Kingdom of Scourge and Shadow (The Sightstone Series #1)

Chapter Forty: Zoya

"It is said that, when he forged the necklace for his wife, Sankt Aleksandr imbued it with the power to sway hearts and souls to Sankta Evgenia's cause, to entrance them with her beauty, and to bewitch the mind."

-from the Spiritiy Sanctiy, Vol. 1 of the Saroviyan Scriptures

***

 The day of the heist dawned freezing cold and foggy, unsurprising given that Allerstad was slowly creeping towards winter. But Zoya didn't mind. The dense, thick, coal smoke-laced fog hid her better even than the night.

Last night, safely ensconced in Jan's office, the five of them had gone over the plan one last time, and now, as the city began to wake up, they were all in position, waiting for Jan's signal. Aleksei and Natalie were waiting in a rented room in a fancy hotel across the canal from the collection of embassies, both dressed to the nines, while Jan and Max waited in a far less auspicious hiding place–the freezing outdoor terrace of a nearby cafe where they had a good line of sight on the embassy, and where Jan's signal could be seen from Natalie and Aleksei's hiding place, and from Zoya's.

For her part, Zoya was crouched on the roof of a department store, directly behind the Saroviyan embassy, perfectly placed to begin the first phase of the heist when Jan gave the signal. When she was in position, she used a shard of mirror to reflect the weak rays of sun, sending barely noticeable flashes of light up into the air to let the others know she was ready and waiting.

A similar response flashed from a balcony on the fourth floor of the Hotel Ambassade, followed swiftly by a response from the terrace of the Waterkant restaurant–a single flash, its meaning clear. Wait.

Zoya peered through the mist and the smog at the embassy, keeping a particularly careful watch on the balconies. The last thing she wanted was for some diplomat to fancy a smoke right when she needed to sneak in.

She didn't need to watch for the flash of Jan's mirror; it wasn't his signal. They'd wanted a diversion, so Jan had arranged one, and that would be her cue to scramble up the wall and into the embassy through a balcony door. Until the signal came, she had nothing left to do but double check the pouch of poisons and drugs at her waist and make sure her favorite knife was still hanging at her waist.

And then, from far off, she heard it. A strange rumbling sound. It drew nearer and then she heard raised voices, shouting for help. Jan's plan had initially involved several Specters getting people worked up and starting a riot or a protest or something, but people were too unpredictable to manipulate into doing whatever they needed them to do, so he'd reassessed.

Now, the plan involved about a half-dozen Specters, a rather large ice wagon that was perhaps slightly overloaded, a pair of excitable cobb horses, and a tame Healer who'd been happy to make a beefy Specter named Klaas look as though he'd just been run over. The screaming, Zoya knew, would be his "pregnant wife," Liese, who was actually a very talented con artist with a piece of foam stuffed up her shirt.

If she and Klaas–and the two Specters playing the drivers of the ice wagon, plus the two people they'd hidden in the crowd to help stir things up–did their jobs right, all attention would be focused on them. She heard running footsteps and the frantic neighing of the two cobbs, and then more voices were added to the cacophony. Several people burst out the embassy doors and swarmed towards the noise, including several mages in Healers' green. A moment later, a man went running back in and reemerged with several mages in the red jackets of Inventors, presumably to help safely lift the wagon off poor Klaas.

Zoya smiled grimly. So far, so good. Everything was playing out exactly as planned. Klaas and Liese's hysterics had thinned the number of mages in the embassy by almost a dozen. Good. Less for Zoya and the others to worry about.