"The Price of Fame" by Travis W. Herring

The Lady’s Lace was a middle-class tavern, its floor covered in fresh rushes, the tables looking used but not damaged, the walls covered in a variety of paintings showing merchants going about their business. The bartender was a slender man dressed in clothing that spoke neither of wealth nor of a lack of it, an apron over it all to protect himself from spills. A variety of glassware hung from specially designed hangs behind him, and a row of spirits ranging from Sern Fireglow to Dindal Moonamber sat behind a low wooden rise, just in front of a long metal mirror. The few waitresses were nicely dressed and not showing off more cleavage than one would expect.

So why was it that Lauryl didn’t feel comfortable there?  She spun her glass of wine from hand to hand, her eyes wandering the room in an unceasing motion.

“Relax,” Shale, her muscled escort and best friend urged softly.  He didn’t speak much, but when he did, he was usually right.  “You’re overly edgy.  We’re just meeting someone who can help us out, here.”

“Yeah,” the slender blonde woman said, shaking her head, “it’s just that I don’t like the means we used to get that person to help out.”  She patted the satchel at her side meaningfully.

Shale offered one of his rare grins, his black hair glistening with whatever oil he’d used to tame its wildness that morning.  They were flush at the moment, and that meant he could afford to keep it from flying in the breeze, even if it was some sort of greasy ointment that made it glimmer in the light.  “I suppose that offering him something you took from him to begin with isn’t exactly a good way to start a relationship,” he said.

Lauryl frowned at him and went back to scanning the room.  Any of them might be the noble in particular’s private guard dressed down for the occasion and here Shale was, cracking wise.  Surreptitiously, she went through those present, eyeing them for level of danger, potential level of competence, and which ones she would take down first if it came to a fight.  Shale merely sipped at his beer and watched her, grinning.

“Here he comes,” he said a moment later.

“How do you know?” she asked.  No one had come in the door.

Shale just reached up and tapped his head.  “Trust me.”

The front door to the Lace opened and in stepped their appointment.  A young man dressed in the latest fashion and carrying a slender blade Lauryl recognized as similar to her own rapier, he seemed slightly out of place in the merchant’s tavern she’d chosen, but then that was part of the plan.  Keep him off-balance, she thought, grinning privately, and he won’t be able to keep up.

He approached at her signal and stood there for a moment, eyeing the man and woman before him.  “May I sit?” he asked.  Shale merely waved at a chair they’d drawn up for him.  He did so without further comment, eyeing them both.  “Do you have it?  Where is my proof?” he asked.

Lauryl pulled her satchel cover open, noting the nobleman flinched as her hand went beneath the level of the table.  A moment later, she tossed the item in question onto the table.  A medallion made of platinum and gold, it was attractive to look at, but that was not the reason they were having this conversation.  The front of the item was a single, smooth surface of tourmaline.  Carved into it was the symbol of his house, a pair of griffons, rampant over a shield emblazoned with the symbol of a pair of crossed swords and a feathered helm.

“House Trelwyn would not be pleased to hear that you had misplaced such an item,” Lauryl said, reaching out and pulling the medallion back before the fop could take it.  He had not moved, however, and the point was moot.

Good, she thought.  He knows the rules.

“Name your price,” he said, chewing on his lip worriedly.

“That’s simple,” Lauryl replied, grinning at Shale for a moment.  “Nothing terribly costly, in this case.  All we want is information.”

The young noble sat back in his chair, eyeing her with relief for a split second, before it turned into a guarded wariness.  “What kind of information?”

Lauryl smiled…

---

“I really don’t see what time the butler goes out for his shopping trips in the morning is going to do toward our fulfilling our obligation to the Shadowed Ones,” Lauryl was saying.  They’d just stepped out of the Lady’s Lace and were heading toward the grand marketplace at the center of Nulhaven as fast as a smooth walk would allow them.  There, the bazaar of merchants and their clients would cloud their path, making it easy to get away from their noble friend before he and his friends could exact any kind of retribution.  “I like that extra bit you added at the end about their being someone watching him, however.  Nice way to buy us time. How long do you think he’ll wait before he realizes it was a lie?”

Shale grunted, eyes scanning the crowd as always for the quickest way through.  He had an unusual knack for knowing just where to be to maximize the seemingly random movements of a crowd and move through it like a hot knife through butter.  Lauryl, remaining as close as possible, sometimes just barely made it through the crush right behind him, his timing was so perfect.  She bumped a passing bodyguard’s scabbard, drawing a dirty look, but she’d already disappeared behind three other people, Shale was moving so fast.

“Why are we in a hurry?” she asked irritably.  A noble woman spat a curse at her as she stepped on her silk shoed feet.

“We’re being followed,” came the terse reply.

Knowing better than to look behind them and give away the fact that they knew they were being chased, Lauryl’s head spun at how her big friend had known.  He’d been moving forward almost since the moment they’d stood up from the table, never looking back.  How had he seen anyone BEHIND them?  Reaching one of the wide thoroughfares at the middle of the bazaar, Shale stopped so suddenly that Lauryl ran into him from behind, bouncing off before realizing they were suddenly not quite so closely surrounded.

“Frel,” she cursed.  The crowd had moved away from them suddenly, making room between them and a trio of rough-clad men standing before a knife-vender’s cart.

“You didn’t think you’d just walk away from our Master’s house after what you did, did you?” asked one of them, a swarthy man with a series of pockmarked scars rippling his cheeks.  He held a shimmering dagger in his hand; it’s long length reflecting the sun with a hint of blue.  Lauryl recognized Northern steel and immediately upped her estimation of these fellows.  They weren’t beginners.  Probably not even household guards.  At least, not officially on the payroll.

Shale’s hand came back to thrust the fall of his cloak away from the black belts that secured his double-bladed Bharsalian war axe to his side.  Crisscrosses of thick black leather kept the incredibly sharp (some said magical) blades from injuring him when he moved.  It looked complicated, but Lauryl knew it all hinged on a single ingeniously hidden pull strap that would free the weapon as quickly as one could pull a sword.  He’d used that to his advantage in the past, when overconfident opponents had taken their time in approaching, thinking he’d be forever too late to pull his weapon.  Lauryl’s hand too, went to the hilt of her blade.

“I suppose there’s no talking our way through this one, is there?” she commented to no one in particular.

The men across from her realized the danger and moved for their weapons.  Their spokesman merely snickered, watching as the crowd around them realized there was about to be bloodshed in the streets.  And bloodshed in the streets of Nulhaven quickly brought the city guards, who would arrest EVERYONE who had seen it and then question them for hours until they found out who the perpetrators were.  It was one reason Shale had chosen this path.  Once they made it through the crowd (not a quick idea, despite Shale’s odd ability), they’d take forever to find the right people, and by then, she and her ally would have long since disappeared.

A knife flew past her ear, jolting her out of her thoughts.  She identified the thrower even as a pained shriek cut through the air behind her, the knife finding the wrong target.  Immediately, the people around them started to panic, moving away as quickly as possible, opening an even larger field of battle for the combatants and making it that much harder for anyone to move IN.

A couple of foreign syllables few could understand escaped Lauryl’s lips, even as Shale’s axe slid from its holdings and flew unerringly into the chest of the spokesman, who had the good grace to at least look surprised before death claimed him.  The air shimmered in front of Lauryl a half second later, and she was sprinting, heading toward the knife thrower before he could pull another weapon and wing it her way.  As expected, he reacted by backing off and grabbing for his sword.  She cut across his midline, severing the thumb of his sword hand before he could close it, drawing another shriek that she silenced with a second slice across his neck.

Behind her, Shale was yanking his axe out of the chest of the man he’d slain in the single motion of drawing it, all the while, listening for signs that the city guards were on their way.  As he did, she saw him slip the blue silver knife into his boot.  No need to leave such a valuable item behind… 

Taking a moment, she could hear the sharp tones of the guards’ whistles as they tried to force their way through the maelstrom of fleeing customers and merchants alike.  She whipped her head around so quickly as to set her blonde tresses to flying, eyes suddenly on the lookout for the third assassin House Trelwyn had sent against them.

He was gone.

“Go,” Shale grunted, hunched and listening.  He nodded toward the space the assassins had occupied when they’d first arrived, where a narrow opening provided the only out in the crazed crowd of terrified shoppers.  The whistles were getting closer…  “GO!”

Knowing Shale’s timing was always right, Lauryl thrust herself at the opening, darting between the canvas-topped tents to either side and disappearing into the relative quiet between the sheets that formed the walls of the mobile shops of Nulhaven’s famous bazaar.  Shale’s heavy tread could be heard behind her and once they were a few rows in, she turned left and then took another right.

That was when the crossbow bolt whizzed past her ear and ripped into the fabric of the tent at her side.  Stopping short, she turned to look in the direction it had come from and saw that the last of the trio was FLYING above the level of the tents, a complicated looking crossbow with a lumpy mechanism on its top aimed in their direction.  Even as she tried to identify it, the CLACK of it being fired echoed again and she was being forced into the wall of the tent they were standing beside.  She heard a grunt and looked up, the canvas Shale had just pushed her up against ripping and collapsing, sending them sprawling into the interior of a rug merchant’s shop.  Immediately, she rolled away from the newly made opening, coming to her feet, her blade up and ready in case someone else was waiting.

“Don’t take the time to look for the shooter next time,” Shale grunted, standing slowly and using his axe as a support.  A short bolt protruded from the back of his left calf and Lauryl couldn’t help but gasp in surprise.  When she went to move toward him, he angrily waved her away.  “He’s still out there!” he rasped.  “Get moving!”

With a last look at the torn entry and Shale’s bleeding leg, Lauryl headed toward the front of the large tent, startling a slender, black-haired man with a scraggly beard, who started screaming at her in a language she did not recognize the moment he saw her.  When he saw Shale come around behind her, his shrieking reached a fever pitch, and then they were out the other side, into crowds that knew nothing of the violence that had taken place just a few streets over.  Lauryl could still hear the whistles of the city guards blowing back the way they had come.

When a passing bearer suddenly gurgled and collapsed with a bolt protruding from his throat, Lauryl knew they hadn’t lost their opponent.  The faint tingling in the air around her that had accompanied the young man’s death told her that her magic had just deflected the shot meant for HER and she whispered a quick prayer before breaking into a run.

This time, however, she had considered a reaction, and when she spun, she found the dark figure flying above the rug seller’s tent, pointed her finger, focused her will, and watched the result.  The man gasped and suddenly fell, collapsing the tent to another series of high-pitched shrieks by the angry merchant within.  Looking back down, she saw Shale limping quickly toward her, nodding.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

Lauryl grimaced.  “I’ve never seen a weapon like that before.  How many shots did he HAVE?”

“Don’t know,” the big man said, continuing to move and grabbing her arm as he caught up.  He spun her into a walk beside her and took the next available turn, pulling her with.  “Doesn’t matter,” he said once they’d found a solid walled structure to rest against.  “Trelwyn won’t have told anyone WHY he wants us killed, which is good enough to think that he won’t say anything to anyone regarding what we spoke about.”

“What does that have to do with this?” Lauryl asked, kneeling to look at Shale’s injured leg.  The bolt had passed through a fleshy part but missed the muscle, thankfully.  That it was still lodged in his leg told that the weapon wasn’t that powerful.  “Guess you give up strength for shots,” she muttered.  Reaching down, she glanced up, winced at Shale’s pained expression, and suddenly yanked the bolt out the other side.

Shale merely grunted again.  “We can’t stay here long,” he muttered, looking away from her and back toward the sunny road they’d just escaped.  The whistles of the city guards were coming this way now, but they wouldn’t have any idea where the assassin’s targets had gone.  Likely, the assassin (if he was even caught) wouldn’t tell them anything anyway.  All she had done was negate the magic of whatever it was that had been keeping him afloat anyway.  Unless the fall had injured him, he might even still be on their trail.

Still, she closed her eyes, whispered a soft prayer, and put her hands to the bloody wound in Shale’s calf.  “Blessed goddess,” she whispered, “Grant your unworthy follower this small boon…”  The warmth of the blood on her fingers cooled and when she pulled her hands away, there was no injury to speak of.  Only a small pink scar showed that her big friend had ever been injured.

“You’ll have to show me how to do that someday,” Shale said, his face back to its normal color when she looked up at him again. 

She smiled, standing.  “It’s not something you can teach,” she replied quietly.  Reaching up, she set her hand against his cheek before a clatter of falling brass pots behind them caught their attention.  Before she could react, Shale was in front of her once again, axe at the ready.

Nothing was there.  A cat ran across the alley.  The guards’ shrill whistles echoed in the distant air.

“Let’s go,” said Shale.  “We won’t get far in the bazaar at this point, so we have two choices.  And our friend has taken one of those away.”   He glanced up, and then down at the iron barred grate that led to the sewers below.

“I hate going that way,” Lauryl whined softly.

Shale merely smiled, his muscled arms tensing as he knelt and yanked the grate up before setting it to one side.  “Not my favorite either,” he answered.  “After you.”

---

Lauryl dipped the sponge in the hot water and squeezed it over her head for what must have been the hundredth time and still the scent of the sewers wouldn’t come off her body.  Spreading her arms beneath the water, she raised them to capture as many of the bubbles that layered there as possible and pulled them close, dipping her nose into the fragrant scent.  The oil she’d bought specifically for removing strong scents had been terribly expensive, but easily worth the perfect ruby she’d bought it with.  Up till now, nothing had survived a single dunking with it.  Looked like Nulhaven’s sewers were particularly strong for some reason.  The scent overwhelmed for the moment, she sat back, blowing the bits of bubbly stuff off her lips and resting her head against the back of the tub.

Their latest jaunt had taken them into the innermost confines of House Trelwyn’s youngest son and resulted with the information Shale had said would be useful in the future.  The only cost had been Shale’s injury and the chaos of a day in the bazaar reduced to a frenzied mess due to the city guard shutting it down entirely while they questioned people.  Lauryl had no doubts that they would have a garbled, but reasonable description of herself and Shale by now, and that their movements around town were about to get a bit more difficult.

Why was it that Shale had wanted to go into Trelwyn’s son’s manor house anyway?  He hadn’t told her yet. Just something about a ‘treasure worth chasing’.  She raised a blonde eyebrow and stared at the ceiling through the vapors of her bath.  What could possibly be worth upsetting a town and drawing assassins on their tail?  Didn’t they have enough problems as it was?  Shale already couldn’t go home, and Lauryl couldn’t remember where she’d been born, so there was no real sense of home to go to.  They’d always lived their lives on the move, and when they’d met, it had been sheer chance that they shared each others’ thoughts and dreams the way they did.

Lauryl snorted, sliding deeper into the hot water when the act drew the familiar scent of the sewer back into her nose.  Closing her eyes, she relived that evening…

---

 “No one gets into the Orland’s compound and comes out again.  Anyone can get in, so it’s said.  It’s getting back to the world that is the problem.”

Lauryl hung from the side of the Orland’s tower, staring down into the courtyard below.  A dozen guards walked regular patrols around the place, but she had managed to get in and up the tower’s side without anyone seeing her.  There was plenty of foliage placed around the perimeter, and marble statues took up much of the rest of the space, gravel paths between it all making the interior of the Orland’s palace walls look like one big garden.  Lauryl had spotted more than a few magical defenses, but had evaded them, thinking that THIS was the main reason most thieves got caught; unlike her, they had no way of spotting such wards and depended on trinkets they purchased from questionable sources.  Her source of power was herself – magic had come naturally to her at a young age, and she had focused and honed it along with her thieving abilities as she’d grown.  It was merely a matter of shifting her consciousness to the magical world, and the Orland’s defensive network of spells and wards became obvious to her.  So, here she was, six stories above the ground, her toes jammed into the slightest of crevices between the marble bricks that the walls were made of, her fingers on the slip of a windowsill, her body little more than a light shadow on the otherwise sheer wall.

“I’ll have to thank Eldris for that camouflage spell someday, if I ever see him again,” she whispered.  Turning back to the window, she edged her senses from the mundane into the magical once more and inspected the window.  As she thought, there was a faint trace of a defensive spell there – little more than a ward to alert guards if the window were broken.

Well, she didn’t intend to break it.  Letting go with one hand, she reached into the open slit in her jacket and produced a small wrap of soft leather, pulling on one lace with her teeth as she did.  The roll came undone, revealing small picks inserted into smaller loops within the roll.  Placing the top of her kit in her teeth, she pulled the one she needed by touch and inserted it into the small window lock, picking it with another series less than ten breaths later.

“Nice lock,” she whispered, inserting the roll into her jacket slit once more and patting the catch to make it close securely.  Wouldn’t do to lose her picks and set off all the alarms just from a lose pocket.  “Too bad I know the maker.”  The window popped loose in its frame without effort a moment later, and she slid in.

Just inside, a dark chamber lined in blue velvet with fleur-de-lis patterns embroidered on it showed the opulence with which the Orland surrounded himself.  Quetel was a wealthy city, built on the power and income of a coterie of cutthroat merchants who prided themselves on eliminating their rivals not necessarily through violence, but through business practices that made violence seem petty.  When they made moves in their own version of political warfare, the losing side was almost entirely wiped out, if not to the man, to the last copper Guilder.  The Orland was the master of the city by right of having the most powerful merchant fleet, most widely placed caravanserais, and by having wiped out nearly every merchant family that had ever dared intrude on his business.

Too bad he spent it all on luxuries and not defenses, Lauryl considered, eyes perusing the room for the most valuable items.  Picking out a small crystalline bell clock whose instrumentation had been made out of carefully folded and forged gold; she shifted her senses again, catching the telltale signs of anti-thievery spells.  Grinning to herself once more, she recognized the spell and ran a finger along the edge of the mantle before touching anything, damaging the glyph just enough so that the spell would remain, but the effects would be minimal.  When she lifted the clock, a slight tingle went through her fingers – instead of the lightning bolt that would have tossed her back out the window she’d come in through.  Reaching around behind herself, she pulled her pack open and inserted the clock, inspecting it first for a recognizable glyph.

There it was – the Orland’s seal embossed on the pearl surface within the bell.  Identifying enough that she could prove she’d stolen it, but not so large that anyone could recognize it from a distance.  When she sold it (IF she sold it), she’d get recognition price on the item.  Powerful lords paid small fortunes for the icons of other lords.  It gave them some measure of power to own something stolen from each other, so it was said.  Lauryl expected that power was probably magical, as ownership tended to forge a link between the owner and the item.  Such a link could be used for dark purposes if one knew the right spells…

Winking at herself for her victory over the Orland’s defenses, she turned, only to freeze as a blade was pushed up against her throat.

“Going somewhere?” a quiet voice whispered.  “Shriek, and you’ll be dead before you finish the sound.”  The blade never wavered.

Lauryl’s heart skipped a beat and she glanced down.  The blade was that of an axe, and a big one at that.  There was little chance that the owner could use it in close quarters, but in the position it was – at her throat – that didn’t matter.  What DID matter was that she didn’t need to move to cast a spell.  Closing her eyes, she began to mutter, making it sound like she was cursing herself for her foolishness.

It worked.  The axe backed off a bit and the owner spoke again.  “You must be quite the thief to get in here and pull that off.  How’d you know that item was safe?”

He didn’t know it was guarded!  He wasn’t a guard!  Lauryl ceased her spell in mid-stride and dared to turn her head to look back.  The axe immediately tightened against her neck again.  She got a glimpse of dark hair before he moved out of her sight.

“Don’t move again, or this blade slits your throat where you stand.  And the Orland has a habit of reviving those who die to his traps, so he can torture them in his dungeons.”

“Do you believe everything you’re told,” she whispered back.  “What is a thief doing catching a thief in the Orland’s tower?”

“What is a thief doing in the Orland’s tower at the same time as another thief?” the rogue replied.

Lauryl snickered and reached up slowly to tap the blade with a finger.  “You going to kill me, or are we going to parlay?”

The blade dropped away.  When she turned around, the rogue was standing a scant few inches away, his axe still held in one hand, at his side.  He was handsome in a stark manner.  Dark haired and strong-featured, his left eye was covered with a black leather eye patch.  His arms, muscled no doubt from throwing that axe around, were uncovered, showing dark skin.  His hair was slicked against his head, a thick pony tail corded at his neck and allowed to fall around his shoulders to lie on his chest.  A bizarre series of straps rode an equally strange belt, apparently the holder for his axe when it wasn’t in use.  His good eye was examining her as well.

Slender, lithe of limb but stronger than she looked, Lauryl knew she turned heads sometimes from the looks she got.  Blonde hair fell nearly to her buttocks, her working clothes a tight set of soft leathers that made her look almost male from the way it fit.  A matching jacket with a series of slits cut in its outer layer covered her from waist to neck, and her rapier hung at her side in a specially made scabbard that never rattled.  Black climbing gloves with grips extending from her palms covered her hands and a black choker with a dull pearl in it caught the eye from her neck.  Pale blue eyes looked at him from a face that had been described as alternately beautiful and dangerous depending on her expression.

He seemed to relax, but she could tell otherwise from the tension in his muscles.  “So you’re not a guard, and you’re not here to test the defenses for the Orland,” he said softly.  “Too strange to think this a coincidence.”

“I would have to agree,” Lauryl replied, sizing him up.  In a fight, she would lose to his strength, but could probably outwit him in the mental department.  Then again, she thought, he HAD managed to ambush her even after she’d scanned the room…

“How’d you stay hidden?” she asked suddenly, impressed despite herself.  “I looked through here before picking that.”  She nodded at the space where the clock had been.  “Where WERE you?”

The rogue blew through his nose and gestured upwards with his chin.  Above, the coffered ceiling showed plenty of spaces to hide, though none were big enough to actually slide into.  A second glance at her opponent’s arms showed her he hadn’t hidden, but had supported himself by his strength!

“How long were you UP there!?” she asked, startled.

He clenched the hand that wasn’t holding the axe.  “Too long.  It wasn’t easy to drop without startling you…”

Lauryl reexamined the man, impressed again.  He’d managed to stay above her when she’d entered, drop down with that big axe on his belt, DRAW it, and catch her off-guard, within a matter of a few minutes.

“You’re here because of the rumors,” he whispered, grinning.

“Aren’t you?” she replied.

The rogue looked away from her for the first time, eyeing the room.  “You didn’t answer my question.  How’d you know that clock was safe?”

“It wasn’t,” she replied, grinning now that they were relaxing.  A pair of thieves meeting in the Orland’s tower, both successful in their independent entries; if they worked together, she thought quickly, they shouldn’t have any problems leaving, either.  “This place is laced with more magical defenses than you can imagine.”

The rogue reached up and tapped his eye patch.  “I know.  I can’t see out of this, but it still tells me things.”

Lauryl’s eyebrows rose.  That was the THIRD time he’d impressed her.  “The clock had a defensive spell on it, but I know how to defuse those.  Have you picked what you want yet?”

“Had it before you came in. Was just about to leave, in fact.”

“But there’s nothing missing!” Lauryl replied, looking around.  A light had become visible beneath the door to the room. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered sharply.

“Out.  Now.”  With a leap, the rogue was up in the coffering again, his axe somehow put away, his hands and feet spread out to hold himself horizontal against the roof.

Lauryl shot toward the window, catching the sill and swinging herself out and back to the wall.  Reaching up, she pushed the leaves closed, leaving him inside.

“Wait, or leave?” she asked herself, instinctively looking down to see if her quick movement had caught anyone’s attention.  She might as well not have bothered.  The Orland’s guards were still moving in their regimented sequences.  When she looked up again, she saw that the light had entered the room she’d just left.  The window was glowing…

“Come on…” she urged.

When nothing happened for a long moment, she edged her way back up, her arms, tired from the climb, arguing that she should start heading down as soon as possible.  When she could look in, she immediately eyed the ceiling.

He wasn’t there.  A figure was closing the door, a lantern showing the finery of his clothing.

“What the hells?” she muttered.  Lowering herself, she waited another thirty count before rising and looking up again.  Before she could see, however, the windows slid open and the rogue looked out on her.

“You waited?” he asked, surprised.

“I couldn’t just leave you in there,” she replied quietly, eyeing him.  “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m getting out of here.”

“Mind a partner in that?” he asked, beginning to swing out of the window.  The bottoms of his boots had sprouted crampons, she saw.  He dug his feet in against the wall and came down.

“Those will leave marks,” she said, nodding at his boots.

He grinned.  “Trust me.”

Lauryl grinned again and started climbing down, eyeing the men moving around below.  The wind was chill against her skin, and soon the descent became a pattern of timed movements followed by soft touches of her toes against the wall, searching for holds.  Her silent companion merely slid down beside her, nearly invisible despite the fact that he was right beside her.

Must’ve paid a fortune for that spell tonight, she pondered.

When they were a story above the ground, they reached the gatehouse where the guards gathered and were dispatched from on their walks.

“Stop,” her companion said quietly.

“They won’t be back for another 30 seconds,” she replied, having timed it.  “If we go now, we’ll be to the other wall before they can spot us.”

“Look at the ground again,” he replied.

She did, then shifted her view to the magical spectrum.  The ground, defenseless before, when she’d entered, was now a glittering field.  “What in…”

“Easy to get in, Hells to get out,” her companion whispered, nodding.  Reaching out, he tapped her on the shoulder and muttered a word.  “When I tell you, push off the building and spin as if you’re leaping over that wall.”

Lauryl’s eyes widened.  She spun to look at the wall, thirty yards away.  “That’s impossible!” she muttered.  She cut herself off when the thirty seconds ran out and the guards returned.  Her arms were starting to strain from holding herself.

“Now,” the rogue whispered.  He shoved off and FLEW over the wall, descending on the other side in a long, slow arc.  Not wishing to be left behind in case his presence had something to do with his spell, Lauryl pushed.  Instead of a leap to the ground, she lofted up into the air above the wall, coming down as he had in an open courtyard.

When she landed, she heard a soft whistle from the shadows and caught his outline there a moment later.  Heading that way, she saw his grin before anything else, her own smile matching his in intensity.

“Do you have an employer or was this a private job?” he asked, the grin fading a moment later.

“I did it for myself,” she said, not expecting the question.  “Why?”

“Planning on holding onto that item?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.  Again, she asked, “Why?”

“Do you know what the Orland does to people who are caught stealing in Quetel?”

“Arrests them, tortures them, and makes them disappear from the world?” Lauryl asked, half-jokingly.

“He does that to people he catches in his palace,” the rogue answered.  “I’m talking about in Quetel, the city.”

Lauryl reconsidered making her living in the city.  “Are there different rules outside, then?” she asked.

“Thieves caught in Quetel are tortured for three days and then their hands are cut off in a public exhibition outside the gates of his palace.  Then, their foreheads are branded and anyone who offers them succor is banished.”

Lauryl raised an eyebrow.  “What’s your point?”

“If you try to move that piece within Quetel, the authorities will be made aware before the day is out, if you manage to even try to sell it.”

Lauryl stared for a moment.  “Who ARE you?” she asked suddenly.  “And what are you trying to tell me?  That I stole something from the Orland’s palace and will never even be able to sell it?”

“Who I am doesn’t matter unless you feel like continuing to talk to me after we finish here.”  The stranger shook his head.  “And not in Quetel, no.”

Lauryl thought for a moment.  He’d left it up to her as to whether or not they would ever work together in the future.  Which meant that he hadn’t minded working together tonight.  He had let her go when he realized she was a rogue like he was, she had waited for him to make his escape when she could have moved on, and he had turned around and offered her a safe way out of the palace when he could have just let her act as a distraction and jump away on his own.  Now, he was offering information on whether or not to try to sell what she’d stolen within the city.

“It would seem I owe you a few after tonight,” she said languidly.  “Why don’t we find some place to drink to our success and THEN decide if we’ll continue together.”

Her companion eyed her for a moment and then grinned.  “The name is Shale,” he said, nodding.  “And you’ll want to get rid of that thing before you even THINK of trying to relax tonight…”

“But you just said there’s no way to sell it in Quetel!”  Lauryl threw her hands up.  Was he purposefully being confusing or was she missing something?

Shale raised a finger.  “I said the authorities would be made aware before the day was out,” he said.  “I didn’t say you couldn’t sell it.”

“And if the authorities know about it, they’ll track me down, right?”

“They’ll try.  That’s why you have to be quick about it.”

Lauryl’s eyes narrowed and she turned to put her back to the wall, shading the pack she’d shoved her newfound possession into before pulling the clock out to eye it.  Shifting her perceptions again, she eyed the clock anew, this time finding the faintest of traces on the clock itself.  “It has a tracer spell on it, doesn’t it?” she asked, grinning.

Shale tapped his forehead with the finger he’d been pointing with.  “You learn quickly.”

“In case you hadn’t realized it when we met back there, I’m not new to this…”

“Then why didn’t you assume it was traceable?” asked Shale.  “Besides, hot merchandise needs to be moved as fast as possible, or the mages those things belong to tend to track down the present owner and extract their vengeance as painfully as possible.”

Lauryl snorted.  “Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?”

Shale grinned that strange grin of his again.  “You’re the one who said you weren’t new at this.  I thought you’d know already.”

Lauryl grinned back.  Suddenly, she knew what the rogue’s saying about escaping the Orland’s palace truly referred to.  It wasn’t escaping physically.  It was escaping the tracking down of the items thus stolen!  Her grin faded.  She owed Shale another favor.

In response, Shale merely tapped his forehead again.  “I know a person who can make the items disappear for a small fee.  You can then use them as a middleman to move your merchandise.  Might take a while…”

“And why would I want to trust this… person?”

“Because I do,” Shale replied, shrugging.  “Unless you know someone else who can evade the Orland’s wizards while you find a buyer?”

Lauryl snickered.  “Why do I keep finding I’m further in debt to you by the minute?”

“There are two kinds of thieves,” he replied.  “One has all the skills.  The other does all the research and always has backups.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “Care to guess which of us is which?”

“You’re complimenting me and saying I’m incompetent at the same time, you know?”  Lauryl didn’t know whether to be offended or pleased.  He obviously meant she was the one with the skills, since he’d known everything and she hadn’t.

Instead of answering, Shale started to walk away, adding, “If you want to learn how to be both of those, come with me.  We worked well together back there, and I have a feeling that we could use each other, at least for a while.”  He cast a grin at her over his shoulder as she started to follow.  “Besides, there’s a matter of those favors you owe me…”

Lauryl’s expression turned to a sneer.  “If you think for one second that I pay favors in THAT way…”

Shale stopped and turned to her, his grin gone as if it had never been.  “I don’t do that,” he said.  He nodded, taking her in again for a moment before meeting her eyes.  “You’re attractive, I’ll give you that.  Probably have all sorts of problems with the men.  But I don’t do that to women.  Especially those I’m considering working with.  It just leads to problems.”

Lauryl struck a pose, eyeing him seductively.  “Even if she were to want that sort of thing?  You’re not exactly ugly yourself…”

Shale snorted.  “If you meant that, would you have reacted the way you did?  We have a long walk, and not a lot of time before that wizard is on the job.  The things we took won’t exactly be missed the next time someone walks into that room.”

Lauryl straightened, again uncertain whether to be insulted or pleased.  He just kept throwing her for loops, and she didn’t know what to do.

When he started walking again, she was two steps behind.

---

And she’d been there ever since, she thought, scooping a handful of hot water up and over her chest in the tub.  Shaking her head, she realized the water had cooled significantly and stood, sluicing the last of the soap off with the lukewarm water in the bucket the serving girl had left for her.  Grabbing a towel, she stepped out and began to dry, shaking her head.

They’d been together since that day, and still Lauryl didn’t feel that she’d ever repaid him.  She’d covered him more times than she could count, but he always managed to have the last word.  She’d healed him after he’d been shot, but he’d only been shot because he was protecting HER.

Picking up her shirt, she pulled it on and sat on the edge of her bed.

It was going to be a long night.  Shale was in the next room, and she had to deal with her own security issues, which meant she wouldn’t be sleeping hard.  After all, there was still the matter of that assassin out there.