The pale and snowy morning found Jay over eggs, little ‘frog onions’ and bread with a sizable mug of dandelion root tea. She was sitting on the rickety chair in Lethe’s room acting like eating breakfast would go out of style soon enough. Lethe, no worse for wear after the last night excesses save some bruises, was sitting on the bed. He eschewed the food in favour of the dark bitterness of the tea.
‘Now’ he said when there was no more danger that Jay would choke if she started to talk with her mouth full. ‘What it this business you were talking about yesterday?’
Jay wiped her mouth in the sleeve of her dress and took a deep breath. She started talking, playing with the charm of St Garret that she now looped around the handle of her dagger. At first she was afraid that at any moment Lethe would interrupt her, laugh her off and scoff at the very idea. But he patiently waited as she finished talking about the Lector and the information about the interior of the Cathedral and the sewer entrance that supposedly lead through the old well.
‘There is so much stuff within the Cathedral she said. ‘Could we take it? Maybe?’
She sat there looking into the eggshells left over from her breakfast, waiting for Lethe to tell her that she’s nuts.
‘You’re nuts kid. Absolutely fucking nuts. But…’’ he lowered his voice so much that Jay thought he’ll start to purr.’ But it is just nuts enough to work. Ballsy too. If that won’t put us in line for commissions and much better gigs then I don’t know what would.’
Jay looked up from the eggshells.
‘You think so?’
‘Mhm, yes. It will be lot of work of course. Take the sewers for example.’
Jay shuddered. How is that she didn’t thought about that? Was the lure of the shiny baubles in the temple overshadowing the truths she knew about the sewers? There were things down there. Things that made Jay never to attempt to go down to the sewer system of Arklington. Sometimes in the night, she would forget not to look into the grates of the gutters and she would glimpse the shining spots in the darkness. And if she listened close enough she would hear the hissing and tapping sounds that brought to mind creatures with equal number of legs and eyes, scurrying in the passages under the streets. Jay had no desire to make an acquaintance with those. Sometimes she saw the ratcatchers walking by, their arms covered with boiled leather pauldrons. She heard them musing about rats growing larger every year. She heard them whispering between themselves about the things that were just glimpsed at and never seen in full light, those that crunch their unseen jaws in the tunnels below.
‘Scared?’ said Lethe, grinning.
Jay clenched her teeth. Of course she was scared. But she didn’t want Lethe to know that.
‘Come on, you want that hit or not?’
She did. Even though she wanted going around the sewers as much as she wanted all her teeth pulled.
‘Let’s get going then. The work is waiting.’
‘What? Now?’
‘Oh excuuuuse me, do you have anything better planned for today? Preparations cannot wait you know.’
Jay pushed away the plate, got up and wrapped her blanket around her arms. A few minutes later they were out on the street. The snow that had been falling all night finally stopped. The sun came out and painted it the palest gold. Arklington shed its normal look. The greys, the dead-browns and shades of dirt on the streets and walkways got a new coat of white, soft and pure. The red-bricked and washed-out wood buildings got the roofs got covered as if they were wearing virgin wool hats. Even the air seemed a little bit more transparent, unburdened by the oppressive damp. Frost lacquered the naked steel of lamps and iron-wrought railings making them shine ever so slightly. For a brief moment, Jay admired this new cleanliness of the post-blizzard day. She knew that it only will hold for so long. Soon the snow would be trod over by horses and carts, the clean hats of the buildings will be salted with ash and the air will acquire new vapours come the night as the magic-powered plants will start their work-cycle anew.
‘You’ve met Brigfen, yeah?’ said Lethe as they walked the streets. ‘Time for you to meet some more talented people.’
All of Jay’s day was filled with back rooms and small workshops hidden in the corners of the industrial districts. There were doubtful-looking alchemists that were selling flesh-dissolving acids and spider powders alike. Tinkerer’s stands that would sharpen whatever you’d bring them without asking what it was for. Normal-looking hardware stores where you’d buy a coil of rope as well as magical lanterns, but if you knew the owner you’d get a new set of lockpicks just by mentioning that you’ve lost your housekey.
Jay looked at all of those and the money that exchanged hands, seeing the coronets from Lethe’s pouch going away forever.
‘Well don’t you look like I just killed your dear grandmama’ said Lethe. ‘You thought all that equipment and materials are cheap?’
‘Uh alright then, but why I have to carry most of it?’ said Jay, equally mourning the expenses as well as her arms that were now getting tired by carrying al the shopping.
‘How about because most of it is for you? I got most of my shit together and can make the rest. It’s high time you got your own.’
Jay just adjusted the weight in her hands and though that considering all that workshops: alchemists and steelworkers, she was justified in thinking that Lethe has someplace to keep all of those, somewhere that was not just shoddy room in a dockyard inn.
‘Last stop for today’ Lethe pointed out a corner shop.
‘Um, a robotic hire shop?’ said Jay, glancing at the symbol on the board above the entrance. A crude painting of a robo-horse and a clock face were drawn on the wood. ‘Are we taking a robo-horse down the sewers?’
‘Yeah sure and a cart and a travelling brothel too with a juggling side-show’ snorted Lethe. ‘Just follow me and pay attention.’
The man in the shop was bent over a ledger, an arc-light buzzing over his head. He was scribbling over the paper, the tip of his tongue sticking from between his lips. He barely looked up from his wok.
‘Yes?’
‘Burke in?’ said Lethe.
The man put away his pen.
‘Who asks?’
‘Fodder merchant. I’ve hay for his horse and oil for the hooves.’
The man grunted.
‘Yeah, he’s in.’
‘I know the way’ said Lethe and pulled Jay by her sleeve. She followed, being completely dumbfounded. They passed a narrow entrance into a passage leading to the back door. But before the exit, Lethe turned into a small alcove and started to paw at the ground, rummaging in the oily scraps of cloth that littered the passage.
‘Stupid thing it’s always like that…’ he mumbled. ‘Ah, there it is.’
Jay looked as he pulled a thick metal ring from the pile of cloth. He kept pulling, the muscles on his back straining. Finally there was a horrible scuffing noise and a piece of the floor lifted up like a trap door revealing a ladder below.
Jay looked into the opening. It the air that blew from below smelled of damp and mould with a tiniest whiff of sewer smell. Light with reddish tinge to it filled the room below, casting uneven shadow over the walls.
‘It’s not going into the sewers is it?’ she asked.
‘Nah, but then Burke is a real rat. Come on.’
Without even looking at the ladder, he jumped inside, landing squarely on the stone floor below. Jay put down the items she was carrying and decided to make use of the ladder instead. The cellar room was higher than Jay initially expected it to be. The heavy vaulting supported the ceiling bricks. Almost the entire place was taken up by a machine. Tall, thin and shaped like a retort, it rose almost as high as the ceiling itself. The slender, hollow crystal body was clenched into braces of riveted metal and placed upon an unshielded mechanism below, full of cogs turning and tubes pulsating. Jay could see clearly the raw magic humming and swirling within the machine. The container and the brace were creaking slightly under the strain of the power contained within. Under the machine, at a small desk, there was an old man in a dirty robe. He was holding a tube connected to the machine in one hand. The tube was ending in a spike that glowed with the same crimson colour as the magic within the machine. In the other hand the man had a slate of rolled iron. From time to time he would touch the iron with the spiked tube and the sparks would fly, the iron would melt under the spike’s touch, leaving just a fast-cooling shapes, squiggles and runes. From time to time a chime would ring, at the sound of which the man would move the spike away, wait a second or two and then come back to the task of carving the shapes. This was the closest that any Adanish ever came to being a wizard- a scrivener of runes, imbuing a normal item with magic with the machine being the one that dispensed and controlled the raw energy. Jay had never seen one before and watched him with a mixture of fascination and awe.
‘Kou’ the man said, otherwise not taking his eyes from the work.
‘Adanish’ said Lethe, folded his arms and leaned over the wall, smiling slightly.
The man said nothing in response. For all purposes he was alone with the machine. Jay stared, not really understanding what was going on. First the strange response Lethe had given to the man upstairs and now those two just ignoring each other after the rudest possible greeting. Now there was just the silence that Jay wanted to scream her way through.
Finally the man put away the spiked tube on a stand next to him, wiped his wrinkled eyes.
‘Now have you come to bore me to death with something that you need taken care of? A break for a curse or enchantment no doubt.’
A small light turned on inside Jay’s head. The man was not only a rune scrivener, but a scrivener that specialized in breaking enchantments, most likely those whose rightful owners would prefer to remain intact. She now remembered the wand that Lethe used on the lock on the roof of the Duke of mansion, no doubt the handiwork of the man before her.
‘Yeah it’s very boring really’ said Lethe, now smiling widely. ‘I need one that would break whatever your once-brethren might use.’
The man’s head snapped instantly towards Lethe.
‘Ah, I knew you might be interested in that’ said Lethe, clearly amused.
‘You want to rob a Lector?’ the brows on the man’s face went up, right towards his hooded scalp. ‘A Lector with a magical lock? Somebody important then?’
‘Now, now- that would be telling.’
The man fell into silence again, examining the newly-formed runes on the metal in his hand.
‘Well can you do it or not?’
‘It’s never if I can do it, Kou’ said the man.’ It’s always just the question if I’ll do it.’
‘And would you?’
The man picked up the spiked tube again. The sparks flew as the spike touched the metal. The runes started to appear over the surface, hot and fiery. Jay fidgeted. Clearly the man had no intention to help them, why were they even still here?
‘Come in a few days’ he said from over his work. ‘I’ll want extra.’
‘’You’ll get it.’
The man nodded and put all his attention back in his work. For all purposes, the conversation was over but Lethe seemed to be satisfied.
‘I don’t understand any of this’ said Jay as they walked down the street, away from the automaton-renting shop with strange man in its cellar.
‘Yeah it’s really rather simple’ said Lethe. ’I told you that Burke is a real rat yeah? A real Kou-hating rat, whatever his damage is. But somehow is fine taking money from one.’
‘Anyway’ he continued. ‘He was a Lector once himself but got kicked out.’
‘For what?’
‘Dipping his hands into the offerings, or fondling little boys, or spitting before the statues of Sacred Pair, fuck if I know’ Lethe kicked up a bit of snow in front of him. ‘He might not be a Lector anymore but he is still a damn good scrivener and would know what sort of enchantments they use in their locks. Because if you think that any locks in the Cathedral wouldn’t be enchanted- think again.’
Jay nodded to herself. That would make sense. Although she couldn’t say that Burke made a good impression on her.
‘Alright, alright the fun stuff is over. Now every night is a work night, get it?’
Jay said that she did, but she really wasn’t prepared for the work that was to commence. Most of all, how boring that would be. Night after she was standing on the roof of the closest building to the white body of the Cathedral, shaking with the chill of the wind. Watching, observing, staring into the heavy door of the pristine building, making note of everything. She would know when the guards in the vestibule would change, when the last worshippers left for the night, when the heavy door would shut, sounding like a lid of iron coffin slamming down. They walked around the Cathedral, memorizing the buildings, the routes. The length of the magically imbued roof spikes shone in the darkness with cold blue fires, making Jay wonder what other defences were there put out against thieves and burglars. Somehow the plan that looked to her so perfect just a few days back seemed much paler.
Jay observed Lethe talking to the grubbers. They were the ones that knew the sewers like the thieves knew the rooftops. They were the true folk that lived from what the above world tossed into the grates always carrying the whiff of the stench that ruled the sewers. They almost all wore long dirks at their waist- thin, pointy blades against whatever the shadows held underneath the streets. Their lips were thin too and not eager to speak of their secrets. To get some bearing on where to look for the access to the old Cathedral’s well Jay saw the money changing palms often and in significant amount.
But then it was all done, all done but to choose the night for the job.
