One doesn’t steal in the light of day, and one definitely doesn’t attempt breaking into a house where there may be people sleeping too close to when they are trying to begin their rest.

No, Deirdre knows that one always plans one’s most ambitious jobs in the wee hours of the morning, well before dawn, when everyone is in a deep state of slumber.

She has been inside this building before. Multiple times, in fact.

It isn’t hard to have yourself let into a building if you are good at being invisible. And there is nothing more invisible to the middle class than those beneath them.

And Deirdre is beneath everyone by daylight.

It is only at night, when the rest of the world sleeps, that she instead stands above all who would ignore her by day.

When she was here previously, dusting and scrubbing and cleaning up after those who feel like cleaning is a task for other people, she left a parlor window unlocked. The broken latch on the expensive glass allows her easy access now. The window slides silently on the rails she personally greased.

She climbs carefully inside, keeping her weight on the balls of her feet and touching as little as possible. More expensive magic can find a thief by their impressions on the objects they touch. She has been caught that way in the past, or she would not even be aware of it.

She knows they can also track her by scent, but Deirdre is less worried about that since she has ways to get around the local sheriff’s hound dog.

It takes a lot of experience on her part to know that she should ignore the obvious safe in the parlor's corner. It’s a decoy for certain, and could not possibly contain anything of more value than any coins it contains.

No, Deirdre is after something she saw while cleaning that was instantly suspicious.

Padding quietly, she carefully leaves the room with the door ajar and stealths her way up a narrow staircase. There is one room in the house they could not clean, and if Deirdre knows this mark, she knows they would only create a rule like that if there were a place that contained objects more valuable than cash.

Her steel trap of a memory prevents her from stepping on the squeaky step in the staircase.

The upper floor of the domicile has a hallway along the solid brick exterior wall of the windward side of the house. There is almost zero light for Deirdre to use as a guide. Instead, she runs the back of one fingernail along the opposite wall, where doorways interrupt her light touch. She makes certain to make absolutely no noise as she pads along the expensive knotted rug.

The first doorway leads to the room where the eldest son snores loudly. The second doorway is a washroom. The third is the master of the household’s own chamber. It is the fourth doorway where Deirdre stops, carefully opens the latch with her knuckle.

Moonlight streams into the room through an open curtain. There is more expensive glass in the window. A thick plush rug cushions the floor, with complex patterns of circles and stars in many colors. A single, massive desk sits as the room’s centerpiece, with a large leather chair behind it.

Two smaller chairs sit facing the desk. Their master arranged the furniture to be deferent to its majesty. The desk itself has carvings of large antlered deer holding up each corner, and the mounted head of a white stag hangs from the wall behind it.

Deirdre would be impressed if she had time to consider the implications. As it stands, she most definitely does not.

She approaches the desk carefully. One never knows what kinds of bespoke wizardry a sufficiently paranoid person may have purchased.

And in this case, there are no telltale sniffles from her overly sensitive nose.

She gives a cursory glance over the materials on the top surface of the desk: a stationery set, blotting paper, two solid brass seals, and few sticks of sealing wax. Taking those would not be terribly useful to anyone, so Deirdre looks to the drawers below.

To either side of the desk are two deep drawers.

She opens both drawers slowly, noting that the one on her left requires more force to open. Neither drawer is locked. Someone is very trusting of the residents of this household.

Inspecting both drawers reveals that the one on the right contains a large quantity of what looks to be receipts and bills of sale. In the dim moonlight, Deirdre cannot quite make out all the writing on these papers, but more than one has an official wax seal and gilt lettering that suggests that it may be a deed. Property deeds are always easy to offload, so even since they were not what she was looking for, she sticks them into a handy document case.

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The left drawer is notably different. Looking into it from the top reveals that the bottom of this drawer is at a different height from the other drawer. Carefully groping about in the dark locates a small latch on the underside of the drawer.

And the bottom releases downward, freeing the contents to slide onto the soft carpet with a deadened thud.

Deirdre knows what these items are. They’re casting plates for coins. The face of each is an exact opposite of the emperor’s portrait on every coin that has ever passed her fingers.

This is a counterfeiter’s dream find. And to think she’d gotten that tip from her cousin that there might be something worthwhile here on a whim. From her best judgment in this poor lighting, she would assume that these are the originals.

The master of this house works for the mint. Why would he bring these home?

It doesn’t matter. Deirdre slides the plates into her sack with the document case. They are incredibly heavy for being so small.

A couple of extra pages of paper from beneath the plates get shoved into the case as well. She should be able to read through them in better lighting later. Surely, if they’re being kept with these pieces of highly regulated metal, they must also be important.

With this heavy bounty as a burden upon her back, Deirdre slides the drawers slowly closed.

And then she sneezes.

Twice, in quick succession.

Significant practice is the only thing that reminds her to muffle them into her elbow so that none will hear.

But it is not enough.

A teenager stands in the hallway, looking into the open door of the office. A witch light between his fingers casts a light that reflects only in his eyes.

Deirdre presses herself into the floor and wishes she could vanish completely. But the magics to do so would just make the situation worse. Her nose runs and her sleeve becomes swiftly saturated with snot.

Cowering behind the desk is not the best hiding place she has ever squeezed herself into. But it is the only one she has.

The teenager reaches into the room, a deeply suspicious look on his face. From under the desk, Deirdre can only make out the shape of his boots without exposing herself further to being caught.

He grabs the latch on the door and pulls it shut quietly.

It is about then that Deirdre realizes the loud snoring was likely some kind of distraction spell, similar to his light. Nobody warned her that the older child in the household was a magic user of any variety. She plots revenge upon her cousin for the bad tip.

And then she realizes the teenager must have heard the sneeze.

For she hears a whispered spell and her eyes water with the desperate attempt to prevent additional sneezes.

The latch locks itself from the inside.

If she leaves now there will be too much evidence. If she stays, then she is already caught.

Deirdre stares around the room with barely contained panic.

There is still a way out.

Taking every care to avoid making even the slightest noise as she creeps out from under the desk, Deirdre pads to the window. All that expensive glass would certainly be a shame to break. And if she did, she would likely leave so much blood behind for that dog to sniff.

Instead, she pulls a cheesecloth wrapped around a lemon slice from her pocket and rubs lemon juice on the latches and drawer pulls of the desk. And a few specks of the spiciest ground pepper she could steal helps seal the deal.

Countermeasures complete, she approaches the window on ghostly silent feet.

She hasn’t cleaned this one. There is no oil on these rails. And she isn’t entirely sure it can open.

The latches unlock easily enough. And a bit of force gets it to move without too much noise.

But then the window sticks. And the only thing she can do is wedge her shoulder in the opened crack between the window and the frame and give it a solid shove with her knee.

A horrible squeal emits from the rail, but it opens almost exactly enough for her to squeeze her narrow self through. She steps out onto the windowsill and then pushes the stubborn thing shut with another shove.

From here, Deirdre notes that there are window box flowers at each window on this floor. And she can easily jump from one to the other. An old apple tree reaches branches that tap the expensive glass of the middle window.

A deviant idea settles into her head, and the temptation is one she can hardly resist. She gently hops onto the parents’ window, carefully making sure that the hanging branch does not give away her location. A few apples fall off while she uses it for balance. To prevent them from making too much noise, she slips the hard little apples into the sack on her back.

And then she silently hops onto the washroom window and allows the momentum of her heavy burden to help carry her onto the next ledge as well.

Deirdre kicks twice at the window’s wooden frame. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to make a very loud and very obvious sound.

The teenager’s panicked face looks out at her with eyes as wide as the full moon that is low on the horizon now.

Deirdre winks at him and then drops from the ledge, catching herself with her hands to slow the fall before rolling to a stand on the flagstone walkway leading into the main house.

If she had remembered that her pack weighs so much more, then maybe the landing would have been as smooth as the ones she had practiced before.

It was not. The thump alerts the adults of the house that the noises are clearly not just their miscreant son doing teenage mischief out when he should be in. And then they raise the alert. And then she has to run. And there is nowhere else she can go in town or the surrounding farmlands where she won’t be immediately found.

So the only way she can run is into the woods.

And there are so very many regrets.