Dragontiarna: Thieves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  After about five minutes of work, the lock yielded with a loud click. Moriah eased the door open and smiled behind her mask when she saw the interior of the strong room. The highest chamber of Lord Hadrian’s tower was a round room with narrow windows overlooking the Eastern City of Cintarra. To the south she saw the towers of the Prince’s Palace and the cathedral, and below she saw the flickers of light surrounding the party in the courtyard. Chests lay stacked on the floor, each of them locked. But wooden tables stood along the walls, and atop the tables rested bags of jewels and coins. Even without prying open the chest, there was a small fortune on the tables, enough to continue to fund Moriah’s efforts. She would have hoped for documents or relics of dark magic that proved Hadrian was part of the Drakocenti, but so far Moriah had not been able to find anything like that.

  Patience. Patience was the chief tool of the thief and useful in many areas of life as well.

  Moriah moved through the treasure room with quick efficiency, pocketing the most valuable gems and platinum coins. Her coat had numerous roomy interior pockets, and she dismissed her dwarven armor long enough to fill the pockets with gems, gold, and platinum. Once she had as much as she could reasonably carry, Moriah summoned the armor again, the mask and the cuirass settling in place over her head and torso. She carried a small fortune in her coat. Probably she could have used it to buy one or two of the enclosed villages. Moriah had grown up poor enough that she was still awed by money. Even though she had stolen and spent a great deal of money over the years, it still made her a little uneasy, and she could not stop calculating all the different things she could buy with it.

  Part of her would always be the scared, hungry little girl who had looked at her older, legitimate sister’s wealth with envy. Though her younger self had not known that Caitrin had been almost as impoverished, save that she had the luster of the heir to a noble title. The Scepter Bank had purchased Caitrin’s wardship with an eye toward future profit, back when the Bank had been more concerned with making money and less with Cyprian’s schemes and digging in the Shadow Ways.

  That pushed aside her half-giddy musings about what she could buy. How much money would she need to buy vengeance against the Drakocenti for the death of her friends?

  Moriah didn’t know, but she was going to find out.

  She hurried down the tower stairs and back to the mansion proper, her mind working through the next phase of her plan. Stealing from Lord Hadrian had been relatively easy. Escaping unseen would have been simple. But escaping in such a way as to embarrass Lord Hadrian and undermine his authority…that would be dangerous. But it was necessary. The digging in the Shadow Ways had slowed as Cyprian had been forced to send men in search of the Wraith. For all his power and wealth, the Master of the Scepter Bank was a commoner, and he needed the support of men with noble titles to carry out his schemes. His noble allies on the Regency Council had forced him to search for the Wraith, and that had slowed his efforts.

  Perhaps Moriah could slow them further.

  She reached the mansion proper and headed for the interior courtyard. Like most of the great domi of Cintarra, Hadrian’s house had an interior courtyard. Sometimes the nobles liked to hold smaller dinners in their central courtyards or to simply enjoy the fresh air on days with clement weather. Lord Hadrian’s courtyard was especially ornate, with a pillared arcade encircling the interior. Moriah came into the courtyard and hid behind one of the columns, waiting.

  Hadrian Vindon himself crossed the courtyard, flanked by two of his men-at-arms. He was trying to stride commandingly, but his girth transmuted his walk into a slightly unfortunate waddle. The lord wore rich clothes, a fine tunic, mantle, trousers, and polished boots, and a jeweled sword hung on his left hip. He also wore a cap with a golden badge, and a golden chain hung around his neck a medallion adorned with jewels resting against his chest.

  Then and there, Moriah decided on her final target of the night.

  She knew what would happen next. Hadrian would walk through the entry hall of his mansion, stand in the main doors, and greet his guests in the outer courtyard. Knowing his habits, he would likely make a speech. Perhaps he would address the topic of Prince Accolon.

  All eyes would be on him.

  Moriah waited until Hadrian disappeared into the house, and then she circled along the colonnade, keeping to the shadows. She entered the domus and found herself in the fine entry hall, the floor covered with polished tiles, the walls adorned with tapestries showing epic battles from the history of Andomhaim. Hadrian stood in the opened doors to the courtyard, welcoming his guests in a loud voice. The two men-at-arms stood on either side of him.

  “My friends!” shouted Hadrian. “Thank you for coming tonight. Momentous events have shaken our fair city. Prince Accolon Pendragon of Tarlion has arrived on a royal visit. But it is good to see that even in troubled times, even when the wise rule of the Regency Council is questioned by slanderers and those with forked tongues,” he wisely did not offer any specific names, “that the lords and merchants of Cintarra can come together in courtesy and honor. We are all loyal subjects of the High King, of course, but nonetheless, it is Cintarra that is the first city of Andomhaim, not Tarlion. First in wealth, first in honor, first in prestige, first in beauty…”

  Hadrian rambled on. The man did love the sound of his own voice. No one saw Moriah creeping up behind him. She slowed her breathing, preparing herself as Gunther had taught her.

  “And so,” said Hadrian, lifting a cup of wine in the beginnings of a toast, “I bid you welcome, and urge you to…gak!”

  He made that sound when Moriah’s left fist hammered into his neck with terrific force. Hadrian stumbled, and before he could recover or even realize what had happened, Moriah hammered her boot into his knee. Hadrian started to fall, and Moriah seized his chain and wrenched it over his head as he collapsed.

  The two men-at-arms reacted quicker, but their swords were in their scabbards. Moriah drove a boot into the gut of the man on her left, and the soldier stumbled back, wheezing. The man-at-arms on her right got his sword out of its scabbard, but he left himself open as he drew back the blade to thrust, and Moriah’s palm strike hit him in the face. Her other hand came up and hit him in the windpipe, not hard enough to kill him, but enough to stun him.

  She whirled to face the crowd in the courtyard and lifted the jeweled necklace high, the gems flashing in the torchlight.

  For a moment stunned silence ruled the domus of Hadrian Vindon.

  “The Wraith!” someone shouted in the crowd. “It’s the Wraith!”

  “Kill him!” wheezed Hadrian, struggling to one knee. He made a clumsy grab for Moriah’s leg, but she saw it coming and jumped out of the way. “Damn you! Kill him! A thousand silver coins to the man who brings me his head!”

  The crowd roared and surged forward, some of the nobles reaching for their swords, others shouting contradictory commands to one another other. Moriah raised the necklace in a jaunty salute, whirled, and sprinted back through the entry hall and into the interior courtyard. The mob of Hadrian’s guests surged after, shouting for her blood.

  Moriah raced into the courtyard and ducked behind the colonnade. As she did, she concentrated on one of the alien presences in her mind. Not the armor, the link to which felt solid and unmoving, almost as if there was a miniature tower of steel in her mind. Instead, she focused on the presence of the wraithcloak, which felt like a swirling knot of mist inside her skull.

  The power of the wraithcloak activated…and the world turned gray and unfocused around Moriah.

  The count began in her head.

  Three hundred seconds.

  She whirled, and she felt much lighter than she had previously. The wall of the domus rippled before her like a mirage on a hot day, and Moriah ran at the wall. She sprinted through the wall, passed through the domus like a ghost, and emerged into the courtyard twenty-three seconds after she used the cloak’s power. No one saw her. The wraithcloak didn’t make her invisib
le, though it did transform her in a specter of gray mist and light. But Hadrian’s guests were pouring into the domus in pursuit of the Wraith, and they missed her presence entirely.

  Moriah ran forward, sprinting through the wall and the mansion across the street. The steady count ticked off inside her head. The dwarven armor was damaged, but she could use that indefinitely. The wraithcloak, however, was a different story. She and Gunther and Delwen had experimented with it, and they had soon determined that the wraithcloak could only function for three hundred seconds within every twenty-four hours. Perhaps the wraithcloak had been damaged when its original owner had been killed millennia ago, or maybe the passing of all those years had eroded the efficacy of its spells. Whatever the reason, the wraithcloak would only function for five minutes out of every twenty-four hours.

  But that was all right. Five minutes, used properly, could accomplish all manner of things.

  Moriah sprinted across Cintarra. Because she could run through walls, she made good time. Cries of alarm rose from Hadrian’s mansion, his men-at-arms rushing back and forth to find the daring thief, but it was already too late. Moriah reached the river and ran across it for the Western City. In the scriptures, the Dominus Christus had walked across the Sea of Galilee to comfort his panicking apostles during a storm. Moriah did not walk across the river so much as she sort of…floated, her wraith-altered body refusing to sink beneath the water.

  She dashed up the opposite bank and into the Western City. Most of the mansions and grand domi of the nobles were in the Eastern City, as close to the Prince’s Palace as they could manage it, and any mansions in the Western City were on the western bank. The rest of the Western City alternated between tenements where Cintarra’s poor lived and the homes of tradesmen who kept their shops on the first level and lived on the floors above. Cintarra’s orcish quarter, where orcs from Rhaluusk and Khaluusk and the other baptized kingdoms visited, was in the Western City, as was Cintarra’s Dwarven Enclave, the trading mission from the dwarves of the Three Kingdoms.

  A great many halflings lived in the Western City, crowded into their own neighborhood. Most of the halflings in Cintarra were domestic servants, employed by noble houses who had been served by the same halfling families for centuries, or by rich merchants who sought to ape the lords. But there were a great many halflings employed in other trades, and they tended to congregate in the northeastern corner of the Western City.

  Moriah headed in that direction.

  About halfway there, she ducked into a deserted alley and dismissed the power of the wraithcloak, becoming solid once more. She had used about half of the cloak’s power to escape from Hadrian’s mansion and cross the river, and it was best to keep the rest of its power in reserve in case something went wrong. Moriah thought she had gotten away clean, but she had been wrong before. Everyone was wrong sometimes.

  Delwen and Gunther had thought that final expedition into the Shadow Ways would make them rich.

  Moriah shoved that thought aside and dismissed the dwarven armor, tucking the hexagonal metal plate into her coat. Then she hurried through the streets at a brisk walk, hand resting on her sword hilt. Anyone who saw her would assume she was a young nobleman out slumming. She probably wouldn’t be accosted by thieves, but if she was, they would be in for a nasty surprise.

  But no one troubled her, even the displaced villagers sleeping in the alleys, and a short time later she came to the Forum of the Halflings.

  It was a small square lined by shops that sold goods catering to the halfling kindred – halfling-sized clothes and shoes and furniture and so forth. There were a few discreetly wealthy halfling merchants in Cintarra, and the shops here sold luxuries to them.

  Moriah crossed to the inn and tavern at the northern end of the forum. It was called the Loyal Man, and the sign had been painted with the image of a halfling man in servants’ livery. Two halflings stood guard outside the door. Moriah gazed at them, and they looked back without flinching. The halflings always looked subtly alien to her. They stood between four and a half and five feet tall, slimmer and slighter than humans. Their eyes were also larger, and they were far more flexible. Moriah could bend over backward and touch her calves while keeping her balance, which was a rare feat among humans. Among halflings, they could commonly do that well past their hundredth birthday.

  “Sorry, my lord,” said one of the halflings, his voice deep. “We’re closed for the night.”

  “I’m here to see the Uncle,” said Moriah, casting her voice low. Let the halflings think she was a man. “The courteous neighbor pays respects and brings gifts.”

  The halflings shared a look. The passphrase Moriah had just given was used by a friend of the Uncle’s organization.

  “All right,” said the halfling. “Follow me, my lord. I trust you’ll be courteous in the Uncle’s house.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of offering rudeness,” said Moriah. “Especially since it might earn me a crossbow bolt or three in the back.”

  The halfling grinned at her and opened the door.

  The room beyond looked like the common room of any other inn, save that everything was sized just a little too small to be comfortable for humans. Moriah was tall for a human woman, just two inches under six feet, and she had to duck and hunch her shoulders. Two halfling men were sweeping up the floor, and Moriah felt their eyes on her as she followed the guard. They stopped at a wooden door, and the guard knocked.

  “Come in,” said a familiar voice.

  Moriah ducked further and followed the guard into the next room.

  The room looked like a combination of a study and a workshop, a hearth and a fire keeping the chill of the spring night at bay. A wooden table filled about half the room, holding a variety of papers, ledgers, and crossbows in various stages of assembly. A halfling towards the later end of middle age sat on the other side of the table, reading a letter by the light of a lantern. He had a seamed face, graying, curly black hair, and bright blue eyes. He looked like someone’s kindly halfling uncle. He actually was a bowyer specializing in crossbows sized for both human and halfling hands, the owner of the Loyal Man…and perhaps the single most powerful halfling in Cintarra.

  He also was, to the best of Moriah’s knowledge, the only person in Cintarra who knew that she was the Wraith.

  “Boss?” said the halfling guard.

  “Ah, good,” said the gray-haired halfling, setting down his letter. “Do come inside. Thank you, Wilhelm. I will speak with our guest alone.”

  Wilhelm nodded and closed the door behind him, leaving Moriah alone with the gray-haired halfling.

  “Good evening, Uncle Helmut,” said Moriah. “Or good morning by now, I suppose.”

  “It hardly matters,” said Helmut. That gentle smile never wavered, but his eyes were shrewd. “You and I, we do our most lucrative business after dark. Do sit down, my dear. Standing hunched like that looks painful.”

  “You’re the one who built an inn with low ceilings,” said Moriah. There was a halfling-sized stool in front of the table, and she sat atop it. It raised her knees high enough that she felt faintly ridiculous, but it was better than standing bent over.

  Helmut smiled. “Human lords and merchants, by and large, do not take us seriously. They expect us to say ‘yes, milord’ and ‘yes, milady’ and don’t think much beyond that.” He waved a hand at the ceiling. “And uncomfortable people do not prefer to linger…which makes it easier to carry on my real business.”

  Helmut earned a good income from his work as a bowyer and an innkeeper, but his real source of revenue was far more lucrative.

  Humans often did not take halflings seriously. Sometimes human lords thought they could abuse their halfling servants. Or human commoners thought they could steal from halflings with impunity. When that happened, the injured parties brought their grievances to Helmut of the Loyal Man, who acted as if he was their kindly uncle.

  And then kindly Uncle Helmut…solved the problem.

  Sometime
s quietly. Sometimes messily.

  Sometimes violently.

  Helmut never charged an unreasonable price for his services. Indeed, he preferred to avoid money changing hands at all. Instead, he accepted the promise of a favor at a later date…and Uncle Helmut always paid his debts and collected on his favors. Judicious use of those favors had gathered Helmut a great deal of wealth and considerable influence. Moriah would have thought him no different than any other petty thug and thief, save for one difference. He used his power to protect the halflings of the city. Any lord or merchant who mistreated his halfling servants or sought to exploit the halfling merchants would, sooner or later, have a sudden inexplicable run of ruinous bad luck. Helmut had friends among the halfling servants of every noble domus in the city, and he knew many secrets before the Regency Council learned of them.

  Moriah wondered if Master Cyprian knew how influential Helmut was. She rather doubted it – as far as she knew, the Scepter Bank hadn’t gotten its greedy fingers into any of the businesses under Helmut’s protection.

  “I suppose that makes sense,” said Moriah. “But I am uncomfortable right now, and I come here often.”

  Helmut smiled and rapped his knuckles on the table. “That is because you have the hardihood to endure some minor discomforts in the pursuit of greater goals. One of the reasons Gunther was fond of you.”

  “Yes,” said Moriah, remembering. Gunther had been one of Helmut’s friends, a halfling locksmith who had become a decent thief. Moriah and Delwen had been friends by then, and they had been fencing some of their stolen goods through Helmut’s inn. Helmut had suggested that the three of them work together on a job…and they had gone on to become friends and the most successful thieves in Cintarra.

  At least until they had found the Drakocenti in the darkness below the city.

  “He was a good man,” said Moriah.

  “A loyal friend, and fearless in the face of his enemies,” said Helmut with a sigh. “What more can you say about a man? But I do not think you came here tonight to reminisce.”