“Be careful Roland and make sure nothing happens to Shadow.”
“We will be fine. Just keep the door locked.”
They left the house and once again, Roland cast the Illusion of shadow. The target house bordered the warehouse district and the slums. It was easy to stay on the roofs until he got to the house. The instructions were to make sure no one saw him enter the house. As far as he or Shadow could tell, the only door was the front door. It was a big house. All the windows were boarded up. There was no access to the house through the roof. Shadow didn’t find anyone near the perimeter of the house. The nearby warehouses were empty. The dwellings next to this house were occupied, but the people were either asleep, or being very quiet and not moving around.
Roland wasn’t comfortable just walking in. He could smell all sorts of strange things in the house. He cast an Illusion on the front of the house. He pulled the door open and peered in. The room was empty. He could smell someone but the smell wasn’t quite right. They were close, maybe not in this room, but in the next room.
He was about to step into the first room when he spotted what looked like a flat piece of floorboard sticking up. He stepped over the board and then he heard the noise. Whoever was in the next room had just risen from a chair. Roland cast invisibility. He crossed the room and entered the space where he heard the sound.
A very short man was looking through a hole in the wall. Roland noticed that there were actually several holes in the wall. He was about to sneak up on the man when he stood straight up. “You’re behind me, aren’t you?” The little man was more perceptive than most.
“Yes, and if I were you I would turn around slowly so you can explain what is going on.” Roland spoke with as much threat in his voice as possible.
“Well my name is Gnorbit. I’m supposed to teach you, however, I had one requirement: That you enter my house without setting off the trap. You met that requirement, then you appeared behind me in my own house. No one does that! They said you had some unique skills. I just wasn’t expecting you to be that skilled. Let’s go downstairs so we can talk face to face.” The little man turned and began to move.
Gnorbit walked over to a door and opened it. The door opened into pitch blackness. “Be careful. The stairs are steep. Close the door behind you. Once we get to the bottom of the stairs, I’ll open the door at the bottom.”
Roland wasn’t sure he could trust this little guy. He was sure that the man was a gnome. His mother had told him on more than one occasion to never trust a gnome. They were too smart for their own good. He wasn’t sure anyone could be too smart, however, that was what his mother said.
He closed the door behind him pushing mana into his ring. He used his hands on the walls along the stairs to get down to the bottom. He could smell and hear the gnome. One of his steps sounded like it was off a bit and his foot hit harder than before. He had stepped over a step. Another trap. Roland had to put mana into his ring twice getting down. The gnome was facing the stairs. His breathing was a bit fast and getting faster. He had eaten something with garlic in his meal. The stench from his breath was how Roland could tell the man was facing the stairs.
He pulled his knife out and placed it on the gnome’s neck. “I’m not going to play this game again. If you try to trap me one more time, I’m going to kill you. Are we clear about the consequences of your actions?” Roland didn’t have to try and put intimidation in his voice this time. He was a bit angry.
“Yes, sir. How you did that is beyond me. I should be getting trained by you. Why didn’t they send you after me? You would have caught me long before the others did.” The little guy was certainly irritated.
“I’m new to this. That is why I need to know more.”
“Let me open the door. The light is bright. After being in total darkness it will hurt your eyes, so don’t accidentally kill me when I open it up.”
The gnome opened the door. He was right. The light was bright and it hurt Roland’s eyes. They walked into what looked like a workshop. One bench was covered with locks of all kinds. Another bench contained springs and gears. Another had tubes and barrels of liquid on it. There was one wall that was covered in tools, hanging as if being displayed.
Gnorbit walked over to the work bench that had the locks. “This is where you will start. I am going to teach you how to break into any mundane lock. We will start out with cam locks and cylinder locks. I’ll even teach you how to get around a simple door bar. Then we will get into the more exotic locks. After that, we will work with booby trapped locks. Again, the mundane booby traps. I hate magic locks. People with a small amount of magic can get around any magic lock. Because it is so easy I never secure anything with magic.”
They worked for several hours, when Gnorbit called a stop to the lessons. “I will give you your first set of tools.” He gave Roland a leather pouch with all the tools they had been working with, plus a few more. “These are all the tools you should ever need. Well, that and a knife. You have a few of those, so I’m not giving you a knife.”
He pulled out two tools that were much smaller, but were the two main tools he had been using. “Figure out how to put these two tools in your hair. Put them at the back of your head where they can dangle down naturally with your hair. If you ever lose your magic for one reason or another, or you’re put in hand cuffs, you still have a way to get out. I always have mine on me at all times.”
Roland was looking at the gnome who had no hair whatsoever. “Where do you keep your tools?”
Gnorbit looked up with a smirk on his face. “You will never know. Be back here tomorrow night. Just remember the two traps you avoided and you will be OK.”
“Just remember if you place another trap between here and the entrance again, I will kill you just the same.”
Gnorbit was grinning at the comment. “Tomorrow then.”
Gnorbit closed the door on him as Roland walked into the stair well. It was absolute darkness. It would have been nice if he could have seen which step had been booby trapped. Before the door closed, he could tell the ceiling was quite tall in the stairwell. He put mana into his ring and jumped. He landed awkwardly, but didn’t set off the trap. He avoided the pressure board and exited through the front door. Instantly, Shadow was beside him.
They were heading toward the nice part of the city. The guards were actually out and alert in this part of town. It wasn’t hard to avoid them. It was well after midnight.
The house they were looking for had two guards patrolling the outside grounds. Shadow kept watch from outside the wall. The guards were easy to get around. They weren’t as alert as the city guards. The house had two stories. The job didn’t say where the ledger would be. He assumed it would be in an office. He guessed the office would be downstairs. Well, it was a 50/50 chance.
Using the tools and the lessons from Gnorbit, cracking the lock on the back door was fairly easy. He locked the door behind himself, entering the kitchen. He could smell several people in the house. He discovered a downstairs containing a wine cellar, food storage, and two people sleeping down there. They must be the hired help.
He made his way through the dining area, parlor, and entryway of the house. He went down the hall and bingo, an office. It was locked. His handy dandy tools were a dream come true tonight. He picked the lock and entered the office.
There was a large desk with a large chair behind it. The desk was facing the door and the back of the chair was against a large window. Bookshelves adorned both side walls. Roland found the desk locked, and again, the picks were the best gift he had been given in a long time.
Inside the desk were all sorts of items. Mostly correspondence between other merchants. He didn’t find any ledgers in the desk. He looked around the room. In the corner, he spied a safe. He had no idea how to get into a safe. It was a small safe. He wasn’t sure a ledger book could fit in the safe, so he kept looking.
He couldn’t find anything. Time was wasting and the sunrise would be arriving soon. He wa
s standing next to the chair behind the desk. It was a very large chair. The thing that caught Roland’s attention was some loose threads on the back of the chair. Everything in this house was immaculate and the furniture looked to be fairly new. Everything but the back of the chair. He pulled the leather backing away from the chair and stuffed inside was the ledger with the red stripes on each side.
He took the book and began his exit. He ensured the doors were locked and that nothing looked out of place. If he moved something, he put it immediately back the way he had found it. As he was closing the back door, he heard someone down stairs beginning to stir. He was leaving just in time.
Shadow was waiting for him and they were off. The sun would rise shortly, but they could make it back to the house before that happened. They got home before anyone was aware of their existence. Roland lay down on his blanket, just as Hazel came into the room.
“You look exhausted. Did you stay out all night?”
“We just got back. Things took longer than expected. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get some sleep. Go to class and when you get back, we will get a dresser for you.”
“Thank you, Roland. I appreciate all you’re doing. I have one question for you though. You’re not doing anything illegal, or working for the Thieves’ Guild, are you?”
“No Hazel, I am not breaking any of the crown’s laws.” In his own mind, he was thinking that he was actually acting for the crown.
He went immediately to sleep. The next thing he knew, Shadow was waking him up, letting him know that Hazel would be home soon. He got up and fixed lunch for himself and Hazel. He gave Shadow some meat. As he was finishing up the sandwiches, Hazel came through the door. “Just in time. I finished making lunch. How did your first day go?”
“It was ok. I felt like a little kid, but the teacher was nice. She said I would improve quickly. She gave me stuff to do before I come back tomorrow. Did you get any sleep?” She had more questions than flowers had bees.
“Yes, I got enough sleep. Let’s find you a dresser, then I have to make a delivery to the Mages Guild.”
Hazel knew right where to go. They purchased a bed and a dresser. Hazel did a great job bartering. If it were up to Roland, he would have paid double the price. He also picked up a bag, into which he put the ledger. He didn’t want anyone to see that he was delivering a ledger to Eli.
When they got to the Mages Guild, Hazel stayed in the lobby with Shadow. He went to Eli’s office and entered immediately. “Well Roland, I assume things went well since you are here so quickly. Gnorbit was impressed with your skill. He really didn’t want to teach anyone, but you did meet his requirements. I don’t think I would have come close to meeting his requirements. Now let me see that ledger.”
Roland handed over the ledger and Eli began to study the book. He spent a long time making odd noises with huffs and snorts when he found something in the book. Roland wasn’t sure if it was a good thing, or bad thing, he was discovering. Finally, he closed the book. “I think sometimes it’s better if I just didn’t know what was going on. You should know, Roland, that even good people do dumb things.”
Eli pulled the drawer open to his desk and put the ledger book in it. He pulled another draw to the side of the desk and picked up a leather pouch which he gave to Roland. “Your pay for this job was 20 silvers for both you and Shadow. The rest is a bonus from our friend. Check in with Imala in a few days. Keep up the training.”
They went immediately to the Adventures Guild. Hazel stayed down at the desk with Imala. They were having a conversation that didn’t seem as stressful as it had been the previous day, which was baffling to both. Roland paid the tax with his own money. It was only 8 silvers. When he got back to the desk, Imala and Hazel were smiling and acting like the best of friends. It was more than a bit odd. By the time Roland and Hazel returned home, the furniture had arrived.
Hazel loved her dresser. The bed for Roland was nice. It came with a down feather mattress like he had grown up with. It was soft as a cloud. Roland spent the rest of the afternoon helping Hazel with her homework. She was going to progress fast. She picked up everything so easily.
Roland went with Shadow again to Gnorbit’s house later that night. The pressure plate was still in place and he avoided the stairs altogether. He jumped over all the steps and avoided the trap. He spent the night taking apart different types of locks and locking mechanisms. Once he figured out how they worked, he was able to unlock them.
The locks seemed to just keep getting more and more complicated. The locks to the merchant’s house the night before had three tumblers. The ones Roland was working on tonight held 5 to 7 tumblers. Gnorbit kept changing out locks to be picked. Each lock took different tensions and some even took different diamond head picks. Patience was good, but sometimes Roland had to work quickly. He began timing how long it took, and before long, Roland figured out the tumblers. He finished for the night.
Roland hadn’t realized how stressed he was until he went outside. Shadow was waiting for him, warning him that someone was nearby. Shadow wasn’t able to spot them but he had heard noises. Roland cast invisibility on himself and Shadow. They hurried away from the area. Next, he cast the shadow illusion and began a broad sweep of the area trying to see who was in the area.
They circled the area until they were up wind of where Shadow was sure the intruder had been. Roland went up to the rooftops and Shadow continued tracking on the ground. Roland cast Reveal Tracks. Immediately, human tracks illuminated themselves on the roof where they had suspected someone had been watching. The prints headed towards the better part of town. Roland and Shadow followed the tracks in pursuit. It was just a few minutes later when the spell had faded and the first hint of whose tracks it might be arrived in the form of a faint smell. Shadow was the first to identify the smell. It was Amelia. Eli’s daughter had been watching them. They had identified her doing the same thing before they had left for Port Orchard.
“Shadow do you think she is doing this for her father? Or is she doing this for herself, or for someone else?”
“I don’t know, but she had to know we were here or she would never have found us, and she knew we had detected her or she wouldn’t have departed so quickly. I didn’t notice Rogue anywhere around either. Last time he was flying overhead when we bumped into her.”
“We should turn the tables on her and track her. Maybe we could learn something.”
They headed off toward Eli’s house. Amelia was just entering the window to her room when they arrived. She wasn’t as fast as Roland and Shadow. She probably didn’t realize she had been followed. They were coming up on the house to the west of Eli’s home when a familiar small black dragon flew by.
Shadow paused and watched the dragon. The dragon landed on a fence next to Shadow. The two conversed for some time.
“Roland, he didn’t know she had tracked us,” communicated Shadow. “She goes out on her own quite a bit, but she rarely tells Eli where she is going, or where she has been. Rogue will tell Eli tomorrow about what happened tonight.”
“Tell Rogue thank you for me.”
They headed back to the house. When they arrived, instead of using his key, he used his picks. The lock took just a second to break into. He thought that he should get a better lock. Anyone could break into his house with little difficulty.
Hazel woke Roland as she was heading to school the next morning. “Are you going to be out every night Roland?”
“For the near future, I will be. When you get back we will discuss it.” He rolled over to get some more sleep.
By late afternoon, Roland knew he couldn’t sleep any longer. He put up his old target board and practiced his knife throwing. It had been a long time since he had practiced and he was a bit rusty. He spent the next two hours doing his overhand throws and his underhand throws, using both hands.
Hazel was back by noon and they had lunch together. “Did you hear what happened to the Master of the Merchant’s Guild?”
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“What happened to him?”
“Well according to my teacher, she knows all the gossip, the king found out he was withholding taxes and he was arrested. The Merchant’s Guild is in chaos. The current master was the youngest in history. They thought he was going to be around for decades to come. The big rumor is that the King’s Hand was the one who found out he had been withholding taxes. He was found guilty already and his execution will be tomorrow.”
“What’s the King’s Hand?” Roland was trying to play ignorant and even cast an illusion on his face to make sure he looked ignorant.
“How can you not know what the King’s Hand is, Roland? Oh, well you did grow up halfway to nowhere. The king has someone who works in the shadows and finds out those who are breaking the King’s laws. The Hand is said to be a genius and would be running the Thieves Guild if he wasn’t already working for the king.”
“So, you’ve seen this King’s Hand, have you?”
“No, silly. No one has ever seen the man. Or at least people think he’s a man. He might be an elf but with the relations between elves and humans right now everyone is sure that the Hand is a human.”
“About this Thieves Guild. Do they exist, or is that a rumor too?” He was curious what she knew.
“Oh Roland, you are such a backwoods hick. Of course they exist. I could have gone to work for them, but they would have picked a trade for me that I wouldn’t have wanted. They control the slums of the capitol. The king has tried to stop them a few times, but they seem to disappear for a while.”
“So where is this Thieves Guild located? Do they have a guild hall, or do they just show up and ask for you to work for them?” Roland was being half serious.
“No one knows where the guild hall is, if they have one. The master thief is said to have a hiding place in the slums somewhere, but I’ve never seen it and no one I’ve ever met knows where it is located. A friend of mine, who is older than me, went to work for the guild. They were taking care of her as long as she extracted information from her clients. She works in one of the gambling dens. I didn’t want to work in one of those places. They are full of opium smoke and if the gamblers aren’t high, they are drunk.” She had a look of disgust on her face.
Caged: Book 2 Of the King's Hand Series Page 3
