When the afternoon arrived, Grange was relieved to finally be in motion. He walked to the plaza, and took up a position so that he could watch the beginning of Hockis’s magic show. He worried that the ringleader was going to wait for the late afternoon crowd.
But Hockis arrived as early as Grange wanted, and just a minute later, Garrel drifted into view as well.
That gave Grange a sense of relief. Everything was in place, and suddenly all his worries melted away. He would work the crowd and collect the money, same as always. When they met to split up the profits, he’d tell his friends that he was finished with being a pickpocket, and wish them the best of luck, while he would move on with his plans to become a band member.
He sauntered over to the location Hockis had chosen for the magic show, a location that was different from the usual spot, closer to the walls and further from the alleys that Grange always preferred to escape into. Grange began to examine the audience, looking for the targets and a planned route that would yield the greatest profit.
Hockis was in his performance, laughing with the audience and holding their attention, although he fumbled his first juggling in a very uncharacteristic manner.
“Now look at this volunteer over here,” he spoke loudly, giving Grange the clue that he was diverting attention to Garrel. Grange was thankful that the pace had picked up to give him more time afterwards. Accordingly, he sprang into action.
He reached into the pocket of his first target and delicately squeezed his fingers around a heavy purse. He pulled it free as he walked on towards his next mark, then abruptly was jerked backwards by the purse. His eyes flew downward in astonishment, and he saw that a fine metal chain connected the purse to the inside of the pocket. The owner of the purse shouted in a deep voice, and then chaos erupted around Grange.
A man in front of him turned and swung a truncheon at his head, while another man landed a hand on his shoulder. He thought he heard Garrel shout his name, and then a swarm of men had him surrounded, and were pummeling him into unconsciousness.
Fantasy Series by Jeffrey Quyle
The Southern Continent Series (NEW)
The Elemental Jewels (New)
Perilous Travels (forthcoming)
The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series
The Healing Spring
The Yellow Palace
Road of Shadows
A Foreign Heart
Journey to Uniontown
The Guided Journey
An Unexpected Deity
A Marriage of Friends
The Ingenairii Series
1. Visions of Power
2. At the Seat of Power
3. The Loss of Power
4. The Lifesaving Power
5. Against the Empire
6. Preserving the Ingenairii
7. Rescuing the Captive
8. Ajacii and Demons
9. The Caravan Road
10. The Journey Home
Alchemy’s Apprentice Series
The Gorgon’s Blood Solution
The Echidna’s Scale
Scarlet from Gold
The Southern Trail
Also by Jeffrey Quyle
The Green Plague
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The Elemental Jewels
The Southern Continent Series
Book 1
Jeffrey Quyle
This book is dedicated to Cory H., who
has been a friend and a wonderful proofreader.
I owe her gratitude and recognition for her labors.
Index
Chapter 1 – Page 1
Chapter 2 – Page 6
Chapter 3 – Page 9
Chapter 4 – Page 19
Chapter 5 – Page 23
Chapter 6 – Page 26
Chapter 7 – Page 28
Chapter 8 – Page 102
Chapter 9 – Page 107
Chapter 10 – Page 118
Chapter 11 – Page 124
Chapter 12 – Page 151
Chapter 13 – Page 167
Chapter 14 – Page 176
Chapter 15 – Page 199
Chapter 16 – Page 223
Chapter 17 – Page 240
List of Characters
Grange, an orphan pickpocket raised in the city of Fortune
Garrel, Grange’s friend and companion on the streets
Hockis, a street magician and leader of a street crime gang
Matey, an organized crime leader in the Verdant canal labor camp
Thrall, from High Meadows village, leader of the orchard workers
Morris, Thrall’s son
Clarine, Deana, Breeze, Ariana, girls from the orchard village
Guy, bandleader in the city of Palmland
Lord Selebe, Palmland nobleman
Lady Selene, Selebe’s sister
Brieed, court wizard in Palmland
Eli, senior apprentice to Brieed
Grace, second apprentice to Brieed
Jom, Appal, apprentices to Brieed
Prince Grael – son of King Leonide of Palmland
Princess Aubrey, daughter of King Leonide
Lord Bartar, nobleman and ambassador of Palmland
Maurin, friend of Prince Grael
Chapter 1
Grange was watching the crowd. The crowd was watching the magician. The magician was watching Garrel. Everything was going according to plan.
They were all gathered around the north side of the square, in the heart of the city of Fortune. The crowd members were the tourists, the people who had traveled from the six kingdoms to see the beautiful city of Fortune, a city built with bright limestone, slabs of crystalline quartz cladding hung on the sides of the great temples, and even brick homes that were white, gray, and tan, instead of red or brown, as Grange was told was common for bricks in other cities. It seemed like a city of light.
The north side of the square was the most ancient side of the public gathering place. The buildings were smaller, there were alleys and arched passages, and a there was a mix of shadows from the taller buildings on the south side of the square – all elements that Grange and Garrel and Hockis the magician recognized made the site advantageous for their purposes.
The three of them ran a small-time pickpocket ring in the city, taking advantage of the foolish tourists and their lack of personal security. They stole into the public square for a few minutes every few days, when they could sneak onto the turf of the bigtime professional thieves that possessed the territory through an arrangement with the local police. It wasn’t easy to run the fugitive endeavor while trying to avoid the professional thieves, the police, and the occasional vigilant tourist or random do-gooder who might interfere, but Grange and the others managed to squeeze a few profitable minutes into every week.
The beautiful glacier-clad mountains that surrounded the valley in which Fortune was nestled were visible in all directions. They were another helpful distraction that drew the tourists’ eyes. Grange paid them little attention; they were part of the background, an element of the city that had always been present. He’d never even left the city to visit them, because he knew he could go any day he wanted to, if he ever wanted to. He saw no need however, since there were no opportunities to carry out his thievery among the mountains.
“Now we’re at the climax of our show,” Hockis told his crowd of watchers after his fourth trick. “Everyone come in closer to see this,” he urged them.
The members of the audience obediently jostled around and against one another, growing accustomed to the feel of other bodies bumping into them, just as Hockis and Grange intended. The magician had called fo
r the climax of his show earlier than Grange had anticipated, making the boy hustle towards the crowd to begin his pilfering, while beginning a sharp look around the square to try to detect any impending threat that might have hurried the magician.
The patrol was entering the square, Grange saw. The trio of uniformed men was walking casually, eating sausage rolls that they had probably just compelled some vendor to donate to them, and paying little attention to the occupants or activities of the square just yet.
But the gendarmes would soon spot the cluster of tourists, and they would immediately know that the cat-and-mouse game was on. They would be the cat, and Hockis, Grange, and Garrel would be the mice. Which meant that Grange needed to work in lockstep with his partners, and begin to immediately gather such pickings as he could manage.
His eyes were already scoping out the best targets, and the best pattern to follow, the path he could quickly travel to maximize the purses and pockets he intended to pilfer. He stepped to his right, to put his right hand closest to the tourists’ backs, since his right hand had the nimblest fingers, the surest grasp, and the quickest reflexes.
He reached for the first bulging pocket he saw as he walked along, then lightly slipped a bright green pocket purse that was half hanging out of another man’s pants.
A woman held a jacket draped over her arm, and an embroidered purse was visible inside a gaping pocket on the jacket. It was a moment of child’s play to slip two fingers into the pocket to clamp on the purse and remove it without even rippling the cloth of the jacket. Yet as he passed by, grasping the purse, the woman turned to look at him, and in a fraction of a moment that seemed to somehow be several seconds long, his eyes and hers locked upon each other. She was an elderly woman, with a face that was creased and lined, but her eyes were clear, and her perception seemed sharp. In her eyes Grange saw not fear, or surprise, or sadness, but instead a shrewd study of his own character, a glance that only lasted momentarily, but that seemed to give the old woman all the time she needed to read his character, and to find him wanting.
Grange turned away from her, skipped several potential targets along his line to move quickly away from her, then resumed lifting purses, though with fingers that were slightly less steady than before.
“Hey!” he heard the first alarm from the patrol. He didn’t turn his head to see if they were addressing his group – he knew they were. Instead he increased his pace. He skipped past a small purse to hone in on a larger target.
“That man!” he heard Hockis loudly proclaim. He didn’t look at the magician either. He knew Hockis was providing misdirection – it was part of their regular routine. He knew that Hockis had pointed at Garrel, on the far side of the audience, drawing all attention to Grange’s friend and partner, giving Grange a few more seconds to try to separate the small treasures from the tourists who carried them.
“Break this up!” the patrol cried, and from the clarity of their call, they were closer than Grange expected. He gave up picking pockets, knowing that there would be other days, and he began walking calmly towards the nearest passageway out of the square. Grange knew the alleys and ditches and sewers and passages of the city as well as any other urchin of the streets, and he knew that with a five step lead, he could escape from the patrol, to go free for another day of adventure.
Garrel drew a round of laughter from the crowd, and Grange was sure he had just pulled one of his pratfall stunts. It was a signal that the show was over. Hockis would be pocketing his props and sleight-of-hand items so that he could escape along whatever route he chose, and that would leave Garrel to use his own long, gangly legs to carry him with that unlikely speed he could unexpectedly spring away with. Garrel would leave the patrol gasping for breath after they gave up trying to catch him during a chase across the plaza.
And then, in an hour or two, the three of them would meet at the Bridge over Cats Canal, or behind the Chapel of the Living Flower, or – if neither of the first two worked – inside the arched gate of the Orphans’ Home. Grange would turn his collected earnings over to Hockis, who would split the amount among the three of them, and they’d go their separate ways to gain the most benefit they could from the money before it became time to run the racket again.
Just as Grange was anticipating the successful divvying up of their booty, a hand as big as a ham landed squarely on his shoulder.
“Who do we have here?” he was startled to hear a guardsman say.
Grange instantly twisted, ducked, feinted and dodged, breaking free from his captor, and darting backward, behind the trio of men in colorful uniforms, in the direction they hadn’t anticipated. The crowd of surprised tourists was bunched together, and Grange dove into the group, pressing his shoulder aggressively through the crowd, then bursting out near the front of the temple. He dodged left, saw the dark opening of a narrow passageway between buildings, and dove into the shadows seeking safety.
He sprinted down the narrow, trash-strewn shaft, turned left into an alley, then right at the next street. Grange was heading towards the sewer ditches, a noisome, foul network of pipes, ditches, and tunnels that no patrol member had ever followed him into. He was already beyond the district that the tourists stayed in, and he only needed a few more yards to be assured of safety.
Grange turned to look over his shoulder, and saw no signs of pursuit. He coasted to a stop just before he had to commit himself to the filthy water of the drainage ditch, and stood with his hands on his hips, catching his breath in the shadows of the narrow opening between the backs of buildings in one of the poor districts of the city, his own home district. Despite the patrol’s nearly successful arrest, he had gotten away with the loot from the day’s work. It was a small load, he could tell by the weight in the pouch on the front of his shirt, but it was something. Hockis’s routine continued to provide funds, and gave Grange more money than most of the other boys his age on the streets – more than the beggars, more than the apprentices, more than the sons who worked for their fathers.
And for the next few months, that was enough. He’d turn seventeen in the heart of winter, and then he’d no longer be allowed to stay in the orphanage. That would engender a new set of problems, such as where to find a bed, and where to go to count on at least one meal a day, inadequate though it might be.
He had a half an hour he needed to wait until it was time to meet Garrel and Hockis at the Bridge, so he squatted down on his haunches, wanting to remain out of sight of the patrol while he carried all the cash from the day’s thievery, and listened to the sounds of the city. It was still daylight, and there were few interesting sounds to listen to. There was the general background hum of the city, the blending of all noises all around him, and there was the dripping of water somewhere nearby, a pipe that was emptying its refuse into the open sewer in front of him. And there were faint, semi-audible conversations – words that floated out of open windows in the backs of the small, overcrowded apartments that faced the narrow opening above the ditch.
He listened to the words, abstractly, his mind wandering, letting the snatches of conversations distract and guide his thoughts. Flowers, love, food, betrayal, jealousy, he heard phrases and emotions and confessions and accusations, all flowing among the crowded inhabitants of the underclass of the city. He knew none of the people, saw none of their faces, yet felt a connection to them all, as the universal concerns of life – of every person’s life, including his own – poured out into the drainage way air for him to hear. And then the words were gone, perhaps leaving some lasting impression on their listeners in the conversations.
There was a furtive movement that Grange thought he saw out of the corner of his eye, a dark blur to his right. He turned his head, but there was nothing in sight – no people, no patrolmen, no cats or rats. He tried to reconstruct what he thought he had seen. Something that had seemed to travel upward? Had something scaled the wall of the building down the way, he wondered. That seemed unlikely – inexplicable. He shook his head, looked closely ar
ound himself for any other signs of movement, and slowly relaxed his vigilance.
Time passed, and Grange decided he could count on safely emerging back into the city. He cautiously walked back through the alleys and passages, crossed deserted side streets, and then strolled along the tow path of the little-used canal that carried mostly trash and debris as it passed beneath the bridge that was the first assigned meeting place.
Garrel was inconspicuously waiting in the shadows, Grange was happy to see. He strolled past his friend without seeming to notice, and then crossed the street and entered an alleyway, where he waited for Garrel to join him.
“I thought they had you for a second!” Garrel said as soon as he stepped into the alley. “I saw that big patrolman slap his paws on you and I thought you were on your way to the chain gang.”
“I slipped away,” Grange brushed his friend’s concerns away. “And then I just went to the ditch in the eastern quarter and waited for things to calm down. What happened to you?”
“Well, I had an easier time getting away, since I’m not as pale as the snow on the mountains,” Garrel jibed Grange. It was true; Grange didn’t have the healthy golden hue of the rest of the people of the city of Fortune. He was a lighter-skinned boy, his unknown parents having left him that detrimentally obvious legacy in addition to poverty and orphan-status. Grange found it hard to blend into crowds; his light skin, high cheekbone, and light hair color all stood out, or made him appear to be a tourist from Southgar, but wearing concealing clothing and hats typically helped him avoid gaining a great deal of notice.
“Have you seen Hockis?” Grange asked.
“No, not a sign. I just took off running. Did you see which way he went?” Garrel replied.
The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) Page 1
