by Ari Marmell
One of these days, she thought to herself, I'm going to ask Olgun exactly what it is that he does to them—or what it is he makes me smell like to them!
And with no more difficulty than that, she was at the wall of the manor. Dropping to her belly, Widdershins wormed her way below the first-floor windows. It'd be embarrassing to come this far just to be discovered by some lovelorn servant staring out at the stars. Only when she'd reached a stretch of wall unbroken by glass did she return to her feet.
Each mortared spot between the bricks was a rung, the entire wall a ladder placed solely for her own convenience. In less time than it takes to tell, she was ten feet above the ground, sidling sideways toward the nearest darkened window.
She took a moment to curse the craftsmen's guilds for making glass so much cheaper in recent years—this would have been much simpler in the days of open panes or oilcloth-covered windows—before her questing fingers produced a thin length of wire from her pouch. She inserted it between the window and the pane with one hand, clinging to her perilous perch with the other. Within seconds, she felt resistance, heard the faint clack as the strip fetched up against the window latch. It required a few tries, but finally the tiny metal hook lifted from its eyelet and fell away with a tiny ping.
In a span of seconds, the wire was back in her pouch and Widdershins was inside the darkened room.
That was the good news. The bad was that she'd just come to the end of any real knowledge she possessed about the manor's layout, as she'd never found the opportunity to examine the second floor.
“Keep your eyes and ears—or whatever—open,” she told Olgun in her inaudible whisper.
After listening for a full minute, ensuring that her own heartbeat was the only sound in the room, she took the tinderbox from her pouch, along with a candle stub, and struck sparks until the wick caught. Keeping her back to the window, she quickly examined the small chamber.
Between the comfortably padded chair, the heavy mahogany writing desk liberally dusted with sundry scraps of parchment, and the overburdened bookcase that skulked dejectedly against the far wall, she knew this must be Doumerge's study. Moved by a sudden sense of idle curiosity that could just as easily have come from her or her empathic ally, the thief-turned-aristocrat-turned-thief leafed hurriedly through the nearest stack of writings. It contained little of any real interest: various calculations on the worth of this product or that market; some letters of identification, presumably for servants running errands in the baron's name; and a few attempts at romantic epic poetry so teeth-gratingly, mind-numbingly, soul-shrivelingly awful that it might have doubled as a form of interrogation. With a quiet “Bleah!” of disgust, Widdershins dropped the parchment back into place and moved to the door, as though afraid that the verses might leap off the page and pursue her screaming down the hall.
Her hand was on the latch when Olgun yelped a warning. Unable to repress a startled gasp, Widdershins fell back, instinct alone keeping her soundless as a snowfall as she snuffed the light of her candle and vanished, an insubstantial phantom, into the darkened study.
Muffled footsteps trod slowly down the hallway, pausing once for a brief instant by the study. Widdershins modulated her breathing, as motionless as the statues in the garden, until the footfalls resumed and slowly faded away.
“Thanks,” she whispered to her unseen guardian. “Though you didn't have to yell.”
Olgun's reply was more than a little perturbed.
“Yes, I should have been paying more attention!” she admitted, her voice rising slightly. “I made a mistake. It happens. I've already thanked you! What more do you—what? I did so mean it! All right, fine! See if I thank you again anytime soon!” Widdershins pressed her ear to the door, making absolutely certain this time. “Condescending creep,” she muttered as her gloved hands once more worked the catch. “Thinks he's so much better, just because he happens to be a god….”
Still murmuring—though low enough that none but Olgun could hear—she drifted out into the hall. She was prepared, if necessary, to search room by room until she found what she needed, but here, at least, her task proved easy. No need to hunt down Baron Doumerge's bedchamber; the prodigious snoring was more than sufficient evidence.
At least, Widdershins assumed it was snoring. Judging by the sheer volume and variety of tones, the noise could just as easily have been a cold-stricken lumberjack chopping down a copse of trees with a wild boar.
“All right,” she breathed, “here's where it gets tricky.” Ready to dive in any convenient direction should she be interrupted, she crept toward the bedchamber.
The door opened inward, unfortunately, meaning that she couldn't grease the hinges. The baron probably ordered his servants to keep them oiled—little disturbs the idle rich so much as petty annoyances—but Widdershins hated trusting to luck. Then again, what was luck, really, but divine intervention?
“Olgun? Could you take care of any creaks or squeaky hinges?”
Petulance was his only reply; well, that and the emotional equivalent of a wet raspberry.
“Olgun,” she coaxed in a breathy undertone, “you're not still mad at me, are you? It was such a little argument….”
With an obvious roll of nonexistent eyes, the god twiddled his equally nonexistent fingers at the door. Widdershins felt the tingle of Olgun's power in the air around her.
“Thank you, sweetie,” she teased. “I'll rub your tummy later, all right?”
Grumble.
Widdershins lightly pressed the catch and opened the door just enough to squeeze through the gap. The sound of the baron's somnolent rumblings intensified, and the young woman experienced the sudden sensation that she was stepping into the gullet of some fantastic beast that would gobble her down as an appetizer.
As the sensation faded and the chamber steadfastly insisted on remaining a chamber, she shut the door and consciously commanded each and every muscle in her body to relax as she waited for her vision to adjust to the near darkness. Thankfully, the window faced west (can't have the baron awakened by something as inconsiderate as the dawn, can we?), from which direction there currently shone a sliver of the vanishing moon.
The room was gaudy, the living space of a man who'd never outgrown the childhood conceit that more is always and automatically better. Paintings, bejeweled weapons, and even a few small tapestries jammed the walls, resembling nothing so much as a bargain bin at a market stall. A tacky chandelier in the shape of Geurron's golden pyramid hung above the bed. The dresser sitting beneath a large silver mirror was covered in knickknacks, doodads, and diverse baubles, from gilded brushes to jewel-inlaid boxes to haphazardly scattered jewelry.
Widdershins ignored it all. Anything stolen from Doumerge Estates would be too easily traced—anything except hard currency. A man as paranoid as the Baron d'Orreille would certainly keep a strongbox of coin close at hand for emergencies. It was this, and no other, that she sought in the man's bedroom, mere moments before the first stirrings of dawn. Sure and silent, she crept from corner to corner, eyes and hands roving, examining. The baron continued to snore, obliviously if not peacefully, as his room was methodically ransacked.
Drowned out by the sound of the baron's nocturnal symphony, all but smothered by the thick quilts and comforters of the bed, the room's other occupant almost completely escaped even Widdershins's methodical examination. Only as the thief reached the far corner of the bed did she spot the young woman—a high-class courtesan, to judge by the clothes carefully laid out on the floor and the smeared makeup that still smudged her face—slumbering beside the noble rodent. Widdershins went statue-still, but the woman remained asleep, if not deeply so. Her eyelids twitched as dreams pressed against them from within, and every few breaths a tiny portion of her voice would escape with a slight moan.
Widdershins, whose desperation had more than once driven her to within a finger's breadth of the profession herself, during her hungriest years, had to force down a sympathetic sigh.
&
nbsp; At least she's got access to a high class of clientele. Somehow, though, that wasn't much of a consolation. Chewing the inside of her cheek, Widdershins resumed her hunt.
It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, under the bed that Widdershins finally found her prize: a heavy mahogany box, equipped with the finest steel lock that money could buy. She knew it was the finest, because it took her two full minutes to open it. Inside, hundreds of gold marks glittered, newly captured stars, wealth enough to live on for many months.
This was, by far, the most dangerous moment of her night: transferring the hoard, or as much as she could, into the heavy black sack.
Fortunately, unlike most people who worked alone, Widdershins never worked alone. Olgun would warn her if anyone approached, or if the baron began to awaken. Furthermore, her “plunder sack” was woven of a heavy cloth, intended to at least partly muffle the inevitable clank of coins. Nevertheless, handling the cache was a slow and arduous process, one that wreaked havoc on the nerves, and Widdershins was covered in a sheen of sweat by the time she was through. The sky had grown bright enough that she could see the stirrings of dawn even through the window's western exposure. It was time, and past time, to go.
She looked up, one last glance to make sure all was well—except that it wasn't. The Baron d'Orreille remained fast asleep, but his companion had sat halfway up in bed, clutching the sheets to her naked breast, staring in terror at what, to her eyes, must have been little more than an inky blot moving through the darkened room.
Widdershins was around the bed in a silent flash, one gloved hand covering the courtesan's mouth. The woman fell back with a terrifying squeak, but otherwise made no sound at all.
Still in absolute silence, Widdershins leaned in until her lips were practically on the woman's cheek. She felt the contours of a bony face—clearly, even with clients as wealthy as the baron, the job didn't pay all that well.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” Widdershins breathed in a voice that even a whisper would have been hard-pressed to hear. “But I need you to keep quiet.” She smiled, knowing that the other couldn't possibly see the expression, hoping maybe she'd feel it. “Fifty gold marks. All yours, for keeping your mouth shut.” She couldn't just give her the coins—doubtless she'd be searched, thoroughly, when the theft was discovered. But…“The peeing cherub statue. Look in the water right under his—uh…” The thief was grateful that the darkness hid her sudden blush. “Well, you know.”
The woman clearly had no good cause to believe what Widdershins said. But fifty marks was more than she'd make in months, and so far, the thief hadn't hurt her. Widdershins hoped that would be enough to convince her.
The courtesan nodded, her face barely moving beneath Widdershins's hand. Widdershins breathed a silent gasp of relief and vanished from the bedside.
Moving with far less speed and far more care—it is simply impossible, however eloquent one might be, to convince a sack of gold to be silent, and Olgun could only muffle the sounds so much—the black-clad intruder crept back up the hall, returning to the relative safety of the study. Widdershins glanced at the window, but found herself unwilling to leave just yet. Doumerge's tawdry display of excess had really rubbed her the wrong way, and she felt an overwhelming need to express her displeasure.
If she was also, perhaps, angry at the reminder of what her life could have become, well, neither she nor her divine companion chose to acknowledge the possibility.
With Olgun impatiently tapping a nonexistent foot, Widdershins resumed her examination of the ledgers and parchments on the desk. No need for a candle now, for the sky was light enough that she could see clearly. She was pushing this too far, leaving it too close, but by the gods (well, by one god, anyway), she wouldn't leave until she was well and truly done. And despite his impatience, she knew Olgun would have it no other way.
Snatching up a nearby quill and dipping it deeply into the inkwell on the desk, Widdershins very carefully blotted out several dozen figures and totals throughout the ledger. It would take the greedy bastard days, if not weeks, to recalculate it all. Then, flipping several days ahead in the accounting ledger, she scrawled her message across the page in a neat but hasty hand:
Thanks for the gold, my lord. I'm sure I'll enjoy it more than you would. But look on the bright side. Now you won't be tempted to go out and spend it all, having fun, when you should be at home balancing your books.
Sincerely, someone a lot richer than they used to be.
A smirk crawling its way across her face, Widdershins closed the ledger and arranged the scattered chaos atop the desk, nearly as she was able, as it had appeared when she found it. Let the baron discover her little thank-you in his own good time.
“Now,” she told Olgun, stepping to the window and glancing outward, “the only issue is getting away from here, yes?” She scowled at the rising sun. “I don't suppose you could whip up some clouds, or maybe even a nice morning mist, could you?” she inquired doubtfully. Olgun scoffed.
“All right. Can you at least take a little of the weight off me?” She glanced meaningfully down at the sack full of gold marks.
The bag grew slightly but noticeably lighter.
“That's just fine. It won't need to be long.” She opened the pane, stretched down as far as she could, and allowed her bag to fall the remaining few feet to the grass. She followed quickly after, scuttling down the side of the house. Glancing around warily to ensure that nobody was up early and working in the garden, she hefted the sack over her shoulder and then did the only thing she could.
It was one of the primary rules of thievery. When hiding, sneaking, and trickery are all out, the correct answer is “run like hell.”
Whether some god other than Olgun watched over her that morning or whether she simply ran through a free-floating pocket of good luck, she made it across the Doumerge Estates without being spotted. (She even managed to make a quick detour and complete her promised delivery to the cherub fountain, despite Olgun's objections.) Then she was at the outer wall, leaped without slowing—again boosted by unseen hands—and vanished into the nearby alleys.
Birds, squirrels, and other disgustingly pastoral creatures sang and chirped their greetings to the rising sun. The streets of Davillon's marketplace filled rapidly: merchants setting up shop, patrons looking for a good deal while the market remained uncrowded and the proprietors remained in a good mood. The trickles of humanity grew, first into streams, then veritable rivers. Flowing through the streets that were the veins and arteries of the town, these were the lifeblood of Davillon.
Above the growing throng at the market's edge, one woman rolled over in bed to face the window, blinking blearily against the sunlight. She'd taken to her bed only a few hours before, and had no intention of rising with the dawn. With a muffled curse, she slammed the shutters and drifted back to sleep, carried into dreams by the low tones of the bustling market.
She woke again around noon, gave some brief thought to staying in bed a while longer—she never opened the tavern more than four hours before sunset, anyway—but decided, reluctantly, that the place needed a good cleaning after last night. Grumbling under her breath, she rose to her feet, shivering as her flimsy shift failed utterly to keep the chill autumn air at bay.
Some hours later, washed, dressed, and breakfasted, she emerged into the sweeping tides of market-goers and allowed them to carry her a few doors down the street to her destination.
To the casual observer, Genevieve Marguilles was stunning. Luxuriant blonde tresses, the sort that most noblewomen tried (in vain) to achieve with expensive wigs, cascaded down her shoulders. Her eyes were a gleaming brown, golden in the right light; her features soft; her figure the envy of women ten years her junior. She wore today a long, burgundy skirt beneath a smoke-gray tunic and a snug bodice that emphasized attributes that, on her, didn't really require additional emphasis.
Yes, Genevieve was beautiful. And had that been the end of it, she'd already be twelve or fourteen years married to
some aristocratic fop chosen for his political connections by her father.
But that wasn't the end of it. Her gait was uneven, leaning heavily leftward as she walked. From birth, her left leg had twisted slightly inward, bending awkwardly at the knee, and though the details of her deformity were hidden by the long, flowing skirts she favored, she could not hide its effect on her stride. It was something to which she'd long since grown accustomed, but for Gurrerre Marguilles, patriarch of the House Marguilles—and, not incidentally, her father—it was the touch of death for any political marriage. To offer an “imperfect” child to the scion of a noble house would have been an insult.
Sensing that she wasn't wanted (not that the proud Gurrerre had tried to hide the fact), Genevieve spent her childhood and teenage years associating with a “lower” class of people. She made many friends among the commoners of Davillon, and while it took some time to grow accustomed to a life where not everything was provided at whim, she ultimately persevered. She'd struck out on her own, taking with her enough of her family's funds to open her tavern. Her father didn't approve of his daughter working among the lower classes, and certainly wasn't happy with her chosen vocation, but neither could it be said that the old man was sorry to see her depart. He made the occasional attempt, for form's sake, to coax her back into the fold, and otherwise they happily left one another alone.
Today, Genevieve found herself in a jovial mood, no doubt due to the extra sleep in which she'd indulged. Waving cheerily at several market regulars, she climbed the five shallow steps to the door of the Flippant Witch. It was a squat building, fairly plain, nothing more than a large common room, a small storeroom, three tiny private parlors, and a kitchen. It boasted no decoration, save for a tiny blue stone with a white cross: the symbol of Banin, the Marguilles' household deity and one of the few portions of her old life Genevieve hadn't abandoned. But despite its modesty, it was a popular spot for those who couldn't afford the “prestigious” drinking establishments. Her prices were reasonable, the food and drink tasty, the staff friendly.