Chapter 145 – Going for Gold

The next loop, Mirian stopped by Cairnmouth, saved Arenthia, then introduced herself to Lecne again.

After a brief introduction, Lecne said, “So… you need us to teach you some more secrets of the priesthood?”

“No,” Mirian said. “I need your help in stealing a great deal of gold.”

There was a pause, and then Arenthia let out a howling cackle, slapping her knee several times.

Mirian thought she should clarify. “So, I need the gold to bribe the Ennecus Guild so that they can help me hire the gang of myrvite hunters I need to go kill an Elder titan so that I can use its arcane catalyst to cast more powerful spells, which I’ll certainly need to stop the leyline crisis. Specifically, I think this unique arcane catalyst might be critical in casting hybrid rune-and-glyph spells, a kind of magic I know the Elder Gods used in the Labyrinth. And I think the Labyrinth is connected to the leylines, which—right, you get the idea.” And, such a spellbook might be critical for using the kinds of spells that might permanently take Troytin out of the picture. She was still working on the theoretical pieces, and a lot of guesswork was involved. She hoped it was possible.

“Won’t you just lose the arcane catalyst as soon as you get it? Arenthia, don’t look at me like that, it sounds like at least a month-long project.”

“You think people did that to the First Prophet? ‘Hey, that’s a neat plan you have, mind if I question it?’ The poor girl’s probably tired of explaining.”

“Oh Gods yes,” Mirian muttered. Then, louder, “And I can’t tell you everything. Operational security and all that. This is step one, in my, ah, nine step plan.” And I don’t know what steps two through nine are, she mentally added.

“Exactly how much do you need?”

“Twenty thousand doubloons ought to be enough,” she said.

Lecne’s eyes went wide.

Arenthia let out another cackle.

“I can get 2000 doubloons fairly easily.” She’d tested the bank she deposited Mayor Wolden’s fake ingots at, and two-thirds of the deposit was about as much as they liked to hand out. They got too suspicious otherwise.

“Hah! That’s more than you ever had for your little heists!” Arenthia said.

“Really didn’t want to rehash that part of my life,” Lecne said.

“It’s quite literally to save all of Enteria. I think Zomalator would approve. I certainly know the Ominian would.” She hesitated. “Actually I think ‘approve’ is probably the wrong word. More like, ‘not understand why it was a problem at all to begin with,’ much like we wouldn’t understand if one ant in a colony lied to another one.”

“I never was much of a consequentialist,” Lecne said.

“I don’t know what that word is,” Mirian said.

“Philosophy, my dear,” Arenthia said. “You might look into it at some point. After all, if you’re going to be the hand tipping the balance of fate, it might be nice to know a bit about the means and ends.”

“After I kill the myrvite titan,” Mirian promised.

At that point, Lecne and Arenthia went off to discuss Mirian’s request. When they returned, Lecne said, “Alright. I’ll help. The time limit makes things harder, because there’s less time to prepare, and easier, because all you have to do is not get caught immediately.” The priest paused, looked at Arenthia again, then sighed. “The way I used to do it was the confidence scheme, but it takes awhile to build up the trust of the person you’re scamming. If we go with that one, you’d need to find a real rich bastard.”

“The Palamas? Or some Akanan merchants?”

“The Palamas are still the richest family, but their assets are all tied up in properties, businesses, schemes—you know. Most of the really rich families don’t actually have a lot of coin, their wealth is in other forms. The Allards are the ones who have the most gold they can actually provide on short notice. Westcrown is their family bank.”

Arenthia added, “They were supposed to divest themselves from it as part of the Unification treaty, but they got their claws back into it.” That was one of the reasons Mirian had saved her this cycle; the old priestess had worked at the Department of Public Security, so of course she’d know about that kind of thing.

“The Allards are part of a conspiracy the other time traveler is paying attention to. It might be best to avoid them.”

“You could just take out a bunch of loans,” Lecne said.

“I’ve done that here and there. Even if I swapped illusions around, without letters of reference, they’ll only lend out small amounts.”

“Can you get letters of reference?”

“Yeah, but I used it already to open up an account to deposit some fake Florinian ingots.” Mirian paused. “I could get Nicolus to write more, I guess. I’m starting to run up against the hard limit of how much I can accomplish in a short time in Torrviol. The more time I spend up there, the higher chance I get caught.”

“They’re going to want to confirm the reference. They might even want to compare her records to the census for any loan of an appreciable amount. Not worth it,” Arenthia said, yawning.

“There’s always robbery,” Lecne said. “If you can crack a bank’s vault—only, that’s a very hard thing to do. Security is built with arcanists in mind. And they don’t keep much physical gold in the vaults anymore, at least not most of the vaults. It’s all done with letters of credit and exchange notes, which use a seal system similar to what the Florinian’s are doing. Which is a tough nut to crack.”

“You dabbled in trying to get a genuine Florinian seal. You know about this sort of thing,” Mirian said.

“I told you that?” Lecne said, startling (which drew a guffaw from Arenthia). “When did I tell you that?”

“Several cycles ago,” Mirian said vaguely.

“Right. Well. Hmm. It was quite a few years ago, I don’t know how much I remember,” Lecne said, scratching his head. “How much do you know about flux glyphs and glyph-pairings?”

This time it was Mirian’s turn to laugh.

“Hey, it’s a fair question. Plenty of arcanists are more casters than theorists, you know. Right, so here’s the gist of it. You know how a glyphkey works?”

“Intimately.”

“Same thing with a bank seal or ingot seal. The primary function of the glyphs is to signal or respond to a signet ring or some other minor divination artifact that the bankers use to verify the seal. Some of them even use little spell engines now, so no one in the bank even needs to be a certified arcanist. The rest makes sure you can never figure out what those glyphs are, because trying to study it will cause it to destroy itself. They use very small glyphs, then put a substance over them so you can’t see the glyphs. If you try to remove that substance, you’ll trigger one of several sequences that will break the whole thing, usually starting a small fire.”

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“They use the special seals on all the major transactions and letters,” Mirian said. “How many arcanists work on them?”

“Several. It’s expensive. But if you’re thinking of bribing a single person, it wouldn’t be enough. Don’t think I didn’t think of that. They don’t let one arcanist know the whole sequence. They do it in layers. Except the Florinians. Rumor has it they cracked how to get a spell engine to scribe the glyphs.”

“Can’t be done,” Mirian immediately retorted.

Lecne raised a finger. “I know. I know! Just a rumor. Me, I don’t know if it’s possible, never knew enough about the theory. Just—maybe worth looking into.”