Tasnim shivered in the cold bite of midnight as she trudged through a field of dry wild grass. The desert was certainly colder, but the windy grasslands of central Morocco were an equivalent pain in the ass in different ways.

“Couldn’t we have brought the car up?” she muttered at her client through gritted teeth and a tense jaw.

Henry Zhang was a self-professed graduate student at an American university’s department of archaeology. Did she believe that for a second? Absolutely not. She had serious doubts that sneaking into the UNESCO heritage site of Volubilis in the dark was above board. Not to mention that nothing about his demeanor said “student.” He dressed like a bouncer with his mandarin-collared black jacket, the sleeves rolled up to make his arms look bigger. He’d shaped the scruff on his chin into a trimmed goatee. Combined with his undercut, he looked like a villain.

He had an almost golden-brown complexion now. A week ago, he would’ve been unmistakably Chinese. But his tan and the scruff said Turkic. Maybe even Latino.

“I mean, I’m not super crazy about spending the night in prison,” Henry said as he climbed over a boulder, dragging a large black duffel bag with him. “You can go back to the car and wait if you really want.”

Tasnim narrowed her eyes. “And leave you unsupervised in Volubilis?”

Henry scoffed, crouching on top of the boulder. “There’s nothing to steal but marble blocks. The Almoravids beat me to it a thousand years ago.”

Tasnim took his hand as he offered it, pulling her onto the boulder. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like you to stay alive long enough to pay me.”

Henry scoffed. What, was this a game to him? 

“The guards have guns, you know.” She frowned. “At least take this seriously.”

He ignored her, starting up a steep hill.

Tasnim tsked. “Are you finally going to tell me what you’re looking for?”

“I thought I was pretty clear that I wasn’t,” Henry said as they crouched down, overlooking the ruins.

“Look, we’re bordering on some pretty serious legal consequences here. If you want me to go with you, I want you to tell me what the hell we’re doing.”

“Legal consequences.” Henry scoffed. “You’re a mercenary. Your whole profession is a crime.”

“Right now, I’m a guide. And you damn well better tell me what I’m guiding you towards. I’ll drive off with the car,” Tasnim threatened, patting her pocket and the jingling keys within.

Henry sighed. “I…really? You’ve gotta be kidding me. This—it’s…stupid. What I’m looking for is gonna sound stupid.”

“So, not a big surprise, coming from you.”

Henry gave her an unamused look. “Clever,” he muttered. “I’m looking for a coin from Alexander the Great’s Tomb.”

Tasnim furrowed her brow. “Now, that is stupid. You’re on the wrong side of the Mediterranean.”

“If the coin was still in Alexander’s Tomb, yes. But the Roman emperor Caracalla removed several pieces of his regalia when he paid a visit. And take a look at this.” Henry pulled a small leather-bound journal from his jacket and pulled out a photocopy of some ancient scroll.

“Let’s pretend for a moment that I can’t read Latin,” Tasnim muttered.

“It says Caracalla’s advisor received the coin as a gift from the Emperor. And on his death, passed it onto his son, who was governor of Mauretania. Whose capital we’re currently sneaking into. And he calls that coin a ‘key’,” Henry explained.

“A key to what?” Tasnim asked.

“To the tomb,” Henry said nonchalantly, as if Alexander the Great’s tomb hadn’t gone missing hundreds of years ago.

“Didn’t it sink under Alexandria?”

“That’s what the stories say.”

Tasnim scrunched up her nose in confusion. What else was there besides the stories? Was she carting a conspiracy theorist around? She began to rethink her commitment to helping this man.

But she’d already come this far…

Rather than pass through the tourist entrance to Volubilis, which was guarded at night, Henry and Tasnim had opted to climb up the hillside opposite from that entrance. After another steep climb, they had found their way to the remains of the Temple of Saturn, overlooking the limestone, marble, and restorative brick remnants of Volubilis, the ancient ruins of a Roman city.

Far from the nearest city of Meknes, Volubilis was wonderfully quiet at this time of night.

Aside from a few lights near the affixed museum, lack of pollution made the stars clear for all to see in the night sky. The moonlight on the ancient ruins gave an ethereal air to the city that had once been here. With lunar backlighting, the city’s Triumphal Arch cast a shadow over the ruins of an old basilica. Both monuments towered over what used to be houses, baths, roads, and markets, the weathered old architecture performing its imperial function a thousand years after the city’s abandonment.

Tasnim’s gaze shifted from the majestic view to the irreverent tossing of Henry’s black duffel bag onto the ground. She frowned as he unzipped it. “What’s all that for?”

Her heart nearly stopped as he pulled out the synthetic black body of a pistol.

“Bismillah…How’d you even get that into the country?”

“Bribes, mostly. Have you ever been in a firefight?”

“Oh, no,” Tasnim hissed. “I’m not getting into a shootout! What the hell are you expecting to find? Are you going to brute force your way through the guards?”

“Relax—” Henry started.

“I will not relax if your plan is to run in there and spray bullets everywhere!”

Henry looked at her, raising his eyebrows. “Are you done?”

Tasnim sighed, letting her arms fall limp to her sides. “Fine, then. Explain. Give it your best shot.”

“I’m not the only one looking for this coin. And my competition would rather send this place sky high than let me have it. I’d rather have the means of stopping that,” Henry said, loading a full magazine. “The only reason I’m out here tonight is because a certain…private collector has decided to make a move at some point tonight. I’ve been tracking their movements, and we’re just barely ahead of them.”

Tasnim’s eyes widened. What kind of competition was he up against?

“I should be able to get in there and get out pretty fast, but things might go south. But if at any point you want to help me not die, I have a rifle.”

Tasnim shook her head. “This is…absurd. I…”

“You don’t have to, but I figure leaving whether you get paid or not up to chance can’t feel too good.” 

She squeezed her eyes shut, realizing she really should’ve taken payment up front. “I…what rifle?”

He turned to his duffel bag and dug through it, pulling out a rifle with a wooden stock and a long, thin barrel.

She looked it over as he handed it off to her. “An M14? What, was this your grandpa’s?”

“My apologies for not splurging on a Sig,” Henry muttered as he pulled out a length of soft rope with a long metal dart tied to the end.

“What’s your plan with that?” She gestured to the rope dart as he began to tie it around his left forearm.

“A contingency. In case I run out of bullets.” He finished his elaborate knot.

Lastly, he removed a small bag carrying a pair of short swords with single-edged blades about as long as his forearm and knuckle guards that curved into upward hooks over the thumbs.

He pulled out a leather sheath for them as Tasnim picked up one of the swords. “And these? Do you plan on deflecting their bullets?” She twirled the blade around, nearly dropping it as her hand tried to account for weight that wasn’t there. “Bismillah, these are light…What are they made of?”

“Good steel.” Henry caught the handle of the sword as Tasnim fumbled it. He put the blade in a crossing sheath that belted around the back of his waist. “I’d rather not leave the ruins full of bullet holes if I can avoid it.”

“How noble.” Tasnim scoffed. Her tone shifted as Henry pulled out something that looked like a steel canister covered in electronics and wires. “What the hell is that?”

“A bomb.” Henry looked up at her horrified expression. “For cars, not for the ancient ruins.”

He pulled out a few magazines for the M14 and handed them to her before grabbing his last few items. Tasnim went to work loading the rifle, not bothering to ask about some weird slips of paper he pulled out of the bag.

As she finished loading, Henry grabbed an earpiece and an accompanying radio. He handed the radio to Tasnim. “Use this to communicate with me.” He put the earpiece in. “You know how to broadcast?”

“I know enough. You have a callsign you want me to use or something?”

Henry shook his head as he stowed his sidearm away. “I had one. Not really a big fan of it anymore. If we don’t have to run for our lives once I’m done here, dinner’s on me.”

Tasnim cocked her rifle and scoffed. “Oh, you’ll be buying me a lot more than that.”

She looked the weapon over. This was insane. Getting into a firefight? All for…what, a thousand US? The gun in her hands was probably worth a thousand on its own. And on the black market, she could get an extra premium. 

She shook her head. Part of her felt bad just running off. But she wasn’t going to close any doors if things got a little too hot.

***

Stealth wasn’t something that came naturally to Henry. He wasn’t an assassin or a secret agent. He was a Martial Magician—the loudest, most brutish type of Magician. So he wasn’t going to duck-waddle everywhere under the pretense of sneaking. Though he did walk heel-to-toe to obscure his footfalls.

He made his way through the commons quarter of the ruined city and near the south gate on the opposite side of the ruin, characterized by a distinctly modern museum for tourists. Made of blank white stone in flat, geometric shapes with no texture, the entrance was flanked by two armed guards.

To be fair, modern styles of architecture had some appeal. At least, more so than modern art. But to Henry, that wasn’t a very high bar.

“Check, check. Do you copy?” he whispered into his earpiece as he crept through the piles of ruined stone and bricks.

“I read you.” Tasnim’s voice patched through. “Aside from the guards at the museum, your coast is clear.”

Henry pulled out a fulu charm, a small yellow slip of paper covered in red-ink scribbling that vaguely resembled Chinese characters. He pulled off a strip of paper covering a bit of adhesive and stuck the charm to the tail of his jacket. The charm turned the polyester fabric to silk of the same jet-black color. It was the upper limit of what he could do with written magic.

The talisman used a small bit of Confucian magic, but goaded Solomon’s Wisdom into effect, hiding all magic from unawakened eyes.

Henry stood up, in full view of the guards, and let the ancient worldwide spell do its work. He waved at them, but even as they were looking in his direction, their eyes were glazed over in boredom before they started some idle conversation with one another.

Tasnim wouldn’t be able to see him either.

Unburdened by any need to be stealthy, Henry trudged to the west, towards the ruin’s characteristically Roman triumphal arch.

So far, everything was going according to plan. That said, his plan was missing a few things—namely, someone able to detect magic. Henry’s arcane senses were…blunted. He’d always relied on his squad to sniff out targets for him in the past. To say he was paranoid about being snuck up on now was the understatement of the century.

His head on a swivel, he ducked under a lopsided arch belonging to the entrance of a block-size pavilion. Down a few stairs, he wove his way around tufts of weeds and foundational stone blocks. He climbed up a small incline to a few ruined columns just as Tasnim patched into his radio.

“Eyes on the museum,” she warned.

Henry glanced over a waist-high stone wall and crouched.

A small group of westerners passing by the oblivious guards stuck out like a sore thumb. Henry frowned. If the guards weren’t seeing them, how could Tasnim?

Maybe she had the makings of a Magician. He’d let the Society of the Setting Sun find that out for themselves.

As for the interlopers, he was under the impression that every Magician’s Circle in Europe was out for this coin. They could be from any Circle. Latins, Germans, Slavs, Greeks. Likely the Latins, since they were the ones who had his information first before it passed hands to him, but he’d cross that bridge when he got to it.

For now, they didn’t know he was here.

Henry crossed a beaten path that had once been a proper road past the despondent ruins of houses that should’ve belonged to richer members of the settlement, leading up to the governor’s Gordian Palace.

The palace was a symbol to him, like treading the last steps of the thousand-mile journey he’d been burdened with these last eighteen months. Relief and terror flooded into him at the prospect of making it this far. Just before him lay the chance for vindication. With the key to the tomb, he could finally be done with this nonsense. Weiying’s lies would be revealed, and he could get his life back.

But a seed of doubt wiggled its way into his mind, sending a burning tingle to the spot between his shoulder blades.

A series of three arches, surrounded by columns implying the continuation of the pattern, marked the Gordian Palace. He stepped over the shin-high stacks of stone that were once walls and onto a patch of ground just outside one of the palace’s mosaics, for which the entire settlement was known.

Pulling off his shoes so as to not damage the mosaic, Henry stepped onto it and pressed his palms against the carefully arranged artwork, focusing on his arcane senses, trying to search for any sign of magic.

There was nothing he could feel. But his fingers grabbed at the mosaic anyway.

He searched columns, walls, other mosaics, and every inch of floor not yet consumed by the overgrowth. He looked for mechanisms, hidden compartments, shifted rocks, anything.

And he came up with jack.

It could be that it wasn’t here. But it could also be that it was here, and its hiding spot was buried under two thousand years of history. Or someone lost it. Or literally any of the near-infinite possibilities that could have occurred since that coin last appeared in recorded history.

Henry pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t afford to spend time worrying about whether or not it was here. But if it wasn’t, he’d be wasting that much time, and possibly more.

He closed his eyes and breathed, calming himself. “Alright,” he muttered. “Just think.”

The coin had been a gift to the governor from Caracalla, later passed onto his son…

“Tasnim, do you know when different parts of this city were constructed?” he asked over the radio.

“Why would I know that?”

Henry grimaced. 

“Best I can do is say the Triumphal Arch was built…I think sometime in the two hundreds. I don’t know, it was a school trip.”

The third century? That would’ve been right at the time of Caracalla’s final years in power.

Henry pulled out his journal, filled with notes from his research on this place. Research that neglected to date every quarter of the city. But the arch was built in Caracalla’s honor. It was a plausible hiding place. And his best lead aside from the governor’s house.

Footsteps on the beaten gravel just beyond the arches made him grab his shoes and dive for cover behind a block of stone.

The four westerners had their backs turned to him as they split up. They held gold talismans out like Geiger counters to extend the range of their arcane senses. Two women, two men. All around his age. Maybe a little older.

Henry waited in the shadows, listening as they spoke to one another.

It was…Latin?

He had figured the Coven of Latium, being a multinational Circle between France, Spain, and Italy, would use English or French as a common tongue. But it seemed Latin served the same purpose. Henry’s expertise was in Mandarin and Arabic. His Latin translations had come from the internet. So he wasn’t getting any of what they were saying.

Slowly and quietly, he maneuvered around them, heading south for the Triumphal Arch, as they continued north.

Once he was out of earshot, he broke into a jog, but stopped as he caught sight of another figure sneaking out from behind the Arch. He was expecting more manpower from the Latins, and in any other circumstance, he would’ve dealt with them then and there. But the coin was top priority.

Henry sprinted towards the Arch and turned the corner of the massive monument to find a hole in the marble. His eyes met the surprised glance of a brunette woman a head shorter than him. She looked like she might fall in with the Latins, with long, wavy hair and broad, more European features with lightly tanned skin. But if she were with the Latins, she would’ve called for help by now.

Maybe she was German or Slavic.

Henry caught a glint of light as she shoved her hand into her pocket.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw a punch at him. Henry blocked the strike and countered with an admittedly arrogant flurry of blows with a single hand, trying to reach for her pocket with the other.

She was able to hold her own with some basic boxing skills, but was hardly trained to fight off a Martial Magician. Henry managed to sweep her legs out from under her. Like he was wrestling with his brother over a toy, he tried to shove his hand into her pockets, which she viciously defended.

He was starting to think she was definitely in the same boat as himself.

“Stop being so…stubborn.” Henry grunted, trying to get past her arms. Grappling was the one combat skill he was lacking in, and it was really showing right now.

“Get…off!” she hissed, planting a surprising kick in his sternum. He stumbled back, the wind flooding out of his lungs as the woman scrambled to her feet and ran. He fell to one knee to catch his breath.

Henry pushed himself off the ground, stumbling again in the process. Before he could chase after the woman, he heard shouts in Latin coming from behind him.

The weathered arch was at least two stories high. Probably higher. There weren’t a lot of hiding places around the wide-open space surrounding the arch, but he could hide up top.

That was his best chance to avoid being outnumbered. He quickly scaled a portion of worn stone before throwing himself up to a handhold provided by a missing block. He pulled himself over the top of the arch just as the Latins sprinted down to it.

“Tasnim.” Henry patched into his radio. “I could really use some support down by the Arch.”

He waited for a response, but nothing came.