Beau found the house easily, he had used his lunchtime to scout it out. It was an old house which meant creaky floorboards, not ideal for stealth. The roof had been repaired recently, however, so he chose that as his point of entry. He walked around outside the garden wall for a little; he found a quiet part with plenty of coverage then scaled it with ease jumping smoothly to the ground on the other side.

The wall of the house was slightly more difficult to climb so he helped himself by creating footholds, expending a minuscule amount of his vast mana pool. He arrived swiftly at the top, and without a moment’s hesitation found an ideal spot to enter, an open window on the top floor.

He silently squeezed through and landed on a carpeted floor, his dirty shoes left a mark on it that he quickly scrubbed out with his hands. He took his shoes off and left them on the windowsill.

He walked to the door and opened it, hearing a crackling fire and voices from below as he did so. He closed the door behind him and continued along the corridor then down the stairs. He could tell which room they were in now and moved to get a better spot to listen.

One of the floorboards creaked underfoot, making Beau pause and cringe a little. He had become an expert at entering households like this one, the elite of Carter enjoyed a lavish mansion. Creaky floorboards, it seemed, came with the territory. Beau pushed some mana into his foot, a tattoo covering the ball of his feet lit up subtly, the light barely reaching through the thick cotton of Beau’s winter socks. Suddenly his footsteps were silent.

He approached the top of the stairs, hoping that he would be able to hear them from there. Alas, no luck. He made his way down, aware that despite his quiet footsteps he was still very much visible. Now that the voices were much clearer, he found an alcove near a statue of a god, he immediately recognised it as Vicion, Carter’s god of pain and suffering.

Carter’s gods were popular amongst the people, stories about them roamed the kingdom and beyond. Vicion was an infamous deity, brought to life by the gods in a moment of weakness. According to the story, Vicion left the realm of the gods as the inhabitants were a little too difficult to make suffer…

Beau hoped that the gaudy statue would provide suitable cover lest the gentlemen (he could tell they were men now) in the next room decided they wanted a cup of tea. They were talking with the kind of comfort you feel in your own home.

“Fucking, Johnathan!” one of them spat.

“He is under the deluded assumption that our order is an army.”

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“Well, let’s be honest with ourselves, gentlemen, Johnathan was never the type for subtlety.”

“Then he’s hardly the man for the job then, is he?” one of the men proclaimed, very threateningly.

“Whilst I could not agree with you more, Johnathan is in charge,” said the leader of the group. Beau could guess this by his commanding voice and the clear silence that emerged when he spoke. “No more new recruits for a while, do you understand. I don’t care how tempting it is. With that damn rogue here, I don’t want to give him any chances.”

“With that damn rogue and our incompetent sect leader,” muttered one of them.

“That’s enough, just do your job, allow Johnathan to fail at his. He’ll be out of Bath in no time,” snapped the leader; clearly tired of the complaining.

Beau could tell they were wrapping up. Plates and mugs clinked as they were put down and clothing rustled as the men stood up. He would gain nothing from sticking around any longer, he scarpered. Easily making it to the window he’d arrived through, he didn’t even put his shoes on, he just climbed down the house using window ledges on each floor. He ran through the garden and scaled the wall.

Beau leaned against the wall from the outside and put his shoes on. Incompetency was Beau’s favourite thing, and this Johnathan fellow seemed to reek of it. Beau had a vicious smile across his face.

Golden opportunities like this were few and far between, if not for his chronic paranoia of being caught, he could have whistled his way home. When he arrived at the house, he was worried he’d missed a huge part of the conversation, and although it seemed like he had, it did not matter.

He climbed into bed fully expecting not to sleep, he was insomnia ridden and had been for a year or two. Sleep evaded him seemingly as the price he paid for what he was doing. He tossed and turned, as usual, his azure air falling this way and that. He got up and stretched his body, cleaned his room, fluffed his pillow. Nothing helped.

He woke up, not remembering when he’d managed to sleep but certain that it was less than an hour ago. He got up from his mattress, which was currently perched on the floor. He had not had time to get any shopping done since arriving, his excitement of making progress in his Carter investigation and the stress of opening the shop had stolen any moments he would have had to himself.

Beau was downstairs behind his desk when a man walked in. “You got any voice recorders?” he asked.

“I got a couple, over there,” Beau pointed to a shelf. He turned and looked back towards the papers in front of him. He was used to the amount of paperwork it took to open a shop, but he never enjoyed it. It did not help that Bath seemed to be a little more thorough than other places he’d stayed.

He brought his hair back and tied it in a neat little bun, just to avoid it from falling in front of his eyes. The man approached the desk with Beau’s entire stock of voice recorders in his hand. “I’ll take these,” he asked, politeness missing from both his tone and vocabulary.

“No problem,” Beau was happy he was selling his wares but, the fact that this man had just bought his entire stock would mean he had to make more. Voice recorders were not massively fun to make. “Can I have your magicians ID?” the man grumbled and rummaged around in his jacket pocket.

“Here.”

Thanks,” nodded Beau and wrote down the relevant information. The man walked out of the shop and Beau returned to his paperwork after glugging some tea.