"Bad luck" is like a vulture circling high overhead. Most days you barely notice it exists. But at certain moments in life, the instant you falter—just a little—you suddenly see it drop like a knife, beak-first, savage and precise. And that's the last thing your eyes ever catch.
Looking back on that morning a few days later, Victor had to admit it—there had been omens.
The first: on his way out the door, a crow sat there cawing at him like it owned the world. Faced with that kind of nonsense, he flicked a finger and had Catherine take care of it.
Then he noticed a fat slug at his feet. Victor even went to the kitchen for salt and sprinkled it gently over the thing. After that, a black cat meowed at him—one strip of dried fish bought its silence. A broken strap was good news, too. Perfect excuse to replace it with a new one.
…
Two days after "Yaevinn's heartfelt confession," Victor was out on his morning run, washed down with a Viper School vitality tonic, when he nearly collided head-on with Rose Knight Siegfried—marching past with an entire squad of fully armed knights.
As he drew close, Siegfried's expression was grim. "It's damn fortunate I ran into you. Come on. I need your help right now. If you haven't forgotten what you promised me last time—then it's time."
Victor, of course, hadn't forgotten. After the Batman incident, when Siegfried had come asking for help and Victor refused, Victor had promised that if anything happened again, he would help. And judging by the tower shields, the loaded crossbows, and the way the squad moved, this was no small problem.
"What happened?" Victor fell into formation without hesitation and asked.
"There's been a robbery at the bank in the Trade Quarter. Scoia'tael. They've got dozens of hostages and they're in a standoff with the city guard."
Victor kept his face calm as he asked the next question. "Do we know who's leading them?"
"Of course. That damned scum Yaevinn."
…
He'd had a bad feeling on the way, but when Victor arrived with Siegfried, he still found himself at a loss for words.
The bank surrounded by city guards was—sure enough—the Vivaldi Bank.
While accompanying the Rose Knight on a quick sweep of the perimeter, Victor saw everything you could possibly want in a siege: sandbag barricades sealing off every entrance, routes blocked tight, and Mr. Jethro—the fisstech lover himself—on site, commanding a squad.
At the same time, Victor's mind stitched every known thread together: the Scoia'tael doing business with Salamandra, the guerrillas swapping gear unusually often lately, Yaevinn's "jobs" that never paid coin, and the dwarf banker Golan Vivaldi.
The truth had been right in front of him the whole time. He just hadn't connected it into a complete picture:
A bank heist with help on the inside.
After the sweep, Victor had the whole outline in his head. He heard Siegfried cursing under his breath. "Come on. These filthy bastards really picked their moment—of course they hit while the king's out of the city…"
"How does it matter?" Victor kept pace beside him as they headed toward the "temporary command post" across from the bank.
"The king went to La Valette Castle for a banquet. The Blue Stripes went with him, naturally—Grand Master Jacques, and Advisor Merigold as well.
"Right now the city's being run by Mayor Velerad and Princess Adda. Neither of them wants to give the order to storm the place and be responsible if hostages die."
As Victor took that in, he spotted a familiar figure being dragged inside, hogtied—an elven scout. The same one who'd been with Yaevinn two days ago.
Then someone shouted his name. "Vic!"
Angoulême came running, yelling as she went. "I finally cracked it! I know what's going to happen—now I know what they want to—"
She reached him and snapped her mouth shut mid-sentence, because she caught the micro-expression on her leader's face.
Victor gave Siegfried an apologetic look. The Rose Knight understood at once, nodded politely to Angoulême with a courteous smile, and stepped a few paces away to give them privacy, waiting at a respectful distance.
Angoulême flashed Siegfried an awkward grin, then leaned close to Victor and slipped a sheet of white paper into his hand. In a low voice, she whispered, "The Scoia'tael want to rob the Vivaldi Bank."
Victor glanced down. Most of it was information he already knew—
Or rather, information that was already happening.
Except for one detail no one else on the scene had realized yet: the Scoia'tael had infiltrated the city through the sewers—through the great-hall corridor where a she-vampire once lived, a route carved out by a witcher apprentice who preferred to remain unnamed.
Back when they'd cleared ghouls in the cemetery, the apprentice had known the sewers could lead out of the city. But the maze of passages was so tangled that humans had never properly mapped it—only Salamandra had managed to set up a smuggling route through it.
Now the Scoia'tael were exploiting that blind spot, slipping straight under the bank itself and making their "big news" in the most prosperous part of Vizima.
Without a word, Victor folded the paper and slid it into his herbal satchel. Then he leaned closer to Angoulême, blue eyes locking on brown, and murmured, "They're going at it full steam—Bond Seven."
Angoulême's pupils widened. She'd only solved the cipher and decided to wander over to the bank mentioned in the letter, just to take a look. She hadn't expected it to already be underway—and she definitely hadn't expected that the moment she delivered the information, the Bond Seven plan would be activated.
The code phrase "Bond Seven" was the most severe level of instruction:
Leave Vizima immediately. Go to the safehouse in the western satellite town. If night falls and the leader doesn't arrive to rendezvous, follow the designated route to Lindenvale in Velen and lie low for ten days. If the leader is still missing after that, cross the border and wait in Novigrad at one of The Limping Anton chain inns.
When they'd drafted the plan, Vic had said, flat and certain, that even though he'd never been to the "Pearl of the North," there would absolutely be a The Limping Anton chain. Angoulême had laughed at him then—what kind of ridiculous setting was that? How would it ever come up?
Now there wasn't the slightest trace of humor in his deep blue gaze.
Angoulême had seen Victor's impossible alchemy, and he'd explained how rare that craft truly was. She didn't believe the "invincible forever" nonsense, but she didn't doubt that an emergency could happen.
"Immediately" meant exactly what it said.
She blinked, hugged her leader once, and turned to leave.
From the second floor, Intelligence Chief Thaler watched the entire exchange with perfect clarity—from Victor and Siegfried approaching the command post, to Victor taking the note from Angoulême, reading it, sliding it into his herbal satchel, and then Angoulême leaving. The King's Eyes monocle missed nothing.
Thaler turned and gave an order to his men. "Take a few people to Victor's home. Watch Angoulême. Don't let her out of our sight. No violence unless it's necessary."
Victor watched Angoulême disappear into the distance, then turned back to Siegfried. "Sorry to keep you waiting. She came to ask what we're having for dinner."
Siegfried only smiled, indicating it was no problem, and the two of them entered the temporary command post side by side.
…
Inside the command room, Mayor Velerad sat at the head seat. Princess Adda sat beside him. After them sat Captain Vincent of the city guard, Lily Knight Roderick, and—descending the stairs just then—Intelligence Chief Thaler.
The elven scout Victor had glimpsed earlier was bound and forced to kneel on the floor. From the side, Victor noticed his eyes were red and swollen, and the hem of his clothes was soaked with blood—but not his own.
The elf spat a string of filthy words at Princess Adda, only for Roderick to drive a heavy fist into his nose and smash him down to the floor.
Victor saw the witcher apprentice standing off to the side.
Then the elf bellowed, "Victor! I knew you dog-bred monkey couldn't be trusted—You sold us out, didn't you!"
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