It took two guiding arms to help Pertuda down the stairs, rather than the one for ascension. Anjeanette and Kester hung by her sides, making the sluggish trek across each tread and the harrowing journey down each riser. Aria flitted ahead, counting each one as she descended. Root didn’t have the heart to break the news that staircases weren’t a one-way ordeal and that she’d already counted that bit on their way up. And it was good to keep the full power of the young woman’s brain occupied anyhow.
Brian lagged slightly, keeping Root from looking too far behind. The guard was gone in pursuit of whatever was loose in the halls, but Root knew he might return at any moment.
“Saly, it’s clear,” she said into her whisper stone. “And you’d better be ready now.”
A second passed, and then Saly emerged from the office one bespectacled eye at a time. When he saw Root—and no one less friendly—he hurried out and latched the door behind him.
“You’ve got the checks?” asked the king from Root’s side.
Saly pulled aside his jacket to reveal a stack of crisp white and gold paper tucked into the interior pocket. The pair hurried to catch up with the retreating tour. The hurrying was unnecessary.
“That took ages,” said Root, keeping her voice low despite their comfortable distance from the others.
“I told you, it’s delicate work. The primary ledger was there, and the one copy, but that won’t be all. There will be other backups archived or locked up for safekeeping—nothing to be done about that; all we can do is make sure our work is clean enough that they’ll chalk it up to transcribing errors. It’s all an art, see, change an eight to a three written just sloppily enough that it might’ve been mistaken, or a four—”
“I get it. Still, that was too close.”
“Besides, it was… er, there were some fascinating things there, see—”
“You were… what, is this like sightseeing to you?”
Saly waved a hand. “It was relevant. Listen: some of the numbers in the ledger had already been manipulated.”
“What does that mean? We’re screwed? The books are already a mess?”
“No, no, the opposite. Someone is already tampering with the church’s numbers. And I can tell you they don’t have the same knack for it—much, much sloppier than I’d ever gamble on if it were my neck on the line. And, well, it is, but my work is much—” He waved his hands. “The point is: I noticed something was off immediately. So, I started out looking for patterns. And I went and walked back through the work of whoever went in and messed about before us. It’s all a bunch of shady payments made to a ship in the church’s service, a missionary vessel called the Viperine. The ledger had all sorts of odd payments in strange amounts, always attributed—falsely, it seems—to other ships or missions crossing paths with the Viperine or in its general vicinity on the given date. Plus there were several redundant charges. That ship received nearly twice as many ‘supply’ shipments as any other, quantities far exceeding the demands for a crew of a vessel that size. Now, don’t look at me like that—sure, yes, I know we all live in the desert, but I know budgeting, all right?”
“So, let me get this straight,” said Root. “We were out here covering for you—I crammed myself in a nook behind a curtain, held my breath, made up some lie about Brian wanting to see the offices—so that you could poke around at other numbers? How is this good news?”
Saly looked sheepish. “Yes, sure, I was curious, but—” He wagged a finger at her. “It’s good because it means I could manipulate some of those same numbers to create the surplus we needed. Making this evening’s event more expensive works, but now we have an extra layer of cover. I left the sloppiness of that prior work—as much as I hate to see a messy ledger—so that if anyone becomes suspicious, if anyone goes through to check or comes in to perform an audit, they’ll look for a gap and find one—a bigger one than it was initially. But, what, if they catch the other culprit, will the crook try to claim someone else messed with their mess? Would anyone even believe them? Your camouflage only has to be slightly better than the flashiest member of the flock, you know? Now there’s a scapegoat.”
“All right,” said Root with a roll of her eyes. She trusted Saly’s logic. He was, after all, the accountant.
(And financial planner.)
“And,” said Saly, who apparently wasn’t done talking. “This means someone else has a vested interest in making sure those ledgers are not scrutinized too closely. They’ll unwittingly shield us long after we’re gone.”
“Unless they’re also long gone,” said Root.
“It’s possible. But that wouldn’t be my guess.”
“Which is?”
Saly wrung his hands. “Well, work like that—this wasn’t a professional. Not a numbers guy, at least. But whoever changed those numbers wasn’t totally in the dark. They’re clearly quite familiar with the church’s movements—supply chains and deployments of crews and such. The Viperine is sailing the Setoterran oceans. So, if I had to guess, I’d say whoever meddled in the ledgers is someone inside the church, and I’d guess they’re using the church’s networks and infrastructure to move something. Goods. Or—oh, heaven forbid—people. You know, something stolen. Or illegal.”
As interesting as all of that might’ve been to Root in other circumstances, she was sort of in the middle of something. And her head hurt.
They made slow progress back down to the courtyard, hurrying Pertuda as much as they could. There was still a lot to be done, and the price of falling behind schedule was in the ballpark of eight thousand helixes, plus one really nice piece of headwear. They’d carved their margin into the ledger and swiped some blank checks, but that meant nothing if they couldn’t get the slips signed.
When they reached the courtyard, Root, Brian, and Saly scattered casually and unsuspiciously. This was the hardest part, if you asked Root: doing nothing in a nonchalant manner, not sweating or smoking, not looking awkwardly out of place or unsociable.
She ventured deeper into the crowd. The event was in full swing now, with the church elite having arrived sometime during the tour. Root didn’t spot David among them, but she could tell approximately where he was just by following the increased density of palace guards, like bees in proximity to a hive.
Others, too, hung close to David, so it was almost as if the guests were invisibly leashed, moving wherever he moved whether by conscious intent or the tug of some innate sense bent on divine salvation and a lighter pocketbook.
It was as she watched the moving crowd, strutting around unsure what to do with the hand that wasn’t holding her clutch, that she nearly crashed right into Syrus.
When she glanced up to apologize, she froze. Their eyes met. Shit. Root rummaged around in her brain for the lines they’d prepared for just this occasion, but in her panic, she came up blank.
Syrus looked her up and down. His wet eyes took their time. Root wanted to smack him, but at the moment she was just glad that he’d found anything at all that took priority over shouting for the guards.
When sense returned, her feet wanted to run. But it was hard to deny any wrongdoing while sprinting in the opposite direction. She held her ground as the words finally snapped into her mind.
“O—oh! Uh, Syrus, hi,” she said with a quiver to her voice that she hoped he’d overlook during the rest of his overlooking. She used her arms and clutch to cover herself somewhat. “So good to see you. We’ve been hoping to cross your path, actually.”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” muttered Beel through the whisper stones. Root ignored him, even if he muttered in harmony with her own thoughts.
“Yes, and might I say you’re looking marvelous. Is that so?” said Syrus with a curious look.
“Yes, well, you recall all the chaos. We’d hoped to regroup. Thought you might’ve gotten pulled off with the rest of Hamlick’s crowd for… er, whatever came about in those woods.”
Syrus gestured to himself with arms splayed. He wore a fine magenta shirt and the gold symbol around his neck, a more formal and less service-y spin on the attire of the church clergy. “Made it out all right. Uh, of course, I worried about you all as well.”
Root gave a thumbs-up. Immediately, she felt stupid for it. “All accounted for. Shame, though, that Hamlick ended up with the real flute after all and you just got that fake. Since he still had the power to lead everyone away like that, you know?”
A quick look crossed Syrus’s face, so brief Root might’ve missed it. His eyes flicked across the backs of those nearby, scanning, tense. Then in an instant he was back. “Yes, and we were so close, hm?” He kept his voice oddly hushed.
“He really pulled one over on us. One step ahead, and all that. Damn.”
Syrus gave her a long look. He did not hold eye contact. “It happens in this line of work,” he said with a shrug. “But no need to discuss the past,” he added hurriedly, watching one of his colleagues stray closer. Had he bought the story, then? He continued. “So, if you’re here, perhaps you’ve reconsidered the thought of joining?”
Root put up a hand, cast a performative glance over her shoulder. “We should most certainly discuss that later. I do have to run, though, at the moment. It was great to see you though, really.”
“Of course,” he said. He didn’t try to stop her, but he kept his eyes on her as she retreated, an expression Root couldn’t read.
She didn’t exhale until she’d wound her way well into the mess of people, and she shuddered as she shook the itch of his eyes off of her. Fucking weirdo. Looked like he might’ve showered before the event, though.
Had he believed her lie? It was too late either way—she’d said what she could, done her best. She wasn’t about to double back and have another go at it. Either way, this elevated the situation. They had to finish the job and get out of there before he cornered them again or asked too many questions—or went straight to the palace guards. They might buy themselves a bit of time with their fake IDs and a well-played rich donor act, but in the end, it was his word against theirs, and he had plenty of his Order of Seekers cronies around who’d heard his reports from Midden, surely.
Root zagged between mingling groups and tables as she made her way to the bar. There was no line, so she went right to the counter and leaned over it.
“Champagne,” she said, devoid of all those magic words her parents might’ve suggested she tack on before or after. The rich and entitled didn’t tend to bother. It was as good an excuse as any.
“Needing a hair of the dog?” asked Vit. Root gave them an unamused look. They clicked their tongue. “Evening going well for you, then?”
Root looked around. No one was too close, so she leaned in a bit farther.
“All went accordingly. Saly took care of the ledger and got the checks,” she said, both to Vit and into the whisper stone, an update for Azriah and Beel. She set her clutch on the bar top as well to include the king in the discussion. “I’m sure you heard…?”
Vit nodded. “I saw him. He hasn’t come for a drink, but if he does, I’m a little… stuck here.” They handed Root her drink. She took a long sip.
“He seemed to buy the story. Didn’t have me arrested on the spot, at least, so that’s a good sign.”
“Right,” said Vit. They didn’t look convinced, only more troubled and sufficiently confused.
“It’ll be fine,” said Root reassuringly. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”
“Ready for the next phase?”
Root nodded once. She looked across the courtyard, through the doors of the Hall of Relics. Anjeanette stood around the display cases with a new tour. She’d be leading several through the area for the rest of the evening, spending ample time around the halo. If she did her job well, when the time came, every guest in attendance would have been seen lingering about the case, fogging up the glass and getting their snobby fingerprints all over it.
When the time came, every guest would have earned at least an ounce of suspicion.
Vit recorked a bottle of champagne and stowed it with the rows of others, sorted by type. They weren’t used to serving such fancy liquors or pouring into such dainty glasses. They’d broken one already. Fortunately, no one had noticed, but how embarrassing either way. The last thing they needed was Gilm Glamson to come sniffing around and find the shards in the trash can. They’d be more than happy to pin the blame on one of the ruder guests—and they were all rude, some just stuck out like particularly unpleasant brambles in a dense thorny thicket. If Vit got thrown out mid event because of some broken glass… Well, they’d be two for two, eh?
Root hovered around the end of the bar counter, occasionally making continued conversation with Vit when no guests needed attention, standing in the shadow of a tall fan of fronds leaping from a heavy stone planter. She sipped her champagne and stared at the crowds, eye bags heavy with stress and murderous intent. She looked lousy, but Vit wouldn’t be caught dead saying it. They quite hoped to make it out of the event alive, and such a misstep would be an even faster way to foil that than spilling their guts to the nearest palace guard. Hopefully the champagne would help.
Two guests approached the counter. Vit looked up, straight into the faces of Grand Priest David Mammona and Leslie Sheridan, President of the Order of Seekers.
Root wasted no time in scuttling away.
“Two glasses of champagne,” said Leslie. “Aminto Bat, forty-eighth.”
“Coming right up,” said Vit, who would need to spend a moment with some labels to figure out what exactly those words meant.
Leslie turned back to David, continuing the thread of some prior conversation. “It’s not about trustworthiness, it’s a matter of simple control.” The pair leaned against the bar counter, Leslie on one elbow, David with his back to Vit. He nodded along.
“We’ll figure out the particulars,” said David, shaking his head. “But I do think small incremental price increases are the way to proceed, I do.”
Vit listened in as they found the right label and poured two glasses. David and Leslie, on the other hand, seemed to have immediately forgotten their bartender existed—if they even thought they did in the first place.
“The time will come when we push the envelope too far and the parishioners either revolt or simply run out of cash.”
“If we can grant them salvation before that day comes, they will never break from the church.”
“Here you are,” said Vit. They set the two flutes atop the counter and then turned aside to gather up some empty glasses from a tray deposited by a waiter.
David continued, ignoring Vit. “It would seem one arm of our organization has maintained its goals quite a lot more successfully than the other, hm?”
“It would seem,” said Leslie, shaking his terrible hair out of his eyes, “that one arm of our organization has a much simpler goal to accomplish than the other.”
“A little bit of hide-and-seek versus molding and mollifying the masses?” David chuckled.
A small group of guests off to the side chittered with laughter over some unheard joke. David turned away from the conversation to watch them.
As he did, Leslie withdrew a hand from the pocket of his suit jacket, an easy motion riding on quick fingers. His middle finger flashed with the glint of a ring: silver and shaped like a coiling snake. Pinched between his fingers was a tiny baggie of whitish powder, which he dumped easily into his own glass of champagne. It dissolved instantly. He turned aside to stuff the empty bag back into his pocket.
Vit didn’t know what sort of instinct overtook them, only that they spotted an opportunity and took it. An opportunity to do what, they weren’t even sure—not in the moment, nor after the fact. All they knew was that Leslie was adding something to his drink—some sort of drug, most likely, as they’d heard was common at parties like these among the elite—but certainly there was no ruling out that he just had to take his evening dose of heart medication or something to help ease him to sleep later on. Any number of things could’ve been at play, but all Vit knew was that in that moment, there was the possibility to sow some degree of added chaos into the night, and that that was (probably) for their benefit.
Of course, it also had the potential to backfire spectacularly if it resulted in some chain of events they hadn’t accounted for. But Vit didn’t consider this in the moment. Instincts aren’t good for that sort of thing.
Vit unfurled their left arm, the sinews unraveling like fraying rope, tan skin turning teal and splitting apart. They reached for the glasses just as David turned for his drink.
Too slow.
“Ah!” he cried, eyes widening as they fell on the spider limbs before him. He cowered with such force it nearly knocked him to the tiled floor of the courtyard. Leslie bent to steady him.
And thus, neither had their eyes on the champagne flutes as Vit swapped their positions on the counter. Too slow, but lucky nonetheless.
David straightened back up, recovered from his bout of fear. He snatched up the drink closest to him and hurried away with a mean but no less startled look aimed at Vit.
“Terribly sorry,” they began, but David was gone, and Leslie—drink in hand—followed close behind.
Whatever it was they’d just set in motion, they had to hope it hadn’t been a tremendous mistake.
Champagne was something of a novelty.
The drink, you see, was named for the region in which it originated, as many such things tend to be when introduced to the worldswide trade networks of the modern age. The only issue with this was that “champagne” found itself being an insufficiently descriptive name.
In Setoterra, the great city of Champagne in the country of Louxe peddled a sparkling alcoholic beverage of the same name. Some said it was invented there first, but unsurprisingly this was met with quite a lot of challenge. Nevertheless, the country exported champagne throughout the worlds.
At around the same time, a crafty distiller down on his luck but with a young and chronically uninteresting son who loved to watch rising bubbles had the half-intentional, half-mistaken breakthrough of his career when he, too, created a sparkling beverage which he named after his son. He called it champagne, which was a name his wife had come up with while still delirious from the labor, and which had no relation to the yet-uninvented beverage nor the great city halfway across the world. His company took off in the coming year, and he became a mogul in the industry.
In Atnaterra, there was another city called Champagne. The intent was for it to be called “Champion,” but the skillsets required to settle a piece of land and to spell an elementary-level word do not need to coexist and do just fine striking out on their own much of the time. This city, too, developed a signature beverage, and wouldn’t you know it, it was a near-match to the champagne invented in the other parts of the worlds, entirely by happenstance. It sounds far-fetched, but sometimes these sorts of strange coincidences do occur. When the subject matter is a little more personal, some venture to call them mir—
Ahem. But what really makes the situation astounding is that a small group of children in the Setoterran city of Aminto Bat once sat down and mixed up all sorts of foragings as kids tend to do. Water, fruits, no small amount of muck and leaves and even a few newts. All of this they dumped into a hole in the dirt, mixed it with a dirty stick, and called it a potion. It wasn’t a potion, but several days later, it was champagne. They presented it to their parents, who politely declined on looks alone, but kicked themselves forever after when their children, a gaggle of young entrepreneurs who, it should be noted, were not yet old enough to drink in that part of the world, went on to found the Aminto Bat Champagnery. They named it this after the city of origin and their new word, “champagne,” an anagram for the first letter of each odd ingredient dumped into that original hole. They took a few liberties, like flipping the W for “water” around as an M.
Walk into any bar in Atnaterra or Setoterra and indiscriminately order “champagne” and you could get any one of these. Perhaps you’d even end up with something new; after all, who’s to say that in all the worlds someone else hasn’t come up with the name “champagne” and, by some bizarre coincidence, an exact duplicate of the same timeless, classic drink.