I don't know what I was expecting when I set foot inside Chankota. Probably some outward sign of their xenophobia: Propaganda posters or keen-eyed citizens looking to turn in a spy for a reward. Instead, it was normal. If teleportation was real and someone had been teleported directly from Opal to where I now stood, they'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.
Even the buildings had Opal-style flat roofs. I'd expected their hatred of outsiders would extend to architectural styles as well, but apparently the extra expense of adding sloped roofs like the Empire prefered was just too much. Especially because that style had come into fashion due to the kind of rainfall that Chankota was unlikely to see on a regular basis.
I made a special note of the flat roofs - that would help in case I needed to escape.
As I walked, though, I began to see the more subtle indicators of the city's attitude. The main thoroughfare I'd been on was clean and its buildings in good repair, but those buildings were not residential. This part of the city was for warehouses and a very few money-changers. For interfacing with the foreigners just outside the city, in other words. Nobody wanted to live anywhere near the outlander's quarter, even with some distance and a city wall between them.
When I left the main roads for the side streets where I'd hopefully stand out even less - no sense testing the limits of the wizard's magic - my suspicions were confirmed. I had a long honed ability to determine the tone of a neighborhood, and this was not a good part of town.
I knew how to carry myself in such a way that I wouldn't be bothered; thankfully I didn't need the magic for that. Aside from a few appraising glances from figures further in the shadows than I was, I nobody even noticed me.
My street smarts, it seemed, were still intact. I knew the heart of the Empire would be different, but Chankota was apparently enough of a desert city for my instincts to carry over. What I needed to do now was find my way to a better part of the city. While this district almost certainly had a police station, it'd be undermanned at best and actively corrupt at worst. It wasn't the sort of place where someone's personal effects would be kept. I was looking for an office in a more affluent area, but not too affluent - the extremes of the city both had token police forces only, though for very different reasons. If I could find the governmental buildings, that was my best bet. For that, I'd need to get to the center.
Finding the center of Chankota was easy - its multiple city walls basically made it a bullseye. The inner gates of the city weren't guarded at all, at least not in these parts. I had to re-join the main thoroughfare, but only lurked there for long enough to cross into the new district. This was slightly better; a business district that had already shuttered its doors for the evening, though as before the side streets held more activity and much of it illegal or at least frowned on. I knew how to carry myself here, too. Aside from the constant calls of the merchants, which no amount of body language could silence, I again passed through unscathed and unnoticed.
The police station here was full-sized but likely only slightly more effective. The legitimate merchants would want protection, but the "protection" that the thugs of the previous district no doubt provided the less legitimate merchants would ensure that the police turned a blind eye to the side businesses. Also not a place to keep goods you didn't want stolen.
Dalostaed had spent a disproportionate amount of time teaching me words for various parts of law enforcement. Either he suspected that I was likely to run afoul of it, or he had personal experience. Possibly both, given his willingness to have the wizard help me. As such, I was looking for one type of police building in particular. All those I had seen so far were labeled 'Pulsin', the Hidna word for 'police'. The translator had emphasized that the person in charge of auctioning off the effects was called a 'Sheriff', and the word for that was 'Shersif'.
Another wall, another change in tone for the city. Now I was seeing what I'd hoped to see: There were some residences, but most of the buildings were large, old, and clearly administrative in nature. After another few moment's walking, I spotted what I'd hoped to: A courthouse. And next to it, smaller but still prominent, the Shersif office.
None of the buildings were guarded, though the local police force for this district seemed if anything overly-effective. I'd had to dodge patrols a number of times making my way here, and as I peered from the alley across the street from the courthouse I could see that this particular spot was frequently visited. The lamplighters had missed this particular alley, thankfully, but they seemed fairly thorough otherwise.
Still, 'frequent patrols' wasn't 'constant patrols'. The next time there was a gap in the coverage, I darted across the street. Not to the front door, which had ample lighting from the street, but to the small alley between it and the courthouse. I had ample experience with Opal's justice district and hoped that Chankota would share a specific feature.
My luck held: There was a large chain fence between the courthouse and the Sherrif's office. Beyond it, a small corridor with a door on each side, allowing for easy transfer of prisoners between the two.
I wasn't so lucky that the fence itself had an entrance, but it was trivial to climb. The lamplighters had done their job in lighting the alley, but they either didn't have permission to go beyond the fence or they didn't feel like taking the circuitous route through the buildings to get there. It was usefully dim at this end, and I hoped that would be enough.
The side door to the Sherrif's office was locked, of course. I'd hoped that, being essentially an internal connection between the two buildings, they wouldn't bother with such measures, but my luck wouldn't carry me that far.
Still, what kind of self-respecting criminal would I be if I couldn't pick a lock?
I held myself as still as I could while I placed the picks in the door; this was an operation I had to do entirely by feel, and it was possible it'd take long enough that the next patrol would come by. None so far had seemed to pay attention to the alley, but I didn't want to give them a reason.
True to form, the patrol returned while I was working. I froze entirely - any movement on my part, especially an attempt to hide, would be far more suspicious than what looked to be a dark blob at the end of an alley. For all anyone knew, especially in the concealing robes I was wearing, I was a pile of trash.
The patrol didn't deviate from the previous ones I'd seen; they paused for a moment, took a cursory look around, and then moved on. I waited a few moments in case they had a sudden desire to turn back. Then I resumed my work.
Moments later, the door was open and I'd slipped through, closing it as I went. I moved quietly - I couldn't hear anyone's surface thoughts in the building, but someone could be sleeping in a cell somewhere. I didn't want to wake them, and though I suspected it'd take quite a bit of noise to be heard outside, I didn't want to take that chance either. Plus remaining quiet when I was places where I shouldn't be was a habit I had no intention of breaking anytime soon.
There was another obstacle to staying hidden: It was dark. Normally this would work in my favor, but when you're trying to ransack a place looking for items that might not even be there, darkness caused more problems than it solved. I had enough fire magic to create a handful worth of light, but the front of the building was windowed. Any light I made would easily be visible from the street.
Then again, that worked both ways. The lamplighters had done their job well and this particular area was important enough to be lit all night. If I allowed my eyes time to adjust, the outside light might just be enough. If it wasn't, I could at least wait until I was in another room to use the fire magic.
It wasn't enough, really, but it would have to do. I started skulking through the front of the building; if I was going to turn on the lights in the back, I didn't want to have to go wait for my eyes to adjust yet again. There wasn't much up here - a couple of desks, a filing cabinet, a wooden board with a number of nails in it from which a half dozen keys were hung. I was tempted to look through the filing cabinet or the copious amount of paper on the desk next to it, but I didn't think I had time and I was fairly sure I wouldn't be able to read in this lighting anyway. A quick glance was enough to tell me that I was mostly right, and everything on the papers was in Hidna anyway.
Not in the front, then. There were two other doors besides the one by the windows and the one I'd come in at. One lead to the rear of the building and the other to something that looked fairly closet-sized. It might have been an evidence locker, but it might have also just been a closet. I decided to try the back room first, as I figured that's where the cells would be, and I could confirm that I was in fact alone in the building.
My suspicions were correct - it did lead to the cells, and they were all empty. Another door at the end of this hallway declared that it was "SHAIBOT". It was a word I didn't know, but judging from the size and all-caps nature of the warning, it had to be important. I made my way to it only to find it locked. It was a heftier lock than the one I'd picked to get in, on par with what I'd expect the cells themselves had. I could probably get past it anyway, but it'd be a lot easier to go grab the key from up front.
I'd had a small handful of fire to generate enough light to read the door by, so I extinguished it and waited a few more minutes for my eyes to re-adjust. I'd hoped to avoid exactly this, but it didn't matter, I apparently had all night. While I waited, I heard a patrol pass out front, but they were distracted by their own conversation and didn't stop.
Once adjusted, I made my way to the board. Fortunately, most of the keys hanging from it were labeled: "1", "2", "3", "4", and "shaibot". Hopefully that wasn't the Hidna word for "Solitary confinement room where we keep our most violent criminals." I grabbed the key and returned to the back.
Determined not to have to adjust my sight yet again, I found the lock by feel and unlocked the door. Slipping through, I found myself surrounded by complete darkness.
With a suppressed sigh, I re-lit my flame and was relieved to find that this was not another cell. Instead, it was a large closet with shelving, nearly all of it full. This had to be the evidence room.
It was more organized than the desk out front had been, but not by much. The evidence was grouped into piles, and each pile had a tag. The tag was just a mixture of letters and numbers, presumably kept straight by whoever maintained the filing cabinet out front. I didn't have the time or light to be able to go back and forth between here and there, trying to figure out which one was the right one. My near-illiteracy in the language made that a terrible idea anyway.
As it turned out, it didn't take much to find what I was looking for. One of the walls had larger shelves, for items that presumably couldn't fit on the others, and the bottom-most one had only one pile. It didn't have a tag, presumably because there hadn't been a trial. Only a few things were here, but I recognized the crossbow as being of Opal manufacture, as was the knife and the sword. I was more interested in the largest item on the shelf: An elaborate white coat.
It looked absurd. Nobody in Opal would ordinarily wear such a thing, and Chankota was close enough to the desert that it would be similarly useless here. During my time in the organization, however, I'd heard of coats like I suspected this one to be. It had a quilted texture, and I quickly determined that each square - about the size of my hand - was filled with a hard but pliant material. I'd found a crosscloak!
The organization had a few, and any criminal boss of status owned some for themselves, but they were mostly for show. They were still as stifling to wear in the desert heat as you'd expect, but they had a very important niche: They made the wearer near-immune to the crossbow. Each of the panels was designed to trap and deflect bolts. Though a strong bowman could pierce them, most thugs weren't talented enough to have trained in an actual bow. It was as close as you could come to being invincible, and I was sorely tempted to take this one. Sure, a good suit of mail could probably accomplish the same thing, but all anyone had to do to take out someone wearing mail was to knock them over, hold them down (not hard with the extra weight), and let the heat take care of the rest. Armor wasn't popular in Opal.
The personal effects had only been the weapons and the coat. I'd been told that the old Bishop had carried a journal - a habit that I'd been encouraged to take up, so long as I used the ciphers - and I didn't see it anywhere. Chances were good that it was somewhere else, being analyzed by the Empire's Intelligence Service, but there was one more possibility to try.
I took the knife, and I started cutting up the coat.
The crosscloaks had another name: "Smuggler's Coats". This was because the squares of a crosscloak could be torn open, the padding removed, and replaced with whatever good one wanted to smuggle. The design of the cloak made it relatively easy to disguise such tampering, and short of tearing the whole thing apart as I was now doing there wasn't any way to discover it. They'd been out of favor in Opal for smuggling purposes because the guards had, in fact, proven willing to destroy the coats. Still useful for day-to-day thuggery, though, as that would take place far out of sight of any guards anyway.
Regardless, people weren't allowed in Chankota for any reason, much less to try to smuggle anything in, so the coat had never gained its secondary reputation here. Otherwise I imagine I'd have found it much as I was going to leave it: Torn to near-shreds.
I really wished I could take the coat with me, but aside from now missing many of the panels that gave it its invincibility, it was also a bright white that would rule out stealth entirely. It seemed a crime to deface such a thing, but then again I was no stranger to crime. Heck, it wasn't even the first crime I'd committed today.
I'd closed the door behind me, so as to not let the light from my flame leak out to where it might be seen. If I listened carefully - and I was always listening carefully - I could hear another patrol pass by. The rest of my time was spent cutting and extracting whatever strange material they used as filler in the crosscloaks.
I discovered the journal - sewn into a side panel just under the arm - at almost exactly the same time I heard a door open.
I'd watched the sheriff's office closely, prior to making my move. It wasn't guarded from the outside, and I'd made sure that there was nobody inside as well. But, as I tucked the journal underneath the layers of clothing I was wearing, I realized that I hadn't paid much attention to the courthouse at all.
And the courthouse was linked directly to the sheriff's office.
The sound of another door opening confirmed my suspicions. The courthouse must have had a guard that did rounds internally, and occasionally checked in on the office next door, as well.
I extinguished the flame that'd been lighting my surroundings, and complete darkness came over the room. Allowing my eyes time to adjust didn't help, as there was simply no light. I found myself wishing I'd found my way to the door before turning off the fire, but there was no time for that now. I could hear the guard ambling about outside.
The evidence room was a dead end. I crouched by the only exit. If I were lucky, the guard would do a perfunctory round and then go back, and I could sneak out. If I were unlucky, well, maybe the magic would hold. I suspected that skulking around in an evidence room was exactly the sort of non-subtle thing that would break the spell, but even then I had my contingency.
The guard was talking to himself as he moved, but it was muffled and in rapid Hidna, so I couldn't understand a word of it. I heard another door opening - this the one that separated the front of the office from the cells. Was this part of his normal routine, or had he looked at the key rack and noticed one missing?
Either way, I heard the door to the evidence room start to swing open. Flickering light - like that from the same sort of handheld flame I'd been using - spilled in. And following it, the guard.
He was not one of the police, I could tell that immediately. The outside patrols had featured lightly armored and heavily armed men. Most of them, while still retaining their youth, obviously had experience. This guard was young, scrawny. He either hadn't made it as a policeman or simply hadn't tried. Still, it wasn't one single guard I was worried about, it was the inevitable alarm such a person could bring. I didn't need the entire city after me, nor for the caravan to suffer reprisals.
I'd still kept a faint hope that I'd go unnoticed, that the guard would take a quick glance around and then head back out, that the magic would somehow hold, but the moment his eyes turned in my direction I knew that had been a fantasy at best.
It was time for the contingency, then. I certainly hoped I was going to survive this.
I couldn't kill him. Not that I couldn't, of course. Even if I hadn't been armed before, I had my predecessor's weaponry within easy reach. But he was just an innocent kid, doing rounds that he probably thought were going to be uneventful, and likely for meager pay to boot. He didn't deserve to die. Even the thought of what the town had done to the old Bishop couldn't change my mind, though it did tempt me more than I'd like to admit. I couldn't just kill people randomly, though.
So, the contingency: I ran directly at him. He was surprised, reflexively thrusting his handful of fire in my direction, but he didn't have any more talent than I did so he couldn't actually hurt me with it that much. Plus I figured he'd do that anyway, either intentionally or not, and I'd already prepared. The light black robe I'd been wearing was too big for me by far. It was a style more popular in some of the southern desert cities, but not entirely out of place here. Its signature was its voluminous nature - if I hadn't been holding on to it or folded it away the entire time I'd been in the city, it'd have been dragging behind me by at least six feet.
Now I took up that slack and cast it over him like a net. If he'd been surprised by my sudden attack, he was even more surprised to find himself covered in my clothing. He reflexively doused his flame to prevent himself from catching fire, now that he was covered in something flammable. More importantly for the plan, he grabbed on to the parts of the robe he could reach.
I'd made some important modifications before I'd set out. So while the guard struggled with what must have seen like an improvised trap, I was already rushing ahead, past him, toward the door to the front of the office. The guard pulled on the parts of the robe that he had, no doubt intending to stop me in my tracks. It apparently didn't occur to him that no criminal would actually wear such a thing. It would invite capture by exactly this scenario.
The robe, weakened by my earlier modifications, tore free from my body. The guard, now off-balance, fell to the ground. I was out the door before he could stagger up, and I devoted no further thought to him, as I had an immediate choice to make: Outside through the front door, or into the alley?
I'd been keeping track of when the patrols had passed by; one was due too soon for the front door to be an exit. I dashed to the side and left through the door to the alley.
"Ruknat!" a voice yelled from inside the courthouse. Of course the guard had a partner. I knew the Hidna word for 'Stop' when I heard it, but I had no intention of doing so. Besides, I'd never intended to escape through the courthouse.
I lept to the fence, climbing it rapidly as I had on my way in. This time my objective wasn't to go over it, though. I balanced for a moment, then pulled myself up onto the roof of the Sheriff's office.
These nice, flat, Opal-style roofs had their advantages.
I hadn't run from rooftop to rooftop in years, and I was in an unfamiliar city to boot, but it was amazing the kind of motivation that fear for my life provided. Shouts trailed behind me but I rapidly outpaced them, making my way toward the innermost city wall.
Bells sounded in the distance - at least one of the guards had alerted the police, and soon the whole city would be waking to find me. I made it to the wall undiscovered, but I could easily see from my vantage point that while the inner walls of the city had seemed entirely decorative, their gates were still fully functional.
Of course, the city had grown since these, the oldest of the walls, had been constructed. The building I was on was actually taller than the wall. I hopped down on top of it, and started making my way around the circumference.
I'd hoped that people would be looking for me on the ground, or at least on the roofs in the district I'd just left behind. People hardly ever looked up. But again luck was against me: It was a cloudless night, lit by a near-full moon. I was pretty perfectly silhouetted, and before long I heard shouts much closer than they had been.
I skipped over rooftops once more, heading to the second of the city's walls. I wasn't heading back the way that I'd came and, much to my dismay, the area of the city ahead apparently had decided they liked empire-style peaked roofs quite a bit. I had to go out of my way, which only gave my pursuers time to catch up to me. I saw lights from watchtowers come on. They'd be near-useless if I were on the ground, given how close together the buildings were, but while I was on the roofs I was easy to spot.
A noise came from behind me. I was pretty sure it was a crossbow bolt - or possibly arrow - striking the roof. It was joined by more as more and more watchtowers woke. The second wall was close, however.
I had to vault to a higher building, but in the end I made the jump to the other wall. The sound of alarm was ringing throughout the city now, including the area I was heading into, but crossing over the wall seemed to have gained me at least a little time.
"Dakkoon! Dakkoon!" the cries started catching up again as I had to repeatedly diverge from the straight course out in order to keep running. The buildings here were extremely non-uniform in height, making my rooftop getaway even more perilous than it already was.
I once again heard the sound of bolts clattering.
Still, the third and final wall loomed. It was three stories tall, but thankfully - like the others - it had been made to keep people out, not in. I scaled a building near it, and moved to the top of the wall with ease.
One brief moment of peace, as the wall once again seemed to throw them off. I looked down to the desert outside, and didn't see any guards. I'd explicitly picked a portion as far from a gate as I could get to, though I'd had less and less of a choice as I'd ran. Still, this would not be easy.
I wasn't a wizard. I didn't have formal training in how to use my magic. I had the same potential as anyone else - about a handful of whatever element I needed. But I did have experience in using it courtesy of that most hallowed of Opal institutions, the school of hard knocks.
As I lept off the wall, I called on all five elements. Air magic to buffer my descent and help shape the sand below. Water magic on myself, to try to move my own body slower. Earth magic on the sands, to help stack the drifts outside the walls - the reason I'd chosen this side of the city to run toward in the first place. Fire magic to heat the air beneath me so it would rise, slowing me further. And Mind... well, that was to ignore how much this was going to hurt.
Impact jarred me and I almost immediately lost my balance, rolling down the dune that my earth magic, my air magic, and ordinary wind had created. Sand got in my clothes, in my mouth, in my ears, and I didn't care because I was out of the city. As soon as I regained control I sprung to my feet, running away from the city and toward the deeper desert as fast as I could. I left a wake of air and earth magic behind me, kicking up as much dust as I could to screen me from bowmen, though if any were firing at me, I didn't hear them.
Minutes later, I was deeper in the desert, behind a small rock outcropping that I'd made note of on the caravan's ride in, and I was stripping off my costume. The robe had been hot enough on its own, but the "desert bandit" outfit I'd cobbled together and worn over my regular clothes had me sweating much more than I felt comfortable doing in a desert. I took a certain amount of pleasure in literally tearing it off of myself and burying it in the sand with earth magic. Even if patrols came out this far trying to find me, they wouldn't find it.
The actual desert bandits didn't really have a uniform, but they had a general look and I'd been able to duplicate it with clothes I bought from the merchant. That, plus the fact that I'd fled toward the desert, should be enough to draw attention away from the caravan.
Just to be safe, I took a very circuitous route back. I swung wide as I walked back through the desert, relying on the stars and the moon to keep myself from walking in circles. I eventually ended up on the far side of the outlanders' quarter, where I leisurely wandered back in as though I'd only stepped out.
I'd done it. I'd escaped Chankota, and brought back a treasure trove of intelligence for my efforts. I made my way over to the wagon I'd been using as a bed, climbed up on top of it, and fell asleep almost instantly.