- Chapter 086 -

  Highway Robbery

  The silence in the archive stretched, measured only by the rhythmic throbbing of Mark’s hip and the steady, unblinking gaze of the Warden’s Assistant. Mark had been staring at the spectral image of Alice Shilling for the better part of an hour. The cold of the tomb had seeped through his coat, settling into his bones, but he refused to leave.

  He needed something, this "Heart of Gales" was an unknown, a piece of lost methodology attached to a woman who shared his name.

  "You have the book open, Vincent," Mark said, gesturing to the lectern with his cane. "The details are right there. Functionality, origin, limitations. Just read it to me."

  Vincent didn't move to close the book, nor did he look down at the glowing text. He stood with his hands clasped, a statue of polite refusal.

  "I cannot," Vincent said. His voice was soft, lacking any edge of annoyance, which made the refusal harder to argue against. "The Warden’s obligations are clear. Recognition is the key. You see a face, Mark, but you do not know the person. To share the intimate details of her life, her capabilities, her choices in these matters, without that connection would be a violation."

  "A violation of what?" Mark asked, frustration sharpening his tone. "She’s been dead for a thousand years. Who is going to file the complaint?"

  "The dead have rights," Vincent stated simply. "Privacy is the last possession they retain. Until you can prove you are kin in spirit as well as blood, the book remains empty to you."

  Mark clenched his jaw. It was bureaucratic, and he was becoming angry at the wrong person. He couldn’t ask because he didn't have the memory, and he couldn't get the memory because that was trapped within the poisoned books of an evil minion to an equally dead administrator.

  He turned back to the ghost. Alice stood there, frozen in a loop of casual summer attire, the red tattoo on her arm a silent taunt.

  He had to force the issue. If the ledger was off limits, then would have to extract it from his own damaged memories, safety be damned.

  He closed his eyes. He ignored the cold stone floor, the smell of dust, the hum of the ritual lights. He reached back, past the granite walls he had built, past the library of stolen secrets, searching through the fog.

  Focus.

  He found the thread. The tinny, synthesized music. Jingle Bells. He pulled on it.

  The grey mist swirled up around him. He was back in the garden. The shadows were there, the indistinct murmurs of a crowd. But this time, he pushed harder. He didn't try to clear the fog, that had failed before, so what was the context of what he had.

  Why were they there? It wasn't Christmas. The air in the memory was warm, humid. A summer evening. The music was a joke, an ironic playlist, a bad choice that was an easy point to anchor a memory in.

  He saw her again. Alice. She wasn't holding a drink, and she was older from the last memory. She was holding a bag. A heavy, canvas duffel.

  Going away.

  The realization clicked into place. It wasn't a holiday. It was a send-off.

  "Be safe," a voice whispered in the memory.

  "Keep your head down."

  She was leaving. Deploying. The context sharpened. Not a holiday, a tour. Military? The lanyard said 'Expedition,' but the posture, the way she held the bag... it screamed service. Army. Or maybe the Air Force. She was going somewhere, and she wasn't sure she was coming back.

  Where?

  He pushed against the grey curtain, demanding more.

  The green sludge surged.

  It wasn't a slow seep this time. It was a pressurized jet of toxic, mental waste erupting from the cracks in his subconscious. The memory of the garden soured, twisting into something rot-filled and sharp. A spike of agony drove itself into his temple, a migraine that threatened to split his skull.

  The fog turned acid-green. The shadows screamed.

  A low, resonant growl vibrated through the base of his spine. It was the sound of high-voltage arcing, the warning of a predator guarding its territory. Tony.

  The tiger stepped into the memory, a massive wall of blue muscle and white lightning. It didn't attack the fog. It slammed a paw onto the thread of memory Mark was pulling and severed it.

  Snap.

  The garden vanished. The pain cut out instantly, leaving only a dull, throbbing echo.

  Mark gasped, his eyes snapping open. He staggered, catching himself on the heavy wooden shelf of the archive. His breath came in ragged bursts, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

  He was back in the tomb. The silver light was steady. Alice was still standing there, unmoving, unaware of the violence that had just played out in his head.

  He wiped a sheen of cold sweat from his forehead. He had pushed too hard, and Tony had been the one to pull him out before it was too late. But he had a piece of the puzzle. A deployment. A military background.

  "You are pushing against a locked door," Vincent observed quietly. "It seems unwise to force that particular latch."

  Mark straightened, adjusting his coat. "The latch is stuck," he rasped. "Sometimes you have to rattle the handle. And I apologise for pushing you for answers before."

  He turned to leave, the adrenaline crash leaving him shaking. He needed air. He needed tea and a scone sounded good as well.

  He stopped.

  The doorway to the side chamber wasn't empty.

  Standing in the archway, framed by the shadows of the main tomb, was a figure in more gold than blue. Petra Novak. She stood perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her, watching him with the unblinking, predatory focus of a hawk that had just spotted movement in the grass.

  "My meeting ended early," Petra stated, stepping fully into the room. Her voice was smooth, carrying the acoustically perfect resonance of someone used to speaking in large, echoing halls. “It seems your comment regarding 'visiting relatives' caused a significant amount of administrative distress among my staff. They were under the impression you had fallen from the sky fully formed, without lineage or connection."

  She looked him up and down, noting the sweat on his brow and the white-knuckled grip on his cane.

  "They panicked," she added, the ghost of a sneer touching her lips. "Idiots assuming a diplomatic incident was unfolding in real-time."

  Mark leaned heavily against the shelf, the wood biting into his side. The headache from the mental recoil was a pulsing, rhythmic hammer behind his eyes. He needed water. He needed to sit down. He needed this woman to stop looming.

  "Give me a minute," Mark said, lifting a hand to rub his temple. "I just... hit a wall, or it hit me."

  Petra didn't blink. She didn't offer a seat. She simply ignored the request as irrelevant. Her attention had already shifted, moving past him, past Vincent, to the glowing projection standing in the center of the archive.

  She studied Alice Shilling. She took in the strange clothes, the lanyard, the posture. And then her eyes locked onto the left arm.

  "However," Petra continued, her voice taking on a new, thoughtful quality. "If your choice of words for our scheduled meeting inevitably turns out to be a waste of my time... this has already balanced the ledger."

  She walked closer to the ghost, stepping into the circle of light with the confidence of a proprietor inspecting a new acquisition. She leaned in, examining the complex, spiraling geometry of the red tattoo.

  "A Garnet-tier design," she murmured, her eyes tracing the jagged lines of the design. "But the flow architecture is... radical. It lacks the structure we use today. It relies on organic flow rather than containment."

  She straightened up, looking at Mark with a cold, calculating appreciation.

  "A new Heart design," she said. "Or rather, a very old one."

  She glanced back at the tattoo, mentally cataloging the schematic.

  "That alone compensates for the inconvenience of walking out here, future potential to be explored for viability. Even if you turn out to be as dull as I suspect."

  Mark once again tried to straighten himself up, holding up his hand in a gesture to wait a moment.

  "Spit it out," Petra demanded, her patience evaporating. She glanced at Vincent, who stood motionless in the shadows, his hands tucked into his sleeves. "The Assistant isn't measuring you for a slab, and the Warden hasn't offered you a job, so you clearly aren't dying. Which means you are just loitering."

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  She turned back to Mark, her eyes hard.

  "What is the issue then? I’ve no time to conduct business with men who look like they are about to faint."

  Mark pushed himself off the shelf. He straightened his spine, ignoring the sharp protest from his lower back and the dull thudding in his skull. He took a breath, holding it for a second to steady his heart rate, then exhaled slowly.

  "It's a hangover," Mark said, his voice regaining a fraction of its professional edge. "From some internal restructuring."

  He met her gaze, deciding that if she wanted to treat him like a curiosity, he would give her something she couldn't ignore.

  "It's the physiological cost of throwing a planet at the Jade-tier mage who was hired by the recently buried Eric Chambers."

  Petra froze. The dismissal on her face was replaced by a sharp, calculating stillness. She knew Clyde was Jade. She knew he was dead. She had called him a sledgehammer. But the specifics of what happened were a mystery to all those that hadn’t experienced it.

  "A planet?" she repeated, her voice neutral, testing the weight of the claim.

  "Specifically Saturn," Mark clarified. "It has a lot of gravity. Clyde found the pressure... excessive."

  He saw the questions forming behind her eyes, a re-evaluation of his threat level, the desire to know the mechanics of what he was implying. But he wasn't here to give a seminar on astral physics or mindscape combat. That was personal history. This was business.

  "But that’s now a private matter, and one that’s been dealt with," Mark said, cutting her off before she could inquire. He adjusted his grip on the cane, planting it firmly on the stone floor. "And that is not the purpose of this conversation."

  He gestured toward the archway leading back to the main entrance, away from the ghosts and the secrets of the dead.

  "You have an opening in your schedule. I have a proposal. I’d prefer to use your time efficiently?"

  "I appreciate," Mark said, his voice echoing slightly in the stone chamber, "that you didn't reach the summit of the Masons' Guild by ignoring how things actually work. You understand leverage. You understand supply and demand."

  He leaned on his cane, shifting his stance to relieve the pressure on his hip.

  "So I'm going to be very open about the deal. No theatrics. A straightforward and clean opportunity."

  Petra looked at him, her expression shifting from impatience to a cold, razor-sharp amusement. She stepped closer, invading his personal space with the casual confidence of someone who owned the building.

  "You are under a significant misapprehension, Mr. Shilling," she said softly. "You think that because I walked here, because I stepped out of my office to find you, that you have power in this negotiation."

  She shook her head, a slow, pitying gesture.

  "My presence here has burnt whatever political capital you thought you had, a deficit you may never get back. You’ve crafted the appearance of a Guildmaster chasing a consultant into a tomb. That is not a power move, it is an annoyance. To try and offer a deal now? From this position?"

  A small, genuine smile touched her lips, but it didn't reach her eyes.

  "I find the audacity amusing. But amusement does not sign contracts."

  Mark didn't flinch. He absorbed the assessment, a great breakdown of the optics of the situation, but not his complete arrangement.

  "You're right," Mark conceded. "If I were trying to sell you a favor, I'd be bankrupt. But I'm not selling favors. I'm selling an asset."

  He met her gaze, his expression hardening.

  "I intend to make the real deal with someone else," he stated flatly. "Eventually, this technology will be the industry standard. The market forces are inevitable. But," he paused, acknowledging the elephant in the room, "even considering my... colorful history with your Guild, I am prepared to put your people in front. An upfront arrangement. A strategic advantage."

  He gestured toward the exit, toward the town and the other Guildhalls waiting below.

  "I get what I want regardless. The product sells itself. The only variable is who gets it first, and how much they pay for the privilege."

  He let the silence stretch for a beat before delivering the ultimatum.

  "If you choose not to participate, Mistress Novak, that is entirely your prerogative. But understand this: my next stop is the Miners' Guild. Then the Merchants. And for them?"

  He offered a thin, cold smile.

  "The price goes up. Significantly."

  Mark reached into his pocket and withdrew the heavy brass prototype. He didn't offer a preamble. He simply held it out, the metal warming slightly in his hand against the chill of the archive.

  "The proof," Mark said, "is in the projection."

  Petra took it. Her hands were gloved in fine leather, but her grip was assured. She examined the casing for a second, finding the latch and the activation stud with an intuitive grasp of mechanics that spoke to her trade. She pressed the button.

  The condenser hummed, a low vibration that echoed faintly off the stone shelves. The water coalesced, swirling up from the face of the device. It didn't form a mountain or a planet this time. It formed a building.

  It was the local Masons' Guildhall.

  The fidelity was absolute. It wasn't just the exterior, it was a wireframe view of the structure from the archives. The walls were rendered in translucent grey, revealing the skeleton of iron-banded beams beneath. Bright lines of blue light traced the plumbing and steam networks. Deeper in the foundation, pulsing red nodes marked the anchor points of the heating and stability circles.

  Petra didn't gasp. She didn't smile. She went still, her eyes tracking the flow of the steam lines, verifying the placement of the load-bearing columns. She rotated the image with a subtle twist of her wrist, zooming in on the sub-basement.

  "Accurate," she murmured, her voice detached but intense. "The stress fractures in the west wing foundation are visible. And the mana conduit for the atrium lighting... yes."

  She looked up, the blue light of the hologram reflecting in her eyes. The dismissal was gone. In its place was the cold look of a professional who had just been handed a tool that made her job significantly easier.

  "It's static," she noted, testing the limits. "A snapshot. How is the data refreshed? If we alter the structure, how does the model update?"

  "Currently, it requires a manual overwrite," Mark explained, keeping his tone clinical. "My associates handle the data transfer. You provide the memory or the schematic, we burn it to the core crystal."

  He paused, baiting the hook.

  "However, we are developing a secondary device. Eventually, we plan to sell the capability for your own teams to update the modules in-house. For a licensing fee, of course."

  Petra clicked the device shut. The water splashed down, vanishing as the containment field collapsed. She weighed the brass disc in her hand, testing its heft.

  "The Engineers charge six hundred gold for a basic sand table that sits in a corner and requires dedicated staff to operate," she said, her voice thoughtful. "It is clumsy. It is slow. This... this is pocket-sized for field use."

  She looked at him, her expression unreadable.

  "Market logic suggests a price point north of a thousand gold per unit. It is a superior technology."

  She stepped closer, the heavy silence of the tomb wrapping around them.

  "But I am of the Masons Guild, Mr. Shilling. We build things. We understand how things are put together."

  She held the device up between them.

  "What is to stop me from walking out of here with this? I have experts in my Guild who could strip this down to its components. We could reverse-engineer the array, duplicate the enchantment, and manufacture our own by the end of the month."

  Her gaze was flat, challenging.

  "Why should I pay you a copper, when I can simply take the innovation and discard the innovator?"

  Mark smiled, a calm, easy expression that belied the tension in his gut. He gestured with his open hand, inviting her to take the device.

  "There is absolutely nothing stopping you," Mark admitted pleasantly. "You are a Jade-tier Guildmaster with the strength to crush stone. I am a consultant with a broken spine and a wooden stick. Physically, I couldn't stop you from taking my coat, let alone the prototype."

  He leaned back against the archive shelf, resting his weight.

  "However," he continued, his tone conversational, "I feel I should mention the tamper-proofing. Since I am, as you noted, magically deaf, I had to rely on... mechanical triggers for the containment seal."

  He tapped his temple.

  "There is a set of very common, very volatile arrays nested inside the casing. They are designed to implode the quartz lattice if the seal is breached without the key. It destroys the data instantly." He paused, his smile thinning. "I am fairly certain I calibrated the sensitivity correctly. But my associate... he mentioned that if I got the pressure triggers wrong, the resulting discharge could take the hand off a Jade. It’s a matter of stored kinetic potential versus structural integrity."

  He shrugged.

  "But I'm sure your experts are very quick."

  Petra stared at him. Then, a rich, genuine laugh echoed through the tomb. It wasn't mocking, it was delighted.

  "You are trouble, Mr. Shilling," she declared, looking at the brass device with new respect. "But for the moment, you are trouble to my advantage."

  She tossed the prototype back to him. He caught it, careful not to wince as the movement pulled at his ribs.

  “Do not think poorly of the Masons for my suggestion of taking it, reactions tell better stories than words.” she paced around the small room, “Agreements that stop my experts from dismantling the Engineers sand tables, stop me from doing the same with this new toy.”

  "One hundred and fifty gold per unit," Petra stopped pacing, the negotiation beginning in earnest. "I will take fifteen. On the condition that your people handle the framework integration free of charge for the next three months."

  Her eyes narrowed.

  "And no other units appear in the hands of the Engineers or the Miners until those three months are up. I want the market advantage."

  Mark pressed a hand to his chest, feigning physical pain. "One hundred and fifty? Madam Novak, you wound me. Moments ago you assessed the market value at over a thousand. This isn't a discount. It's highway robbery sanctioned by a handshake."

  "It's a bulk order," Petra countered smoothly. "And it buys you the Masons' seal of approval. That alone is worth the difference."

  They haggled. It was a brutal, rapid-fire exchange of numbers and clauses, executed with the cold precision of two predators of different worlds dividing a kill.

  "Twenty units," Mark countered. "At one hundred and seventy gold. We handle the initial load, you handle the updates after we sell you the secondary unit in month four."

  Petra considered it. "Agreed. One hundred and seventy. I will send a team with the schematics and the deposit by the end of the week."

  "One final clause," Mark added, his voice hardening. "Under Guild Law, if the design is stolen or reverse-engineered while in your possession prior to the expiration of the exclusivity window... the Masons' Guild assumes full liability for the lost intellectual property."

  He met her gaze.

  "I won't have the Engineers stealing my work from your pocket and blaming me for the leak."

  Petra nodded slowly. It was a fair clause, and it shifted the security burden onto her shoulders. "Agreed."

  "Then we have a deal," Mark said.

  He didn't offer a hand. He simply nodded. Petra returned the gesture, a sharp, decisive movement.

  She turned and swept out of the archive, her steps echoing on the stone, leaving Mark alone in the silence of the dead.

  He let out a long, slow breath. Three thousand, four hundred gold. It was a fortune. It was enough to fund Carl's workshop for years, enough to buy safety, enough to build a real foundation.

  He had sold the Masons a tool that would revolutionize their industry, at a fraction of its potential value. Petra believed she had fleeced him. She thought she had secured a technological marvel for pennies on the gold piece.

  Mark picked up his cane and began the long walk back to the entrance. He smiled.

  She had paid him to beta-test his prototype. She was funding his R&D, providing real-world stress testing, and giving him political cover, all while thinking she had won.

  It was the perfect contract. Everyone walked away thinking they had robbed the other guy.