The art of the steal

Mixing modern technology and magic, Ti’Dani and Sang are stealing a famous statue. But when things start to go wrong, they’ll be challenged not to lose their heads.

The Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze appeared utterly unremarkable from the outside, except for the thick iron bars across the windows and, tonight, two old stone gargoyles perched along the guttering. One was laying on the roof above the main door, forelegs crossed and spaded tail curled around its rough-hewn body, and the other was on the southern edge of the building, patrolling. Ti’Dani could track its movements by the faint orange glow of its cigar.

“Had to be tonight, didn’t it?” she muttered, turning her eyes back down to the faint glow of her computer screen. The rooftop trattoria was closed, the lights out, and thanks to some good planning and a judicious amount of sleep charms she was the only one in the building. Not exactly hidden, but hardly conspicuous – just a small business owner working late.

“You know I have a date tomorrow.”

Ti’Dani frowned and pushed her earpiece deeper into her ear. “What? Keep an eye out for a couple of guscio on the ground floor, near the back.”

“You know we couldn’t do it tomorrow. I have a date. And I’m nowhere near them.”

Feeds from several of the cameras and detection webs flickered across her screen, and Ti’Dani pulled a few of them to one side. “Well excuse me for being cautious. This’d be so much easier if you showed up on my systems.”

“It’d be so much harder, you mean.”

In the background, quiet chatter from the guards’ radios ebbed and flowed. One of them was reinforcing a Gym or Tower or Outpost or something in a mobile game, and there were a few discussing bets on a recent race.

“Whatever. Look, just keep a sharp eye out. We don’t need you raising the alarm.”

“You forget, I’m sexy as fuck. Alarms aren’t going to be the only things rising.”

 Ti’Dani rolled her eyes and enlarged a section of the first floor surrounding the target. “Guscio don’t have the bits for that, Sang, and you know it. They’re just stone and… like, words or something.”

“Such deep insight, Ti’Dani.”

“Bite me, Sang. Magical Constructs and Simulacra wasn’t my forte in school.” Ti’Dani watched on the camera as a small, expensive piece of jewellery two displays down from the target floated off a display plinth, rose to the height of an adult’s head and vanished. She sighed.

“I make it a point to never eat my coworkers. I’m in the room, by the way.” Sang’s voice was slightly muffled, as if he had something in his mouth. Like marbles, or a small, expensive piece of jewellery.

“I could see that. You can’t pull that trick with David, though.”

A faint chuckle came over the radio. “That’s what I have you for, isn’t it?”

Ti’Dani took a sip of coffee from the cup next to her and pulled a face. Cold. Well, at least she could make a fresh cup easily enough; the place had at least four coffee machines and there wasn’t a piece of technology made that she couldn’t make like her. But first things first. “In case you haven’t noticed, not everyone can just waltz into art galleries dressed for their birthday and get away with it. What am I supposed to do from three blocks away?”

“Do your technology stuff. Turn off the alarms and I’ll carry it out, no problem.” There was a slight pause. “Some property damage, though. The doors are pretty tiny.”

“My ‘technology stuff’?” Ti’Dani scoffed. “I’m good, but that’s a whole different skillset, Sang. I thought you had a plan. You said you had a plan.”

“I do. That’s the plan. You can do it, Ti.”

Ti’Dana sighed and began digging out a second screen from her equipment bag. She unfolded it with one hand, tugging at the tangle of electrical cords that emerged from the depths of the bag like a pile of spaghetti. She had labelled and tied them up separately, how on earth had they managed to get into such a mess? And why were there so many of them? She’d only packed three – did computer cords breed when not watched?

“I’ll give it a shot. We do need the money.”

“Excellent.”

Ti’Dana’s head shot up as alarms began blaring, and the chatter from the guards changed from casual banter to panicked shouts and barked orders. On her screen, she watched the statue of David rise several feet off the floor, swaying from side-to-side. Sang might be invisible in mirrors, on camera and to surveillance webs, but a large marble statue was an entirely different matter.

“What the hell, Sang?!”

“I thought you were disabling the alarms!”

“I need more than half a second to—guards approaching you, coming up quickly.”

“You surprise me.”

“Get moving, Sang.”

“On it, on it.” David lurched sideways and took another statue clean off its stand, sending rock showering onto the polished tiles. The first guard came in, slamming the door open and immediately skittering and sliding on the shards – David changed direction abruptly, heading for the opposite door. A second guard smashed their way into the room, nearly squashing their fallen compatriot beneath clay feet. Words in a dead language were carved into its earthen skin, and its face was a flat, featureless expanse of reddish-brown clay that turned to face the floating statue of David and, presumably, Sang

“There’s a naked guy carrying the statue,” came a deep voice over the guards’ frequency. It sounded like boulders grinding up against each other at the edge of two tectonic plates; Ti’Dani’s speakers tried to vibrate their way off the table as they struggled with the bass.

“Is he hot?”

“Nothing’s showing up on-screen, are you sure?”

“Naked? Like, naked, naked?”

“Faster, Sang.”

“Don’t damage the art, you lumbering idiot.”

“Dammit, vampire. Vampire!”

“Zachariah’s got ‘em.”

There was a crack that echoed painfully around the display hall and sent feedback squealing through her headset, and Ti’Dani cursed and pulled her earpiece out. She couldn’t see much on the screen – the hall was filled with a cloud of dust that swallowed up a lot of the room and obscured even the enormous bulk of the golem. She flicked between feeds, trying to find one that showed the hallway or the front doors. The plan had just been to go straight out the main doors; the gargoyles weren’t usually there, and it was the closest exit. Once he was out, Sang could activate the teleportation sigils, but he needed to get past the guards first.

“Three more guards coming your way. Watch your left. And that big guscio’s right behind you.”

“Unlikely. I’m faster than greased—” Sang’s radio shrieked and there was a sound like breaking masonry. “Wow, glad that punch missed me. I can see the doors, Ti. Nearly there!”

Abandoning the screens, Ti’Dani pressed her face against the wide screen window, eyes fixed on the Galleria’s front door. The guards’ radios were buzzing and chattering, and through her earpiece she could hear Sang quietly singing MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This’ under his breath, accompanied by a backing track of shouts and breaking stone.

As she watched, the front door and part of the wall exploded outwards in a shower of dust and debris. The lounging gargoyle leaped straight into the air, tail extended vertically like a startled cat as it landed on all fours. That would be Sang. Ti’Dani began shoving electronics back into cases, unplugging cords and swearing.

“Oops.”

Before she could ask what had gone wrong, a dull blue flash illuminated the night as the teleportation sigils took hold and, hopefully, whisked Sang and the statue to safety. Ti’Dani sighed. She’d find out what the problem was soon enough, and hopefully it wasn’t enough to stop their client paying them.

***

Ti’Dani stared up at the statue. It was mostly familiar, and mostly what they had been sent to acquire.

“I’m telling you, it’ll be fine. And it wasn’t my fault.”

“So who’s fault was it, Sang? And what the hell are we going to tell our client?”

Sang grinned at her, fangs flashing in the glare of the electric lights. “It was the wall’s fault. And I mean, that statue of Venus is still considered a masterpiece. Works for it. I don’t see what the difference is, really.”

Ti’Dani closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. “You absolute moron, Sang.”

Behind her, the decapitated statue of David loomed. This was going to be a hard sell.