Proper Thieves

by Smith, Luke CJ

  “Torg has been easy-going in the past. But tomorrow, this big floating payday we’ve been riding on pulls out of port and Torg will be leaving. As your usefulness to Torg grows short, Torg’s patience with you pretty thugs grows short too.”

  Torg kicked the crippled man in the gut.

  “Sit still. Shut up. Wait out the clock. And when Torg is gone, you can slip right into a nice, comfy job here in the lap of luxury, just like all the other pretty thugs who came before you.”

  Samus

  Samus winced with each step as he made his way down the stairs. Two years as an administrator for The Palace had put leather on the soles of his feet, as he was constantly walking the concourses, keeping an eye on the help. But he felt like he’d walked more in the last seven days than he had in the rest of his tenure combined.

  Each day this week, he had spent all his daylight hours conducting his regular business, but on any small moment he could steal, he would make the long trek down to the tunnels to check on Torg and his team. Or he would meet with Tolem to pass on news from The Palace’s inner circle. Or he would poke his head in on Vertus to make sure he hadn’t slunk off somewhere or (gods willing) died from his many hideous maladies.

  He’d thought about spending this, his last night on board The Palace, in celebration: drinks on the upper promenade, a visit to a courtesan, a performance by the songmaster’s private quartet. But just then, he could think of no more beautiful sight than that of his own chambers and no more exquisite sensation than the feel of his soft rugs under his weary feet. He especially looked forward to the smell of the fresh cut wildflowers he’d had sent to his room this morning.

  But the smell that greeted him as he unlocked the door to his suite wasn’t wildflowers. It was burning leather.

  Tolem

  Phaedra twisted one of her red curls as she stared off the edge of the roof. “I’m just ready for this all to be over,” she said. “Every time I look over there at that...thing…”

  She paused. The Palace hung in the distance, lit from above by a full moon.

  “...I think about Thomme Faerathore and his reputation. And how close I came to being part of it.”

  Tolem watched her over his menu.

  “You know, my daddy used to say the gods talk to us,” she said. “Of course, the gods told him my mom was sleeping with the neighbor’s wife, so he killed the both of them with a leather strap.”

  “Krist, Phaedra,” Tolem said quietly. “How far out in the country was your family?”

  “I think what the gods are telling me is that it’s time to get away from this sort of awful shit. And from people like Vertus and Samus and you and Torg...”

  Tolem laid his menu aside. “People like…” He was at a loss for words. “You lump me in with shitheels like them?”

  She finally looked over at him. “Why? Who would you lump you with?”

  Tolem rubbed at his forehead. “Phaedra, I—”

  The words died in Tolem’s mouth. His heart froze in his chest. From across the room, a person waving had caught his attention. A moment later he realized the person had been waving at him. A moment after that, he realized that person was Devan.

  “I know how you feel about all of them, Tolem,” Phaedra said with a cool indifference, “but you can’t associate with—”

  “Quiet,” Tolem demanded, looking past her.

  Phaedra stopped talking. “What?” she whispered eventually.

  Devan had stopped waving. He was looking over at the person seated across the table from him. An auburn-haired young woman: Zella. Zella, who turned around and waved at Tolem too.

  Tolem shook his head, trying to ward off a bad dream. “No,” he breathed. “No, no, no.”

  “What!” Phaedra whispered again.

  Devan dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin and set the napkin aside. He took up his cane—a new one, smaller and thinner than his last one—and reached across the table to take Zella’s hand. The two rose and made their way over to Tolem and Phaedra.

  “Uncle Tolem?” Devan said as he approached, one arm linked with one of Zella’s. “What are the chances?”

  Tolem looked over at Phaedra, whose back was still to the two of them. She looked every inch as shocked as he was. But Tolem recovered fast. He smiled, and he stood.

  “Devan of the Field,” he said, extending a hand to his nephew. He kept his tone light and conversational. “I hadn’t heard you were back in town.”

  Devan leaned in close. “That’s kind of the way we like it,” he said with a jauntily conspiratorial tone in his voice. He laughed, then stopped mid-chuckle as he pretended to notice Phaedra for the first time. “Is that...why, Zella, is that Phaedra?”

  “I do believe it is!” Zella had adopted Phaedra’s syrupy baby voice. “Hel-lo, Phaedra! However have you been?”

  Phaedra just smiled. She looked over at Tolem and kept smiling. She went back to smiling at Zella.

  “Do you mind if we join you, uncle?” Devan was still shaking Tolem’s hand, squeezing it tighter and tighter. “We have so much catching up to do.”

  Tolem let him squeeze. “We would be delighted, Devan. Just delighted.”

  Samus

  In a panic, Samus threw the door open. The tapestries on his walls were ablaze. His curtains, his couches, his rugs...they were all well on their way to burning down to the stone floors and walls. And standing there in the midst of the smoke and flame was a slight young man with a shock of red hair.

  Samus screamed and turned to run.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” the young man said evenly, pointing a hand at Samus’ bald head. Samus caught himself against the doorjamb. He gripped it tightly, as if to prove he wasn’t going to move any farther from that spot.

  “Allister...” Samus gaped. “Please...you have to know...it wasn’t my idea.”

  Allister stared at him, hand outstretched, as if weighing his options.

  “I was just going along with Tolem’s plan. It’s him that you want. That conniving bastard...he...he took off with the gold the night of the robbery and left the rest of us here to twist. I swear, I’m as much a victim of all this as you are...”

  Allister’s hand twitched. Samus’ entire body flinched. He cried out again.

  “I know where Tolem is,” Allister said. His tone was flat, quiet. “I also know he’s going to be calling for you soon. He’s going to tell you the timetable’s moving up.”

  “Time...table? I...I don’t know what you’re...”

  Allister took a step closer. Samus hugged his body hard to the doorjamb. “We’re going to need to be ready when you hear from him,” Allister said. “But first, we have some things to take care of.”

  Torg

  A noise from the corridor caused all five of them to turn and look. Someone was coming, but they were carrying a blue-tinted lantern, meaning it was one of Torg’s men. As the guard came around the nearest corner, Torg could see he was wearing a blue rose on his lapel—the kind Torg had instructed all his replacement guards to wear to distinguish them from The Palace’s regular crew. And he wasn’t alone; he had another man with him, carrying a folded up stack of clothing in his arms.

  “Speak of the devil,” Torg said to the four men on the ground. “Another pretty thug. Another reason for the rest of you to be less useful to Torg.”

  Torg lumbered over to his man as he approached. “Just one,” he said. “Torg said pairs.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the guard with the blue rose said. “He’s all I could find today. I thought one was better than nothing.”

  Torg looked down at the new recruit. “So, boy,” Torg said. “How long have you lived in Kauleth?”

  “Six years, sir,” the young man fairly shouted.

  “Quiet, boy,” Torg rumbled. “Sound carries a long way down here.”

  “Yes sir,” the young man said, only a hair more quietly than before. “Sorry, sir.”

  Torg cocked an eyebrow at the pretty thug. “You’re an
enthusiastic one,” he said. “But you’re also a liar.”

  The guard looked sideways at Torg. “...sir?”

  “You haven’t lived in Kauleth for six years. Have you?”

  The new recruit said nothing. Torg began to circle around him, slowly. “We haven’t met...but that doesn’t mean Torg hasn’t been watching you. You and your friends. Torg can be pretty quiet when he wants to be. And Torg never forgets a face.”

  The recruit bit his lip and watched as the giant paced around and around.

  “So, Nalan,” Torg growled, “is this going as well as you thought it would?”

  Phaedra

  Tolem smiled grimly. “That’s a familiar tune,” he said to Zella.

  Phaedra crossed her legs at the knee. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “It’s just a catchy little melody I taught these two a while back,” Tolem said, settling into his seat again. “It seems to be all Devan can think about at the moment.”

  “I thought we might have a nice conversation with just our mouths tonight,” Zella said, sitting up straight on the edge of her seat.

  Devan leaned his cane against the table. “So!” he said brightly. “Whatever shall we talk about?”

  Phaedra looked over at Tolem; his whole body was clenched, but still his smile stayed in place. “Devan...” Tolem began, then stopped, reconsidered his approach, and began again. “Devan, I know you don’t have any reason to believe this but...I really am glad to see you’re okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe that, uncle?” Devan said, feigning confusion. “I mean, I’m relieved that you’re okay. And I’m really relieved Phaedra here is okay. Last I saw of her, she was being carted off by The Palace’s floor mages. Z and I, we both feared the worst when you didn’t show up at the cave that night after the job. Isn’t that right, Z?”

  “Oh my, yes,” she said. Her tone was still light, but her eyes were boring holes in Tolem’s face.

  “So tell us.” Devan leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “However did you get away? Because you wouldn’t believe the kind of shit we had to deal with.”

  Tolem leaned forward as well, bringing his face closer to his nephew’s. “What if we didn’t focus on the past just now? What if we talked about the future, instead?”

  Zella propped her elbows up on the table and joined the two of them. She laughed a high, trilling laugh. “Oh, Tolem. You say that like a future is something you’ve got.”

  Tolem shot her a look that was charged with animal ferocity. She shot one right back. Phaedra suddenly became very aware of the prying eyes of the patrons at the other tables.

  “Tolem...” she began, putting a hand on his lap. But Tolem brushed it off immediately.

  “Whatever you have planned,” he hissed, “you need to think very carefully about the next thing you do here, kids.”

  “Thinking carefully is what I do best, uncle,” Devan said with a smirk.

  At that, Tolem’s jaw dropped. He squinted, crushing up his forehead into a wrinkled mass. “Thinking...” he said, drawing out each word with incredulity. “...carefully? Really?”

  The smirk faded somewhat from Devan’s face.

  Tolem looked over at Phaedra. “Phaedra, dear. Why don’t you tell these two what you told me about the night you two met?”

  Phaedra was watching the wait staff. One of them was watching their table closely now. “I don’t really...”

  “Tell. Him.”

  Samus

  Allister had been fiddling with the lock on the viewing room door for some time. Samus was getting tired of watching for people coming down the hall.

  “No one’s going to be anywhere near here,” he said at last. “The treasure hold this room looks down on has been decommissioned because someone stole the spell-lock they used to empty this room. There hasn’t been so much as a brass bit in that vault since the night of your...oh, let’s call it a ‘daring escapade.’”

  Allister finally got off his knees. He closed the door and jiggled the handle, but the handle didn’t turn.

  “Try and unlock it,” Allister said, motioning to Samus.

  “I remember you being a bit more verbose,” Samus said, flipping through the keys on his ring. “Did we finally get tired of hearing ourselves talk?”

  “I’m not kidding around tonight. Hurry up.” He held up a hand at Samus.

  Samus flinched as he looked through his collection. “Can you please stop doing that? Can we just assume that I’m already properly terrified of you?” He found the key he was looking for and tried to insert it into the lock to no avail. He bent down and looked in the keyhole; it seemed that some part of the lock’s internal workings had frozen in place and was barring the insertion of anything thicker than a sewing needle.

  “I can’t open this,” Samus said. “It’s jammed.”

  “Good. Now let’s go find your bombs.”

  The blood seemed to drain out of Samus’ face. “Bombs? What b—”

  Allister held up a hand at Samus. Samus flinched again, then he scowled for having flinched again.

  “We found Vertus’ ledger,” Allister said. “We know everything you ordered to make this job work. Once we had that, we had your plan.”

  Samus grimaced. “Is that right?”

  “One blasting hood and six hundred pounds of explosives? That’s too much firepower for one hood. You have other uses for it besides just blowing a hole in the ship.”

  “And now you’re going to, what, make me defuse all my little diversions?”

  “No,” Allister said, giving Samus a push from behind to get him walking. “In fact, I’m going to help you set them.”

  Phaedra

  “Tell. Him.”

  Phaedra looked across the table. Devan’s swagger probably looked unassailable to most onlookers, but Phaedra had made a career out of reading people so she could tell them what they wanted to hear. From where she was sitting, Devan’s defenses had a hole in them wide enough to drive an oxcart through.

  “All right,” she said at last, reaching for her wine glass to steady her nerves. “Tolem and I...we’ve worked together a few times before. A couple of months back, he sends word that he was finally ready for the big job. I know the one he means. It’s the only one he ever talks about. He says he’s got some...interesting new additions to the team. Young. Eager. Excitable. He says he’s only seen them on one job, but he’s looked into their past work and it’s impressive. Still, he feels like he needs to test them out a little, make sure they’re going to hold up under pressure.”

  “‘The mage is a little twitchy,’ he says, ‘but he’ll work for what we need him for. The machinist is brilliant. A little stunted, but that’s what you get with machinists. The mentalist…’” She looked over at Zella, who was listening impassively. “‘She’s as good as they get. Years ahead of where he was at her a—’“

  “Get to the part,” Tolem butted in. “You know the part I mean.”

  Phaedra hesitated.

  “Go on.”

  “‘My nephew, he says. He’s a born burglar. Lives for it. Breathes it. Studies it like fine art. Drinks it like fine wine. I watched one of his jobs in person, and it was a thing of beauty. But…’” Phaedra looked over at Tolem. “...he said…” She looked back at Devan again. “...’he doesn’t have the sense the gods gave a retarded goose.’”

  Phaedra reached across the table and grabbed a bottle of wine. She turned it over into her glass, taking the last of it.

  “So Tolem, he says he wants me to test the boy out. See what kind of instincts he’s got. I’m supposed to play the part of a front office plant—someone the Cenerons would have working among the regular wait staff to keep an eye out for hustlers pocketing chits, that sort of thing. Straight away, Devan comes up to me and he immediately starts hitting on me.” She locked eyes with him. “Shameless. Brazen. Ridiculous. And...sort of irresistible. In an assholey kind of way.”

  “Her story checks out so far,” Zella said, looking at
Devan out of the corner of her eye.

  Phaedra sipped at her glass. “I wasn’t making it too hard to guess the role I was playing, but he surprised me with how quickly he picked it out. It was like playing shadow puppets, and having someone guess exactly what you’re trying to do the moment before you hold up your hands in front of the candle. That impressed me. But after that, it was like he stopped trying to see through me. I dropped in some inconsistencies in my story. I let my accent slip a little. But he’d made up his mind about what I was…”

  Devan’s smirk was gone. His face had taken on an almost solemn demeanor.

  “...and he loved it. A beautiful, devious spy for the enemy. You should have seen the twinkle in his eye. I was just what he’d always wanted.”

  Phaedra noted Zella’s eyes. They were still stony and cold, but there was no hiding the hurt there.

  “Over the next couple of hours, he spun this...bizarre...cover story. Foreign revolutions. Magic bombs. It was…” Phaedra smiled down at the table. “...it was kind of fascinating, actually. But it sounded like something out of a…”

  “Crime novel?” Tolem offered, glaring over at Devan.

  “I guess so,” Phaedra said. She stopped smiling when she looked over at Devan. “All I know is, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Wow. It’s a good thing I don’t actually work for the casino. Because this kid and his friends? Faerathore would have the kitchen serving tiny pieces of them on canapés at the next Holy Days ball.’”

  Phaedra set down her wine glass and leaned back in her chair. Across the table, Devan stared off into space. Zella looked over at him, waiting.