The Thieves’ Guild

Chapter Nineteen

Luckily, Cael found the privy unoccupied, though the scent of lingering pipe smoke proved that it had only recently been vacated. He pulled himself up through the hole, reentering the privy by way of a small round opening primarily meant as an exit. The privy’s door had been replaced, since it was so rudely pummeled into kindling by Captain Alynthia’s thugs, by a stout new one of planed pine stained a deep burgundy red. Even the doughty little bolt that allowed him time to escape had been replaced with a shining copper latch.

Cael clambered free and quickly hooked the latch to prevent anyone from barging in unexpectedly. He sat back and relaxed for a moment, pondering his next move. His clothes were in terrible shape. He’d been wearing the same outfit for the better part of two months. He could not go about much longer dressed like this, he thought with a rueful smile.

Before he left the privy, he turned to the wall and placed his hand against its stained wood. He spoke no word, but from beneath his outstretched palm there grew a bar of red light, spreading above and below, like a door opening onto a brightly lit room. Where the red bar glowed, the wall began to bulge outwards until Cael’s ironwood staff, sheathed in reddish fire, burst free of the wall. Where it had been, there was neither sign nor mark upon the wall. Cael sighed and clutched it to his chest like an old friend. He unlatched the door and opened it.

The sharp end of a stiletto against his throat stopped him before he’d taken a step.

“Your arm must be long indeed to have fished that staff from the sewers,” Alynthia said with a laugh from the other end of the blade.

She stood blocking the door, wearing a loose blouse of palest green silk and violet trousers bound about her hips by a wide belt and tucked into knee-high black leather boots. Swordsman’s gauntlets of double-stitched leather protected her hands and completed her costume of dashing swashbuckler.

Her face grew serious. “There are agents of the Dark Knights watching this place, just as I foretold,” she said. “It is good that you came by way of the sewers instead.” She returned the stiletto to its sheath. “You look a mess, and you smell like a pig wallow. Phew!” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “We have a long evening ahead, you and I, but first you need a bath! I know just the place, but first let us get you something to disguise your face and those elven ears. Your room, I seem to recall, is up those stairs?”

She stepped back to allow Cael to pass, all the while pinching her nostrils. As Cael led the way up the stairs and to his room, his staff thumped rhythmically against the floor.

“Are you limping again?” Alynthia asked in muffled tones.

“I am in disguise,” Cael grandiloquently pronounced. “The limp allows me to smuggle an extraordinary weapon through the gates of the city. Besides, no one suspects a cripple of such deeds as I have accomplished in my career.”

“Well, it’s silly and altogether amateurish,” Alynthia said. “You’ll have to stop relying on such an outmoded weapon. We can show you ways to slip a dagger or sword past the guards.”

“I will not abandon my staff,” Cael said. He paused before the door of his room and fingered his pockets for the door key. “It was given me by my shalifi.”

A low whistle from down the hall drew their attention. An old beggar lay in the corner under a heap of rubbish, but nothing else could account for the noise. Cael gripped his staff, but Alynthia merely smiled. “It’s only Mancred,” she whispered.

Slowly, the old thief rose from his resting place and shuffled toward them, taking care to not move too quickly and give away his disguise. When Cael turned back to the door, and with his staff smashed the butt against the doorknob to snap the lock, Mancred threw aside all caution and rushed at them both, wildly waving his arms.

The door creaked open as the elderly thief came running up.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alynthia asked, staring around to make sure no one had seen the odd incident.

“There was a glyph of warding on that door, as sure as I am standing here,” Mancred answered. “I waited here to warn you. I could not dispel it.”

The three thieves entered Cael’s bedroom and cautiously shut the door behind them. They found things just as they had been left. Even the bed was still lying on its side. Mancred continued to scratch his balding pate in puzzlement. “I can’t understand why the glyph didn’t strike him when he opened the door,” he said.

“It was never a good lock,” Cael said. “I’ve opened it that way many times.”

“But this time you should have been stunned by the magical glyph. It was placed there for that purpose,” Mancred answered.

“By who?” Cael asked as he righted his bed and pushed it back against the wall. He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled his tattered shirt over his head, tossing it into a corner.

“By the Dark Knights. They set a trap for you, Blood Eyes,” Alynthia said with a laugh.

Several weeks had passed, but the crimson stain to the whites of the elf’s eyes had only begun to fade in the past few days, allowing him to see things without having to peer through a red haze.

Though she laughed at him, Alynthia could not help but admire how finely muscled was his upper body. His sides still bore the scars of the behir’s claws, though Varia’s healing magic had helped speed his recovery.

Cael glanced around the room, choosing a tunic from his available clothes, and slipped it over his head.

“May I see your staff?” Mancred asked suddenly.

Cael handed it over with obvious reluctance. “I only want to examine it for a moment,” the old thief said. He took it nearer the window to get a better light to see by.

Alynthia insisted, “A staff is no weapon for a thief.”

“It serves me well,” Cael said, refraining from any further explanation.

After a moment, Mancred handed it back, shaking his head. “It seems ordinary enough,” he said, “but I sense it has unusual powers.” He nodded to Alynthia, who did her best to look unimpressed.

“Anyway, the guards of the city know me as a cripple,” Cael continued as he turned back to the Guild Captain. “I cannot suddenly appear on the streets healed of my injury.”

“What injury?”

“I was trampled by the horse of a Solamnic Knight,” Cael said, displaying his twisted ankle. He immediately straightened it, and then wiggled it around to show its flexibility. “Of course, it healed some years ago, but the Dark Knights like the story. It makes them think I am sympathetic to them.”

“They don’t think so anymore. Isn’t it obvious that they have orders to arrest you?” Alynthia argued.

Cael shrugged and pulled his wet, torn boots from his feet. “Hand me those brown boots from the wardrobe,” he said.

“Who did you offend? It must have been someone very powerful,” Alynthia said thoughtfully as she retrieved his boots. Then, realizing what she was doing, she threw the boots on the floor just out of Cael’s reach. “Get your own boots!” she snarled.