Chapter 79. The Most Romantic Burglary of My Life Happened Inside a Crate Full of Straw

Chapter 79: 79. The Most Romantic Burglary of My Life Happened Inside a Crate Full of Straw

I stood up carefully, testing my ribs... They ached, but the panel had crept up to forty percent while I slept, which was something.

I took a moment to pat Biscuit and thank her for her long service. And she snorted at me.

We slipped out of the chapel together, three dark shapes in the dusk, and headed for the depot.

I’d always assumed that burglary was easier than this.

It wasn’t hard to get over the wall. Laura had scouted it that afternoon, and she knew precisely where the gaps were in the patrol.

We reached the east side by crawling along a drainage ditch, under the black shadow of the stone, and Alicia boosted me over with a grunt and a sharp warning about my ribs.

I landed in a pile of old sacking on the other side, and she and Laura followed without a sound.

The yard inside was a maze of crates, barrels, and stacked timber.

A few lanterns burned on posts here and there, spaced out so that long pools of darkness lay between them. Laura crouched at the corner of a woodpile, counting under her breath.

"Two guards on the north walk," she whispered. "They switch every ten minutes..."

"The tower sentry looks east for half an hour... There’s a third man by the main gate, but he sits down at midnight."

"How do you know...?"

"I watched them from the chapel with a glass for three hours."

"Remind me never to cross you."

"That’s obvious."

Alicia picked up a pebble from the ground, weighed it in her palm, and flicked it. It sailed through the air in a perfect arc and hit a lantern on a post thirty feet away.

There was a tiny plink, a puff of smoke, and the flame went out.

"You’re a menace," I whispered.

"I’m a gifted amateur."

I closed my eyes and let Combat Instinct open, quietly, at the very edge of my mind. I didn’t use any Aether... I couldn’t afford it.

I just let the golden map unroll, faint and shadowy, and watched the guards move across it like dots on a chessboard.

When one of them stepped around a corner, I tapped Alicia’s arm.

When another paused to scratch his nose, I tapped Laura’s.

We crept from shadow to shadow. We slid under a loading dock.

We stopped, motionless, when a patrol passed within ten feet of our hiding place, and we waited until the boots had faded before moving on.

Laura stopped dead at a doorway, knelt, and ran her fingers across the threshold, and I saw a faint trace of violet light flicker under her touch.

"Alarm glyph," she breathed.

"Can you disarm it...?"

She pulled a stick of white chalk from her pocket and drew a tiny, intricate circle around the glyph, humming under her breath.

The violet light shuddered, dimmed, and went out.

"Easy," she said.

"Where did you learn that...?"

"It’s efficient."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one you’ll get."

We were almost at the administrative building when I heard it: a sharp, rattling clatter of boots on stone and the sound of a man humming a bawdy song. I grabbed Alicia and Laura by the sleeves.

"Patrol," I hissed. "Coming back... They’ve turned around."

"Where?"

"Twenty feet... behind us."

The nearest cover was a huge wooden crate, about the size of a small cart, with its lid half off. It stood against the wall of the warehouse, and there wasn’t another hiding place in sight.

I yanked the lid back, shoved Alicia in, pushed Laura after her, and scrambled in on top of them.

The lid fell shut with a thump.

It was dark... It was incredibly dark and incredibly crowded.

The crate smelled of straw and oiled leather. There was a hard edge digging into my hip, and a boot in my ribs, and a long, warm weight pressed against my back.

It took me a moment to realize that the weight was Laura... She’d wedged herself behind me, with her chest flat against my spine and her arms folded between us, and she’d stopped breathing.

"Don’t move," she whispered, so close that her lips brushed the back of my ear.

"I’m... not."

"You are... Your elbow is in my stomach, and with one more movement, you’ll reach to your favorite spot." Laura said it so suddenly that it made me move instinctively, where my elbow pressed on her breasts. "And there it is..."

Laura sighed. "How do you feel about having a perverted boyfriend, Alicia?"

Alicia giggled. "You’re used to it."

"I can’t help it... There’s a rib."

"There’s always a rib with you."

I shifted, and a hand closed over my wrist. It was Alicia, curled against my chest, and in the thin line of moonlight that leaked through a crack in the planks, I could see the glint of her grin.

"This," she whispered, "is the most romantic burglary of my life..."

"Quiet," said Laura.

"I’m just saying."

"Quiet..."

Footsteps thudded past the crate. And a lantern swung.

A bored voice muttered something about "damned cold nights" and "when are they going to rotate us out of this hole."

I held my breath... I could feel Laura’s heartbeat against my back, quick and light, and her ears, which were pressed to my shoulder, were burning like coals.

Alicia was shaking with silent laughter.

I tried very hard to think about something dull... I thought about taxes. And I thought about the price of grain.

We’re so fucking close... and I can’t take this seriously when their tits are pressing onto my body so much that it makes the REAL SWORD awaken.

The boots paused.

For an awful, endless moment, they stood right outside the crate, and I felt every muscle in my body clench.

Then a long, rich belch echoed through the night, and the boots moved on, and the humming resumed, and slowly... very slowly, the sound faded into the distance.

We lay there for a full minute without moving.

"Okay..." Alicia whispered. "I think we’re clear."

"I’m going to murder you," said Laura, in a voice that was perfectly serene.

"Whaaaaa!? For what?"

"For existing!"

I pushed the lid open and rolled out onto the cobbles, as quietly as a man can while trying not to laugh.

Alicia followed. Laura came last, with a face the color of a boiled beet, straw sticking out of her hair, and a murderous stare that could have melted iron.

I helped her up, and she slapped my hand away. ’Yeeshh... she’s pissed...’

"Not a word," she said.

"I wasn’t going to say anything."

"Good."

But that’s where I wanted to tease her so bad, and so I smiled smugly. "It was a very nice crate for us to make, right?"

"Roland..."

...

The commander’s office was on the second floor of the administrative building, at the end of a long, dark corridor lined with doors.

We reached it without further trouble... The door was locked, naturally, but Laura had a way with locks.

She pulled out a small leather roll, opened it to reveal a row of slim steel picks, and knelt at the keyhole.

I watched in awe as her fingers moved in tiny... precise flicks, twisting, probing, and tapping.

The lock gave a quiet click.

"Tell me this is also efficiency," said Alicia.

"It’s very efficient, yes."

"Where do you learn this?"

"A knight must be thorough at every situation."

The office was a large room, lined with bookshelves and lit by a single dim lamp that Alder had left burning.

A heavy oak desk stood in the middle, with a tall chair behind it and a huge, iron-bound safe in the corner. The safe was an ugly, squat thing with three dials and a brass handle.

Laura looked at it for a long time with her head tilted. Then she cracked her knuckles.

"Give me five minutes," she said.

"You can open that?"

"Probably."

"Probably...?"

"It’s a Hargrave model, thirty years old... They all have the same flaw." She laid her ear against the door and began to turn a dial, with great delicacy.

I stood guard by the window, and Alicia took the corridor.

It took seven minutes... Laura swore twice, which I’d never heard her do before, and then the heavy door swung open with a deep metallic clunk.

Inside were rows of leather-bound ledgers, a stack of sealed letters, a tray of coins, and a long flat case of polished wood. Laura ignored all of it except the biggest book, a thick folio bound in black leather, with the Royal Crystal Guard’s crest stamped on the cover.

She laid it on the desk and opened it under the lamp.

I read over her shoulder. The pages were ruled in neat columns, with entries in at least three different hands.

Dates, quantities, and destinations.

Most of it was standard military bookkeeping, long lists of crystal shipments from the royal mines to depots and towers across the kingdom.

But as Laura turned the pages, a pattern began to emerge.

"Look at this," she murmured, running her finger down a column. "These are the official shipments..."

"Here, here, and here... Delivered to Elarion, to the border posts, to the western garrisons."

"They’re all logged correctly." She flipped forward. "And these are the others."

A second set of entries ran alongside the first, in a smaller, tighter hand. Each one was marked with a short code in the margin: ’S-09.’

The numbers were large. And the quantities were enormous.

Hundreds of crystals at a time, dispatched from the depot in convoys of ten or twelve wagons, and each shipment ended with the same two-word note.

’Phase Two.’