Brennus hummed with a prosperous, river-town energy. Barges lined its sturdy docks, guild banners fluttering. The Argent Accord headquarters dominated the waterfront – solid, respectable stone and dark river-wood, projecting pragmatic success.
Elias, Rolan's contact confirmed via discreet message, was deep in negotiations with Guildmaster Thorne. All local attention focused there.
This left the Millstone Granary upstream relatively vulnerable. Its master, Borin, distracted; its guards, likely complacent. The perfect opportunity.
Rolan and I approached under a moonless, overcast sky. The clouds swallowed the stars, leaving the valley in inky blackness. We moved through harvested fields like ghosts, damp earth silent beneath worn boots.
The granary complex loomed ahead, a sleeping giant against the slightly less black sky. A few flickering lanterns near the gate and docks cast long, distorted shadows.
My Rhythmic Sense painted a clear, ghostly picture: four guards on lazy patrols, signatures relaxed, bored. Two more inside the main office, signatures sluggish – likely dozing. No unexpected watchers, no hidden alarms. Borin felt secure.
Getting inside was insultingly easy. A crumbling section of the north wall offered silent entry. We slipped through, melting into deeper shadows, the air thick with grain dust.
Navigating the maze of towering silos and silent machinery in absolute darkness was challenging. I kept my Sense active as a constant, low-level sonar – a manageable drain now – guiding us past unseen obstacles, timing movements to avoid the occasional patrol. The sheer scale of the place was impressive, silos rising like ancient stone pillars into the unseen rafters high above. The air tasted of dust and the faint oiliness of machinery.
We reached the back storeroom on the ground floor an hour before first light. Heavy, iron-banded door, unremarkable. But the faint hum of the Aetheric ward was unmistakable – low-level, cleverly designed to seem inert unless specifically probed. A subtle lock for a subtle secret. Hidden in plain sight among dozens of identical doors.
"Can you bypass it, my lord?" Rolan whispered, his voice barely audible over the distant sigh of the river, his hand resting reassuringly on his sword hilt, eyes scanning the shadowed corridor.
"Break it? Yes. Quietly?" I murmured back, placing my gloved hand flat against the cold iron bands, feeling the faint, rhythmic thrum of the ward's energy loop. "A direct infusion would shatter it, trigger alarms. We need subtlety." Father's warning echoed. No unnecessary displays.
I closed my eyes, extending my Sense like a delicate, probing tendril, mapping the ward's intricate structure. It was a simple loop, four anchors embedded in the stone frame. Stable. Consistent. Designed to passively resist.
But as I traced the flow, focusing my entire concentration, I felt it again, clearer this time – the flaw. A tiny imperfection near the bottom hinge, almost undetectable, a place where the energy flow wavered fractionally. Dampness? Flawed construction? A weakness waiting to be exploited.
This required finesse. Precision over power. A test of the control I'd painstakingly cultivated.
I focused my will, drawing the smallest thread of Mana, syncing it perfectly with my cadence. Thump-THUMP. Pulsed the energy through my fingertips, not destructively, but as a precisely tuned resonant frequency aimed at the flaw. Tapping a crystal glass, seeking the harmonic.
Nothing. The ward hummed, resisting. I held my breath, maintained the delicate pulse, pouring concentration into that single point. The mental effort was surprisingly intense, like holding a complex equation steady in my mind.
Then, a soft click echoed inside my skull. The ward flickered erratically, sputtered like a dying candle, its faint hum dying, and died. The oppressive Aetheric stillness vanished. The simple mechanical lock remained.
Rolan stared, wide-eyed in the gloom. He'd seen my power break steel; this silent manipulation was something else. I offered a tired smile – the mental effort was taxing – and produced Leo's lockpicks. The tumblers yielded with surprising ease, clicks loud in the predawn silence. The heavy door swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges.
The room wasn't large, dimly lit by a single, low-burning lantern left carelessly on a crate – sloppy security, relying far too heavily on the now-defeated ward. It smelled faintly of oil, dust, and something metallic.
Sacks of grain were stacked haphazardly against one wall, clearly camouflage. In the center, covered by a heavy, stained oilcloth, sat several sturdy, iron-bound chests, locked tight with heavy padlocks that looked far more formidable than the door's simple mechanism.
But leaning carelessly against the far wall were the items that immediately confirmed my suspicions. Military-grade crossbows, dark wood polished, heavy steel prods gleaming. Far superior to simple guild guard equipment. Beside them, coiled neatly, grappling hooks attached to lengths of dark, sturdy rope, treated to be silent and resist cutting. Tools for ambush. Tools for scaling fortress walls. Not tools for guarding grain.
The final, damning proof lay open on a small, rough-hewn table near the chests, illuminated directly by the flickering lantern, as if someone had been interrupted mid-entry. A ledger. Not bound in the familiar brown leather of the Argent Accord. Black leather, expensive, subtly stamped near the spine with the discreet crest of 'Ironwood Ventures' – the known House Vane front company. My blood ran cold despite the confirmation.
I stepped forward cautiously, motioning Rolan to cover the doorway, his hand now firmly on his sword, his gaze sweeping the shadowed corners. The ledger wasn't coded, merely written in a precise, cold, mercantile script. It detailed secret payments from Ironwood Ventures to Foreman Borin ('B'). Large sums, disguised as 'consulting fees', 'loss adjustments'. Dates corresponded perfectly with the resource shortfalls.
Further entries detailed chilling instructions from 'IV' to 'B': routes for diverting Ashworth timber towards unmarked barges; methods for under-reporting grain yields; coded references to 'ensuring navigational delays' for barges carrying our vital star-silver ore. A systematic sabotage operation, orchestrated by Vane, executed by Borin. Cold. Efficient. Ruthless.
Where was Thorne? Partner or victim? The ledger didn't explicitly name him. But the scale suggested Thorne was, at best, willfully ignorant, or worse, deeply compromised. The sheer volume of resources being skimmed couldn't have gone entirely unnoticed without his complicity or forced silence.
Entries also detailed significant payments to Borin for 'specialized equipment' – the crossbows, the climbing gear. Vane wasn't just disrupting trade; they were actively equipping agents here, using our supposed ally's facilities. Preparation for escalation. Sabotage leading, perhaps, to assassination attempts or direct attacks. This was far worse than political revenge.
The silence in the small room felt heavy, suffocating. Rolan looked from the ledger to the weapons, his face grim. "Vane," he breathed, the name a curse. "Right under the Guildmaster's nose. Or maybe…"
He didn't need to finish the thought. The implication hung heavy between us.
Just as the horrifying scope of the treachery solidified, I felt it. A sharp spike of Aether outside. Not just one signature, but multiple. Moving fast, purposefully, converging on this exact location. Not the slow, lazy patrols. These were alert, armed, heading directly for us with undeniable hostile intent.
Someone had detected the ward failing despite its subtlety. Or perhaps Borin had a secondary, non-Aetheric alarm I hadn't sensed. Or maybe, chillingly, someone had been watching us all along.
"We've been made," I hissed to Rolan, snatching the incriminating Vane ledger, tucking it securely inside my tunic beneath my rough wool shirt. "Forget the chests, no time. Ledger is the proof. We fight our way out. Now!"