image [https://i.imgur.com/9JnFmXw.jpg]

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Just as she'd paid them to, shortly after her arrival at The Delles Gallery, Bron’s criminal gang started fires at four of the major warehouses storing Delles private merchandise.

The fires themselves would be swiftly extinguished, and probably did very little damage to the warehouses or the goods, but the whole event looked like a coordinated attack, demanding Haldor's immediate attention.

The Delles operation would be on the lookout for more fires, and Haldor would want to oversee the response, and get reports from his warehouse security in person. His history with crisis management indicated that he disliked delegating responsibility in stressful situations, a weakness she’d was trying to exploit at this moment, so he would leave her unsupervised in the Gallery.

Sure enough, after some heated words with his bodyguard outside the door, Haldor returned, smoothing his hair and adjusting his cravat. He stood in the doorway and gave her a very slight bow, ‘My apologies, Miss Milsen. I must leave you to attend to some urgent business.’

It worked! He's leaving, and I still have his jacket hidden. Stay calm; I just need to play along and we're on to the next stage of the job.

‘Rumdoodle looked disappointed, but curtsied and nodded in response, ‘Of course, my lord. Don’t let me detain you from anything important, and thank you again for this opportunity to study in the Gallery.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, barely paying attention to her as he prowled the room, searching for his jacket. His mind was clearly already on crisis management, just as she’d hoped it would be.

Impatient and distracted by his need to manage the warehouse situation, he finally cursed softly and turned to leave without the jacket.

In the doorway he paused and turned back, his eyes resting on her one last time, ‘Feel free to spend another hour or two here, Miss Milsen. Continue your studies, but make your way back to the reception at the end of the corridor when you’re done. Don’t wander off; our security system is quite advanced; it would be best for you to avoid triggering it by accident… Perhaps we should reschedule this appointment for tomorrow and I can show you some more of the collection in person?’

‘That is most generous, my lord, Haldor. Of course I accept,’ She said, smiling and bowing her head in deference.

‘Until tomorrow then. Good day,’ he said, and stalked away down the corridor with his bodyguard in tow, leaving her unattended in the study room.

Thank Orot that’s over.

Rumdoodle waited for a couple of minutes, to be safe, before she went and grabbed Haldor's jacket from beneath the chaise-longue.

She rifled through the pockets, taking out the knife he’d used to open the wine, alongside several other small items; an embroidered handkerchief, a small pocketbook, a Garrel made pen with an internal ink reservoir, a cigar case, and a flint lighter embossed with the Delles family crest.

Altogether, it was more than she needed to completely mimic Haldor Delles’ ethereal signature.

Rumdoodle put on Haldor’s jacket, then she reached into a secret pocket hidden in the lining of her skirt. She produced a small purple ether crystal, around the size of a grape. It hummed with stored charge, filled to capacity by her contacts at the Independent Guild of Arcanists. Not only that, this crystal had been skilfully enchanted, at great cost, to conceal it from triggering the detection wards used by the doorman and most magical security, meaning she could sneak a secret source of magical power into almost anywhere as long as she could hide it upon her person; something she rarely had trouble with.

Wearing the jacket, with Haldor’s personal effects gripped in one hand, and the ether crystal in the other, Rumdoodle visualised her spell and drew power to complete it.

This was a skill she’d trained over many years to learn, something most mages wouldn’t attempt, not only because it was difficult and required specific ethereal focuses, but because it could very easily go wrong. It was also an illegal form of magic, but who cared about that, really?

Rumdoodle surrounded herself in a blanket of ether that entirely mimicked the signature of Haldor Delles, using his personal items as focuses and drawing on their conceptual attachment to him. The items needed to be fresh, meaning they had to have been very recently in the owners’ possession, and still ‘ethereally entangled’ to use wizard jargon. Consequently, the right focuses were difficult to source, and that made the spell only situationally useful.

On the surface, her appearance shifted as a purely visual illusion of Haldor took her place, looking exactly as he had today. That was the easy part, the more challenging aspect of the spell was everything you couldn’t see. Haldor’s ethereal being overlapped her own, smothering it. She could feel him in a way that was almost more intimate and disconcerting than whatever crude sexual liaison he’d been planning to force upon her. She felt his calculation, his lust, his ambition, and the most recent emotion, his deep anger at his warehouses being attacked; by extension it was an attack on him. The depth of cold rage she felt from the man she’d been sitting beside not five minutes ago was enough to make her shiver.

She held that ethereal blanket of Haldorness there, overlapping her own, but not melding into it. This kind of magic could theoretically, or accidentally, be used to dive into another person’s mind and personality, wrenching deeper and more specific information out of their ethereal being, but it was costly, and blurring the lines between your own being and that of another person could really fuck you up if you weren’t careful. She didn’t want that, she just needed the mimicry to stay in place long enough for her to fool the Gallery’s magical security system into believing she was Haldor.

Based on her practice runs, and the amount of ethereal charge in the crystal, she probably had about ten minutes.

She left the study room and turned left, following the route she’d mapped out when she studied the floor plans of the building. The Gallery was full of staff, but her route was blessedly clear since it kept her away from most of the working studios, and Haldor already had her in the part of the building where he didn’t want to be disturbed.

The painting she was trying to steal was in the basement vaults. There were three obstacles she needed to pass in order to get there. The first was the magical alarm that would trigger anytime someone without authorization tried to open a door.

It was an innovation that had been widely implemented ever since the Slimy Lez burglary spree a few years ago. Few places solely relied on mundane locks or barriers anymore. Most used magical access tokens like rings or amulets that gave the wearer access, much the same as keys; though those were debatably secure because they could be stolen, just like keys.

Those who could afford it used the far more advanced method of identification wards to track people’s ethereal signatures and determine whether they were the same people keyed to access those areas. They took a huge amount of time and investment of energy and spellcraft to set up, but they were considered the most effective defence, and could link to further alarms, traps, whatever the user wished.

It was exactly this kind of warding system she had so painstakingly developed her shroud technique to circumvent. Who would have more access privileges in The Delles Gallery, than Haldor Delles himself? The ethereal Haldor shroud would surely fool the wards

Well, here’s the moment of truth.

She turned a corner and pushed open the door to the basement stairway.

It opened freely. No alarm bells, no running feet. Success on the first count. Excellent.

The second obstacle were the guards downstairs, two of them, standing in the hallway leading to the vaults.

Those were more tricky.

Rumdoodle peeked around the corner at the base of the stairs and saw them leaning against the walls and chatting.

They were in close proximity and neither their armour or weapons looked especially enchanted. Best guess was that they weren’t magically trained, which gave her options.

She began visualising another spell, while being careful not to lose concentration on her Haldor shroud. This one was a trick she’d learned when she was still in the orphanage, before they kicked her out for reasons that were quite understandable in hindsight.

It was a simple spell and it worked wonders for putting crying babies to sleep, but if you amped it up with enough juice…

She leaned out and flung the spell down the hallway. A glowing mote of light landed between the guards and flashed brightly once without making a sound. The guards both collapsed unconscious to the floor, magically stunned into a deep sleep that should last for at least the ten minutes she needed to get in and out of the vault. If nothing disturbed them, they could be snoozing all afternoon until they awoke with no memory of what put them to sleep in the first place.

The spell had an instantaneous effect so it didn’t take any concentration to sustain, but it did consume a fair chunk of her ether crystal’s charge. She probably had about six minutes left on the Haldor shroud.

Which brought her to the final obstacle. The door to the vaults. It had the same warding system she’d already tricked, but also a mundane lock she would need to bypass one way or another.

She checked the guards. One of them had the key.

Amazing! That saves some time. I thought I was going to have to pick the lock.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She kissed the snoring man on his forehead, ‘For this, I wish you many sweet dreams,’ she said.

Letting herself inside, she entered an extensive, high ceilinged space full of shelves and racks of stored paintings and documents. This room was used for intake and classification of new items. They were kept here until the appropriate experts could be brought in to study the pieces, restore them, document and tag them, and transfer them to the organised archives elsewhere in the complex.

There was currently no-one working or retrieving anything, which was good luck on her part. Another knock-out spell would drain her ether crystal too much, and passing herself off as Haldor with the illusion might have worked, but it also would have raised a lot more suspicion in hindsight than a couple of guards found asleep on shift.

Her mysterious employers for this job had supplied her with the reference number for the shipment, and she searched through the shelves until she found the one she was looking for, and cut open the box.

It was a painting of Utred, the Alfir hero who ended the Fogotten War, standing on a rocky outcrop above a sundered field of death and awful twisted magic, with the light of the sun blazing from his shield. At his feet lay a young boy, cowering away from the hero with his arms held up to shield his eyes from the overwhelming brightness. Utred’s arm was raised to strike the child, but in his pose there was a sense of hesitation and unwillingness, communicated in the tilt of his head and the stiffness of his sword-arm.

There was a small card inside the box.

Title: The Betrayal – painted in 64AFW by Subor Jakszil, veteran and eyewitness to the final battle of the Forgotten War, shortly before his demise from memory related complications. Painting secured from auction.

This was the one.

Rumdoodle opened up her cylindrical document case and pulled out a rolled up forgery of the painting from a hidden chamber in the base.

The doorman really should have done a more thorough search before he let her into the Gallery

She removed the original painting from the frame and replaced it with the forgery, an action she’d practised over and over again until she could do it quickly and carefully in two minutes or less.

The forgery was exactly the same as the original, down to the materials, weathering, and the quality of the brush strokes. She’d stolen enough art in her time to develop an eye for good forgery, and this was one of the best, except for one glaring issue.

The little boy Utred was preparing to strike down in the original, had been replaced by a generic soldier.

She checked her ether crystal, just over two minutes of charge left, she didn’t have time to question. She’d just have to trust that her employers knew what they were doing.

She closed the box and sandwiched the original painting carefully between two sheets of protective vellum before rolling it and stowing it inside her case’s hidden compartment.

Then she swiftly left the vaults, locked the doors behind her, left the key on the sleeping guard and ran up the stairway to the corridors above.

Her ether crystal was almost out of juice but she made it back to the study room without running into any Gallery staff in the corridor and dropped the shroud with a sigh.

All things considered, she didn’t think that could have gone much smoother.

She took off Haldor’s jacket and dropped it down the back of the chaise-longue. Then she gathered her things, tidied up the scriptures that had been left open on the table, left a thank you note for Haldor and whoever came to clear everything away once she left, and made her way back to reception.

The receptionist looked up at her in mild surprise, ‘Leaving so soon?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I wasn’t finding my study time very productive without instruction. If Lord Delles is still available for a follow up appointment tomorrow I’ll return at the same time?’ she asked.

‘He mentioned it on his way out so it’s in the book,’ the receptionist said, patting the list of appointments, ‘Was everything…ok today?’

‘Very satisfactory,’ Rumdoodle said, ‘I don’t suppose you could recommend me somewhere to get some lunch, could you? I’m so hungry and I’m new to the city. I haven’t really explored beyond my hotel.’

She waited while the receptionist made some recommendations and wrote a set of directions on a piece of notepaper, then she left.

The doorman saw her walking over with all the same belongings. He waved her past without a search.

Just like that she was home free, strolling away across the plaza with the stolen painting rolled up in a carry case that hadn’t been checked once. It was almost embarrassingly easy. Then again, only someone with her skillset, connections, and a month to plan, could have pulled it off quite so stealthily. The whole point was that nobody realised the building had been robbed. Even if the guards woke up and thought something was weird, they’d no way of figuring out exactly what had happened, let alone tracking down a single discrepancy in a single painting out of thousands of documents and works of art. With any luck, it would be months before anyone checked that painting and realised something was up.

As for her meeting with Haldor tomorrow, she had no intention of attending. She’d send an apologetic letter blaming food poisoning and describing the symptoms in too much detail, which would surely put him off, and then she’d be forgotten in a week.

Rumdoodle made her way back down into the low-city, wasting no time in heading directly to the drop off.

She cut through a steamy alley behind the Grand Public Bathhouse, but pulled up short when a pair of street roughs appeared at the end, blocking the way through.

A quick look behind her told a similar story, a single large Orend man sidling up with a cocky look on his silver skinned face.

‘Ello there poppet,’ he growled. His breath smelled of smoky whiskey, ‘What a pretty little thing y’are. Whachoo doin so far down from the hilltop?’

‘Looks lost to me, Vince,’ said one of the others, ‘P’raps we can help er?’

‘There’s a lotta nice spots round ere. You probly neva bin to the low-city on yer own before, ave yer poppet?’ Vince, the Orend, said, ‘Let's give ya a little tour.’

‘Back off,’ Rumdoodle said, turning to keep all three in sight as she squared her shoulders and glared at them.

‘Hoho, that’s a mean look you got there, poppet. Why should we?’ Vince asked.

‘I’m a friend of Bron Labonse,’ Rumdoodle said, dropping the name and hoping for the reaction it deserved.

Sadly it failed to land.

‘Who?’ asked one of the other two roughs, looking her up and down like a piece of meat.

‘Never erd of im,’ Vince said, ‘What’s it to us?’

So they’re completely ignorant of local factions, probably visiting sailors from out of town.

‘If you lay a finger on me, he’ll gut you and nail you to a mast for the whole harbour to see,’ she hissed, hoping to instil some kind of doubt in their minds.

They were too far gone with drink and their own hubris. They fell about laughing.

‘I’m sure yer boyfriend is very tough, but he ain’t got nuthin on Vince, I’ll tell ya that. C’mere,’ Vince said and reached out to grab her arm.

Fine. We tried the nice way.

She used the force of the pull to bring her close and then she head-butted Vince in the nose, sending him reeling back, with blood spewing from his nostrils.

‘Fuck all you stinking men, always coming onto me!’ she shouted, bringing up a secretly steel toed shoe to crush his balls with a vicious kick that left him squealing and vomiting on the ground.

‘And trying to fucking touch me when I said no!’ she spun and brought her briefcase crashing around into the jaw of one of the roughs behind her who had just started moving forward to help Vince.

The briefcase flew open on impact, scattering papers across the alleyway as the man's jaw shattered and he hit the ground, unconscious.

The last one backed off. He’d been quiet up to now, standing slightly behind the others and looking shiftily around, as if he was worried they’d get caught harassing her.

He held up his hands.

‘I didn’t do nuthin!’

‘You watched,’ she said, and faked a lunge towards him, making him lurch backwards and run out of the alley.

She gave Vince one last kick in the teeth for good measure, spat on him, and left the scene, abandoning the briefcase; it was useless now anyway. She still had the cylinder with the painting inside safely strapped over her shoulder.

Ten minutes later, she let herself into an old warehouse where a dark skinned Mardin man in black clothes was sitting on a stool waiting for her.

He had unkempt hair and a few days worth of stubble, but his clothes were clean and he had a bright twinkle in his eye. This was her contact for the job. She didn’t know his name, or who he represented, but they had a lot of money and resources, and their information had been flawless so far.

‘You have some blood on your face… and on your boot,’ he noted, speaking in a deep and rich voice.

‘It’s not mine,’ she smiled, ‘and it’s not from the Gallery; that went off without any issues, but I got jumped by some horny sailors on the way here.’

He made an ‘ah’ of understanding, then motioned for them to continue the drop off.

She handed over the case with the painting, indicating the hidden compartment, which he checked and nodded appreciatively.

‘Nicely done, my contact at the Gallery hasn’t reported any disturbance, other than the acts of arson by your friends, but there’s nothing to link those to an art theft at present. I think it’s safe to say the job was a success.’

He brought out a small pouch of payment and passed it to her.

A look inside revealed a bag of five small ether crystals, each glowing brightly with a clear white light. These were high grade, rare and expertly cut, with none of the flaws or abnormalities that gave most crystals their varied hues. They were perfect for expert enchantments and made peerless magical batteries. Rumdoodle had never seen five in one place before. Traded in, these would be worth at least twenty-five-thousand gold suns, an obscene amount of money.

‘This is more than we agreed,’ she said, looking up suspiciously.

‘Call it an investment, paid in good faith towards our future partnership,’ the man said.

‘You want to hire me again?’ Rumdoodle asked, this past month had been a lot of work and preparation, and she'd been meaning to take a break to enjoy her payment and unwind. Still they were the best employers she’d worked for in a good while, and the large payout had made an impression.

‘What’s the job?’ she tried not to sound too keen.

‘An auction is being held at the upcoming Lovers Festival in Loverlock,’ he said, ‘We want you to wait until the bidding is over, then steal a particular item back from whoever has bid the most for it. You will then deliver the item to us, and of course we’ll pay. It’s a job with less planning time, so we’ll increase the rate by thirty-percent.’

‘Auction, bidding, not knowing the mark until late in the game. It sounds a little convoluted,’ she frowned, but that was a lot of money, and she did enjoy Loverlock. It was a beautiful lakeside resort town on the other side of the Twirling Ridge Mountains, just the kind of holiday she’d been after. Maybe she could enjoy it while she did a little job on the side?

She cocked her head, ‘What’s the item?’

The man leaned back on his stool and smiled, perhaps sensing that he’d gained her interest

‘How much do you know about Bilberry Rattlestaff?’ he asked.

[End of Chapter 11: Part 2]