If nothing else, the weirdness with the two Tsuirakuans had cleared Layla's head slightly. She was beginning to function again, and she found she could push the shock and horror of Arty's death to the back of her mind while she did what had to be done; there'd be time for mourning later. Her cold, calculating mind started to take over -- she got it from both parents, after all -- as she began to work through the next steps.
She'd either gathered up or destroyed the most important records, at least the potentially incriminating ones; she and Arty made sure to control those herself, rather than let the goons next door do something stupid with them. Most of the rest of the belongings on site could just stay there. There was no point in doing anything to the derelict decoy; it had been rotting into nonexistence for a long time. Faye's people could be counted on to demolish the big farmhouse and barn (at least if they were more competent than the Tsuirakuans appeared to be...). That only left her own house, and she and Arty had had a remarkably cold-blooded conversation, before they were even married, about how to handle things there, in the not-unlikely event that one of them met an early end; being a Wraith was risky business, after all. A perfectly plausible cover story involving funeral rituals in Delphiniel, where Arty allegedly came from (not a grain of truth to it, but false documents had been carefully prepared to "support" that history), would explain the absence of "Andrea" and Zachary; the entirely legitimate vineyard would be administered by their lawyer (who didn't know about the ... other ... business there) for the time being; and eventually, the Gewehr would step in and do something.
That left three things to do. First, it wouldn't do to have her house still bristling with lethal traps while the lawyer was keeping up appearances. This wasn't a big problem; they'd planned ahead for that eventuality too, and had prepared a number of small thermite bombs that would melt the guns, blades, etc., into undistinguished slag, without even blistering the house's paint. She placed and activated the bombs, on a timer that would set them off in the middle of the following night, by which time she and her son would be long gone.
Second, there was the problem of getting out of town. This, by contrast, hadn't been heavily planned, on the grounds that it really couldn't be, but Layla at least knew her options. Let's see, she thought to herself ...
- Warp gate to Port Lorrel: No, that wouldn't do. The problem was the Pocket Dimension built into her "suitcase." Interactions between the spell and the gate might send the passengers to a different destination, or a different plane of existence, or just into eternal nothingness. Magical, interdimensional interactions weren't to be screwed around with, and the portalmages checked passengers carefully to make sure they weren't carrying anything that could create them -- her suitcase, for example.
- Airship: That looked like the way to go. She quickly checked schedule and discovered that there was a redeye special departing for Port Lorrel that she could still catch if she hurried, and was half way to the door, needing only to collect her son, before she caught herself and realized what a disaster she was setting herself up for. The problem again was that Pocket Dimension suitcase. Airships used their own Pocket Dimension spells to stow inanimate cargo in flight, and she knew (from yet another of those secret reports that most Wraiths couldn't see but that she'd picked up from her mother) that there'd been an astoundingly large explosion at a testing range in northern Tsuiraku when the Tsuirakuans tried to put one Pocket Dimension inside another. (Why hadn't anyone thought of using that effect as an actual weapon? She didn't know, and marked the thought for later investigation.) No, that wouldn't work either.
- Mr. Stagpoole's "special" sea-going courier service: Maybe; they'd certainly done business before, and that might even have been how Oskar made it back to town. But somehow, she'd just never trusted the man. (Call it feminine intuition.) This didn't seem like the time to test whether her concern was well founded; Zachary would be going along, after all...
- One of the Gewehr's "slow boats": Ah, that looked best. They tended to be highly secure, were innocuous enough that they weren't prone to incidents on the high seas, and their main drawback, slow travel, wouldn't make any difference under the circumstances. (It would also allow her some time alone to mourn, the emotional corner of her mind pointed out.) She'd seen Phil and Lefti in town just yesterday, so she was sure that one could be worked out. Yes, that would do, and it had the advantage that she'd be able to get some sleep tonight and link up with them in the morning.
Decision made, she turned to her third item: what to do about the Tsuirakuans. The question was very simple:
do I kill them, or not? Presumably they weren't actual Gewehr people (she would have at least heard of them, probably known them, if they were) but rather some sort of not-very-bright "contractors" that Faye had rustled up. Standard opsec under the circumstances would call for them to be quietly disposed of, and she was perfectly capable of killing quietly and efficiently ... but what if they
were Gewehr, or otherwise important enough that they'd be missed? There might be repercussions. She just didn't know enough about these two to be sure.
She was about to risk another secure call to Faye, to get her guidance (even though she'd probably be asleep and none too happy about being awakened), when her calculations were interrupted by what sounded like an explosion coming from the general direction of the farmhouse.
Well, well, well, she thought; that problem might have taken care of itself...
[EDIT:
Incredibly belated retcon to fix a name issue that may be important soon -- at least we can hope....]
