Dominick's Heart

Part V

Gasconi cursed the rain. Not only because it had rained for four straight days, but because of the mud. Hard to turn invisible when you're leaving mud tracks everywhere. He slipped off his boots, stepped out of the "locked" laboratory and glanced back once more at the window; he had broken only a small pane of the glass—enough to slide his hand in and release the latch, but not large enough to attract the attention of the guards outside. All the student laboratories were equipped with simple, nonmagical windows...Rad knew, they broke them often enough. Besides, who would want to break in? There were no spellbooks, no expensive components; only textbooks and bat guano.

He nodded and smiled grimly. The halls were quiet this time of night. He stepped back into the lab long enough to use the spells and potions he had been given for the task. Then, invisible, undetected, and out of phase enough to bypass any traps he might encounter, he proceeded to the tower of the Grand Master. He let out a chuckle, then glanced quickly about to be sure that no one had heard. They hadn't; the place was utterly deserted at this time of night, and with no less than three parties in the adjacent Nobles' Quarter. Haaskinz might have been a problem, but he had taken off to his wilderness principality with that Darine piece of his a few days before.

Given his good fortune, Gasconi permitted himself another muffled chuckle. What a dope that Haaskinz was. Last week, he had allowed it to get around (among the building's custodians, at least) that the magical locks on his office had malfunctioned, but that he would get to it "after this project." After all, the office had a basic iron lock, and who in the world would want to break into the Grand Master's office? Student records were kept at the Registrar's office; important research notes in the private labs.

And so, mere days after She (as he preferred to think of his erstwhile benefactor) had scried out and ensorcelled the elf maid's ring to behave as nothing but polished glass, the absent-minded Haaskinz had fled the city with his paramour, leaving the ring and its "fake" gem behind in his office, awaiting replacement.

Indeed, Your Grace, Gasconi thought, you are a first-class idiot.

The custodial staff's information proved true enough: the magical locks on Haaskinz's office were disengaged. The metal lock took him about five seconds to pick.

The gem was his less than two minutes later. It was a large, round stone, darker than a any ruby should be. Free of the protective runes of the ring (which lay beside it on a corner of the desk like discarded rubbish—Gasconi took that for his own "bonus" payment...the diamonds alone would pay his obligations for years), the ruby had taken on a malevolent cast. Blood, he suddenly, irrationally thought. It's made of blood.

He shook off the chill, thinking inadvertently of his patroness and her almond shaped eyes. He could almost feel them upon him.

"Sorry, Your Grace," he whispered aloud, acutely aware that, in his invisible state, it would appear to a bystander (had there been one) that the very walls were speaking. The thought chilled him again, and he grew suddenly angry with himself—Since when had he become so easily spooked? Since you decided to cross Her, his mind whispered back, unbidden.

He squelched the thought, and went to go and find his buyer.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII