Thief's Desire

by Isabo Kelly

  “Didn’t you get lonely?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What about your parents’ families?”

  “I had an aunt, my mother’s sister, but no one knew where she was. She wandered the mountains, appearing every once in a while, then she’d disappear again for years. She’d been gone for two years when my mom died, and we never saw her after.”

  “So, for three years, you lived all alone in the deep forests of Georna? And you thought I had a rough beginning.”

  “You did. My beginning was easy. It wasn’t until later that it got hard.”

  “What brought you out of the forest?”

  “There was a day, late in the spring, when an old woman showed up at my shack. I was outside, roasting the day’s catch over an open pit. And this bent and wrinkled woman strolled up to me and said, ‘You’ll share a bit of that, I think.’ Then she sat, smiled and waited for me to finish cooking. At first, I thought she was crazy, so I went ahead and fed her. I’d caught a big bird that morning. But as we talked, I discovered she wasn’t crazy. In fact, she had one of the sharpest minds I’d ever come across in my limited experience.”

  She glanced up and caught him smiling at the memory.

  His somber tone lightened. “She was something. She made me laugh. It had been just over three years since the last time I’d talked to another human being, and it felt good to laugh again. I offered her shelter for the night, which she took. Then the next morning she said, ‘Get your things, Jacob.’ When I asked why, she told me I was going with her to Georna village. To this day, I’m not sure what made me go. Hell, I didn’t even question her. I just collected my quiver and bow, my hunting knife and a few clothes and followed her.

  “It took us the better part of the summer to get there, walking at her pace. I hunted and she foraged a wide range of edible plants, some of which I’d never seen before. And I thought I knew the forests pretty well.”

  Vic chuckled. “You thought you knew Dareelia pretty well, too,” she said playfully. The fire before them was starting to die. Darkness filled the glade.

  “Shall we retire?” Jacob asked in her ear.

  His breath sent a shiver of anticipation up her spine. She nodded and stood. “Will you finish your story?”

  “There’s not much left.” He rested an arm across her shoulders as they walked to his tent, stopping once so Jacob could talk to one of the men just coming off watch.

  Inside, he finished the last of his tale. “We reached Georna Village at the beginning of autumn,” he said, pulling off his tunic. “That was right after Baroness Georna’s father died, and she became Baroness. We walked into the village during her ceremonial procession. For reasons I’m completely in the dark about, she stopped her carriage when she reached our place in the crowd. I can’t be certain, but I think she recognized the old woman. She motioned us over and asked the woman who I was.”

  “Didn’t the old woman have a name?” Vic slipped her hands into his hair, running her fingers through the thick strands as he plucked her shirt from her breeches and began unbuttoning it.

  “She never told me. I never needed to refer to her by name. The Baroness didn’t call her by name either.” He threw her shirt aside, shifting his fingers to the lacing of her breeches.

  “What did she tell the Baroness about you?”

  “That I was a forest boy. That I was good with a bow. I was already tall but still a gangly kid. The Baroness was so kind and such a striking woman that I blushed the entire time she talked with the old woman.”

  “You blushed?” Vic lay down on their trail blankets, pulling Jacob with her. Despite the cold night, her skin tingled with warmth.

  “I was young,” he said, kissing her cheek.

  “What happened then?” She arched her neck as his hot mouth moved across her pulse.

  “We went to the castle.”

  “What?” She lifted his head to look into his eyes.

  “I know, it sounds strange now. At the time, it seemed perfectly normal. We got into the carriage with the Baroness, and I was placed in the castle guard the next day.”

  “What happened to the old woman?”

  “She left. I never saw her again. When I was older and braver, I asked the Baroness, but she shrugged and smiled and never explained.”

  “That is very odd.” She playfully nipped his chin.

  “Yeah. But that’s how I started as a guard.”

  “How’d you end up in Dareelia?” She closed her eyes with a sigh as his hand moved to her breast.

  “Baroness Georna thought I’d make a good King’s Own. She was always looking out for me. And I’d managed to get in enough trouble in Georna. I think she decided if she could get me to a bigger city, I might stay away from married women.”

  “Jacob!” Her eyes popped open. “You didn’t! I thought you said the rumors were exaggerated.”

  “Well, I wasn’t always the honorable man I am now,” he said a bit ruefully. “I’m afraid I was irresponsible when I was younger. But the ladies were so kind and their husbands so…inattentive.”

  “Did you have the same effect on women then that you do now?” Her breath caught when his mouth closed over her nipple.

  “Similar,” he said, moving his mouth back to hers and nibbling at her lower lip. “Ever since meeting the old woman, I’ve been very fond of women. I like listening to and talking with them. Unfortunately, that kind of attention given to certain women got me into situations my body had a hard time saying no to.”

  She chuckled, running her hands down his back to his buttocks. “And since coming to Dareelia?”

  “Well, let’s just say I’ve grown up.”

  “Mmm. I’ll say.” She smiled and ground her hips against his erection.

  Jacob growled and covered her mouth with his, kissing her deeply. He pulled away only long enough to say, “Good enough bedtime story?”

  “Yes. Now it’s time for you to help me sleep.” Just to make her point, she bit her bottom lip.

  That night, she slept without a single dream.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They woke the next morning to a heavy fog enveloping everything in gray. The scouts were sent ahead as the rest of the group packed camp and began the day’s journey. They rode in relative silence, the heavy fog masking the noises of the forest while at the same time magnifying the sounds of their passage.

  As the morning wore on, Vic started to worry over a suspicion twitching at the back of her mind. She moved up next to Jacob and whispered, “Why haven’t we seen any sign of the kidnappers yet? They only had a twelve-hour lead, if that.”

  Henry, who rode just in front of Jacob, answered. “They’re gating a few miles every day. To keep that much farther ahead of pursuers.”

  “Gating? With those cube things?”

  “Yes.”

  “But can’t you disrupt gates?” Vic didn’t know that much about magic, but no one lived on the streets without picking up a little.

  “We can only disrupt magical gates,” Tiya answered over her shoulder from where she rode next to Kevin at the head of the group. “Those cubes are mechanical gates.”

  “Then why didn’t they just gate to where they’re going?” Vic asked.

  “The mechanical gates can only gate a mile at a time,” Henry said, “and gating more than three times in a single day is very dangerous. The chances of molecular scrambling increase considerably.”

  “Molecular scrambling?” Vic had no idea what that meant but it sounded painful.

  Henry chuckled, a strangely musical sound. “Essentially, it means you’ll come out as a pile of gray mush. If you’re lucky. I’ve heard stories of people coming out of a mechanical gate so deformed, their bodies so twisted and scrambled, they no longer looked human. But they were still alive.”

  “You’re right,” Vic said through a grimace. “That would be worse than coming out mush. But if they’re gating even three miles a day, how will we catch them?” She asked Jacob this l
ast very quietly, hoping Lady Tiya wouldn’t hear. The fog worked against her, carrying her voice despite her effort.

  “We’ll catch them,” Tiya said, “because I can still feel Arlana. They don’t realize that.”

  “And Tracker was able to give us the location of the ruins where they first rendezvoused with the sorcerers,” Jacob said, his voice hard. “From what Tiya says, they’re heading northeast toward Georna. If they continue as they have been, the most likely heading is the Bthak border and those ruins.”

  “Time will tell if we’ve guessed right,” Henry added. “But the fact Tiya still feels Arlana gives us an advantage they can’t predict.”

  “What concerns me,” Kevin said, entering the conversation, “is they haven’t set an ambush. Surely, by now, they know where we are.”

  Henry coughed, cleared his throat, then said, “They don’t know where we are.”

  “What?” Jacob and Vic said at the same time.

  “I’ve been shielding us,” Henry said almost shyly. “I didn’t mention it earlier because I wasn’t sure how long it would work. The shield is…well, there’s an element of illusion worked into the shield spell, and it is possible for magicians to detect an illusion if they know to look for one. We still need to take the usual precautions, but I thought any extra time we could gain would be beneficial.”

  Tiya looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you, Henry. I wouldn’t have thought to try something like that.”

  Vic frowned quizzically at the sorceress.

  She smiled. “I’ve only been in training for two years, Victoria. I still have a lot to learn.”

  She returned the lady’s smile, both surprised and pleased to hear Lady Tiya wasn’t perfect. When she glanced back at Jacob, she wasn’t surprised to see his half smile. “What?” she said sourly.

  “Nothing.” His smile didn’t fade when he looked back to the trail.

  The scouts met them in a clearing at midday. The trail for the next few miles was clear. The group stopped for a short break before pushing on. They were moving as quickly as a group their size could along a game trail. Along the main roads at a quick pace, the trip would have lasted a mere eight days. Slowed by the narrower trail, they expected to reach Georna castle in eleven.

  Only the continued movement of the kidnappers in the same general direction kept Tiya from protesting the necessary stop at Georna castle. Vic, whose street instincts kept her on constant alert in the strange environment, was more concerned with being able to reach Georna before having to face the goblins again. After seeing what those fangs could do, she didn’t want to fight the GeMorin again without the help of the Georna smith’s special weaponry. But she knew the odds weren’t in their favor.

  She was thinking quietly about the remaining eight days of their journey, unconsciously gnawing on her bottom lip, when a new question occurred to her. “Henry,” she said, riding closer to the young sorcerer. “Why don’t we gate?”

  “Magically? Because they’re too easy to disrupt. If we gated ahead of the blood magicians, they’d feel it—gating makes ripples in the fabric of magic—and they’d disrupt the spell. Whether they realized it was us or not. They wouldn’t take a chance that the gate opening onto their path just happened to be formed by some innocent sorcerer.”

  “But why not gate to Georna castle, instead of ambushing the sorcerers? That would save us a week.”

  “Gating also takes a lot of power, Vic. Tiya and I couldn’t build a gate for a group this size on our own. It would take a large number of the more powerful Guild magicians to gate this group all the way to Georna. And the blood mages would still feel the ripples and could still disrupt the spell. They’d never discount the formation of a gate that big, using that much power, as mere coincidence.”

  “Damn,” Vic said, frowning. “I don’t know about you, Henry, but my street sense is telling me we won’t be able to reach Georna castle before the blood magicians send those GeMorin to slow us down.”

  Henry’s white eyebrows drew together. “I’m afraid you may be right. But until they find us, they can’t ambush us. And the closer we get to Georna, the better. We’ll just have to hope my shield can give us the time we need.”

  She nodded, trying to look optimistic and knowing she failed. Slowing Night’s Gale, she fell in beside Jacob again.

  “You okay, little thief?” he asked quietly.

  “Yeah. Just…” She shrugged.

  “I know. Me too.”

  The fog clung to the ground throughout the day, bringing darkness to the forest early.

  On the sixth day of travel, they crossed the main road leading to Bthak’s western border. Scouts were sent ahead, but they found no sign of a GeMorin ambush. Henry’s shield seemed to be working. But Vic’s unease grew each day. The closer they got to Georna, the more her fingers twitched.

  The sky was a heavy slate gray, keeping even the brightest parts of the day dim. As the sun ducked behind the mountains, they set up camp in a rock-circled glade. Vic fussed over Night’s Gale for a long time after they’d stopped for the night. Once her muscles had finally adapted to being on horseback, she found herself growing quite fond of the mare.

  The horses were picketed along the edge of the glade just inside the trees. She was combing out Gale’s mane when an unexpected sound floated down from the camp. Quiet laughter.

  She looked up to see Tiya sitting by a fire, circled in Kevin’s arms, watching Jacob as he told an animated story. And the lady was actually smiling. And laughing. The first genuine laughter Vic had heard from her since the kidnapping.

  Just behind Gale, Vic heard another quiet chuckle. “Good to see her laughing again, isn’t it?” Garath walked to Gale’s head and petted her chest.

  “Yeah.” She glanced back at Tiya, then looked up at Garath. “You’re one of the lady’s admirers, too?” she asked, hoping her smile didn’t look too much like a smirk.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you carry a secret…affection for Lady Tiya?”

  Garath smiled and shook his head. “No. Lady Tiya is very beautiful, but she’s not my type.”

  “I thought she was every man’s type.” Vic’s brow furrowed. She wasn’t sure she believed Garath.

  “If everyone had the same taste in potential mates, we’d all look alike. There are all kinds of men who like all kinds of women.”

  “Really?” Vic said, still skeptical. Her gaze wandered back to where Tiya sat, engrossed in the tale Jacob was spinning.

  “Of course,” Garath said. “Some men like tall blondes, others prefer short brunettes with curly hair and huge brown eyes.” He paused for a heartbeat, looking into her eyes, then shifted his gaze to the mare and continued, “Some men prefer redheads, some like fat women, some like skinny women, some like dark skin, some like light skin. And some men prefer other men and their varieties. That’s one of the great things about the human species, Vic. The variety.”

  She smiled crookedly. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He finally met her gaze again. “I’d better get going. I’m on first watch.”

  As he stepped away, she said, “Garath…”

  He turned a questioning glance back over his shoulder.

  “Stay standing.”

  A brief flicker of surprise crossed through his blue eyes, then he grinned, nodded in understanding and moved off to take his post.

  She watched him retreat, a little concerned. She couldn’t decide if she’d imagined his brief pause after describing her or if she’d really seen that flash of emotion he’d so far kept hidden. Must have been her imagination, she decided with a slight nod, closing the matter.

  The feel of hands on her shoulders made her jump. “Jacob,” she scolded, glancing up.

  He chuckled. “Sorry, love.” His gaze moved to the spot where Garath had disappeared into the forest. “What were you and Garath discussing?”

>   “Why the human animal comes in such a wide variety,” she said.

  He studied her upturned face. “And what did you come up with?”

  “That humans like variety.”

  His eyebrows drew together, but he let the answer go with a shrug, his thoughts obviously on something other than the conversation she’d been having with Garath.

  She changed the subject. “Lady Tiya sounded entertained by your story.”

  “She needed to laugh.”

  “Um hmm.”

  He kissed her forehead before saying, “Would you prefer she lost her temper again?”

  “No,” Vic admitted, “that wouldn’t be good.”

  “Exactly.” He turned her around to face him. “Are you through with Gale for the night?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I want to talk to you about something.”

  He ran a finger over her forehead, softening the creases that had collected at his statement. She nodded uncertainly and let him lead her back to his tent.

  Inside, he turned to face her, staring into her eyes for a long moment before beginning. “I’ve been thinking about this since we left…actually no, I’ve been thinking about this since before we left Dareelia, but…” He inhaled deeply. “Victoria, I want you to quit Thieves’ Hole. When we get back to Dareelia, I don’t want you to go back to work for them.”

  “Why?” she said, not a little confused.

  “I worry about you all the time. I’m still not happy about you being here, but at least here, I can look out for you.”

  “Jacob, I’ve survived in the Hole for fourteen years.”

  “I know, love. But things are different now. Please, when we get back, quit.”

  “What else would I do? I have to feed myself. Being part of Thieves’ Hole…it’s all I know.”

  “I’ll take care of you. We’ll come up with something.” He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her. “I don’t want you in any more danger.”

  She dropped her gaze, resting her forehead against his chest. She stared at her fingertips, where they pressed against his stomach, and considered what he was asking her to do. He was asking her to change what she was, who she was. She’d never relied on anyone to take care of her, even when she was very young. Now he was asking her to put herself completely in his keeping.