Hunting a Unicorn
The conditions for my agent were easy enough to draw up. First, he had to be rich enough to buy a bank. Second, he had to move exactly as I willed. Third, he could never betray me — not until the very end of the very end.
No single condition was difficult on its own, but stack all three together and what did that make him? He might as well be one of those beasts that exist only in legend. However long I studied the list and picked it apart, I couldn't help doubting such a man existed anywhere on this earth. And so I became the hapless adventurer setting off to hunt a unicorn out of myth — then crumpled the paper and flung it into a corner.
And yet I found myself chewing the conditions over again. Rich, fine — that much was plausible. But a rich man who would never betray me and move at my every command? Solve one of the three, and the other two became the problem.
No — I can't just give up. Think it through properly. I picked the crumpled paper back up, smoothed it out flat, and glared holes into it. First condition: who in the world was wealthy enough to buy a bank? Barely anyone, honestly. Then what about someone with power in place of money? There was more than one way to acquire a bank, after all — you could pay for it, or you could lean on the owner with influence until he had no choice but to sell. But I scrapped that idea almost as soon as I'd formed it. Most of the powerful were far too busy tiptoeing around Julia to notice anyone else. There was no chance in the world they'd take my side.
"Wait a moment."
I had been staring at the paper for a good long while before one unnecessary condition finally jumped out at me. "I can supply the money for the bank myself. So why would I need a rich man?" I straightened my spine where I'd been slumped deep into the chair. "If my conditions were wrong, they were wrong by a country mile!"
I dragged over a fresh sheet and began writing the conditions anew. First, he had to have a weakness — one that money could solve, thank you very much. Second, he had to be able to act the wealthy man convincingly enough to fool anyone. Third, he had to be someone no one else knew about. Written out like that, none of them seemed particularly hard. And with his weakness in my keeping, that third condition from my original list would practically take care of itself. Who betrays you while you're holding their weakness in your hand?
Flip the thinking, and suddenly everything was easy. My conditions were complete; now all I needed was the man who met them. The easy part.
I sank deep into thought — and then it surfaced. Something was surfacing! A name. Then a face. And then the nickname that trailed behind both.
"Jenice!"
I rang the little bell on my desk in high spirits, hunting for Jenice, who appeared almost before the chime had faded.
"You called for me, my lady?"
"Yes, Jenice. Bring Aunt Chyo to me right away."
Chyo, summoned back barely after she'd left, wasted no time airing her grievances. She flopped onto the sofa in an insolent sprawl and fished out a cigarette.
"Aren't you taking terrible liberties with your aunt, just because you've got money now?"
"I didn't call you as your niece this time — I called you as a client. There's a job I need done."
I left the rest unsaid: so kindly conduct yourself accordingly. Chyo straightened up on her own. My grave manner had told her this was no ordinary commission.
"What's with the sudden formality?"
Because this job would be anything but easy. The commission I was about to hand her might well become Chyo's first failure since founding Chyorny.
Could she actually pull it off? I quietly weighed her odds. She hasn't a single seasoned hand to help her, for one thing. Chyorny was a newborn guild, which meant it swarmed with burning enthusiasm rather than proven talent. Thanks to that, Chyo was run off her feet, day and night. Everyone knew how to lean on her; no one knew how to take the weight off her shoulders.
And the venue worried me, too. One misstep, and I could lose Chyo altogether. As things stood, failure looked the likelier bet.
I studied Chyo in silence. In the way she sat canted sideways, glaring holes through me, I could already glimpse the future of Chyorny — the greatest intelligence guild on the continent, kneading the whole of it in the palm of its hand. And that future would truly come to pass. So I decided to bet on her future rather than her present, in the full faith that she would one day claim Chyorny's glory.
"Out with it. What is it you're dragging your feet ov—"
"Could you get into Bulta Prison?"
"Bulta Prison?"
Chyo's eyes narrowed to slits, brimming with suspicion. The word — the last thing she'd ever expected out of my mouth — had plainly rattled her. She didn't answer at once, and watching her hesitate, I felt anew how heavy Bulta Prison's infamy truly was. The place they said was a rehearsal for Hell, wasn't it?
"Why Bulta Prison, of all places?"
Known by the nickname Hell, Bulta Prison held nothing but the continent's most notorious convicts. Once you passed its gates, you did not come out until your sentence was served — a technicality, really, since only lifers and the condemned were locked up there. Serial killers, habitual drunk coachmen, would-be rebels, soldiers who had fled the battlefield, swindlers of historic audacity — criminals whose sins could hardly be forgiven by any measure. In a word, Bulta Prison was a place you left only as a corpse.
And here is where I said it.
"There's one person I need you to bring out."
"I take it he's locked up under some terrible false charge, then — for our dear niece to take such an interest in him."
Chyo believed I took after my mother: endlessly righteous, naive, and good to the bone. It was high time she learned what I was really like. I had thought that kind of blindness was a disease only lovers caught; apparently blood relations caught it too. I shook my head.
"No. He's a thoroughly bad man."
Chyo's cigarette dropped from her fingers.
"What? You want to smuggle a bad man out in secret? Why? Don't tell me it's because he drew a life sentence? So you can kill him yourself once he's free? Or are you practicing to play the apostle of justice?"
Her instincts were razor-sharp at work, plucking the right answer out of the air time after time — so why were they so hopelessly dense about my affairs? Chyo was a riddle I could never quite solve.
"Why? Why him, of all people?"
When I still didn't answer, Chyo pressed again, impatient now. My reply was short.
"He's going to help me with my work."
"There's no one else?"
"No. It's not as if you could ever show your face and work in the open, Aunt."
Chyo hated standing in front of people. The moment Chyorny began to grow, she had hired a whole roster of body doubles to act in her stead. Even her meetings with me she sometimes foisted off on a double, to my endless inconvenience. The only time she had ever appeared before the public was when my execution was carried out.
Chyo was not about to sell her own face over the purchase of a single bank — and for my part, with Chyorny still on the rise, I had no intention of thrusting her into the spotlight either.
Chyo heaved a sigh.
"Who on earth is it?"
"Loomdrax."
Chyo's mouth finally fell open. Of course she knew the name — Loomdrax's notoriety rang from one end of the continent to the other.
The swindler of the age. His cons varied wildly in both method and target; merely listing the major exploits would keep a person talking for three days and nights straight. And yet sealing him in Bulta Prison had been outright excessive. A mere con man — no one had ever even died from Loomdrax's schemes, mind you — shut away in Bulta Prison? That was without precedent. Besides, unlike other swindlers, Loomdrax occasionally fleeced genuinely wicked men out of their fortunes. The trouble was that his standard for "wicked" was an entirely private matter of his own.
Even so, that habit of robbing the rotten had won him devoted supporters among the public. Whenever Loomdrax was caught, petitions begging for leniency came flooding into the courts like a tide. By every measure he was a swindler who was difficult to catch — and a problem even once caught.
And the reason a man like that ended up in Bulta Prison came down to a single painting.
The Smiling Face of Naplax, treasure of the Joseph royal family — a portrait of Naplax Joseph, founding king of the Joseph dynasty, captured in a smile of perfect ease. So exquisite was the master painter's rendering that admirers swore the man might draw breath at any moment. Depending on the hour, on the angle from which you looked, the smile could seem sorrowful, or stony, or full of joy — which is why it was whispered of as a portrait possessed by a devil's charm. The Smiling Face of Naplax was the number-one national treasure of the Kingdom of Joseph, and its fame burned all the brighter because the royal family unveiled it only for their most honored guests.
That was the painting Loomdrax stole. Or, to be precise, it was a painting the Joseph royal family placed directly into his hands. King Joseph believed with iron certainty that the elaborately disguised Loomdrax was a genius painter and a titan of the art trade. But Loomdrax was a con man, and the Smiling Face of Naplax he sent back to the Kingdom of Joseph was a forgery. The fake was so convincing that the royal family didn't catch on until a full year after the painting's return.
There were even rumors that Loomdrax had copied the canvas with his own two hands.
And so, on top of fraud, Loomdrax was charged with lèse-majesté — and he drew the hatred of an entire kingdom's people upon himself. The whole nation mobilized to drag him down, and then even the kingdoms friendly with Joseph stirred to join the hunt.
And that was how he was caught. A joint operation spanning the continent. The Loomdrax manhunt went into the history books as the singular event that united kingdoms which otherwise did nothing but growl at one another over land grabs. Quite the achievement, honestly. For that one moment alone, he unified a continent that had never once stopped feuding.
In a word, Loomdrax was deft of hand, sharp of mind, a gifted actor — and he thought on a grand scale. Flawless, as my agent goes.
The longer I thought, the more I liked the man. The indifferent if he'll do, he'll do had quietly hardened into it must be him.
"And once he's out, what do you mean to have him do? Ah — never mind. None of my business, I suppose."
I shook off the reverie and looked at Chyo, who had asked the question. And though she'd said she didn't want to know, I took my time laying out exactly what I intended to do. Her expression darkened with every word of it.
"Should I really be putting my faith in you? This thing of yours just keeps swelling."
The words had finally slipped out of her — she wanted to wash her hands of it all. But it was far too late for that. And hers was really only a token grumble; I knew it, which was why I laughed it off.
"We're already aboard the same boat. But if you'd like off, just say the word — I'll see you put ashore. Though I can't promise the shore will be safe, dry land."
"The only thing growing around here is your repertoire of threats."
Chyo clicked her tongue and settled in to hear the rest of my explanation.
"So there's no one but Loomdrax — no one dangerous enough for this."
"There isn't. And least of all would someone second-rate do."
Ordinary con men were a dime a dozen. But an ordinary con man could never hope to fool a bank president and Julia. Julia was, however much I hated to grant it, a very clever woman — vicious, too, and perfectly clear about her goals. She was not a mark who could be taken easily. You cannot fell a hardwood tree with a soft axe.
To answer Julia, the person I sent out had to be every bit her equal. He would need audacity to spare, the skill to vanish on his own the moment things went sour — and above all, ambition.
It was a punishingly exacting list of requirements. And of every person I knew, exactly one man fit it: Loomdrax.