Whatever faults she might have, Keeper was a thorough researcher. She’d pulled information from dozens of different sources, speculated on what hadn’t been written down, confirmed those speculations, and compiled everything into an entirely logical conclusion. I couldn’t find a single fault or unaccounted for variable in her chain of reasoning.
I just wished the entry point was anywhere else.
The Actalus family had no reasons to like me and many, many reasons to hate my guts. I’d killed their head of house and his daughter, as well as a decent portion of their guards and probably a few unlucky servants who’d been caught in the crossfire. I’d also caused a significant amount of property damage in the process.
All of that made it easy to understand why the woman standing across from me radiated hostility. Their former leader, a man named Roenark Actalus, but more appropriately known to me as Velvet, the charismatic socialite who controlled the Wolf Pack’s lesser ranks, was her cousin, and the familial resemblance was obvious.
“Let me get this straight,” she said, her voice tight with anger. “You want me to grant you access to my family’s castle grounds, but you won’t explain why or what you’re doing.”
When she put it that way, it would have been suspicious even if she didn’t already hate me. I said nothing, though, merely waited for Keeper to formulate an answer.
“Lady Vaciana, I understand your skepticism, but I’ve already given my word that nothing we’re interested in will bring any harm to you or your own. Considering the payment we’re offering, I hardly think we’re being unreasonable here.”
Keeper was far politer with this woman than she’d ever been with me, but there was enough steel in her voice to know that she’d haggle just as fiercely when it came down to it. If it came down to it. Vaciana was giving every indication that she was about to summon the guards and have us tossed out onto the street. Probably the only reason she hadn’t was that the scars from my last visit were still visible in certain parts of the castle.
“No,” she said. “Not for you. Never for him.”
That was that, then. I didn’t blame the Actalus family for not wanting to deal with me, but that wasn’t going to stop me from getting what I was after. A pair of retainers escorted us back out of the castle, a slow trip in deference to Keeper’s age, and we waited until we were alone to discuss our next move.
“Do you have a second-best place?” I asked.
“We do have a few other options, but the Actalus crypts are by far the deepest and also the closest to where I suspect we can find the core of the device. The next best spot would add weeks to the excavation at minimum.”
That wasn’t an idle estimate, either. We’d already discussed how fast I could dig with my magic, a speed that I’d had to assure her wasn’t an exaggeration. But dirt and stone were still heavy and not even my mana was unlimited. Digging down a thousand feet just to reach the depths we needed wouldn’t take too long, but then finding the device itself was another matter altogether.
Keeper was confident at least a part of the mysteel framework ran directly under the Actalus castle, which was why we’d wanted to start from their catacombs. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t interested in cooperating. “What if we find someplace close by, dig deep enough to get under the Actalus catacombs, and then go straight for them before we go the rest of the way down?”
“That… might work,” she admitted. “I’ll have to look into the closest place we can find that might be amenable to us working there.”
“Alternatively, we can use the Actalus castle as a starting point anyway,” I said. “Honestly, it’s not like it would be hard to get in there and once I get started, I could seal up the hole behind me and set up a teleportation beacon. There would be at most a half an hour window where someone might stumble across me while I do the initial work. Do you think they patrol their catacombs that frequently?”
“That is also a good option. Yes, I rather like that one. Vaciana should have just taken the offer,” Keeper said with a laugh. “This would be illegal, of course. And since I no longer have any measure of political power in this city, if you get caught, you’ll have to deal with the Hierophant’s justice system. If I recall, the Enforcers do not like you and I doubt your stay in prison would be pleasant.”
“You are greatly underestimating my abilities if you think any amount of Enforcers in Derro could even capture me, let alone keep me restrained for an extended period of time.”
“All the same, I would have thought you’d prefer to keep better relations with the city.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Derro means nothing to me. I care more about this supposed cache of mysteel under the city than the city itself.”
“I feel a bit too old to be moving my archives again,” Keeper said. “And unlike you, I’m not confident I can fight off every mage in the city at the same time. How certain are you that you can get in and do the work without getting caught?”
“Completely,” I assured her. “I’ll get started tonight.”
“No, get me my payment first.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll brew your potions and build your storage crystals. Give me a week for that, then I’ll be back to start digging.”
With a final nod, Keeper started shuffling down the street, back to her converted warehouse. I didn’t bother going with her. Instead, I spent a few minutes completing a teleportation spell and returned to my demesne. I had work to do.
* * *
One of the drawbacks of living in a petrified forest was that it was difficult to find any alchemical reagents growing wild. I did have a few greenhouses set up, but I was busy enough that I didn’t take care of them like I should. Back when there’d been other people living here, Hyago and his assistants did most of that for me, and I’d found I quite missed being able to offload that work.
I considered the idea of tracking Hyago down again and seeing if I could convince him to grow more reagents for me. The last I’d seen him, he’d gone to New Alkerist with the rest of the population of the little village we’d established in the valley. At some point in time, he’d decided that wasn’t the life for him and left, but I wasn’t sure where. Once I found him, I knew I could tempt him into doing some work for me, though.
In the meantime, I needed to grow my own and I was sadly short on a few key ingredients for the potions I’d promised Keeper. I frowned to myself as I surveyed my supplies and considered how best to go about obtaining what I needed. There was the trader’s market in New Alkerist, though that was unlikely to have what I was looking for. Perhaps the Arborists in the original Alkerist might have some of it.
No, that was even more unlikely. I had enough to make a third of the potions needed. I’d deliver that and Keeper would just need to accept that I’d have to bring the rest to her at a later date.
Not for the first time, I resolved to do a better job keeping up on my greenhouse work. It had been so much easier in the Night Vale where everything I needed just grew wildly, and if it didn’t, I had connections to trade for it. Damn Ammun for destroying it.
* * *
“Do you happen to know where Hyago moved?” I asked my father through my scrying mirror.
“No, I don’t.”
“Could you do me a favor and ask around?”
Father nodded slowly. “Suppose I could. Ryla might know. Maybe Tetrin.”
“I’d appreciate if you could find out for me. I have some work for him but I’ve lost track of his whereabouts with everything else on my plate. I really thought he’d stick around New Alkerist longer.”
“I heard someone say he decided it was too structured for him, that planting trees in neat little rows was less exciting than he thought it’d be.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that. There’s a reason I want to hire him to grow stuff for me instead.”
Father laughed at that. “What kind of stuff? You know we’re a farming village, right?”
I started to tell him that it required a lot of mana to grow, but then I paused to think about it. Father was technically an apprentice mage, even if he had no desire to ever advance past that. He imbued plants with his mana literally every day. With my demesne supplying me so much mana, I could easily afford to cover anything and everything he might need to grow what I wanted.
Why hadn’t I ever considered that before? Probably because I hadn’t needed to. Up until a few years ago, I’d had Hyago to do that for me. “It’d be a couple greenhouses,” I warned. “Probably a full-time job. It’s not hard, just time-consuming.”
“Sounds perfect for your sister.”
“Hmm. Not a bad idea. I can teach her how to properly manage her alchemical reagents and pay her in mana so she can get some practice in. Is she home? If she’ll agree to it, I’ll come over right now and set the greenhouses up.”
“Uh…” Father looked behind him through the open door of my bedroom. There wasn’t much of the rest of the house to see from that angle. “One minute.”
I waited while he walked out of the room and looked around. When he came back, he shook his head and said, “She’s ‘hanging out with friends’ right now. So probably just Juby and probably not so much hanging out as looking for some privacy.”
I chuckled. No teenager was ever half as sneaky as they thought they were, and my sister, despite her growing proficiency with magic, was not an exception to the rule. I’d hunt her down later with the job offer.
“Maybe some other time then,” I said.
“You could still come visit for dinner,” Father offered.
If I was going to make the trip there anyway, it wasn’t wasted mana. I’d just have to stay a bit longer than I planned to set things up afterwards. Even if Senica didn’t want to take care of the greenhouses, I was sure I could find someone that could be trained to do the job. Why couldn’t Hyago have just stayed in New Alkerist? That would have made this much easier.
“Give me an hour,” I said. “I need to make a few mana batteries to power the greenhouses' enchantments first.”
I’d also want to head out into the desert and use the sand there as raw ingredients for the many, many panes of glass that I’d need, but I could do that after I went home. It was easier to find out there than it was up in the mountains where my demesne was.
“I’ll see you soon,” Father said.
“Wait, what are we having?” I asked just as he started to let the connection go.
“Uh… That is a good question. I’ll go find out.”
“Never mind,” I said. “It’ll just be a surprise for me. I’ll be there soon.”
The mirror went blank and I stood up from my desk. After a quick lap to confirm the progress of a few alchemical solutions with long brew times, I put together six mana batteries, topped them off by pulling on the mana coming through my genius loci, and stashed them in my phantom space. Then I walked over to my own personal teleportation circle, one that wasn’t connected to the rest of the platform network, and went to visit my family for dinner.