Twenty-One
The brilliant light of the twins shone down on me. Blinking, I raised a hand to shield my eyes and gazed around, my heart
turning over as I realized where I was.
This is Kovass. I’m home.
My beloved city. It looked the same as it did in my memories, before an immortal god had pulled down every building to replace
them with his own. The dusty streets and thronging crowds were immediately familiar. I breathed in the scents of dust, sun-warmed
rock, and sweaty bodies, and felt the comforting rightness of it all. This was where I had once belonged.
Home, a voice in my head that was not mine repeated. This is where your story begins. Where your thread, if you had one, would be woven into the Tapestry of the World.
My heartbeat quickened. Ahead of me, a small figure melted out of the crowds in the thronging market. She was probably only
nine or ten, but I recognized that skinny body, the wariness in her brown eyes, the familiar hood pulled up to hide her features.
She moved through the crowd like a shadow, sliding between and around bodies with the practiced ease of having done this hundreds
of times before.
A lump formed in my throat. I watched the girl make her way through the throngs, seeing everything that she saw, knowing everything that she was feeling.
I could sense the years of the guild weighing on her in every cautious shift of her eyes, every motion she took to stay out of sight.
When a pair of guards strode through the market, she melted into the shadow of an overhang and became invisible until they had passed.
I didn’t know what exact memory this was yet; it could’ve been any day in the market, slipping through oblivious crowds on the hunt for a target.
I saw him almost before she did: the perfect mark. A girthy man wearing fine silk clothes stood in front of a market stall,
arguing loudly with a tired-looking vendor. From the many colorful bottles on display, I guessed this was a perfume stall.
The large man held a green bottle in two fingers, gesturing to it and the vendor as he spoke, proclaiming that he was being
robbed for the amount that he would have to pay. Standard haggling procedure, but the coin pouch dangling from the side of
his belt was on full display, indicating this man knew very little about being in the marketplace.
Beside the perfume stall, a ragged-looking boy around the girl’s own age gazed longingly at a cart of fruit, the hunger in
his eyes clear. It was obvious that he was debating whether or not to grab one. I recognized the fruit vendor, a suspicious
man with sharp black eyes. He was extremely protective of his cart and wares, and a difficult man to steal from. The boy seemed
to realize this, too, for he continued to stare at the tempting baskets of fly-laden fruit but made no move to go closer.
I was so busy watching the boy, I almost missed it.
As smoothly as a ghost, the girl stepped around the boy and passed behind the man still shouting at the perfume vendor.
There was no hesitation, no falter in her steps.
I saw her hand reach up and snag the coin pouch off his belt only because I was looking for it.
Without missing a beat, she slipped the prize into her sleeve and continued, walking away from the crime without anyone noticing she had been there.
I felt an odd tingle of both pride and shame. Pride because that had been the perfect snatch, smooth, quick, and over in an
eyeblink. Everything Vahn had taught me. But I could also feel the eyes of the cat creature seeing through mine, watching
me steal as if it was nothing. The weight of her judgment pressed down on me . . . or perhaps that was just my own sense of
guilt and remorse.
An enraged shout drew my attention back to the cart. The large man had stopped arguing with the merchant and was now patting
his belt furiously. He had discovered he had been robbed, far too late. But his small, angry eyes fixed on the ragged boy
next to the fruit cart.
With a howl, he reached out his thick hand and grabbed the boy by the collar, hauling him close. “Thief!”
The shout boomed through the marketplace, making me wince. This was every hood’s worst nightmare: being caught and having
that word shouted in your face, drawing the attention of everyone around you. The boy cried out as the large man shook him,
snapping his head back.
“Where is it?” the man roared. “Hand it over now, you little parasite! Or by the goddess, I’ll break every one of your fingers
right here and save the guards the trouble!”
“I don’t have it!” the boy gasped. “I didn’t steal anything, I swear!”
“Liar!”
I bit my lip, forcing myself to keep watching. All the nearby crowds had turned to watch this little scene play out, but no
one stepped forward, either to help or condemn. Everyone knew this was how you dealt with thieves, whether or not they were
guilty.
But then, the sharp-eyed fruit vendor blinked and turned his gaze back toward the perfume cart. He frowned. “Sir?” he said,
interrupting the man as he raised a fist to strike the now weeping boy. “Sir, is that your pouch on the ground there?”
The man paused. Turning, he stared at the dusty ground in front of the perfume vendor, where something glinted gold in the
light of the twins. A small leather pouch, spilling a pair of coins into the dust, lay innocently on the ground before the
wooden stall. The man gave a shout and immediately whirled around to snatch the purse from the road.
“Thank the goddess,” the man huffed, attaching the pouch to his belt again. “I must’ve dropped it earlier.” He did not, I
noticed, try to apologize to the boy, who had already fled, white-faced and sobbing, into the crowd. He didn’t even look his
way as he dusted off his hands and turned back to the merchant as if nothing had happened. “So, are you going to give me a
better price for this, or are you going to continue to rob me blind?”
As the watching crowd began to disperse, I caught the glimmer of a familiar hood in the throng and turned, already knowing what I would find.
The thief girl stood at the edge of the crowd, watching the blustering man begin his haggling anew.
Her eyes were shadowed, and I knew what was going through her head and heart.
Anger. Anger toward the man and the callous accusation of a fellow urchin, even when the boy had done nothing wrong.
Regret that she had let sympathy get the better of her, causing her to toss the hard-won coin purse in the dust in front of the cart.
Fear of what Vahn would say when he found out.
Because he always found out, eventually.
Interesting. The voice in my head was cold, giving nothing away. Had you not returned, that boy would have lost a hand. He would have died on the streets, begging for the scraps and coins
of strangers. Instead, he grew into a predator who would murder a young mother in an alley one night, leaving behind three
orphans. Do you know why you chose to return, to help?
“I . . .” I swallowed the poisonous lump in my throat. “I didn’t want anyone taking the blame that should have been mine,”
I said shakily. “He hadn’t done anything wrong. It didn’t seem right that he should be punished for my actions.”
I see.
The cat creature said nothing more. The scene around us faded, growing blurry as if caught in a dust storm, and then blew
away on the wind. Stripped clean like sand on a wall. When the gale died down and the haze around us cleared, I was once more
in a different place.
Vahn’s office.
I would have recognized it anywhere. How many hours—years—had I spent in this room?
Learning everything I could from the Guildmaster of Kovass.
Every skill, every tenet and teaching and rule of the guild, I’d learned it all here.
Sitting in that small chair in the corner, working on a lock or just listening to Vahn as he spoke to clients and guildmembers from behind his polished desk.
His desk.
It was a monstrous old thing, scarred and dinged from age and abuse. Besides the shelves of ledgers on the far wall and the
single chair in the corner, it was the only piece of furniture in the office, and it dominated the room. But Vahn was not
the only one who had sat behind it. When I had been younger and much smaller, I would often hide beneath the desk, sheltered
in a cave of polished wood and confident that no one in the guild would ever find me there.
Tonight, Vahn’s office was already occupied.
A chill slid down my back. There were many reasons that the cat creature would bring me here, many memories to choose from.
Nearly half my early life had been spent in this office, after all. But I recognized this night, and the two men sitting at
Vahn’s desk. Vahn had been talking to them about membership in the guild; they were apparently newcomers to the city and wanted
to ply their trade in Kovass, but needed permission from the Guildmaster. That was the story they had given Vahn, anyway.
Vahn had stepped out of the office for a moment to deal with a trivial matter, leaving the two men alone. Bassig was just
down the hall, and there was nothing of value to steal inside the room, so it had been safe to do so. Or so he had thought.
Silence filled the office for a moment, and then one of the men leaned forward. “So . . . tonight?”
His voice was a hushed, raspy whisper, causing the second man to shake his head. “No,” the other growled. “Too many witnesses.
We do it tomorrow, when the guild is empty. You get his attention, lead him outside. He won’t be able to take us all.”
A thump in the hallway signaled Vahn’s return, and the men leaned back as the Guildmaster entered the office. After a few
more minutes of Vahn talking about rules and territories within the guild, the three men stood up and left the office, closing
the door behind them.
A moment passed. Then the chair behind the desk moved back on its own, scraping against the floor, and a tiny girl emerged