Pain rolled through her expression. Because she understood the same thing I did—all ways led directly through Stavros.
She took a deep breath. “Fine, then. An assault on a creepy sanitarium run by hundreds of Department mages, it is!” she said with a grimness that didn't befit the exclamation. “William, send everything we have. Ren is on the run, forces arrayed against her, checkpoints set up on all ports—”
Dagfinn rubbed his hands together. Asafa cracked his knuckles.
“—and her magic the most recognizable in the world now, with one of her companion's just a hair behind. Sounds great!”
I cringed at her tone.
Olivia pinned Constantine with her most intense gaze, and her expression morphed into something almost like worry when he said nothing. She looked at me and I slowly shook my head again at the question there.
Her gaze switched harshly to Axer. “Don't let us down, Dare.”
“I'm not one of your minions, Price.”
“Excellent. I've been told I can't kill those.”
Chapter Sixteen: Plotting
On the clock as we were, it took us most of the morning to gather information and start to prep.
A large topographical hologram splayed around us. Axer methodically shifted it smaller and larger, while walking around it.
“Mountain fortress. Guarded by five ward fields. Mostly meant to keep people in rather than out.”
“Because no one in their right mind would go there unless someone made them,” someone groused.
Axer reached over and tapped the schematic. “But easily accessible by non-magic means. They have a sophisticated notification system, but if we can start in the interior of the first field, we’ll have no problem manually scaling the mountain. Entering the facility isn’t the problem, leaving it quietly is.”
I stared at the path he was drawing with his finger up the lengthy side of a steep cliff. “Easily? What in the world do you think that word means?”
“You'll be fine.”
“You've been looking at this schematic for like, zero minutes,” I said. He had looked over everything, lightning-fast, and zoned in on the maddest entry route, then moved onto interior defenses and blueprints. “Maybe, you know, maybe there's another way in that doesn’t involve our bodies being scraped from the valley below.”
“There are lots of ways in,” he said with a small smile. “The door from the east, with its hundred-warded security, would take the three of us about an hour to crack, but we’d already have two dozen guards on us and the alarms raised by minute two. The tunnel from the sixth basement level, is a possibility, but it is protected by a magic generator that would attach and subdue us. We could get around it with the proper preparations—precautions that would take us a minimum of two days to create.”
His finger pulled down the schematic. “The loading docks have half a dozen points of entry, but are highly secured and actively monitored by three different towers. Their sole job is monitoring authorizations. Guards are constantly looking for unauthorized people and shipments coming through. They have defenses specifically made to target Port Mages, and your magic is too comparable to take that chance. We could get past the electrical substations with little trouble on the third shift change in twenty hours, but that leaves us too little leeway on time.”
His finger stopped and tapped the first path again. “This route takes the least amount of time and magic. Both of which we can’t afford to waste. I won’t let you fall.”
Everyone was silent around us.
We had figured out how to get simulated holograms working again for a limited time, by linking through the worms I had brought with me to populate the city. Of all the things I would have thought to use, worms weren’t even in the top hundred on the list.
Axer had picked one up during the discussion on reinvigorating communications and Dagfinn had gone silent, then nodded reluctantly.
“Worms leave trails in the earth,” was all Dagfinn had said before he’d gotten the system up and running.
It never paid to forget that Axer was an elite combat mage, and what that meant for the quickness of his mind and decision-making skills.
“Did you just...seriously glean all of that from the schematics in ten minutes?” Patrick asked, voice subdued.
The smiled slipped from Axer’s face and he was looking at Patrick like he did pretty much anyone who wasn’t in his intimate group. “Yes.”
“All of that—”
“Infiltration training and commercial warding aren’t exactly non-standard arts. Crelussa isn’t a military campaign that will take weeks to plan and put in place. How do you think we fight on the field?” Axer answered, somewhat impatiently, when the others still looked doubtful. “By sitting down and strategizing? You either train yourself to notice openings quickly, to pinpoint all the exits and threats, or you die painfully, repeatedly. Disemboweling curses are love taps in training.”
No one said anything, then a muttered, “And you say I’m the dark one.”
“You want to debate military campaign strategies,” Axer said, piercing Patrick with his gaze. “Then start looking at how to get around triple-weave security. Because I guarantee we will run into it down the line.”
I stared at the mountain path again. “Magic carpet?” I asked hopefully.
He flicked a finger against my unbound wrist, making the magic beneath ripple. “Too much magic.”
I grimaced.
“How do we get to Crelussa from here?” I searched my knowledge of travel and layer magic. Getting inside the first field would probably be as easy as letting Constantine have at it, but getting to the site required travel, and we were strapped by time and secrecy. A new portal pad was out, even though Will had two more.
“Priority Five is still being hotly debated, but the Department has most layer transportation locked down and your signatures have been entered into the system as Class Five felons.” Will looked regretful. “Ports won’t work. And the bounty...”
“Right. Everyone is looking for us. People smarter than us, too.”
Will straightened. “I wouldn't go that far.”
“People with more experience.”
He blew out a breath. “People with setups already in place. Give us a few years and we'll be unstoppable. But right now, we are still in Bandit beta mode. Our devices, wards, and machinations work, but we have holes everywhere—especially in security and cloaking.”
“We have Alexander Dare.” I thumbed at him.
“And his magic is being tracked as hard as yours is,” Olivia said pointedly. “He has amassed quite a following in a short amount of time who want to be the ones to say they brought him down.”
I looked at Axer, whose eyes glittered in anticipation. I grimaced. “Great.”
“I feel crushed that no one is directly after me,” Constantine said laconically. “I’ll have to try harder.”
Olivia looked at him without humor. “You’ve got your own personal fan club of a type that makes it worse. Ren has the government, Dare has the adrenaline junkies, and you have the bounty hunters.”