Chapter 148 – Breaking the Banks

The second airship may not have been sure what just happened to the first one, but the pilot on board had been watching. The skiff accelerated, then started doing evasive maneuvers as it approached, randomly weaving through the sky as it passed the manor again, sending out another bombardment of fireballs. The return fire from the manor was meager; a few beams and bolts either missed entirely or just fizzled on the ship’s shield. The estate guards and armed servants were in no way prepared for this kind of firefight, and whatever reinforcements Enrico Allard had called for would be too late.

Mirian descended to the ground, hiding in the garden. She kept her camouflage spell up, but dismissed everything else. Then she drew from her soul repository, healing her arms. There was barely any soul energy left at that point, which was concerning. At least her auric mana was doing better.

The airship’s new tactics would mean she needed to change hers as well. She might be able to use levitation to ambush it, but she just as easily could exhaust herself as it maneuvered away from her attempts. Mirian flipped through her spellbook. There was a distinct paucity of the kinds of destructive spells she would need to bore through an airship hull or pierce a spell engine generated shield.

The skiff has to be moving at top speed. The amount of inertia it has—I wonder if I could use that against it? she thought. Her gaze narrowed in on the debris around the manor. There were sections of solid stone. If I could get it to collide with that—I can move a stone wall of that size faster than I can fly. But the pilot would just adjust course. Unless….

Mirian got an idea. She moved towards the manor until she was closer, hiding behind one of the fires in the garden she’d set. A few meters away was a hunk of stone wall. She flipped through her spellbook, fingers marking the pages she’d need. Coordinates for a rectangular prism, lift object… and my improved camouflage is the last piece.

She’d never tried to improvise a spell this complicated, but she did have all the glyphs she needed. Mirian rapidly switched back and forth, needing to use six different flux glyph pairs to stabilize the light-bending spell around the new coordinates. The result was an illusion spell that bent light from behind it and projected it forward, centered on the chunk of marble wall. It wouldn’t be perfect, but the stuff behind it would be a sky full of gray clouds, and the illusion itself would be shrouded in smoke. She finished casting, holding that spell in her mind as she then applied lift object to the stone.

As the airship approached, she started lifting the stone wall. The skiff predictably accelerated as it made its approach, and while it could evade, it had to bank before it started to turn. There! She saw the wings tilt, and repositioned the wall to be in front of the new course.

The pilot didn’t even slow. Mirian released the spell as the airship impacted the thick marble, and inertia did the rest. The shield flared and broke. The bow of the ship crumpled so fast it looked like it vaporized, and the hull cracked down the center. The left wing was sheared off entirely. The spell engine broke apart, either from being pulverized or overloaded, and the ship ignited in a burst of arcane fire, orange and violet ribbons of light spiraling madly behind the ship as it plummeted to the ground. The impact was visceral, and she felt the ground tremble.

Mirian dismissed her personal camouflage spell and made her way to the manor, using air manipulation spells to smother the fires in the garden, then heat displacement spells to stop the small fires she encountered in the manor. This time, she didn’t use a window; she could just enter by stepping through a gaping hole in the wall.

She found Sire Nurea, slumped over by a window, pistol empty and discarded, wand cracked open, and hand over a bleeding wound in her side. From the damage to the wand, Mirian guessed Nurea had lost control of her mana and ruptured a conduit. Despite bleeding out, her eyes still held unrestrained fury.

Mirian knelt by her side, gently mending as much of the bleeding as she could until her soul conduit was completely empty. “That’s all I can do for now,” she said gently.

“This is all your fault,” Nurea snapped. “We should have never got entangled in—”

“Fourteen days left,” Mirian said. “It was always going to end like this. Do you know what the alternative is?”

Nurea said nothing, but grit her teeth as she stood.

“Without my intervention, you and Nicolus flee Torrviol and are on a train that is next to a leyline when it erupts. You die. He lives. He holds your corpse for hours, weeping, trapped in a train car until myrvites eat him alive.”

That broke Nurea. She fell to her knees and wept, tears full of fury.

Mirian knelt by her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I promised you both that, when it matters most, you’ll live. I intend to keep that promise. Take the time you need to grieve, but this isn’t over. Another you will see him again.” Mirian turned to go, thinking the knight would need some time, but Nurea’s tears abruptly cut off, and she rose again. Her face twitched, and her eyes were still red. She looked like a mess. Mirian wasn’t foolish enough to believe she’d gotten herself under control that fast, but she could at least mask it, it seemed. Wordlessly, they headed back down to the safe room.

“Who took out the airships?” one of the Allard guards asked. “We didn’t see any—”

“Me,” Mirian said. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her. She raised an eyebrow. “Unless you think airships just do that on their own?”

One of the Allard arcanists turned to Enrico and said, “Sir, the airships both came under attack by… something. I was unable to determine what, but both ships were destroyed in short order. I do not believe it was our efforts.”

“She has a levitation wand, which implies a certain capacity. And certain connections,” Enrico said, still looking rough around the edges. To Mirian she said, “Naluri, what in the five hells was that? Why was I attacked?”

Time to change my cover story. “You are aware of the wide-reaching… negotiations among the Akanan and Baracueli… heights?”

Enrico glanced at his guards. “This discussion needs to be private,” he said.

“Sir…”

“If she wanted to harm me, she had the perfect opportunity. See to the house. I am informed it is still on fire?”

“Yes, sir.” The guards left.

Sire Nurea sat down, clenching her jaw.

“She is…?”

“Aware. She was the one who contacted me. The Akanans never intended to fulfill the bargain, just divide Baracuel up before conquering it. They’ve betrayed the Sacristar family already, so they came to the Praetorian elements they knew they could trust. There’s selective purging going on, and I got a tip your family might be next. I needed a pretense to get people over here, hence the negotiations. But I thought we had more time.”

Enrico Allard looked concerned. “Why would they target me of all people?”

“My tip didn’t include that information. You tell me.”

He moved to rise, winced, clutched his side, then settled back down. “I’ve been coordinating distribution of donations to our favored Parliamentary candidates,” he said. “And scheduling meetings of interested parties. And working on the funding side of galas. All perfectly legal activities. I’ve only heard about the project through small talk at the galas. In no way am I key to anything.”

“Someone seemed to think you were. Or perhaps there’s something here they wanted.” Mirian glanced over by the cabinets.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Enrico followed her gaze. “There’s a great deal of financial records. With enough time and accountants, someone could certainly make something out of them, but it would be information, not control. The Allard family has embraced modernity. Gold ingots can be stolen. Stocks and letters of credit use magical seals that are marked with the owner.”

Mirian saw her opportunity. “And how sure are you the seals can’t be broken?”

“A great many people have thought they could do that. They are dead or shackled in labor camps. Even the underworld appreciates financial stability.”