After the emotional hike that was last night— all breathless summits and stifling valleys, linked only by tense climbs— investigating a theft with Gelson sounds effortless by comparison. No speaking from the heart, no meddling in grand affairs, and no Benny asking why I’d been up until past midnight running around the Manor. Admittedly, that last one was my fault. They didn't even have pastries to offer— apparently, the delivery never arrived. A problem for another time.

  Point is, to assist in finding those metaphorical open plains again, I take the long way to the park.

  The ‘long way’ takes me through a thousand sounds and a thousand scents, pouring from alleys and side streets like streams to a river. There's even Magebloods to be seen. A woman with pitch-black hair and cat's ears catches my eye for a moment, and her golden eyes stare back. Someone crosses in front of me as I slip down an alley, their tail swaying— is that an ox's tail? Maybe.

  Most of my kind have only a touch of magic in them, a touch they're born with, just enough to change. Others dabble and change, as Helena eventually will— as long as she intends to become a Mage, it's inevitable. Few are as obvious as I am, and it doesn't take the immersion I've experienced to become a decent Mage.

  Perhaps one of these Magebloods is our culprit, or a thief hired for the job?

  Maybe they don’t know what they’ve stolen, the same way that we don’t quite know. Maybe it’s already left the city, destined for parts and plans unknown.

  Regardless, I’m meeting Gelson, not stewing in schemes. Specifically, I’m meeting her by the central Constable Station, and I refuse to let that dampen my mood. The plants and trees of the nearby park offset that noisy, beating heart of ink and law. Maybe that Chief Flint even bleeds the stuff? Heh.

  So I greet her with a half-smile, just a sliver of my teeth showing. “Morning. What's the plan today? Planning to wrap this up, hopefully?”

  Gelson nods at me, stiff-backed and sitting oddly on a bench next to the door. One leg is up to brace her journal as she scribbles, the other sticks straight out so her heel can tap rhythmically against the cobbled stone.

  “Coordinating with my colleague, first and foremost; he has collected all the testimonies of people external to the Church. The Church of the Restoration itself should also be investigated...” she trails off again, brow furrowed. She hasn’t yet looked up.

  Ugh. “You'll have to poke around the Church yourself,” I say, not bothering to hide my distaste. So much . So many ‘well intentioned’ folks in a faith I loathe. “I'm not welcome and I like it that way.”

  Gelson tilts her head, frowning. After a pause, she says, “Very well.”

  Neither task sounds like it needs knowledge of magecraft— or myself, by extension. A little disappointing, actually. Dragging my tail across the grass, collecting dew on my scales, I shrug at her.

  “Any theories, Gelson?” I ask. “It doesn’t feel like we’re getting much of anywhere, just talking to a bunch of people about stuff.”

  “Fewer theories than before,” Gelson says eventually, hesitating for a moment. “This is good.”

  That exact exchange happens again the moment we step inside the Station— only this time, it’s a man I only faintly recognize making the query, while Gelson’s response remains the same. No inflection, no hesitation, perfect certainty, only an added, “And you, detective?”

  This must be... uh, her colleague, then, speaking quietly with three constables in their signature blues. There's someone seated near them, faintly familiar at that, but my focus is elsewhere. Starts with an L, maybe. T?

  My first thought is that he’s even the way Gelson is odd. Tall and lanky, wrapped tightly in a long tan coat, with dark eyes and bright blond hair. Rough facial hair shadows his jaw, sharpening it in the depths of his tall collar.

  And yet, from the spark gleaming in those pitch-dark eyes, I can tell he's the same as Gelson where it counts... though it’s yet to be seen if he’s a decent sort. Many in his line of work are, but there’s enough rotten ones out there to keep me cautious.

  “Far fewer as well, fortunately,” he drawls, his voice low and rough. “A few dark nights, a few threads that raise more questions than answers, but Gods are we getting close.”

  Even and odd, once more. Chatty and quiet.

  “And you must be our wandering Dame, then,” he continues, striding forward with an arm outstretched. I take it and clasp it, meeting his eyes. “Detective Calvin Tracer, at your service. Call me Tracer. Glad to have you at ours, even if it does stir the hornet’s nest.”

  Oh, thank Adamantine, he’s introduced himself.

  I smile, baring my teeth and holding his gaze. He’s tall enough that I don’t have to look down at all, impressively. “Dame Crawford, at nobody's service but here to help. You’re up to date with the box; of course I’m sticking around.”

  Tracer lets go, and I let go. He stares unflinchingly, answering my smile with his own. “Glad to hear it.”

  “So I hear you two have . Fewer than before. Care to share your deductions?” I step back, searching for a capable chair and finding none. Figures. Hopefully there’ll be one in whatever room detectives do their detecting in.

  “Can’t exactly go pulling truths out of a hat, Dame, let alone here where everyone can hear it,” Tracer provides, being about as helpful as the chairs. “But we can certainly compare notes. Celine, would you like to join us? I can send you back home with a blue otherwise.”

  “Celine, from the bakery?” I ask, following Tracer's eyes. The seated woman looks up, and sure enough it's her. “Is everything alright?”

  “Oh! Dame Crawford!” Celine beams at me. “Charlie and Marie would say hello, I'm sure! Um, I-I'd like a constable, yes. Nothing's wrong, but—”

  “Something wrong, Celine,” Tracer cuts in. “Sorry to interrupt, but if a lady like you doesn't feel safe, we're not doing our jobs.”

  “Unsafe?” Now I'm just confused.

  “I think there's a thief or something tailing me when I handle deliveries,” Celine says, alarmingly dismissive. She smiles, though. “I don't feel unsafe, I'm just worried about the pastries.”

  “They good pastries,” I add, resisting the urge to lick my lips. I follow the thought as it curves back to the investigation, and nod once they connect. “Right, you delivered on the day of the theft, didn't you?”

  “I did, yes. I already gave my testimony to Calvin.” Celine nods toward Tracer, her smile shifting.

  “Which I'll relay when we go somewhere less public. Sorry to break up a friendly conversation, but the mystery awaits us.” Calvin speaks a bit louder than before, gesturing at one of the constables. “Get her home safe.”

  After a brief goodbye and a few muttered orders from Tracer, Celine heads out and we head deeper into the building. I can appreciate the haste— the frustration of is getting to me.

  We walk past Chief Flint's office, past the crammed boards of notes and findings, and into a brightly lit room with a round table. A rather disappointed part of me expected a shadowy corner, which admittedly would be terrible for working.

  “My accounts indicate the theft happened well before noon. There are inconsistencies in testimony, but the order of events is clear.”

  Gelson's already pulling parchment from her bag, splaying it out across the table before I've even had a chance to sit down. “Right to the point, then?”

  “Never change, Gelson,” Tracer chuckles, dropping into a seat. He pulls out his own notes, stacking them rather than spreading them. “Glad to have a third with us today. Always good to have a Mage on hand.”

  “I’m a Delver, not a Mage,” I raise a claw, debating how much I want to get into this. “I don’t pursue magic as an art form or scholarly study. I break things and fix portals.”

  “It’s more than we know, and that’s shying away from the expertise we already know you have,” Tracer replies, shrugging. “You do magic for work, that’s a Mage to us.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Bah. Fine.

  Humming, Gelson rearranges her notes, sliding slowly into a chair. I take that time to spin my chair around, because I swear nobody has chairs that handle tails.

  “All settled?” Tracer looks about the room, nodding at each of us. “Let's get to work. Dame, if anything seems ridiculous, point it out?”

  I arch an eyebrow, using one hand to push a stray hair out of my face. “Sure. So, who do you think did it?”

  “Personally?” Tracer spreads his hands, palms up, to encompass the entire table. “We can't pin anyone with it. Alain Hendrick was present, clearly knows something he isn't telling us, and is involved in a testimonial contradiction. He's got some motive, too, but his behavior doesn't line up.”

  “Unless he wanted to pin it on me, but I doubt he's stupid.” I shrug. “Fair enough.”

  “If it was a thief, hired or not, its destination likely includes the key's owner. Possibly a colleague of Sir Markus Crawford,” Gelson adds, tapping something on the table. “Perhaps the former priest of the Church? The interview with Bitgarm seems to indicate the previous priest both knew and wanted it kept away from Dame Crawford. He was ousted and the wards were replaced, so theft is his best option.”

  A pause, a hum, a creaking of chairs.

  “What truly narrows down the list is that almost nobody knew that it was a puzzle box, let alone its significance.”

  I... hadn't thought of that. Gods, I hadn't even known the damned thing existed, and I'd probably passed it several times when breaking in five years ago. My tail whips through the air, curling and uncurling, straining each individual muscle.

  But, then again... “Didn't the guards get told to watch it, specifically?”

  “I asked the same question. Not bad.” Tracer rises from his seat, hands clasped behind his back. “The guards knew there was wooden box in there. But none admitted to knowing its significance, and Alain Hendrick only started asking for it to be monitored—”

  “When I returned to Craumont, I'll bet,” I finish drily. A growl builds in my chest, a barely smoldering ember of frustration.

  “Three days after,” Gelson confirms. “He cited a concern for ‘malicious parties' in our discussion, but refused to elaborate.”

  “I scare the life out of him,” I muse. “Does that count as malicious?”

  “Scared him?” Tracer asks, which is a rather silly question.

  I smile— no, I bare my fangs. I know my mouth opens a bit too wide, showing far too many sharp teeth, and the scales creeping up my neck merely punctuate the statement.

  “Maliciously.”

  It takes him a moment to find his voice, and his eyes remain fixed on my teeth as I hide them again. “That... confirms my assumptions. Gelson thinks there's more to it, but we don't exactly have evidence.”

  “Yes.” Gelson inclines her head slightly. “There remains a chance that the thief doesn't know what they stole, but it is... increasingly unlikely. Which points to our other lead— methods of entry.”

  “How so?” I raise an eyebrow. “The vault's got one door in, one door out, and maybe the guards...”

  It's a vault that is itself in a room with one entrance. How could anyone slip past them without notice? Unless one of them left the room and the other was asleep.

  “Hit that monster dead on, Dame. How in Fidelis’ name did they get through? Or whatever God cares for guards, I suppose. Maybe the guards stole it, and were hired to do so. Or hired to look the other way.” He shakes his head, cursing more creatively under his breath. “Started a search, asked everyone nearby. The guards didn't leave the building through the front doors. Side door, maybe, but how'd they avoid tripping the wards? We searched the damned building to see if it got hidden somewhere.

  “It's all a damned mess. No indication of magical ability from anyone involved that would've been there, and our searches turned up nothing.”

  Sounds an awful lot like the guards did it, but that feels like a stretch of the knowledge I have. Hm.

  “Which leaves us with the implausible,” Gelson picks up, speaking a little faster than usual. Is that excitement I sense, pulling at the fringes of her steady voice? “We have eliminated the probable and the only evidence against anyone is circumstantial at best. So I gave Calvin a theory to follow up on.”

  I admit, I'm not following. These two are clearly enjoying the moment— a hint of theater, a stage for two with an audience of .

  I always love a bit of theatrics.

  Tracer pulls a parchment from his own pile, a massive piece folded into quarters. “It was a good one, Ruby. We looked again at the vault from a new angle. This building isn’t Imperial and it’s owned by the Church; we don’t have the blueprints on hand. So, I had the town engineers come out yesterday dressed in blues to measure out the rectory's floor plan.”

  The tension becomes a trembling, manic thrill, the calm before the cacophony. I watch, hands clamped against the table, as he slowly unfolds the map. There's the main room, there's the twin halls, the offices, the vault tucked between them, and—

  Oh. You've got to be kidding me.

  “You've got that glint in your eye, Ruby, and it looks like the Dame's been bitten too,” Tracer practically croons.

  An empty space. A gap between the back of the vault and the wall in the front room, marked neatly as a full march and a half wide.

  “Seems like we've got ourselves space for a Gods-damned secret passage, ladies.”

  Gelson beamsShe's showing teeth in her smile as she snatches the map away. “I love my job.”

  “And we'll keep that rare Gelson smile off the record, I gather?” I chuckle, tail uncurling from the chair leg it'd fixed itself to at... some point.

  “Nobody would believe us anyways.” Tracer waves me off with a smirk of his own. “I'll need that back, R— Gelson, we've got to look for egress points.”

  Perhaps half an hour later— maybe less— we're out the door with questions on our tongues and the rectory in our sights.

  Well. Neither part is accurate, really. I'm not a detective or practitioner of detecting, so I have maybe one question on my tongue. The rest is for the professionals; I'll stick to Magecraft, monster-punching, and Delving.

  And more importantly to the moment, we're stopped by the abrupt appearance of Winston and some guards. Winston is a march too short to block much of anything, but we're not exactly moving towards it now that he's in our way.

  “Cousin!” Winston calls out, eyes alight the moment he sees me. He runs a hand between his horns, thumb catching on one and tracing the base. “Perfect timing. And the detectives are with you too!”

  “My lord.” Gelson inclines her head. “Detective Ruby Gelson, at your disposal.”

  “Detective Calvin Tracer,” Tracer nods, taking a half-step forward. “What brings our lord down our way today?”

  “Probably me,” I say with a shrug, running my tail along the cobbled road. “Morning, cousin.”

  “Good morning.” I know Winston well enough to recognize the twitch at the bridge of his nose— a wrinkle, there and gone in a heartbeat. A tiny break in a mask I didn't even realize existed, Winston leaking through the cracks of Lord Craumont.

  “Thank you, detectives, for your service to my city. My business is with my cousin, but given the context it might be more accurate to say it's with everyone present.” He nods back, speaking with a cultivated ease and gentleness.

  “To business, then?” I reply drily, not bothering to match his nobility with my own. The metaphorical mask fits poorly on my face, and becoming a Drake rendered it nearly unrecognizable years ago.

  “To business,” he agrees, smiling faintly. He looks to his guards, and without so much as a word, they step away. He clasps his hands behind his back, looking off into the distance. “It occurred to me last night. Now, Ivy, cousin, you said you examined the wards on the vault?”

  Where's he going with this? “I did, yes.”

  “And you called them clean. Well-maintained.” He nods along with his own words. “And on a possible two-year maintenance schedule?”

  “Dame Crawford related the details to you, Lord Craumont?” Gelson is at full attention, eyes sharp and posture tense.

  “She did. As the keyward of Craumont, I am quite experienced in maintaining and constructing wards.” He looks at Gelson, frowns, and continues. “So, cousin, did I remember correctly?”

  “Yup,” I say, swishing my tail around to tap one of my boots. “Well maintained. Not very complicated, either, but well made.”

  Not quite following, but as he said, he probably knows way more than I do. Most I've done to tinker with a ward in the last five years was to punch through one.

  And that ended with me getting clubbed by an ent, so my memory of that day is suspect at best. No, concentrate, Ivy!

  I shake my head, looking down at Gelson then back at Winston. “You've figured something out about the wards. What is it?”

  “Do we even have the forms to take our own lord's expert advice?” Tracer muses, scratching his chin. Despite his casual attitude, I can practically taste the curiosity in his tone. “The Dame was hard enough as it was.”

  Winson's eyes darken, even as they glint in the light. "I'm sure it'll work out, detective. Now, self-maintaining wards— well, self-cleaning, depending on how you perceive them— are incredibly challenging to make. I don’t know of any in the southern Free Kingdoms that’d be capable, and I doubt the Church could afford the expense. They don’t hold onto that sort of money; they donate it. While I assumed the wards were merely durable last night, have you considered..."

  "That someone inside the Church is maintaining them?" I pick up Winston's thought, feeling a knot tighten in my gut.

  “Someone with ” Gelson cuts in, voice utterly bland. “A member of the Church, perhaps. Hard to prove. But is getting in regularly without anyone noticing to do this, or I am missing a crucial clue.”

  “Now that's a whole different mystery. Who in Adamantine's name would want to maintain the wards in secret and steal a box?” Tracer laughs darkly, shaking his head. “Sounds like the circles are just stacking up inside each other, now.”

  “And it's not Helena?” I clarify, meeting Winston's eyes. Was her lie? No, there's no way she's competent enough. No amount of ambition and bullish attitude can replace actual knowledge.

  “I’ve continued supporting her research, but she's nowhere near ward theory to begin with. Enchantments, yes. Wards, absolutely not.” Winston shakes his head.

  I raise an eyebrow at him. Still supporting her? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; doesn’t seem like many people have the ambition to be Mages around here, and Helena means well. The lie doesn’t matter too much.

  Everyone lies.

  He catches my gaze before looking away. “I can't just ignore that kind of ambition, only direct it.”

  Fair enough.

  Tracer steps forward, deftly avoiding my wandering tail. “Well, my lord, this has been enlightening. Didn't even realize those dark corners existed, and it might not even fit into our puzzle. But it's more than we had, and we should probably get going. By your leave?”

  Winston smirks. “Don't let me keep you. I've got meetings, after all. One's with the city council in minutes at most, which has included Priest Dongbaek this week. He’s somewhat displeased with the tax code again...”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Gelson says with an incredible lack of inflection. Her feet speak for her, though— one foot is twitching, tapping, and the other shifts forward as I watch.

  “Come on, then.” I grin, tail sweeping along the ground. Striding past Winston, I clap him on the shoulder and give him a proper smile. “We've a secret to find, and a Mage to hunt. Any theories, Gelson?”

  “,” Gelson practically chirps, which is strange coming from a woman who isn’t even smiling. “I shall have to make a list.”

  Well, that’s exciting.

  both excited about the same thing? Gosh, buckle up. Anyways...

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