Yuri held himself motionless at the top of the wall, waiting for the explosion.

A roar shook the wall, the manor house, and the courtyard in between. Flames shot up on the far side of the house.

He would have cut a dashing figure, Yuri thought, if only some one could see him. His long blue coat (stolen from a Tolan officer who wouldn’t be needing it anymore) draped over him dramatically, its brass buttons shining in the moonlight. The goggles on his head (also stolen) were enchanted; they soaked up all the starlight and shot it into his eyes so he could see in the dark. (Or something like that. He hadn’t been paying attention when the old wizard had explained them to him.)

Yuri wore his most magnificent trophy on his back. The prototype was forged of some lightweight metal he didn’t recognize, and powered by aether rods. Hoses protruded from the thing like boneless black limbs; two of them ended in armored discs, which Yuri wore on either wrist. He was down to his last aether rod. He’d have to steal some more when this job was over.

The device had many functions. His favorite was turning him invisible.

Yuri ran across the courtyard to the manor house. On a silent night in full moonlight, it would take the most observant of watchmen to see or hear him coming. And tonight? With a fire raging at the eastern gate, and the air full of shouts and smoke? Yuri smiled. He was a ghost.

He avoided the front doors. Even invisible, even under the cover of night and a fiery commotion, he didn’t trust doors. There would be guards — there were always guards — too smart or too stubborn to be distracted from their duty. And it was Yuri’s experience that those guards were always just inside the front doors.

With a silent leap, he was on the wall, dangling from a bit of gargoyle worn to a grinning nub from centuries in the rain. From there, he scrambled up the wall, finding handholds in the chinks between the great stones, until he was at the second-story window he’d picked out the night before. As he’d suspected last night, it was unlocked. Yuri pulled, the sash swung out, and he was in. He pulled the window closed behind him.

The empty hallway was lined with thick carpet that spoke of luxury and taste. Yuri approved. He though he might steal such a carpet for his own place someday… whenever he finally settled down. It turned a corner up ahead, and Yuri followed it.

Aether torches on the wall gave the hall a pale blue ghost-light, revealing where it turned left up ahead. His footstep muffled (he was loving this carpet more all the time), Yuri scampered down the hall and around the corner.

“I see you.”

Yuri stopped. The voice came from the far end of the hall, where the torches didn’t reach and where, according to his client (Markov or Molov or something like that), his prize awaited him. He could almost see the door just beyond the torchlight. But in front of it was…

“I see you hiding there, pressed against the wall.” There was a hint of a giggle in the woman’s voice.

Yuri glanced down, but still couldn’t see himself. If she could… he smelled magic at work.

He rotated a switch on the disc attached to his wrist. The device on his back remained silent, but he could feel its vibration shift frequency as he dropped the shield of invisibility.

“You can see me,” said Yuri. “But I’m having a hard time seeing you.”

Again, the giggle.

The woman appeared at the end of the hall. Yuri couldn’t tell if she was magically manifesting in the light of the torches, or just stepping forward out of the gloom.

Her dark eyes matched her long dark hair, and her skin was a deep brown that glistened in the ghost light. Her robe was light and thin, making Yuri think of a sleeping gown a noble lady might wear to bed. But it was far too ornate for sleeping. She had no armor, and no weapons beyond her playful smile.

A sorceress, then.

“I know why you’re here,” said the woman. “The Mokovs sent you, didn’t they?”

“Something like that,” said Yuri. Mokov, right. Not Markov. He hoped he’d remember the name now, but knew he wouldn’t.

“You’ll never get in,” she said. “You might as well go. If you leave right this moment, I won’t even call for the guards.”

“Afraid I can’t do that,” said Yuri. “I’ve got a contra –”

“Moment’s up!” cried the woman, who thrust her hand at Yuri, two fingers extended. A bolt of red energy leaped from the fingers to Yuri —

— where it splashed harmlessly across the aether bubble surrounding him. The device on his backed whined as it strained to absorb the magic.

Yuri ducked into a doorway. He wasn’t sure his shields could take another blast like that. He flipped a switch on his wrist. Time to go on the offensive.

“You coming to get me?” he called down the hall.

“No, I like it here,” the woman called back.

That was odd. Yuri would have expected her to follow up on her attack.

On a hunch, he poked his head out. In the instant between when the woman fired off another bolt and when he jerked his head back in (smelling burned hair), he saw it: On the floor at the end of the hall was a pyramid-shaped bottle. No wonder he hadn’t seen it before, it was no bigger than his hand. And no wonder she wasn’t pressing her advantage — she wasn’t a sorceress at all, but an ifrit, bound to the household.

Yuri twisted a knob on his wrist and took a deep breath.

He hit the hallway in a roll, arcane energy flying over his head. He brought his hand up and returned fire, spraying aetheric bubbles down the hall. Sparks flew where they caught the ifrit’s blasts in mid-air.

The ifrit went silent.

Yuri realized his eyes were closed. He forced one open and peered down the hallway.

The ifrit was gone. The bottle was still there, captured inside an aetheric bubble. Yuri might have been imagining it, but was pretty sure he heard small, muffled pounding and tiny screams of rage from the end of the hall.

He smiled and loped down to the door he’d come here to open. There was a lock, but nothing he couldn’t overcome before the guards showed up.

Yuri couldn’t help but glance at the bottle in a bubble next to his foot. It was ancient, with fine blue markings on each side — possibly writing in some arcane script. He shrugged, scooped up the bubble in one hand, dropped it in his pack, and turned back to the lock to give it a final click.

He pushed the door open gently.

“Come on, kid,” he called inside. “It’s time to go home.”