Thief

         The Haunted Frog tavern wasn’t exactly the jewel in the crown of Keverel City. From the outside it was a rickety-looking structure, with wooden planks peeling out from the walls and a dirt-smeared sign dangling by one final, stubborn peg. The railings of the balconies were little more than bits and the windows – or remains thereof – hung at awkward angles. It was a place any civilized person would steer clear of.
         With good reason. Alvuir sat with his elbows on the table, staring at the dirty glass of purple wine in front of him. The roar of the tavern was thundering in his ears; booming laughter, shrill cackles, shouts, the pounding of mugs against wood, and dozens more sounds he couldn’t pick out swamped the air around him. The tavern was packed wall to wall with all manner of unsavoury-looking types, from eye-patched sailors to tattooed brawlers to lithe figures spinning daggers on tables.
         From a table over, there came a flash of green fire and a melon-sized red egg appeared on the tabletop, conjured out of thin air by a hook-nosed witch in a pointed hat. Alvuir didn’t really notice. Things like that weren’t unusual here. Across the room he saw a wrinkled old man pull a battered bird cage from under his table and set it in front of his companion, but inside the cage was a massive brown toad which quickly shot its tongue out and swallowed the nearest fly. Not far from that was an immense man, heavily tattooed with all manner of designs, eating a candle. The woman with him fidgeted with the candlestick – if fidgeting could mean bending the metal object back and forth as if it were made of clay. Without warning she snapped it in two and slammed the jagged edge straight through the tabletop.
         And yet Alvuir didn’t think for a second that any of them were crazy, not even candle-muncher. It might have been just a drunken game, but it could just as easily have been a signal. Alvuir didn’t dwell on it. That was the one rule at the Haunted Frog: mind your own business and stay out of everyone else’s.
         One might have found it surprising that even with all the strange, often violent-looking brigands that spent time in the Haunted Frog, there were never fights. But that was because, as Alvuir knew, chances were good that anyone you picked a fight with was far more dangerous than you.
         He glanced back at the filthy glass of wine on his table. He had no intention of drinking it. You didn’t eat or drink anything here that you didn’t bring yourself. No one really knew for sure how the Haunted Frog managed to stay in business if so patrons actually bought food and if the few that did never ate it, but rumour had it that the tavern really was just a façade, that it was all sponsored by the various criminals that used it for a meeting place. Because if there was one thing the Haunted Frog was good for, it was getting business done without the city guards sticking their noses in.
         And you never had to worry about eavesdroppers here – you never eavesdropped, because chances were that the person you were eavesdropping on was already watching you. Not that anyone cared what anyone else was doing anyway. The only reason you came here was if you had business of your own to attend to. Things tended to go quite badly otherwise.
         Alvuir swirled the purple wine in the glass absentmindedly as six daggers thudded into the ceiling from the table beside him. He watched the wine, fascinated by the bits of food or gods-knew what floating around in it. Behind him he could hear an audible scratching noise as someone etched something into the wall with a rapier. Alvuir set the wine down again. A man, hidden beneath a voluminous black robe, stalked up alongside his table and set a bulb of garlic down beside him. “For luck,” he murmured sibilantly, and disappeared into the crowd. Alvuir ignored it. While it wasn’t exactly a rule, it was certainly safer here not to touch anything anyone gave you.
         He stared at the purple wine again. Three silver pennies for the disgusting thing. But he didn’t have much of a choice. When you were meeting someone here, you had to use their signals.
         And for whatever reason, the Crow used purple wine.
         A woman sat down across from him. She was young, at twenty-something maybe ten years younger than him, and was rather nondescript. Her clothes were unassuming and she looked rather ordinary. She gestured at the wine. “Not going to drink?”
         “I’m studying the dirt.”
         She made an understanding expression. “What’s the job?”
         Alvuir glanced up sharply. “Crow?”
         She smirked at him. “Not what you expected?”
         “No.” He looked her up and down. “I would have thought a disguise, or at the very least a mask, would be appropriate for someone in your line of work.”
         She shrugged. “In a city of a hundred thousand people, a face blends in better than a mask does.”
         Alvuir flicked his gaze up from the purple wine. “Brother Armaenus.”
         “The priest from the chapel?”
         Alvuir nodded. “He has a pendant, one he wears about his neck at all times. You’re to get it for me.”
         The Crow glanced at him, unimpressed. “That’s it?”
         “That’s it.” A smile twitched about his lips. “Used to something more challenging?”
         “You know my reputation; that’s why we’re meeting. People hire me to break into palaces or the royal dungeons, not lift necklaces off priests.” The Crow stared at him with calculating eyes. “What’s the catch?”
         “Catch?”
         She smiled. “If it was that simple, you wouldn’t need someone with my expertise.”
         Alvuir returned the smile. “Ah. Very true. As I said, our dear Brother at the chapel wears the pendant at all times. Even when he sleeps. And when he sleeps, he does so in the chapel’s private chambers.” Alvuir’s smile broadened. “I presume you know the difficulties involved in breaking into the chapel.”
         The Crow nodded slowly, realization dawning in a clever smile on her face. “Yes. You need someone who can sneak into the chapel.”
         “Precisely. Have you done it before?”
         “Yes.”
         I bet you’d say that no matter what place I mentioned. “Excellent. And as for your pay – ” He reached around and jangled a pouch of coins at his belt “– thirty crowns.”
         The woman snorted. “Hah. Triple it and we’ll start talking.”
         Alvuir fixed her with an unimpressed look. “This is for a simple pendant. And you said you already know how to get into the chapel.”
         “I said I’ve gotten in before. I didn’t say it was easy. And as for the item, if it really is just a pendant, why do you need someone like me to break into the Holy Chapel itself to steal it?”
         “Because it has value to me,” Alvuir replied. “It is of no consequence to anyone else.”
         The Crow laughed again. “If I believed that, I’d have been tricked and robbed blind years ago. No. There’s more to it. I don’t care what, but you’d still best up your offer.”
         Alvuir stared at her for a long while before he finally said, “Fifty.”
         “One hundred.”
         Alvuir’s brow furrowed in annoyance. “Triple thirty is ninety. You’ve just raised it above what you said before.”
         The woman smiled disarmingly. “Have I? Well, it’s my decision, isn’t it? Since you need my services.”
         Alvuir could see it in her smirk that if he haggled again she’d probably double the price. “One hundred.”
         The Crow got up just in time to have a drunken man stumble against her. She pushed him off. Alvuir watched as the man staggered away, then said, “Where will I find you once it’s done?”
         “You won’t. Where will I find you?”
         Alvuir laughed. “I have as much reason to keep my secrecy as you do.”
         The Crow gave him another smile. “Wait here for an hour. I’ll have a look around and be back to give you a time to meet again.” She began walking away, still facing him, and just before she slipped out the door she waved the drunken man’s coinpurse at him with a confident smirk. Alvuir chuckled to himself and returned his attention to the wine.
         Someone cackled nearby and he glanced up to see the witch with the egg give her table three hard raps with a gnarled stick. The man across from her did the same and the egg vanished in a flash of green fire. Both of them got up and disappeared towards the door. Shortly after, a foot-high gnome sprang up onto Alvuir’s table, seized the garlic left there and stuffed the whole bulb into his mouth. With a mad laugh the creature vaulted away towards where the man in robes had just reappeared. The gnome scrambled up a table-leg and into the black-robed man’s pocket.
         Alvuir shrugged to himself. The odd ways people here conducted business were of no concern to him.
         An hour later, Alvuir glanced up to see the Crow saunter back into the tavern. She was twirling something about her finger, and as she sat down she pressed it onto the table beneath her hand.
         Alvuir didn’t need to see it. He could sense it. He could feel the boiling power beneath her hand, reaching for him, stretching out invisibly towards the matching pendant about his own neck.
         The woman removed her hand, revealing the small metal symbol threaded on a length of cord. The symbol was roughly circular, but half of it was broken off and missing. The Crow glanced at him. “It was already like that.”
         Alvuir nodded, fighting the urge to snap his hand forward and seize the pendant. “You were quick.”
         “I didn’t need to wait for him to sleep, so I never had to enter the chapel.”
         “You lifted it right off his neck?”
         The Crow smirked at him. “My reputation did come from somewhere.”
         “Impressive. How did you find him so quickly?”
         She snorted. “Please. I know everything that goes on in this city. Important people have schedules. I know the people; I know their schedules.”
         Alvuir smiled slightly. “Everything and everyone. What can you tell about me, then?”
         The Crow didn’t look impressed. “You’re not from Keverel. You arrived here two days ago to find a thief. Now that you’ve found one and got what you came for, you’ll be leaving.”
         “Good guess.”
         “You also know Armaenus personally,” the woman added. Alvuir frowned. The Crow continued, “You were once in some sort of order, though not anymore. An ex-priest, or ex-wizard perhaps.”
         “Where did you find all this out?”
         The woman laughed. “From you. I know the way people like you talk and act.”
         Alvuir nodded slowly, impressed.
         “You also have the other half of that pendant around your neck.”
         Alvuir’s eyes shot up from the stolen object on the table to meet the Crow’s cunning gaze. “Very clever. Read that from me as well?”
         The Crow nodded. “You don’t get to where I am without being able to guess everything about a person.”
         Alvuir suddenly realized that the Crow had to have guessed – at least to some degree – the pendant’s magical nature. I think it’s best I leave. He set the pouch of coins down on the table. “One hundred and fifty. For your silence.”
         The Crow inclined her head in acknowledgement before deftly tucking the pouch into her belt. Alvuir took the pendant from the table and almost reverently lowered it over his head. The Crow smiled. “Looks quite fetching.” She got up. “Farewell, good priest or wizard,” she said, a faint mocking tone in her voice. “I trust we won’t meet again.”
         Alvuir shook his head. “We won’t.”
         The Crow vanished from the tavern. Alvuir settled back into his chair, raising a hand to clutch the pendants about his neck. His hand touched his throat and froze.
         The pendants were gone.
         But- but- that was impossible! Not even thirty seconds had passed since he’d put the stolen pendant about his neck.
         His own words came back to him: You lifted it right off his neck.
         And then he realized that he’d been played the entire time. That woman hadn’t been the Crow. The Crow would never have been foolish enough to reveal its face.
         But it had been here.
         It had stood right behind him. Only the Crow itself could have seized the pendant from about his neck. That woman had been a front, probably only relaying whatever she had been told to by her master.
         A master who was the most notorious thief in this part of the world. Who now had in his or her hands one of the most powerful artifacts Alvuir knew existed.
         He rose from the table and realized more with irritation than concern that the Crow had also taken the rest of his money off his belt.
         Alvuir stepped out of the Haunted Frog and into the dusk-darkening street. The Crow couldn’t have gone far, no matter how skilled he or she was at escaping.
         Ex-priest, Alvuir thought to himself. How quaint. You were wrong to meddle in this, Crow. And when I find you, you will realize just how wrong.


Word count: 2225