58. The Society of Night (IV) (Patreon)

Shadows

It was fortunate that our survival class had moved to the forested hills of Alhred Island, because otherwise I'd have been spending far too much time in the dark…

Twice a week, I acted as Philo's assistant in the garden, learning about all of the plants with alchemical and medical uses, as well as a little bit about how to help the plants grow. With the right combination of alchemy, artifice, and magecraft, you could get over a year's yield out of a plot in less than a month - artificed growth-stakes to draw mana into the soil, alchemical all-growth to keep the soil from becoming exhausted, and botanical magic to help the plants absorb the nutrients and mana you were basically force-feeding them. On top of that were the pesticides, temperatics, and humidics to keep pests at bay and make each plant 'think' it was in the right season of the right environ for growth. I only barely understood the craft, but I could follow directions and I could invigorate the growth-stakes all night long.

Then, another two nights a week, I ran gambits with the Society of Night. We ran our operations across all of second shift (ten at night until two in the morning). It was recommended that we take a nap after suppertime to be ready for the night's antics, but I've never needed much sleep, and so I never did. We took to the roofs, the back streets, and the tunnels in about equal measure - the three staples of getting around a large city like Floria unseen, more one than another depending on the night's gambit. The two main tasks for us newbies were mapping the area we'd been sent to explore and finding (and/or stealing) things. For instance, we might be tasked with mapping out a section of the sewers and/or catacombs (there was considerable overlap between the two), finding a special object therein, and returning it to one of the Greycloaks in charge of the night's missions.

"I don't want laundry detail again," I said. Laundry detail after our nightly gambits was always a hassle because you had to collect everybody's mission darks, clean them, and get them back within twenty-four hours smelling like the day they were spun. Fortunately, it was still the responsibility of the outfit's owner to see to any rips, tears, or scuffs. In any case, given how often we were in sewers or trash-mucked back-alleys, the outfits were often ripe with sweat, sewage, trash, and even more unmentionable things.

Mailyn sat next to me in the dark. "Welp… we're going to have it," she said.

It wasn't that Mailyn and I were the worst - in fact, we were probably number two and three among the five neophytes in our 'Night crew', but Aldo was an emphatic number one and, seeing as how Mailyn and I always teamed up, he paired up with Ramses, who was just competent enough not to bring Aldo down. That left Nima, who was competent but less so than Mailyn and Myself. She got paired with a slightly-older girl who wasn't eligible for laundry detail, and so if Nima got last place than either Mailyn or myself would get laundry detail. It was more companionable to let her get third place and take last place for ourselves - at least Mailyn and I could commiserate one another in our drudgery.

"Maybe laundry detail isn't so bad," I said. "We could wash our own clothes at the same time…"

"You're going to wash your own clothes in a soapy vat with a bunch of kids' nasty mission clothes?"

"Hells no," I said. "I mean… we could wash our mission clothes and our regular clothes separately at the same time. We'd be the cleanest."

"Maybe," Mailyn mumbled, but I could tell she wasn't buying it, either.

Our latest mission had been to map a section of catacombs and find and return the old stone idol that had been placed there by one of the Greycloaks. Mailyn and I had split up mapping duties and then converged on the hidden central hallway that Mailyn had been able to see through the grating in one of the hallways she'd scouted. I'd been hopeful that we might actually get first and second place, since we would have heard it if somebody else had opened the great door with its growling gears and stone-upon-stone grinding. We'd proceeded inside and found the idol upon an altar - a somber stone head, like the ones said to dot the isle of Lerutania, carved out of black scoria with octavo-sized yellow crystals in its gaping eye sockets. We'd checked for traps - and there had been some - carefully disarmed them, and then proceeded toward the altar, when Aldo darted in from out of nowhere and yanked the idol.

There'd also been a trap on the altar, of course, and it triggered with a flash and a bang, temporarily stunning the both of us as Aldo dashed off into the darkness, cackling with laughter. Once I'd regained my feet, I'd started after him, but Mailyn held me back - I had even odds with Aldo over short distances, but there was no way I was catching him with a five-second head start. Instead, we sat next to one another in the cool darkness, coming to peace with the fact that we'd be on laundry detail yet again.

"Maybe laundry detail isn't so bad," Mailyn said eventually. "I grew up on a farm, and one of my first chores was laundry. Five years old, and I did the laundry for all my brothers and sisters. I had to heat up a big cauldron of water over the hearth, bring it up to a boil, and then dump the clothes in along with a chunk of lye soap. I'd stir it for an hour and then, when the cauldron was cool enough to handle, I'd dump the water, scrub everything down on a wooden rack, and then rinse the lye out with clean water. I just did it the once a week, but my hands were raw every time. Probably took me four hours. What we do at the Collegium's a luxury."

Indeed, while the laundry facilities for the residence halls weren't pleasant, they were undoubtedly efficient. The tubs were all artificed so that any Sneak could heat them to a simmer, the soap was the powerful alchemical sort - three or four drops for the whole tub, everything was stirred about automatically by gears attached to the waterwheel, and there was a centrifugal press that would dry everything to mildly damp once you were done. From there, you dumped everything into the bowl of an enormous rock filter and mixed them around until it sucked the remaining moisture out. All told, a load of laundry took about an hour from first pour to dry, and the only concession was that you were busy for about forty-five minutes of that time.

"Even if you only got paid two tollos per week, that's more than five octavos per year," I observed.

"When you're poor, it doesn't work like that," Mailyn said. "You're lucky enough to see your finances through to next month, let alone next year. Mostly, you feed and house yourself and then see what other essentials you can afford after that. You find out pretty quickly that some essentials aren't so essential."

"But you are essential," I said. I gave her hand a squeeze.

"I know that," she said, but I knew she liked to be reassured, so I'd said it anyway.

"I've been stopping by the Asunist temple again. Just once a week for services and supper," I told her. It was going to come out eventually, so I might as well come clean while we were bonding in the dark.

Mailyn shifted, propping herself up on her elbow so her body pressed against mine, warm in the cool underground. "Really?" She sounded a bit disappointed in me - I'd expected that. "After they tried to tie you up in criminal stuff and then ship you off to South Turia?"

"I mean… they wanted to make me a princess, Mai. Can you imagine? And, if you ever tell Aria that, I swear I'll have my royal guards execute you." That made Mailyn giggle. After a moment, I continued. "Anyway, it's not like that. I'm not doing jobs for them, just helping with services and talking over supper afterward. I've been talking about the Collegium to them, and all the other guilds, and they say they'll try to get some Selenite kids into the guilds here… I mean, it's to train them to work in New Selen, but since that probably won't ever happen, it's a good thing. And we talked with this one guy who's going to try to get in touch with my family! If he can, then-"

Mailyn shushed me, her cool palm over my mouth. In the distance, I heard Nima and her partner passing the hidden hallway for what had to be the third time. "I know it has to be around here somewhere!" she said in the distance - because you couldn't finish the exercise until you had the whole complex mapped.

"She's going to find us eventually," I sighed.

"Or maybe she'll just give up… uh… hmm…" Mailyn said. We'd been sitting in absolute darkness in hopes that Nima wouldn't find us, but now Mailyn cast a tiny globe of fire above her palm, barely illuminating the floor around us. With a quick intake of breath, she presented the little, smooth stone she'd just found on the floor.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked.

Mailyn nodded. "It's one of the eyes of the idol…"

"It must've come loose when Aldo set off the last trap."

Mailyn grinned before pulling her mask back down. "That means we've still got a chance!"

The sound of our raised voices finally Alerted Nima, who came barging in with her partner. "You?!" she shouted - it wasn't clear whether it was an accusation or a question.

"Gotta go," I said. I grabbed Mailyn's hand, and we rushed past the pair and out of the secret passageway, dropping in and out of the Shadelands as we zipped through now-familiar territory and out into the night.

The pink moon hung, half-full, in the sky, the pale moon nowhere to be seen. Thunder rumbled in the distance, brooding out over the sea but not yet sweeping inland. We soon lost Nima and… I want to say Norma was the name of her partner, but I honestly never bothered to remember it… we lost them in the maze of back-alleys as we navigated toward the pagoda near the All Nation's Market in the heart of the Foreign Canton. The place was abandoned after sundown, except for when we trespassed in it for our Society purposes - in a way, the whole city was our meeting place. We approached the small group under the pagoda with our maps.

Aldo and Ramses sat nearby, relaxing on the bamboo benches and looking very smug, indeed. "Better luck next time," Aldo said.

"No hard feelings," I said sweetly. I handed my map to Aria. "Boss, may I please see the idol?"

Aria's eyes narrowed with skepticism. "I suppose…" But she was the Greycloak and had nothing to lose whatever transpired, so she passed the idol to me. The stone was cool and rough and lighter than I'd have thought, a somewhat abstract likeness of a long-faced man that came across as silent and stern. "It's not much to look at."

"Oh, I know. I saw it before Aldo snatched it away from me… only it's not really the whole idol, is it? Mailyn?" Mailyn flipped the crystal to me and I slid it into the eye socket with a push of my thumb - a perfect fit. "There! Here you go, boss - one competition idol."

Chuckling, Aria accepted the idol back. "The current standings are Vix and Mailyn in first and second place and Aldo and Ramses in third and forth," she stated. "You'll have to draw lots to see who has laundry detail with Nima."

"What?" Aldo snapped. "How's that fair? I was faster than them, wasn't I?"

"That's 'what, boss' to you, and it's not a race, Sneak, it's a competition. You were faster and they were smarter, and sometimes brains beats quicks. And I've decided that you get detail for annoying me."

"But… but I never done laundry detail…"

"Then how do you know you won't like it? Maybe laundry detail isn't so bad?"

Aldo shot me a pleading look. "Is it, Mai? Vix?"

Just then, the other two thirds of our crew tromped into the pagoda, finished with their own exercises. They were wet up to their knees and smelled distinctly of the sewer. Mailyn and I shared a look.

Mai gave Aldo a meaningful pat on the shoulder. "Brother, I'm sure you'll have tons of fun," she chuckled.