Proper Thieves

by Smith, Luke CJ

  He thought about those quiet moments a lot as he tried to navigate the casino floor, mostly because, to him, the gaming hall felt a lot like standing in the middle of one of those dust devils. The difference was, instead of dirt and debris, this one was made up of shrill middle-aged women shrieking about how drunk they were.

  Without one of the others there to lead the way through the crowd, it took Nalan forever to navigate from the group’s shared suite back to the Kiva tables. The gaming hall was a maze made up of exotic-looking rich people, its passages forever shifting and changing. Between the intermittent roar from the coliseum next door, the constant jostling shoves from people who never looked where they were going, and the natter and laughter from the gaming tables, it was all Nalan could do to keep from curling up in a little ball on the floor.

  Instead, he just clutched his coin purse tighter as he approached the cashier’s cage. “Chits, please,” he said. He tried to keep from making eye contact with the pretty blonde attendant on the other side of the bars.

  She smiled. “We live to serve your every need,” she said as she took the purse from him. She poured the coins into a basket on one scale, then weighed out a commensurate amount of chits into a basket on a second scale. She walked Nalan’s coins over to an ornate bronze tabernacle set into the wall in the back of the cage area. The coins clinked and chinked as they dropped into the tabernacle’s front-facing funnel and, one by one, they vanished. After that, the cashier handed him a small brass pot full of his chits, thanked him for coming, and turned to manage other affairs.

  Tolem had explained it: it was Palace policy to give the customers a chance to see the gold disappear, teleported off to parts unknown before they received their gambling tokens. It was routine and ritual and it kept any madmen with broadswords from loping through the lobby, threatening to skewer the pretty blonde cashiers through the bars of the exchange desk.

  Nalan didn’t know much about magic, but he’d been friends with Allister long enough to know that teleportation was among the most elaborate of workings. And the mages who served this casino had provided a means to undertake it on an almost constant basis, whisking the gold away to a secure vault somewhere on The Palace grounds.

  Not for the first time, Nalan felt in over his head. But he wasn't about to let the others know that.

  ---

  “Finally!” Allister said as Nalan handed him his new pot. The first pot Allister had lost because Devan told him to. The second and third pots, he lost because, without the Art to fall back on, he was utterly terrible at gambling.

  “I’m not going back again,” Nalan said, sitting down beside Allister. He folded his hands in his lap so no one could see them shaking.

  “You won’t need to,” Allister said, kissing one of the chits and dropping it back into the basket.

  From across their private table, Zella smiled at Nalan. Nalan just shook his head and smiled back. Around them, servers refilled Tolem’s wine glass, removed some empty bowls from in front of Devan and Allister, and brought a pillow for Breigh, who had passed out at the table, wine cup still in hand. (A server attempted to retrieve it from her, but stopped when Breigh started growling in her sleep.) Before returning to the kitchen, a young dark-skinned woman in chef’s whites laid a cream-soaked berry torte in front of Zella.

  Zella thanked her. “We live to serve your every need,” the server replied.

  “So...” Zella said, scooping up a bit of the torte. “...there's this girl. Her name is Phaedra, and she works as one of the chefs' attendants.” Zella popped the fork in her mouth and froze, eyes wide as saucers, lip quivering.

  Nalan exchanged a worried look with Devan. Tolem hid a smile. “Uh...Z?” Devan said.

  Her vacant eyes swung toward him. “I think...I think this is what an orgasm tastes like.”

  Allister poked the confection with his finger and popped it in his mouth. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, fuck me.”

  “It's called 'dessert,'“ Tolem said, easing back in his seat, “and it's a trap. There's a reason we don't have anything like this in The Tower.” He pointed out Zella's glazed-over expression to Devan. “It's especially a problem for female types.”

  “Yeah,” said Allister, scooping up another fingerful of cream. “If I were a woman, I'd spend all day applying this directly to my labia.”

  “That's...really not something anyone should ever say...” Nalan said, brow furrowed.

  “I only speak the truth,” Allister said, waving down one of the chef's attendants. “It is my power, and it is my curse.”

  Gently, Devan reached across the table and pulled the torte dish away from Zella with one finger. He smirked at her. “The girl?”

  Zella dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “Phaedra. She's someone Tolem's creepy friend Samus knows.” She turned to Tolem. “By the way, your creepy, pedophile-smelling friend Samus says hi.”

  Tolem nodded his understanding.

  “Samus is in charge of coordinating the staff here at The Palace. Phaedra came to him looking for some leeway because she's been called on the carpet a lot lately. Apparently she has a sick brother, and she spends all her time taking care of him. As a result, she ends up being late a lot. The chefs have told her, one more time and she's done. She can't afford to lose her job, but she can't afford to not take care of her brother either.”

  “So,” Nalan said, putting the pieces together in his head, “Samus is blackmailing her to help us?”

  “You'd think, to look at him,” Zella said, reaching over with one finger of her own to pull her torte back. Devan's finger was stronger. “But he makes it sound like he legitimately wants to give her a chance to make some extra cash.”

  “How charitable of Samus,” Tolem grumbled.

  “Oh...” Zella said. “I think that's her.”

  Nalan turned in his seat just as Phaedra emerged from behind a serving room curtain. Her long, fire-red hair blazed against her crisp, white server’s jacket. Below the hem of her black skirt, the sight of her long, perfectly toned legs made Nalan blush and turn away. He tried his best to think about Cheris, his intended bride back at The Collegium, instead.

  Beside him, Nalan could feel Devan sit up a little straighter. “Hm,” was all that Devan said.

  “So how do we handle this?” Allister asked. “'Excuse me, young lady, but we heard from this sleazy pervert we just met that you'd be interested in helping us undertake a criminal enterprise.’”

  “Hm,” Devan said a second time. He was still watching her. Nalan looked back over. Where Nalan could barely move three feet in a crowd without apologizing to someone, Phaedra moved through the room like smoke. The throng parted seemed for her as she passed through it. A patron asked about one of her desserts. She pulled on one of her long, red curls and smiled as she talked.

  Devan smiled too.

  “For someone with so many problems, she doesn’t look all that worried,” Allister noted.

  “How did she afford those earrings on a kitchen girl’s salary?” Zella wondered.

  “Her fingernails. How does she keep them that nice working with her hands all day?” Nalan asked.

  “I should go talk to her,” Devan said.

  Zella pulled her torte back across the table. “Should you?” she asked with, Nalan thought, a little too much intensity for the conversation.

  “Sure,” Devan said brightly, turning back around to face the table. “I’ve got this.”

  Tolem cleared his throat. “Fine. Just remember: Samus hasn’t told her anything about what we’re after, and she doesn’t need to know. Don’t give away any more than you need to to get her on—”

  “Hey,” Devan cut him off. “I said I’ve got this. I'll take her out to dinner, talk it over a little, see what she’s capable of...” He looked over at Zella, picking at the last crumbs of her dessert. “...and I'll still be back to take Miss Z dancing tonight.”

  Zella looked up, smiling. “You're going to take me dancing?”

 
Nalan smiled as well, but thinly. Cheris loved to dance. Or, at least, she’d told him she loved to dance in the notes they’d exchanged. They hadn’t yet been allowed to be in the same room together, let alone dance. His smile faded as quickly as it had come.

  Allister leaned over to Devan and whispered just loud enough to be heard by the others at the table. “You know, I left my shin guards back at The Tower.”

  Zella flicked a bit of torte cream across the table at Allister. “This? This is why nobody likes you.” She turned to Devan and put on her best aristocratic accent. “I would be delighted for you to accompany me to the Opal Room this evening, my good man.”

  “And I would be delighted, “Devan said, “for you to wear something other than those shoes with the pointy toes.”

  Zella pointed at him with her fork. “You’re going to pay for that,” she laughed.

  Devan leaned across the table and kissed Zella gently with smiling lips. That was something else Nalan hadn’t had a chance to do with Cheris yet. Nalan looked down at his drink.

  “A down payment,” Devan said. “I’ll be back before you know it. We’ll just have a quick talk.”

  “Sure you will,” Allister said, dabbing at Zella’s torte cream attack with the corner of a napkin.

  Devan pulled himself up to his feet and grabbed his cane. He winked at Z. “Tonight?”

  “Tonight,” she said back. “Don’t be late.”

  Allister

  “Sorry I’m late,” Devan said the next morning as the door to their suite swung open. “Everybody, this is Phaedra.”

  Phaedra was beaming. She had one hand on Devan’s chest, the other resting on his far hip. Her body was tight against his side, without an inch of daylight showing between them from kneecap to noggin. “Hiiiiii,” she said in a child's voice; it sounded like it had been glazed with honey and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar.

  Inside the suite, everyone stood frozen in the middle of what they were doing when the door opened. The moment the initial shock wore off, Allister and Nalan each flung themselves across the dining room table, covering the stacks of paper there with their bodies.

  “Fine work, men,” said Breigh in a whisper that was still louder than Nalan's normal speaking voice. From her seat at the table, she shook a fist at them, indicating solidarity.

  Allister began to feel a dull ache in the back of his head. He craned his neck to look behind him at Zella, who was standing, stock-still, in the middle of the main room. When he was facing Z, the pressure was in the front of his head.

  “Hey.” Zella was smiling. She had a musical lilt to her voice. “What are you doing?”

  Off to one side of the room, Allister caught Breigh looking back and forth between Phaedra and Zella, grinning from ear to ear. What in the worlds is she smiling about? he thought to himself, squinting over at her.

  “Oh, I'm fine,” he said to Zella. As he spoke, he beamed down at Phaedra, who was beaming right back up at him. “Sleep well?”

  The pressure in Allister’s head sharpened. Behind him, Nalan winced and said, “Ow.”

  Fortunately for Allister's frontal lobe, the door to the comfort room opened and Tolem appeared, rubbing his face with a wet towel. “Okay,” he was saying. “Let's get down to work, shall...” The towel came off, and his eyes fell on the young lovers in the doorway.

  Impossibly, Breigh’s grin got even wider. Her knees were rocking back and forth rhythmically, colliding and separating again.

  “My boy,” he said with strained politeness. “A word?” He motioned to Devan with one finger. Devan gently stroked Phaedra's forehead with the tip of his nose and disengaged from her. Without a word, he edged past Tolem and into the comfort room. Tolem turned to Allister. “You too? If you would?”

  Allister looked over at Breigh. “Girly girl? Would you mind?”

  “Of course, tiny man,” she said, replacing his body on the table with her own. Sprawled there, she smiled broadly at Phaedra. Phaedra smiled back, although a hint of worry crept around the edges. Zella was also smiling, but Allister knew what kind of smile that was. Nalan was beginning to smile, too—probably because he realized he was the only one in the room not smiling—but his eyes still looked like he was deciding on whether to go with a fight or flight response.

  “Well!” Breigh said, rubbing her hands together as the door closed behind Allister. “This ought to be good!”

  ---

  “Muffle that wall,” Tolem whispered to Allister. Allister did as he was told. Tolem drew a huge breath to fuel the berating of a lifetime, but before he could get a word of it out, Devan held up a hand.

  “Listen fast,” he said, “because we’ve got to get back out there. Now luckily, Samus didn’t tell her much about us, so I was able to make up a cover story. We’re from…”

  Tolem pushed Devan hard, in the center of the chest. “‘I got this,’ you said. Your words. ‘I got this.’” He pushed Devan again. “I tell you not to give away any more than you have to and you bring her back here? I thought you had more sense. Some sense. Any fucking sense.”

  “Listen,” Devan said, steadying himself against the wall. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Really?” Tolem pushed him again, harder. “Really? ‘Cause what I think is that you got your jollies rocked by some waitress and now you want to roll her on up here to impress her with what a big, slick thief you are.” Tolem scoffed. “A cover story? A cover story?”

  Tolem shoved him again, sending Devan sliding backwards down the wall, his cane clattering to the floor behind him. Allister backed up, too afraid to lift a finger.

  “She’s an asset, Devan!” Tolem yelled down at his nephew. “She needs to know just enough to be useful. No more. And she surely doesn’t need to know what the rest of us fucking look like!”

  From the floor, Devan glared coolly up at his uncle. “If you’ll just tuck it back in your pants a minute, Tolem, I’ll explain.” He smoothed out his shirt, not taking his eyes off his uncle. “She's working for the casino.” he said, as if he were stabbing at Tolem with his words. “But not as a chef's assistant...She's working for them.”

  If Tolem's eyes got any wider, Allister would've expected them to fall out of his head and bounce away across the polished marble floor. “Then it's not as bad as I thought,” he said, then leaned down and bellowed into Devan's face: “It's a hundred fucking times worse!”

  “D, man...” Allister said quietly. He didn’t want to take Tolem’s side, but it had to be said: “What are you doing? Bringing her back here where we keep the plans and, you know...our faces?”

  “She already knew us, Alli,” Devan said, speaking more slowly in the patronizing way he did when someone disagreed with him. He pulled his cane under him and clamored awkwardly to his feet. “I've never been so sure of anything.” He leaned against the sink. “Your friend Samus must have rolled over on us. The Palace, the Lieutenant, they’ve had us pegged the minute we walked in the door.”

  “What you're sure of, that means nothing to me,” Tolem said, advancing toward Devan by another step. He stood there a moment, looming over his nephew, grimacing and shaking his head. Finally, he turned away. “Pack your shit,” he said. “We're leaving. Right fucking now.”

  “You go ahead,” Devan said, quiet in contrast to his uncle’s fury. “We've got this.”

  Tolem stopped, his hand on the doorknob. He didn't turn around.

  “I brought her back here,” Devan said slowly, aiming each word at Tolem like a dart, “because they know who we are. They suspect we're going to try something. I'm sure it's her job to find out what we're up to and report back on the best way to take us out quietly.”

  Tolem said nothing.

  Allister shook his head. “And when the guards storm this room, what? We fight them off? Us? A bunch of kids from The Collegium against an army of mercenaries?”

  “No, Alli,” Devan said. “There won’t be any guards. Not once Phaedra tells them about the bomb.”

&nb
sp; Tolem released his grip on the doorknob and turned around. He covered his face with both hands. “Bomb,” he repeated quietly. “What bomb?”

  Breigh

  Breigh could picture it now.

  Sooner or later, this Phaedra would have to leave. And as soon as she did, as soon as Devan walked her to the door and closed it behind her, he would turn back to face the rest of the group and sploosh—blood would come geysering out of Devan’s ears. Breigh wasn’t even sure Zella could rupture a man’s brain with her abilities, but if the dull ache in her own head was any indication, a blood fountain might be in the cards for that afternoon.

  Bright was chuckling maniacally to herself when she realized everyone was looking at her.

  “So! What’s funny?” Phaedra asked, still standing in the doorway, waiting for her man to return.

  “Oh, nothing,” Breigh laughed, waving the question off, “I was just thinking about vengeance.”

  “Oh!” Phaedra said, leaning down to put a tiny hand on Breigh's bicep. “Of course! Vengeance for Brafglograd!”

  “Of course!” Breigh replied without really stopping to think. “Vengeance for…” She trailed off, her eyebrows going through a series of contortions.

  “Brafglograd.” Zella stepped forward. She managed to keep it from sounding like a question.

  “Oh, Drake told me all about your struggle,” Phaedra said, positively shaking with excitement. “The pretender king in the east. The siege of the golden city. The deaths of the Queens Victorious.”

  From behind her, Breigh heard Nalan mumble to himself: “Sabers over Senturia.” She recognized it as the name of one of the Cliven stories Allister loved so well.

  “The six of you, you’ve seen so much,” Phaedra said, squeezing Breigh’s bicep a little tighter. She shook her head. “And now you’re here.” Her sympathetic frown turned back into a broad, toothy smile. “Stealing the gold you need to fund the liberation of your homeland. Long live the revolution!” she said with a squeal.