Chapter 59: A Simple Solution

Chapter 59: A Simple Solution

Sebastien

Month 12, Day 18, Friday 8:00 p.m.

Damien was true to his word. That evening, he brought her his plans to keep Tanya Canelo under surveillance, complete with spell array notes and designs. He had found a small ward they could carve onto the underside of Tanya’s door that would alert them when it was opened, and a couple of different designs for a tracker that they would somehow need to get onto her person.

The proposed tracker designs weren’t active, and so wouldn’t require constant spellcasting, nor were they artifacts that would keep working even without input from either Sebastien or Damien. Rather, they created sympathetic beacons that would point the way to Tanya like a compass when the linked item was used as a divination component.

“It will work,” Sebastien said, looking over Damien’s notes.

He smiled, but smoothed back his hair nervously. “Ana would be better at this. She’s taking Artificery. She’d probably have some design we could carve into the sole of Tanya’s shoe or some other ingenious idea.”

Sebastien looked up. “That’s a great idea, actually.”

Damien hesitated. “Err, well, yes, but none of the books I found had anything like that, and I don’t have any experience with spell design...” There was a reason why spell theorists and designers were paid so well. It was almost as dangerous as free-casting, if not quite so glamorous.

Sebastien pointed to one design, a disk that was carved and spelled on both sides. After it was split in two, one half could be used to find the other until repeated castings caused the material to disintegrate. “Let’s put it into the sole of her shoe. Her boots have a one-inch heel. We can cut it open, insert it inside, and then seal the boot heel back together seamlessly. I know a leather-mending spell.”

“How will we get hold of her boots?”

Sebastien smirked. “She doesn’t wear them into the shower.”

Damien’s face split with a grin of excitement.

They planned Operation Sentinel—as Damien insisted on calling it—that night, and found a cow leg bone to use as the material among the kitchen scraps from dinner. One of the cafeteria workers was happy to give it to Damien.

The two of them cast the linking spell together to give it as much power as possible. Technically, that part wasn’t a requirement, just as no linking spells had been done on Sebastien’s blood to allow the coppers to use it to search for her, but the extra step made sympathetic spells a lot easier. Sebastien cut the bone disk in two with repeated, careful castings of the same slicing spell that had gotten her involved with Damien in the first place.

They implemented Operation Sentinel early the next morning, before most of the other students were awake, while Tanya completed her daily ablutions.

It succeeded without any problems, which Sebastien found faintly unsettling. ‘I’m a little too used to things always going wrong. I’ve come to expect it,’ she mused. ‘Well, things still have time to go wrong,’ she assured herself wryly. The hardest part of the operation had actually been carving the tiny ward array on the underside of Tanya’s door without removing it from its hinges or being seen by the occasional person walking through the hallways, even at that early hour.

Based on a combination of anxiety and a lingering lack of confidence in Damien, Sebastien wanted to stay at the University over the weekend to keep an eye on Tanya, but the crushing weight of her ever-increasing debt and her empty purse drove her back to Oliver’s house to spend Saturday and most of Sunday brewing, taking a few minutes here and there to make a few more batches of linked bracelets.

While there, she mentioned that she had an extra Conduit she could sell to Oliver, but he wasn’t particularly optimistic about quickly finding a buyer who could afford the celerium at current market price. “Our thaumaturges already have their own Conduits, and most of our clientele is either too poor to afford one, too uneducated to need one, or both.” She was willing to sell it for less than a licensed shop, but she hoped to make as much off it as possible.

She gave a simple set of ward bracelets to Damien and Newton so either could immediately alert her if Tanya left the University grounds. She instructed Damien to follow and monitor Tanya from morning till night. “Be discreet,” she emphasized.nove(l)bi(n.)com

Damien scowled. “I know, you’ve told me several times already. I promise I’m not going to sit there staring at her and be following two steps behind when she goes to the bathroom! I grew up in the Westbay Family, Sebastien. I think I can handle it.”

“Don’t get snippy, it’s a valid concern. You tend to draw attention to yourself. I’m not sure you have much practice being discreet.”

“I could say the same of you,” he said, crossing his arms and giving her a challenging stare.

“Lord?” Sebastien echoed, flicking through the proof of one more false identity.

He shrugged, leaning against his desk and crossing his legs at the ankle. “Technically. It’s foreign and basically a defunct title, with the destruction of my family as a boy, but it still affords me a measure of influence.”

“I hope it will never be useful, but thank you.” She wondered how much the false identity had cost him, but didn’t ask.

“My investigation into who set off the false rogue magic alarm has borne no fruit,” Oliver offered, changing the subject. “The coppers have no idea.”

“Perhaps Tanya will slip up, and we’ll be able to follow the trail to her accomplices. Everyone makes a mistake eventually.” ‘Myself included,’ she admitted silently.

“You’re right. We have people watching the Morrows as well. Eventually someone is going to slip up.”

With sunset approaching and little time to waste, Oliver hired a carriage to take her to her midpoint destination.

The carriage driver gave Sebastien a knowing look as she stepped down into the street. “Have fun, milord.”

She ignored the man, staring up at the large building made of creamy white bricks. The sign above had words rather than a picture like it might have in the slums, where stores couldn’t trust that their patrons could read. In unadorned lettering, it read, “The Silk Door.”

Sebastien entered through a side door. Within, soft music played. The lighting was mellow, the furniture dark smooth wood and soft plush cushions. A couple of girls lounged about in tasteful but impractically light dresses, kept comfortable by the fire raging at all hours and the warming stones laid under the floor.

It was a high-end brothel, discreet and comfortable.

Without pausing to speak to anyone, Sebastien followed Oliver’s directions, walking up the stairs and down two hallways to a private, locked room.

The workers weren’t stupid, and would probably notice her strange comings and goings given enough time, even if she didn’t interact with them and the little room she used was well away from the trafficked areas of the building. But they also wouldn’t talk to the coppers. Their clientele was strictly confidential, and they had all taken vows.

She pulled out a key and entered. The room held little more than a well-appointed bed, but it was clean, and connected to another hallway and staircase, these ones private. She moved to the closet, where a nondescript but still stylish dress and accessories were waiting for her.

She stripped out of Sebastien’s clothing, pressed the dark matte stone artifact against her chest, and changed back into Siobhan.

She shrank a bit, her hair grew dark and long, and her skin gained an ochre tint. Looking into the small mirror inside the closet door, she confirmed that her eyes were the same as always, dark and fathomless.

Siobhan stared into them for a while, taking comfort from the sudden vertigo of the change. She wiggled and flexed until her brain remembered how long her limbs were in proportion to each other and the floor. Then she put on the dress, smoothed her hair, and spread bright scarlet cream over her lips, very carefully making sure not to smear it.

It took a quarter hour to prepare and cast the color-changing spell to fix the section of hair that Katerin had bleached. Lynwood would be expecting the Raven Queen, not Siobhan the Verdant Stag contractor, or even Silvia the courtesan.

Since she’d previously had trouble with this spell in Professor Burberry’s class, she squeezed every last drop of clarity and intent into her Will that she could manage. The spell worked well, perhaps even a little too well, leaving her hair a black that was so dark it almost shimmered blue.

Finally, she put the feathered ornaments back on, watching as they settled, lending a regal mystique to her presentation.

She transferred her spell components, the paper spell arrays, and Silvia’s identification to her new clothing and more stylish leather satchel, which was not nearly as convenient or spacious as her school satchel. “Women’s fashion,” she muttered disapprovingly.

When she looked nothing like the young man who attended the University, she exited the brothel through a different door than she’d entered through.