Kordas slipped away whenever he was not being scryed and Gated into the records complex. He had unprecedented latitude in using the City’s stores and resources, thanks to the Dolls. He’d begun, early on, by grilling the Record Keeper on what he could do as a Duke without attracting anyone’s attention. It was stunning just how bad the Imperial way of doing things had become. The Record Keeper revealed to Kordas that its function was not to interpret nor verify the origin of orders, but rather, to follow the authority of the seals—and the Record Keeper had full sets of seals. Talking quickly, Kordas prepared requisition forms via the Dolls—all of whom worked nearly blindingly fast when they wanted to—then sat at the Record Keeper’s desk, and had the Dolls turn away. By using the seals there, Kordas could impersonate a King, if he dared. The Record Keeper would turn around to find a stack of properly sealed orders to be carried out, and no Doll could claim to have witnessed anything awry. The materials requisitioned by the sealed order would be located, neatly packed, labeled, inventoried, and carried by Dolls to the so-familiar-as-to-be-unnoticed plain barges and boats that plied the canals of the City, with the inventory attached just inside the door. And off the barge would go to the refuge.

Kordas felt a genuine tingle of joy at stealing on such a scale. He knew it was wrong in general to steal, but this was for lives. He told himself that whatever he plundered from the Empire for his people were resources that wouldn’t be available to the Empire against his people. Audacity will win the day, he thought, and had the City Armory unobtrusively carted out “for offsite inventory and storage relocation” with the proper stamps, and replaced with identical, but empty, crates. Tons of combat-ready Poomers, Spitters, and the ammunition for them streamed to Valdemar, with no one but he and the Dolls aware of it. Boatloads of pellets in their secured crates accompanied them. All the boats looked the same with their raincovers on, and nobody cared what Dolls shipped. Hundreds of Doll-operated barges plied the canals every day. And so, without Courts, Kings, or commoners noticing or caring, the Plundering of the City was underway.

Better to be hung for a big deed than a small one, he thought. And, if I leave the City with a bare minimum of weapons, they won’t have reserves to defend themselves with, and they might panic. Panic was a good, useful option in a Court. The only supplies he let go out as usual were things that were expected on specific dates, such as ammunition and pellets going to the War. If those didn’t arrive as expected, there would be furious consequences.