Chapter 4

When Desari first arrived back in Ilus, it had been so subdued. Some buildings the same, others new. Her home had changed.

She’d familiarized herself with it once again, becoming part of its fabric once more. Though it was different, she had always felt removed from the city with her secrets.

Now that barrier was removed, though it felt like she was on a timer, an invisible pressure weighing upon her. It had spurred her into action, to spreading her roots back through the city. Though she still felt detached from it.

She would be pulled away it was a question of when. She wanted Egrin to have firm handle upon the happenings in the city and Trinity as a whole.

With her disappearance some of these elements needed to be trimmed back into place. It also led to her connecting some of her contacts to Egrin and Jana.

The others had helped her and Ilus, still were. Each of them had their own issues to deal with, pasts to right and last choices to change. She owed them deeply.

Her target looked out of his window, checking the street, then the roofs. His gaze passing over her, back from the building’s lip, her gear removing any heat or magical signatures. Her eyes affixed to the top of the window frame.

“Finally,” she turned her head from side to side, cracking it and stored the book infront of her. She flexed and relaxed her muscles in series, preparing to move.

He was wearing a costly jacket that had runed defences built in. She’d had some of her contacts gather the information from a tailor. There would always be criminals in every city, Desari just made sure to give them rules. If crossed they didn’t deal with the law, they dealt with her.

He moved through his apartment, opening his front door and hurrying down the steps to the street.

Desari stretched as she stood, tracking him through the streets.

Lyra stood up from where she’d been hiding, Desari’s near constant shadow. They’d cleared through the ranks of what had been the Molten Fist and Ilus.

This was their last hunt. Lyra’s life was no longer her own, bound with contracts she was the shadow affirming the agreement between the three groups that made up Trinity.

Desari grimaced, in her rush to clean up Ilus, to hunt down any scorpions and their remaining influence she hadn’t the time to create concoctions, spend time in the libraries or the summoning rooms.

She moved across the rooftops, dusk coming quickly. A tracking spell upon his shoes gave her direction. Her yellow mixed green core gave her more than enough strength to launch herself across the buildings, a silent shadow.

Lyra followed after her silently.

He moved through the streets, casting nervous glances at people around him. He moved through shopping districts and past workshops that were getting out.

Desari and Lyra shifted across the rooftops. He darted into an open market. It had come back to life with new goods and new trade.

Food, goods and services were for sale, stalls were still thinner than Desari remembered. A large roof arched over the stalls, hiding them from the sky.

“We’ll follow on the ground.” Desari dropped down from her perch into an alleyway.

Lyra followed.

Both wore unremarkable clothes, she could have been a student, a teacher or a worker, one of thousands in the city.

A quick illusion on them both changed their faces.

They slipped out of the alleyway and into the growing crowds heading to the market. People sat on small chairs at small tables, sharing a meal as staff moved among those waiting to collect orders, or clear the tables and wipe them down, new diners taking the place before it had even dried.

The smells of the market snuck up on them, spices, vegetables, fruits, meat, tea and a dampness mixed together in a heady mix becoming offensive or intriguing depending on the shifting wind pulled by the whirring fans hanging from above.

Desari’s target jostled through the crowd, in the day he dealt with the academy and the city’s accounting. Watching where funds were going and how they were being spent.

Not the most natural spy.

Little taste of the high life, more food than the others around him, that had been the catalyst.

Desari and Lyra checked the different stalls as they moved through, threading the crowd and gaining on him.

He turned around, checking in every direction.

She had to hide her grimace. Sloppy, real sloppy. A smirk threatened to appear. It did make her job easier though.

He turned down a corridor between stalls.

Desari flowed afterwards, looking at a scarf, giving herself a clear view down the corridor.

The target checked around himself again and passed through racks and tables of clothes on the market street and hurried into an enclosed store space behind them.

People wandered over to check their goods. Out of the three ‘staff’ hanging near the goods, none tried to engage those passing by, one was folding clothes, his eyes scanning the area—bored.

Lyra looped her arm in Desari’s, pointing at another stall, drawing her away before one of the staff working at the stall she was checking out the scarfs could weigh-leigh her.

“The people manning the clothes stalls out front are all fighters. Don’t think they’re mercenaries either. They’d be looking at the people wearing jewelry more.” Lyra said into her ear while waving at the scarfs at another stall as if explaining the different kinds before guiding Desari away.

“The clothes, do you know where they are from?” Desari asked, holding her arm crossed into the crook of Lyra’s, like the best of friends.

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“The style and cut isn’t local. Too thick for most in this kind of heat. Doesn’t use layers to cool those wearing them. Similar to the clothes that you and yours wear.”

“Not a hot climate and interested in our information.” Not doing what Scorpions would have done either. “Crystaline Dominion?”

“Fits,” Lyra said.

“Lets go and take a look at their wares.” Desari led the way up to the stalls, mana weaving through her channels. She gave a slight acknowledging smile to those watching the goods, picking up different clothes.

They quickly lost interest, looking for real threats.

Lyra and Desari released one another to look at different things and shift the eyes looking at them.

Desari spread out her senses, tapping into the wind. She was one of the greatest elemental casters in Ilus, though without her bond to her wind and earth elementals, she fought to gain a greater clarity.

Their target wasn’t in the store, just one man watching them from his chair, his eyes watching her and Lyra’s every move.

Air moved through the gaps in three doors around the store, hidden by clothes. A rack over one was still moving back and forth, the heat of a handprint dissipating on the door’s front.

Behind the door was random items, a hallway that cut to the right into a small cramped office where her target was. One was sitting behind a desk, another to the side of the target in the small space, patting him down.

Desari drew out a powder in her hand and opened the stopper, she caught it in the air spreading it out so that the green tint of the powder wasn’t noticeable.

She stored the vial as the cloud of powder drifted along the floor till it was perpendicular to the sitting man.

Desari moved over to Lyra, her movement drawing his eyes.

The cloud darted through the air and wrapped around his face, he jerked suddenly, his arms starting to open with his mouth.

Desari pulled up a shirt and walked towards him. The tension bled out of the man.

A wall of air snapped behind Desari, splitting to create a vacuum in between two planes, a quick and effective sound barrier as she pressed the shirt to the man’s chest to stop him from falling forward, she hooked her foot under his stool and drew it forward, its squeak on the floor lost by the sound barrier.

Using the shirt to cover her actions she pushed him back against the wall, the angle enough to stop him from toppling over, she held up the shirt as if to point to the detailing and haggle, using her other hand to open his eyes.

She lowered the shirt, melded the planes of air together, equalizing the pressure and bringing back in the noises of the market.

She put down the shirt on the counter. The man continued to look out at the street. Desari looked back at Lyra, none of the men on the street were looking into the store.

She lifted her chin in the direction of the trio. Lyra drew out three needles from her shirt and turned in their direction.

Desari took out another vial, the half depleted cloud spread out to capture the extra powder. Her eyes picking out the alarm spell linked to the door’s latch.

She guided the powder filled pocket of air under the office door up to the corner of the hallway leading to the office.

She pulled up the scarf she wore, covering the bottom of her face, Mya had sown it with thread that would filter out all that passed through and wouldn’t impede her breathing.

Mana ran through her body as she threw the latch up and pushed the door open, her powder laden cloud rushing for the trio in the office.

The door smashed against the hallway, her footsteps taking her halfway down it.

The man who had been patting down the target jumped up, the other threw back his chair throwing a blade that went through the target, his foot kicking down a door beside him.

Desari turned the corner, pushing off of the wall with her speed. She called on the wind, hurling the man trying to break out, into the wall.

The muscle fired a crossbow.

Desari turned her chest, the bolt hitting piercing her shirt and hitting the breast plate underneath, not slowing her as the cloud had reached the muscle and thrown man.

The muscle’s eyes widened.

“Des-ar-i.” His choked words fell from his lips as he slumped to the ground.

The man behind the desk tried resisting before he succumbed.

She pulled the knife from the whimpering target on the chair. Tearing a cry from him as she studied the blade.

The two spies breathing was steady, completely asleep.

Poison coated. She stored the blade, pouring a potion cure on the man’s wound. A yellow liquid trickled out of the man’s wound, staining his bloody shirt and jacket.

“Didn’t do you much good did it?”

The man’s face was pale, his eyes focusing down at the wound as he shuddered.

Desari slapped him, whipping his head to the side. Giving him something to focus on and keep him out of shock.

“Come on stupid, got your shit mixed up in something you didn’t mean to. Give me your defense.” She put away the antidote potion.

“Uh huh wuh?”

She slapped him the other direct, the dribble of yellow liquid slowing to a stop. Petor would be better at this.

“Better tell me everything you told this lot. Saving your life and all that.” Desari took out and opened a healing potion grabbing the man’s hair and pouring the potion right on the wound.

A scream tore out of his throat as the damage of the knife was reversed, bone, muscle, vein, skin and all the layers in between knitting together at about a tenth the speed.

His color was returning. Desari shoved the health potion into his mouth and poured.

He choked and coughed, spluttering as she drew it back out of his face. She looked him over and shrugged. “You’ll live.” She released his hair and stoppered the remains of the healing potion. “Waste not, want not.”

The powder cloud lurched at the man, his whole body slumping in the chair.

He tilted over and fell out of it onto his side.

Desari grabbed the muscle by his collar using a dagger to cut away his hidden weapons before pulling off his jewelry and anything not clothing.

She dumped him on the hallway floor and moved around the desk and repeated her actions on the man there before studying the desk.

Trap runes. She studied them before threading mana into them, unravelling them and then stored the entire desk.

A loose floorboard revealed a box of funds, gold, silver and copper from various places, as well as a selection of diamonds.

“Lots of diamond here.” She took out some rings and an earring, those in the front of the store had similar earrings with crystals in them. Communication crystals?

She checked the jewlery, each inset with different gems, jewels and crystals. Runes were etched into several.

“Storage devices are much harder to make. Rare you’re going to see someone go so far as to get a new storage device, they’ll get a smaller one by selling their own.”

The Crystaline Dominion knew about them, worse they were spending the time to understand Ilus and her allies. Speaks of planning and patience.

Lyra stepped into the hallway. Desari had sensed her moving through the store and the five ‘helpers’ that were helping the trio of watchers into the back of the store and drawing in the tables, closing the stores’ shutters.

Desari’s crystal vibrated in her pocket.

“Get a carriage around back to pickup this lot. Make sure he doesn’t die,” Desari waved at the accountant on the floor. She pushed open the broken door that weaved through a common alleyway between businesses to the loading areas at one end.

People hurried away back into their stores, leaving her undisturbed as she threaded mana into the crystal, creating a sound barrier around herself once more.

“—Alter here.”

“Desari here.”

“Up for a trip? Jaxus needs our help,” Mya said.