She’d talked him out of the sherwani he’d originally suggested, mostly because that would make the two of them stick out as exotic. She wanted to be fabulously rich today, but only memorable for money.

  It was a fine line.

  So she’d gone for a floor-length skirt with two petticoats and plenty of swirl. Dead-grass brown, too bright to be tan or taupe. Half-jacket blazer with vertical lines in bronze that made her look taller, plus heels she didn’t generally wear, as they almost got her to Fin’s height. All the better to hide in plain sight.

  She’d even gone old school and put on a bonnet, pulling her hair up and doing her makeup in a severe way that made her look a decade older and possessed of a religious fervor of the type you frequently got in some of the smaller places in Hawkswold. Some folks came out here to escape religious persecution. Or at least the sorts of state-led things that Lorastir or Zaddinul still practiced.

  It was a character. She was exceptional at those sorts of things.

  Leagrove was two steps up from many such places on the Periphery. Nothing about the city of eighteen thousand people she’d looked up inspired her. Not as crude as Weinsefeld Docks. Not as sophisticated as Weinsefeld City. Likely the peak of civilization for this planet, but Tessa hadn’t had a high opinion of things, and Abigail had chosen not to let anyone know she was on the planet.

  It had been a personal vacation, of sorts. She supposed that it still was.

  If robbing a bank counted.

  “You have an unnaturally evil grin on your face, wife,” Fin muttered.

  Abigail flashed it at him, then turned back into a sober and serious housefrau.

  “I’m not supposed to be having this much fun committing crime,” she muttered back. “Rather goes against most of the things I was trained in, as you know.”

  He nodded, his own grin subdued.

  “In my perfect world, it would entirely unnecessary,” he replied. “For now, it is a thing, and still better than staying home in Inleah counting interest statements while slowly suffering from entropy, like my parents.”

  “Are you ever going home?” she asked.

  They’d talked about it, but never in much detail. Of course, they’d never pretended to be husband and wife in public, either.

  “They’d hate Tessa,” he said. “She’d hate them. Someone would end up in the hospital. Someone else would end up in jail. Better this way. I live in fear that something happens to my father, may he live for a thousand years, and I find out that they didn’t write me out of the will, wherein I’m expected to handle all that money myself.”

  Abigail nodded. She had a pretty good idea how much money Torcall Barton was worth, having been bored enough to look up a few things when she’d first met Fin and Tessa, before hiring them to squire her around Hawkswold.

  Fin really didn’t belong out here, except that all he wanted in life was to be in love with Tessa and fly.

  This was the place for that.

  So she walked on his arm, having a ball not being the utter center of attention she usually was when people knew who she was. And what she did for a living.

  In places, the sidewalks were wooden boardwalks, but as they got closer to the bank from the rough starfield at the outskirts of town, dirt streets transitioned to cobblestone, then asphalt. Sidewalks became concrete, with the occasional tree in a planter space.

  Folks transitioned as well, from the rough and tumble spacers and the folks who preyed on them, to the ones that preyed on those. Middlemen. Merchants. Even bankers, though Leagrove was still primitive that way, with more churches than banks.

  Fin would be able to bamboozle any of them. She was just along to help his disguise.

  Maybe she needed to make Wyatt clean up and squire her around town occasionally on some of the worlds they visited. She’d been so busy being her that she forgot to take days off.

  And have fun.

  They approached the imaginatively named Second Bank of Leagrove. Nice enough place. Concrete walls that would keep the interior cool on hot days, though it might be a bear to keep warm if there was a meter of snow on the ground outside.

  Two stories above ground, with small, barred windows at ground floor to let light into a basement level. Security looked professional enough, though Abigail knew that even Fin was a better expert on that sort of thing.

  Her job was to memorize everything, so she could recall precise details for Wyatt later. Steps. Heights. Directions. Colors.

  She’d be able to map everything easily when she got back to the ship.

  Fin stiffened as they approached the door, and a stranger was suddenly leading her in.

  The guard had seen them approaching, and pulled the door open with a polite-if-slightly-frightened nod.

  Fin’s scowl was something she would have expected from Tessa on a bad day. She supposed she was seeing Torcall Barton, were she to ever travel back to Inleah to meet the man in the flesh.

  Certainly, folks inside the bank came to sharp attention when he entered, one demure wife walking delicately on his arm, head mostly down.

  A man behind a nearby desk rose immediately and stepped around to meet them in the middle of the wide, polished marble floor.

  “How may I be of assistance, sir?” he asked politely.

  She felt Fin size him up like a cutlet. The silence dangled like a man on a gibbet.

  “I suppose that we’ll be spending some time on Leagrove,” Fin-as-Torcall announced in a dreary voice on the verge of being pissed at all the things. “It thus behooves us to open an account locally, that we might be able to deal with local merchants without having to carry large amounts of cash. Or be forced to walk about the town with a small mob of armed killers to keep folks at bay.”

  Just the way he said it caused the temperature in here to drop three degrees. Abigail watched folks twitch. She controlled hers, but that was a lot of training.

  “Certainly, sir,” the man said. “Would I be acceptable to assist you, or should I conduct you directly to the bank president?”

  Now Fin was studying with the same emotion one might have when looking at something the cat threw up on an expensive rug.

  “You’ll probably end up having to ask permission to do certain things,” Fin replied drolly. “Let us skip the intervening steps.”

  “Quite right, sir,” the man bowed now. “If you would care to follow me?”

  Abigail noted that at no point had names been offered. She supposed that money at the suggested levels meant that they were unnecessary as yet.

  Fortunately, Tessa and Wyatt had her. Nobody else had the kinds of money handy to pull a scam like this. Even Fin’s eyes had goggled when she brought her trunk down from the shuttle and pulled out stacks of bills.

  Being a Player was an exceptionally profitable venture, even after she made monthly payments against her debt back home. Helped that she’d been blessed with beauty, talent, and brains in excess.

  Premiums, as it were.

  Useful today.

  Fin nodded and the peon led them deeper. Past a half-wall gate that looked like it was to keep dogs and goats penned in, rather than people. Past a few pedestrians and a half dozen employees, all on tenterhooks.

  The guide knocked on the second door, currently open.

  “Enter,” a woman called.

  The guide stepped back, bowed again, and gestured them in.

  Abigail rode on Fin’s arm through the door.

  Older woman. Perhaps a fleshy fifty without adequate exercise. Hair graying in stripes, and white underneath. Ten extra kilograms, mostly around the center. Sharp eyes. Bad skin. Pale.

  The woman rose.

  “Jocelyn Solari,” she said. “Bank president. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  Fin turned to the door. The guide, still hovering.

  “Iced tea or lemonade,” he said simply, a command by virtue of not asking if it was something available, and assuming the man would flee madly to the nearest bar or restaurant to acquire it post haste.

  Abigail decided that she liked Fin better. Torcall sounded like a prick.

  Fin moved to sit, placing her first, then himself.

  “Ezra Foxwell,” he introduced himself. “My wife Saffron.”

  Abigail bobbed her head. Solari sat quickly, all papers shoved to one side to focus on Fin’s needs expectantly.

  “I understand you were needing to open an account and establish credit, Mr. Foxwell?” Solari asked.

  “That is correct,” Torcall Barton replied with his son’s mouth. “We’re intending to spend perhaps a month on Leagrove at the outside. More likely two weeks, as the city and planet really don’t present as having enough to interest us for that long. I prefer not having to carry large amounts of cash, and your local banking capabilities pale somewhat compared to Falorea.”

  As in, the capital world of Lorastir.

  “I’m certain that we can handle your needs over that short of a period, Mr. Foxwell,” Solari nodded brightly, not insulted by being compared to a one-horse town socially.

  It was accurate, after all.

  Fin nodded. It was a tired motion. A man put upon by the needs of his wife, perhaps. Abigail kept herself compact emotionally, as Fin seemed to have a certain character in mind.

  Dominating and disparaging, all at once. Utterly unlike the man who built model railroad runs in the kitchen or cargo bay occasionally, though not recently. Perhaps he would need that after this.

  She watched him reach into an inner pocket of his blazer and pull out an envelope. A thick one.

  Had anyone attempted to rob them in broad daylight, Laney and Brianna would have shot the fool from cover. Even now, they watched from outside, not part of the current scene and relying on her to map everything.

  Solari’s breath caught as Fin began counting bills. Lorastir bills.

  In the nicer parts of Hawkswold Sector, the monetized parts rather than those farming districts reliant on barter to accomplish things, a Yuan—ten Jiao—was a day’s wages for a lower-class worker. Fin was counting a stack of ten Yuan notes. Ducats. Lots of them, bundled. Probably more of them than had existed on this planet before today.

  Abigail watched Fin turn to give her an appraisal with those cold, calculating eyes. Stranger’s eyes.

  “Four Talents should be sufficient, my dear?” he asked.

  Four hundred Yuan. For two to four weeks. Utter high life, but she knew folks back in the Core Sectors that had that as a minimum of their weekly expenses, maintaining entourages and mansions.

  Abigail nodded. He had a fifth talent in the envelope, which remained there to show off how much more there might be.

  She wouldn’t be broke if they ended up losing it all here, but she would be working extra hard for a while if she had to make it up.

  Good thing someone was planning to rob this bank soon.

  Solari had seen those extra bills. She’d mostly managed to cover her gasp.

  The man returning with lemonade wasn’t so sharp but didn’t spill any as he got two glasses deposited on the desk, then withdrew to the door.

  Servant, in all the bad ways that made Abigail feel icky, but she was a character playing a role, and knew that Fin felt even worse about it all.

  “Raymond,” Solari said to the servant. “Get this deposited in a new account for Mr. Foxwell.”

  He quickly slipped into the room, collected the money, and disappeared.

  Abigail watched. Fin seemed to seethe with quiet disdain at the entire city in ways that amazed her.

  Torcall must really be a son of a bitch. Maybe she needed to give the man a piece of her mind sometime.

  They sipped lemonade. Not bad but made from powder. She preferred fresh lemons and honey.

  “Have you determined where you will be staying in town, Mr. Foxwell?” Solari asked, making small talk while her staff no doubt ran around like headless chickens outside.

  “We’re aboard a small freighter for now,” he replied. “Parked on the edge of town on the starfield. Perhaps later today we will tour a few hotels and see if any of them appear adequate.”

  “The Blue Star, two blocks south and one block west, is an exceptional facility,” Solari said.

  Abigail wondered if the woman knew someone who worked there, or if the hotel banked here. Not that it mattered. Fin had a good cover story if they chose to remain aboard Last Stand.

  Before running like hell after robbing the place.

  Fin nodded serenely, a man of consummate power in control of the situation. Money frequently had that effect on things.

  Raymond returned quickly with a checkbook that they could use to pay for things in town, drawn against their funds on deposit.

  Civilized, more or less.

  “Also,” Fin said as almost an afterthought, “do you have facilities to store important papers or boxes for jewelry and some such?”

  He fixed Solari with a questioning face and Abigail watched the woman perk right up.

  “Of course,” she said immediately. “Would you like a tour? Perhaps to rent a box while you were on planet?”

  “Let us see,” Fin nodded.

  Abigail rose with him.

  Time to scout the basement as well.

  They finally escaped after more small talk and glad-handing. Pastries that were adequate for a bank in the middle of nowhere. Got to the door without problems, then onto the street, walking down to look at the Blue Star.

  “After we rob the place, can you convince Wyatt to set fire to the building?” Fin asked in a quiet voice that sounded far more like the man she knew.

  “Concrete,” she replied. “Won’t burn. We’ll have to talk him into throwing something flammable into that one file room beyond Solari’s office, then hoping it will ignite the internal walls. Those are wood.”

  “Gods, I hated being that guy,” Fin muttered.

  “It was necessary,” Abigail reminded him. “And you can set up the train later to help recover.”

  “That sounds like a lovely idea,” he nodded. “If I wasn’t already married, I’d marry you.”

  “Islam does allow a man up to four wives,” she teased.

  “You convince Tessa first,” he teased back. “Then we’ll talk.”

  At least he was smiling as they headed home.

  They would need that.

  Scene Thirteen

  Wyatt studied the map that he’d started drawing from flying over the city, flattened out on the dining room table.

  Abigail and Fin had added a lot of detail on the two corridors that they had followed on their walk. Laney and Brianna had added even more from their surveillance.

  Wasn’t as good as a month in town could make it, but he didn’t figure they’d be coming back to Leagrove anytime soon, what with robbing a bank in broad daylight.

  Needed to be daylight. The vault door would be open, and way easier than trying to blast it open, based on Abigail’s descriptions and maps of the interior.

  Warchild’s box would be in the basement. He didn’t know who had rented it, but Abigail had noted that there were only six safety deposit boxes large enough to contain the thing Warchild expected.

  Auntie Maru had a drill with various bits sufficient to punch through either a lock or the side, then you could shine a light in and see if the box might be worth opening.

  Not like they hadn’t done this before, but most recently it had been on a crashed freighter. Hell, on Orvan, all they’d had to do was walk aboard the ship, so maybe they needed this job to keep their skills sharp?

  Wyatt studied the others.

  “In and downstairs, after taking everyone in the bank hostage?” he asked.

  “That would be my suggested course of action,” Laney spoke up. “A city like this does not rise early, though there will no doubt be a few people at the front door as soon as it is unlocked in the morning, to deposit the prior day’s take and perhaps balance cash boxes.”

  Fin perked up.

  “How many banks have you robbed, anyway?” he asked.

  Wyatt watched Laney blush.

  “Had he known, Wyatt’s friend Warchild might have been better asking me to conduct such an operation,” Laney replied. “More than is good for my soul.”

  Wyatt nodded.

  She was the cop. He was the guy who would put a few grenades in through a window to soften the place up. Not that a bank needed such a thing.

  Hopefully.

  “So do we wait for them to leave?” Wyatt asked.

  “Abigail needs her money back,” Fin noted. “We can take it out of the vault while we’re downstairs, or we can hit folks making large deposits.”

  “That money won’t be put into the vault immediately,” Brianna spoke up suddenly.

  Everyone turned to stare at her. She didn’t blush, but the Queen of Ice and Darkness had her soul today.

  “Social assassin,” she reminded folks in that cold voice. “They will put it into the till and account for it. Someone will swing by in an hour or so and haul it down. Unlikely to make Abigail whole, but it will likely come close, depending on today’s sales and accounting.”

  “Why do I feel like maybe we should be doing this more often?” Wyatt asked.

  “We do have a rather interesting collection of skill sets,” Fin noted. “Especially considering that we’re missing two. But no, I’d rather not get into doing this as a hobby, thanks. Masterson’s after two of you, remember?”

  Wyatt nodded. Masterson Galactic Investigations were the folks who money hired to get things done, while providing plausible deniability later. Those fine people didn’t do such things. They hired mercenaries to handle things.

  Or put up large bounties on folks for other folks.

  Maybe he needed to burn their local office down while he was here.

  Not like they didn’t have it coming.

  “So one guard by the front door,” Wyatt said, waiting for Abigail to nod. “We assume alarm bells connected to foot triggers on the other side of the counter, either ringing local or sounding at the police headquarters, which is sixteen blocks away on foot or by land vehicle. Not a lot of such vehicles, but we assume that they’d come running, so we have to hit fast, or risk having to shoot our way out later. None of the cops on this planet have done anything that requires me to make it a bloodbath, so let’s avoid that if we can?”

 

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