by Logan Jacobs
I shoved the halfling beside me.
He fell to his knees, and then he turned back and peered up at me angrily.
“What the hell was that for?” the halfling demanded.
“Don’t yell at me. It was that dwarf right there,” I said as I gestured to the whistling dwarf to the halfling’s left. “I saw him do it.”
The halfling’s face flushed as his rage took control.
“You bastard son of a miner’s uncle!” the halfling screamed as he took down the unsuspecting dwarf. “I’ll kill you for this!”
I stepped back as the panic ensued. I knew full well what I’d started. I just hoped it would be enough of a distraction to free Dar.
The riot started instantaneously as dwarves and halflings alike swung their fists and created enough mayhem for me to fight my way to my own halfling. A dwarf landed a few good punches to my gut, and someone punted me in the shin, but eventually I made it to the side of the elf with the magical power.
Penny was behind him with her daggers out, but the second she raised one in the air, her body froze as well.
I charged ahead, unsure what I would do.
I could smell the heavy stench of magic on Dar the closer I came to him. Its essence made me woozy, and I laid a hand on Dar’s shoulder to use him as leverage to move through the rambunctious crowd in my sickened state. As soon as I did, the halfling thief’s frozen body was released from the elf’s magic, and the strong scent dissipated with it.
The elf was as surprised as I was when Dar’s limbs went soft again beneath my touch. Then the magical elf turned his sapphire eyes on me, and as they widened, I knew something was off, especially when I realized Penny’s body was still frozen behind the pointy-eared bastard.
What in the hell?
“Human, what did you do?” the elf hissed as he stepped toward me.
I didn’t know what to say, because I had no idea what he meant by his question, so I just pulled Dar backward with me, and the halfling was as pale as the white-faced dames in Madame Rindell’s care.
The elf advanced as I struggled to get Dar to move, but finally, the halfling’s legs responded, and the space between us and the elf grew wider. I needed to go back for Penny, but first I had to make sure Dar and I weren’t captured.
The blue-blooded creature knew he wouldn’t catch us in the brawl I’d started, so he pulled the hood up over his head as his sapphire eyes bore into me.
“Humans can’t wield magic!” he proclaimed as he bared his teeth before he drifted off into the crowd. “I’ll find you, human, and when I do, you’ll answer my questions.”
I watched him disappear into the chaos, and Penny was released a moment later.
Dar and I went back for Penny, and I pulled the two of them into an old abandoned building the next street over. We ran up the stone steps and through the crippled green door. It was an old shop of some kind, long ago ransacked for everything of value and trashed by a group of young, rowdy halflings.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” I shut the door behind us before I turned on Dar, and my knuckles drained of color as I clenched my fists.
Dar’s black eyes were unreadable cesspools of darkness, and his lips pursed in a thin line.
“I was thinking the man must have some decent coin if he frequented Madame Rindell’s so often,” my friend sighed as he lowered his head. “I thought it would be easy pickings with my height and all, but I never expected him to be magical. Magic elves never show their faces in our parts of town.”
“Or maybe they do, but no one is stupid enough to try and pick their pockets,” I retorted.
Penny was quiet behind him, and she leaned her back against a broken wall before she sat in a pile of dust. Her gorgeous gown was ruined, shredded in places from the fight, and it was now dirty from her seat on the dust-covered floor.
“He is right, Dar,” Penny explained. “You’re our friend, and by pulling a stunt like that you put all of us in danger.”
She looked up at me as I ran my fingers through my hair and combed it back into place. Her emerald eyes narrowed, almost like she knew I could sense magic, and now, maybe even something more.
“What?” I averted my eyes.
“Why did the pointy ear say that about you?” she asked.
“What?” I asked again as I cleared my throat.
“You know what I’m talking about,” she scoffed. “With the magic stuff.”
“I don’t know what he meant. The key is gone, ya?” I should have told them about my new ability to smell its weighted fragrance, but it felt too personal, like it was something I had to figure out for myself before I told anyone about it. I couldn’t ask the hard questions I hadn’t been ready to face, and what happened today only proved it.
Humans can’t wield magic.
The elf’s words rang in my head like the bells in the clocktower come noon. I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out either.
“Sorry guys,” Dar sighed from his new spot on the ground, “I was hoping for a juicy gemstone big enough to supply me with a lifetime of riches, so I’d never have to work another day in my life.”
“It was too risky,” Penny said.
“Yeah,” Dar admitted as he slumped on the floor, “but what else do we have? We just pulled off one of the most amazing capers our Guild has ever dreamed up, and we did it on the fly with almost no planning. Between you, Wade, and me … well, we’ve got the stones to do the impossible, but where has it gotten us? We are still Hagan’s property. We need our own score. We need our own loot. We need enough money to get out from under his thumb.”
“We can’t,” Penny sighed. “Even if we did a big score, where are we gonna hide? All the other districts have branches of the Guild. Hagan or his boss, or the overboss, will find us.”
“Won’t matter if we have enough money,” Dar said. “You know what’s going to happen with Hagan?”
“No?” Penny asked as she shrugged her shoulders.
“He’s going to put us on riskier jobs,” I said, and Dar nodded as they both turned to me.
“Ya,” my halfling friend said. “This is just the beginning. The Guild is going to make bank off that wine. Hagan will tell them he did it. They will promote him, or give him more jobs. He’ll make us do them. Eventually, we’ll ride the edge too close, and the pointy ears will get us.”
“They won’t get us,” I said.
“Maybe,” Penny sighed as she looked down at her dress, “but this is our life. We are in the Guild. We owe them for giving us lives, and--”
“What if there was a way for us to get rich without having to steal from the elves, and the Guild didn’t have to be involved?” I whispered. “Would you both want to do it?”
Penny’s eyes slanted as she surveyed me, and she probably wondered what scheme I had tucked up the corner of my sleeve.
“You got an idea, Wade?” Dar asked as he bit his lip.
My friend would follow me anywhere, but I knew Penny was always skeptical, and my plan wasn’t fully formed in my mind yet.
“I know how to distill whiskey from my days back on the farm,” I admitted.
“Huh?” Dar asked as his eyes opened wide.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I did it all the time with my dad. If we gathered all the supplies, we could sell it, and it would be our ticket out of here. A way out of this life of crime for good, so we could live comfortably wherever we please. We won’t have to deal with Hagan or worry about the law ever again.”
“You should have told us this ages ago, we could have been rich already!” Dar’s eyes widened as he jumped to his feet, already onboard with my deadly plan. But his sights were set on the riches at the other end of the tunnel.
“Uhhh, hello?” Penny’s jaw was clenched so tightly I was afraid it might break, and I feared I misplaced my trust as her glare intensified. “Selling alcohol is against the elven law. Even more so than pickpocketing. Also this is treason against the G
uild.”
“I know that it’s--”
“You plan to open a business apart from thieving and make a profit on it without telling Hagan?” Penny growled. “I might as well finish you lot myself, because it goes against everything the Thief’s Code stands for.”
“You gonna gut me here, Penny?” I asked as I glared at her.
Then we stared at each other for a few moments, and the air grew still.
I knew she would bring up the code. I knew she would have talked about loyalty to the Guild. Her family had died for the cause of thievery, but what had it brought them? Fame? Glory? Riches? No, all it left them with was empty pockets and a trip to the grave.
“You know as well as I do the Thief’s Code is a load of halfling shit.” I dragged my hand through my hair as I attempted to calm my temper. “That code has put us in more danger than we deserved, all so Hagan could get rich off our spoils and leave us scrounging for scraps. I’ll still do Hagan’s bidding, but this is not something I plan to share with him. Do you want riches, or do you want to act as Hagan’s bitch for the rest of your life?”
I hated myself for saying it, but I knew it would rile Penny up. She despised when the other Guild members called her that, and I knew it was the only thing that might convince her to join us.
“Take it back.” Her face reddened and her fists balled as she rose faster than I had thought possible, even with her nimble abilities. She was inches from my face, so close I could have kissed her. Her breath smelled of blueberry jam, but the face that greeted me spoke of the darkest deaths.
“Penny, I--”
“Take it back, Wade,” she hissed.
“Will you help us?” I whispered as we stared into each other’s eyes. The tip of her nose almost touched mine, and I could smell her sweet breath. There were countless times I’d wanted to kiss her, or tell her how beautiful I thought she was, or wrap my arms around her and feel comfort with her touch. I felt like we were on the edge of a cliff, and the next words out of her mouth would determine both of our fates.
Maybe we’d always been heading in this direction. Did it start with the key, or did it start when we both knew we wanted each other but could do nothing else but dance around the topic?
“The Thief’s Code has a loophole,” she whispered so softly I almost didn’t hear her. “As long as you are thieving, the activity is deemed acceptable by the Guild. It never states the money must be given to Hagan, but rather a Guild leader. If you are the leader of the alcohol division of the Guild and share the profits with other Guild members, like Dar and I, then you’re technically within the grounds of the code. But what do I know? I’m only Hagan’s bitch.”
Then the beautiful redhead turned away from me, took a few steps back to the corner of the room, and sat down on the dirty floor again.
Stunned, I stared at her, and then I glimpsed Dar out of the corner of my eye doing the same. Did she just agree to work with us? I hesitated to ask, so I decided to keep talking.
“We will have to steal a lot of supplies to begin operations, as well as the grain and coal we need to make it,” I began. “It will be dangerous, so I won’t hold it against either one of you if you decide to back out. All I ask is you don’t breathe a word of this to anyone outside this room.”
“What supplies do you need?” Dar asked.
“We’ll need three vats and ways to connect them,” I said. “One vat will be our cooker, another will be our fermentor, and the last will be the actual still where we make the booze.”
“Vats?” Penny asked from her corner, but she still faced the wall.
“Yeah,” I cleared my throat. “Think big pots. Like maybe cauldron size. Copper is best. We’ll also need pipes to connect things. I can do some of the first steps in a wooden barrel, we’ll just need to--”
“You got money to buy all that?” Penny groaned as she whipped around to glare at me. “Or are ya gonna steal it all?”
“My cousin may have some of the supplies you need in his catering company,” Dar said as he glanced at Penny. “I can contact him and see if he’s willing to work with us. Maybe give him a cut?”
I pondered his request as I wondered if it would be safe to include his cousin. But right now, I couldn’t be picky. Operations wouldn’t get off the ground if I didn’t trust Dar with his vast connections within the community.
“Alright, fine, but only people you absolutely trust,” I said. “I don’t want word getting around we are thinking about making whiskey, otherwise the Elven Guard will have us executed before the day is out. No shortcuts, and nothing that will get us caught. Don’t tell anyone what we are doing with the supplies, don’t get too many from one place, and if anyone asks, say you need the copper or whatever for something the Guild is doing.”
Penny and Dar nodded in agreement, and then we all headed back to the Thief’s Guild to give Hagan our daily spoils.
Chapter 7
A few weeks had passed since we concocted our whiskey business plan. Hagan was pissed we only brought him “scraps” after the night we feasted on his wine, so we paid for our “insolence” with more time spent scouring the streets for every ounce of coin out there.
“Good news Wade,” Dar declared when he opened the attic door. “My cousin is free to meet today. Is our cauldron of shit ready or what?”
We’d found a large rusted iron cauldron in the basement of the Guild, and I’d cleaned it up with some steel wool, soap, and a lot of elbow grease. Then I had stolen a bag of corn and yeast from a nearby bakery and concocted it into the wash I needed to distill whiskey. I’d let it sprout, and then Dar and Penny helped me remove all of the ends from the sprouted kernels. After that, they helped me crush all of the corn with the mortar bowls I’d stolen from the apothecary.
Next, I camped out one night deep in the Falrion Forest and mixed the crushed kernels with yeast and water as I heated it over a fire. Dar had to help me transport the large cauldron and all of my materials out there, but I promised him the sample whiskey I made at his cousin’s would be well worth it. Dar wanted the meeting to be sooner, but I told him the goods needed to ferment for ten days before we could meet. The whole process had been ten times more labor intensive because we didn’t really have the correct equipment, but we still got the job done, and we could improve on the process later when we had more time and money.
“If by ‘shit’ you mean the fermented wash you helped me make, then yes,” I replied as I cocked my head at him. “Do you have a cart for us to take or do you plan to transport this heavy cauldron all the way there on foot?”
“It’s already waiting in the courtyard,” Dar explained. “My cousin let me borrow his cart, and his lackey just dropped it off for us.”
“I’ll go down and distract Hagan while you sneak that outside,” I said as I gestured to the cauldron sitting beneath a pile of rugs in the corner.
The wash began to smell horrible after a few days, like rotten eggs or vomit, and the rugs dissipated the stench. If anyone asked, we told them Dar had suffered a bout of the harroweed fever and had spilled a chamber pot all over the floor, the one that held the spoils of his stomach. It happened to the best of us, so no one questioned our lie.
Later, we had to keep the rugs over the fermented wash because the scent turned sweet, like that of freshly baked bread. Everyone knew thieves loved their sweets, but Penny told everyone it was an admirer who sent her a delectable treat every day. She threatened them all within an inch of their lives if they dared touch her stash of candy, and that was enough to dissuade our fellow Guild members.
I descended the stairs first and blocked the second-story doorway where Jed and Basher sat hunched over decks of cards.
“You crushing him again Jed, or did Basher finally learn how to play?” I asked as Dar slipped by behind me.
“After I win for the hundredth time in a row, Basher can show you the souffle he made in the kitchen,” Jed laughed as Basher sent us both a vulgar gesture. “He’ll make someone a nic
e wife someday.”
I laughed as I went after Dar and exited the bottom stairwell ahead of him. We needed to be quick, since the delicious scent of the cauldron couldn’t go unnoticed for very long. I exited the stairwell and blocked Hagan’s view from the foyer. Luckily, the thieves-in-training were out on the streets today, instead of at their usual post at the sorting table by the back door.
“I figured I’d go out and pickpocket the locals today.” I smiled at Hagan as Dar snuck out the back door.
“And ya telling me this why, boy?” Hagan asked and narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“Well, you always complain how I never pull my weight, so I figured I’d start telling you where I planned on thieving each day,” I explained to the halfling. “Consider it a gesture of good faith.”
“So insteada bringing me coin, ya decided to stand here and waste my time waggan ya gums like some sort ahh idiot?” Hagan scowled and advanced on me threateningly. “Get outta my face and don’t come back till ya have something to show for it!”
“Yeah, boss,” I said as I ducked out the door. Penny promised she would cover my half of the dues for today, and I didn’t doubt it. Hell, she probably would still have extra left over for herself.
“My cousin Adi, the one who I’m taking you to see, caters to some of the highest elves in the realm,” Dar informed me as he slid the heavy-for-him cauldron into the back of the cart and covered it with a cloth. “Could you imagine having to cater to those bastards? Hell, I’d rather eat my own arm than use it to serve them.”
I laughed as I imagined Dar at an elven event as a server. It was odd for a halfling to hate them, since they and the dwarves were treated the fairest of any of the races. Dar had never explained to me why he disliked the elves, but it always rendered a good laugh.
“So, I’m guessing your cousin has to make some pretty decent meals?” I questioned, since I was slightly concerned with Dar’s cousin's connection to the higher race. “The elves don’t exactly go for low quality.”
“Adi’s food is to die for, and it’s always flavored with a mixture of spices,” Dar explained with a wistful look in his eye. “I couldn’t tell you of another halfling with a similar passion for cooking. Adi is the best of the best, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut. He might not hate the elves like I do, but he sure as hell doesn’t want them to interfere with his consumption of alcohol again.”