Quigly shoved the Runner to the center of the room, and the boy looked around at the damaged walls.
They were in the warehouse Tibs used to train his control over the elements, and the walls were scratched, cut, and the parts that had fallen due to rot were improperly covered. What was left of the wooden crates were piled up in a far corner. Jackal assured him that no one would come claiming the building anytime soon.
Tibs sighed as he looked the boy over. He couldn’t be much older than Tibs had been when he’d arrived, and after everything he’d gone through, he looked much younger than Tibs felt.
He was named Drasko and was a rogue, as those fell directly under Tibs’s supervision, and he’d recently graduated to Upsilon, with their assistance, although Tibs didn’t know what they’d provided beyond the armor and weapon. Almost certainly training, but with handling the merchant, the patrols, and his own training, Tibs hadn’t had time to help with that aspect.
Not to say of all the papers he had to read as part of making sure the coins balanced.
When he’d asked Jackal to take over dealing with the merchants’ accounts, the fighter had laughed so hard he’d fallen out of his chair.
Along with the rogue, Quigly, and Tibs, were a handful of other runners, there to witness and make sure the punishment wasn’t so out of scale with the crime. Carina called them the Board of Impartiality.
Tibs hadn’t asked what they had to do with planks, but had had to ask about impartiality. She’d explain it meant they would be fair. Tibs didn’t know that would be true, but he knew too well how vindictive people were, so having someone there to keep things from getting out of hand made sense.
With them was the merchant Drasko has been caught stealing from, Hanna of Souster. Her shop sold a variety of items to put in houses. This was the first time a rogue broke Tibs’s rules.
When Tibs had been informed, Jackal had smirked and pointed out he’d had to knock heads dozens of times already among the fighters to keep them from fighting where they weren’t supposed to.
Tibs was annoyed it had happened at all. His rules were fair, and he didn’t charge for the assistance they provided, so why had he needed to steal?
“Why?” Tibs asked.
“What d’ya mean, why?” Drasko asked, chest puffed out. “Imma rogue. It’s what I do.”
Tibs rubbed his temple. Whoever, because he’d found out it wasn’t something the transportation platform did, but someone, had woven the magic when the last group of Runner was transported to Kragle Rock had done a poor job of it. All of them spoke with an accent that, at times, made it difficult to understand. If sorcerers didn’t demand so many coins, Tibs would have it done again, so they’d speak properly.
“You don’t have to steal.”
“Ya kidding?” he asked with derision.
“Mind your—” Quigly’s arm was up.
“Don’t,” Tibs ordered. “I’m not going to have someone beaten just because he doesn’t know who I am and—”
“I know ya,” the boy said with a snort. “Ya the Hero of the Dungeon. Like ya could save anyone.” He smirked.
“He saved the town,” Quigly stated.
“Don did that,” the Runner countered with, and added, in a tone that said he wasn’t sure that was true, “he helped.”
“I’m still in charge of protecting the merchants.” Tibs wasn’t arguing over who protected the town anymore, with him and Harry doing it officially, and Don claiming some of it as part of being the guild’s go-between. “And who set the rules you have to obey. One of which is the merchants are off limits. We need them for supplies and they need us to sell them what the guild lets us keep. If we don’t work together, it’s going to make the runs tougher.”
Drasko snorted again. “I don’t need you or this. My team does the runs fine.”
Tibs didn’t think Don had put him up to it. They needed each other too much to actively interfere in how the town worked. Don was the Hero of Kragle Rock, the one anyone talked to when they needed the guild to act on something. Don loved how important that made him, even if he complained to Tibs about how his teacher was on his back about demonstrating the good that Corruption could do.
Tibs was still second to him in who the townsfolk considered important, and with the attempt on the dungeon growing ever back in time, some of the newcomers didn’t even know who Tibs was.
Tibs didn’t mind being forgotten.
“If your team doesn’t need the help, why did you accept it?” Tibs asked.
The Runner beamed. “I never turn my back on something that’s given for free.”
“It wasn’t free,” Tibs said. “You were told the rules and obeying them is the price.”
“How am I gonna practice?” Drasko demanded. “I donna just pick pockets. I want stuff.”
“Buy it,” Tibs replied, keeping his mounting annoyance at having to parse what he said to himself. “The dungeon gives you plenty.”
The Runner snorted.
“Have you started on the second floor?” The fearful expression answered him and put the lie to his statement he didn’t need their help. “Once you do, you’ll see the loot gets better. As for training. Break into a noble’s house instead, and take something small. They have so much they won’t notice it.”
“Ya crazy?” Drasko demanded. “They gonna beat me for it.”
“Only if—”
Quigly shook his head.
Tibs sighed. “What happened?”
Stick answered. “We’ve had some of the trainees take on nobles houses before they were ready and… they were still alive when we found them, but we had to go to those clerics that do the rounds of the bad part of town to get them on their feet.”
“Why did they do it if they weren’t ready?”
“Seems there’s this kid running the roofs who gets in and out of noble’s houses without even pausing,” Stick said, with mild reproach. “If that kid can do it, they’ve got to be able to.”
Tibs stared. “Why haven’t I been told? I could have explained to them how long I’ve been doing this.”
The rogue trainer shrugged. “You’ve been busy.”
“I’m never too busy to know that rogues are having problems. They’re my responsibility.” Not that he was sure anyone would have listened to him, but he suspected Stick was quietly undermining Tibs’s position. The rogue hadn’t lied in anything he’d said, but he could be skirting the truth in ways Tibs couldn’t pick up on yet.
He considered Drasko. “Alright. I’ll look for a way to address proper training. You still broke the rules, so you need to be punished.”
“I gave it back,” he complained, glaring at Quigly.
“Then that’s one part of it I don’t have to worry about. I’m not handing you over to Harry, because your team would end up paying too.”
Jackal had told him to have cells made, but Tibs didn’t see a point in them. Those who went through Harry’s cells didn’t come back with a new way to look at what they’d done. Neither had all those from his Street… if they came back. No, they just went back to how they did thing, and tried not to get caught another time.
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Tibs didn’t want to train his rogue in not getting caught—well, not exclusively that. He wanted them to be people the townsfolk trusted, would go to if there was a problem.
He was trying to turn rogues into trustworthy people? He could hear Jackal laughing again. Except, Tibs was simply trying to get the town to trust them, not respect all the laws. He wanted the rogues to see Kragle Rock as their home, not another cell they’d been sent to.
Hanna wore a dress in light purples and blue. Seeing her in the street, Tibs would think her one of the poorer nobles, instead of a successful merchant. She was one of the few merchants left over from when Tibs had arrived. Which was why he knew her name. He was so busy he didn’t have the time to visit the newer shops, get to know the owners the way he felt he should. He certainly didn’t have the time to meet those who were setting their shops at the periphery of Market Place.
Was time an element?
“Hanna, do you need help in your shop?” Maybe seeing the Runners going more than enjoying their rest and training between runs would help the townsfolk see them as being part of the town. It might also get Drasko to feel like he was one of them.
She chuckled. “There’s always a need for help. Most come here for the excitement of the dungeon, not the tedium of shop work.”
“Then, an extra set of hands for…” this was Drasko’s first time breaking the rules—getting caught breaking them, he corrected himself. He hadn’t come across any reports from the merchants about being robbed, and he was sure they would jump on the chance to pay less than they owed. He still wanted this to show he took their security seriously. That he wasn’t the guild.
But he couldn’t be so harsh that Stick could band rogues and Runners against him.
He rubbed his temple again. He was understanding why Jackal knocked heads together when it came to teaching the fighters to follow the rules. So much simpler.
“Would two weeks be helpful?”
“Ya can’t do that,” Drasko protested as she studied him.
“It’s that or Harry’s cell,” Tibs replied, not interested in looking for an alternative that was more acceptable to the rogue, but… “I’ll arrange for you to get supervised training so that when you do break into a noble’s house, you won’t have to worry about getting caught.”
He could sweeten the deal. Except that…
“It means he’d only work in the morning,” Tibs told the merchant. “And if he has a run, he doesn’t have to work that day, or the one after,” he added, remembering how exhausting the runs used to be before he had Purity to help him.
“It would,” she replied, then added to Drasko, “and I’ll pay you a copper for the half day of work.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Whyd’ya do that? How’s it a punishment if I’m getting paid?”
She smiled. “The work will be arduous enough. And I think that the coins will act as an incentive for you not to consider that an opportunity to steal again.”
“That’s eighteen coppers,” Drasko said thoughtfully, and she nodded. “Make it that statue of the rearing horse instead, and we gotta deal. The small one, with the black hooves.”
“That’s an oddly specific request,” she replied with a raised eyebrow.
“That’s the one I was after, the rest was just…” He shrugged. “They were there.”
“All right,” she said after thinking it over. “After two weeks of work for me, you get the statue of Stident Rearing.”
Statues were named? Tibs set that aside. “So, this works for you?”
Hanna nodded.
“How about you?” he asked Drasko when he didn’t answer.
“Me?” he replied, surprised. “Why d’ya care?”
Tibs stifled the sigh. “Because if you’re not happy about this, you’re going to look for ways to get back at me, and I don’t have the time for that.”
He thought about it. “I guess it’s fair. I’d get worse back home.”
“Good, then be at Hanna’s shop tomorrow when it opens. I’ll have someone meet you for your training once you’re done there.” Not Stick.
They left, with Stick hanging back, until Quigly motioned for him to leave.
“Not letting Stick deal with that one?” the fighter asked in a tone that told Tibs he knew the rogue was up to something.
“How dangerous is he becoming?”
Quigly shrugged. “He has aspirations. That’s always trouble. What kind of training are you planning on giving Drasko?”
Tibs glared at the fighter. Did he have any idea how busy he already was? He couldn’t personally see to the training of another Runner. “More than hitting someone on the head.”
Quigly chuckled. “If that’s what you think fighting’s about, I’m not doing a good job of teaching you swordplay.”
“It’s not play,” Tibs replied, having memories of the bruises to support the claim. Which reminded him. “What are the clerics asking as payment?”
“Nothing.”
Tibs narrowed his eyes. It was one thing for a cleric to go around helping the townsfolk, but to be sought and have to work for the runners? Well, he knew of one who’d do it, but she couldn’t be the only one involved. Quigly had made it sound like it had happened multiple times already.
“I swear they aren’t. One’s doing it because Purity demands it, another because he wants the training and got tired of waiting for his turn at the door. One uses it as an excuse to get aways from ‘the old crystals’, her words.” He paused. “I think we’re getting the rebels among the clerics; if there is such a thing.”
He took the fighter at his word so he wouldn’t have to worry about yet another thing. Although, if they needed the training, why weren’t they placed among the teams yet? Could the animosity the siege had created between the clerics and the guild be that bad? And if it was, why still be here at all?
“Do you have any idea how we can train them to break into a noble’s house so they aren’t going to be caught and beaten when they finally try it?” Tibs asked.
“You’re asking a warrior about rogue stuff?”
“I’m asking someone older than I am,” Tibs replied. “Who’s seen more than I have.”
“I’ve seen war, Tibs. No house breaking. But using that, I’d say that whatever else you do, you need to have lookouts to keep an eye outside, and someone competent with them inside to assist if it gets to that. With them having their own guards, we can’t depend on them always keeping in mind we’re Runners. Some might start just vanishing.”
“Lookouts and muscle,” Tibs grumbled. “That sounds a lot like how the gangs did things on my street.”
Quigly shrugged. “People use what works.” He took a step toward the door and stopped. “Of course, an even safer way to let them train is to get the noble, who’s house they’re going to break in, to go along with it.” He grinned. “If you can trust one of them with something like that.”
Tibs snorted. Like there would ever be one noble he trusted with anyone’s safety, let alone a rogue.
Only…
* * * * *
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Mez complained as he led Tibs through a part of the town he’d only seen before from the roofs. The road was paved with flat stones, the houses on each side were pushed far enough back an entire house would fit in on that lawn. Before he’d gotten more air essence, reaching these roofs had been challenging.
The people who noticed them stared.
No, who noticed Tibs.
The guards looked ready to grab him and throw him out back where he came from. Some of them even looked ready to question Mez about why he was associating with someone like Tibs.
Tibs had dressed in the best set of clothing he owned, and he still shouted that he didn’t belong here. By contrast, Mez, in his leather armor emblazoned with red gems, and the orange cape with ash gray border, looked the regal part of a noble, even if Tibs knew he wasn’t a fan of the people they were walking among.
Tibs wasn’t either.
He wanted to be on the roofs, unseen, instead of looked at with disdain. Where he didn’t feel like they silently told him to go back to the Street. That Street he was keeping them out of.
“Please be courteous with her, Tibs,” Mez said as they approached a house that fit the others. That looked as ostentatious, and as a waste of space better used to house more families, as any of the others in this part of the town. “I know nobles aren’t all that great, but she’s one of the better ones.”
Tibs’s reflex was to argue that a noble was a noble and there was nothing redeeming them. But this one…. Tibs hadn’t actively looked for anything bad she did. He hadn’t had to with the other nobles. They were always getting themselves known by causing trouble; demanding things be done their way, even when they were the ones intruding.
She… seemed to be helping.
She’d helped when Tibs had first organized the protection for the merchants against Sebastian. He hadn’t been able to confirm any of them, but there were stories that she had protected some of the poorer neighborhoods during the siege. Before and since, she went around the town, helping in one way or another and she had yet to demand anything in return.
Quigly had said he’d need to trust a noble.
Tibs didn’t know if he could trust her.
Mez stepped up to the opulent door and pulled a cord that caused a bell to ring deep inside the house.
But Tibs was willing to try.
The door opened, and instead of a servant, the woman who answered wore a white shirt and pants, trimmed in red. Her long brown hair was held behind her by braids of gold with blue and green gems set in them. The necklace around her neck was also gold, with a sparkling red gem set in its center.
It was an amulet with as tight a reserve of fire essence as Tibs had ever sensed.
“Mezano!” Amelia exclaimed, then hugged him. “It’s such a pleasure to see you again. I miss our times on the archery field. I hear you’re becoming the accomplished archer.”
“Thank you, my Lady,” he replied with more formality than Tibs expected. “Your assistance was, as always, invaluable in me becoming the archer that I am.”
She looked surprised by the attitude. “I doubt I did that much to help you understand Fire.”
“Oh, you were part of it,” Tibs grumbled without meaning to, remembering that argument.
“That,” Mez said, tone clipped, “is Tibs. I am certain you remember him.” Tibs could see how hard it was for the archer not to turn and glare at him.
“Mister Tibs Light Fingers,” she said with a smile. “It’s good to see you again. I hear you played an important part in ending the Siege. Andia,” she called to the inside, “pour four crystals of wine. We have guests. Please come in.” She motioned for them to enter.
“We won’t be here long enough to warrant refreshment,” Mez objected.
“Nonsense, Mezano. It isn’t often I get to enjoy another Runner’s company anymore. I’m not letting this one pass, and relax. There’s no one inside the house who’ll rate your behavior.”
The statement made the archer visibly uncomfortable.
“I want to get your house broken into,” Tibs stated. Figuring he should end this now.
She stiffened, but her expression turned quizzical instead of angry once she was over her surprise. “You want to rob my house,” she said thoughtfully, then broke into a smile. “Please, tell me more.”