepped into the view of his spark in the corridor. Half-naked, rubbing his eyes. The guildmistress's son, from what Brazinka had told him.

So maybe that wasn't the best time to prowl around. Eli had mostly come to test himself, and to check if the guildmistress had her own stash of gems. He'd wondered if he could hide in her house and make an imprint of her safe key while she slept. He even had a block of clay in his pocket, but that would have to wait.

He withdrew his spark, slunk to the side of the building, and dropped off the roof. He loved the feeling of catching himself in mid-air, slowing himself before landing as gently as a leaf drifting from a tree.

A carriage clattered past on the street in front of the townhome. The air smelled of damp wood. When the carriage turned the corner, Eli strolled unhurriedly away.

Twenty minutes later, he leaned against a fence overlooking the river. He couldn't see the barges unloading at the wharf, but he could hear the riverfolk and dockworkers calling, poles splashing, and crates scraping. He stood there for a time, thinking about the Killweeds. Thinking about the concomitance, but mostly thinking about Lady Brazinka's plan to unite the valley.

It sounded like a long shot to him. Still, at least she was taking a shot. That was more than anyone else had tried in generations, as far as he knew. The rest of the valley just hunkered down to weather the Celestial attacks, to suffer them and survive; nobody else gave any thought to fighting back.

Eli didn't know if fighting back was possible, but Brazinka was right about one thing: if it was, the first step was unity. Without that, they had absolutely no chance.

And was there a better way to achieve unity than to influence the Hyssop Throne?

No.

Plus, Brazinka's power functioned as a sort of compass, leading them through the wilderness. It couldn't tell them what obstacles might be waiting, but at least they'd know they were heading in the right direction.

He was still thinking about that when he returned to Brazinka's compound. He stepped through the side gate then turned the corner to the courtyard, absently noting Nanny berating a maid in the kitchen. He smiled at the sight. He'd started to feel so comfortable in the compound, that he barely scouted ahead.

And, too late, he saw the visitors:

A handful of soldiers.

Two women in civilian clothing, one with short hair and a square jaw, the other with silver-streaked black hair.

And two young nobles. One was a handsome man idly plucking a dead leaf from a bush in the front yard. The other was his twin.

A young noblewoman with clear brown eyes and a hawk nose.

It was Lady Pym, and she was looking directly at Eli.