The four of them sat around the table in their basement hostel, a tablecloth of plans laid out between them. The king sat at the head—or… stood, or lay, or whatever verb a brick could manage.
“The Evening of Generosity is when we spring our plan,” he said. “The palace is open—at least for those willing to pay handsomely for a ticket.”
“That counts Beel out,” said Root.
“I have plenty of money!”
“Yeah, but—never mind.”
“That makes getting in easy,” continued the king. “Get the team in, steal the halo, escape through the tunnels.”
“Steal the halo,” said Root with a sarcastic gesture. “Right. Get in, steal the halo, get out. Quick to-do list—only three things.”
“I have the skeleton of a plan here. It should work. But there’s more to see before we can hone all of the details. We need to know what we’re up against—need to know what’s different now, what this ‘Hall of Relics’ looks like—used to be a great ballroom, you know—and the courtyard, too. And, of course, we will need cash. They won’t have that lying around with the halo. We need to see the palace.”
“We were just in there,” said Azriah. “Not even two weeks ago, now. We’ve described it all to you—every detail we remember.”
“But you don’t know what you’re looking for. I do. I need to get inside.”
“We can take another tour,” suggested Vit.
“We will. But there are people we need… it’ll make it easier if we start filling out our roster first, pulling in our recruits. But we have to be smart about it—we need people we can trust, people who will do what we need them to do because there’s something in it for them.”
“A lot of cash motivates most people,” said Root.
“And we need specialists—the best of the best, giants in their fields.”
“Of course,” said Azriah. “It’s a heist. We all know how this goes. A locksmith, an acrobat—”
“No, no, no,” said the king. “What do you think you’re going to do with an acrobat?”
Vit raised a hand. “Someone to, you know, do some flips around in the vault?”
“Repel down from the ceiling?” suggested Beel.
“What good will that do?”
Vit shrugged. “Good action?”
“So what do we need, then?” asked Root.
“First,” said the king, “and this is one of the most important roles. Yes. Our first specialist. First, we need a tour guide.”
Anjeanette Johnson knelt by the open door of her roommate’s liquor cabinet. Before her sat an open bottle, the cork away somewhere picking up dust from the carpet. She hadn’t seen where it rolled off to.
She picked up a cup. It was this one, right? She took a whiff. Woo—nope, wrong one. Damn it—why had she started drinking before wrapping up her heist?
Because sometimes a day just demanded it. A hard day at work—tourists with questions, the gall! And all for what? College credit. Not a penny in it for her. Why pay interns—they’re just here for the experience, the resume building. All day, wandering gilded-fucking-halls and what did she get out of it? A stamp, a signature.
Maybe with a little pay, she wouldn’t have to steal Sofia’s alcohol. Not that her roommate didn’t deserve it. Never even home. Where was she? Out at a party, probably—and in the middle of the week, too! Always out, always doing things. And where was Anjeanette? At home, alone, shooing fruit flies away from the open bottles, watching them congregate around the dregs at the bottom of yesterday’s bottle of mead, getting more action than her… How did Sofia do it? How did she get out and meet people? Anjeanette didn’t get it. What she needed was some kind of, oh, some kind of social group…
This one, then. She smelled the contents of the second cup. That was the one—good old water. She poured it carefully into the bottle.
Damn it—shit! Water dribbled down the outside of the cup, streaming off the bottom. She tilted it farther and the water cascaded around the bottle’s narrow opening, some making it inside, the rest splashing down the sides and soaking into the carpet. The bottle’s paper label drank greedily and the ink started to run. Why did pouring water end up everywhere except where you wanted it to go?
“Fucking—!” In frustration and bad judgment clouded by the drinks she’d already downed, Anjeanette dumped the cup’s contents in the vicinity of the bottle’s open maw. Undeniably, some of the water made it inside, which was at least a partial success.
There was a knock on the apartment door.
Anjeanette jumped and looked up. Shit! Wait—Sofia wouldn’t knock. It was her apartment, too. That was worse; that meant it was a stranger.
Anjeanette ignored the door, taking more care now to move quietly. She couldn’t have any unexpected visitors knowing she was home.
She lifted the bottle. Yes, that looked about as full as it had been. Maybe a little more…
Another knock.
Anjeanette’s heart raced. No—anything but a conversation with strangers!
She continued to ignore the door as she finished watering down the stolen booze, re-corked it with a sprinkle of added dust, and kicked at the wet spot on the carpet in a vain attempt to make it dry faster. If Sofia asked, she’d say there’d been a leak—a leak that had dripped directly onto the bottle of vodka, the carpet, and nowhere else. It wasn’t the only leak in the dingy old place, an old apartment with a draft that only took up residence there during the cool desert nights and flew south for the sweltering afternoons. Two bedrooms, a cramped kitchen and living room, and a bathroom hardly bigger than the liquor cabinet—which, in fairness, was less about the dimensions of the bathroom. But every university apartment had a certain hierarchy of priorities.
Someone knocked on the door a third time. Didn’t they get the message? No one was home!
Quietly, on feet that had more experience on tiptoe than not, Anjeanette approached the door and peeked out the peephole.
Yep—she definitely didn’t know those people. Go away!
They knocked again. Should she hide in her own apartment until they left? She knew some good spots…
Her heart continued to thunder. It often did. She wasn’t sure she’d ever had a BPM below ninety.
But… well, they weren’t going anywhere, clearly, and the alcohol made her inclined to actions that sober-Anjeanette would’ve found horrifying. She unlatched the eight deadbolts and opened the door.
“Can I help you?” she squeaked. It’d been supposed to sound annoyed—scare the pair off a bit—but there were some things even alcohol couldn’t change.
“Hi there. Anjeanette, right?” said the girl. She was immovable and pretty, with a wavy bob of black hair and a smattering of acne scars across her cheeks. She smelled like a campfire.
“Do I… know you?”
“No. Well—”
“No,” said the second person. They were tall, with too many eyes and too few ears. Silver earrings glinted on the one they had. They seemed to have a permanent smile and some sort of teal affliction. Anjeanette found strangers with two eyes to be two too many, so this was a most unwelcome outlier.
“Could we come in?” asked the girl.
“Um—”
“Oh—brought you this,” said the girl. She produced a large bottle of gin and placed it in Anjeanette’s hands.
“I—” Anjeanette didn’t get another word out. The two strangers filed inside.
“Nice place,” said the girl. “Spacious. Oh, is this what you’re drinking?” She lifted Anjeanette’s half-empty cup from the floor and swirled it under her nose as the pair made themselves comfortable at the small kitchen table. “Hm. I hope you like gin, too. Vit said wine would be classier, but—well, college, so I figured—”
“Booze is booze,” muttered Anjeanette. The two of them said the words in unison.
The girl cracked a grin. “Fucking thankyou!” She turned to the other stranger. “I told you!”
“Whatever.” They turned to Anjeanette. “I’m Vit, by the way.”
“Anjeanette.”
“We know,” said the girl. “I’m Root. We took a tour with you.”
“Oh. Um, can I…?”
“Sure, I’ll take whatever,” said Root.
Anjeanette furrowed her brow. “I meant, uh, can I help you with something?”
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were offering drinks.”
“We have a job we think you might be interested in,” said Vit.
“Um. No—thank you, sorry—I just don’t really have time. With school, my internship…”
“Oh, it shouldn’t conflict with your internship,” said Vit.
“I don’t know,” said Anjeanette. “I mean—will it get me college credit?”
“Afraid not,” said Root.
“Depending on what you’re studying,” said Vit. “But—no, yeah, probably not.”
Anjeanette shrugged. She took her cup back and downed the last of her vodka as she looked between the two—odd people, and vague, and possibly criminals. Who went around knocking on a girl’s door at this hour? Offering a “job”—and loose with the details, at that. Sounded like just the sort of scam her dad was always telling her to watch out for; just the sort of outsiders her mom always talked about, the ones the church warned of. Why had she even opened the door for them? Maybe drinking was a bad idea…
She looked at the bottle of gin on the counter. A big bottle—no small price tag on a bottle like that. It was a sizable payment. It was better than drinking three-times watered-down vodka stolen from Sofia. If she tried to skim more out of that old bottle, she’d be getting hydrated more than getting drunk.
Her fingers inched toward the bottle of gin. “Well…”
“Won’t get in the way of your studies or your internship. Honest,” said Vit.
“I suppose…”
“We can count you in?” asked Root.
Anjeanette sighed. She picked up the bottle. “As long as it’s not going to take up too much time. Um, or be too difficult. And—and as long as I don’t have to work with customers!” How could she have almost forgotten that one? Another job working with the public? She’d need a hell of a lot more alcohol…
“None of the above,” said Root.
“Well…” whispered Vit.
“None—” said Root with a hard look. “Of the above. If you can give tours, you can do this.”
Anjeanette nodded. She lifted the bottle higher and shrugged. “It’s a decent payment. More than I’m getting for my internship, anyway.” She uncorked the gin and poured a bit.
“Oh, that’s not—” started Root. “Sorry. The gin isn’t the payment. That was just a gift. For barging in and all.”
Vit nodded. “But there will be payment. Obviously. We wouldn’t expect you to take a job and not get paid. Er, I mean…” They looked up sheepishly. “Sorry. But, uh. Seven hundred helixes, give or take, is what we’re paying.
Anjeanette choked on her gin. It spattered the countertop, and she didn’t even care. All that alcohol, wasted, and she didn’t care.
“Seven—?”
“Hundred,” said Root.
“Helixes?”
Anjeanette was dizzy. Had she had that much? She held onto the counter. She’d hit a new record heart rate, and not on the lower end.
“If that sounds acceptable,” said Vit.
“That—yeah, that sounds good,” said Anjeanette. Seven hundred helixes? What kind of position were they hiring for—Grand Priest? “That sounds good,” she said again. “Um, thanks… thanks for the liquor, too… as part of the payment, but—yeah, I think that sounds acceptable.”