Cloak Games: Thief Trap Read online

  “Nadia,” I said. “Nadia Moran.”

  “I am Morvilind,” said the Elf, “an archmage of the Elven nation and a Knight of House Tamirlas, vassal to Lord Tamirlas, the Duke of Milwaukee. You may address me as Lord Morvilind, or as ‘my lord’, as you prefer.” The cold blue eyes seemed to sink into me. “Now, Nadia Moran. Are you ready to follow my commands?”

  I tried to work moisture into my mouth. I was only five years old, but I had the sense that I was about to make an irrevocable choice. Yet I was only five, and I could not articulate my fears.

  Besides. Morvilind could help Russell. That was all that mattered. That was the only thing that could matter.

  “Yes,” I said, “my lord Morvilind.”

  “Good,” said Morvilind. “Let us begin at once. I shall speak with the doctors and secure your release, and I suppose one of my human men-at-arms can take care of the infant. One of the childless ones, I expect.”

  “What?” I said. Morvilind gave me a look that was just short of a glare. “I mean…Lord Morvilind. Won’t Russell be with me?”

  “Of course not,” said Morvilind. “Child, you and I have a great deal of work to do.”

  ###

  I had no idea what Morvilind wanted with me.

  At the time, I guessed he wanted to put me to work in his mansion. When I was a child, there were a lot of cartoons on TV about orphaned girls going to work in an Elven lord’s manor, gaining his approval through hard and industrious work, and then marrying one of the lord’s handsome human men-at-arms. The show usually ended with an epilogue set twenty years later as the protagonist watched with proud eyes as her son joined her lord’s service as a man-at-arms himself, ready to fight for the High Queen’s honor in the paths of the Shadowlands.

  In retrospect, I watched a lot of stupid TV as a child.

  Anyway, that was what I expected. Scrubbing floors, cleaning pots, vacuuming carpets. That sort of thing.

  Instead, two things happened.

  First, before we even left the hospital, a physician visited, and gave me a drug that induced unconsciousness. When I awoke, I had a sharp pain in my chest and back, accompanied by a nasty bruise and a bandage. Morvilind informed me that he had drawn out a vial of heart’s blood, and with his magic he could use that blood to find me anywhere in the world or the Shadowlands if I ran. And with that vial of blood, his magic could kill me from any distance as easily as crushing a cherry in his fist.

  That should demonstrate the overall tone of our relationship.

  Second, Morvilind started teaching me a variety of peculiar things.

  We left Seattle, and he took me to his mansion. As a vassal of the Duke of Milwaukee, he had an estate in a little lakeside town called Shorewood a few miles north of Milwaukee. My parents and Russell and I had lived in a small two-bedroom house in Seattle, and Morvilind’s mansion was so large that it boggled my mind. It was a sprawling pile of marble and glass and wood, built in the Elven style with a fine view of Lake Michigan. I looked at the house with dismay, wondering how long it would take me to scrub all those floors and wash all those windows.

  Instead, I had tutors, some of them human, a few of them Elven.

  In the mornings, I learned things most grade school children would have learned. Math and reading and lessons in English and Chinese and Spanish, the three most common human languages in the United States. I also learned High Elven, the language of government and law, and the use of computers. All the subjects were of a practical or technical nature. No history, no science, no art, no religion.

  Then, in the afternoons and evenings, Morvilind’s tutors taught me things I suspected grade school children in the United States generally did not learn.

  First, there was a great deal of physical training. A hard-bitten man who had the look of a former man-at-arms made me run laps in a gym, over and over again, a little further every day. He also taught me how to lift weights, and made me do sets on days I did not run. Another man taught me self-defense, how to fight with my arms and legs and how to get away from an attack.

  I learned other things. How to break into a computer illegally, whether I sat in front of it or accessed it over the Internet. How to open locks and safes and windows without being detected. How to use security systems, cameras and alarms and the like, and their weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

  There were endless tests. I had to open a lock, or hack a computer, or pick the pocket of a man unseen. There were no grades. If I failed a test, one of the instructors beat me across the shoulders and hands with a leather belt. It never broke the skin or raised welts, but God it hurt. If I failed too many times, Morvilind himself came to see me, and spoke of how disappointed he would be if Russell died of frostfever because of my failures.

  That drove me on.

  I pushed myself endlessly, desperate and frightened. The failures grew fewer and fewer. By the time I turned twelve, I suppose there were few people who knew as much as I had learned about locks and security systems and hacking and traps. More and more, I wondered what Morvilind was training me to become. Some kind of soldier, maybe? That seemed unlikely. The High Queen forbade human women from serving in her armies. A woman’s duty was to birth more sons and daughters for the defense of Earth from the Shadowlands, and a woman who died in battle could not birth children.

  So what did Morvilind want with me? Why go to so much effort?

  At the age of twelve a different set of lessons began.

  Morvilind’s hard-bitten retainers taught me to use weapons. Knives, pepper spray, stun guns, and firearms. As much as I hated my teachers, I really enjoyed shooting. It took discipline and focus and concentration, and there was something deeply satisfying about putting a bullet through a target from forty yards away. Certainly it was much more efficient than fighting with a knife.

  I had another set of teachers. Women, this time, mostly middle-aged. They taught me about clothing and makeup and manners, how to carry myself, how to dress myself. All the things my mother would have taught me, I suppose, had she lived. I hit puberty around that time, and they taught me how to deal with some of adulthood’s messier aspects.

  I didn’t particularly enjoy that.

  And then, to my astonishment, Lord Morvilind himself became one of my teachers.

  “It is time,” he said, standing in the training room in his mansion, looking at the treadmills and weights with disdain. “You were too young to learn the power when we first met. Now that you have entered into what passes for adulthood among humans, you are ready.”

  With those words, he began instructing me in the use of magic.

  His training focused upon the magic of illusion. Spells to create images, spells to alter the minds of others. Later I learned that the High Queen had forbidden humans from learning any kind of magic save that of the four elements, that any human who learned spells of illusion magic or mind magic was subject to summary execution. Morvilind did not share this little detail until later, but once he did, he never shut up about it, harping that if the Inquisition or the archmagi or the Wizards’ Legion or even the Department of Homeland Security learned what I could do, they would kill me on sight. And then, with no need for my services, he would not be obliged to continue his annual spells for Russell’s treatment.

  Needless to say, I never breathed a word about my magic to anyone.

  Nevertheless, I enjoyed learning to wield magic. The power, Morvilind said, came from the Shadowlands, radiated from it the way that heat and light came from the sun. Previously only a trickle had reached Earth, which was why true magic had been so rare in human history prior to the Conquest. After the High Queen and her armies had come, they had breached the barrier around Earth’s umbra, allowing far more magic into the world.

  It was a lot like shooting, really. I needed the same kind of discipline and mental focus to summon and direct the power. I learned basic spells to cloud the minds of others, to make them more favorably disposed to me. I learned to wrap myself in illusion, to dis
guise myself using a spell of Masking.

  But the most powerful spell I learned was the Cloak.

  With the Cloak spell, I could make myself completely invisible, undetectable by the senses or any magical spell. It did have a severe limitation, though – the minute I moved, the spell ended and I would be visible once more. Nevertheless, it was a powerful spell, and I surprised Morvilind by learning in quickly. In time, he told me, I could develop enough skill that I could Cloak myself while I moved, though that would take years of practice.

  The thought thrilled me. I dreamed of having that much power. I wanted enough power that I could cure Russell. I also wanted enough power that I could break free of Morvilind’s tyranny.

  Because at the age of fifteen, after nearly ten years of nonstop training and study and work, I understood what Morvilind wanted of me.

  He wanted me to steal things for him.

  The first job was a bank in Minneapolis. I think it was a test of sort. Using the skills and magic that Morvilind and his retainers had taught me, I accessed the bank, overrode its security systems, stole an ancient golden necklace from a safe deposit box, and escaped without anyone even realizing that a theft had taken place.

  Morvilind was pleased.

  After that, he began giving me new tasks, each one harder than the first. A statue from a museum in Los Angeles. A rare book from the library of Harvard University. An enchanted ring from the mansion of an Elven noble. A computer hard drive from the offices of an art college in Seattle. Bit by bit I realized why Morvilind had trained me.

  Morvilind was greedy. He liked antiquities and art, both from Earth’s history and the history of his homeworld, and he didn’t want to pay for them. So he had trained me as an expert thief. He could use me to steal anything he wanted, and all the risk fell to me. If I screwed up, if I was captured, no one would believe the word of a human thief over an Elven noble archmage.

  Or Morvilind could just use that vial of heart’s blood to kill me.

  And if I was killed, Russell would die.

  So I didn’t screw up. I pushed myself hard, and I was careful. I had some close calls, but I always got away clean.

  When I turned eighteen, Morvilind let me get my own apartment. So long as he had that vial of my blood, he could find me anywhere, kill me anywhere, summon me from anywhere. I asked if I could do some jobs on the side, and he answered that it was no concern of his if I got myself killed and let Russell die of frostfever.

  I started stealing for myself, squirreling away the money. I tried to seek out magical texts, volumes that could increase my power and magical skill.

  I wanted power. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be so powerful that no one could ever hurt me or Russell again.

  Or, at the very least, I wanted to be free of Morvilind.

  I would find a way.

  Somehow.

  ###

  A few days after my twentieth birthday, I felt the summons from Morvilind.

  I was in my apartment. I lived in the basement apartment of an old house in Wauwatosa, one of the suburbs of Milwaukee. My landlord thought I was a student at the nearby medical college. At least, that was what all my paperwork and electronic records said. So long as the rent cleared, I don’t think he cared.

  Specifically, when the summons came, I was hanging from my pull-up bar, working through my second set, sweat drenching my workout shirt and shorts. The magical summons rolled through me in a wave of pain, my muscles going rigid. I caught myself before I hit the floor, and a jolt of pain went through my elbows and shoulders. I let go of the bar, hit the floor with a grunt, and lay down for moment, waiting until my head stopped spinning before I got up again. Morvilind’s magical summons always felt like a kick to the gut.

  At least it hadn’t happened in the middle of a job this time.

  I couldn’t ignore it. If I delayed too much, he would just keep casting the spell, first daily, then hourly, until I obeyed and came to his mansion in Shorewood.

  Best to find out what he wanted from me.

  I took a deep breath and went to get ready. My basement apartment had only one bedroom, but since I never had guests, I had converted the living room and the dining room into a small gym and a workshop, with weights, a treadmill, a computer, and a workbench for my various tools. The bedroom held my other equipment, my clothes, my cosmetics, and most of my bookshelves. My bed was also tucked in there someplace.

  I showered off and dressed in jeans, a black tank top, and sneakers, and tied my hair back into a tail. There was no point in taking any weapons or equipment except for two of my phones. If I brought weapons, at best Morvilind would be amused. At worst, he would be offended and decide to punish me. It was June, which in Wisconsin meant it could get up to ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but I snatched a heavy leather jacket and a helmet with a visor as I left my apartment.

  I needed them for my bike.

  Motorcycles are an impractical vehicle in the Midwest for about a third of the year, but I loved them nonetheless. I loved the speed of them, I loved the power, and the minute I had stolen enough money to afford one, I had gone out and bought a Royal Engines NX-9 motorcycle with a six cylinder engine and a black body with orange highlights. Technically, the dealer called it a “sport bike”, but I didn’t care. It was fast, and when riding it I felt…

  Free, I suppose. I knew it was only an illusion. But the illusion was fun while it lasted.

  Maybe someday I would have the kind of power for real.

  I went to the ramshackle shed that served as my apartment building’s shared garage, started my bike, and headed into traffic. Milwaukee was a big city, with nearly two million people spread out along Lake Michigan. It had once been smaller, or so I’d read, but Chicago had been destroyed during the Conquest.

  I wondered if traffic had been as bad before the Conquest.

  Eventually I worked my way north of the city proper, putting on speed. About an hour’s ride brought me to Morvilind’s estate. I rode through the gates of the grounds and up the long driveway to his mansion. When I had first seen it as a child fifteen years ago, I had thought it looked like a vast pile of glass and marble. Now I thought the Elven style of architecture looked like a peculiar mixture of Imperial Chinese and old Roman designs, with ornamentations on the side that seemed vaguely Celtic but were in fact Elven hieroglyphics. (Evidently the Elves had their own alphabet for day-to-day use, but used hieroglyphs for formal documents and for spell work.) I parked my bike in front of the mansion’s grand doors of red wood, placing my helmet on the seat and draping my jacket over the handlebars. I didn’t worry about someone stealing it. No one would dare to steal from an Elven lord.

  Well. No one except me.

  Morvilind’s butler awaited me at the door, a paunchy middle-aged man named Rusk. He wore the formal garb of a household servant, a long red coat and black trousers, the sleeves adorned with black scrollwork, a golden badge of rank upon his high collar. Even the phone at his belt was in a red and black case.

  “Miss Moran,” rumbled Rusk. He did not approve of me. I didn’t know how much he knew about his master’s business, but he did not like me and considered me a necessary evil in his domain. “Lord Morvilind awaits you in the library. I shall take you there at once.”

  I grinned at him. “No need, Mr. Rusk.” I patted him on the shoulder, and he cringed away as if my hand had been covered in poison. “I know the way. I’ve been here before. Or did you forget? You should really get that checked out. Memory loss is a bad symptom in an older gentleman like yourself.”

  I may have mentioned before that I have a smart mouth.

  “If you will accompany me, Miss Moran,” rumbled Rusk, but I was already walking past him. I heard the butler sigh as he followed me into the depths of Morvilind’s mansion.

  Like most Elven architecture, it was light and airy, with lots of open space and red-painted walls, the wooden floor polished to a mirror sheen. Morvilind had a taste for the art of ancient Earth, and so Roman and E
gyptian and Greek statues stood in niches or upon plinths. Morvilind had also listened to the advice of the experts who had trained me in various illegal skills, and my practiced eye noticed the signs of expensive security systems, small cameras and infrared lasers and pressure plates. I would not have wanted to rob this place, not even with the aid magic.

  Morvilind’s library occupied a large room at the rear of the house, high windows overlooking the bluffs and the endlessly churning waters of Lake Michigan. The floor was white marble, polished and gleaming. Books written in both high Elven hieroglyphics and the common Elven alphabet covered the walls, along with countless volumes on ancient Earth’s history and peoples. An elaborate summoning circle had been carved into slabs of gleaming red marble before the high windows, a design so intricate that my eye could not follow it. I recognized maybe a quarter of the glyphs and symbols and runes in the design. Long tables ran the length of the room, holding books and scrolls and relics. One table held the tools and instruments a wizard needed to create alchemical potions, essentially spells in a bottle. Before the summoning circle itself stood a high table covered with computer equipment, complete with three enormous monitors arrayed in a semicircle.

  Lord Morvilind stood at the table, watching the computer displays. As ever, he wore his black robe with gold trim and the red cloak of an Elven noble. I don’t think I had never seen him wear anything else. The monitor on the left showed a strange language I didn’t recognize. The central monitor scrolled through three different windows of text, while the one on the right displayed what looked like news footage of a party.

  “My lord Morvilind,” said Rusk. “Miss Nadia Moran to see you.”

  “Thank you, Rusk,” said Morvilind in his deep, rasping voice. “You may go.”

  Rusk bowed and strode from the library, and I went to one knee and bowed my head.

  “Lord Morvilind,” I said, keeping my eyes on the gleaming marble floor. For once, I did not make any smart remarks. Morvilind never grew angry if I did. I don’t think I had ever seen him lose his temper. Instead, he simply lifted the crystal vial holding my heart’s blood and inflicted a wave of excruciating pain on me. While I writhed on the floor, he waited patiently and resumed his instructions once I was coherent again.