Lying got you killed. Everyone knew that.

Jachai mulled over the sobering thought for about five seconds, according to his inner clock, and then shrugged. He was prepared to lie his way to the top regardless. Close brushes with death had never stopped him before, so why worry now?

Jachai perched on the top of an eight-sided wall at the corner of the city, his gangly legs dangling over the outside of the building. He lounged on his makeshift throne, his back against a blue cement dome, soaking up the warmth of the vibrant afternoon sun. He surveyed the city of Esoptron, named for the original Esoptron Shrine. The tangle of streets spread out before him while he charted out his path to victory. What I wouldn’t give for the illusory magic of the fae, he thought, waggling his long, dexterous fingers over the distant streets as though annotating an invisible map. Imagine seeing the glowing pathways in his mind, overlaid across reality?

Dangerous thoughts. Heretical.

He drew in a breath, then let it out slowly in a soft whistle between the gap in his two front teeth. Yep. Lying was dangerous, but truth could hurt far worse than death; just ask a faen vanguard scout caught during a Glimmer ceremony.

Stretching the truth without stooping to the level of the Deceivers was as dangerous as clutching a pit viper to his chest. Yet it carried the same heart-pounding allure as hanging out the side of a carriage strapped together with twine as it rattled down a mountainside switchback road at breakneck speed with a stolen necklace in hand—one of his most cherished memories.

Recalling that escapade always made him chuckle. Seeing how far he could bend truth in his favor before he felt the fuzzing, fraying sensation of the righteous world’s displeasure was his second favorite pastime.

First favorite, chief among all his varied and, according to his mother, utterly useless pastimes? Lifting loot from safes and strongboxes whose smug owners thought them impossible to crack.

“It’s all a matter of perspective.” He tapped a finger to his temple, nodding at his own hard-won wisdom. That’s why all the successful people in life used the truth itself to conceal their sordid intentions, consequences be damned.

Jachai loved the game of tiptoeing along the knife’s edge separating fact and fiction as much as anyone, but an unfortunate reality remained: the game did not love him back. A quarter century into his life, and he had little to show for it other than his pickpocketing and lockpicking.

Jachai puffed out his cheeks and sighed explosively. He was still chasing after success and grasping only the wind. That struck him as entirely unfair, since he could obfuscate with the best of them. Or, at least, that’s what he was counting on.

He kicked his feet off from his narrow seat, flipped over onto his belly, and grabbed onto the edge of the wall. Lowering himself down backward until his long arms could reach no further, he glanced at the ground, gauging the drop. Only about seven or eight feet; he let go, falling to the ground below, where he landed with bent knees to absorb the impact. Two quick pats to dust himself off, and he set off again, jogging through town to set up operations.

T-minus twenty minutes, if the clock in Jachai’s head was anything to go by. Most days, it was more reliable than a real time piece, drawing on his meager magic to keep him apprised of the passage of time. Most days didn’t have stakes like today, though, and when he got nervous, the hands of time went haywire.

Today was his big break. He knew it in his bones. That had him all jumbled up inside. He licked his cracked lips and let out a soft whistle, hating that it sounded as half-hearted as he felt. No more time for second-guessing. He’d done his research, planned out his steps meticulously, and now it was high time to reap the rewards.

A compulsive glance over his left shoulder revealed his slight error. He checked the big brass clock in the town square for what must have been the third time that afternoon, craning his neck to see the time.

Ah. Eighteen minutes until Glimmer.

He was off by an innocent-seeming two minutes, but that meant cutting things too close. Generous estimations were far worse than stingy ones in this line of work. Thinking you had more time than you did to get in and get out—that’s how jobs went pear-shaped. He recalibrated his golden mental timer, watching the numbers tick in synchronicity with the real clock for a beat before he further adjusted the time down to an even fifteen minutes. Better to count on a quarter hour and leave a little room for error.

“Nerves. Can’t let ‘em get to me,” Jachai muttered. He smacked his cheeks, building up his courage. Jachai rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and bounced on the balls of his feet, continuing to warm up for his act. He flashed his most charming smile at no one at all, grinning at the way his eyes crinkled, and marched around the corner for his date with destiny.

Right on cue, Jachai spied the head of the Mirror Guild, master Keo. A tall man with a lean face sporting a five o’clock shadow so perfect that it had to be intentionally curated, Keo strode about as though he owned the town, which wasn’t far off from the truth.

There was that word again. Truth. Jachai grinned. Good thing he thrived in the grayscale margins. Blurring the lines meant opportunity.

A gold-threaded vest accentuated Keo’s slim frame, making him look like a walking bit of jewelry. He strutted toward Jachai on the wide sidewalk, on his way to his station at the Esoptron Shrine. He took his duty to initiate the weekly Glimmer ceremony seriously. As usual, Keo barely seemed to notice Jachai until the younger man waved more enthusiastically and caught the sunlight with his alethial, a handheld portable mirror used for revealing the truth. He angled the alethial just so, reflecting it at Keo’s face.

“Guildmaster Keo! I see good fortune in your future.”

Keo flinched away from the dazzling burst of sunlight, blinking. Jachai reached out a hand to steady Keo just as he tripped over an unfortunate crack in the pavement—he’d chosen his ambush spot perfectly, after all. Apologizing profusely for his clumsiness, Jachai tucked away his alethial and grabbed hold of Keo to provide decidedly unwanted support.

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A moment later, Keo righted himself and nodded tightly in thanks, disentangling himself from Jachai as though worried about contamination. “True sight be yours, Jachai.”

The Guildmaster delivered the formal greeting with weary resignation and hurried on his way. He seemed flustered, and barely remembered to lift his own alethial in acknowledgement, as was customary. He didn’t even pause to ask how his former student was doing. Unspoken, but nonetheless unmistakable in the Guildmaster’s wake, lingered his faint disappointment that Jachai always forgot the more traditional words of his people.

Perhaps several years ago, the disapproval would have stung. Today? Well, it just made the job all the sweeter. Jachai loved proving his doubters wrong. Profiting off them at the same time was simply poetic justice.

Besides, he’d done as expected of him and told the truth, as he saw it. Good fortune was in Keo’s future, although Jachai had conveniently left out that it wasn’t the Guildmaster’s good fortune that Jachai foresaw, but his own.

=+=

Five minutes later on the dot, the world plunged into thick darkness. The moon swallowed up the sun, consuming it like a Devourer beast. Wine-dark, the gathering storm clouds of an early evening squall cut off the precious light. Jachai rubbed his hands together in anticipation; today was unfolding just as he’d read in the celestial predictions buried in the far back of a dogeared old farmer’s almanac his Uncle Emmer kept around.

Still, witnessing an eclipse in the flesh was worlds different from reading about it. His heart thudded in his chest, and his stomach fluttered like hummingbirds were trying to escape. The day had turned to night in the blink of an eye.

Jachai gulped at the unnatural gloom, unnerved by the prospect of attracting spawns. Most citizens of Esoptron shied away from unlit areas, even though they all carried alethials. Dying tended to be hazardous to one’s health, or so he’d heard.

“Steady,” he admonished himself. Years of practice ducking into shadows gave Jachai courage; he had braved the dark before and come out unscathed. So why worry about the sun disappearing?

He clenched his fists and darted down a narrow alley behind a shop adjacent to the imposing, black stone edifice of the Mirror Guild Hall, trusting his alethial to keep away any Deceivers lurking in the murky darkness. This deep in the center of a human city, the tiny fae beasts would have to be mad to try their luck, even in the sudden absence of sunlight, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

Good thing I didn’t bring Lachlan this time around, Jachai thought as he ran the last few blocks to the Guild Hall, not daring to voice his thoughts aloud. On a delicate job like this, stealth mattered. All too often, Lachlan fixated on ridiculous details, like the morality of lifting treasures from people who could obviously afford to lose them. Jachai’s sometimes-best-friend, sometimes-adversary, Lachlan usually pestered him about whether or not it was too late to back out of their plans.

Lachlan worried too much.

He also had a real job.

. . . And real friends, come to think of it.

Jachai tried not to hold it against him.

Gritting his teeth, Jachai shoved the sudden surge of envy aside. He scurried beneath a half-open window and flattened himself against the wall, straining to listen for anyone inside the shop. Voices drifted out from the window; he swore at his rotten luck.

“Blasted eclipse,” someone grumbled. “Hope it doesn’t undo all the good work of Glimmer. We’ve been making progress on the war front! Just you watch, we’ll be back to curfews and short rations before you know it.”

A low snort. “According to you, we’ve been ‘making progress’ for two decades.”

“I swear it’s getting better!”

“I don’t see you putting down your alethial.”

“Doesn’t hurt to be prudent.”

“Whatever you say. Hey, help me with this box. Need to haul some potatoes to the guild hall for the feast tonight. For such a scrawny man, the guild master sure can pack it in.”

Their conversation faded, giving way to the scrape of a wooden box and the dull thud of footfalls that signaled their departure. Only a few seconds until they returned to the room, Jachai reckoned, but for now he trusted the all clear.

He shimmied up a drain pipe that passed right by the room above and slipped through the open window, glad for his slender frame. His mother once called him “more skeletal than an alley cat,” all the while chiding him over not eating more of her garlic cheese bread. He’d sulked as a child, resenting the description right up until he learned how good he was at infiltrating places. Turned out that he had real talent for squeezing into the homes of the wealthy and liberating their goods. Now he bore the alley cat appellation with pride.

“Liberating” sounded nicer than stealing, he thought as he crouched down on the other side of the window, scoping out the room for danger. Either way, Jachai didn't care much about equivocation. He only had one goal: he had his sights set on striking it rich himself.

Satisfied the room was clear, he dashed to the doorway, sticking his head out into the hallway and checking both directions. No one was around. He turned to the right, jogged down two flights of stairs, and made his way down to the basement level. If the intel he’d paid for was any good, then the lower storage rooms led to a tunnel that connected the goods and victuals shop he’d just infiltrated with the Mirror Guild’s main hall. From there, it was a simple hop, skip, and a jump to the vault where the secrets were kept. If he knew anything about Keo, then the Guild’s vault was locked down tight.

That had never stopped Jachai before.

Jachai wove his way between shelves and crates, keeping a sharp eye out for workers, but he needn’t have bothered. Few people dared to venture into dark places. If they were down here, they’d come with lanterns lit and mirrors out. He rolled his eyes. Cowards, the lot of ‘em. What good did it do, carrying around personal alethials, if you still acted afraid?

Emboldened by his sudden insight, Jachai gave up creeping about like a rat. He stalked down the center of the room, chest puffed out, shoulders thrown back, as proud as a lion on the prowl. At the other end of the long storage chamber, double-doors led to the tunnel, exactly as the reports he’d bought had indicated. Beyond, he was certain he’d find the intake room for the guild hall. And beyond that, the vaults.

Time was running out. Reflexively, Jachai drew on his paltry magical talent, checking his mental timepiece. He’d managed to keep his agitation to a minimum, so he hadn’t disrupted the clock again. Ten minutes left. He needed to be in and out before Glimmer burned away the inky night and ruined his cover.

Thankfully, the clock in his head was back to ticking merrily along, marking each passing seconds with confident precision. Pre-job jitters had fled, replaced by the gleaming vision of his prize: Keo’s secret method for creating perfect mirrors.

It wasn’t right for one man to hoard that kind of knowledge and wealth—at least, not when that man was someone other than Jachai. That was an injustice he intended to remedy today, come ravening beast or consecrated light. He grinned in the dim light of the tunnel, lifting up his alethial just so he could admire the predatory glint to his crooked smile.

By the time Keo figured out what had hit him, Jachai would be long gone. He patted the crude map in his breast pocket. He’d paid a pretty penny for the route to the next sanctuary city, but his investment would pay off many times over once he set up shop producing high-quality alethials. All he had to do was survive the wilderness. How hard could it be?