A surprise attack like this would work against all but the most paranoid of targets. Unfortunately for Gaius, Secundus was an old spy. Paranoia was a necessity for someone like that.

  Secundus' left arm shot up before Gaius' hand even let go of the dagger. The spy already conjured a sheet of metal around it. The dagger bounced off without doing anything.

  Secundus then raised his other arm and immediately, Gaius felt a push of force hitting his chest. The next moment, he found himself stuck to the wall with a cocoon of sticky webs holding him in place.

  Secundus bent over to pick up the dagger and pressed its tip into his hand. "I must admit, I didn't expect our partnership to end on such a senseless betrayal. So, I guess, it's another point for you in exceeding my expectations. Now I have to figure out what to do with you." He turned to face his guards. "What do we do with him, boys?" Both of them knew better than to try and answer this non-question.

  Almost immediately, Secundus turned back to Gaius. "I know. Since you're so fond of this dump for whatever inexplicable reason, you get the privilege of just hanging in there and watching it all crumble around you."

  Secundus turned to leave but briefly paused to say over his shoulder, "You know how captains are expected to go down with their ships? Well you can consider yourself the captain of here, then."

  "I think it already has a captain." Gaius couldn't help but imagine Esven in his place. He wondered which of Mallia's body parts he would invoke in a situation like this.

  "Its champion then," Secundus shrugged. "In any case, I'll leave the dampening runes, so you can save your strength and not bother screaming for help. Bye now, I have an empire to rebuild."

  He was just about to leave when the door flew off its hinges and flattened him on the floor.

  Isabella was on the other side, with her leg still up from the kicking. The surprise on her face rivaled that of Secundus' goons now facing an irate Caladonian knight.

  It didn't take an entire inquisition to figure out what was going on. Isabella's saber swung towards one of the guards who, despite his impressive proportions, moved out of the way without effort.

  The other guard tried to stick Isabella with a knife from behind, but the blade deflected off her shield. Still, she sent an elbow at her assailant. He ducked under it and then aimed another stab at Isabella, assisted by his double wielding a similar curved knife.

  The three could as well be fighting in a closet. The room was far from spacious to begin with, but with the door blocking a large part of it, things got real tight.

  Secundus' guys were good. If not for her shield, Isabella would've been in real trouble. They knew their hits weren't connecting, but they kept pressing, and Gaius noticed too late that Secundus was being awfully quiet.

  "Careful. The door," Gaius shouted, but as he did, a surge of magic was already seeping from under it.

  The floorboards creaked around Isabella as they transformed into a formless putty, sucking her in and then becoming solid wood once again, locking the knight in place. Just her head and the top of her shoulders were showing, making her an easy target.

  Despite its failure to recognize Secundus' spell as an attack, Isabella's shield was still working. It came in handy when the two guys launched a series of kicks and stabs at her.

  "It's clearly not helping, boys," Secundus said upon crawling from under the door and adjusting his simple suit. "The knights of Caladonia care not for conventional attacks and they can't be defeated in the same way you'd deal with a runaway head of cabbage. You have to be more inventive."

  He took a moment to admire his own inventiveness.

  "Don't do it, man," Gaius pleaded. It was a feeble last-ditch effort that only resulted in Secundus smacking his lips and tapping his pocket.

  "I'll give you the benefit of assuming you didn't expect that to work," Secundus said before facing the exit. "Well, I'll leave you two to hang out." There was a well-hidden snort behind that, and then Secundus and his men left.

  Stuck to the wall, Gaius looked down at Isabella stuck in the floor. His moment of triumph was as brief as it was glorious. But now, it all came crashing down on him.

  He wasn't getting his big payday. Mystlund's spies now had it out for him. There was also a good chance Siembra was about to be leveled by an ancient facility emerging from its subterranean slumber. Should he somehow survive that ordeal, Vasily's curse would soon get him for losing the store. And if that wasn't bad enough, the whole world would be endangered thanks to the beast's energies spilling out.

  Gaius sighed. Isabella was clearly waiting for an explanation. "What are you doing back here so early?" he asked.

  "After all we've learned yesterday, I guess I just wasn't feeling like wasting an entire day on pointless luggage checks."

  "What about your divine duty? Or have you finally given up on that stuff?" Gaius tried to grasp onto whatever thread he could before this conversation pivoted to where it was inevitably going.

  "You heard Major yourself. Even his people couldn't unravel the mysteries of the goddesses. If anything, my faith was only strengthened. My order, on the other hand, may need to be completely restructured." Isabella waited for a bit before saying, "And now, will you finally tell me what's going on here and who were those guys?"

  And there it was. The moment of truth. Sure, Gaius could spin a yarn explaining their current precarious position without giving himself away, but he was too dejected after his greatest success slipped away from him to really care.

  He told Isabella everything in as few words as possible. The knight listened to it all with stoicism uncharacteristic for a Caladonian.

  "Well, what do you know. The one time I disregard the order's instructions, I find my thief." There was a certain cold distance in Isabella's words. "Clearly, it's a sign from the goddesses."

  "This is how you're going to play it?"

  "There is nothing to play. My mission is fulfilled, and all I need to do now is get out of here and haul your ass off to court. The goddesses must have brought us close to assist me with my mission. It just took me a while to realize this."

  "It wasn't the goddesses that put us close. Just a drugged-up priest, a hurried attempt to cover my tracks, and a hint of personal attraction. There's nothing wrong with admitting that."

  "Seriously, Guy, have some respect for yourself. Now that I can see through your lies, you won't be swindling me again."

  "As long as you admit we had fun together, I won't try to convince you of anything," Gaius said.

  "Deal," Isabella nodded. "We've had our fun, and now I have a duty to deliver you to justice."

  "No, now we're fucked is what we are."

  Gaius followed that up with a few words on who Secundus was and what he was trying to do.

  Whatever feelings Isabella was trying to conceal, this revelation cracked her armor. Furiously, she attempted to free herself from the floor to no avail. And her goddesses couldn't exactly help her smite the floor.

  "I can't believe that you're simultaneously much smarter and way dumber than you appear," she said in frustration. "How could you give him the relics when you knew exactly what they did?"

  "I figured he'd use them to steal Major's toys. Level the playing field between Mystlund and Caladonia. Why wouldn't I help him? He seemed like a reasonable guy. Reminded me of myself, had I been cursed at birth with ambition."

  "Well, what a blessing that you weren't, and now he has all the cards."

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  "I'm still hoping Major will have enough sense to send him away packing."

  "And how's hoping for the best working out for you?"

  "Pretty good so far, honestly. It got me here. A master thief living together with the very knight searching for him? You had an image of me as a druid all this time but didn't even suspect we were the same guy. I'm the best."

  "I liked you better with hair," Isabella snorted. "And if you were the best, you wouldn't have to shave it all off to disguise yourself."

  "Are you kidding? Brother Greenleaf was the disguise. This here is the real me. Or at least as close to it as you'll get."

  Gaius didn't get a chance to hear Isabella's response to that. The sound of leathery flapping turned his head to the empty doorframe where the imp was now floating.

  "The spook got you too? Losers," the demon said with a chuckle.

  "Too?" Gaius focused on the important part.

  The imp placed himself on the table with a good view of both Gaius and Isabella. "Oh yeah, he gooped me all up, just like he did you. Told me to expect the end and ran off before I got a chance to tell him what I thought of his precious emperor."

  "How are you free, then?" Isabella asked.

  "Wizards, especially those cabbage-loving types," the imp pointed his chin at Gaius. "They think they have all the answers. Pah. When he got me, I tried calling for you. But I guess he has a dampening spell around this place or you were too busy bickering to hear me. I said what the hell, bit my tongue off and choked on my blood."

  "That seems excessive," Gaius said.

  "You're clearly not dead," Isabella pointed out.

  "Of course, I'm not dead. What happens to a demon after he dies in this dung heap of a world? He goes back home. And usually it takes some time until he can be summoned again. But the old man, he's not just good with moving things from A to B. He has other tricks up his sleeve. The way our contract is set up, if something happens to me, I just pop back in straight away. And this pretty much catches us up."

  When Gaius told Isabella the truth he didn't mention how he was the one behind that demon invasion a while back. He already had an idea for how to get himself out of his current predicament with the knight, but it relied on her not learning about his many minor transgressions.

  "Speaking of the old man," Gaius said to the imp. "Get me down and let's get in touch with him."

  "Why do you think I can do that?" the imp asked.

  "Look, Bes, you're one cute hat away from a familiar. We both know you have a direct channel to him."

  "Don't ever remind me of the hat," the imp groaned.

  "Then just get me down already."

  "And what's in it for me?"

  "Not this shit again," Gaius said with the emphasis on shit. He watched the imp squirm, then continued. "I can give you the whole speech about how if there's no town, there's no shop, if there's no shop, we breach our contracts, and what have you. But seriously, that Secundus guy was a dick. I'll need all the help I can get to ruin his day."

  The imp was already cutting through the webs with the sharp point on his tail when he said, "Fine, whatever. But if he gets real upset about us bothering him, I'll stick to the story that you coerced me."

  "Works for me."

  Gaius finally regained the ability to move and was using it to make sure his limbs still worked.

  "Well?" Isabella looked up at him with a squint.

  "What?" Gaius was all feigned ignorance.

  "Are you just going to leave me here?"

  Gaius nodded with enthusiasm. "Indeed. I don't need you arresting me while I'm trying to save your stupid town. So, you hang in there, dear."

  The imp was terribly amused by this exchange, especially upon seeing Isabella's renewed attempts to escape the floor's unwavering grasp and even bite Gaius' shins as he passed by her.

  Gaius made a conscious effort to step over her head as he followed the imp across the hallway.

  "I take it your master plan wasn't as masterful as you hoped, pal?" the imp said while he was setting up a small mirror on the table and then covering it with hellish runes. "How bad is it?"

  "Probably not that bad." That probably was the operative word there. "But if I'm wrong. Oh, buddy." The whistling noise that followed simulated the whole world going down the drain.

  "Eh, I'm sure you can weasel yourself out of it, whatever it is," the imp said. He then knocked on the mirror's reflective surface that was now opaque thanks to a thick fog swirling within it. "Here comes."

  The mirror cleared, revealing Vasily in a canopy bed. The old man was drowning in pillows, half-obscured by what looked to be a thick maroon drape.

  "I thought I told you not to bother me unless there was an emergency. No, you resummoning yourself to get unstuck does not constitute an emergency. And yes, I am aware that happened." Vasily's voice was beyond cranky and his eyes, despite his unliving nature, looked murky and tired.

  It took him a while to notice Gaius in whatever he was using on the other end of this conversation.

  "I should've known you were behind this, young man. You are lucky my company for the night chose not to stick around." Vasily sat up in his bed, revealing a complete lack of shame for presenting Gaius with his pale sinewy torso. "What do you want?"

  Once again, Gaius was tasked with condensing mind-shattering truths about the world into a few quick sentences. He was actually getting quite good at summarizing by that point. Ancient people, Major, the beast, Secundus and his plan for a new Mystlund empire.

  Vasily listened to it all. Then, he made a few chewing motions, as if tasting the words before they came out of his mouth.

  "I've been reading your reports, young man," he started. "You have a real knack for writing. The stories you've been sending my way make that backwater of yours sound like the most exciting place in the world. In fact, for a time I was actually thinking about tasking you with writing my memoirs once your contract was over. But then I got to thinking. I've lived for so long, there's no way you'd be able to write it all down during your natural lifespan. So you would have to become undead. I could facilitate that, of course, but there's no telling which parts of your personality would survive that transformation. It was becoming this whole thing, so I eventually dropped it."

  Vasily stopped talking after that, leaving Gaius to figure out how to proceed from there.

  "I'm flattered, of course, but you didn't address my question. At all. Is this some Slavian thing I'm not getting?"

  "Maybe," Vasily smirked. "Or, I'm just returning the favor, since you didn't actually ask me for anything. You've just unloaded a tall tale on me. What is it exactly that you want me to do?"

  "I figured you could pop in here, kick some spy ass, save the world. That sort of thing. Nothing big for someone like you."

  "Flattery is beneath you, my boy. And I don't know what your play is here, which angle you can possibly pursue, but let me give it to you straight – I'm not going anywhere. Like I've said before, I like your style, but I just don't care enough about you to come solve your problems for you."

  "Look, just think of it as a business decision. If Secundus succeeds, the town will perish, I'll bite the dust, and you'll be out of a store," Gaius pointed out.

  "You're really overestimating the investment I have in a single outlet," Vasily said. "Teaching you a lesson was more a matter of principle than anything else. And if anything, I am quite curious to see how that new empire of yours will shake things up."

  "No help from you, then?" Gaius wanted to make sure.

  Vasily shook his head. "Nope. But, let me warn you. While I'm not unsympathetic to your plights, and in fact, I am actually rooting for you to succeed in your crazy schemes, should you decide to die and abandon your post, I would have no choice but to wrangle your soul from whatever underworld it ends up in and punish you. A man has to stay true to his word, you know. Well, given your trade you probably don't. Doesn't matter. Lately, I've been thinking of getting myself a rat familiar. And it just aligns so well with your predicament, I have to warn you. If you die today or any time before your contract runs out, you better start acquiring a taste for cheese."

  With that, Vasily cut the link from his end. The mirror once again turned into an ordinary reflective surface presenting Gaius with a good look at his own face deflated of hope.

  He didn't have much choice now but to go back for Isabella. Freeing the knight was always a part of his plan, but he intended to do it while backed by Vasily.

  "Promise me you won't try to detain me," he said as he was chopping through the boards holding Isabella in place.

  "Why would I do that?" she asked.

  "Promise or detain me?"

  The knight groaned. "Just give me a single reason to work with you now."

  Gaius put away the axe for a moment. "Lying aside, when have I ever let you down?"

  "Are you kidding me? I had to practically drag you to do anything. If not for your potential and your prowess in bed, I would never have bothered with someone like you."

  "Well, it makes sense for a merchant to not want to get involved in any of that dangerous stuff," Gaius pointed out, as he went back to trying to get Isabella unstuck.

  "But you're not a merchant."

  "I was at the time, you can trust me on that."

  "About the last thing I want to do right now is trust you."

  "But that's exactly what you'll need to do."

  By then, Gaius dislodged Isabella enough to have her be in danger of falling through the ceiling. He employed the imp to help hold the knight up, while he was working on the last few stubborn boards.

  What followed was a clumsy performance by everyone involved. Driving a splinter into his finger made Gaius curse, and that forced the imp to recoil in pain and nearly let go of Isabella. The sudden jerk jammed one of the boards in-between her shoulder blades, which her shield saw as dangerous enough to deflect. That deflected board bounced into the imp and sent him flying, leaving Gaius to catch Isabella before finally dragging her out of the hole and dropping down on the floor beside her.

  Gaius turned his head towards the knight. It wasn't unlike him to feign feelings for someone, but whenever the grift was over, it was never easy to let it all just crumble away.

  During his stay in Siembra, he was a merchant, and he did care for this unusual knight that managed to change his perception of that law-keeping bunch forever.

  With a shake of his head, Gaius pushed those thoughts away and said, "Getting our crew together would take a while. And for all we know, either the spymaster failed and we have nothing to worry about, or he's well on his way to unleashing the beast on the world. And isn't that more pressing than a bit of thievery by yours truly?"

  "And we should just forget that you stealing the relics is exactly what allowed him to even attempt this madness?" Isabella was looking right back at Gaius, and if not for the subject matter of their conversation, he could easily see himself getting lost in the moment.

  "Yes, and earlier it allowed us to stop Lucius from drowning the world in alefs." Gaius tapped on his shaved dome. "See? I don't have any hairs to split. Now let's go figure something out."

  After the briefest hesitation, Isabella picked herself up, tidied her toga, and grabbed her saber. She was ready to go.

  The imp, who was still hovering inside the room, let out a groan.

  "What, no makeup bang? You want to tell me I listened to all that sappy garbage for nothing? Eh, screw you, both of you. I'm sitting this one out in my pool. And if the customers complain, you're dealing with the old man."

  The imp pointed his finger at Gaius and flew off, leaving Gaius alone with Isabella to experience a new kind of tension around one another.

  Story Facts - Chapter 37