It probably wasn’t their fault, he told himself as he cased the joint. Maybe they didn’t even know that the light was on down here. From what his coven’s long evenings of scrying had told them about this place since it had come to their attention a year or so ago, the cavern had been carved from the stone a very, very long time ago. More than long enough for memory to have lapsed on a few things. Dragons had theoretically unlimited lifespans, after all… and at a certain age, it was understandable that they might forget to turn the lights off.
It was such a waste, though. Even moving through this room of dusty old artifacts, he could feel a restlessness growing in him. The power he could feel sparking from some of this staff… staff that clearly hadn’t been looked at in decades, let alone touched or used. He squeezed the handle of his staff reassuringly as its light flickered and danced, imagining he could feel its dejection. These things were so beautiful. It felt like such a shame to keep them hidden away. Like commissioning an ornately woven, beautiful cloak… then safely storing it away in a closet instead of wearing it as its maker intended.
Power was forusing. And Cato was determined to do his part in making that a reality.
“Should’ve brought a bigger bag,” he muttered to his staff as he moved past yet another cabinet, this one full of gemstones. Did they even know what they had here? A quick glance told him that most of them were inert, but there were two among them that his staff bent towards. He pulled the cabinet open and slipped both the stones into the pocket of his robe. Haspar had been very clear that his task was to retrieve the gauntlet and nothing else, but how could he complain about a couple of additional acquisitions while he was searching for the grand prize?
He would, of course. But that was Future Cato’s problem.
The urge to take more was hard to resist. He finished casing the floor he was on then headed for the staircase, sensing he needed to go deeper to find what he was actually here for. Judging by the haphazard way these objects had been stored and arranged, not to mention the laughably incomplete notes that were stored with a few of them, the dragons had an incredibly limited understanding of the power of the artifacts they were hoarding—so there was no use trying to work out where they might be storing the most valuable ones. The gauntlet could be anywhere.
How close were the guards, he wondered? There were usually guards posted in these storage rooms, Cato knew that from their long evenings of preparatory scrying—that was why he’d insisted on targeting the lowest levels of the Archives with the teleportation spell, even though it increased the risk tenfold. The guards would be much higher up, minding the entrances. There was no reason to believe he’d be discovered down here, but still, he knew he should move quickly. The longer he spent here, the greater the chances that something could go wrong. No need to get greedy, as Haspar had said repeatedly. If this initial burglary was a success, they could always return later. He let his eyes linger wistfully on a stone bust in one corner… and then he turned himself forcibly away.
“Guidance,” Cato murmured to his staff, squeezing it in his right hand and seeing a gemstone flicker to life on its length. The gauntlet, the gauntlet… down, the gemstone seemed to suggest with its pulsations. He moved quickly down the stairs, noticing that the dust on the banisters was disturbed in places. So people did come down here occasionally—or at least, they had been doing so recently. That was interesting. Could it have something to do with the calamitous magical event that had first drawn his coven’s attention?
Focus, Cato, he told himself. Hadn’t his coven-mate Inota been telling him his curiosity was a hazard? Unfortunately, it was also what made him so good at his work. He wouldn’t be here right now without his curiosity—nor would he have obtained most of the prizes on him right now, the magical artifacts embedded in his staff and his armor. But like any power, he needed to keep it in check… and right now, he could almost hear Inota telling him to get the gauntlet and get out. She had a deeply annoying habit of always being right, and he didn’t want this triumph being marred by any bragging on her part.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself from swiping a simple-looking band of leather that had been left on a bookshelf like an afterthought. These dragons really didn’t know what they had, did they?
And finally, Cato found his footsteps slowing as the yellow gemstone on his staff flickered urgently… his eyes had slid over a nondescript-looking cabinet, but the spark of recognition from his staff was too powerful to be a coincidence. That was where they were keeping it? Some beaten-up old cabinet at the back of the Archives? If this thing was really everything Haspar had said it was—and Haspar, true to form, had been decidedly unspecific in his descriptions—then it should have been on display in pride of place, for all the dragons to come and marvel at. That, or it should have been hidden so deep that even a sneaky, devastatingly handsome young mage couldn’t find it for love nor money. It certainly shouldn’t have been in a damned filing cabinet.
“You poor thing,” Cato murmured, even his whispered voice feeling strangely loud in the dead silence. “Come on out of there. Let me give you some love.”
At least it was the only thing being stored in the cabinet, he thought once he’d worked the door open. And they’d locked it, too, that was something. It was a laughably simple lock, strictly mechanical in nature—it felt a bit pathetic, if Cato was honest, protecting something this powerful with something that even a non-mage could disarm it with a few pieces of sharp metal. A flick of his fingertips was all it took… and there lay the gauntlet, in all its glory.
It wasn’t especially glorious to look at, if he was honest. Cato felt a frown crease his brow. This was definitely what Haspar had been talking about, wasn’t it? The gemstone in his staff had confirmed that, and the thing matched his physical description at least. It looked like a dull silver glove at first glance, but a closer inspection would reveal that it was composed of thousands of tiny interlocking threads of metal, woven together to create a surface that was at once flexible and strong. More of a glove than a gauntlet, really, but he wasn’t going to argue with Haspar’s naming conventions. Cato had been hoping that once he’d found the gauntlet, he’d be able to get a sense of what the incredible power it held actually did, practically speaking—Haspar had been very vague on that front. But looking at it now, even with all his magic flaring, he couldn’t detect any power at all.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t there, however. When you were sitting under a tree, you couldn’t see the forest… that didn’t mean you weren’t surrounded by it on all sides. Disappointing, though, that Haspar’s little mystery was going to remain a mystery. Sometimes Cato thought that Haspar maintained his control over him with information, not with power… leveraging his own curiosity to bind him.
It wasn’t true, of course, but it was a nicer thought than the reality.
“Time to go,” he murmured, reaching for the gauntlet. A gemstone on his staff was pulsing in time with his heartbeat, a low, steady warning of danger—but it had been doing that ever since he’d arrived here, it was no indication that the gauntlet was guarded. And sure enough, he picked it up without incident, slipping it into the satchel at his side along with the collar he’d found and a few more small odds and ends that he hadn’t been able to resist liberating from their places. Done. The heist was over. Getting here had been the hard part… returning to Haspar and the coven would be as easy as blinking. Cato turned, already beginning to form the words of the spell that would take him home.
And then he stopped dead in his tracks, struck by the decidedly alarming sensation of a sharp blade scraping the skin of his throat.
“Don’t move,” came a low, unfamiliar voice. Cato almost nodded… then thought better of it. His fingers twitched around his staff, where he could see the gemstone pulsing faster now, keeping pace with his accelerating heartbeat. “Drop the staff.”
“Listen—”
“Not a request,” the woman snapped. The blade moved forward a fraction of an inch and he yelped as he felt a trickle of blood run from its point to the collar of his shirt… his staff clattered to the ground a second later, and he raised his hands a little higher. Sharp sword. Very sharp sword. What the hell kind of guard kept their sword that sharp? He followed the blade down to the hand that was holding it, mercilessly steady. That kind of control only came from decades of training. Centuries, even… and though the woman in front of him looked barely more than thirty, he’d been told it was unwise to assume a dragon’s age. “Who are you? No tricks.”
“Cato,” he managed, mind racing. No tricks—did she mean magic? Did she know he was a mage? Based on the haphazard way these artifacts were being kept, they’d assumed these dragons didn’t know much about magic. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, uh…?”
She ignored the hint, her forest-green eyes taking him in, sizing up the nature of his threat to her. He had an inch or two on her height-wise, but that was about it for his list of advantages… at least, the ones she knew about. “How did you get in?”
“Aren’t you more interested in why?”
“I can see why,” she snapped, nodding towards the satchel still dangling from his shoulder. “How did a thief get into the Archives? Who let you in?”
“Look, it’s not every day that a beautiful woman strikes up a conversation with me, but I’d really prefer to talk without a sword half-lodged in my throat. Can that be arranged?” He’d flirted his way out of worse scrapes than this before, but the woman’s hard face barely shifted in response to his most winning smile. If anything, she looked more annoyed. “Please,” he added, feeling the blade against his throat as he swallowed. The woman’s face didn’t change, but he felt the sword withdraw… not much more than a few inches, but he’d take it. “Thank you.”
“Talk.”
This was already a disaster. Remaining undiscovered had been high on the list of priorities for this little operation, but not only had this woman found him stealing, she’d seen what he’d stolen, too. Cato could feel the bragging rights slipping out of his fingers. At any rate, it was time to go.
“Well, the story begins a few years ago,” he started, a mischievous smile on his lips as he mentally scoped out where his staff was lying. He just needed his fingertips to make contact with the wood. “There I was, staring up at the sky, just wishing I could for once know what it was like to be a hundred miles underground, breathing dust… and that was when my dear old mother told me that—”
He hadn’t given anything away, he knew that. There was no reason this woman should have known what he was about to do when he dove, mid-sentence, for his staff… but as he was reaching it, he could already hear her sword moving, faster than gravity, faster than his hands could close around the staff’s grip. There was an almighty thump that seemed to resonate in every inch of his skull… and then, nothing but darkness.