The windows were illuminated by candlelight. It was very late, but no one drew the curtains and snuffed the wicks. Inside the house, quiet voices concocted plans, debated strategies, amended lists and plotted. The discussion went on for a long time. Finally, just before dawn broke, a hooded figure slipped out into the street.
~~~
She didn't let the illusion drop until she had rounded three corners and was quite certain she wasn't being followed. Only then did she pause to sift through the folder of documents she had purchased. She smiled, looking them over. Orders for weapons, letters between crafters, a few official looking documents from the Hempstead guards and council ... and the most expensive of her purchases, a book on weaponsmithing, scribed by a follower of Dorand. As she glanced over the pages, she was already looking at the shape of the letters, the degree of slant and height of loops, the size of the script ...
~~~
They haggled, but she had already decided. They were perfect. They looked the part, and they'd keep their mouths shut. They had no loyalty to the church, but she judged that they'd keep their bargain with her. As she listened to a counteroffer, she calculated how many of them she would need and compared the number to the size of the camp. She multiplied it by the last figure she'd heard and added the cost of the costumes and props they'd already acquired. An even ten thousand or so. She liked the number, and before she could stop herself she heard herself saying “Done,” and shaking a beefy hand.
She pictured the surprise this would engender if they pulled it off right, and her lapse in concentration caused the illusion to shimmer slightly. None of the mercenaries noticed, and she quickly reasserted magical control. The tedious business of payment negotiations done, they quickly worked out the rest of the details. She smiled as she walked away, and dared to hope.
~~~
She stared accusingly down at the page, knowing right away it was all wrong. The link of the last ligature was too long, and the supralinear and infralinear portions were too short. She caught sight of a flourish that had snuck in – her own script sometimes contained them, but in this matter-of-fact dwarven scrawl the small extraneous stroke stood out like a sore thumb. The majuscules were the worst. They always were.
Angrily, she crumpled the sheet of parchment and pitched it off the desk and into a corner. It bounced off another crumpled ball and rolled a few inches before coming to a stop. She was rushing. She wasn't ready to start the freehand practice. And yet she was impatient – they were running out of time!
With a sigh, she lifted a piece of vellum off a thick stack.
That had been expensive. Each piece of the animal skin parchment was so thin it was translucent. It was necessary, for what she needed it for. She rubbed her eyes, already strained from the tedious work, then dipped her quill in the ink. With painstaking care, she started at the beginning, carefully tracing the letters, and mimicking their forms ...