Captains' Days - Ch. 04

Chapter Four

It had mostly been a quiet month or so since he'd brought Kaya to see the Antiquarian, and he'd done his best to make sure nobody knew that he was snooping around, preparing for whenever the next Captain's Day was, but also making sure he was doing his job, and that he was taking care of Kaya's needs as well.

She'd fallen into the role of spy very naturally, and they worked incredibly well as a team, able to communicate in public without so much as a word spoken or even more than a couple of quick glances. They'd worked hard to keep their communiques and encounters private, but the newness of it all kept both on their toes.

Within the first few weeks, he'd already averted a minor crisis between the Orange Elves and the Orange Wizards, simply because Kaya had been able to pass him some backchannel information that Tommy was able to finagle into both sides getting what they wanted without either side losing face in the matter, and nobody knowing how he got his insight.

That was exactly what he wanted.

Fixing complicated issues and making it look easy.

One of the Orange Wizards, a woman named Katarina Sokolov, had almost laughed at the notion that he might have had a Plunder in the Orange Elves, as the organization was notoriously impenetrable, and so, of course, Tommy had laughed it off with her, pointing out that if he had Plunder with ties to the Kingdom of Avalon, he would've been making much bigger moves, maybe even having eyes on the royal family and their notoriously private inner circle.

Mostly though, Tommy and Kaya went about their daily lives while trying to keep their contact minimal, and generally on neutral grounds, although they'd also done one tryst each in the other's sanctum, so they both felt like all the cards were on the table.

And some forty-two days after Tommy had marched Kaya in to meet the Antiquarian, he'd gotten a request from the Red House of Dragons in England to come out and consult on something Tommy was considered something of a specialist in - enchanted weapons.

When a wizard studied at Vastian, they were encouraged to pick up a deep love of something no one else seemed to take much interest in. As such, Tommy's specialty had been the research of enchanted weaponry, something of a rarity in modern times, as most people had moved into what was called 'fast casting,' the idea of a spell having slightly less efficacy in exchange for requiring little-to-no preparation or items on hand.

While it was true that fast casting was the preferred method for most mages, Tommy had pointed out time and time again there were definite use case scenarios for long-work spells, things prepared well in advance of their use. Merlin, Morgana and Silversmith all had several prepared spells concealed around them at all times, which Tommy took as an indication that it was a form of spellworking that shouldn't be overlooked or forgotten, although most of his fellow students at Vestian had given the subject matter only the most rudimentary of glances. As such, he'd become one of the specialists in the field, and sometimes was called to consult on more exotic spells on more exotic weaponry. He was by no means the definitive expert on the subject matter - how could he be with his age taken into factor? - but he was still one of the best at determining what sort of enchantments were on an item without accidentally setting them off.

His nickname when he was working on such tasks was Unboom.

"We appreciate you coming out to take a look at this, Captain Clarke," a dragon named Percival Burntpillar said to him as they were walking down the tunnel they'd teleported him into. "We're certain it's dragonwork, but none of the current members of the House had anything to do with its creation, and none of us have admitted to recognizing whose work it might have been, so we're a little uncomfortable leaving it lying around where we found it."

"Mmm," Tommy said, glancing at the dragon with a slight smile. He was a little surprised they'd let him into the actual Red House of Dragons, simply because most organizations kept their sanctuaries for members only. That meant something about this particular item had the dragons nervous, and they didn't want to risk one of their own looking into it. Thus, his being called in. "You didn't mention where you found it, specifically."

Percival's human form wasn't much to look at, barely five foot tall, rail thin and pale as ivory, stringy black hair and a dusting of hair atop his upper lip that could only be called a mustache on the most generous of days. Despite the fact that Percival was clearly hundreds of years older than Tommy, Tommy felt very much the elder in the conversation. "We were expanding downward, knocking down walls and digging into the earth to expand for new laboratory space for some of our members and we found an abandoned laboratory that hadn't been touched in at least a few hundred years, so we're certain it was the work of an older member who simply died."

"Are you now?" Tommy said to him, clicking his tongue a little bit. "You don't think it might have been the workshop of someone's Plunder? Maybe someone they wanted to keep nearby? Or, worse still, one of your members was Plunder, and built their Captain a little spy post inside of your sanctum."

Percival bristled in annoyance at the very suggestion. "Dragons do not get caught, Captain Clarke. Not now, not ever," he said. "If you have heard tale of a dragon being Plunder, you should put it out of your mind as a flight of fiction."

"Now Percival, I know that's simply not true," Tommy replied with a charming smile. "While I haven't been allowed to look at the current books, beyond entering my own Plunder, I've seen the historical archives, and while yes, dragons have been captured in fewer numbers than the other tribes, you're also a proportionally smaller tribe, so that makes sense. Still. No one's immune to being Plunder, Percival, and you would do well to keep that in mind, especially if you're working within the sanctum. Now, where's this item you want me to take a look at?"

"Follow me, Captain Clarke."

He'd been brought to the Red Dragon House blindfolded and through both physical and magical means, and he wasn't entirely sure where he was, other than it was somewhere within Europe, and, if he was honest, it was almost assuredly somewhere within Britain. The Dragons were too prideful to keep their home anywhere other than Albion, so he was guessing it was somewhere beneath the Shropshire Hills, west of Birmingham.

Which meant there was probably a bloody castle above his head.

Damn castles.

They headed deeper into the stone catacombs and Tommy could feel the walls closing in around him, even though he'd been invited. There was something uncomfortable about being in the heart of someone else's sanctum, like he was spying on some sort of illicit affair.

The walls were recently carved, the stone showing signs of recent spellwork, fine flecks of glittering in the outskirts of his vision, tiny markings of a caster's stonecraft. Whoever had done the work, it had clearly just been the workman's pass, no finesse or refinement to it, just large-scale workings done to paint the broad picture, to be touched up later.

Whoever had been filling out the shape of the space, it looked as though they had stopped mid-project when they'd come across the alcove that Percival led Tommy to. It was a rat's nest of papers, books, glass vials and jars full of substances that had clearly gone bad at some point during the period of unuse the small lab had been through. Based on the level of dust, the yellowing of the papers and the spoilage of the vials, Tommy guessed this space hadn't been touched by a living soul for the better part of a century, maybe even before World War II.

The space was mostly undisturbed, except for a single solitary box in the center of it that had clearly been opened, as the dust around it had been scattered in a large explosion away from the box itself, as if the box's unearthing had shaken the very space it had lain dormant in for so long. Inside of the box sat a velvet pillow and on top of that pillow rested a long silver dagger, with definite chips in the edge of blade, something that had seen use and not just rested untapped.

"This it?" Tommy asked Percival. "You got all worried about that little thing?" Tommy glanced over at it, and while he could see quite the dormant spellworkings laid into it, they didn't seem anything especially dangerous at first glance. Not that he ever trusted first glances. "That looks mostly like a concealment enchantment, as if it was designed to be snuck past security of some kind. It's good, but it's of its time, and I don't expect it would fool anyone these days. You'd spot it as a magical blade at any checkpoint with even a half-awake guard."

"Come now, Mr. Clarke," a majestic, feminine voice like golden honey said as it approached them from behind. "You were meant to be a specialist in this kind of thing and if this is your only reading on the object in question, I must confess to being somewhat disappointed."

It was Tommy's first chance to lay his eyes on Lady Elise ColdEmbers, and he was not disappointed. For years he'd heard tale of her beauty, but he'd often thought the tales had to be exaggerated. Her human form was described as a brunette Caucasian woman of almost staggering radiance, albeit somewhat older than many mages were accustomed to dragons appearing, looking like a human woman in her mid-to-late forties. The age didn't detract from her luster at all; if anything, it added a more mature and confident layer to her majesty, the minor wrinkles breathing dignity into a face that, had it been much younger, might've been hard to take seriously.

Based on stories he'd heard from other mages, he'd sort of imagined her akin to the actress Elizabeth Hurley, but Elise was much taller than that, a little over six foot tall, much taller than he was, and athletic almost to a fault, muscular without it detracting at all from her femininity. She looked like he imagined that videogame character, Lara Croft, might have looked like, in human form and less polygonal. Her skin was a soft cream, as steeped in her British heritage as she could get it. She had the kind of model-like cheekbones that shapeshifters must have been aping for centuries. Her eyes were a mix of green and brown, the color of deep jade and she had an intensity about her gaze that felt like standing in the single spotlight on stage in a pitch-black theater. He imagined she'd spent lifetimes turning down scouts for people who wanted to use her in advertisements to sell anything, because he imagined ads featuring her would inspire great deals of, well, just about anything.

Elise was wearing what almost looked like a child's idea of a princess dress, gossamer and silk with glitter all over the place, although the darker shades of fabric almost made it look tasteful, if still somewhat punkish, considering the bottom almost looked like a tutu. She was wearing leather thigh-high boots that made a statement all by themselves, and that statement was 'trifle with me at your own peril.' Her dark hair was swept back with a hairband, but still hung down past her majestic, perfect sized breasts that strained just enough against the fabric of the dress's low-cut top to hint at the shape of nipples beneath. Around her neck hung a single pendant, a large, glorious opal in the shape of a teardrop, with an inlay of a monkeypod tree, spread wide over the top half of it, unlike anything found in the British Isles. She wore rings on both hands, though none on the ring finger of her left hand. There were small diamond ropes hanging down from her ears, and her makeup had been done to give her eyes a sort of smokey wonder, drawing a natural glance to them before her décolletage.

Calling her striking would be both an understatement and a gross misuse of the term.

She was deafeningly beautiful.

And yet, Tommy had to keep his game face on.

"That wasn't my analysis for you, Lady ColdEmbers, just for the hired help here," Tommy said, gesturing dismissively at Percival, whose presence had been little more than an annoyance since his arrival. "He seemed determined to toe the party line, that Dragons are great and almighty and powerful, rah rah, all that, without even admitting that y'all called me for help on this particular item, because it's got you all stumped. So, I figured I'd just waste a little bit of time joshing with him until the grown-ups arrived and then we could start talking actual business."

"And now that I'm here, perhaps we could get down to brass tacks, Captain Clarke?" she said as she glanced him over. Her expression was difficult to read, but Tommy would've guessed it as pleased. There was a hint of a smile around the edges of her mouth, and her eyes seemed focused on him. Lady ColdEmbers had a reputation of fraternizing with young mages for only a few years at a time before kicking them to the curb, and Tommy needed to discern if that was just because she hadn't found what she was looking for, or because they aged out of being interesting to her. "I would hate to think you do not live up to your reputation."

"Hold your wings in, m'lady," Tommy chuckled. "The enchantment's a red herring. It's designed to draw attention to it so that the weapon can't be easily smuggled without clueing anyone in as to what it actually does. I'm guessing whoever found the dagger tried to move it, which is why you called me in?"

"What makes you think someone attempted to move it?" Percival asked, scowling in his direction.

"You want to scurry off and let the adults talk, junior?"

"Answer his question to my satisfaction, Captain Clarke, and I will dismiss him," Lady ColdEmbers said to him, chillingly, as if Tommy hadn't quite made his mark yet.

"You've got signs all over the lab that the dagger's been disturbed, and I felt like that was obvious. The dust patterns being blown out from around the dagger's box, the singular set of footprints leading up to, but not away from, the box, that pile of wreckage there with the shape of a human-sized indentation in it... that you, Percy?" The younger dragon looked flustered and annoyed, then spun on one heel and marched past both Tommy and Elise, and headed straight up the stairs, not saying a single word. "He shouldn't be too hard on himself - the distraction enchantment's good enough that I might've missed it wasn't the primary myself if I was in a hurry or otherwise busy. Judging by the auras and the runic work, I'd say you're probably looking at an archivist's blade, something designed to store large amounts of research and information and do so with relative security, since any attempt to move it would result in... well, that. It also would've let the archivist know, who in this case I'm guessing is long dead?"

"We're starting to suspect this was one of the private labs of Gordon the Mad, so yes, dead nearly half a century now," she said, stepping in somewhat closer to him. She smelled vaguely of caramel, one of Tommy's favorite scents on the planet, and he wondered if she was wearing some kind of targeted perfume designed to target the subject's memory and evoke specific smells as a tool to get them to subliminally lower their guard. Even if that was her plan, he had to admit, it was working somewhat. "It's also the reason we brought you in, as we suspect there may be multiple enchantments baked into the object, but I would very much like to gain access to Gordon's notes contained within the blade, and would much prefer it if I could do so without also going mad, as Gordon did."

"Any idea what sent him off the deep end?"

"He opened up a portal at some point and didn't like what he saw on the other side," Elise said as she glanced around the lab behind him. "Never was the same after that. Spent more time hiding in various labs, working on all sorts of bizarre projects, designed to open some doorways and close others."

"Have any idea what portal sent him down the spiral?"

"He would never say, but I am suspecting it might be Vaelrax."

Tommy clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Yeah, that'd probably do it. That place has been a shitstorm for warring factions for three different demonic armies, and they're known to do all sorts of horrific things to one another. Who the hell knows what he saw if he peeked into that world at the wrong time and the wrong place?"

"Whatever it was, it was severe enough that he never recovered from it," she said to him. "I'm hoping there might be some of the intel about what he saw in that knife. But that also means I need to open it carefully and with care to my own personal safety."

"And thus--"

"And thus, you, Thomas."

"Don't call me Thomas, Lady ColdEmbers. You can call me Tommy, you can call me Captain Clarke, but if you start calling me Thomas, I'll start calling you Elsinore, and I don't think you want that."

"Tommy it is then, as long as you knock off that 'Lady ColdEmbers' shite. It's Ellie or Elise, dealer's choice."

"Alright, Elise," Tommy said, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather zip bag. "So, you need the dagger and its contents intact and accessible, yeah? That's the ask?"

"That's the ask."

"And the payment?"

"My dear Tommy, what do you want?"

He smirked and tilted his head to one side. "A five-minute conversation, at the end of which, I give you two options, and you have to take one of them."

She placed a cocky hand on her hip. "That's brazen, even for our line of work, darling."

"I'll make it easier," he said. "Or maybe just sweeten the pot a little bit. One of the two options is to cast a five-minute memory erasure spell on yourself, forgetting the entire conversation."

"And the other?"

Tommy grinned a little bit, giving a little shrug. "Leave a boy a bit of mystery, will you? Otherwise, the conversation will be no fun at all." He glanced at the knife, clicking his tongue a little bit before turning his head back. "Hell, I might even be asking too little, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for a pretty face."

"Oh, I have a pretty face now, do I?"

"You have a pretty everything, Elise, but I'm certain you know that," Tommy teased, flirting right back at her. "You don't get as far as you have in life without knowing exactly which assets to use, when, where and how. It'll be one of the most interesting conversations you've had this century, I guarantee it. I apologize if I'm laying on the mystery a little thick, but I have to make the most of this opportunity."

She adopted a wry smile of her own and she nodded her head. "I appreciate the apology, and yes, you are being rather overly dramatic, but a girl likes a bit of flair in her life. Alright then, a conversation of five minutes, with the option of brain shake afterwards. Now, can you see about the task that's been set before you?"

Tommy rolled his eyes with a little laugh. "Let's get to it." He unzipped his leather bag and took out two small silver rods covered in runes that immediately started to glow, as he frowned a little, his voice taking on the slightest edge of concern. "Well, that ain't good." He moved to set down one rod on either side of the box, watching as the runes started to spark and flicker.

"What does that mean, Tommy?"

"That means the protection magic on this thing is a few orders of magnitude higher than I would've expected it to be, and I have to work quickly," Tommy said, taking out a couple of gold coins, setting them on the sides perpendicular to the two rods. They, too, started sparking in moments and all four relics began to smoke.

"Tommy..."

"I'm working, Elise. Give me just a goddamned minute."

"I would happily give that to you, darling, except your relics looks as though they seem to be catching on fire, and when the flames are green, that's usually a very bad sign..."

"I've got it."

"Do you?"

"I've got it!"

"Do you?"

Tommy's fingertips cut a quick sigil in the air over the box, drawing lines in the space inches above it, leaving afterimages of red in the wake of his motions before the colors and smoke trails started to fade, the sparks dwindling down as the dagger hummed with an uncomfortable blue glow. Tommy let out the breath he realized he'd been holding in. "I said I had it, and if I tell you I have it, you're going to have to learn to trust me in such matters, as crazy it sounds. This is the kind of thing I've gotten good at dealing with." He picked up one of his silver rods and began bouncing it between his hands, finding it much hotter to the touch than expected. Finally he got it flicked into his bag, and then repeated the process for the other rod and both coins, zipping the pouch closed shut once more.

"Are such artefacts normally this dangerous, or do you think Gordon the Mad was simply--" Elise had reached for the blade, and Tommy snapped his own hand out to grab her arm by the wrist, keeping her a few inches from touching it, causing her to stop mid-sentence. "I thought you assured me it was safe."

"No," Tommy said, pulling her hand back slowly. "I assured you I had it handled. In no way, shape or form did I even imply it was safe." He chuckled throatily. "You're so impatient. Like a kid on Christmas morning, determined to open your presents before the grownups have told you it's okay to do so." He tucked the pouch away into his leather satchel and took out a small silver flask, unscrewing the top of it.

"This is hardly the time to be drinking, Tommy, but if you're offering--"

"You definitely don't want to be drinking this stuff, Elise," Tommy said to her, as he tipped the flask over the blade and let a single shimmering drop of metallic-looking fluid, almost like mercury, drip out of it and onto the blade. The liquid hit and a giant puff of orange smoke suddenly billowed in a small mushroom cloud and then was gone moments later. Tommy rescrewed the cap on his flask and squirreled it away once more. "Your friend Gordon didn't just use spellcraft to keep his archive dagger safe - he even poisoned the damn thing. Physical safeguards are something that apparently most people overlook, although I've made it a point not to do such nonsense."

"Now can I touch it?"

"If you like, although be aware, I haven't the slightest idea how to access the archive itself yet, so if you're thinking it'll just open like a book to you, I wouldn't hold your breath," Tommy said to her.

"You needn't worry about that sort of thing, Tommy," Elise said, taking the dagger in her hand with a sort of playful glee writ large upon her face. "I've been searching for this relic for the better part of a century. I know how to get it to reveal to me its secrets." She held the dagger to her eyes for a long moment, as if relishing the very fact that she held it in her hands, before she made the weapon disappear into the ruffles of her dress somewhere, somehow. Whether that was magic or just general trickery of women's clothing, Tommy couldn't be quite sure. "Now then, I do believe I owe you a conversation, but somehow I rather suspect you'd prefer we be somewhere more neutral ground."

"Top of the London Eye?"

"Alright, I can do that," she said, reaching up to pry a bit of existence away, opening a portal to the empty carriage at the top of the London Eye, stepping through, and so Tommy followed. It was the dead of night, so the Eye wasn't moving, and it provided the perfect place for the two of them to have a conversation. "Alright, Captain Clarke, you have both my attention and my interest." She sat down on the big center bench while Tommy stood before her.

He inhaled a deep breath and started to launch in on his pitch. "Friction between the factions has been at something of an all-time high recently, Elise. Would you agree?"

Elise's face blossomed into a wicked smile, one that almost made Tommy feel a little uncomfortable. "So, the prophecy is true, then, is it, Captain Clarke?"

"What prophecy?"

"The one stating that you were eventually going to put together the Second Great Confederacy, a group that would cross tribes and geography, to form an allegiance to the group before any of the factions, and to the world before the group," Elise said, crossing her arms below her chest, making her cleavage perch up to draw his eyes to it. "It's a fairly obscure prophecy, but I have found the source to be quite reliable, and it did state it wouldn't begin until you became Captain."

"What's the source?"

"Gordon the Mad."

Tommy smirked and tilted his head a little bit. "You fuckin' with me, Elise?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, darling," she said, giving him a saucy little wink. "You are asking if I would join your little cabal, then, I'm guessing?"

"There's more to it than that, but that's a good starting point, and it skips me having to get into the weeds too much. You said the Second Great Confederacy? What was the first one?"

Elise tilted her head in surprise. "You haven't heard? I thought you must have found a tale of it that wasn't so clouded in the mythology."

"What mythology?"

"The first one was called Camelot," Elise said with a smirk. "But they were one of everything - a dragon, a faerie, a human wizard, a vampire, an elf, a werewolf and a shade."

"King Arthur?"

"He was Arthur Pendragon, it's rather a giveaway, don't you think?" Elise licked her lips. "Are we all going to be play partners, like the original Camelot?"

"Easy there, Empress Nympho, don't put the horses ahead of the cart," Tommy said. "I am putting together a new group that's going to be one of everything, but as part of it, everyone will be Plunder to me, so you'll all have those basic protections. In exchange, however, we're all going to be under the same effects of a singular, unifying spell, keeping us on equal footing."

"Which does what?"

"None of us will be able to lie to each other."

Elise puffed up her cheeks and then let out a heavy breath of air. "That's a rather tall ask you're making there, Tommy. How many people are in your cabal as of right now?"

"Other than me? Just the one, but I'm preplanning, so that when the next Captain's Day hits, I can 'capture' two or three more people, and then bring them into the Antiquarian, to get them in the books as Plunder."

"Not being a Captain, I'm a bit unfamiliar with the Plunder process," Elise said, uncrossing her arms and placing her hands behind her, leaning back on the bench, as if trying to distract him by putting her gorgeous form on display, inviting him to have a look at her plentiful tits without judgment. "Are the benefits of being official Plunder that significant?"

"That and moreso, Elise. They would make it very hard for other dragons to turn on you without ample proof, and one false accusation, and it all goes up in smoke. And even if they're right, it just removes you from your House. You'd still be alive."

"Who else is with you?"

Tommy shook his head, a wry smirk crossing his face. "Nope. You get that information when you're in and not a moment sooner."

"I've agreed to letting you wipe this whole conversation from my mind if I don't agree to your terms, Tommy. You could hint."

"I'd rather not."

"Just a little?"

"It's an elf in line to the throne of Avalon."

Elise giggled a little bit, rolling her eyes before making a frustrated pouting noise. "Ugh! It's Kaya, isn't it? Told that saucy little minx that I was going to get you into my bed, and she beat me to it. I'm going to have to make sure she regrets playing with my emotions."

"Elise, focus. I'm neither confirming nor--"

She waved her hand in the air, as if she was already over it. "I'm certain it's her, so let's move on," Elise said. "Assuming I'm going to be onboard, I want to have some input on who the rest of our cabal is going to be."

"Of course, you--"

"Specifically, I don't want Hugo Wapole as part of it."

That gave Tommy a moment's pause. Wapole had been on his and Kaya's shortlist and crossing him right out so early would need justification. "Why not? And I'm going to need an actual reason here, beyond 'I just don't like him.'"

"Nothing so petty as that," Elise said. "He won't agree to your truth spell, and he's likely to rat you out even if you approach him. No, you will need a better fae option."

"We will need a better fae option," Tommy said. "If you're in, that is."

"Promise me that Hugo's out, and I'll be in."

"Everyone in the Cabal has to unanimously agree before we bring on new members, so if you're in, you got here first, and your refusal to let him in will stand."

"Then we can manage."

"And you'll agree to the honesty spell?" he asked her.

"I will, with one final caveat."

"What's that?"

"You, she and I? We're going to fuck. Regularly."

Tommy's grin broadened comfortable and wide. "I can get behind that."

"Not for our first time, darling. I'll be on top."

"Oh yeah?"

"A girl's got a reputation to protect."