“Well, it was like the sort of stuff you’d use on Saint Kalton’s Night.”
“Saint Kalton’s Night?” Elyse asked, jumping into the conversation.
“It’s a local tradition in Brakith,” I answered. “Everyone dresses up like ghosts and ghouls and monsters and gets rat-assed drunk. You should come to one of our Saint Kalton’s Night festivals; it’s quite the party. Anyway, Anna, I’m pretty sure I know why my uncle’s courtier was buying that kind of makeup.”
“It was most curious,” Anna said, “and he was very secretive about it. He told me not to tell a soul he came in regularly and paid me a very generous bribe to keep my mouth shut about it, but I’d never keep any secrets from you, Vance, no matter how much anyone paid me.”
Anna batted her eyes at me, her lips slightly parted with unabashed desire. Elyse observed this and rolled her eyes, folding her arms across her chest and huffing. As amusing as it was to watch, I didn’t have time for cattiness right now, so I ignored both of them and pressed on with my questions.
“Well, I’m glad to know that your loyalty to me has remained so steadfast over the years. I need to get a hold of this Beauty Mirror. How easily I’ll be able to do that will depend on how much information you can give me about this Millicent character. The more, the better, obviously.”
Anna proceeded to spend the next five minutes giving me a wagon-load of details about Millicent: where her shop was, what she looked like, what her hours were, where she lived. It seemed that she’d been planning on stealing back the mirror herself, judging from all the info she had gathered. And, knowing what Anna had been capable of as a kid, I didn’t doubt that she was able to do it. However, considering the “image overhaul” she’d done since those days, I guessed that she didn’t want to break a nail or get a scratch on her knee by climbing down someone’s chimney or breaking a window or two.
“All right,” I said when she was done, “well, it looks like it’ll be an easy enough job, considering she lives in a country villa outside the walls of Brakith. It’ll make getting to her a lot easier. You’re absolutely certain she has the mirror?”
“Without outright admitting to it, she’s practically flaunted the fact that she has it every single time we’ve talked,” Anna said, “and that red-haired cow loves rubbing my face in the fact that I can’t prove it was her. Oh, I’m sure she’s got it all right. She has been using it to charm some of my wealthiest customers away from my store, and to charm men half her age into her bed.”
“Don’t you worry, Anna,” I said. “I’ll use some of my assassin skills—uh, not to kill her obviously, just to sneak into her place—and I’ll get that mirror back. Then you’ll be the one rubbing the fact that you own it again in her face. Just make sure you lock it up good and proper next time, so whatever second-rate burglar she hires next can’t lift it so easily from you.”
“Thank you, Vance. Thank you so much!”
Anna charged forward and flung her arms around me in an eager embrace, but when she pressed her slim but busty torso against my chest, there was more than mere gratitude in the way she hugged me. She held onto me far longer than she should have, and I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed the feeling of her tight body pressed against mine. My, my, how she had blossomed indeed. When Elyse coughed rather loudly, with more than a hint of annoyance, I broke off the embrace.
“Well, there’s no time to waste. It’s getting dark, and I do my best work when the sun is down.”
“I bet you do,” Anna remarked, smiling lasciviously and batting her eyes at me.
Elyse emitted an angry humph, while I simply chuckled.
“Come and dine with us in the camp, Anna,” I said. “I’ll head over to Millicent’s right after we’re done eating, and I guarantee that when I return, I’ll have that mirror with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After we’d eaten and done some catching up around the campfire, I set off on my burglary mission with Rami and a few skeletons. Rami was the only person in my party with enough skill in the art of stealth to be of any use in a burglary, and the skeletons, who could sense the presence of enemies or danger without the need to see or hear, would prove useful as lookouts.
When we arrived at Millicent’s villa, we found that the old dame was pretty security-conscious, which was not much of a surprise; thieves were often paranoid about other thieves coming to take their shit.
The villa was surrounded by a high wall, and we circled the woods around the perimeter, looking for any weak spots. There were none unfortunately. The gate was large and imposing and was guarded by a pair of private guards in full plate armor. I could have taken them out easily enough, but they were just regular guys doing a job to put food on the table, and it wouldn’t exactly be very just of me to kill them when I had the option not to.
The walls were at least 15 feet high at the lowest point and had been plastered over with very smooth plaster, which made climbing them pretty much impossible without a set of climbing claws, which neither of us had. A ladder, however, would do the trick easily enough, and the way I saw it, we had an undead “ladder” with us, just waiting to be used. The only problem was that even with my skeletons standing on each other’s shoulders, only one person would be able to go over the wall because the other would have to serve as a rung in the improvized ladder. I decided that I would rather go into the
