The Scepter Heist (The Dragon Rogues Book 2), page 12
And once he did, he would deal with him.
But for now, there was something else Jonathan needed to do. Jayna had warned him about Heziah, but perhaps it was his turn to warn her. She probably would not listen, but that didn’t change what he would do. He was her big brother, after all.
Chapter Thirteen
The palace stretched high overhead. Jonathan approached slowly, feeling for the energy that told him of the use of magic around him, though so far he had not felt anything other than the occasional flicker. That flicker was expected, especially when he got close to the palace and close to those who had the means to use magic openly while serving the king.
He would’ve expected there to be more power here, certainly more than just those brief, transient flickers of energy. Jonathan thought there would be something stronger.
He looked up at the palace, realizing that he hadn’t considered how he was going to get in. The only thing that came to him was simply asking at the gate to visit with his sister, though a direct approach might not necessarily be effective.
Jonathan didn’t know if Jayna would be aware of his approach, but that was another possibility. Given what he had learned of her and her connection to magic, along with how powerful she had proven herself to be, he wondered if perhaps she would know that he was coming.
He peered around him, searching for any evidence that somebody might be following him, but he didn’t see anything. Jonathan waited, half expecting that he would come across some sense of energy that might trigger his awareness of power, but even as he felt for it, he detected nothing more.
There was nothing to do but approach the palace, so he started across the street.
Someone crashed into him. He looked up at the person he’d collided with, then started laughing.
“Jayna. What are you doing out here?”
“I’m out here for you,” she said. She slipped her arm into his and escorted him past a pair of guards standing watch, who seemed to pay her no mind. They continued along the street that circled around the palace walls. “What is it?”
“If you knew I was coming for you, then you probably already know what it’s about.”
“Just because I knew you were coming doesn’t mean I know why.”
“It’s Heziah,” Jonathan said.
Her face darkened briefly. “What about him?”
She twisted the ring on her finger again. Jonathan found himself drawn to that ring, wondering why she kept fidgeting with it and what it meant to her. It wasn’t something she’d worn before he went to prison, so whatever it was had value to her. Why was she wearing it?
“He made contact,” Jonathan explained. “He found me in one of the outer districts and offered me a job.”
Jayna squeezed her hand around the ring, and for a moment, a flash of incredible cold washed across Jonathan’s skin, then faded.
Was that her sorcery? The sudden, almost overwhelming sense of it jarred him. He knew his sister was a sorcerer, but what he had felt from her was incredible. Maybe she was more powerful than Heziah.
“What kind of job?” she asked.
“The kind that would involve me doing something you would disapprove of.” He contemplated telling her the truth, especially as he suspected that Jayna would be upset by what Heziah had asked of him, but he wanted to see how she reacted first.
“Which means that it’s not a job you disapprove of,” she said. “I suppose I’m surprised you didn’t accept it. Well, I guess it did come from Heziah, as if that makes a difference to you.”
“It does,” Jonathan said.
She frowned at him. “Why come to see me now?”
“Because he broke into my home last night, or had somebody break into my home, and—”
Jayna laughed.
Jonathan crossed his arms. “I fail to see what’s so funny. You know how dangerous he is.”
“Oh, I know,” she said, “but I can already see where this is going. Let me guess. He took everything you have, all the funds you took from Vileforn.”
“He did. You know what I had. You knew what we had taken.”
More than that, she knew what he had risked by taking the job to break into Vileforn’s vault—all on her behalf. Because of that, he thought she might be a little more upset.
“Jonathan, I have known you long enough to know that you will most likely find another job,” she said. “Isn’t that what you do? I ask because even with all your wealth, you couldn’t help yourself. You were still stealing.”
“You don’t know me quite as well as you think you do.”
She sniffed. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“Regardless,” Jonathan said, “I don’t think he’s going to stop taking my money.”
“What do you think he’ll do next?”
Jonathan said nothing. This was the reason he had come to her, but now he wasn’t sure how she would react.
“You found me, which means…” Jayna frowned. “You think he might harm me.”
“I don’t know.”
Jayna smiled tightly. Once again, a flare of cold washed over Jonathan. “If he attempts to harm me, he will find it more difficult than he believes.” She sounded just as confident as Heziah, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, nor was he sure whether he believed that his sister was as capable as she believed herself to be. Perhaps that was the problem.
“Are you sure? I don’t know magic the way you do,” he said, though lately he had come to know magic more than he had ever wanted to. “But I had quite a few enchantments on me when I encountered him. He dismissed them as if they were nothing, though I was at least able to defend myself.”
“Any sorcerer of the Society with as much skill as he has should be able to do that easily.”
“Fine.” Jonathan suppressed his irritation at how she ignored his concerns. “But it’s been my experience that only powerful sorcerers can do it as easily as that. I knew Heziah was powerful, but I didn’t expect that from him.”
More than that, if Heziah were that powerful, why wasn’t he far more important to the Society? Instead, he had been essentially marginalized by the Society, and they weren’t at all concerned about pulling him back in. That surprised Jonathan. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but he couldn’t shake that sense.
“When you mentioned that he’d been dabbling with power—”
“I will be careful,” she said, her voice curt. “Is that all you need from me?”
Jonathan watched her as he tried to think of the right thing to say. He wanted to share with her that he wanted to protect her, but he wasn’t sure how to put it. Even when he had been in prison, Jonathan had wanted to protect her. She would never know the lengths he had been willing to go to in order to do that. Hopefully, she would never have the opportunity to learn. Even if she did, he would do everything in his power to refute any claim that he had a hand in influencing her acceptance into the Society.
As far as he knew, she had no idea what he had done. And as far as he was concerned, she would never know.
“Does the king treat you well?” he asked.
“You do realize that I just work for him. It’s not a master and slave relationship,” Jayna said with a smile, and Jonathan shrugged. “He might be irritable, but it’s only because he’s been trying to ensure the stability of an agreement he’s made. We have also been dealing with some unique dangers.”
“Unique like Heziah?” Jonathan asked.
Her face darkened. It was only a moment, but it was long enough that he was certain of what he saw. “I hadn’t thought so, but perhaps,” she said.
“How?”
She sighed and twisted the ring on her finger again. “I told you that he is interested in power that he shouldn’t have.”
“You also told me you were interested in power that you shouldn’t have,” Jonathan said.
“It’s not that I shouldn’t have it, it’s just that I acquired it earlier than most. Anyway, none of this is your concern. I will take care of it, and I need you to be safe. Don’t do anything dangerous given your current circumstance, like take a job similar to what landed you in prison.”
“That was a mistake I don’t intend to make again,” he said.
“Just be careful, Jonathan.”
“I am careful. It’s not me that I’m worried about these days.” Or Jayna, either, though he was still worried about her.
Jayna shook her head. “No. Not with Matthew. And the other girl.”
“Her name is Elizabeth.”
“What will happen to her when all of this is done? What will happen to the rest of your team?”
Jonathan frowned. What was she getting at? “I don’t know.”
His sister shook her head. “I’ve been around you enough to know that something always happens. You might not mean for it to, but regardless of your intentions, things happen. Often, they are things you did not account for. In this case, if Heziah remains active, and if he has you push toward a job you can’t refuse, are you going to be able to protect them?”
“Why are you unwilling to get involved?”
“Why do you need me to?” Jayna asked.
Jonathan clenched his jaw. Here he had thought that maybe she would want to help, but she wanted to protect her Society and her status with the king. Then again, he understood that. How could he not? She wasn’t at the mercy of what he had done. Jonathan had made his own mistakes over the years, and he didn’t want to drag his sister into what he had done.
“You don’t have to be concerned about me or my team. And I warned you about Heziah because I wanted you to be safe. Maybe I didn’t need to be concerned about you. Are you going to do anything about him?”
“I’m not terribly concerned about Heziah,” she said.
“Even if he’s chasing power that he shouldn’t have?”
“Do you think this would be the first time I’ve ever faced anything like that?” The sharpness of her tone, along with the absolute confidence, struck him.
He pursed his lips. “I suppose I don’t know.”
“It’s not,” she said. “So if Heziah wants to throw himself at me, let him.”
“What if he was using me to get to you?”
Jayna scoffed. “I trust that you aren’t going to be so foolish as that. You know what kind of person he is, and you know what he’s after, so just be smart, Jonathan. Stay out of it.”
“If you hear anything I need to know about, you obviously know how to find me. And if I hear anything you need to know about, I will…” He wasn’t exactly sure what he would do. Send word? He didn’t think there was any word he could send. Maybe try to share with her what he had heard, but Jonathan doubted he’d learn anything that would make a difference.
“Stay safe.” She strode away from him.
When she was gone, he turned and walked away. Without meaning to, he ended up in the district where he had last seen Heziah. Heziah had stolen from him, but it was more than that. It was an implied threat, a promise, and Jonathan couldn’t sit by anymore and wait for Heziah to do something else that would potentially threaten those he cared about.
That was why he had gone to his sister. Regardless of Jayna’s claim, he knew that she would be on edge now, and hopefully that meant she would be prepared for the possibility that Heziah might come after her.
Jonathan had to be concerned about himself. If Heziah intended to threaten them, then Jonathan would use his own resources to stay ahead of him. He wasn’t sure whether the job that the priest had mentioned would be a good one or not, but if it did involve El’aras items, it was a potentially significant score.
He could only hope that Matthew would be willing to go after it with him. If not, he might have to do it with only Elizabeth. Whatever else, he intended to be one step ahead of Heziah.
Chapter Fourteen
The church was empty.
Jonathan had expected to find the priest here. He wanted to ask a few more questions about the El’aras job he’d mentioned. They needed more information than what the priest had provided on a slip of paper.
He looked around the church. Jonathan had never taken himself for someone to get caught up in things like superstition, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a measure of a facade here that he still had not grasped. He’d been trying to teach Elizabeth how to generate such facades, but he still felt he was not the right person to do so. More than that, he felt as if there had to be some answer as to what had happened to Grayson and whether Heziah truly was involved in it.
“Now what?” Matthew asked, glancing over to him.
“I just wanted to look,” Jonathan said.
Matthew snorted. “You wanted to look, but you also knew that there was something here, didn’t you? You recognized that there was likely going to be some surprise.”
“I don’t think this is a surprise. The priest is just not here.”
“Look at the building. What do you see here?”
Jonathan shrugged. “I see a church in need of maintenance.”
Matthew shook his head slowly. “Only you would see the most basic of answers. What you see is a church that has been long ago abandoned. Honestly, I should’ve looked into it sooner.”
“Looked into what?”
“The religion. You’re the one who told me about it. The Lady Serene. Who celebrates her any longer?”
Jonathan pulled the door closed and studied the church. There were no lanterns lit this time, and the air was stale and musty. The building seemed as if it had not been occupied much lately.
He strode down the hallway to the room that the priest had brought him to when they had first taken the job. Once inside, Jonathan paused to look around. The light still spilled in, though it was a dingy, pale light. Part of that was because it was overcast outside, but was part of it because there had been a facade here? It would’ve been a subtle effect that had taken the church as it stood, then shifted it and modified it ever so slightly so that Jonathan would believe this was someplace they were supposed to go.
“What do you think?” he asked Matthew. “Is it all a facade?”
Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe all of it, or maybe none of it. Maybe it’s just dirty from the storm that came through the other night.” He looked up and then swept his gaze around. “Everything is basically the same, so maybe there wasn’t a facade.”
He couldn’t tell if Matthew was saying that to try to appease him, or if he actually believed it. At this point, Jonathan just didn’t know. Too many things were starting to conspire against him and didn’t add up.
“Well?” Matthew asked.
“I still think we need to do the job,” Jonathan said. “If the items are there—”
“If the items are there, then we should do the job. But if they aren’t, then we have to start digging into who this priest is and why he hired you.”
“Because he wanted the necklace.” Jonathan chuckled at the look Matthew shot him. “The necklace was where he claimed it was. Your reports on this warehouse fit with what he told us. Everything that he’s said so far has been accurate, right?”
Matthew gave a slight shrug. “I suppose so,” he said, somewhat begrudgingly. “I can’t say that I’m terribly pleased by the fact that we’re trusting this priest, of all people, to provide us with a job, but so far, I think it does fit.”
“If that’s the case, then we keep looking. Who knows what we might find?”
Jonathan headed out of the room, then back into the main part of the church. The altar remained empty and there was no sign of anybody here, though he did see a lantern. He ignited the lantern, sending a soft orange glow that cast shadows back along the wall. For a moment, he thought he saw movement, but he swung the lantern and realized it was just the shadows seeming to chase each other.
If there were truly El’aras items wherever the priest was guiding them, then Jonathan couldn’t help but feel as if perhaps they needed to go after the treasure regardless of how trustworthy the source was. He looked over to Matthew, and he had a feeling that his friend felt much the same way.
“The job sounds straightforward,” Matthew said. “Part of the reason I’m a little on edge, to be honest, is that a job like this shouldn’t be too straightforward. There should be a measure of complexity to it.”
“No one said there wouldn’t be,” Jonathan said.
“We find the warehouse. We get inside. We find wherever the item is stored, and then we get back out. That’s not a job that either of us couldn’t handle. We don’t even need a team for it.”
“Think about what’s there. There will be defenses.”
“Fine,” Matthew said. “There’s going to be some defenses, and we may have to navigate around them, but even if there are some, we have enough enchantments that we should be able to easily overpower them. So I wonder,” he said, sweeping his gaze around, “why us?”
Jonathan shrugged. “Because we got the necklace for him?”
“Oh, I think that’s part of it, but I wonder if that’s all there is to it. What if the priest—if that’s what he is—is really after something else? We don’t know if the necklace is what he claims.”
“We also don’t know that it’s not.”
“We have his assertion that it was some sort of valuable item for the church. Just his assertion,” Matthew said. “That’s not enough.”
“I don’t know that it matters.”
Matthew regarded him and nodded. “Normally, I’d say that it doesn’t. But in this case, we’ve done the necklace job, and now we have the El’aras one and Heziah’s. What do you think Heziah is after?”
“Something of power,” Jonathan said.
