The two weeks since our last discussion had flown by incredibly fast. We were once again in my austere room, trying to hammer out a realistic plan for recovering the Scepter.

  Elesya had brought several plates of appetizers and three glasses of iced tea with her. With barely concealed pride, she told us she had prepared everything herself and urged us to taste a bit of each dish.

  Without waiting for a second invitation, I helped myself to a slice of cheese pie and immediately noticed how excellent it tasted. The different flavors suggested that three kinds of cheese had been used. Even though I wasn’t familiar at all with products from their world, the composition reminded me of ricotta, asiago and blue cheese.

  For some inexplicable reason, Elesya seemed eager to prove she was skilled at cooking. I wondered to myself why she felt the need to stand out—perhaps to show she was in no way inferior to Thanida? Whatever the explanation, for a hungry man like me, her snacks were a blessing. The terrible food served at the Academy canteen made me wish the two girls would cook more often—every day, if possible.

  “I managed,” Thanida began, “to find the secret spell for creating our passports.”

  “That’s great news! It means we’ve made progress. But why was a spell necessary?”

  “Imperial passports weren’t just simple pieces of paper,” Thanida explained. “There was a verification spell that never failed.”

  I shrugged, since I didn’t fully understand how Imperial bureaucracy worked.

  “How exactly did the verification work?”

  “When issued, the spell imprinted the bearer’s traits directly into the passport paper—but not visibly, rather in a subtle way, invisible to the human eye. Only customs officials could verify whether the passport truly belonged to its holder and whether it had been issued by the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs. Forgery was impossible in those days.”

  “Then how did you manage to—?”

  “I found an old Imperial manuscript in the Royal Library of Atrolos that describes the spell in detail. With some effort, I managed to reproduce it and create passports just as good as the original Imperial ones, able to pass the verification test.”

  I took a sip of the iced tea Elesya had brought. It was refreshing, lightly flavored with hibiscus. It wasn’t too sweet, so I immediately helped myself to some small rose-petal–shaped pastries and found them delicious—an excellent follow-up to the cheese pie.

  “Elesya, have you made progress with the clothing?” I asked. “How will we dress once we reach the Imperial capital?”

  “The best approach is to disguise ourselves as young nobles from some obscure province, visiting Heropolis,” she replied. “That way we won’t seem suspicious if we get close to the Imperial Palace.”

  As she spoke, Elesya spread several drawings across the table, showing how the clothes were to be tailored.

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  “I’ve already started working on them,” she continued. “I hope they’ll be finished in ten days, unless something unforeseen happens. Before that, you’ll need to try them on so I can make the final adjustments.”

  “Perfect. We’ll look exactly like Imperial citizens. But what excuse will we have for visiting Heropolis?”

  “There’s a bazaar in the city that sells expensive goods,” Elesya explained. “So we’ll have the perfect justification. Nearly all the nobles of the Empire bought luxury items in the capital, eager to show them off.”

  I examined the clothes she had drawn. They were beautifully colored, in shades of purple and blue, but without extravagant flair. Thanida leaned over my shoulder to look as well and declared herself satisfied. Even if they weren’t suitable for a warrior, she remarked, they were fitting attire for nobles.

  We moved on to the next item on our list of problems: entering the palace. Thanida spread out the plans of the Imperial building on the table, explaining where the Hall of the Scepter was located and how we might, in theory, reach it.

  When she began describing how the artifact was guarded, her voice grew less optimistic.

  “There are only two entrances to our objective, both extremely well guarded by the Imperial Guard. On top of that, I don’t have good news about what we’ll find inside the hall. The protective spells that prevented the Scepter from being stolen were never written down. They were so secret that they were passed on only orally. Only the Emperor and a few Imperial mages knew how to use them.”

  I fell silent, trying to find a way around this obstacle. Acting without knowing what traps awaited us would be extremely risky.

  “Thanida, is there any spell for invisibility?”

  “Not that I know of,” she shook her head thoughtfully. “There are legends about the Helm of Hades, which can make its wearer invisible. But the helm is more myth than reality. Apart from Perseus, no mortal has ever possessed it.”

  “I don’t think invisibility would help us much anyway,” Elesya said. “Their protective spells would affect us whether we were visible or not. And the alarms would still be triggered the moment we entered the Scepter’s hall.”

  I didn’t like the deadlock we’d reached. We’d barely begun discussing the plan, and already we were stuck on our first serious difficulty.

  “Then how do we get past the protective spells surrounding the Scepter?” I asked. “Come on, don’t either of you have an idea?”

  “The Scepter is so well guarded,” Thanida said, “that not even the infamous Kaononai would dare try to steal it.”

  Puzzled, I asked her who these Kaononai were. It was the first time I’d heard of them.

  The Kaononai—or the “faceless ones”—were worshippers of a certain god of thieves. The name of that deity was a closely guarded secret, known only within the group. Their reputation as thieves and spies had become legendary throughout the world. It was said that a Kaononai could remain hidden inside a house for days, even weeks. The larger the house, the easier it was for them to hide. For them, it was trivial to stay crouched and motionless in a corner without making a sound.

  Sometimes they hid under beds; other times in the most secluded corners of a home. A Kaononai could disguise themselves as anything, even pieces of furniture, if they wished. Rumor had it that one of them once posed as a bedside table, temporarily replacing the original object beside the owners’ bed. Another had managed to spy on a gathering while hanging beneath a table, listening perfectly to the conversations above as lavish meals were served.

  Most impressive was how they entered buildings. They were so agile and silent that they could slip in behind people at the exact moment those people opened the door to enter their own homes. Legends claimed the Kaononai were the only ones capable of stealing a ring from your finger without you noticing—or even the pillow from beneath your head while you slept.

  I listened to Thanida’s account with considerable skepticism. While I believed there was a kernel of truth to it, most of the details struck me as exaggerations. Besides, the exploits of these legendary thieves paled in comparison to those of the dean. He had managed to steal fifty thousand sesterces from me in broad daylight. The famous Kaononai still had much to learn before reaching the level of mastery displayed by the dean of Wyrmlithus.