A captured cauldron, p.21
A Captured Cauldron, page 21
After scanning a dozen or so articles, they all began to melt together. She rubbed her eyes and flipped through them more quickly, and it was only through her speed that she noticed a new pattern: not just Aphos’ name, but the appearance of Madam Mila, head of the syndicate. The sketches of her had been dashed out quickly to satisfy a deadline but remained elegant in what they had achieved. Dark hair swept behind her shoulders, sharp, unwavering eyes, aging gracefully as the years went on… She looked familiar, but Dawn couldn’t place it.
Eventually, her search caught up to the more recent past: handwritten notes from this year’s Potion Con. She stopped and read through them. Rory’s notes on the fluff piece about bodyguards had quickly devolved into scribbles about Ambrose’s kidnapping: the vanishing, the ensuing chaos, the ring and the cloth in the tunnel…
She tried to read further, but a ripped scrap of paper had been taped over the original notes, blocking her view. Though torn from something else, she could still see the Scarrish Post letterhead and the name F.C. Grayson, Editor in Chief across the top, just above the scrawled message:
Story not worth it. Stop and move on to the Jameson arrest, then come back once the peacekeeper’s dug up the potioneer—or once Aphos has dumped him back into his shop.
Dawn stared at the note, a cold unease growing in the pit of her stomach. That wasn’t right—Rory was doing all this for the story. She had been working on it this whole time, hadn’t she?
She checked under the paper and around the other piles, searching for another note from the editor. Something telling her to pick the story back up, to follow the trail again—
Rory pushed up against the cabinet with her whole body to force the door closed. “I’m not getting anything here. Any luck on your end?”
Dawn fought against her unease. The editor’s note was weeks old—and even if Rory had been told to drop the story, did it matter? She had volunteered to help. Put herself at risk multiple times at the tavern, the stakeout…
Of course Rory wasn’t going to drop it just because her editor told her to. That wasn’t who she was.
“Nothing.” She slid the papers back into place. “I’ll tell Banneker we couldn’t find anything useful. He’ll make something work.”
“Sorry, Banneker.” Rory meandered over and leaned against the desk. “You…okay?”
“Yeah.” Dawn shook herself out of her thoughts. “Yeah, fine. You?”
Rory’s smile tilted upward. “Fine. So, did that toll go up?”
“Hm.” Dawn mimicked her posture. “I think it did.”
“Oh, whatever shall I do?”
She pulled Dawn against her and ducked down for another kiss, far deeper than the last one. Several breaths and two traveling hands later, Rory had her pinned against the side of the desk, her fingers skirting just under the hem of Dawn’s tunic.
Dawn reluctantly recalled where she was and managed to pull away.
“We’re at work,” she blurted out. “Literally, we’re at your work.”
That fact did nothing to dim the glint in Rory’s eye. She gave a hum and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “There’s a decent wine bar around the corner that should still be open,” she murmured. “Wanna go check it out?”
The back of Dawn’s mind was still latched onto the editor’s note that lay not two feet behind her—but a good bottle of wine would settle her thoughts.
And a few more kisses of the desk-pinning variety wouldn’t hurt, either.
“Only if it’s better than that Aphosian stuff,” she said. Rory took her hand and intertwined their fingers.
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad.” She tilted her head. “I recall that wine making us both excellent dancers.”
Dawn allowed herself a grin and pushed all other thoughts out of her head. “Then let’s see where this wine will lead us tonight.”
RULE 26:
MAKE A BACK-UP PLAN
Eli
“Okay, Tom, you go over here.” Eli pointed. “No, not that way, that way. Toward the cannon.”
Tom zoomed deeper into the maze that was Banneker’s shop, then paused.
“Good,” he said. “Now, I’m gonna sneak up on you, and if you hear any sound, you have to turn around and wave your arms.”
Tom waved her fork arms in excitement.
“Yes, exactly like that.” Eli gave her a double thumbs-up, then shooed her along. “Now go, and I’ll come find you after I count to ten. Ten, nine, eight…”
Tom wheeled off into the artificer’s abyss. Technically, Banneker’s shop was open to customers, but given the lack of adventurers in town to purchase cannons and nets and other violent sundries, the slow day gave Eli and Tom the run of the place. Every now and then, Banneker would pop his head out of the workroom, remarking on a horoscope he had read or asking about ink preferences for the forged invitation—but at the moment, he hummed and clattered away in the back room.
Leaving Eli to do a little work of his own.
He waited a few extra seconds, then tiptoed in Tom’s general direction, mentally running through all the advice his adventuring party had given him. Stick close to walls and heavy objects. Breathe through your mouth. Remain steady and frustratingly silent and painfully slow—
“I’ve got it!” Sherry burst in through the front door. Eli stumbled and banged his knee against a defunct whirligig.
Just above the crate ahead of him, Tom’s hands popped up and waved.
“Sherry!” Eli tried to admonish her, but it didn’t stick—she had already made a beeline for Banneker’s workroom, brandishing a silky waistcoat.
“I didn’t get rid of this old thing after all,” she said proudly. Eli followed her into the room, where she laid out the waistcoat alongside a pile of clothing. “This should be about your size, Eli. Granted, it’s an older pattern, but it should do the trick.”
The clothing she had gathered here for the next venture couldn’t have been more different from the bristly furs and tough leathers of their first rescue attempt. Everything here either shone, sparkled, or begged to be touched. Eli carefully picked through gold-embroidered waistcoats, silky tunics, a dainty half-cape…
All in service of them blending in with Aphos’ inner circle.
“I’ll stitch in what armor I can,” Sherry reassured him. “I’ve got a few pieces thin enough to fit under the cape, at least. You won’t go in defenseless, I’ll tell you that.”
“Gotta make sure they can get into Aphos first,” Banneker called from across the workroom and held up two sheets of paper. Ink stained his fingers and arms, but he didn’t seem to care. “Ready to test these out?”
One by one, Rosemond Street trickled into the room—Grim first, then Dawn, Viola, and Xavion. While Banneker laid out his test invitations, Eli huddled with Dawn nearby. His nerves about the rescue were bubbling up again, but if he began pacing one more time, Sherry was going to chain him to a chair—so instead of walking, he distracted himself with his favorite topic of the month:
Dawn’s love life.
“You”—he poked her arm—“were going to tell me about how that wine date went days ago.”
Dawn leaned back against the table. “I told you we didn’t find anything at the newspaper office—”
“I know that. What I don’t know is anything about the wine bar you hit up after.”
He expected her to gush, for the floodgates of gossip to open and distract him—but instead, she hesitated.
“It was great,” she said. “The atmosphere was lovely, and Rory knows her wines.”
“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Dawn snorted and slapped his arm. “Oh my gods.”
He laughed along with her, but the details she had provided were far too lean for his liking. That was all right—perhaps the details were too saucy to bring up in merchant company.
“We’ll go to the café this week and chat about it,” he said. “Ames’ll want an update, too.”
Dawn shot him a look. “Wait, you told him about Rory?”
“Of course I told him.” He grinned. “You were depriving him of this news. And you’ll be thrilled to know he’s absolutely devastated to be missing out on all the teasing.”
Dawn groaned and covered her face. “I was trying not to make him feel worse than he already does.”
He tugged her hands back down. “Worse? He demanded every detail. Held me at knifepoint about it. Summoned a knife from the dreamscape and everything. I don’t know how he did it—”
Xavion cleared their throat from the corner, cutting into Dawn’s laughter.
“If anyone still cares, I have the testing solution ready,” they drawled. “Please utilize it now so I can go back to the interminable myriad of high-level potions our dear Amby insists on stocking.”
They all gathered together as Banneker took the solution and set it beside his creations: a set of forged invitations, some written in gibberish, others blank, and yet more written in an approximation of an invitation.
“I tried to make invitations that would magically imitate what the guards expect to see,” he explained. “As long as it’s not the first invitation they’ve seen that day, they should pass muster and get you inside.”
“As long as the invite passes their illusion test.” Viola took the spray bottle from Xavion. “May I?”
Xavion nodded. “To be clear, I don’t know Aphos’ exact formula, but this is a rather basic solution to indicate whether an illusion is present. One spray should do it.”
Viola carefully sprayed each invitation with a light mist. They all waited, watching for any change in the text, any curl in the paper…
One by one, each invitation turned black at the edges, even the blank one. Banneker cursed under his breath.
“Back to the drawing board,” he muttered, then looked at Grim. “How much time we got left?”
“Two weeks.”
Banneker let out a louder curse; Dawn tucked her arms against herself with a queasy expression. Forcing himself to stay in place, Eli toyed with his earring, his nerves a reflection of the curled and broken invitations.
But he refused to lose hope so close to the rescue.
“We’ll come up with a back-up plan,” he said, trying to cut into the silence with confidence. “If the invites don’t work, we’ll just pivot.”
“You’re right.” Grim ran a finger along the edge of the closest invitation; it shattered into black dust. “If we can’t get in this way, we’re going to need to sneak in again.”
Eli rubbed his knee, which still ached from his failed stealth practice earlier. Pivoting no longer sounded like a good idea—but Grim wasn’t wrong, either. Without a working invitation, disguises would be useless, brute force even more so.
But stealth was how he had failed Ambrose the first time.
Tom tugged on his pant leg; he picked her up and hugged her close, hoping the gesture would help glue his insides back together.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, though he wasn’t sure whether he was reassuring the room or himself. “We promised him.”
RULE 27:
UNCORK
Ambrose
Though time had no real meaning in his windowless workshop, Ambrose prided himself on his precise bedtime.
It was one of the only ways to ground himself to some sort of routine while in captivity—he lived by his mealtimes and the ticks of his pocket watch. Unless he had to spend extra time brewing something for Cassius’ check-ins, he made sure he was in bed at the same time every evening, with a watery cup of tea and a desperate wish for a nice book to read…
Until his loved ones started visiting in his dreams.
Now, all thought of leisurely reading in bed had vanished, and he had to fight not to burrow under the covers right after dinner. The sooner he went to sleep, the sooner he could see Rosemond Street—and tonight, he thought of nothing but them. He barely held out an hour after dinner, then eagerly climbed into bed, wondering who he’d see and what sort of setting they’d think up. His dream surroundings had become increasingly fantastical every night—though there was a limit to what the circlet’s magic could achieve. Banneker had tried to set his dreamscape in the clouds once, which only held for half an hour. Viola had dared to summon an enormous cake to sit on, with fondant chairs and teacups filled with buttercream.
(Delicious, until it all melted away a minute later.)
But his dream tonight was, at a glance, more realistic. He stood on the walkway in front of Widdershins’ Books. Whoever created the dream had captured the details of his favorite bookshop perfectly: the stained-glass flowers adorning the window, the strong whiff of coffee and paper flowing in from the chipped doorway.
As Ambrose took a deep inhale of the intoxicating scent, Eli stepped out of the shop, a bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“Hoped you would like it.” He grinned and leaned against the doorframe. “Happy anniversary.”
The bookshop air in Ambrose’s lungs went stale. “Anniversary?”
While his bedtime had once been precise, his recollection of the actual days was hazy at best, limited to the series of rough tally marks he maintained at the top of his notebook. Had their one-year anniversary already arrived? His heart twisted. Gods, he’d had ideas for the event and everything. He was going to close the shop for the day, wake Eli with pastries and coffee from Viola’s—then they were going to picnic in the fields, attend a show, make out somewhere they weren’t supposed to…
And now he had nothing to offer. He couldn’t even summon a gift into his hands, like Eli had done.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I didn’t mean to forget. I can’t—I wish I could…”
While he choked on his words, Eli approached with his bouquet—a bright, stunning array filled with lavender and sunflowers.
“It’s all right,” he said, the circlet across his forehead as beautiful as the flowers he held out. “I’m just glad I get to see you today. We’ll plan something better for when you’re back—”
Ambrose cut off his words with the only thing he could give: a kiss, pressed like a rose petal against Eli’s lips, while his fingers delicately traced his cheekbones. He tried to keep the gesture light, happy, something anniversary-worthy—but as soon as Eli pulled on his waist, his despair pushed him forward until he had one hand tangled in Eli’s hair and the other grabbing fistfuls of his shirt.
“I love you,” he managed between kisses. “You deserve so much more than this.”
Eli’s laugh vibrated against his neck. “Ames, I don’t even deserve you.”
Eventually, Ambrose recalled that Eli hadn’t summoned an entire illusory bookstore only to be pinned against its outer wall, and with rumpled flowers in hand, they meandered into the shop together. Out of instinct, their path took the shape of a normal bookstore date—starting at the new releases first, then moving to the romance novels on the maroon shelves deeper in. While the front of the shop appeared normal, Eli had taken a few fantastical liberties with the dreamscape in the back. The flowers draped over the romance shelves looked real, quietly furling and unfurling in a velvety, perfumed rhythm as they walked past. Next to the shelves, the shop had been expanded to accommodate a cluster of comfortable furniture: deep couches and cushioned armchairs, each paired with steaming cups of tea.
An excellent idea for real life, Ambrose thought, if Widdershins ever scrounged up the coin to renovate.
When they eventually settled on the couch together, he hoped they could continue their pretend date for a while—but then the walls flickered, and the flowers stuttered in their movement.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to ask about the rescue.
“How are the preparations going?” he asked, trying to keep his tone even. As he was falling asleep that night, notes on astral projection spinning in his head, he had desperately hoped the Rosemond Street team was making strides of their own. The very idea of projecting his way through the tunnels of Aphos was so risky, he still hadn’t dared utter a word of it to Nat. But if Eli, Dawn, and the others had made progress, perhaps he wouldn’t need to try it at all. He could just sit back, brew more fake potions, find a few more ways to annoy Cassius before his inevitable departure…
But when Eli spoke next, his voice was tight.
“Good,” he said. “Banneker is…still trying to figure out how to get Grim and me into the demonstration. But he’s close.”
Ambrose frowned. That was Eli’s lying tone—the overconfidence, the slightly higher pitch. “How close?” he pressed.
Eli shifted against the cushions. “He’s still trying to come up with a foolproof invitation to get us in. No luck so far.”
“And if he can’t?”
Eli cleared his throat. “We’ll sneak in like last time.”
Ambrose’s chest tightened. Sneaking into this demonstration, through Cassius’ beloved security, past all of Madam Mila’s guests… He didn’t dare try to calculate the chances of success. It would only make him want to hurl into a cauldron again.
Eli must have read the thoughts on his face, for he took Ambrose’s hand in both of his. “I know it sounds dangerous, but however we get in, it’ll work this time. We’re not letting you go, I promise you.”
“I know,” Ambrose said quickly. “I know you’ll do everything you can. I just…”
He swallowed. There was no getting around it now—if Eli was going to take on the risk of the rescue, he would have to take on a risk of his own.
“I’m going to find something that can help,” he said. “You won’t be alone in this.”
Eli frowned. “Is it the dragon plasma Tavi wrote about?”
