“Yeah,” Zella said quietly. She was still playing with Allister’s hair. “Oh shit.”
“So,” Devan continued, “things got hot. Parnick stared them down. And at the end of the day…Faerathore went home with just the gold. And Parnick went home with the understanding that, if we ever set foot outside The Tower again…”
Devan let the rest go unsaid. Allister took the pillow off his face.
“Well,” he said at last. “That’s that, then.”
Zella crinkled her forehead. “What’s what? This doesn’t change anything. As soon as you’re out of this bed and your dimple’s healed up, we’re gone again.”
“Aye,” Breigh roared. “And woe be to any perfumed Palace dweller who tries to bar our way.”
Allister swung around and looked at Zella. “What do you mean this doesn’t change anything? It changes everything. We’ve been made. You’ve been identified by name by one of the most dangerous men in six worlds. We’re trapped.”
“We could be,” Nalan said thoughtfully. “If that’s what we want.”
Allister squinted at him. “What does that mean?”
“Just that it would be a good reason to stay…” Nalan didn’t make eye contact with any of the others. “…if some of us weren’t sure that they wanted to leave again.”
Devan leaned over in his seat. “Cheris?”
Nalan nodded. A clumsy smile crossed his face.
Devan clapped a hand on Nalan’s back.
“It won’t be the same without you,” Devan said.
“You’ll adapt,” Nalan replied.
“So you’re…okay with this?” Allister asked Devan. “After everything that happened? I mean, mind you, I’m laying here with a huge, amazing scar…” The others could actually hear Breigh’s teeth grinding. “…because of the last time we left The Tower.”
Devan bit his lip and nodded for a moment before replying. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said at last. “This whole not-being-perfect thing is going to take some getting used to.”
Allister flashed a wide-eyed look over at Zella. “Devan isn’t perfect?”
Zella ran her fingers through Devan’s bangs. “I’m as shocked as you are,” she said dryly.
“Allister,” Devan said. “Do you want to go or don’t you?”
Allister’s mouth hung open and he struggled to find the words. “Well…” he said at last. “…yeah. Of course I do.”
“Of course you do,” Devan said, smiling. “You’re a fireblood mage who outran The Palace’s entire guard in a flying dump wagon.” He pointed over at Breigh. “And she’s the captain of the field at Collegium Hill and the slayer of Arachnus of the Fall.”
He pointed at Nalan. “And he’s a machinist who’s going to be back here dreaming up crazy new inventions to help us out in the field.”
He pointed over at Zella. “And she’s the best—the best—mentalist in six worlds.”
“And yeah. We’re going to get stabbed, hurt, chased, and all that. But we can take it. Because the five of us?”
Devan looked around the room at his friends.
“We can do motherfucking anything.”
Zella
“So,” Zella said. “What have we learned?”
The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows on the Summit. Zella looked over at where Devan lay stretched out on the grass. He smiled. “Oh, I’d say I learned a great deal. What about you?”
She thought about that. “Some solutions can be a little too elegant,” she said at last. “Sometimes, you gotta show some tit.”
Devan snorted. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Hey,” she said, pulling up a strand of grass and tossing it over at Devan. “Life is hard enough as it is. Sometimes the easy way isn’t such a bad thing.”
“I could definitely go for a few weeks of the easy way before we head back out,” Devan said, rolling over onto his back. “You know, when you said you could do a lot of living in six months, you weren’t kidding. We were barely gone four months, and I feel ten years older.”
Zella laughed. She rolled over and crawled around Devan, positioning herself so she was laying on her chest in the grass and looking down into Devan’s face from above. “You know...before I left, all I wanted was a chance to show everyone in this shithole tower what I can do, why they’re wrong and why I’m right, and why they should bend down and kiss my ass…”
“And now? What do you want now?”
“When we were in Kauleth, I did things I didn’t know were even possible.” Zella smiled. “I want to do that all the time. I want to learn. I want to learn and keep learning and never stop.”
Devan smiled up at her. “That’s a good answer.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“Sorry.”
Zella sat up on her knees. “I want to be free. From The Tower, from obligation, from higher powers in all their forms. I want to live my life the way I choose, with no one telling me what to do or how to do it.”
“This sounds…a little rehearsed.”
“It is.”
Devan nodded. “Just checking.”
“And,” Zella said significantly, “I also don’t want to tell anyone else what to do either.”
Devan stared up at her. He bit his lip.
“I cheated on you,” he said.
Zella demurred. “We never really...officially…”
Devan put a hand up. “Z. I cheated on you. And I went to pieces after we lost the gold. And in between, I was smug and insufferable and mean to you.”
“Yes,” Zella said, nodding. “That all happened.”
“And after all that? You’d still have me? Why?”
“Because that’s not all that happened.” She leaned down over him again. “When I got hurt, you held me up while I was falling apart. You did everything in your power to keep all of us safe. And honestly, if I had to choose between the Devan you were before we left and the Devan who’s lying in front of me right now? Knowing everything that’s happened in between? I’d still pick you.”
She leaned down and kissed him.
Devan smiled up at her. As the sun finally disappeared behind the distant horizon, he reached up his hand and gently stroked her cheek.
“But seriously,” Zella said. “You cheat on me again, and I’ll knee you so hard I’ll make your sperm puke.”
Devan
After the sun went down, Devan and Zella made their way back to Allister’s room in the infirmary. Breigh and Nalan were already there. The five of them stayed long into the night, talking and laughing. Allister needled Nalan about getting married, and Zella poked Allister in the chest again. One by one the others made their way back to their rooms until only Devan and Allister were left.
In the silence at the end of a story, Allister stared off into the distance and smiled. “This is weird,” he said with a chuckle.
Devan cocked his head to one side. “What? What’s weird?”
“Well, just…” Allister took a moment to hunt for the words. “After all that time pretending we didn’t know each other, meeting in secret, hiding from the instructors…we just spent all night together. With nurses and instructors coming in and out.”
“I know,” Devan said. All day long he’d felt their eyes on them. Truthfully, he liked it—for a long time, he’d been suspected of being a thief by the people of The Collegium. He wasn’t fond of being looked at with mistrust, but he could absolutely get used to being looked at with nervous awe. “How do you like it?”
Allister nodded. “It’s all right. I kind of miss having a secret.” As those words left his mouth, his face froze. “Oh…oh god…”
Devan moved in closer. “What is it, Alli?”
“After dinner…while you were gone… I was all doped up on painkillers…” He covered his face with both his hands. “I think I introduced Breigh to my parents.”
Devan tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “How’d it go?”
Allister tu
rned slowly to look over at the wall next to his bed. There was a faint dent in the plaster there roughly the size and shape of a man’s back.
Allister turned back to face Devan. “I…I don’t think it went well.”
Devan doubled over with laughter. Allister threw his blanket up over his head.
“All right,” Devan said at last, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “All right…I’m sure it’ll shake out in the morning. And if not?” Devan smiled. “We’ll just break out of here a couple days early.”
Allister snickered at that. “…Yeah,” he said, shaking his head under his blanket. “Yeah.”
Devan spread his hands wide, as if framing something in space. “Journey to Adventure!” he announced, invoking one of the bold-faced taglines emblazoned across the covers of each of Bellitt’s Cliven the Clip books.
“Notorious Ne’er-Do-Wells!” Allister proclaimed from under his blanket, following suit. “Daring Deeds Done in Dead of Night!”
Devan pulled the blanket off Allister’s head. “Two-Fisted Action, As You Like It!”
Allister laughed and laid his head back against his pillow.
“Get some sleep, you,” Devan said, leaning in to give his friend a gentle hug.
“You too,” Allister said. “You’ll need to get up early to get started on those ten labors you owe me.”
Devan laughed and picked up his cane. He turned to leave when Allister caught him by the arm.
“D…” Allister was still smiling, but there was something pensive in his expression. “Um…before you go…”
“Yeah?”
“I…didn’t want to ask, but…I have to know.” Allister took a deep breath. “The gold. Why didn’t you hide it before you came back? You must have had plenty of chances. Parnick never had to know.”
Devan smiled. “You were dead. Or dying. We didn’t know how long your freeze spell was going to last. So…yeah. We had other priorities.”
Allister’s expression fell. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
He removed his hand from Devan’s arm and ran his fingers through his red hair. “For what it’s worth…” he said, “I’m sorry.”
Devan patted Allister’s hand. “Come on, Alli. It was never really about the gold, was it?”
Allister thought about it a moment. “No. No, I guess not.” He smiled at that.
Devan opened the door to leave, but before he did, he looked over his shoulder and gave Allister a smirk. “And besides,” he said, “it’s not like we gave all of it back.”
Thanks for inviting us into your brain space! We hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we did!
Stroke our egos, send us a review.
You can find us on Amazon, and also on Goodreads.
Pledge your fealty to Breigh! Discover an extra short story featuring everyone’s favorite bombastic warrior.
Yearning for more? Hop on over and watch an interview with author, Luke CJ Smith. Take a gander at variant covers, character portraits, and snarky bios by the Collegium’s own Professor Winselle.
From the Author
This project started in 2013 when I sat down to participate in my first National Novel Writing Month. I had recently joined the St. Louis Writers Meetup Group, which was my first exposure to actual, serious writers who actually, seriously wrote things. (My last significant project was a webcomic which had folded some years prior.) Quite a few of the members of that group were staunch NaNoWriMo advocates, so I decided that, if I was going to be an actual, serious writer myself, that would be a good place to start.
A few years later, when some of those fine folks decided to found 7th Titan, they reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in submitting something for possible publication. I dusted off my NaNo manuscript, handed it in, and, hundreds of hours of rewrites later, here we are.
I really can’t overstate how useful that rewriting process has been to me personally. Now, I’ve been writing all my life. I spent most of my career as a reporter, a copywriter, an English teacher, and a communications wonk. In my free time, I’ve written screenplays and comics and what is possibly the world’s worst novel. But Proper Thieves is where I feel like I’ve figured out how writing actually works, and for that, I owe an immense debt to the team at 7th Titan. There is literally no way in which this book would have existed without them. My gratitude cannot be overstated.
So, some brief shout-outs:
To the team at 7th Titan (@7thTitan): Abby (my rock), Chappy (my role model), Carolyn (my queen), and Meg (my goddess).
To the folks from the St. Louis Writers Meetup Group (@StLouisWriters) for getting me moving again after too long a time off: Kurt, Kathy, Corey, Elliott, Molly, Jeanne, Steve, Sonya, Chuck, Ryan, Florrie, Andy, Patrick (who writes science fiction and fantasy, although one time it was both), and many, many others.
To the crew at National Novel Writing Month (@NaNoWriMo) for giving me a launch vector.
To Dan, for helping me build momentum. We need to finish our sci-fi sex robot vengeance epic one of these days.
To my mom Sherry and my dad Rick, for their constant love and encouragement.
And, of course, to Andrea, who collaborated on every word of Proper Thieves without ever knowing it. Love you, lady.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, NaNoWriMo 2016 is just six months away, and I need to prepare.
Luke CJ Smith
St. Louis, Missouri
May 8, 2016
Proper Thieves Page 35
