Cloak Games: Thief Trap (3 page)

Morvilind was greedy. He liked antiquities and art, both from Earth’s history and the history of his homeworld, and he didn’t want to pay for them. So he had trained me as an expert thief. He could use me to steal anything he wanted, and all the risk fell to me. If I screwed up, if I was captured, no one would believe the word of a human thief over an Elven noble archmage.

Or Morvilind could just use that vial of heart’s blood to kill me.

And if I was killed, Russell would die.

So I didn’t screw up. I pushed myself hard, and I was careful. I had some close calls, but I always got away clean.

When I turned eighteen, Morvilind let me get my own apartment. So long as he had that vial of my blood, he could find me anywhere, kill me anywhere, summon me from anywhere. I asked if I could do some jobs on the side, and he answered that it was no concern of his if I got myself killed and let Russell die of frostfever.  

I started stealing for myself, squirreling away the money. I tried to seek out magical texts, volumes that could increase my power and magical skill. 

I wanted power. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be so powerful that no one could ever hurt me or Russell again.

Or, at the very least, I wanted to be free of Morvilind.

I would find a way. 

Somehow.

###

A few days after my twentieth birthday, I felt the summons from Morvilind. 

I was in my apartment. I lived in the basement apartment of an old house in Wauwatosa, one of the suburbs of Milwaukee. My landlord thought I was a student at the nearby medical college. At least, that was what all my paperwork and electronic records said. So long as the rent cleared, I don’t think he cared. 

Specifically, when the summons came, I was hanging from my pull-up bar, working through my second set, sweat drenching my workout shirt and shorts. The magical summons rolled through me in a wave of pain, my muscles going rigid. I caught myself before I hit the floor, and a jolt of pain went through my elbows and shoulders. I let go of the bar, hit the floor with a grunt, and lay down for moment, waiting until my head stopped spinning before I got up again. Morvilind’s magical summons always felt like a kick to the gut. 

At least it hadn’t happened in the middle of a job this time.

I couldn’t ignore it. If I delayed too much, he would just keep casting the spell, first daily, then hourly, until I obeyed and came to his mansion in Shorewood. 

Best to find out what he wanted from me. 

I took a deep breath and went to get ready. My basement apartment had only one bedroom, but since I never had guests, I had converted the living room and the dining room into a small gym and a workshop, with weights, a treadmill, a computer, and a workbench for my various tools. The bedroom held my other equipment, my clothes, my cosmetics, and most of my bookshelves. My bed was also tucked in there someplace. 

I showered off and dressed in jeans, a black tank top, and sneakers, and tied my hair back into a tail. There was no point in taking any weapons or equipment except for two of my phones. If I brought weapons, at best Morvilind would be amused. At worst, he would be offended and decide to punish me. It was June, which in Wisconsin meant it could get up to ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but I snatched a heavy leather jacket and a helmet with a visor as I left my apartment. 

I needed them for my bike. 

Motorcycles are an impractical vehicle in the Midwest for about a third of the year, but I loved them nonetheless. I loved the speed of them, I loved the power, and the minute I had stolen enough money to afford one, I had gone out and bought a Royal Engines NX-9 motorcycle with a six cylinder engine and a black body with orange highlights. Technically, the dealer called it a “sport bike”, but I didn’t care. It was fast, and when riding it I felt…

Free, I suppose. I knew it was only an illusion. But the illusion was fun while it lasted.

Maybe someday I would have the kind of power for real. 

I went to the ramshackle shed that served as my apartment building’s shared garage, started my bike, and headed into traffic. Milwaukee was a big city, with nearly two million people spread out along Lake Michigan. It had once been smaller, or so I’d read, but Chicago had been destroyed during the Conquest. 

I wondered if traffic had been as bad before the Conquest. 

Eventually I worked my way north of the city proper, putting on speed. About an hour’s ride brought me to Morvilind’s estate. I rode through the gates of the grounds and up the long driveway to his mansion. When I had first seen it as a child fifteen years ago, I had thought it looked like a vast pile of glass and marble. Now I thought the Elven style of architecture looked like a peculiar mixture of Imperial Chinese and old Roman designs, with ornamentations on the side that seemed vaguely Celtic but were in fact Elven hieroglyphics. (Evidently the Elves had their own alphabet for day-to-day use, but used hieroglyphs for formal documents and for spell work.) I parked my bike in front of the mansion’s grand doors of red wood, placing my helmet on the seat and draping my jacket over the handlebars. I didn’t worry about someone stealing it. No one would dare to steal from an Elven lord. 

Well. No one except me.

Morvilind’s butler awaited me at the door, a paunchy middle-aged man named Rusk. He wore the formal garb of a household servant, a long red coat and black trousers, the sleeves adorned with black scrollwork, a golden badge of rank upon his high collar. Even the phone at his belt was in a red and black case. 

“Miss Moran,” rumbled Rusk. He did not approve of me. I didn’t know how much he knew about his master’s business, but he did not like me and considered me a necessary evil in his domain. “Lord Morvilind awaits you in the library. I shall take you there at once.” 

I grinned at him. “No need, Mr. Rusk.” I patted him on the shoulder, and he cringed away as if my hand had been covered in poison. “I know the way. I’ve been here before. Or did you forget? You should really get that checked out. Memory loss is a bad symptom in an older gentleman like yourself.”

I may have mentioned before that I have a smart mouth. 

“If you will accompany me, Miss Moran,” rumbled Rusk, but I was already walking past him. I heard the butler sigh as he followed me into the depths of Morvilind’s mansion. 

Like most Elven architecture, it was light and airy, with lots of open space and red-painted walls, the wooden floor polished to a mirror sheen. Morvilind had a taste for the art of ancient Earth, and so Roman and Egyptian and Greek statues stood in niches or upon plinths. Morvilind had also listened to the advice of the experts who had trained me in various illegal skills, and my practiced eye noticed the signs of expensive security systems, small cameras and infrared lasers and pressure plates. I would not have wanted to rob this place, not even with the aid magic. 

Morvilind’s library occupied a large room at the rear of the house, high windows overlooking the bluffs and the endlessly churning waters of Lake Michigan. The floor was white marble, polished and gleaming. Books written in both high Elven hieroglyphics and the common Elven alphabet covered the walls, along with countless volumes on ancient Earth’s history and peoples. An elaborate summoning circle had been carved into slabs of gleaming red marble before the high windows, a design so intricate that my eye could not follow it. I recognized maybe a quarter of the glyphs and symbols and runes in the design. Long tables ran the length of the room, holding books and scrolls and relics. One table held the tools and instruments a wizard needed to create alchemical potions, essentially spells in a bottle. Before the summoning circle itself stood a high table covered with computer equipment, complete with three enormous monitors arrayed in a semicircle.

Lord Morvilind stood at the table, watching the computer displays. As ever, he wore his black robe with gold trim and the red cloak of an Elven noble. I don’t think I had never seen him wear anything else. The monitor on the left showed a strange language I didn’t recognize. The central monitor scrolled through three different windows of text, while the one on the right displayed what looked like news footage of a party. 

“My lord Morvilind,” said Rusk. “Miss Nadia Moran to see you.”

“Thank you, Rusk,” said Morvilind in his deep, rasping voice. “You may go.” 

Rusk bowed and strode from the library, and I went to one knee and bowed my head.

“Lord Morvilind,” I said, keeping my eyes on the gleaming marble floor. For once, I did not make any smart remarks. Morvilind never grew angry if I did. I don’t think I had ever seen him lose his temper. Instead, he simply lifted the crystal vial holding my heart’s blood and inflicted a wave of excruciating pain on me. While I writhed on the floor, he waited patiently and resumed his instructions once I was coherent again.

Like he was training me. Like I was his damned dog.

The thought filled my throat with bile, but I kept the anger from my expression. 

“Rise, Miss Moran,” said Morvilind at last, turning to face me. I rose, and he regarded me with those ancient, icy blue eyes. “I trust you have kept yourself in training?”

“Yes, my lord,” I said. 

His thin lip twitched in something that was almost a contemptuous smile. “Given the expense of that motorcycle you rolled up my driveway, it seems you have kept yourself profitably occupied indeed.” 

“It allows me to answer your summons all the quicker, my lord,” I said. 

He stared at me without blinking, and I saw him turning something over in the fingers of his right hand. It was the crystal vial holding the blood from my heart. A little flicker of fear went through me. With it, he could use his magic to do almost anything he wanted to me. If he decided that my last remark had been impudent, he could use the vial to fill me with unbearable agony. 

It was cold in the library, thanks to the air conditioning, but a drop of sweat slithered between my shoulders anyway. 

I may not have been his dog, but he did not need anything as crude as a leash to control me. Between the blood and Russell, he could make me do anything he wanted. 

How I hated it. 

“Answer a question,” said Morvilind, turning and tapping a sequence on a keyboard. The monitor on the right shifted to display the face of a middle-aged white man in an expensive-looking suit. He was handsome in a bloodless sort of way, clean-shaven with graying hair and rimless glasses. “Do you know this man?”

“No.” I hesitated. “But…I know him from somewhere.”

“When was the last time you ate a McCade Foods canned meat product?” said Morvilind.

I almost wrinkled up my nose in disgust. “The canned meat all the veterans like? Never.”

“Why not?” said Morvilind. 

“Because...it’s full of salt and chemicals and grease,” I said. “If I wanted high blood pressure and morbid obesity, I would at least have a bacon cheeseburger and enjoy the taste…ah, my lord.”

Morvilind did not care. Likely he considered the culinary needs of humans beneath his notice. 

“This man’s name is Paul McCade,” said Morvilind. “His father John was a man-at-arms in the army of the Duke of Sioux Falls, and served with distinction in the battles against the Archons across the Warded Ways of the Shadowlands. After the elder McCade retired from the Duke’s service, he took his retirement pay as a pig farm in South Dakota. John McCade proved to have a talent for business, and by the time of his death, McCade Foods was the biggest producer of meat in North America, and McCade himself one of the richest humans in the United Sates. After he died, Paul inherited the company.” A look of amused contempt went over Morvilind’s face. “Unlike his father, who was proud to think of himself as a working-class man who had done well, Paul views himself as a member of the elite. Consequently, he makes certain to ape the tastes of his betters.” 

“A lot of imitation Elven art and architecture?” I said before I could stop myself.

“Correct,” said Morvilind. “Gaudy and tasteless. However, like his betters, Paul McCade collects ancient human artwork. Specifically, he has a taste for ancient Assyrian artifacts, taken from eastern Asia before the Caliphate destroyed most of them.”

“And I suppose,” I said, “you want me to get one of those artifacts?”

“You suppose correctly,” said Morvilind. “A stone tablet, weighing approximately nine pounds.” He tapped some keys, and the image on the right monitor changed from Paul McCade’s smug face to a tablet of gray stone covered with strange, angular writing. I didn’t recognize it, but it did look the same as the symbols upon the left monitor.

“What is it?” I said. 

“A tablet,” said Morvilind, “containing a passage from a certain text. I wish to add it to my collection.” 

I shrugged. “It’s right there. If you know the language the computer can translate it for you.”

“I require the tablet itself,” said Morvilind. “You will obtain it for me.”

I looked at the tablet, at Morvilind, and then back at the tablet. 

“It’s magical, isn’t it?” I said. “That’s why you want me to steal it. If you just needed to translate the text, you could do it here. The tablet itself must be enchanted.”

“You reason correctly,” said Morvilind.

I let out a long breath and stared at the image of the tablet. 

“Is McCade a Rebel?” I said. 

“Not to my knowledge,” said Morvilind. 

That was not a reassuring answer. The High Queen might have ruled over Earth for three centuries, but not everyone was satisfied with her rule. The news didn’t report on it, but there were underground Rebel groups. Sometimes they were little more than disgruntled thugs. Sometimes they were well-armed terrorists. And sometimes they tapped into forbidden magic in an effort to overthrow the High Queen. I didn’t care about the Rebels or their stupid plans, but I had gotten caught in the crossfire between the Inquisition and the Rebels during a previous job, and I didn’t want to repeat the experience.

“You have to tell me if he’s a Rebel,” I said. Morvilind gave me a cold look. “My lord. If he’s a Rebel, and the Inquisition comes for him and I get caught…”