Chapter 1

A Morning’s Work

Earthday, month of Wealsun, 591 CY

I winced internally at the faint ‘snick’ as the sharp little knife I’d hidden in my palm sliced the purse string. Smoothly, I brought the coin pouch, cradled in my left hand, silently this time, behind the rope belt that held my ratty brown breeches up. I always enjoyed bringing a bit more bad luck to priests of Ralishaz, even if they were uncanny.

Luckily for me, the press of the crowd and the curses of a hung-over dockhand who’d nearly stumbled on a turd, half dropping the beer-barrel slung over his shoulder, covered my lack of professionalism. I made my way through the crush of folk with a fluidity and speed born of experience. The river quarter this Earthday was too crowded, and I’d already scored thrice.

Hopefully the take would be enough to satisfy that snake, Kerrel, who ‘kept an eye’ on the apprentices. The unlucky, who stumbled in without what he considered a full day’s earnings from the gleanings to be found by ‘fumble fisted and footed’ apprentices had little food, and were frequently caned or whipped. Dog had told me that Kerrel had done other things too, but I wasn’t sure if I believed him. Oh, I wasn’t an innocent, no one in the thieves’ guild could be in the district where the brothels, gambling halls and more exotic ‘pleasure’ places were centered. I just thought Kerrel’s kinks were more disgusting. I bet him ten commons that the motherless bastard liked dwarf women, and set a time limit on him proving me wrong. The silly canine obviously had no idea how difficult it was to prove something wrong, I smiled to myself, remembering his utter disgust when he’d had to pay up. But that bet had established Kerrel as the ‘dwarf futterer’ in the guild, until he half killed Genie when he’d heard her saying something that could have been interpreted as a slur. He was still a dwarf futterer, we just didn’t talk about it.

I stopped thinking about that, when I realized that I’d arrived at one of my hiding places. It was nearly mid-morning, cool and somewhat cloudy, so there was plenty of light in the gutter, not that I really needed too much light. But showing too much ability, or ‘uncanny’ skills, was possibly even more dangerous than screwing up. You usually survived screwing up a few times, after all, or Greyhawk would be a necropolis.

I felt that breeze, and shivered. I wasn’t cold – cold never seemed to bother me. But I felt the rain that would drizzle later this afternoon, and stared at the puddle from yesterday’s hard rain, trying to see myself. Me? I’m… I don’t really know. Whenever I start thinking about it too hard, fear fills me up. I’m definitely not ordinary, though I take great pains to hide it. My memory is perfect, but something sliced it up. I can’t remember anything before I was six… and I was six because they told me I was.

A couple of thieves found me, so mother Ghenna said, covered with blood in an alley. She had no idea which thieves or what alley. She did, however, bemoan the blood ruining all that lovely silk, so I might have come from nobility, the rich. Everyone dreams of that, but I was not fool enough to consider that seriously. It didn’t fit. I didn’t really think I was human, and I knew I was not elven or half elven. I wish! But my ears were perfectly round.

I am twelve now. Almost five foot tall, thin but not cadaverously so, with skin so white that it almost glowed. I had to rub ashes or grease on it to achieve that pinkish white humans have, and always took care to remain at least a bit dirty. My hair was so black that it had blue highlights, and I kept it cropped short with my dagger, and my eyes were painfully blue, according to Rat. He considered himself a poet, and we tried to be kind, when we weren’t being cruel. His doggerel actually wasn’t so bad, but his attempts at heroic recitations or romance stumbled upon his stubborn resistance to learning proper grammar, never mind spelling. How is my language so clean? The guild makes very sure we take our lessons, and I made sure to learn everything I could. Joren the scribe boasted that more money was made with ink and paper than with sword and spell, and while that was utter nonsense, there was little doubt that such learning was an easier way of making money, and money greased the wheels.

Anyway, I was thinking of my eyes. I liked to think of them as electric blue, as I’d always like to watch thunderstorms from the tops of buildings, daring the swirling winds and the blue lashes of lightning. But truthfully, the lightning was paler than my eyes, so I settled on them as sapphire. Properly expensive, not that I’d ever sell them to any necromancer. No thank you.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a girl. Of the female persuasion. Definitely the stronger sex, when one speaks of intellect. The fact that all the archmages I’d ever heard of were male has nothing to do with it. Absolutely nil relevance.

Though I actually am much stronger than my frail figure suggests, and quicker than anyone else I’d ever seen in action. It was the magic that really set me apart, though, the eldritch arts. Not there was much art to it. When I concentrated, I could sense a certain darkness from people, or more rarely, things. It took me almost too long to realize that darkness meant evil. As in EVIL. A year ago I’d followed an ugly looking young woman who fairly shouted darkness at me, and found out she was a servant of the evil one. Iuz. Don’t speak his name, if you value your soul. Joren, the scribe I helped every now and then, said the gods hear us when we speak their names, and so do the great demons. When I expressed a certain unhealthy skepticism, he told me to look up Cort’s Ruminations on Theology, and read it all. Never argued with him again, as I never wanted to suffer quite that badly once more. How could anyone be so boring? Even one of Rao’s philosophers?

Feeling evil was the least of it. Wizards are supposed to have these big laboratories, fat books and gigantic libraries. I could sense magic, and use it, without anything at all beyond ‘wishing it so’. It’s not really something I can explain, for how does one put in words what it feels like to grasp the building blocks of the multiverse and twist them to your will? I wasn’t really very good at it, yet, despite a lot of practice. The selection of books in the guild’s library dealing with magic was quite poor, and all I could really do was shape the power into those old familiar spells. I couldn’t wait to muster up a real fireball or a bolt of lightning, though I couldn’t really think of a place to practice something like that. I could make myself all silent or invisible, change my appearance, open any lock, grease things up, make myself dirty or clean, change smells, and a few other things. Mastering a new spell took a lot of effort, and using magic always left me a bit weak for a time. I had a terrible nightmare that should people find out, one of the great wizards would snatch me up, slice me open, and mutter to himself, “so, it’s all in the liver, right, my sweet?” – always woke up in cold sweat from that one. Even the nightmares in which I was running from all those red skinned, slavering demons weren’t quite that bad. Good thing I didn’t need a lot of sleep, or food for that matter. Or water.

A passing cloud blocked the sunlight, and my image in the puddle shattered. I shook myself, and counted coins. It was enough – more than enough. Apprentices weren’t supposed to keep anything, naturally, but I’m sure we all had our little vaults. It was more a matter of survival than greed, because greed was very much anti-survival. Hide away too much, and you wouldn’t survive. That lesson was always impressed, for me when they had us ditch Honky’s body into the sewers. He hadn’t reported a comb he’d snatched from a lady, when someone had seen him. The body was not a pretty sight, and with the added stench of the sewers, even Lorin, who’d once eaten a live rat on a bet, voided his breakfast.

I hid eight gold coins right there, for I usually kept a small stash in each hiding place. I’d gotten very lucky with the cleric. This stash was behind a loose brick that really didn’t look very loose, what with the creeping vine growing over the wall. At that place, the scraggly gray-green plant could be moved aside.

A sharp crack, which I immediately identified as the sound of something solid hitting a skull, had me ready to disappear. Literally. I hated using my power, because every time I did I was jeopardizing everything, but I like the present shape of my skull just fine.

“Ha!”, a deep voice grunted, “see if he ever welches on gambling debts again,” and low laughter filled the tiny side street. It was Boar, as he liked to call himself, almost certainly with his sidekick Tremor, who never had quite recovered from his first meeting with a demon in the wars. The two worked security for the gambling that took place in the back rooms of the Barge inn, and I’d met them a few times while scouting for the payoff escort. For thugs, they weren’t too bad.

“Hey there, princess!”, Boar bellowed when I made my presence known, and put down his cudgel, “Any news from the guildhall?”

“Depends on what you call news,” I contained a wince at the volume and grinned, “I heard that master Nockeree slipped up yesterday. His lordship Davirk was entertaining away from his betrothed, and he slipped in to nab the jewelry. ‘pears like the two lovebirds were so eager, they’d strewn their clothes all over the place. Poor thief slipped on a pair of silk panties left on the stairs, like and broke his leg. Pantynocker he’ll be from now on, the puir tyke! Now why don’t you tell your friend te let a profeshnal take a look?”, I asked with a pointed look at Tremor, who was rifling a body I couldn’t see too well in a desultory manner.

“Sure thing, princess,” he snorted, laughing, and cuffed his friend away. I slithered past and knelt by the body, hands moving too fast for them to track. The fool of a sailor didn’t have too much, and I let them have the purse, a dagger, a silver bracelet and a chunk of quartz. The small benison to Procan, a tiny rose coral carving of a triton or merman or something fishy like that, which carried the sea god’s sign and held a surprising level of detail, I kept. It was worth more than all the rest combined, especially to Procan’s priests.

“Have a nice day, boys, gotta run. Work, work, work, you know how it is,” I gave them a wave which they didn’t bother to return, counting the coins as they were, and strolled away.

They call me Princess, or Prin for short, and they always have. I used to find it annoying, exasperating and all those other adjectives which indicate violent disagreement with a chosen mode of speech, but nowadays I find it amusing. Maybe I’m growing up? That is not very amusing, alas. I’ve grown a full foot in the last couple of years, and can no longer pass for a halfling from a distance. My chest started itching a year back, and now I’ve got a small pair of titties. It makes me very uncomfortable. I’ve always been one of the boys, and as long as you don’t look too carefully at the fine lines of my face, you’d never really know. I’m rather afraid of what the future holds in store. What will I look like? What will happen once they notice that I’ve started to ‘sprout’? I’ve no real doubt that I’ll grow up beautiful, and I will not spend even a single night in a brothel. Assuming I have any choice, that is.

Thinking those dark thoughts, I just strolled around, my feet leading me to a food stall. I wasn’t really hungry, but old Yenka sold the most delicious pastries, so I spent a few coppers on a meal. Time was passing, and I was supposed to report back to the west city warehouse, from which the operations in the river quarter were run. The walk there was fun, as I ran into Mark, Kay and Marine. We played catch me if you can all the to the warehouse, bumping into people as much as possible, and I managed to snag another purse, a pair of handkerchiefs and a gold chain this strange dwarf had wound through his beard. We pulled our takes, and I silently added a couple of silvers and the linen hankies to Kay’s handfull of coppers and lone silver coin.

The warehouse was not terribly busy, and we slipped inside and up the stairs. Kerrel was waiting with his damned ledger, and took our earnings with a bevy of soulful mutters and no comments.

I was not all that hungry, as I’d eaten a pair sweetmeats recently, so I bid the gang farewell, and climbed the unofficial ‘ladder’ that led to Merreck’s ‘office’. For a half elf, Merreck didn’t really look like much. His features had too much of the coarseness of humanity, and with his burly body he could easily pass for human. For all his bulk, the ‘warehouse foreman’ was an exceptionally skilled rogue, accountant and warrior. Dextrous, perceptive and possessing just the right edge of ruthlessness, he was an excellent master thief for the River Quarter. If he did say so himself.

Truth, he really is rather perceptive. Which is why I’d felt very uncomfortable when Rat told me, when we met earlier in the morning, that he wanted to see me after lunch. I’d have worried and fretted myself to tatters, if I hadn’t learned that worry and regrets are useless. Or so I told myself, as I steeled myself and climbed into the dark room, lit only by the light of the sun peeking through the gaps between ill fitted wooden boards.

I rolled aside, heart in my bottom, and the knife went THUNK into the wood. Merreck must be in some mood, though his face was as pleasant as usual. He’d stopped playing that game after injuring one of his subordinates, a sallow rat-faced fellow by the name of Fink, who we all knew as ‘Odious’. No one I knew was quite as good at talking you out of your purse.

He scowled at me, as I slowly came upright, and tossed me a sealed ivory tube. I snatched it out of the air without thinking, and nearly dropped it when I sensed the power it held. It felt like enough magic to blast the building apart.

Torture wouldn’t have made me ask a question at that moment. Only scream.

“Take that to the guildhouse, your highness. Give it to Dirk the Greeter” was all he said before he motioned me away.

I had a bad, bad feeling about this.