1.3

Adelyne glared at the enormous pile of parchment that occupied her desk.

How did she end up with a desk?

Why did she have reports to read?

Where had Adelyne gone wrong?

Old Man Ginter had been right all along, she was just a stupid girl and she thought far too much after she acted then before.

And for that foolishness her punishment was a desk and hillocks upon mountains of parchment.

Why was Adelyne, some random street rat of a child, Who lived by what she could slip into her hands or cut off the waist of her marks, drowning in reports!?

She had what felt like an entire gang or whatever you called a whole lot of pigs piled up on her desk in ink filled parchment! Why was she needed to oversee all of this!? Oh right, that was because she was the head of the Orphans, Infirm, Cripples and other Assorted Beggars Guild.

She wanted to throttle the girl that had insisted to her lady that they needed a ‘thieves guild’.

Especially because that girl was named Adelyne!

Jewel had listened to her.

Had heard what she meant.

The orphans, beggars and others had no voice in the halls of the judges and law. They had no say under the bloody countess. Adelyne had been able to wrangle and bully the guilds and their various teams of violent men (and sometimes women).

It was by definition that you only got a voice if you were lucky enough to be apprenticed and thus under the auspices of your master and their guild.

Jewel had listened to Adelyne’s plea that the children and old that had to either beg, snatch or trade a day’s hard labor for another night alive needed a voice. That there was value in the places they could go, the things they could see and the word they could spread.

The Countess of Viznove. One of the richest people Adelyne personally knew had listened to a fool girl drunk on a wizard’s boon in power.

A dragon had listened and heard the plight of the poorest of her subjects.

And for the crime of daring to overturn the natural order of the world. Where the poor starved and scraped in the alleys?

Adelyne’s punishment was to die buried in the dried and stretched skins of a pig.

Her corpse would be found years hence, with a quill clenched in her skeletal hand.

Blood signing the last document because the ink had run dry.

“When I shared this spell with you. I never would have guessed you’d use it for-”

A striped cat in a red hat with eyes that glittered with the shine of brass coins placed a paw in the way of her quill. The interruption made her freeze in terror at the thought of blotting the document.

If she spoiled this receipt-

They would have to send for a replacement!

The cat squinted down at the document he had stopped her from signing.

“Taxes”

Adelyne could taste the disdain in his tone. It was the one that every merchant, every working man and woman who walked the proper streets of gate town spat.

The way they used to speak of the old Countess Bathory.

But not anymore.

No, that tone was never said openly. Adelyne had ears on every street. Eyes in every tavern. Boys and girls, men and women, young and old ever so gratefully put up in comfortable rooms and settled in food and firewood.

For the too young or old other guild members could be arranged to see that their fires were lit in winter. That their windows were shuttered from storms, that they ate enough.

All of that for the cheap price of a due in rumors heard, sights seen and word carried.

Or service to help their fellows in turn.

All of it however was fueled by silver that had to be tallied by Adelyne and the growing army of ‘beggar scribes’. Most of them orphans that had never learned to read a letter in their short lives a year prior.

But taught with lessons bartered from the other guilds. Along with the food they ate and the repairs made to their housing. It had been such a shock to Adelyne just how much it actually cost to feed every beggar in Kaeketeh when she was put in charge of making it happen!

Not that she didin’t have the coin.

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The Beggar's Guild had plenty of silver.

All of it paid for in ‘donations’ and ‘charities’ and ‘gifts’ from those that wanted to curry favor with the Countess and her personal project.

At least that’s what the fools in the city did.

But the savvy nobles and Adelyne’s fellow guild heads?

Oh they did it for a much simpler reason.

Greed.

“Adelyne?”

She turned her attention back to the cat, drawing back from the torrent of responsibility that had filled her head.

“What do you want, you smug rat catcher?”

The cat, which was not a cat, grinned up at her and licked his paw. Far too slowly for any real cat. He drew it out to occupy far too much time. Let her see him flicking something out of his fur.

Fur that had lately been different every time he met with her.

“I simply came to marvel at how versatile you are with that slightest bit of a working I gave you. Truly I never would have thought to found a Guild of Thieves where their marks are eager to be robbed.”

Adelyne looked down and really read the document she had been mechanically verifying and signing off on.

A receipt for twenty-nine Knight’s Marks in silver received and noted. To be exempted from the tithe owed to the Countess of Viznove for the passing of goods along the river Vah out of the port of Kaeketeh.

On paper it looked like a deal with the beggar’s guild was a means of getting an astonishing discount.

An oversight made by the still young and mostly distant Wyrm Countess.

Or perhaps even a clever loophole fashioned by the concerted efforts of the guilds of Kaeketeh.

After all the Orphans, Infirm, Cripples and other Assorted Beggars Guild as a recognized Guild of the city. Officiated and empowered to send a representative head as judge over common law in Viznove.

Invited to all the important parties and dealings as any other.

Adelyne in fact knew was invited to quite a lot more deals and back rooms than any other guild head.

On paper it looked like Jewel was bleeding silver from how many taxes were being dodged through a discounted gift to beggars.

A pittance on what the openly stated rates were.

“It was a simple enough trick, And you gave me the way of it fair and square. I already paid the debt you called for wizard. I’m free to use this magic however I want. Teach it to whoever I can.”

The wizard nodded solemnly.

“And use it and teach it you have, What is it? A hundred now who can manage a shade of your own skill? A dozen that are nearly your match in it?”

Adelyne huffed and pulled the parchment over so she could finish marking receipt and acknowledgement. Then melted the black wax of her guild’s mark and set her seal.

“There are two that manage to walk the way better than me...”

The cat nodded and walked deftly around the hills of parchment she had already completed and marked.

“True, but your power is hardly in merely walking where others do not see. Is it Abigail? You’ve taken the nature of my spell and made of it things I never imagined. Not even when I’ve tried to conspire with the likes of Urul the Written. Not in all my centuries.”

He squinted at another receipt. That one a guarantee in grain that would feed nearly a thousand children for a season come winter.

Not that Adelyne expected to actually use that grain. Or for it to even need to pass through her guild’s storehouses or cook in their pots. No it had not even been harvested yet. But the Goldsmiths’ Guild in Kaeketeh could do wonders with the Merchant’s guild if you had a promise of grain for a particular season at a set price.

“Yeah well, you obviously were kinda shit with it then weren’t you? I figured this out the first year with your bit of magic. Now what do you want ya oversized rat?”

It was astonishing what one could do with a promise if you could feel where attention would not settle.

Sense where others would not see.

“I came to inform you that the rumors I warned you of in the Capital have been confirmed. The Magarska Kingdom has reared a Tyrant Wyrm. Ten years now since its hatching and already starting to make a stir.”

Adelyne sighed and shook her head.

She had just wanted to make a Thieves Guild in Kaeketeh.

It seemed like such a perfectly simple and straightforward idea!

How had it gone all wrong?

No, that was the worst of it. She did have a Thieves Guild.

That was the worst part of it. With the stroke of ink, seal of wax and a smile Jewel had given Adelyne a means to lift more silver than she weighed off the undeserving every day.

She found out how to be a bigger thief than she ever could have imagined.

It lacked the same thrill and gratification of relieving a rich fuck of his purse though.

Theft just was not the same when the mark thanked you for the privilege.

“Is that all? Just confirming the word I already have been hearing from the traders?”

There was no answer, and when Adelyne turned to check the cat was nowhere to be seen. She gave a shudder and reaffirmed the working that had been given to her. The sense in her bones that only needed the slightest shift in posture. The slightest cant of the head.

The simple bristling moment of stark alertness to awaken.

She’d mostly tried to not bring out the boon these days.

Feeling the brush of everyone’s attention was never comfortable.

But if Fizzbunches felt the need to show up in Kaeketeh ahead of Jewel and inform Adelyne personally that the rumors were true?

She was probably going to have to get out there herself as well.

As if Adelyne wasn't busy enough with how much Kaeketeh got in the seasons right after the Vah Thaw.

With the working flush through her meat and bone Adelyne could feel her ‘apprentice’ turn towards her from a corner of the room she had forgotten about. She did not need to turn to know that the most skilled member of her guild was following the rapid gestures of Kaeketeh Begger’s cant made into the air.

She could feel the brush of eyes on her finger tips.

Trusted that the waif who saw it had been trained well.

She needed to verify what the wizard had said.