Pirin and Myraden wove through the crowd of partygoers, snaking down the beach and getting closer to the store-room with every step. Their Familiars trailed behind them, bumping through the crowd. Most of the extremely wealthy wizards at the party had small, useless Familiars, save for the Aremir family, whose horses were easy enough to pick out of the crown.

They stayed as far from the Aremir wizards as they could.

It didn’t look like much of a formal solstice party to Pirin, but then again, he couldn’t really say what a solstice party should’ve looked like. Maybe he’d been to one, but it slipped his mind, and it really wasn’t important. He’d learned to deal with the discomfort of knowing he should have a memory, but not being able to call it up.

Pirin let Myraden lead, following behind as they slipped around bonfires and guests, then navigated further down and lower on the beach until waves lapped at their ankles and crashed into their shins. He kept watch on them all, making sure no one was paying too close attention to them.

The further along the beach they got, the more he realized this was a distraction for the young, unimportant members of the Aremir family, and for the guests that didn’t warrant an invitation to any of the important parties elsewhere on the estate.

For one thing, no one looked older than thirty years old, and there were no powerful wizards. Maybe some mortals had political sway or wealth, but they had arrived on ocean-going ships, not airships, so they couldn’t be that wealthy. Anyone important would be inland.

A few mortal servers in Aremir family armour waltzed through the crowd, offering platters with drinks—alcoholic beverages, displayed in the open without a care in the world. The cups were glass, even. The partygoers could break them and no one would shed a tear.

Pirin tapped Myraden’s shoulder once, then motioning for them to move out toward the water a little bit and avoid a Aremir wizard on horseback.

Now that it was veiled, Pirin’s own core didn’t twitch nearly as strongly in the presence of other wizards, and he needed to be closer to them to guess what stage they were at or how strong their foundation was.

“Know much about the Unbound families?” Pirin whispered to Myraden as they approached the store-room—now only fifty paces away. They curved back up the shore, drawing closer to the village higher up on a ridge. Aremir staff in simple white tunics and aprons rushed in and out of the buildings, holding platters of food and wine.

There was only one building they didn’t enter: the storeroom.

“Why have the storeroom here anyway?” Pirin whispered. He had tucked his haversack and Nomad’s map into the void pendant, but that wouldn’t give them any clues. The only thing he kept out of the storage pendant was the umberstone mask, which he hung off the side of his shorts.

“Elixirs will decay in a matter of years if they are not kept cool,” Myraden said. “Seawater is a good source for naturally cool substances—I do not think the Aremir family has a Bloodline Talent for ice or cooling, and their Path’s techniques afford them nothing.”

Pirin nodded, but none of that information would help them get into the storeroom.

He only had one reliable way of getting in, and that was the Whisper Hitch. None of the mortal staff were entering or leaving the storeroom, and there was no way its door was unlocked. Someone had to let them in.

Myraden cleared the way through the crowd, delivering surprisingly curt and professional nods to anyone who got in her way. A few partygoers stared at Kythen and Gray, but they reeked of alcohol—they wouldn’t remember in the morning.

But the storeroom was only twenty paces away, and Pirin still didn’t have a plan. A single Aremir wizard stood outside the main door of the storeroom—a gate twice his height, perfect for fitting wagons and horses into the two-storey-tall building. The Aremir family wouldn’t make their own elixirs; the Emperor controlled elixir production and gave the Unbound Lords an allowance.

So technically, they were stealing from the Emperor of the Dominion.

The wizards patted the back of his horse. “How strong is that wizard?” Pirin whispered to Myraden.

She whispered something to Kythen, then after a few seconds, replied, “Flare. Four-pillar foundation.”

“They must have stronger wizards than that…” Pirin muttered. “Wouldn’t leave a single guard in charge of their elixir supply.” They climbed up a set of stairs, scaling and embankment and approaching the little village. A few smaller houses surrounded them—staff accommodations, kitchens, sheds, and stables.

“Perhaps something has distracted them,” Myraden suggested when they reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto the packed mud streets of the village.

Pirin blinked. Nomad? But word wouldn’t have travelled that fast.

But whatever was happening, it didn’t change the fact that they needed to get into that storeroom. He said, “Can you…distract him? The guard?”

“What?”

“I can use the Whisper Hitch on him—probably. But if I unveil myself and use the Whisper Hitch while he isn’t distracted, he’ll sense me…”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I dunno, but you can be very distracting…”

She narrowed her eyes. “Fine. But Kythen needs to come with you.”

It made sense. The wizard was sober, and a bloodhorn was uncommon. Even if the wizard didn’t immediately find it suspicious, he’d remember it in the morning and could cause problems.

“Act drunk,” Myraden told him. She added a bit of a stagger to her gait, and her eyes looked a little sleepier. “Our presence here will seem less suspicious.”

“I—” Pirin gulped. “I haven’t been drunk, not that I can remember.”

“You have not been,” Myraden said with certainty.

“And you have?”

“Once or twice. The Cursebearers of Ískan were treated like nobility before the Burning.”

Pirin matched her gait as they took the last few steps to the storeroom. He clicked his tongue and beckoned both of the Familiars with him; they slipped off to the side and tucked themselves behind a shed adjacent to the storeroom. He motioned down with one of his hands, instructing the Familiars to sit and stay.

First, he checked for any easy routes into the storeroom, but there were no windows or secondary doors into the storage room. They’d have to go the hard way.

At the moment, he couldn’t see any staff or wizards, and he hoped that meant they couldn’t see him. He gripped a window frame, then climbed up to the roof of the shed, using the boards of the walls and the ornaments on the eaves to haul himself up. He perched at the edge of the roof, watching the main street and the guard of the storeroom.

Myraden walked past the guard, stretching her arms up and yawning. She paused in front of the wizard, then said, “Oh! A guard. Good…”

Still stiff as ever. At least it wasn’t just an act she put on around Pirin.

“...You would not happen to know where…we could go to meet Lord Aremir? My matron…she was seeking an audience…”

Hamming up the drunken-ness? Pirin tilted his head. Myraden purposely stumbled and leaned against the wall beside the guard. The guard’s horse Familiar neighed, its intelligent eyes scrutinizing her. With a soft bleat, Kythen looked up at Pirin, as if begging for answers.

“Return in the morning, servant, when you are clear of mind,” the wizard said. “Or I shall report you to your Lady and inform her that you were drinking and shirking your duties as a servant.”

Myraden staggered forward and caught the guard’s shoulder, pretending to use him as a crutch to hold herself up. “If you would just give me the…time…”

The guard looked down at her with scorn (Pirin couldn’t tell if it was because she was a sprite or because she was drunk, or both) but she had caught his attention. It was enough. First, Pirin activated the Fracturenet in his legs and leapt from the roof of the shed to the roof of the storeroom—an extra two storeys up.

He landed in a crouch, impact shaking the roof. The guard looked up, but Pirin deactivated the fortification technique and pressed his back against the thatch, shielding himself from sight.

When the guard looked away, Pirin snatched up his mask and attached it to his face. Fuelling the runes, he activated his Reyad. Golden light poured out of the eye slit for a few seconds, but he covered it with his hands so it didn’t make a bright flash.

Finally! Gray said inside his mind. But, real talk, when are you going to…I dunno, ask Myraden out for tea?

“Not now, Gray,” Pirin whispered. Gray wouldn’t hear, but he pushed the words with intent, and they’d reach her.

You need a wingman. Wingwoman? Wingbird? Or just bird…?

“We have a job.”

Right. Sorry.

Pirin crept to the edge of the storeroom roof and peered over. He held his hand out toward the guard. He snagged a glimpse of the guard’s eyes when the man looked down the beach, trying (and failing) to keep Myraden out of his field of view. She staggered back in front of him every time he looked away.

A glimpse of the guard’s eyes was enough. With his Reyad active, the Whisper Hitch was a guaranteed activation. An orb of mist formed in the palm of his hand. But the guard had been training his willpower for years, too. His mental strength felt about the same as Myraden’s, even though he was significantly older. But Pirin didn’t need absolute control.

He pushed parcels of doubt and anxiety into his Essence, cycled it to his hand, then let it seep up into the man’s mind. Then, he prodded with a simple thought: There’s something inside the storage room. Open the door and look.

The first time, the guard only swallowed nervously. It would have seemed to be an intrusive thought. Pirin focussed on his own senses and emotions, targeting his inexperience and nervousness, and fed that to the man, then kept prodding. There’s something inside the storage room. Open the door and look.

After two more pushes, the guard finally told Myraden, “Step back, sprite-filth.” He raised his hand, as if about to strike, and pale grass-green Essence swirled around the back of his hand.

Myraden stepped back, hand overtop her void pendant—if needed, she was ready to activate it and withdraw a weapon.

But it wasn’t necessary. The guard pulled a key out from a keyring on his belt and slotted it into the storeroom gate’s lock. He used a fortification technique on his arm, filling his veins with green horse Essence, and heaved the lock open, then pushed one half of the gate inward.

With his own Reyad active, Pirin had access to gnatsnapper Essence. He guided the wind under his arms, then swung under the storeroom’s eave. He dropped weightlessly to the rim of the gate, then swung under and through the gate at the same time as the guard.

With a Winged Kick, he pushed himself up into one of the storeroom’s corners and slotted his hands into the walls to hold himself up and in-place without using any technique at all. All the guard would have felt was a gust of wind.

The storeroom was a single hall with a flagstone floor and simple walls. Kegs lined the edge, and candles guttered in their sconces, but the main attraction was four massive silos of elixir. Tubes ran around them like a giant metal snake, and Pirin figured those held seawater to help keep the elixir cool.

Now, Myraden needed to get inside too.

Pirin flicked a thin blast of wind down to the other end of the hall. It barely made a sound until it struck the other wall with a thud. The guard and his horse ran down to the other side and looked up. Pirin tucked himself further back into the darkness.

Immediately, Myraden peered through the door, then slipped inside. She ran to the other side and ducked into the shadows behind one of the silos.

After a few seconds of searching, the guard shook his head, then marched back to the door and shut it behind himself.

Pirin smiled. The elixir was theirs.