Elend stepped out of the car when they reached the East Shore Bank. It was almost midnight, but Koreldon City never slept. A sea of lights swept over the horizon, from the tips of the buildings to the clustered streets below.

Irina slid out of the car behind him, and they stepped through a pair of sliding glass doors. Half a dozen guards filled the lobby, clad in black suits and armed with long Missile rods. The guards were only Artisans, but those weapons could probably stun someone much stronger.

Heels clicked against the granite floors as Master Harren strode out to meet them. The bank manager was a serious-looking woman with her strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun. She wore a beige turtleneck beneath a gray blazer, along with a a pair of bright golden earrings.

“Grandmasters.” She gave them a polite bow, but it didn’t match the impatience in her voice. “What’s this about a break in?”

“Someone’s been in my vault,” Elend replied. “Less than an hour ago.”

“Impossible,” she said. “None of the alarms have been triggered. We double-checked them before you arrived.”

“None of your alarms,” Elend said. Despite the bank’s security measures, Glim had installed her own sigil-based alarms on the vault’s contents. If someone even breathed within six inches of those contents, she would know about it. Such things could malfunction, of course, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Have you checked the vault?” Irina asked.

“Of course we haven’t. Aside from Grandmaster Darklight, only the director can open his vault. He’s in South Shoken right now.”

Ah. Elend couldn’t complain, though, since he’d requested that exact security measure. But that was before, when they’d assured him these vaults were actually secure.

“I’d like to see the vault for myself,” he said.

“Of course.” Master Harren gave a tight smile and gestured toward the elevator with both hands. “Right this way.”

The lift carried them to the fifth floor, where they emerged in another long hallway. Swirling designs raced along the dark stone walls, and golden chandeliers hung from the archways above. Elend recognized both features from the Neokinetic Era.

They passed rows of identical doors—stainless steel laced with impedium to resist mana techniques. Beyond that, each vault had several layers of Grandmaster wards. Manatronic devices wouldn’t work inside, and no detection technique could pierce them.

The bank manager stopped walking when they reached vault 518, and she gave Elend an expectant look.

He stepped forward and pressed his hand to the mana signature pad. At the same time, he opened his right eye for the optical reading. Several heartbeats passed, then the metal doors slid open to reveal a small chamber, no more than nine square feet.

To anyone else, this would look like an empty room. Indeed, Harren practically held in a gasp of alarm. But Elend saw past his own illusion to where a small pouch sat in the center of the vault.

Still, he didn’t get his hopes up. Glim had placed her security measures on the pouch itself, and someone had tampered with it.

Elend took a single step forward, but Irina held up a hand. “We should sweep it while it’s clean.” He nodded, and she slid through the wards, flaring her Cloak of a Thousand Eyes. Golden mana filled every corner of the vault—a thousand tiny Missiles surveying the scene like a swarm of insects. Several seconds passed as the mana returned to Irina’s outstretched hand. Her Second Brain formed around her in a series of golden rings as she processed her findings.

“Someone’s been here,” she confirmed. “The air pressure isn’t right, and they left traces of spatial mana behind.

“That’s impossible,” Harren said from the hallway. “We have Mystic wards—”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Around the building,” Irina finished for her. “But not around each vault.” She let the rest go unsaid, but there were countless options. The intruders could have formed the portal from another vault. The bank was obviously closed at this hour, but even Mystic wards could be bypassed if you made the portal from both sides. Smugglers did that exact thing when traveled between nations.

Of course, they’d still need to bypass the vault’s wards once they got inside the bank. Harren might have called that impossible, too, but the evidence said otherwise.

Elend let out a weary sigh. “Anything else?”

Irina nodded. “I’m also getting traces of dragon pheromones in the bag’s fabric.”

“Wonderful.” He stepped inside the vault and fed some mana into the pouch. When the bag didn’t respond to his mana, Elend knew the truth.

The Etherite collar was gone.

~~~

“Suspects?” Irina asked as their car pulled away from the bank.

Elend leaned back on the leather headrest. “Valeria Antano, of course. She has plenty to prove and nothing to lose.”

“She would need a whole team,” Irina said. “A Grandmaster Space Artist, and a ward breaker at the very least. Not to mention someone on the inside. Even I couldn’t connect a client to a specific vault.”

“Aye,” he muttered. “Far more advanced than the team who tried to capture Akari. Then again, Sozen Trengsen had specifically designed that team to fail. It was terrifying what the Sons of Talek could accomplish when they actually tried.

Irina turned to face him. “What about Harren? She didn’t seem happy to see us tonight.”

Elend waved that away. “She thought I was jumping at shadows. I watched her closely, and she was confident the entire time.” In hindsight, he didn’t blame her. How many other paranoid customers must have left her late night messages about their vaults? Elend doubted he was the first. He might not even be the first one this week.

“And where’s the rest of it?” Irina asked.

By “it” she meant the rest of the Etherite. Elend reached out with his mana and double-checked the wards between them and their driver. He trusted the lad well enough, but not with a secret like this.

“Aside from the piece we gave Relia?” He patted his belt pouch. “One is with me. One is in my Estrana vault. The other one is back at the house.”

She gave a slow nod. “We’ve learned one thing tonight—these vaults aren’t safe against our enemy. Then again, I doubt they can pull this heist more than once. We’ll only make things easier for them if we panic.”

“True,” he said. “They might not even know where to find the other pieces.”

They talked for the next twenty minutes as they drove back to the house. No sooner had they pulled into the driveway than Elend’s phone began vibrating in his jacket. He pulled out the device to find Sterling’s name on the screen. Elend put the phone on speaker and answered the call.

“Trish,” he said. “Calling to cash in your favor?”

She chuckled from the other end. The other Grandmaster was technically his age, but her voice sounded thirty years younger. “That obvious, huh?”

“Well, it is after midnight.”

“Huh,” she said. “Would you look at that? I guess time flies when you’re hunting mana spawn.”

“Get to the point,” Irina said. “It’s been a long night.”

“Oh, hi, Irina! Didn’t know you were there.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, here’s the deal. A few of us are down in Vaslana doing cleanup duty. We could really use a recon expert on our team.”

“How soon?” Elend asked.

“Tomorrow morning would be great. I could take a ship across the channel, then swing by your house to pick you up.”

“And for how long?”

“Um, well, that’s the thing about Storm’s Eye, isn’t it? It’s all sort of a cluster—”

“I need a number, Trish. I’ve already taken too much time off work.”

“No more than a few weeks,” she promised.

“A few?” Irina asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Three,” Trish said quickly. “That’s it.”

Elend rubbed at his eyes. His students had their first interschool match next Talekday, and leaving them alone with Raizen wasn’t an option. Irina could probably go, but that hardly seemed fair to leave them without their actual coach.

Trish’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Hey, I warned you, didn’t I? The Vordica job wasn’t easy.”

“That still only took two days of your time,” he countered. “Maybe a week of research, but that’s being generous.”

“Okay, sure. But consider this—lots of Masters have volunteered to fight Storm’s Eye, but we’re short on recon experts. Salerian could summon you to the front lines at any time. Then, not only would you still have to leave, but you’d still owe me a favor.”

Bloody hell. She had a point there. All Masters from Koreldon swore an oath to the prime minister, agreeing to fight for Espira in times of need. Prime Minister Salerian could draft him tomorrow morning, and he’d have no choice but to go.

“But he can’t summon you if you're already here,” Trish said in a singsong voice. “And my team’s just cleaning up the countryside. Helping evacuations, killing up mana spawn—stuff like that. If anything, I’m doing you a favor.”

Elend met Irina’s eye, but she only shrugged. This might be an inconvenience, but things could have been far worse. The work itself would be easy enough. Irina would still be here to watch over the kids, and the school would understand his absence. Storm’s Eye was the hot political topic right now, and anyone who fought it seemed to get a free pass.

The hardest part would be leaving his students without their coach. Then again, Akari still had some rough lessons ahead of her, and being closer wouldn’t speed up that process.

On the contrary, this might be just what she needed.

“Fine,” Elend said. “I’ll do it.”