Reyn had stopped seconds before the slap, hoping that the fight wouldn’t escalate. He could only stand there and watch as Natali slapped Seff in the face. Reyn did not know what to say.

Seff turned to Natali as the slap happened, and he only glared at her as she too glared at him.

“I was kidding. And that wasn’t very nice, Natali,” Seff said.

“You were serious, and you know it, Seff. I don’t think that’s what friends think of each other, so I think I’m going home for tonight. You guys can figure out everything on your own. Have fun,” Natali said while turning around.

“Wait, Natali,” Reyn said, “I’m sure he was kidding.”

Natali turned back to Reyn. She pointed at Seff. “He wasn’t kidding, Reyn, and you need to learn when people are serious and not serious. This joker thinks he’s a meteor sent from the gods, and he’s not. He’s just another rogue sorcerer.” Natali walked to Reyn and put her arm around him, positioning him so they both faced Seff.

With that, Natali turned and walked down the cobblestone road.

“Hey, Natali,” Reyn said, “He didn’t—well, bye.” He knew he could have said something else. However, the words didn’t come to his mind. Natali’s words reverberated too well through his mind, distracting it every time he tried to form a thought. He watched her disappear off into the fog. He glanced back at Seff.

Seff was running away. He looked back at Natali. He now wondered if he should walk back with Natali, siding with her. Staring at a Jum-Jum’s Jingles sign, he thought about the potential benefits of going with her. Certainly, she would like him more, but then Seff would be angry that he had left, too. Without him, he might not be able to get through the iron door.

He looked closer into the store’s window. An azr instrument lay displayed right in front. His dad had always wanted a high quality azr—a native drum made from a specific type of seal hide.

After laying bricks all day, Reyn supposed that beating on a drum could alleviate some of the frustration that he might have, but he had never asked his father why he would have liked an azr. Reyn was sure there might be an intriguing story behind why he pined for one, but now perhaps—right now—Reyn could procure one. He could break right into that store and, within seconds, be holding one.

He wondered if his father would appreciate the gift or whether he would start asking questions about where he had bought it from. Probably the latter. His father liked asking the details so he could later tell a story about it.

“Hey, you there!” shouted a constable down the road.

Reyn jumped almost a foot in surprise, exclaiming softly. He turned to see the constable running up the slight hill towards him with his lantern held high and his whistle in his mouth.

Reyn started walking towards the constable who let the whistle drop onto his chest. When he got close, the constable said, “What are you doing out here?”

“I was walking around looking at the storefronts, looking at the sky and admiring the city at night.”

“Admiring the city at night? This isn’t night, this is past midnight. Have you been strolling the streets all night?”

“Ah, no, I—uh,” Reyn looked for any sign of Seff, but he was gone. “I had trouble sleeping, and my window was open so I could feel the cool breeze outside, and I felt hot under the covers and ornery because I couldn’t sleep, so I just had to get out. Had to. Ever feel like that?”

“You had your window open tonight? It’s below freezing outside.”

“Well, yes, I did. Tonight I guess I was feeling a bit stir crazy. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Well, why don’t you just go back to sleep, as I’m sure you’ve been walking enough for tonight. That reminds me, why were you staring at the shop up there?”

“My dad always wanted an azr, and I was wondering when this shop opened. Then I started thinking about the flute which I played when I was younger and how much better a good flute might sound compared to a bad flute—which is what I had and—”

“Fine, fine, you just go home. I don’t want to see you out here again tonight. Goodnight, goodbye.”

Reyn headed down the street where Natali had disappeared some moments before. He thought it was sad that Seff would be alone now. However, he really couldn’t take the risk of getting caught again.

He was sure there’d be a record of the constable stopping a young man on the same night a store was robbed, but surely there would be others stopped that same night and added to the list. Fortunately, the constable hadn’t asked his name.

As he walked down the road, he could hear the constable’s footsteps fade. He thought of two options—no three options. He could now trace back to the store going the way that the trio had originally planned. Or, he could find where Natali had gone and join her in a nice quiet conversation without Seff’s interference—‘tempting’, as Seff himself would say, Reyn thought. Or he could just go back home and go to sleep.

The choices rolled around in Reyn’s head. He couldn’t quite decide what to do until he realized that Natali—being angry—had probably run back home so she couldn’t possibly be missed by her family. That, and it could be very possible that Seff was already inside the barn working on the doors. Without Natali or Seff, he had no idea how to get inside the barn, and he needed to get off the streets.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

With that, he thought over once more how he could possibly catch up to Natali and dismissed it. He started back home, taking a left and not a right at the fork in the road. He hoped Seff would succeed.

* * *

Seff couldn’t believe that he had encouraged the move to this frozen place to hide Reyn. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. His fingers felt numb with cold, and the only thing saving them was an occasional fireball he would cast to warm them.

He had wanted someplace far enough away as to make it hard for the authorities or assassins to track them down. However, this wintery night pushed him to realize just how cold it was this far north.

Standing on the street, outside a tall, wrought-iron fence, he examined the lock into Goff’s courtyard. It was entirely frosted over.

He couldn’t believe that he’d have to light up his sorcery in the middle of the road here, with a hundred feet on one end visible and nearly half a mile visible on the other. He could only imagine if a constable saw him lighting up this portion of the street with a nice fireball, the amount of alarm and whistling that would ensue.

Knowing that the constables carried two whistles with them didn’t make Seff feel any better. He knew what the two whistles were for. One was for petty matters that the constable wanted help with, but then the second—the noise of which carried farther—signaled trouble that required a large amount of backup.

Some constables lived to hear that second whistle, to go running to help their comrade-in-need. Ignoring the risk he knew he was taking, Seff lit up the lock, but only after studying the road in both directions.

The ice dripped off the lock almost instantly as it heated up.

Seff ended the fireball, glancing behind him, checking both ways. He saw no lights and breathed a sigh of relief. He smiled, turned his head back to the lock, which now dripped with a soft pitter-patter on the stones below.

Pulling out his picks, Seff quickly picked the heated lock and pulled the gate open as he glanced once more behind him. He had hoped Reyn would be walking up to him now, but he knew that Reyn had been stopped. He had waited and heard the constable shout. Hopefully Reyn had been able to tell a good story.

He closed the gate and went to the barn door, heated that lock slower and more carefully as to not catch the wood on fire, picked it, and went inside. He looked for the opening of the secret ramp and found it under some scattered hay. He pulled the trapdoor back and stepped into the gloom, lit up a nice fireball on his hand for light, and continued on.

At a steady downward angle, the ramp led Seff to an iron door. The passageway was lined by worn and scratched boards, while the floor was sandy with bits of scattered hay.

Seff began casting runes and concentrating on the middle of the door, locking his eyes on it intensely. Moments passed by with no noticeable effect. He knew it would not be immediate. The first minute slipped by, with others soon following. The color change had been imperceptible at first, but the door had started glowing a faint red.

The air around Seff grew colder even as the iron got hotter. More time passed as Seff stacked the melting spells one on top of each other—all of them heating the iron from the air bordering it. As he cast each spell, he imagined a different item in a cabin. Stove, stovepipe, table, chair 1, and chair 2, etc. He needed to keep track of each spell in his mind, and a visual representation was one of the techniques to do so.

The iron door’s edge lightened to a straw color then started to darken. It was taking much longer than Seff had thought it would. Dawn would break soon. He ended the spell stacks and kicked the hot iron section, hoping it would budge or bend. Nothing. Knowing he only had an hour left before Goff’s opened, he gave up. He exited quietly, setting everything back to the way he remembered it.

He walked to the edge of town, near the docks, to the secondary import office—the one that Natali, Reyn and he were all supposed to rob after taking care of Goff’s. Stars peeked out from the forest canopy as Seff reached the import office.

Located where the forest edge met the dock, the small building looked vulnerable to Seff. He eyed the double front doors, eight six-pane windows, and gable roof. Looking closer, he saw the building was painted a drab green. Such ugly paint, he thought, walking up to the window. He cut part of the glass out, unlocked and opened it.

When he climbed through, he realized he had made a mistake. A giant dog stood before him, growling.

Seff guessed that the dog was a hundred and fifty pounds with a monstrous head. With his eyes on the dog, he lost concentration and just stared back. Nearly all his prepared spells slipped his mind. The dog tensed only a foot away from him with its giant eyes boring into him.

Seff thought, at that moment, of only one word: Natali. The word meant so much: Natali, you didn’t tell me about the dog keeping watch in the import office; Natali, you didn’t tell me you had a raging temper that would leave our group split; Natali, where are you to help with this giant mongrel even as a running distraction; Natali, why’d you get so angry—I really was mostly joking; Natali, this dog is huge.

The dog barked, shaking the floor. It stepped forward, growling ever louder. The hound’s breath now warmed the outside of Seff’s shirt, and he knew the hound could have opened its jaws and disemboweled him all within a moment. He redoubled his efforts to implement his father’s advice: always keep the wand’s first spell on his mind, even in duress or surprise.

Seff said the lightning bolt’s last rune, and cast a white-hot flash of lightning, searing an image of the storage room with a growling, drooling guard hound into his mind.

Seff jumped out the window, without even looking to see if the bolt had brought down the beast. His hands shook as he cast the few runes required for another lightning bolt spell. He was not sure that one spell, or any spell, could be potent enough to bring down such a hound. He had never fought a beast before.

Looking around to ensure no one had been alerted by the sound or light, he cautiously climbed back in when he was ready.

The dog was dead; everything dark. He felt bad for the hound. It was only doing what it was trained to do. A tear formed in one eye. Looking at its peaceful form, he rubbed its monstrous head and left it, in search of loot. He vowed to never forget Natali’s temper and treachery, as he blamed her for how this evening had gone. Even being careful, even obtaining inside information, he had almost died.

Seff found various liquor bottles, mostly empty. He took a full one from a tray. After much work, he obtained four sealed bags holding coins from a locked iron door closet—which now had a very melted padlock. By stringing the bags together, Seff could rest them on his shoulders, leaving a hand free for the liquor.

On the way out, he looked at the dog again. He put the bags and liquor bottle down.

“I’m sorry, boy,” he paused for a moment to stroke the thick fur. “Sorry.” It had only been doing what it had been trained to do. His mind flashed to the people who he had killed. Many had only done what they did every day… Seff cut off his train of thought. Better not to think about that. Better to block those moments out. He turned his thoughts to the cold, miserable weather and what was just ahead of him. The window.

His mind, ignoring his desires, flashed again to the people. So many faces. So much tragedy. But most of it was inevitable. Most, not his fault. Not his fault. Just… circumstances. Or fate.

With that last thought, Seff climbed out with the bags and started home. The liquor stood forgotten next to the dog’s head.

He hoped Reyn and Natali had made it home safely. He wondered how much the coins would be worth.