Thief of dargonhall chapter four

Thief of dargonhall chapter four

Chapter four.

It was a jewel encrusted box. That was about all Gorin could tell of the thing. It was probably fairly valuable, but the fact that the lock was far more dexterous and intricate than some hidden safes made him think that the papers rustling about inside the box were even more valuable.

Papers usually had things written on them, and where there were things written and sealed up tight, there were secrets to be found. There was nothing Gorin loved more than a good secret or two to sell to the highest bidder. The more someone tried to hide a secret, the more he wanted to get at it.

Bang. The gilded box hit the wall with a very satisfying thunk, but unfortunately the lid remained tightly shut—the gilding didn’t even crack. Gorin sat back in his chair and sighed. The fire had burnt low in the hearth as he had worked on the locked box. Never before had he broken as many picks in one single lock as he had over the course of the last two days, even as a clumsy child still under his Master’s care. Frustrated and cold, Gorin gave up for the evening and hid the box behind a loose board in his wall.

Dressed in black trousers, tunic, waist sash (even though the sash had fallen out of fashion before Gorin was old enough to walk, it was a wonderful place to store small knives and trinkets) and hidden under a green cloak the colour of crushed basil, Gorin grabbed a messenger’s bag off his shelf and hit the streets of Lower Quarter. He quickly cut across Luire Street on his way to the Upper Quarter.

Once Gorin had reached the western part of The Wall, he made an irritating discovery: A member of the City Guard was stationed in the back alley, blocking the break in The Wall that Gorin had been using for the last several weeks to get in and out of the Upper Quarter with ease.

The guard was well hidden between a stack of old crates, and Gorin nearly missed him on first glance, only catching the glint of moonlight on metal as he made to dash across an alley entrance.

“Who’s there?!” the Guard exclaimed—Gorin wasn’t sure if the man had actually expected someone to reply. He made a small noise like an owl (or what was supposed to sound like an owl but gave more of an impression of a dove trying to mate with a cat) and threw a pebble that bounced off the Guard’s helmet with a soft ‘ping’. Watching the Guard draw his sword and swing his body back and forth to try and catch a glimpse was amusing enough, but after the third pebble pinged off the mans helmet, the Guard seemed to have figure out where Gorin was hiding, thus ruining the fun.

“Oh balls,” Gorin cursed softly, entertained, as he dashed halfway down the alley and half dove half climbed through an unshuttered window. The building smelled of pastry. He guessed it was either a bakery or a store house, but gave it no mind as he quickly navigated to the back door, ducked out while the Guard was still looking around the alleyway, and slipped through the break in The Wall.

“Come out!” The Guard’s voice came muffled from behind The Wall. Gorin dashed away down one of the Upper Quarter side streets. Once safely away from the angered Guard, Gorin scaled the side of a store house. He left his cloak and boots behind, wrapped a few straps of leather around the soft parts of his feet, and began picking his way slowly across the roofs as he readjusted his messenger bag behind his back to be out of his way.

One of the Nobles’ houses was almost fully lit. The front walk had lanterns every few feat leading up to the door, the colours alternating in a symmetrical pattern of blue, green, white, blue, green, white: they were the family’s court colours, blue and green inherited through the father, white signifying a (even if very distant) tie to the royal family. The front door was hung with glimmering banners of a pale, metallic green. Gorin could make out the depiction of Jokul on the banners, his thin, icicle like body stretched out and shimmering with faint blue paint. It was obviously a Name Day celebration.

Gorin climbed down off the roof he was surveying from and made his way to the back alleys. The front gate was open and inviting and probably had a guard stationed right inside to catch idiots without an invitation trying to waltz right in. The side gate leading to the kitchen was similarly useless, as cooks and servants had the side doors and windows wide open, letting out heat and smoke. There was no back gate, and judging by the sounds in the court yard, some of the more lascivious and inebriated guests had taken to the gardens.

Gorin scaled the back wall, squishing a few bugs and pale yellow creeper vines under his fingers and toes, and perched atop of the large stones with the cover of a tall oak to shield him from the guests. He made a quick scan of the courtyard and found no obvious or simple entry points. But if he had been looking for simple, he wouldn’t have chosen a Name Day celebration, let alone have been in the Upper Quarter at all.

“The Young Mistress has a blessed future, don’t you think, Aldor?” an older woman asked a young man dressed in pretentious livery or red and a muddy olive green sitting beside her on the bench just below Gorin’s perch, “Perhaps you should put yourself into her good graces? I hear her parents were quite impressed with your recent work with the Harbourmaster.”

“Mother, surely not! She’s only turning eleven.”

Gorin rolled his eyes and descended the wall back into the alley. There was a garden shed to the left of the courtyard that was barely in view even from where Gorin had been perched on the wall, and anyone amidst the bright lanterns probably didn’t even know it was there. Not that anyone would take particular notice of a plain building without any windows hidden artfully with tall bushes. Similarly, no one would notice the black figure against the surrounding darkness alighting from the slate and wood building onto the brick path.

It was fairly simple getting over the wall and onto the roof of the shed. The slate was cool under Gorin’s feet, cool and slick from years of weather wearing the texture from the pale orange panels. The shed was probably the oldest part of the property, hidden as it was, and forgotten as the home was remodelled again and again over the decades.

Just as he was turning to climb down the front of the shed, he was overtaken by a terrifying sense of vertigo and then lost his breath in a sudden impact with the ground. Gorin lay for a few minutes in the grass. He would have sworn, if he hadn’t been holding his breath and listening to make sure no one had heard his idiotic tumble off the shed roof. When no alarm was raised and the distant buzz of conversation in the court yard and instruments in the house continued, Gorin made his way towards the shrubbery concealing the house’s foundation, making sure to stay low.

The main building was constructed of cream stucco brick, like most buildings in the area. The plastered stone had been popular for the last fifty years or so: cream stucco and brown tiled roofs decorated with marble unicorns and curled up dragon statues.

The brick was decorative and expensive and made horrible handholds. The sharp protuberances could shred unbound hands and feet if one weren’t careful; a slip could puncture soft skin.

Gorin had heard the horror stories of thieves who thought themselves better than they were, and attempted to scale a wall too fast. These stories were meant to be deterrents. Gorin had once seen a younger boy’s hands wrapped tightly in bloody bandages after a slide down a similar wall. Gorin kept the image close in his mind as he flattened against the wall between two windows and spread his fingers into the first crease between the large bricks. Most of the injuries other thieves sustained weren’t merely from climbing up the wall; they were from losing a grip on the meagre creases between stones and sliding back down.

Scaling the wall wasn’t that hard a task when done slowly and methodically, and soon enough Gorin had reached the first ridge of ornate tiles that indicated the end of the first floor.

Peeking through an upper floor window, he got a glimpse of a fairly plain room (by the standards of the rich) that didn’t immediately appear to have a particular purpose. The thief’s fingertips and toes were growing numb with cold and exertions. He continued on past this floor, past the third floor, and slid onto the roof on his belly. He stopped here to catch his breath and rest his fingers and toes. Perched at the edge of the roof behind a weathered dragon statue, his appearance could have been described as formidable. What couldn’t be seen, though, was the giddy feeling in the pit of his stomach that spread a brief smile across his face.

Gorin would have been content to just sit and watch the crowd below, but he had a job to complete.





This wasn’t a house Gorin had been in before, but it looked the same as nearly every other Noble’s home: It was a big waste of space. Three people occupied three floors and two wings with a handful of servants busy night and day to keep everything clean and working. Gorin had personally lived in a space the size of one of the houses’ bedrooms with twelve other people—and that had been considered roomy lodging with relative privacy.

There were more things in this room than any person could possibly know what to do with. Boxes, pots, chests, glass figurines, silver figurines, gold figurines, rock figures. There were rugs overlapping rugs, contrasting patterns intertwining over a patterned tile floor. There were pictures and more rugs adorning the walls and leaving almost nothing exposed. It was insanity, and Gorin decided that it was his personal duty to remove some of the clutter, and, perhaps, even reorganise some of the figurines into gruesome positions. He saw a stone figurine on one side holding a raised staff (a Mage of some sort) that looked to be about level with the neck of a glass figurine of a little girl on the other side of the shelf. Gorin tucked both of these figurines into his waist sash beside his penknife, lock picks, and GlowStone and set to work.

A good twelve of the gold figurines—only the cool-looking ones, of course, like the dragons and unicorns—and one fairly slim wall-hanging ended up in his bag along with an incense stand and a container of tea.

Gorin shut the window he had used as an entry point and put his ear to the door. The halls appeared to be silent, but the door was also very thick. Gorin eased the door open a crack. The halls were indeed silent. And very, very dark. Not to mention a complete waste of space of you asked Gorin—or anyone in the Lower Quarter for that matter. At least the multitude of halls and passages made for good escape routes and hiding places, not to mention the number of ‘secret’ passages that spider-webbed the larger of the mansions and made getting around just that much easier.

Gorin was still in the hall, kneeling in front of a particularly stubborn lock with his GlowStone emitting just enough light in his hand to produce a faint glow on the door handle, when a feminine giggle cut through the darkness and lamplight lit the passage to Gorin’s right. Gorin touched his fingertips to the top of the palm-sized oval and slid them down to the bottom of the stone. The light dulled at his touch and he slipped the stone back into his sash

“I don’t think you should be up here, M’lord Mathus! The bedrooms and tearooms are up here, M’lord Mathus!” the girl protested half-heartedly as she continued to giggle. A servant, judging by her speech. Gorin slowly slid his lock picks into his sash and stood up. The lamp light was low and guttering, and the couple stopped a few doors away from Gorin, who had hidden behind the large marble statue of … something with a very large head that obviously wasn’t quite human. It was like a perverse reverse-centaur snapping a slightly-stooped salute. Gorin had a sudden urge to mimic the pose but the giggling of the servant girl and the manly grunts of the Nobleman kept him flat against the wall.

“You don’t need to worry so much. You won’t get in trouble, I can guarantee it to you, Lovely Miss.”

“Oh, please,” the ‘Lovely Miss’ giggled, her voice too loud and too close for Gorin’s liking as the two stopped at the last possible door before having to pass his hiding spot. “Call me Gizzela.” Flickering light spilled out over the floor just in front of him, casting a warm amber glow over the hard stone and cherry-red carpeting. The light reached for his toes, hungering to illuminate his flesh and alert the Nobleman to his unsought presence. The light retreated, and Gorin let out a sigh of relief as the two shut themselves within the room.

There were no sounds from behind the door. Gorin slipped his lock picks back out of his waist sash and set about opening the locked door he had been so intent on before he had been interrupted: the one right beside the bedroom or tearoom the couple had entered.

There was little light filtering in through the windows, but it was brighter than it had been in the hall. It was a storeroom. It was almost completely empty. And it was covered in dust. If there was anything valuable in this room, it had been forgotten about long ago. Gorin sneezed into his hand, plugging his nose to stifle the sound.

Bang.

Gorin gave the wall a look and rolled his eyes as the sound was followed by a few more rhythmic bangs. The man made a grunting noise behind the wall, and Gorin decided to just find another room; there probably wasn’t anything worthwhile in this one anyway.

There weren’t anymore locked doors on the third floor, and few things of interest in any of the rooms. Gorin drifted from room to room until he came to a room that looked to be the master bedroom. This was judged solely on the extremely large feather bed up on a ledge on the floor. The floor was covered in white and rusted-red tile. In the center of the room there was a cheery orange rug and a low white table meant for tea surrounded by lush cushions. The thief stretched out on these cushions and set his GlowStone in the center of the table. He then set to work.

The mage and the little girl statue were quickly removed from Gorin’s sash and placed on the table. His knife followed. He listened intently for a moment, braced the little girl on the edge of the table, then struck her head off with the handle of his knife.

Once the figures were arranged in their morbid pose upon the table—a pose that made it appear as if the Mage had decided to whack the flower girls head off with his staff—Gorin held the decapitated head in his fingers and stared at the cheerful features.

He tossed the head to the side and tucked his knife and GlowStone away in his sash. The room was as dark as the moonless night, and the hall was darker.

In his own home, Gorin could see the moon through the unshuttered window, he could see every corner and under every table from on spot in the room, and he could light the entire space with just the dim of his worn-out GlowStone. He didn’t understand these Noble homes at all.

Magnificent homes filled with gardens and doors. Once the magic of the shear mass of the structure had worn off, it just became oppressive and hazardous. There were too many dark places for someone like Gorin to hide and wait.

The thief retraced his steps down the hall and around the corner. A few feet from the room he had used as an entry point, beside the locked storage room, a door was slowly swinging inward on too-thoroughly-oiled hinges. The soft sound of someone trying to walk silently was growing fainter and fainter as someone retreated down the hall. The person wasn’t using a lantern to light his or her way. It didn’t sound like the serving girl, whatsername, so it had to be the Lord (Manus? Mathis? Mathus?).

Gorin was momentarily torn between following the man and checking the room—what kind of respectable Nobleman would walk down an unlit corridor, unsuccessfully attempting to be silent? One who was doing something they shouldn’t be.

The Nobleman was more than likely heading back to the ballroom, so Gorin trailed after him just long enough to confirm this, hanging back in the shadows as Lord Mathimuwhatever emerged into a dimly lit hall. The Nobleman paused to straighten his shirt sleeves and winter vest. And then he did what any man, sneaking around, did when surrounded by darkness. The rich landholder turned back and scanned the shadows despite the fact that, no matter how hard he tried, he would never see through them.

Gorin held his breath as the man’s eyes, cast dark by the lamps, seemed to focus on him. The man gave the impression of a sharp-toothed alligator, his copper hair like a flaming halo surrounding his head, which was the shape of a squished Naga’s egg: vertically too long. Just like the rest of his lanky, thin body.

Gorin held the other man’s gaze. It was one of those paranoid things that happen to everyone: even when someone knows they can’t be seen, they would swear that the other looked them dead in the eye and smiled.