It was a quiet night. A soft breeze made its way through the city, rustling the lines of laundry strung between buildings and making passerbys huddle into their cloaks. The guards at a certain warehouse ignored the wind, protected as they were by the small recess the door was set in. Instead they passed the time with idle chatter, filling the air with meaningless words while looking around. The streets nearby were empty, and the moon reflecting off the canal made it easy to see that there weren’t any boats coming or going either.

At least on the surface.

Underneath the water, protected by the dark, the reflected light, and a new layer of camouflaging paint, I steadily made my way closer to the building. Like an oversized beetle my hull rested against the bottom of the canal, and I carefully lifted it up using my oars as legs, pushing off the bottom in a scuttling motion that slowly but steadily moved me forwards. I was pushing Water Resistance for everything I could, using it to keep myself from experiencing any drowning sensation that could have crippled me. I needed it as well, given just how deep underwater I was at times.

Not all the canals were constructed the same. Some were natural pathways, present before Dirint had ever been dreamt of. Others were man made constructs, carefully cut out of the dirt and rock underneath the city to allow for ease of aquatic movement and to control the tidal flows as they ebbed and flowed through the city. Most places nowadays were magically protected from the effects of erosion, but some canals had been cut deep, the endless motion of the time steadily wearing away what it could, until the water stood thirty or forty feet deep, trapped in an underwater canyon.

Other places experienced the opposite phenomenon, where the ocean deposited sand and dirt and silt. The richer parts of the city could afford the routine dredging necessary to maintain their canals at peak efficiency, but elsewhere some canals were almost completely blocked off, traversable only at high tide or with the shallowest of drafts. Trying to sneak across those canals would have been an easy way to be discovered, and it meant that our trip from our starting point to the actual warehouse was both longer and more winding than I would have liked.

My two passengers didn’t complain about it, a fact for which I was endlessly grateful. I did what I could to provide constant updates with my progress, but for the most part, all Jim and Stella could do was to sit tight and wait for us to get close enough for Stella to do her job. And by sit tight I meant lay flat on their stomachs, stretched out on the planks that we had just installed. Stella had had the foresight to bring some of her spare cloth to use as cushioning, and Wiz had convinced Jim of the utility of a light spell, so the pair's conditions were far better than they could have been, but I still hurried as much as possible.

“We’re here, up against the north side of the warehouse.” I said, settling fully into place and letting myself sink slightly into the silt at the bottom of the canal. Jim rummaged through his pockets before pulling out the paper and pencil he had brought along, while Stella simply concentrated, using her Skill to feel out what lay beyond the wall next to us. It wasn’t a fast process, as she wasn’t interested in providing the rough level of detail she used to navigate normally. Instead, Stella was carefully paying attention to every square inch she came in contact with, feeling it out with the same fidelity as if she was actually touching everything inside, and processing that information at a comparable rate.

“I don’t think this is just a storehouse.” She eventually said, half distracted by her continued examination. “There’s plenty of boxes and crates against the walls, but the center of the place is mostly empty, except for what feels like actual displays. There’s a large case covering a table with lots of small objects on it, as well as two pedestals five feet south of it with objects on them. One of those is flat and relatively large, likely a framed painting based on the leathery, irregular texture. The other Pedestal has a necklace on it, but I don’t know what it’s made of, beads or pearls or something similar.”

“There’s two guards in the corners nearest to us, and I’m not feeling any internal walls in the place, so they probably have sight lines over everything. The far wall is outside my range though, so I can’t say at the moment if there's more guards at the other corners, or if it’s just these two. They’re well-armed though, both of them are holding crossbows with bolts already loaded, and they have a sword and a club hanging from opposite sides of their belts. Their clothing feels like leather armor, given how stiff it is, and both guards are alert and ready to act. They’re a lot better than the regular bouncers and thugs I usually see around the city.” Stella added, almost as an afterthought.

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“Keep going, this is all great information. Once you feel like you’ve covered everything you can I can move us around the block. There’s another canal on the other side, but it’s a fair bit shallower, so I don’t think I’ll be able to get as close as I can here.” I encouraged Stella. Jim was scribbling away as best he could, making a rudimentary map on one sheet while writing down other notes on the other sheets he had brought. Already though, I was having doubts as to how we were going to pull this off. I was confident in our ability to gather information as we were doing now, and I knew that if we managed to get the goods out the door we would be fine, but there was a big gaping hole in the middle of the plan that we still needed to come up with an answer for. It was one thing to tell our friends that we could figure it out later, but that later was almost upon us. Stella was doing a marvelous job of scouting out everything, and soon we would have an almost perfect picture of everything we would need to get through.

A single entrance, guards inside, guards outside, locks and cages around the valuable goods, Items stored separately instead of relying on a single lock or case to keep everything safe…It was a lot. I wasn’t about to count us out quite yet though.

“I’ve gotten as much as I can from here.” Stella said, interrupting my train of thought. “You’ll have to take us around to the other side so I can finish up.”

I obliged, shaking myself free from the muck on the bottom with a silent squelch, before slowly moving to my new destination.

“A little closer, a little closer, that’s good! Thank you, Robert.” Stella let me know once She could feel out the rest of the warehouse, and then she and Jim got back to work. There were two more guards in the corner, but around half an hour after we first arrived something interesting happened.

“Shh!” I whispered, causing the pair to go completely silent, their sharing of information coming to a sudden halt. The water was an excellent noise dampener, but I had still heard the sound of footsteps approaching the place over the closest bridge. With my oars held ready to carry us away as fast as possible, I listened carefully as the new arrival casually approached the warehouse.

“Hey!” He called out. “Boss wants a pair of guys to head on over to the fruit seller’s.”

One of the guards waiting outside groaned. “Just two, or was it a more general call for muscle?”

“Just two.” The messenger confirmed. “More won’t fit in the shop, from what I can tell, anyways.”

“Dammit.” The first guy swore. “Lerry and Gerry are inside and are next up for any assignments. “I could really use something else to do though, but those two never are willing to trade slots.”

“That’s because you never honor your deals, Jerry.” The door opened and two more sets of footsteps could be heard as the guards in question exited the building. “We trade with Merry and Terry all the time, but you have this awful habit of forgetting whenever it’s convenient for you.”

The newly named Jerry spluttered for a bit, but before he could muster an appropriate response the messenger and the two guards were gone, off to do whatever business they were needed for.

“Cocky bastards.” Jerry said, loud enough for his partner at the door to hear and chuckle at, but not so loudly that the men leaving would be tempted to come back and have him back up his words.

I wasn’t overly concerned with jerry’s feelings on the matter, but I was interested in the mechanism that allowed guards to be pulled elsewhere. It sounded as if this location wasn’t just a storehouse for valuable goods, but was also a staging area for the muscle that these criminals used on some of their jobs, whether for protection money, or intimidation, or as bodyguards in dangerous situations. It would mean a large amount of work setting up the right problems elsewhere, but if it was possible to draw most of the men elsewhere then we might just have a shot at this.

“All done?” I asked my passengers.

“Yep.” “Yeah.” Were their responses, and I once again began to move.

This time I headed for one of those shallow areas, one that was out of sight of the warehouse and had a wall right up next to the canal. It took all my strength, but I was able to leverage my hull completely out of the water, and then I used the wall to slowly tip myself up and over, before landing upright with a splash. A bit later Jim and Stella emerged, a little bit mussed and tumbled about, but easily capable of taking on the appearance of a ferryman and his passenger out for a late-night voyage.