Warding qi wrapped the cargo boat in giant cobwebs as it wound up the channel. Guards shuffled about on the deck, scowling at nothing and everything. Looking straight on. People seldom remembered to look up, even those paid to pay attention. And even if they looked, what’d they see? Specks of dust and smoke and ash floating about! Nothing to worry their precious little heads on.

So maybe one of the specks was a little bigger. And if you squinted maybe you could make out some prickly dots at the bottom of it. If you really listened—was that a buzzing noise? But then it’d wafted overhead, straight through the wards, settling over the mounds of crates, passing clear out of mind.

Or so Sun hoped.

She gasped. The cloaking had held up. She was here! Now—she scanned the crates. She needed one with an air hole, somewhere to squeeze in—there! She buzzed in. Figures.

There was a plant in here, hairy spiky thing.

She transformed back, keeping the cloaking drawn tight. She took a moment’s pause, waiting for an explosion of alarms, or for soldiers to come pouring our of nowhere. Nothing.

She did a happy little dance. Then she got out a knife, cut a leaf off the plant, and tasted it. She wasn’t even really hungry—it was more on principle than anything.

She wrinkled her nose. Awful! Whatever it was she was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be eaten. Maybe it was poisonous. I mean—if I’m about to die anyways…

Now for the tough bit.

She got out the vampire poison vial. It was hot purple and it gurgled menacingly at her. Her hand was trembling as she got out the syringe and drew the liquid in. She had to simulate a vampire’s bite. So needle.

She held it now, and boy was that a big fucking needle! The light caught it just right—it twinkled at the tip, like it was winking at her.

Deep breaths, in and out. She thought about stabbing it—injecting it—easy in, easy out. Pinch, push, done. Simple! She closed her eyes, mimed it in her mind, ran imagined it done again and again. It was a trick Gerard said to do. She’d said, “I get really anxious!” And he’d said something like, ‘Oh, blah blah tome of psychology says imagining a thing desensitizes yourself to it!’ So now here she was. Imagining. Because try as she might she was having a great deal of trouble convincing her fingers to suck it up and inject the thing.

…

This is dumb.

If anything she was even more scared now.

She opened her eyes.

…Had that needle gotten an inch bigger?

“Royal Palace! Two hundred strides!” yelled a voice from outside.

Ah, shit.

She had to be dead by then.

“You can do this,” she whispered. “C’mon!”

The liquid gurgled at her. “Oh, screw you too.”

The boat chugged closer…

She dredged up Grandpa Wukong’s scowling face. What would he say if he was here? Little Ninth. Frozen again. And he’d sigh. How… disappointing. But what else can you expect from a weakling pissing herself in a cave, too fearful to stand and fight with her family? The rest of us are dead, so that you may live—you, Sun the glutton, Sun the wastrel. You, who least deserves it!” Fake-Grandpa barked a laugh. Truly the Multiverse has a sense of humor—

She jabbed it in and pressed down in one smooth hard motion.

A beat.

“…Owww….” she whimpered.

Then she blacked out.

***

She woke up bleary-eyed. Her ears were bleary too. Everything seemed soft and mushy. Her tongue was horribly dry.

She’d died. And now she was alive.

…Huh. It was, as resurrections went, thoroughly underwhelming. She rubbed her eyes, squinting, and the world resolved. She was still in the crate. Her plant friend was still there. But there was very little light filtering through the air-hole now, and what air wafted in was stale.

I’m in! Yes!

Then a pain shot up her arm, and she winced. Oww…

Her skin was mottled. Half-painted, streaks of white streaking up it like cracks up the surface of a frozen lake. Shit—the antidote. She yanked the vial out of her Ring and swallowed it in two gulps.

Thank Heavens the cracks instantly shrank back. In less than ten breaths she felt almost normal, save for a dull ache up her arm where she’d stabbed in the needle. Why had she gone so damned hard?

She shrank down to beetle-form again, and out the air hole she went.

And instantly came face-to-face with a guard, which was such a nasty shock it almost stopped her little beetle heart then and there. They made eye contact. A bored-looking lizardman with a spear, tonguing his gums.

He moved past like he hadn’t even seen her.

Probably because he hadn’t. She’d made eye contact with him, but she was a beetle! A black beetle in shadows. And her Interspatial Ring, worn around her like a belt, was matte black with no shine to it.

You’d think with all of the harrowing life-threatening shit she got up to she’d be used to this sort of thing, but whenever she was mid-job she always felt like a kettle filled with water just a few degrees from boiling. It was very unpleasant.

She resolved to get out of here as quick as she could. Up she went, to the corner of the storage room she’d seen drawn on the maps. The same maps to the floor plans to the palace she’d stolen weeks earlier. This barge hadn’t been sent with the highest caliber goods. These were the auction’s appetizers. The highest caliber goods were shipped out weeks in advance and had oodles more defenses, sealed in a room so airtight it might as well be in an alternate dimension.

This one was still connected to the vents.

And the vents—down an L-shaped lightless metal path—were connected to the wardroom.

It was warded, she saw, when she got there. But her cloaking was now at the 30th transformation, and she was tiny! Those with Wukong Blood were the best pretenders in all the Multiverse. Grandpa got to Top 2 in the Multiverse and most of it was off concealment and distraction. It was a rare sort of creature that could get into the wardroom of the Royal Palace of Ur. To go this route they’d need to both have cloaking abilities of a very high caliber and the ability to resize to be very small at will. Sun felt the Royal Palace could cut themselves some slack. She grinned—as much as a beetle could grin, anyways. It was an even rarer sort of creature that was ready for her.

That was when she noticed it.

Her eyes popped. As much as a beetle’s eyes could pop, anyways.

Oh…. My….

Fuck!

That’s a lot.

She sensed in the distance a writhing mass of qi. She shouldn’t have been able to. The rooms were insulated, and so were the walls—she couldn’t sense almost anything past these vents. But that mass still stood out stark, the way the hazy outline of a volcanic eruption still shone through thick cloud cover. She started counting and quickly lost track. So many layers of wards it was mind-bending. And stationed outside, faint but there, peak Empyrean auras…

That was the room with all the true treasures.

…

Well, she sure was glad that was Dorian’s problem to deal with!

Her job was almost done. She slipped into the wardroom.

***

“What’s taking her so long?” said Dorian.

Just then, Gerard patted his suit pocket and pulled out a conch shell glowing softly. “What lucky timing. This is her now. With good news, I’m sure—”

He held up the conch to his ear. His expression froze.

There was a long pause. And Dorian saw the blood start to drain from Gerard’s face.

“What is it? Has she been caught?” “That was not Sun. Sir—”

Dorian’s own suit pocket grew warm. At the same time, he and Gerard pulled a second set of shells out of their pockets.

“It’s done!” This was Sun. “I’ve put in the ward breakers. You’re good to go. Oh—and Dorian! I found the treasure vault. It’s a real piece of work. There’s like a dozen layers of wards on this thing. Plus a small army of guards outside.”

Dorian whistled. “That is a piece of work.”

“You’ll have to do one Hell of an ass pull. See you soon!”

It went dead.

“Sir!” Gerard grabbed him by the shoulders with uncharacteristic intensity. It felt like he was snatched in the claws of some giant bird of prey.

“Yes?”

“We must leave. Now!” He leaned in. “Jez knows you’re here. He suspects you have designs on the auction. We cannot enter that palace! It’s there he plans to spring his trap in full…and I fear we’ve already been drawn in.”

For a second Dorian’s mouth hung half-open. He snapped it shut.

“You’re sure about this.”

“It was Fate that told me.”

“…Fuck.”

Now that he cast a second glance about the city center—at the suspiciously well-defended city center, bursting with Empyrean guards—he saw just how many were positioned near the exits. Ready to cut off any route of escape. They had fenced off the public, letting no-one in or out. Waiting like the open jaws of a beast trap.

Waiting, but not moving in. Yet.

But they know I’m here. All they’re waiting for is a signal.

“What shall I do?” whispered Gerard. “I stand at the ready, sir. Say the word and I shall detonate all of the plants at once. We can carve a bloody path out of this city.”

A hunger shadowed Gerard’s face now. His pupils were startlingly small.

“Hold on…” said Dorian, kneading his forehead. “Let me think.”

Suddenly it was like he’d been slapped awake. His mind had been swimming in Heist plans; it felt like whiplash trying to wade out of it and into this steaming mess. He frowned, eyes darting, soaking in the whole of the city center, the scope of the problem. And what a Hell of a problem it was!

If ever there was a time for one Hell of an ass pull, this is it!

There were a few major issues with blowing their way out of here, straight-up.

When Dorian had suggested it initially he hadn’t expected the majority of Ur’s most elite fighters to be bunched in striking range. Making a mad dash for it now could be suicidal.

And then there was the small matter of Sun’s being stuck in the Royal Palace. His soul contract forbade betraying her. Would this count? The mere thought was making his soul prickle with tension. Not a good sign.

And then there was still a tiny, wheedling, utterly absurd voice in his head lamenting that—nevermind his own survival being in incredible jeopardy!—he was forced to scuttle his Heist plans. How many millennia Kinzo’s Elixirs would’ve saved him! So close... Gah! It wasn’t like he’d be able to get through that vault in the palace anyways—

He gasped.

“We may also try sneaking out,” Gerard was saying. “They’ve sealed off the exits, but—”

“Gerard,” Dorian said softly. “I have a spectacularly stupid idea. And I need you to listen to me very carefully.”