“Could be gulls again . . .”
“Too many fallen slates for that. Better take a look.”
“Do we tell him?”
“Fuck no . . .”
Lizanne waited for the tread of boot leather to fade then hauled herself back up onto the roof. It was overlooked by the parapet and she knew she had only moments before the inquisitive and overly conscientious guard climbed up and raised the alarm. The barracks were separated from the Okanas mansion by a twenty-foot gap, a relatively easy jump for a Blood-blessed stoked with Green, but requiring a decent run up and yet more fallen tiles. Instead Lizanne opted for the shorter jump to the crater wall to the rear of the barracks. It was a rough-hewn cliff-face with hand- and footholds aplenty, enabling her to latch on and descend rapidly into the shadows below.
Upon reaching the ground she immediately sprinted towards the mansion, disappearing into the refuge of the house’s shadowed rear in the space of a few heart-beats. Given the lack of alarm she had successfully avoided the attentions of the inquisitive guard.
Scanning the rear edifice of the mansion, she saw lights in the ground-level windows, but none in the floors above. Intelligence on this place had been meagre, garnered from the few sailors and refugees she could find with some familiarity of Varestian waters. Only one, a former Blue-hunter hand recently recruited into Madame Hakugen’s militia, had actually been to the High Wall but never reached these lofty heights. “They’re a right suspicious bunch to be sure, miss,” the man had said. “Don’t let visiting sailors wander from their docks. Though there’s rumours of all manner of treasure in the upper reaches of that mountain.”
Lizanne, of course, wasn’t interested in treasure tonight, merely maps and documents which experience told her would most likely be found on the first floor. The mansion was a close copy of a larger-than-average Mandinorian country-house, the kind purchased by the upper middle rank of the corporate managerial class desirous of a refuge from the odorous bustle of city life. She had had occasion to burgle such places before and the study would normally be found opposite the stairwell on the first-floor landing. Quickly identifying the correct window, she moved to the mansion wall and launched herself upwards, the Green ensuring she gained purchase on the window-sill some twelve feet off the ground. Hoisting herself up, she was gratified to find only a basic latch on the window, easily opened after a fractional injection of Black. She used the remaining Black to draw the window up and swiftly swung herself inside, crouching to survey the room with her enhanced vision. After a few seconds of squinting at brooms, buckets and a variety of mops she realised she had chosen the wrong access point after all.
Getting rusty, she chided herself, moving to press her ear to the door of what was plainly a closet. She could hear a faint murmur of voices from the lower floor, two or three, all male. The words were indistinct but the pitch was casual, lacking in urgency. Lizanne found the door unlocked and eased it open, seeing an empty landing and two stairwells, one leading up, the other down. Spotting another door opposite the cupboard, she stole out onto the landing, moving in a slow crouch, her feet testing each floor-board before putting her full weight on it. She found the other door secured by a heavy Alebond Commodities double-mortise lock, indicating something of value might well lie on the other side. Another injection of Black and some careful probing later and she was in, closing the door softly behind her.
The room was fully dark and the windows shuttered so even with Green in her veins it took a moment to confirm she had in fact found the study this time. However, it was more of a library-cum–map room, the walls lined with book-laden shelves from floor to ceiling whilst a number of chart-bearing easels were arranged around a large central map table.
Not so rusty after all. Lizanne allowed herself a small compliment as she went to the map table. Laid out on its surface beneath a thick sheet of glass was the largest complete map of the Arradsian continent she had ever seen. It was clearly several decades old from the foxing that discoloured the edges of the paper, but it also appeared to be remarkably accurate, albeit also heavily modified. Annotations in dense Varestian script had been scribbled all around the coast and at some places in the mostly blank Interior. Lizanne’s interest piqued, however, as her gaze tracked across the chart to Krystaline Lake where the annotations became a jumbled, overlapping frenzy.
“Mrreaaoow?”
Lizanne’s gaze snapped to the underside of the table, finding a pair of green eyes blinking up at her from the gloom. The cat slinked out of the shadows and wound itself around her legs, tail swishing. Lizanne ignored it and returned to the map, peering closer at the cloud of scribbles around the lake. Her spoken Varestian was perfect but her understanding of the written form less so. It was a curious mode of text in that it mixed pictography with phonetics, making rapid translation difficult.
“Current becomes . . . a vortex here,” she murmured, her finger tapping a notation next to a series of circular arrows. It was marked with several cruciform squiggles she knew to be the equivalent of a Mandinorian exclamation mark.
The cat let out another plaintive miaow then purred as it prodded her calf with its head. Keen to quiet the animal, Lizanne crouched and gathered it up, stroking it as she continued to examine the map. Large as it was the depiction of Krystaline Lake still lacked sufficient detail for her to identify a precise location. She gauged the swirl of arrows as about sixty miles south of the falls that fed the lake, and at least three miles from shore, but doubted that would be enough for Clay and his Contractors to pin-point it.
She stepped back from the map, turning her attention to the easels that surrounded it. She carried the cat to the closest one, the furry bundle purring as she scratched under its chin. The map was a detailed scientific study of the lake marked with the crest of the Consolidated Research Company. Various depths were depicted and coded in different colours and likely concentrations of “draconic activity” outlined in green ink, but the map itself gave no clues as to the location of what had so obsessed the late patriarch of the Okanas clan.
She examined each of the easels in turn, finding them all detailed renderings of various regions of Krystaline Lake, until she came to one that was plainly an enlarged version of the region with the swirling currents. The arrows depicting the vortex were drawn with more care, some rendered in black, others red and often marked with the Varestian equivalent of a question mark. However, what drew most of her attention was the large “X” in the centre of the vortex. The notation next to it was unusual in that it wasn’t written in Varestian, but something that resembled the flowing elegance of Dalcian. Ancient Dalcian, she decided, recalling what Clay had told her about the original legend regarding the treasure of Krystaline Lake. She didn’t know this script and therefore couldn’t translate it, but was sure if she had it would have read “a vessel of wonder, unbound by earth or sea, come to rest with precious cargo ’neath the silver waters.”
“I do believe,” Lizanne said, giving the cat a hug, “I may have found what I came for.”
The cat squirmed in her arms, suddenly agitated. A flicker of movement drew Lizanne’s gaze to a near by bookcase, finding another cat perched atop it. Unlike the grey tabby she held, this one was black, and considerably larger. Also, judging by the white teeth it bared at Lizanne as it hissed, much less desirous of petting.