tkworld B5 Chapter 553: Common Thievery, pt. 1
B5 Chapter 553: Common Thievery, pt. 1
Kaius planted his hands on the dining room table of their suite, roving across the papers that were scattered across its surface. With Lyren giving them the address, it had been simple to scope out Kanmost’s house — breaking in wouldn’t be.
A day and a half of planning, and they were almost ready to strike.
It was a simple, middle-class dwelling. A thin, three-story terraced house that was set back from the street by a small, fenced in courtyard. It had nothing in particular to differentiate it from the thousands of others just like it in the city. The street it was on wasn’t exactly a bustling shopping district, but there was an inn across the road. That meant a steady flow of people moving past, sometimes late at night.
Lyren’s floor plans weren’t to scale, but he doubted she’d manage to completely forget where the rooms were, so he assumed they could be trusted. According to her, the spare room where Kanmost had stashed his notes was on the third floor. Unfortunately, it was an interior room butting on a shared wall, so they couldn’t just slip through the window.
The place was well defended too. Guards out front, inside, and on the roof. More, potentially. They weren’t stupid enough to simply walk past the place and scope it out, they were far too distinctive of a group for that. However, Kanmost’s house was close to a hilly park that had a brilliant view of the front of the building — at least for those with strong Ocular Skills.
Kaius settled on a rough sketch they’d made of the front of the building, with red blotches by the front door, the roof, and a window on the second floor.
A few of the guards that worked the night shift smoke. The glows of their pipes had been obvious from even a quarter league away. Hanging out of the window, it had been easy to spot them chatting with the guards below them. It happened damn near every hour — and they often left the window open when they left.
Their entry point? He was torn — it was a way in without breaking any locks that might potentially tip off the guards, but they could just as easily use their actual conversation as a distraction. They tended to chat for a good ten minutes at a time, and he swore he could have seen some of the watchers on the roof listening in in their boredom.
After weeks of no leads, and nothing happening at Kanmost’s house, they had to be getting distracted.
Kaius tapped the sketch of the window he was thinking about. “So, what do we think? Use the smokers to create some sort of attraction? Ianmus could put one of the guards to sleep with Whispering Lullaby — if we could engineer them getting caught by an officer, the yelling would certainly pull attention.”
Kenva frowned, shifting in her chair. “Too risky. It’d only help if we were trying to come in from the back, but we have almost no idea how thoroughly it is guarded.”
“Couldn’t get a good angle from the rooftops?” Kaius asked.
Only a few hours ago, Kenva had done her best to get an angle on the rear of the building — but it had been hard with guards on the roof. Getting close put her at far too much risk of being spotted, and there were few good excuses for skulking on the rooftops near a crime scene.
“Not really — but I did spot something else. The inn across the street; I'm pretty sure there are guards watching from a room on the top floor. I caught them looking through the shutters far too consistently for it to be simple curiosity.”
A problem, but they would manage — just had to find the right distraction. A shame they couldn’t just use Ianmus’s Witching Hour keyseal. Even if they were inclined for a direct smash and grab, his mass confusion spell — Sermon of Iniq — could lead to injuries to the common people caught in its effects. Not to mention a glowing magical circle made him stand out like a sore thumb and would blow their cover.
Hiding their identities was just as important as getting Kanmost’s notebooks. Lord Flowers had made it extremely clear that there would be repercussions if they were caught involving themselves in this matter, and directly ransacking the man’s house under the nose of the guard would certainly be provocative.
“Well, whatever we decide on, it’ll just have to be you and Kenva who make the actual approach. Ianmus and I are too distinctive and lack any useful skills for actually sneaking in. Maybe Ianmus and I can work on occupying the guards somehow, and we can coordinate through our bond?”
“I’ll see if the receptionist can get me some makeup — darkening my hair to brown and hiding my complexion will go a long way to stopping me from being recognizable at a glance,” Kenva added.
A fair and reasonable point; he would need to hide the glyphs on his temples too.
Regardless, iIt seemed like a fair division of responsibilities to him — now they just had to figure out how they were going to pull it off.
…
Kaius pressed himself flat against the alley wall, feeling the chill of the layered brick soak into his back. It was a cold night, far more so than anything he’d experienced in the last week. A sign of autumn, if it hadn’t been obvious enough from the yellowing leaves of the tree that partially obscured his view of Kanmost’s roof.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Peering through the vines that covered the mouth of the alley way, Kaius watched two guards with truncheons belted on their waist stalk back and forth on the man's roof. Below them, an open window on the second floor, and another pair of guards standing by the front gate.
One of them wrapped their arms around themselves, crudely shielding themselves from the chill. They gripped tighter when a breeze kicked up, a few bits of stray leaf litter kicked up to gust high.
He watched them closely, his heart pounding away in his chest. Planning a heist left him nervous — he felt naked without his armour, and every jagged corner of the brick wall behind him jabbed like the point of a knife.
“How long until Porkchop and Ianmus are in position?” Kenva said silently through their rings, her voice sounding clear as day all the same. She was in the alley across the street from him, ready and waiting to move.
Kaius shrugged slightly. “Won’t be too long, I didn’t want to distract them, considering all the complications they’d be dealing with.”
The rest of his team weren’t far, just a few blocks down the road, hidden in an alley much the same as him. Their plan for a distraction was… inspired, if Kaius said so himself. A lot could go wrong with it, but at the same time, it was the only thing he could think of that wouldn’t give away that someone was trying to break in.
If it didn’t work, they could simply try again tomorrow night.
Still didn’t mean he liked waiting — hopefully they would capture that damned cat soon.
Another gust blew through the street, kicking up more leaves, more than one settling on a nearby roof. They were getting more frequent — a good thing, since it was the perfect cover for Kenva’s Leaf on the Wind. She would be their infiltrator, having both the stats and the skills to best avoid discovery.
His job was to stay close enough that they could stay in contact the whole time, and, if necessary, provide another distraction so she could escape.
“Someone close that damned window! Bloody freezing in here,” someone yelled from within the house. It was faint, but with his enhanced senses Kaius could hear it despite the distance and obstacles, just as he could a dozen other quiet conversations from the inn just a few buildings away.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” someone replied.
Kaius’s heart lurched as he watched a figure wander in front of the window, sliding it down with a soft thunk.
Rotten bloody roots, that had been their way in. He clenched his jaw, teeth grinding together. Fuck.
“Kaius?” Kenva whispered. “What’s happening?”
“Can’t use the window, they just shut it,”
“Do we call off Porkchop and Ianmus? The wind’s getting worse, and I doubt that I’ll be able to sneak past the guards while they’re actively smoking.”
They couldn’t — he had to find her another way in. They’d already burned more than a day scoping the house out. The longer they waited, the worse their chances of actually finding Kanmost alive were — and the more likely it would be that someone else would find the man's journals hidden in his wall.
As he wracked his brain, one of the guards by the front gate frowned up at the closed window.
“Lucky bastards,” the man grumbled.
His partner shrugged. “Not like they can light the fires, and the place is drafty as hell. I doubt they’re much better off than we are.”
“The man had blankets and shit, didn’t he? It’s bloody freezing, and that wind is cutting right through me. Why don’t we just pop into the cloak room and grab a couple — no one would ever know.”
Kaius’s quickly rising hope that Kenva might be able to slip right through the front door was dashed when the other guard snorted.
“No way — you heard the sergeant, any tampering with the scene and it’ll be a week of no pay. Not bloody worth it.”
“Come on, man, they wouldn’t know,” the other guard begged, vigorously rubbing his arms.
“Nah, ain’t doin it. You heard it as well as I did, they need it the same for them, don’t they? Bet they’ll be able to tell some things off, and who did it too. Or did ya think there was no reason the boss won’t even light a damned fire?”
That seemed to be enough for the other guard to drop it, but Kaius couldn’t help that the man’s words stuck with him.
Auguries. He hadn’t realised the guard used techniques like that. Why hadn’t they found any leads for Kanmost yet, then? Why wait? Either the technique wasn’t all that effective, or they had chosen not to look too hard into the man’s disappearance.
His suspicions about Lord Flowers grew. Maybe they weren’t just trying to protect whatever ruin the archivist might have found.
Sliding his eyes upwards, Kaius settled on the wide chimney stack in the centre of the roof, a dozen strides or so behind the guards who watched from up high. Unlike the rest of the street, it lay cold and dead, without the tell-tale trails of smoke drifting towards the stars above.
Could it be their way in? Kenva had fit through a tight gap when they’d been chasing after the golden ceratin larvae beneath Deadacre. Should they even use it if they could? According to the rough floor plan they’d used, the only room with a fire was a central lounge on the ground floor of the building. Without any way to see in, they had no way of knowing if there would be guards waiting for her. If Kenva was forced to fight, it would be a tall ask for her to disable them in complete silence without causing any real harm. They were just doing their jobs, after all.
Nor would Kenva be able to check with the soulsight that Farseer gave her. Its range was far too short — by the time she could check, she’d be halfway down the chimney.
Still, what other option did they have?
“Think you could fit through the chimney?”
Kenva didn’t hesitate. “Of course, it’s not that narrow — I just hope that I won’t end up covered in soot once I cancel my skill. It’s not particularly subtle if I track black footprints through the building.”
That was just a risk they would have to deal with.
Right on queue, Porkchop mentally prodded him. “The cat is secured.”
Perfect — now they just needed to wait for the wind to pick up a bit more, and they could get this job underway.