The bag of holding hit Benedict in the face. At the same time, I dove to the side, and a bolt flew forward, missing my vitals and narrowly grazing my ass.

Now, an ass injury may sound like a laughing matter, but I can tell you, it is not. Not when it’s your ass, anyway. It hurt like a mother every time I moved – and not moving wasn’t really option at the moment – and bled worse.

I’d been mad before, but now I was truly pissed. Benedict had always given me the heebie-jeebies, and now that I knew what I was dealing with, I had no second thoughts.

He had to die. And if all I had to get the job done was my fists, well, so be it.

Benedict tossed the bag aside and fumbled with his crossbow. I darted forward. He wouldn’t be able to reload before I reached him. We were too close for that.

But before I’d closed the step and a half between us, his head simply rolled off his shoulders.

I drew up short, too stunned to fully process what I saw. Then the squire’s voice, seeming to come from very close, asked, “Hark. You are injured, good sir!”

“Jack?” I spun around, in time to catch him stepping out of the trees. With one hand, he lowered a cowl from his head. A very familiar cowl.

The same cowl Artemus had given me.

In the other, he held his blade, dripping with dark blood. Blood that looked black in the night.

“What happened? How did you…? And, where did you get my cowl?” Somehow, that seemed of paramount importance in the moment.

If he thought it odd, he rolled with it anyway. “You dropped it as we left the cell. I put it on, to return to you later.”

“Oh.”

“But when I saw you going off with that man, I knew trouble was at hand.”

“You recognized him?”

“No. But I know a blackguard when I see one, as I know a man of good and noble heart.” This said, he offered a subtle bow in my direction.

The kid was delusional, but a lucky guesser anyway.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Of course.” He hesitated, then added, “Kaej.”

“Yeah, you don’t have to use that name.”

“Is it not yours?”

“Eh, it kind of is.”

“Then it is an honor to speak it.”

“Okay. Sure. Knock yourself out.”

“Knock myself…out?” He stared in incomprehension.

“Never mind. It’s a saying.”

“From your homeland?”

I frowned at him. How did he know my homeland wasn’t the Realms?

As if sensing the question in my expression, he shrugged. “Your name is quite unusual. You are quite unusual, Kaej. Furthermore, you do not speak like any Realm-born man that I have ever met.”

“The accent? Oh.” I’d thought I had that more or less mastered. Guess not. “Well, yeah, you got me. I’m not from around these parts.”

“We’re honored that you chose to sojourn with us,” he said, with another little bow.

I shook my head. Even when I liked this kid, he managed to annoy me. “Look, I’m grateful for the uh…” I made a gesture with my hand across my throat. “But let’s not get weird about this, okay?”

“Weird?”

“I mean, I don’t really do friends or whatever.”

“Why?”

“That’s my business,” I said, a bit more sharply than I’d meant. “Look, kid, let’s just keep things professional, yeah? You’ve got a job, I’ve got a job. Let’s leave it there. It’ll be better for both of us.”

“I understand,” he said, though I strongly suspected he did not.

“Good. Okay.” I stooped to retrieve my dagger and bag. “Then let’s go.”

We made our way back to the bucket chains, parting ways to join separate human chains. That was my doing. I felt a bit guilty for how I’d talked to Jack, especially after he’d saved my life.

But the truth was, it was as much for the kid’s good as mine. I wasn’t who he seemed to think. I sure as hell wasn’t some kind of noble knight or hero to look up to. I was a thief, with a past a mile long, and a future that probably wouldn’t be much better.

Provided there was a future at all.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

No. I didn’t want friends, and if they had any kind of brains, friends didn’t want me. Just ask Artemus, I thought, passing bucket after bucket.

The work was fast-paced, but the monotony dulled my brain a little. I heard fire crackling, voices shouting, water sloshing in pails. I heard feet tramping and fire hissing. I smelled smoke and body odor, mine and my neighbors.

But there was nothing complicated about it. Take the bucket. Twist. Pass the bucket. Turn back. Take the next bucket. Over and over.

No dead people. No fuck ups. No unfixable mistakes.

Take. Twist. Pass.

Simple. Easy.

Then the fire was out. I’d been so lost in the rhythm of the bucket chain that I didn’t even notice until people started to shout and cheer.

I was still holding a bucket, and the water sloshed onto my shoes as I paused mid-pivot to look at the smoking ruin of one of the dorms. Smoking, but not flaming.

All around, people cheered and congratulated each other. Someone slapped me on the back, and I staggered a little. More water spilled onto my shoes.

I stared at them, and realized that the earth under my feet had turned to mud. It was too much mud for the spills just now.

It had happened as we put out the fire, water leaking out of each bucket as we passed them along. Probably just a drop or two at a time.

And now, the whole place was mud.

There was probably some sort of parable in that, kind of a reverse to the single pebble that diverts mighty rivers. A platitude, certainly, about the power of many tiny droplets.

But I was too tired to think of it, and in no mood for platitudes anyway.

I’d made it a point not to obsess over that fateful day on the beach, the shiny rock and the choice. I refused to drive myself crazy wondering what the hell I’d been thinking. And as a rule, I was pretty good at avoiding introspection anyway. So I’d never had much trouble.

Right at the moment, though, with the world burning around me, figuratively and literally, I let myself wonder.

What the hell had I been thinking? How drunk had I been to be okay with a message box popping up out of a rock? And who touches strange message boxes anyway?

I could be back home now, working a mind-numbing eight to five, complaining about money and the weather and women with my idiot friends. Maybe they’d be married by now. Hell, maybe I’d be married by now. Maybe I’d even have kids.

Kids.

A family.

Instead, I was caught in a weird political, magical nightmare, with assassins on my tail. And my only allies in the world were a brainwashed kid and a bunch of reclusive monks.

Monks who, if Abbot Tiberius was anything to go by, couldn’t stand me.

I was pulled out of this self-pity party by a tap on the elbow. A scrawny tonsured orc said, “Master Kaej? The abbot requests your presence.”

Preach looked even twitchier than usual when I stepped into the room. He informed me that the fire had been deliberately lit, and then demanded to know if I knew anything about it.

I started off with an indignant, “Of course not,” but then paused. “Actually, I might.”

His eye started to quiver, so I added, “Not because I started it or anything. But the New Thieves Guild, you’ve heard of them?”

“The what?”

“The New Thieves Guild. There was a schism a few years back between them and the original Thieves Guild. Anyway, they’re what you’d call bad apples.”

“Aren’t all thieves ‘bad apples?’”

“I suppose a priest might say that, but it’s a very closed-minded view, really. It doesn’t take their circumstances into account. I mean, if the choice is starvation, or dismemberment by ogres, or stealing, is it really–”

“Forget that I asked. These thieves, I am to take it, are not merely thieving out of necessity?”

“Well, some of them are. It’s not the thieving that makes them bad apples.”

His eye twitched again, but I ignored it.

“It’s how they go about it, and the other stuff they do. And who they target.”

“Who they target?”

“Yeah. So the original Thieves Guild, the real Thieves Guild, has rules about this kind of stuff.”

“How do you know so much about the Thieves Guild?”

“I’m a man who likes to know things.”

He didn’t look convinced, but I rushed on before he could delve any deeper. “Rules like, you can’t steal from working people. You can only rob the fat cats – lords and ladies, tax collectors, priests.”

His eye did the thing again.

“Calm down, Preach. You’re safe. You work for a living. I mean the guys you’re out here getting away from. The ones who live in golden palaces and huge stone edifices, while browbeating their starving parishioners into giving more, more, more.”

For some reason, the twitching only increased.

“Anyway, that’s only one rule. There are others. You can’t hurt people when you rob them. You can’t pick fights with their guards. You can’t kill anyone.”

“How benevolent.”

“It’s not about being benevolent. It’s about a code of conduct. And those guys – they’d never ally with the Sorcerer. But the New Thieves Guild isn’t like that. They go where the money is, period, and they don’t care who you are or how they get it.”

“Fascinating. But what does this have to do with the fire in my dormitories?”

“The thing is, I met one of them on the grounds. Not met, more like, ran into. I think he was looking for me. He wanted the scepter.”

“You didn’t tell him where it was?” he demanded.

I decided to skip a direct answer, as I figured that wouldn’t be good for Preach’s blood pressure, and go right to the salient point. “He’s a little too dead to care.”

“You killed him?”

“Well, it was that or be killed by him.”

Preach sank into a seat, murmuring something about bloodshed on hallowed ground.

“If it’s any comfort, he was a bad dude. Like, a really bad dude. You remember Rebecca Flannery?” He stared blankly. “A lady’s maid. That part’s not relevant. Point is, she was murdered – by the guy we killed, Benedict. And I don’t mean throat cut. He was a butcher, and he liked to hurt people, and animals.”

“We?” Preach repeated. “You mean, Squire Alf was with you?”

“Well yeah. But, if you’re going to be mad at anyone, don’t blame the kid. I was going to kill him either way, on my own or not.”

Preach’s eye quivered, and he said, “I shall need to speak to him, but in a moment. For now, explain to me what this Benedict has to do with the fire.”

“It’s just a hunch. But I think he might have set it.”

“Why?”

“Because he was looking for me. I think he set the fire to get us all out of bed, and create a distraction. So he could get me outside and away from everyone without anyone noticing. And the thing is, he said the guild is working for the Sorcerer. That’s why he was here.”

“Then the enemy knows where the weapon may be found.”

A frisson of excitement shot up my spine. For a fraction of a second, Preach’s gravelly tone and somewhat dramatic word choice put me in mind of Gandalf. A tonsured, soot-covered Gandalf, but Gandalf all the same.

Then, his gaze rested on me, and his eye twitched. And the spell was broken.

“You must have been lax in covering your tracks for them to find you so quickly.”

“I wasn’t,” I protested. “They guessed I’d come here, because – well, it’d be the right thing to do.”

A bushy gray eyebrow climbed a solid two centimeters up his forehead.

“Yeah, I don’t understand it either. But that’s what he said.” For whatever reason, Constantine seemed to take it into his head that I was one of the good guys. Well, more fool him.

“I see. Well, you have given me some food for thought, Master Kaej. Now I must consult with the squire. And you should try to get some rest. You will require your strength come morning.”

“Then, you have a plan?”

“I do. No, do not ask. You will know all in the morning. For now, send in Squire Alf, and rest yourself.” His nose twitched this time, rather than his eye. “And perhaps, speak to Brother Aethelthorn about finding a bath.”