Proper Thieves

by Smith, Luke CJ

  Phaedra exhaled deeply. “There,” she said, not looking at anyone. “Happy?”

  Torg

  Nalan went sprawling across the floor, rolling to a stop at the feet of the four replacement guards. A huge red mark was already growing on his cheek from where Torg had struck him. To the boy’s credit, he didn’t make a sound when he hit.

  Though he was big as a bear, Torg moved fast as an alley cat, closing the gap between himself and his toppled prey in the blink of an eye and delivering a bone-crunching kick to Nalan’s ribs. The impact lifted him fully off the floor. As he landed, he sucked in air, but still the young man didn’t cry out.

  Torg smirked. A proud one. Perfect.

  “My pretty thugs,” Torg said, circling around where Nalan lay. The guard with the blue rose just watched from the doorway. “We’ve caught ourselves a spy. His name is Nalan, and he has plans to take what belongs to you: your share of Torg’s gold. How do we feel about this?”

  The four guards all stood mute, looking around at one another, as if to decide silently among themselves if it was all right for them to respond. Apparently Torg had finally beaten the silence into them.

  He smiled at that. “Very good,” he purred. “You’re learning.” Torg looked down at Nalan as the young man climbed to his feet. “Torg sees an opportunity here.” He looked over at the guard who was nursing a broken hand. “You there. High roller. For a second or two, Torg thought this boy was going to be your replacement, and he thought you were going to be another corpse on the pile. How would you like a chance to make Torg proud of you again?”

  With a hard look in his eye, the injured guard nodded. He stepped forward and put up his hands.

  Nalan clutched at his ribs. “Please,” he said, looking the injured thug up and down. “Please, no. Don’t hurt me anymore.”

  Torg laughed at that. “That was some of the least convincing begging Torg has ever heard,” he said. He called out to the injured guard. “I think he’s mocking you, friend.”

  Torg showed his teeth and growled. “Teach this boy to beg proper.”

  Tolem

  “Devan, I tried to warn you.” Tolem’s voice was surprisingly soft for being so gruff. “That morning when you walked into the suite with Phaedra on your arm, I knew it wasn’t going to work. I knew you weren’t cut out for this. And I knew you weren’t going to listen to me. So I did what I had to do.”

  Zella placed a hand on Devan’s arm. Devan was still staring vacantly down at the table. “Yeah,” Zella said. “You did what you had to do. You cut us loose.”

  “I gave you Phaedra.”

  “To keep us out of your way.”

  “To keep you safe!” Tolem slapped the table in front of him. He shook his head. “If I’d sent you away, Devan would have had you right back here the next day, planning something with no time, no resources, no information…”

  “...Sort of like what we have planned for tonight,” Devan said softly. It almost sounded like he was talking to himself. Tolem couldn’t read his nephew’s thoughts, but he didn’t feel like he had to.

  “Devan.” Tolem was a step away from outright pleading with the boy. “It’s not about the money. You have to believe me. Samus, Vertus, Torg: they’ll kill you. They will kill you. And Zella. And Breigh, Allister, and Nalan. Your friends...they listen to you. You have to call this thing off.”

  Devan looked up at Tolem for the first time in a long while, studying his face. Tolem stared back into his eyes.

  “Devan,” he said. “Please.”

  Devan hung his head. He let out a soft sigh.

  He held up his hand, palm up, in front of Zella’s face.

  Zella sat her purse on the table, opened it, and produced three silver coins. She placed them in Devan’s hand. Devan clenched his fist around them. “Told you,” he said.

  “You were right,” Zella replied.

  Tolem squinted at his nephew. “What—”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Devan said. “I just...I bet Zella that you’d literally beg me not to take your gold away from you. And hey…”

  Devan smirked. “...you didn’t disappoint.”

  Slowly, Phaedra scooted her chair away from Tolem. “Oh shit…” she whispered.

  Torg

  The injured guard clearly wasn’t a fighter. He swung his remaining fist in a wild, uncontrolled arc with little art in his technique. From the young man’s stance alone, Torg doubted the blow would even land on its target at all. But even so, Torg certainly didn’t expect the guard to end up on his knees, wailing and clutching a second broken hand to his chest.

  It had happened so fast, at first Torg wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but it had looked like Nalan had brought up an arm at the last moment to deflect the blow, catching the incoming fist with the hard tip of his elbow and diverting its momentum off course.

  Nalan was breathing fast and shallow. “I don’t think that helped improve my begging any,” he said, still clutching his ribs. “Would you like me to try again?”

  Torg scowled. “You two,” he said, pointing at another pair of guards.

  One of them reached out to grab Nalan by the shoulder. Before Torg knew what was happening, that man was lying on his side screaming, his arm folded up like a paper fan. A flash of movement later, and the other attacker was lying on top of the two remaining men in a heap.

  Wincing, Nalan bent down to pluck the blue rose off the chest of one of the fallen guards. When he straightened up, he was a head taller, his hair was white blonde, and he was most definitely a woman. Breigh fastened the flower in her hair and smiled over at Torg.

  Torg smiled back. “Ah,” he said. “A mentalist’s trick. What is it called...an inflection?”

  “If you say so,” she said. There was a definite limp in her walk as she made her way over toward Torg. “My partners, they say a lot. I don’t listen half the time. All I remember was my friend Zella telling me she could get me back inside The Palace. And me thinking how much I was looking forward to…” She laughed. “...seeing how your new beard is coming in.”

  Torg’s face fell into a stony mask.

  “You humiliated Torg, girl,” he snarled. “Torg humiliated you. That makes us even.”

  “Oh no,” Breigh said with a dangerous smile. “Not even close. I owe Torg a great deal. You see, ever since I was a small girl, I dreamt of crossing swords inside an immense arena like the heroes of old. I dreamt of a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds, and surviving—conquering—only by the skin of my teeth. You…” Breigh put a hand over her heart. “...you made that possible.”

  Reaching behind her, she snaked her hand up the inside of her jerkin. “That’s why I came back,” she said. “To repay the favor. See, I lost my two best friends in the coliseum that night. I had named them Bloodfeast and Ballstomp. But I thought the least I could do to thank you was to introduce you to my newest friend.”

  From behind her back, Breigh produced a short sword with a vicious serrated edge. “Torg,” Breigh said. “Meet Torgsbane.”

  Torg sneered, blowing a blast of hot air from his nostrils. “You’re not fooling anyone, girl. You’re hurt,” he said. From behind his own back, he produced a pair of long knives and held them up in front of his face, one in an overhand grip, one underhand. “Torg watched you in the arena. No one takes a beating like the one you took and heals in a week.”

  “Plus, I’m a girl,” Breigh said, slicing away at the air in fierce, controlled arcs. “And I’m young and I’ve experienced so little of true combat. And I’m unaccustomed to fighting with a short blade.” She stopped attacking the air. “There. Do you feel confident enough to begin now? Or must I actually stroke your cock?”

  Behind Breigh, two of the guardsmen she’d left unmaimed were stirring. They stumbled to their feet. They drew their swords from their belts.

  Torg smiled at the sight.

  But so did Breigh.

  “Come on, then,” Torg thundered.

  Tolem

&nbs
p; Tolem lunged across the table, upending wine bottles and scattering glasses in a storm of breaking glass. “You son of a bitch,” Tolem snarled at Devan, lunging from his chair and reaching out to throttle his nephew. “I’ll fucking…”

  And then he froze. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t alter the position he found himself in, one hand on the table, the other stretched out just inches from Devan’s face. Around him, cutlery clattered to the floor and a centerpiece shattered as it toppled over, and then everything was still. This wasn’t like the time in Alta Paradour when he’d been caught in a statue spell; this didn’t feel like an outside force restricting his movements. It felt like he simply couldn’t will his muscles to do what he wanted them to do.

  Zella cocked her head to one side and watched Tolem. “You must really be pissed to let your guard down enough to let me do this,” she said, a little smile on her lips. “I can’t even do this to the average person. And you’re not exactly an average person. Are you, Tolem?”

  Tolem wasn’t able to answer. A thin sheen of sweat formed on his brow, and a twinge of panic set in behind his eyes. She has me, he thought. How is she even doing this?

  “This can’t feel good, being in this position,” she said. The strain of what she was doing was showing plain on her face. “How does it feel? To have someone inside your head like this, uninvited? Worried I might leave something in here? Like the things you left in mine?”

  Sweat began to bead on Zella’s brow too. One of her eyes began to twitch. “Putting that tune in my head...that was bad enough. But what you put in my head that night in the suite, that night you said those hideous things about me...that was worse. I’m sure if you could talk, you’d say it was one last attempt to get us to turn back, to get us to see reason. But whatever. What matters is, I owe you for undermining me. For making me feel pathetic. And for getting that goddamn song stuck in my head for three fucking months.”

  Zella just stared into Tolem’s eyes. “I owe you. But you owe me two tons of gold. And I’d rather collect on that.”

  Next to her, Devan let out a low whistle.

  “I’m going to let you go now,” Zella whispered. “But if you get frisky again, I’m going to eat your brain. Understand?”

  Somewhere in his mind, Tolem relented. Zella released her hold. Tolem sat back down in his chair. Around them, several members of the wait staff hovered nervously at what they suspected might be a safe distance.

  Pushing himself up on his cane, Devan stood and straightened out his dinner jacket. “This has been great, uncle. We should catch up again soon.” Devan looked over his shoulder at a large clock on the wall. “Speaking of catching up, you might want to check in with your team. Because by now, my team should have caught up with them.”

  The big man stroked the stubble where his beard had once been. “You’re a goddamn catastrophe,” he said, standing up from his chair. “The both of you. You know...if something had happened to you that night, I...”

  He took a deep breath.

  “...I would’ve had a hard time living with that. But now?” He put his hands on the table and leaned in close. “Whatever comes next is on you.”

  Tolem grabbed Phaedra by the hand and made for the stairs leading down from the roof. As the pair exited the lounge, Tolem looked back over his shoulder, but Devan and Zella were already gone.

  Vertus

 

  Vertus snorted and awoke, feeling as though someone had just shouted in his face. He looked around; the room was no more or less empty than it had been when he went to sleep.

  He lit another candle. The room, with its mud-brown brick walls, seemed to eat light. No matter how many lanterns Vertus brought in, he felt like he was always squinting, like the room was perpetually cloaked in shadows. He would have thought that the mountain of gold on one side of the room would have amplified the light by reflecting it in all directions, but if anything, it seemed to make the rest of the room darker by comparison.

  came a voice in his head.

  Vertus crossed his fingers, opening his connection to Tolem’s link. he blurted groggily.

  Tolem barked into his mind.

  Vertus rubbed the back of his neck.

 

  Samus sounded exasperated, even for Samus.

  Vertus grunted as he pushed himself up from his cot, catching himself on a stone support beam. He reached for his crutch.

  Tolem cut him off.

 

 

  Samus said.

  Vertus put his hands to his temples.

  Just then, another sound caught Vertus’ attention. The sound of metal clanging on metal, just on the other side of the room’s outer wall.

  Tolem went on, ignoring Vertus’ request.

  Samus said.

  Vertus staggered on his crutch as he made his way toward the far wall. The floor sloped downward, with the mountain of gold occupying the lowest spot in the room. They had built their hidey-hole in the lowest point in The Palace, walling off the spot where the ship’s round-bottomed hull reached its absolute nadir. Vertus had procured the building materials, Samus had smuggled them in, and Torg had provided the labor in the form of his replacement guards.

  Those same guards were usually bivouacked just on the other side of the outer wall, so as to defend the only door into and out of the room. Pressing his ear to that door, Vertus could make out muffled shouting and the bang of steel on steel.

  Vertus said. <...there’s someone here.>

 

  Vertus swallowed hard.

  Samus’s voice took on a note of panic.

  Tolem said. His tone sounded even more harried than it had been even just a moment before.

  Vertus’s eyes went wide.

  Tolem shouted into the link.

  Vertus uncrossed his fingers and closed the link. He shook his head in bewilderment. “If you say so,” he said to the shadows in his room.

  Phaedra

  Without a roof to the airship, the wind whipped Phaedra’s hair all about. She fought to hold it with both hands. At least there was one thing she could actually feel she was in control of.
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  “Go faster,” Tolem said through clenched teeth. He was leaning over the back of the driver’s seat.

  The driver, a young, easily bribed Palace mage by the name of Danel, looked back over his shoulder. “A minute ago you said to be inconspicuous.”

  “And now I’m telling you to drive faster.”

  “I can’t do both.”

  Tolem drew back a hand. “Kid, I swear to—”

  Phaedra stepped between them. “Danel. Go a little lower and speed up. Maybe we won’t stand out as much if we’re not so high.”

  Danel thought about it then nodded. The craft lurched slightly as they began to descend.

  Tolem pulled Phaedra aside. “I’m gonna kill this fucking kid.”

  “Well, could you maybe wait until he’s not quite so important to our continued survival?”

  Tolem didn’t answer. He just stared out the ship’s front window as the city went flying past. Gaslight streets and candlelit windows whizzed beneath them in a blur, while above them The Palace grew larger and larger in the sky. A full moon lit the great ship from above, casting an immense shadow on the city below.

  Phaedra said into Tolem’s link,

 

  Before Samus could finish his thought, The Palace shuddered. It wobbled, like it had stumbled briefly from its place in the night sky before righting itself again. A moment later, the sound reached them—a massive boom that shook the frame of their tiny airship, that shook the insides of Phaedra’s bones.

  “Holy…” Danel said quietly.

  After that, there was another explosion. And then another; the last one was visible from the outside, as a small hole blasted open in the side of the ship’s upper hull. Phaedra had been responsible for recruiting the fuse-lighters. She felt no pride in seeing they had done their jobs; Vertus had rigged the fuses to detonate almost immediately upon being lit. Her recruits wouldn’t survive to get caught, let alone receive their earnings.