Crash and Grab [Carina]

[Aurin]

Carina's Home
22nd Searing, 123 of Steel

"...so tell me the plan," he said, exhaling narcotic fumes.

Aurin had cleared his schedule when he received her coy little letter, then vaulted to a safe house in Zaichaer. His memories of Gel'Grandal were vivid enough, and he had had his sembling trick when he was there, but Valencia opened him a portal all the same. Said he would be stupid to take an unnecessary risk. So he dropped off some packages to various people, shared drinks and information with Dornkirks and a Kampfer, and then made his way through the portal to the imperial capital.

It had been years, but he was able to track Carina down without too much effort. He arrived faster than a return letter would have, no doubt.

And he was going to fill her in on what was going on with the covens in Zaichaer (and in Kalzasi now that he had helped many of them migrate), but he had brought some of her favorite treats from Kalzasi and she was always a pleasure before business type of girl.

Carina had intimated that she had exciting prospects for him - or for them - and while he wouldn't make any final decisions while under the influence, he didn't mind relaxing far from his responsibilities while they caught up on the latest and discussed opportunities.

After one more hit, he passed the spliff along to her and repeated himself.

"Tell me your great master plan for robbing the Emperor of Geleria."

He laughed because it was incredibly audacious, but he wasn't going to dismiss it out of hand. They were Railrunners and this was exactly their gig. If they managed to crash and grab, he could have things moved out of the Imperium and off to whoever was buying.

He paused and looked around.

"Where's Imogen?"

[Carina]

.

Carina had been working when Aurin came to the door of her office. Carefully stowed away in a chest in the corner were the blankets and padding she set down to sleep on the floor, still hidden when he showed. She could have easily afforded a separate apartment, but having to keep track of two places was an excess amount of stress on the paranoid girl. On her desk was a smattering of tools, something to engrave the lorestone with, a tool to write, many sheets of spell paper. A magnifying glass was elevated above her desk, and she had been carving into the minor lorestone with exploratory glyphs — testing out an idea she had.

She was surprised to see Aurin's aura at the door when she pinged the newly carved lorestone node on her desk. She had received no return letter, but there was a lingering of traversion on his aura and that explained his quick visit.

Now they were smoking and she was sitting on the floor despite multiple open chairs, feeling like she had said too much already. It didn't matter. A fellow Railrunner — now that he was a Railrunner — wouldn't rat her out, and he surely did not have any allegiance to the emperor.

"There's always these rumors. Any governmental power will have a myriad of secret artifacts, right? Sometimes people like to speculate." She shrugged and took a hit. "I've already broken into the OIR and left unscathed. I can get into the Palace of Spires if I am able to study it long enough." She was deadly serious but she laughed just a bit, fully confident in herself. "I can get into anywhere if I take my time, and I have all the time in the world." She handed back the spliff to Aurin and rolled her shoulders. "Serious. I have half the city mapped in here." She tapped her temple. "Guard walking patterns. Safes. Unlocked doors."

At the question of Imogen, Carina shrugged. "She's in Ecith. Doing fine. I don't know when she's going to come to the Imperium, but I hope soon. I saw her last Frost, but Grandal and Orks don't get along well."

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[Aurin]

It had just seemed wiser to come in person, and now he had established a way to reach the Imperium's capital instantaneously, which could certainly come in handy. As for what she had planned, he nodded along as he listened, but figured if this was to get off the ground, it would take quite a bit of planning. Her sembling was as strong as his, and he knew her to have had longer standing with the Railrunners than he did. He knew she was clever, but he didn't know if she had the thieving chops. Perhaps that was why she had - wisely - contacted him. Breaking and entering wasn't his bread and butter, but it had been at times.

Long legs splayed out along the floor, he peered at his toes, wriggling them. He chuckled. Toes were funny.

Then he squinted thoughtfully at her, hazel eyes a bit red-rimmed.

"Sure, sure, sure," he slurred. They were as safe as they were going to get in Gel'Grandal here, so he wasn't quite so stringent with himself, wasn't carefully limiting his intake while pretending to feel something. "Every head of state is going to have some treasures, magical or otherwise. So, I guess, you're wantin' to case the palace, locate the vaults, and... figure whatever we find is gonna be valuable? Surely would be. Ahh... but is there anything in particular you're after? Or just... whatever's mobile? And like... they've got to be warded against our tricks, no?"

He wasn't against the idea, but he was sure as shit going to play devil's advocate until her plan was tempered unto a razor's edge. Risk had to be calculated and he had to be sure of her plan's high chance at success.

"I'm just sayin'... you want to know as much as you can know before you make a move. No suicide missions." He laughed. Then he remembered Imogen.

"Wait, aren't you fuckin'?"

[Carina]

.

"Our tricks," She made a wide gesture with her hand as if to indicate Railrunners as a whole. "But not my tricks." Carina had done her fair share of breaking and entering, but it was all small. Breaking into a locked storage room in a department store. Stealing files from cabinets and desks, rummaging through medicine cabinets. She had yet to attempt to crack a safe, for instance, but she knew how to open a safe normally, and her semblance-laden aether was adept enough at minute details she felt with some practice she could do that, too.

It was a fool's errand to break into the Guild of Coins, of course. Avenna was a goddess, but the Emperor was a man. She just had no idea what was in the Palace of Spires. The buildings it was comprised of were massive, and there would be no chance she was there long enough to inspect every door and window and ward without overstepping. That was where lorestone dragonshards came in, runed and small. She needed stronger dragonshards, but not necessarily bigger ones. Ones that she could slide into place and allow them to record everything for a week or so.

She was playing with her own hair on the floor, pulling up pieces and letting them fall onto her face. "My plan, first... I need a lot of dragonshards. The best quality I can find. I need to get good at scrivening, or find a runeforger I can work with..." She already had a laundry list of expectations, but for this heist, it could be worth it, no? "Make them small and near invisible to an aetheric eye. Bury and hide them on the land of the palace of spires. Soak up the aura."

Carina sat up, reached for a dragonshard placed on the edge of her desk, and touched it. The network of dragonshards she had hidden throughout the building echoed back to her, filing in auras from the top of the three story building to the bottom. An unfiltered flood of information came back, but at a quick glance, nothing had changed enough to raise any suspicions.

"Me and Imogen?" She asked, her eyes widened just a touch. "No, I think we're just... friends...?" On some level she knew exactly what Imogen felt about her, and what she felt about Imogen, and they had matching rings. It still felt more complicated than it should have.

"Step one of my plan, I think, is to get some high quality— superior, I think — dragonshards, and prepare them to read the aura of everything. Get near to the Palace of Spires to place them, hide them, and case the joint magically. Then go from there." She changed the subject back to her half-thought plan. To find superior dragonshards was the first part, but they could surely acquire them with their connections. Finding someone capable of making a few items capable of surveiling the entire palace was another issue, but not impossible to solve.

The hardest part of the "first step" would be placing them.

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[Aurin]

"Huh."

As she explained her plan, his mind moved toward solutions to challenges, albeit a bit sluggishly due to the pungent smoke in his lungs. When there was a lull in her talk, he found that he was nodding and didn't know how long he had been nodding. It was, apparently, time for him to chime in.

"As long as you don't need illumite, lunicite, or something ridiculously rare, I can get you dragonshards. And... yeah, high quality lorestones can get expensive, but uh... I do have a runeforger in my back pocket so if you give me one to reference, I can probably get him to reverse-engineer 'em, and maybe even make 'em better than what you already have. Just going to need to know exactly how many you need... I'll probably see if I can get blue prints of the palace... or at least what's publicly available. He might as' questions about how much space we're talking... how much time we're talkin'..."

Aurin rubbed his nose.

"And we'll have to have a way to get 'em out, too. Because if the Spires are too dangerous to crack, we don't wanna just... lose the investment we make in these things. Speakin' of investment, how much seed money have you got?" It seemed like enough of an idea that he would pony up some money, but he didn't know if Carina wanted him to be her sugar daddy here.

He wondered if Imogen wanted a sugar daddy...

Was Ansel her sugar daddy...?

Fuck, what were they talking about again?

[Carina]

.

"I don't know if there's any blueprints publicly available..." Carina teetered off. "I think I just need mnem...memno... lorestones. The ones that can store information. That'll get us all the blueprint we need if I can get my hands on it and imprint my magic on it with a runeforger. I'd like to be involved a bit, since I've worked out how to use Semblance just right..."

"You know next season is the Games." Carina ignored the question about money. She didn't have a lot of money. "Best and brightest of the Imperial Legion compete with each other. Which means the best and brightest of the Imperial Legion aren't at home."

"I don't know when, exactly. It'll be all over everything when they're happening, though. And before. I think that's when our goal should be, at least to plant the dragonshards. You know? It'll take a while to prepare them anyway."

"It's a bit harder to plan anything before we know what we're working with, but I can figure out how to get into and out of the grounds without, you know, being seen by every Kathar and Inquisitor in the empire. Or at least get some leads on it. In a way that we can do it again when we need to get the dragonshards back, you know?"

Carina contorted to crack her back and made an annoyed groan. "It's been too long since I danced. I try to keep up with stretches but without a company it's damn hard to keep up." She sighed. "I'm a registered notary here in Gel'Grandal now. It's so boring that no one thinks about me at all." Which was the ideal, and just how she liked things to go. She rubbed the back of her neck.

"I know some Inquisitors, too. Some that don't care too much, but they're not really associated with the Palace of Spires as much. Still," she trailed off.

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[Aurin]

Aurin nodded.

He assumed that any blueprints he might be able to acquire would be incomplete. No sovereign would want all their secret passages and hidey-holes made available to public record. But it would give them at least an incomplete map, the which they could correct once the lorestones were collected, assuming they worked. They certainly could work. Carina's idea had merit (as well as the obvious audacity), and Aurin had the utmost faith in Torin's genius to enchant things.

"Hm."

The Games gave them a bit of a timeline. It wasn't the longest of long games, but that did give them time to plan and prepare. He considered while watching her contort her young body a bit; it was supple, but ached. He could understand that. He had managed to survive to thirty, and while he could still outrun most law enforcement, there were more repercussions now.

"A fair amount of Pfenning folks are in Kalzasi now. Got 'em blended into the Golden Peacock company as best I could. A few blamed Kalzasi for whatever the fuck happened to the sky, managed to send some letters of introduction to other theatrical outfits around Karnor." He sighed. "Anyway, you can always practice in Kalzasi. That said, can you vault there directly...? Or do you need me to open you a portal? I can get you there to show your rocks to the runeforger, and you can do your pole dancing while you're having your Kalzasern holiday."

He said pole dancing. He meant dancing at the barre. Asshole.

"Any corruptible Inquisitors?" he asked, then took another hit. "Open to bribes? Open to seduction...?" His grin was wicked, but he had watched the courtesans at work for years. Mists, he had watched his mad mother charm men while slipping the slenderest of blades between their ribs, dead before their minds acknowledged any pain. In any case, he was also Myshalarai now, and it would take a master sembler with insane luck to see through his best work.

"Any corruptible people in finance, even? I could think about opening a satellite for my side hustle here. Give me an in on the Imperium."

[Carina]

.

"Hmm..." Carina mused, digging her brain for the logistics of travelling to Kalzasi just to dance. She could audition for the Imperial ballet, but the Golden Peacock was an easy in, even if it just meant to keep herself up to snuff. And it was an excuse, even a weird one, for frequent travel to Karnor. Imogen could also be in Kalzasi normally, while it was difficult for her to creep around the Imperium, even under a Carina-mirrored guise.

"I might be able to make it to Kalzasi. I just haven't tried to vault that far, but I don't think it's impossible... but I'd have to stay a few days before I left. Overstepping and all." Carina was careful about her aether reserves, to her detriment. She didn't push herself when she felt herself close to the brink, and she decorated herself in aetherites — earrings, coat buttons — so that she could use their aether to power her spells if she wasn't sure about it herself. Losing control was terrifying.

She tried to keep herself together.

Carina reached across her desk as far as she could reach and pulled a carton of cigarettes towards her with the tips of her fingers, a matchbook resting on top. She lit a cigarette and offered one and the matchbook to Aurin. She took a drag. "Your runeforger is good? We need one of the best in the business for this." She asked, but it felt a given. She hoped Aurin had good judgement in people, because that reflected well on herself. She refrained from her usual habit of digging through someone's aura aggressively at this moment. He was a sembler too, and just as good as her, at least — he could present anything he wanted and she wouldn't be able to tell the difference at first glance.

"I think my Inquisitorial friends do not swear as much fealty to the Emperor as they should." As for finance... there was that one guy who chased her through the OIR, but she couldn't remember his name, or his face, or much about him at all. She tried to avoid the pencil pushers in the Imperium because they liked to keep more records than she was comfortable with. Zaichaer didn't care — you had to come to them. It felt like every cafe in the Imperium sent your order to be filed away with how massive their archives were in so many of their buildings.

"No one in finance. They're strict about it, and taxes, but I think paying taxes is more important than following the rest of the laws. Their tax office is bigger than their police station."

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[Aurin]

Aurin nodded slowly; he had always been cautious with his tricks - to the point where he still thought of them as magic tricks even as he had become rather powerful with them. Having not been truly educated in their use, though, he seemed to have been able to do things merely because he hadn't been told he couldn't. But in all likelihood, he would pass out here, and then spend a couple of days casing Gel'Grandal and renewing his reserves before he vaulted back to Kalzasi; the trip here had been done in parts, but now he felt confident he could make it back in one go.

Thankfully, he kept a little reserve in a dragonshard, as well. Her own jewelry was functional as well as decorative. He gave another nod, though he was just acknowledging them to himself.

"Oh, the runeforger is better than the pidge prince of Skyforge," he assured her.

It was good to know she had Inquisitorial connections, but he didn't feel the need to make contact with any of them. While he could wear a glamour and shield his aura, it would just be another risk; better nobody know of their connection. Then it would be more difficult to tie them together in case anyone was investigating the dream-eyed dancer who certainly wasn't a local.

His laugh was rough from the narcotic smoke.

"Ah, taxes. The greatest con game of all time. Well, do make sure you're meticulous about yours. We all have our cover jobs. Don't give them any reason to give you more than a passing glance." Unless she was trying to get laid, but he didn't say that out loud. At least, he didn't think he had said that out loud; sometimes things slipped out when intoxicated. But keeping the Golden Peacock in the black had given him a solid cover, as well as a new network to exploit at need.

[Carina]

.

"Better?" She had very little knowledge of Talon's runeforging skill, just that he was, apparently, a runeforger. A magic for the wealthy, but if Aurin knew a runeforger who could do the job, she would not question it further. And although trust was always a dangerous gambit with those of Aurin's ilk, She trusted him as far as his ability to judge a person and their skill, and enough to tell him of this treasonous plan; trust was a currency Carina knew the value of quite well. But to contrast, Carina did not know so much about runeforging to suddenly decide that someone's work was not to her standards. Even as a talented Sembler, she couldn't quite discern the finer nuances of work like that, especially as it was in progress.

"I am always meticulous." Or Carina tried to be, as difficult as it could be. She kept track of income, even from illegal activities, if under a different name. She had more than one identity now in the Imperium, but that didn't matter as she intended to pay under her real name, now that she had a real business and real registration. "I've even transcribed for the government hearings on occasion, so you know I've got a real good gig."

"Do you pay your taxes? Are they as careful with bookkeeping in Kalzasi?" Despite her frequent travels there, she'd never had to deal with the realities of being a local. "I heard it has some Zaichaeri refugees now. Some Coven, too. Perhaps I will not be so out of place anymore."

Kalzasi had always been a bit kaleidoscopic in terms of who called it home, but even so, being Zaichaeri had always made her feel like a standout among the denizens. The animosity between the two city states had always given her an innate, hard to shake sort of paranoia- especially when she spoke, because her accent was muddled and obvious unless she spoke Synskrit, which seemed to hide it better than her common.

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