"Outwitted (Part eleven)" an original work of fiction for #365dayso...

This is today's offering (day 162) for @mydivathings' #365daysofwriting challenge (click here to see her current post)

Today's picture prompt (below) is a Photo by Adam Bichler on Unsplash

“Will my sister be joining us?” I asked the old man, trying to keep his eyes on me. “After all, I traveled a long way to see her.”

Grevyl scowled, and drew his cloak about him, as if he were cold. “You came here to kill your sister, not to come for a cosy chat, boy!” he spat. “If I had it my way you’d not be in the same country, let alone the same room!”

I smiled. The old man was uncomfortable. Perhaps my presence was getting to him but, as much as I liked to think I had that power, given his talent, and his position, that was unlikely. No, something else was going on. His plans - their plans - were being interfered with. Perhaps, my unlikely allies were doing what they said they would, after all.

“Oh, poor Grevyl,” I said. “You should know by know that my sister is far too headstrong to listen to a bit of good advice. Now be a good fellow and fetch me another cup of tea, would you? All this chatting with such an old friend is working up a terrible thirst.”

Grevyl's scowl deepened and after another fruitless glance around the room, he left. I waited a minute, listening to the tap-tap-tap of his cane as he retreated down the corridor, and then hurried over to the purple covered chair. I reached underneath and retrieved the bundle. It was my cloak! My fingers worked their way into the secret pockets. Everything was still there! Perhaps all was not lost. I could still achieve my mission.

I selected three items, from the cloak, leaving the rest, and then pushed the bundle back under the chair as far as I could. I moved quickly away from the chair. I went round the room, again making a show of picking up items and examining them. This served two purposes: I wanted to distract anyone watching from my performance by the chair, and, assuming I would be searched at some point, I was looking for possible hiding places for my contraband.

The room was full of ornaments that suggested Mathilde had visited all the places I had - and indeed, some I had not. They were not the artifacts we had both been looking for, of course. These - those she had managed to locate before me - would be locked away somewhere, or now useless, having been drained of their power.

My fingers played over a stone carving depicting one of the great stone cairns in the Desert Lands. The first time I had visited the pyramid country I had not used the power to get there: I traveled by boat. That first trip had opened my mind to what other cultures could teach us about the power. And it had opened my bowels too, for I had been so ill, from food poisoning, I had almost died.

It had been Pewds' idea, or at least I had led him to believe it had been. He had become not so much my mentor as my co-conspirator. Both of us were driven by the same two goals: to become proficient in the art of the Power and, more importantly, to destroy Grevyl. Our dedication to both these tasks necessitated a permanent move to the city. I left my mother in the care of Mrs Karn and the nursing staff, and moved into Pewds' house, a rundown little two story building, that even the rats avoided. We spent very little time in his hovel, instead we were to be found in the library, or in the lock up Pewds rented from a grubby man in the East of the city.

It was in the lockup, late at night, that we practiced our art. The building was in an area of the city that nice respectable people did not live in, most would not visit it in broad daylight, let alone after hours. There were no houses nearby, just warehouses, and brothels. If the strange noises, smells and lights coming from our lockup alarmed anyone, they kept it to themselves. We were never disturbed in our work.

At first Pewds was my teacher: he knew much about basic control of the dust and how to move it from one state to another. Once I had mastered the basics - conjuring small objects that appeared solid and real, at least for a short time - and twice narrowly avoiding turning myself into dust in the process, I ached to do more. My sister had used the power to travel. I wanted that power. I wanted to do everything she could, and more.

Pewds was an amateur practitioner. He was not a master in the art, like Grevyl, and their mutual distrust meant that Grevyl had never shared any of his secrets with my teacher. So we had to start from scratch, find what little information existed in my father’s vast library. And go in search of other documents that had yet to be collated. The first was easy, of course. Much of our days were spent in the dark room going through the scrolls and books. The later proved more difficult. Grevyl had a network of people employed to search out old documents and to bring them to him. We did not. The best Pewds could do was to employ someone to intercept the information before it reached Grevyl. That someone was Piggs.

If any man was more suited to his birth name than Piggs I have yet to meet them. A fat, greasy man with a snout rather than a nose, who snorted when he laughed, I was convinced that Piggs was an unpleasant nickname, and asked Pewds whether we should address the man by his real name.

“No,” he said, chuckling at my error. “The poor man was born with that name. I did not know him when he was young, so I have no idea if he grew into it, or whether he was born that way. But it is true it is an unfortunately accurate name.”

It was said that Piggs would do anything for money - and later I was to put that assertion to the test - and certainly he seemed to have no moral objection to - nor did he seem to encounter many problems - intercepting documents and information about documents before they arrived into Grevyl’s bony hands.

Most of the documents we would have copied before sending the originals on their way to their rightful owner. Some - those we decided would give us an advantage over our rival - we would make disappear or make them illegible or, sometimes send on the copy, but with some errors in the text of our own design.

At some time Grevyl must have become wise to our little game - although we doubted he had worked out who was behind it - because he shut down the supply route and began to go and fetch the most valuable documents himself. The game changed. Now, we had to intercept the information about where to find the documents, and then get there before the old man and his young protegee.

The trip to the Dessert Lands was one such trip. Not only did I almost die due to the dehydrating nature of my illness, but it was the first time I came close to understanding how powerful my sister had become.

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You can read the next part right now: @felt.buzz/outwitted-part-12-an-original-work-of-fiction-for-365daysofwriting-challenge

"Outwitted (Part eleven)" an original work of fiction for #365daysofwriting challenge