Chapter 1: A Morning's Work

Earthday, month of Wealsun, 591 CY

I winced internally at the faint 'snick' as the sharp little knife I'd hidden in my palm sliced the purse string. Smoothly, I brought the coin pouch, cradled in my left hand, silently this time, behind the rope belt that held my ratty brown breeches up. I always enjoyed bringing a bit more bad luck to priests of Ralishaz, even if they were uncanny.

Luckily for me, the press of the crowd and the curses of a hung-over dockhand who'd nearly stumbled on a turd, half dropping the beer-barrel slung over his shoulder, covered my lack of professionalism. I made my way through the crush of folk with a fluidity and speed born of experience. The river quarter this Earthday was too crowded, and I'd already scored thrice.

Hopefully the take would be enough to satisfy that snake, Kerrel, who 'kept an eye' on the apprentices. The unlucky, who stumbled in without what he considered a full day's earnings from the gleanings to be found by 'fumble fisted and footed' apprentices had little food, and were frequently caned or whipped. Dog had told me that Kerrel had done other things too, but I wasn't sure if I believed him. Oh, I wasn't an innocent, no one in the thieves' guild could be in the district where the brothels, gambling halls and more exotic 'pleasure' places were centered. I just thought Kerrel's kinks were more disgusting. I bet him ten commons that the motherless bastard liked dwarf women, and set a time limit on him proving me wrong. The silly canine obviously had no idea how difficult it was to prove something wrong, I smiled to myself, remembering his utter disgust when he'd had to pay up. But that bet had established Kerrel as the 'dwarf futterer' in the guild, until he half killed Genie when he'd heard her saying something that could have been interpreted as a slur. He was still a dwarf futterer, we just didn't talk about it.

I stopped thinking about that, when I realized that I'd arrived at one of my hiding places. It was nearly mid-morning, cool and somewhat cloudy, so there was plenty of light in the gutter, not that I really needed too much light. But showing too much ability, or 'uncanny' skills, was possibly even more dangerous than screwing up. You usually survived screwing up a few times, after all, or Greyhawk would be a necropolis.

I felt that breeze, and shivered. I wasn't cold - cold never seemed to bother me. But I felt the rain that would drizzle later this afternoon, and stared at the puddle from yesterday's hard rain, trying to see myself. Me? I'm... I don't really know. Whenever I start thinking about it too hard, fear fills me up. I'm definitely not ordinary, though I take great pains to hide it. My memory is perfect, but something sliced it up. I can't remember anything before I was six... and I was six because they told me I was.

A couple of thieves found me, so mother Ghenna said, covered with blood in an alley. She had no idea which thieves or what alley. She did, however, bemoan the blood ruining all that lovely silk, so I might have come from nobility, the rich. Everyone dreams of that, but I was not fool enough to consider that seriously. It didn't fit. I didn't really think I was human, and I knew I was not elven or half elven. I wish! But my ears were perfectly round.

I am twelve now. Almost five foot tall, thin but not cadaverously so, with skin so white that it almost glowed. I had to rub ashes or grease on it to achieve that pinkish white humans have, and always took care to remain at least a bit dirty. My hair was so black that it had blue highlights, and I kept it cropped short with my dagger, and my eyes were painfully blue, according to Rat. He considered himself a poet, and we tried to be kind, when we weren't being cruel. His doggerel actually wasn't so bad, but his attempts at heroic recitations or romance stumbled upon his stubborn resistance to learning proper grammar, never mind spelling. How is my language so clean? The guild makes very sure we take our lessons, and I made sure to learn everything I could. Joren the scribe boasted that more money was made with ink and paper than with sword and spell, and while that was utter nonsense, there was little doubt that such learning was an easier way of making money, and money greased the wheels.

Anyway, I was thinking of my eyes. I liked to think of them as electric blue, as I'd always like to watch thunderstorms from the tops of buildings, daring the swirling winds and the blue lashes of lightning. But truthfully, the lightning was paler than my eyes, so I settled on them as sapphire. Properly expensive, not that I'd ever sell them to any necromancer. No thank you.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a girl. Of the female persuasion. Definitely the stronger sex, when one speaks of intellect. The fact that all the archmages I'd ever heard of were male has nothing to do with it. Absolutely nil relevance.

Though I actually am much stronger than my frail figure suggests, and quicker than anyone else I'd ever seen in action. It was the magic that really set me apart, though, the eldritch arts. Not there was much art to it. When I concentrated, I could sense a certain darkness from people, or more rarely, things. It took me almost too long to realize that darkness meant evil. As in EVIL. A year ago I'd followed an ugly looking young woman who fairly shouted darkness at me, and found out she was a servant of the evil one. Iuz. Don't speak his name, if you value your soul. Joren, the scribe I helped every now and then, said the gods hear us when we speak their names, and so do the great demons. When I expressed a certain unhealthy skepticism, he told me to look up Cort's Ruminations on Theology, and read it all. Never argued with him again, as I never wanted to suffer quite that badly once more. How could anyone be so boring? Even one of Rao's philosophers?

Feeling evil was the least of it. Wizards are supposed to have these big laboratories, fat books and gigantic libraries. I could sense magic, and use it, without anything at all beyond 'wishing it so'. It's not really something I can explain, for how does one put in words what it feels like to grasp the building blocks of the multiverse and twist them to your will? I wasn't really very good at it, yet, despite a lot of practice. The selection of books in the guild's library dealing with magic was quite poor, and all I could really do was shape the power into those old familiar spells. I couldn't wait to muster up a real fireball or a bolt of lightning, though I couldn't really think of a place to practice something like that. I could make myself all silent or invisible, change my appearance, open any lock, grease things up, make myself dirty or clean, change smells, and a few other things. Mastering a new spell took a lot of effort, and using magic always left me a bit weak for a time. I had a terrible nightmare that should people find out, one of the great wizards would snatch me up, slice me open, and mutter to himself, "so, it's all in the liver, right, my sweet?" - always woke up in cold sweat from that one. Even the nightmares in which I was running from all those red skinned, slavering demons weren't quite that bad. Good thing I didn't need a lot of sleep, or food for that matter. Or water.