Chapter Eight
Sinead and I sat in the large meeting room of Hippopotamus Hunting Trips, blueprints and papers strewn all over the table. We had been drinking espresso as the day drew, and the table was littered with empty cups. The caffeine made me jittery, which didn’t mix well with my anxiety about this job, and with my overall tiredness. It was almost midnight, and my eyes were blurry from reading and rereading the summary, and examining the mansion’s layout bit by bit. The blueprints were scribbled with notes in both our handwriting. Some were short informative sentences, like air conditioner ducts too narrow to move through or motion sensors here. Others were somewhat less informative, such as fuck this security cam and motherfucking big lock.
We peered mournfully at the mess.
“This doesn’t look good, Lou,” Sinead finally said.
“It’s not the best, I agree.”
“See there?” Sinead pointed. “That’s… bad.”
“Right, and this.” I tapped the large blueprint. “Terrible.”
“And this.”
“Argh. I mean, how paranoid can you be. And there’s this, of course.”
“This really isn’t good, Lou.”
“It definitely isn’t good.”
“Maybe if we look at it like that…” She turned the blueprints upside down and we stared at them for a few seconds.
I shut my eyes. “You’ve made it worse.”
We sat in silence for a while.
“Well, the upside is that if we break into the vault, crack the safe, and manage to leave alive, we’ll be very rich,” Sinead muttered. “What with the dragon scales.”
According to the notes, there were six dragon scales in the safe. Saying that dragon scales were valuable was a bit like saying the crown jewels could fetch a nifty price. Dragon scales were more than just rare—they were powerful items, each storing a portion of the dragon’s magic. Dragons were, for obvious reasons, quite stingy with their scales, which meant that six scales could potentially make us very rich. Or, if the dragon caught up to us, very dead.
“You’ll have to fix your flamey-hands problem,” Sinead said.
“I don’t have a problem,” I objected.
“Lou… you can’t break into the dragon’s vault if your hands keep bursting into flames every time you get a bit emotional. People whose limbs are on fire are sorta conspicuous.”
“Don’t worry about it. It hardly ever happens.”
Sinead rolled her eyes. “You told me it happened yesterday. Look, it’s not a big deal. Just figure out a potion that will make it go away.”
“It’s not that simple,” I muttered. “I… can’t. I tried.”
What Sinead called my “flamey-hands problem” was a result of an alchemical accident involving phoenix blood a few months before. Coincidentally, it was the same accident that had burnt my store down, and resulted in my inability to pay Breadknife back. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, and it definitely made life complicated. Sinead was right. Heists usually involved hiding in the darkness, or blending in with a crowd, things that became quite difficult when your fingers were happily blazing like twin bonfires.
“Okay. I’ll fix this,” I said.
“Good.” Sinead smiled in satisfaction. She’d been hassling me about the “flamey-hands problem” ever since it had begun, like a nagging mother. She’d been worried I would eventually light my hair on fire.
I changed the subject. “We’ll need to find a way around the dragon’s senses.”
Sinead’s face crumpled. This was the worst bit of the information Breadknife’s notes had summarized. Dragons, it turned out, had a special affinity with their lair and hoard. When someone stepped into a dragon’s lair, the dragon immediately knew about it. Even if it was miles away, it would sense the intruder. In our case, the dragon’s lair was his mansion, which meant we couldn’t enter the mansion’s premises without the dragon being instantly aware.
Even worse, supposing you did manage to enter a dragon’s lair without him noticing, once you touched the dragon’s treasure, it would instantly feel the intruding hands on its hoard. It would rush to stop you. And dragons moved fast.
So, in essence, we had to figure out two things: how to get in without the dragon noticing, and, once we got in and stole the safe contents, how to get out before the dragon turned us into crispy bacon.
“We should probably look for a sorcerer.”
Sinead was definitely right. A sorcerer could help with these problems. The only problem was that sorcerers were a nasty bunch. The reason was simple—sorcery was dark magic, and that tended to attract a certain type of person. Even if they were fantastic to begin with, the magic slowly warped them, changed them, peeling off their humanity, leaving behind a diseased soul. It’s hard to maintain a good nature when demons constantly whisper in your ears. There were exceptions, of course, but they were few and far between.
“You’ll have to call Estagarius.” I sighed. He was the only sorcerer we ever really worked with.
“He’s dead, Lou.”
I gawked at her in shock “No! Really?”
“Died two months ago, haven’t you heard? Cancer.”
“He was such a nice old man,” I said sadly.
“You called him pompous and unbearable!”
That was true, but when people died on you, adjectives morphed, becoming slightly more positive. “He was a pompous and unbearable nice old man.”
“That’s a lovely eulogy. You should send it to his wife.”
“Who then?”
Sinead thought about it for a second. “There’s a new guy. Kane Underwood. He has a good reputation.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Probably that he’s never been caught drinking blood in public, or cackling with his hands raised high as lightning flashed behind him.”
“Oh, good.”
“I can’t think of anyone else.”
“I’ll check him out,” I muttered.
Sinead leaned back, putting her feet on the table. “Don’t you have a puppy?” she suddenly asked. “He’s probably pissed all over your house.”
I shook my head. “I texted Isabel earlier. She took Magnus for a long walk.”
“That’s nice of her.”
“Isabel is good people.”
“We’ll need her. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And we’ll need a hacker.”
“A hacker who can handle magic.” I tapped the notes.
“Fine, I’ll ask around.”
“And I’ll talk to this guy Kane.”
Sinead groaned and massaged her forehead. “So… you, me, Isabel, Kane, and hacker. That’s five. Do you think it’s enough?”
I considered it. “Yeah,” I finally said. “I think it’s a job for five people.”