Chapter 15. Undercover

  The private meeting with Empress Aubrianna did little to alleviate Jeremiah’s misgivings about the black op, but it was as Delilah had said—they were never going to get another chance like this. Allison clearly shared his concerns. She settled into a permanent bad mood as they established their new home base in Elminia.

  The apartment was barren and filthy. There were two spare rooms off the main living space, more like large closets, and a fireplace that looked like a hole that had been knocked in the side of the chimney and never repaired. Dust was the primary occupant, although it shared space with its extended family dirt and grime. It took the harshest soap they could find and several hours of labor to evict the worst of the tenants. They spent another few coins on cheap furniture, already one bad day from the kindling pile.

  Fortunately, the Giant’s Bag meant they were very well equipped. Jeremiah laid out his enchanting gear in the room he shared with Bruno—plates, tools, long spools of gossamer thin gold, silver, and copper, and a pile of Thurok’s borrowed books that Jeremiah was wary would eventually come to life to kill him.

  “I’m certain this is just as unsafe as it is ineffective,” said Delilah. She had wedged a pot of stew deep into the chimney hole. The heat rising from cooking fires in the apartments below was just enough to provide a suggestion of warmth, but the smoke was choking.

  Bruno swept into the room and stabbed a hunk of mysterious meat from the stew. He bit into it like an apple and spoke as he chewed. “Alright, here's the plan for the next little bit. Al, I’m going to need you to try to relax, maybe go sharpen things. Jay, you’re gonna keep practicing enchanting so I can have magic shoes that let me walk up walls. Delilah, I'll need you to read books or something. Your most important books." Delilah gave Bruno a sharp nod.

  Allison stared at him coldly. "And what will you be doing?"

  "Literally everything else," said Bruno, tearing off another bite. “This is a mission to infiltrate the city's underworld, find its secrets, and expose its leadership. I’ll have us out of here in a few weeks.”

  Delilah squeezed her eyes shut against the smoke . “What makes you think it’ll be so easy? The empress’s best people have already tried.”

  “Ah, but the empress didn’t have me . Until now, anyway.” Bruno grinned his cockiest grin. “I've done this before. Multiple times. It's kind of anticlimactic, to be honest.” He started idly spinning his knife between his fingers.

  Allison glared as the flashing blade of Brunos’ knife. “This isn’t a game. These kinds of missions can get brutal. Ugly.”

  Bruno's spinning knife stopped. “Oh, are you sure? You're telling me this black operation might be unseemly? That there might even be skullduggery or nere-do-welling?”

  Allison ignored the sarcasm. “I'm serious. These missions change people.”

  "Al, is there something you want to talk about?” asked Delilah. She put a hand on Allison’s shoulder, but it was like reassuring a statue.

  "No. It's fine," said Allison.

  "See, you say that, but I'm not sure I believe you," said Jeremiah.

  "I said, it's fine!" Allison slammed her fist on the table. A long silence followed.

  "Well, clearly it's not fine,” said Bruno. “But places to be, and all that. I expect you all to stick to your assignments. With some luck, I’ll be back before you have time to miss me.” He dipped his fingers into the stew pot, scooping up some of the floating fat, and ran it through his black hair.

  Delilah grimaced. “Oh, what—why did you do that?"

  "Gan underco, sveeha," said Bruno, his voice adopting an accent Jeremiah couldn’t place. "Needa deepa, needa natura, pe gran prof."

  "You sound like someone that speaks Gnomish with a dwarven accent, trying to stumble their way through Common," said Delilah.

  Bruno snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Yas.” He stepped across the room, leaning heavily on the chair to support his newly acquired trick knee. “Su see may? No see may. Yas?”

  They nodded at the stranger that had evolved from their friend. one that had suffered a stroke some time ago, leaving a drooping eye and lip. The stranger strode to the door, all but barely hiding the stiffness in one leg.

  “Good luck, stay safe,” said Jeremiah.

  “Lucka fer gennas,” said the stranger. Then he spit on the floor and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Allison’s attitude did not improve in the days following Bruno’s departure. If anything her mood worsened, permeating their living quarters with an air of sullen misery and rebuffing any attempts to talk. Jeremiah was more than happy to close himself in his room to work on his rune. After the carriage ride, working on solid ground was a breeze.

  In addition to his overly-complex Strengthen plate, he had created a separate plate for each of the runes he knew that had an effect on their own, Decay, Heat, and Adhere. Unfortunately, the same strategy he’d used to delay the Strengthen diagram had not proven very useful for testing his unknown rune. Decay still caused the plate itself to rust away within minutes, Heat made the temperature of the plate increase until the metal surface warped and destroyed the rune, while Adhere made the plate stick instantly to the floor, his hands, and anything else it touched until he managed to break the enchantment.

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  He also created a plate containing the new rune on its own. Charging it directly hadn’t seemed to change the properties of the plate in any way Jeremiah could detect, so he created a simple diagram to connect the new rune to the Strengthen plate. When he charged it in this configuration, he was disappointed to observe no difference in the Strengthen plate either—it still seemed Strengthened.

  Gus watched Jeremiah wrack his brain from a comfortable water bowl. “What do you think?” Jeremiah asked his familiar. “Whatever it’s doing, it should be doing it now. Unless it doesn’t work on metal plates. Or on Strengthen. Or needs two runes to work, like And. Or doesn’t work because the plate is already Strengthened, and I need to start from scratch.”

  That final possibility filled him with the most dread, so Jeremiah decided that was the one he’d start with. “ Thurok would be proud ,” thought Jeremiah. It was wrong, but still fun to think sometimes.

  To his relief, the new plate took only a couple hours to complete. His hands were becoming familiar with the geometric intricacies of the Strengthen rune, and he found himself needing to reference the diagram only intermittently. He scratched the final notch in a single stroke, and was pleasantly surprised when the gold rod nestled snugly inside.

  “Let’s give it a shot, buddy,” Jeremiah said, stretching out his wrists. He connected the new plate to the mystery rune, took a moment to gather his focus, and charged the diagram.

  The runes glowed softly for just a moment. Jeremiah snatched the new Strengthen plate and inspected it closely.

  “Still nothing. Whats this damn thing do?”

  Jeremiah rubbed frustration and tightness from his jaw and tossed the plate onto a pile of other discards with a ringing clang.

  Jeremiah stopped. Something sounded off. He picked up the plates; the old Strengthen, and the new Strengthen. He had handled hundreds of plates at this point, and his hands told him these weren't exactly equal.

  He studied them side by side. Both were stronger than a normal plate, yes, but….With suddenly shaking hands, Jeremiah drew a rasp across the surface of each plate.

  There was no doubt about it now. The new Strengthen plate was less resistant to the rasp than the old one. He tested over and over, and the rasp consistently bit deeper into the new plate than the old one.

  The idea formed in his mind then, but Jeremiah forced himself to keep testing. Over the next two days, he recreated plates for Decay, Heat, and Adhere. In each case, charging them through the unknown rune lessened the effects of the main rune. Decay took hours to rust through, Heat was safe to touch for several minutes, and Adhere became only mildly inconvenient.

  It was a strange feeling. This moment could prove to be his greatest contribution to the field of magic. It could be a discovery that changed the course of history. It could see him immortalized in the annals of magical history…but he didn't actually know what to do with it.

  A knock at the door made him jump. “Dinner,” said Allison. Then she took in the chaos of components, tools, and metal squares strewn across the floor like a game of fifty-two pickup. She cocked an eyebrow.

  Jeremiah leapt to his feet, countering her gloominess with uncommon buoyancy. “Great! I’ve got news.”

  He waited until Delilah joined them at the table, though he was practically brimming over with excitement. The moment she sat, he produced the plate with the new rune with a flourish. “I think I’ve got it figured out!”

  Delilah immediately matched his energy. “And?!” Even Allison looked more interested than she had in days.

  “I think it essentially says, ‘Gently’,” said Jeremiah. “Whatever rune I attach it to, it modifies the effect to be less strong. The effect still happens, just slower or not as much.”

  “Wow, an adverb!” said Delilah. “That sounds really useful!”

  Jeremiah beamed. “Indeed, it is. Though any new word is valuable.”

  “Valuable how?” asked Allison. “How do we turn it into gold?”

  “Um. I’m not sure, actually,” said Jeremiah. “The only people I know who might want to buy it are Thurok or Flusoh, and it doesn’t feel right to make them pay. Other than that, I'm not really sure how you monetize a new rune.”

  “It’s your discovery, Jay. When alchemists discover something new they have to decide if they're going to share it, or keep it as an exclusive. But once it's out there it's out of your hands.”

  “I know, I know,” said Jeremiah. “But this feels different to me. I want them to have it, you know? They taught me so much.”

  Delilah reached across the table and patted him on the arm. “You’re a really good guy, you know that?”

  “Yeah, good and poor,” said Allison. “First useful thing your enchanting turns out, and you’re giving it away.”

  “Any money is going right out the door anyways,” grumbled Delilah.

  “There will be more, I promise,” said Jeremiah. Still, her words stung, not least because she was right. “ At least when I was a necromancer, I was worth keeping around. ” He pushed the thought away, but the frustration persisted.

  Being on the streets of Elminia was always awful, with the unfriendly crowds and the sense of malevolence that seemed to emanate from the city itself. Tonight Jeremiah felt even more on edge than usual due to the two parcels tucked under his arm. Each contained a metal plate bearing the rune Gently and a letter explaining how to use it. Even if he didn’t know how to sell it, he was aware that he had never held anything as valuable in his life.

  He pushed through the crowds towards a jagged tooth of a building where a few youths gathered outside, wearing identical loose-fitting uniforms. As he approached, they reluctantly paused their bawdy story. The smallest among them was shoved forward to address Jeremiah.

  “What do you want?” the young man asked.

  “I need something delivered,” said Jeremiah.

  “Uh-huh, that’s why you’ve come to the Courier’s Lodge,” said the young man, rolling his eyes.

  Jeremiah flashed a gold coin. All at once, the young man adopted an expression of polite attention. “Listen closely,” Jeremiah said, injecting as much authority as he could while whispering. “Far from here, there’s a place called Throatlock Swamp…”