After a bout of lovemaking, they lay in serene silence on their king-sized bed that stood atop a mountain of gold and jewels so gigantic that a rickety bridge was used to exit the chamber. They both intended for the mountain to grow ever bigger. Victoria Whitmore laid her head on her beloved king's chest. “I do not like it, Dudley,” she finally confided. “I know our riches have doubled, and I care not about what the assassins take from our fences. It’s what we do to hide them.”
It was when Victoria witnessed one of her sworn thieves in an alley selling a pound of momentum to a peasant woman with a belly heavy with child that she felt her skin turn to slime and her stomach twist. Citizens taking a harmless hit of Nightbliss from the Thieves Guild did not trouble her sleep. It was the other narcotics the red-eyed witch had ordered them to push that gave her disquiet. Cloud Crystals, Purestar and that wretched Momentum that could turn men and women into withered ghouls. She did not want her Thieves Guild’s mark on people who slowly turned themselves into husks of their former selves.
Dudley turned his head against the pillow to face her with that same jovial smile. His dark black curls were tangled and sweaty. “Look at what we’ve built, My Queen,” he said as he gestured to the riches and trinkets around and below them. Above the bed, gold chandeliers twinkled. Sometimes a chime would fall and hit the mountain of gems below. The sound of it clinking against the treasures as it landed was the sweetest song they could hear. “It took a long time to get us here. I don’t like them any more than you do, but this mountain was shorter by a foot before we made this unsavoury deal.”
As unsettling and distrustful as Sonya Greyheart was, she was correct about the Shards. Despite it being rampant with poverty and crime, there was still much loot to be taken. Counts and lords did reside in the borough. They might not have been quite as rich as others but when Victoria and her thieves broke into their modest mansions in the dead of night, they still found hidden gems in desks and drawers, bronze and silver ornaments displayed by studies and pouches of Gold Bears and silver Denarii next to beds and in the pockets of neglected garments. When it came to the Shards, there really were diamonds in the rough. And no crime lord stood in their way. We are under the Inferno’s thumb, yet we have never soared higher…
The Gargoyle’s departure from the world left a void in New Jade City that many high criminals were eager to fill. The Goldfish, Baroness Cartwright, the various gangs, old and new. They all wanted to stick their fingers in the pie. But they were all foolish. The Inferno Clan really control the Shards and have for only the spirits know how long. But with their help, maybe the Thieves Guild could rule the entire underworld. We would be just, only the rich would suffer under our rule. Except that would be just a fallacy if they continued to sell narcotics to desperate people.
Dudley interrupted her pondering. “We must go, My Queen,” he said with a heavy sigh. “That red-eyed woman will be awaiting our company soon.”
“Can we not stay here?” She wished to remain where the golden chimes clanged, and her treasure kept her safe.
“Unfortunately, we cannot,” her King said regretfully. “We still have one other matter to attend to first.”
The bridge swayed above the glinting gold as they crossed it. The Queen of Thieves donned her garb. Her black cloak with the insignia of a crowned magpie in the centre, her russet hood, black domino mask streaked with golden stripes and her bronze crowned magpie cane. Dudley pulled his black bandanna down the upper half of his face. The crowned raccoon gleamed in the dark. They took their small escort through the hidden tunnels of the city.
The rest of their thieves awaited them at the Ruby Relic, a quaint and small tavern between the border of the Shards and Dorfchester. Dudley nodded, and the Queen of Thieves tipped her hood to the dour and bald bartender as they passed. Unlike others, Borico had welcomed the Thieves Guild to come to his protection in exchange for a cut of the tavern’s profits. The deal had benefited both parties greatly. The Ruby Relic served all kinds of clientele. The rich whom Borico would eavesdrop on and whisper sweet nothings to the guild, such as when their mansions would be vacant. Then there were the poor and struggling who were good with their hands. Borico would point those patrons to the right places to be recruited to the great cause against the rich. In return, the Thieves Guild gave generous donations to help his tavern become more opulent. Gem-encrusted statues of gold angels, harps, and a harpist to go with. Even one of their own thieves who would act as bouncer and guard during the Ruby Relic’s rowdier nights (and whatever that thief might happen to take from the pockets of patrons would be seen as a gratuity charge). Although his face did not indicate it, the Ruby Relic’s bartender professed nothing but respect and satisfaction towards the Thieves Guild’s services. This tavern thrived whilst others in the Shards and Dorfchester would wither and die.
They ascended a wooden spiralled stairway eighteen feet high. The Queen and King of Thieves always stood tall above their loyal rats wherever they went. Upon opening the oaken door, they were greeted by cheers and yells. Down rows of benches, there were the clashing and swinging of tankards of ale, beer, and wine. It was drowned away as their hooded followers broke into song with one another, swaying to the tune of a plump and rosy-faced bard in the corner, his sausage-sized fingers plucking at a flute.
The rich grow richer and our bellies grow sorer
If they shall take from us, then we shall piss on their bright aura
Take their gold and eat their banquet food
Sweep their houses and slay their arrogant mood!
Dudley’s wide grin matched the bronze raccoon that shimmered on the forehead of his bandana. He loved the glory of it all. He went about the rabble going from table to table and greeting the odd thief with a pat on the shoulder, a jest and amiable conversation. Victoria was not so accustomed to idle small talk. She preferred to stay near the shadows. She felt comfort in isolation.
The Thief Queen sighted Brie the Blind, draped in brown rags, and sipping on a tankard in the corner, her wooden stick propped up against the wall behind her. When Victoria approached her, the blind woman’s ginger stray squeaked on her lap. “That magpie on your cane is burning bright tonight, My Queen,” the blind woman said, looking ahead with those empty grey eyes.
“How can you know that?”
“It is what others have been telling me,” Brie said coyly. “A ninja appeared some nights back asking after you.”
“The Night Fang, yes.” She sighed in solidarity. “He was troublesome work, but he shan’t be bothering us again.” Although Victoria was disappointed that neither she nor Dudley could obtain the Night Fang’s blade. That curved dagger would have awarded her Thieves Guild a most impressive sum from the right buyer. The existence of Night Fangs and their rival clans were still widely regarded as a myth to the common man, especially in the midlands and their cities. Some merchants and collectors that wanted to believe would sell their homes and families for an ancient artefact that provided such evidence of their very real presence in the world.
“Would you happen to know where Rafe is?” the Queen of Thieves asked with stiff courtesy.
“I can hear his irksome cackling from across the tavern,” Brie the Blind moaned. “Possibly by the windows. Would you close them while you are there? I can hear a cruel and cold draft sauntering in.”
“They should best stay open for a little while longer. Until we have finished.” Victoria took her leave to find him, knowing the blind woman would not understand what she meant. She would know soon enough.
Brie had posited correctly. The Queen of Thieves spied Rafe drinking by the open window, foam from his beer tankard lingering on his hooked nose, which would snort snot in and out every time he laughed at another thief’s jape. She noticed Dudley already approaching him, placing a hand on his shoulder. The Queen of Thieves moved silently behind the table. “How do you like the beer, good sir?” Dudley asked eagerly.
Rafe nodded, wide-eyed and grinning like a moron. “Most warming to the stomach, My King.”
“Borico really knows how to pour them,” Dudley commented, looking at the other thieves sitting around the small table. “Rafe has made us over four thousand Denarii from the Shards this past week.” The other thieves at the table cheered and raised their tankards, and Dudley did the same.
Rafe sat there blushing with a flattered look on his gaunt face. “I aim to please the guild, My King.”
“It’s funny when me and my darling Queen defended our new tower from the Night Fang the other night. He mentioned you.”
“Bloody Arkovian,” Rafe spat. “Damn near broke my arm, he did. Did you deal with the bastard?” Victoria disliked the derisive tone Rafe used when talking about Arkovians. Some of them served the guild and deftly so. None of them was, nor had ever been, in allegiance with a ninja clan. Rafe seemed to think every Arkovian was given an assassin blade the moment they left their mother’s womb.
The King of Thieves answered. “Oh, my darling queen gave him a thorough enough hiding and sent him on his way.” The table roared and burst into laughter whilst he broke off to take a swig from his tankard. The laughter did not quiet by the time he continued. “Yes, he told me a most interesting tale about you,” he yelled above the raucous howls of his rats, “a tale about how you attacked a priestess in her own chapel.”
The laughter around the table swiftly died, as did Dudley’s affable smile. The red flush around Rafe’s face faded away, and he turned pale as milk. “My King, she refused to agree to our terms, refused to pay the guild-”
“Yes, think of all the coins we will lose from this small Pax chapel.” Dudley’s tone was profoundly different. His words were scornful and the eyes behind his bandana became hard as ice. “You were clearly left with no other desperate choice but to try to stab her.”
“She attacked me first, the harlot!” Rafe argued back. “She swung at me with a steel basin.”
Rafe had not known that the Queen of Thieves was standing behind him, listening to the whole affair. It took him by great surprise when the bronze beak of her magpie cane hooked around his neck and pulled him backwards. She pressed her boot against the back of his chair and heard Rafe squirt spit from his ugly mouth as he tried to breathe. “Do you remember the codes we make every thief recite so eloquently before allowing them into our guild?” she enquired. “Which one do you think you broke?”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Rafe struggled out words from his clasped throat. “Do-Do-Don’t kill an innocent for gold-”
“No, not that one,” the King of Thieves sighed in mild irritation. “Although you would have broken that one too if the Night Fang had not interfered. Thanks for that, by the way.” He smacked Rafe’s hooked nose with the brunt of his raccoon cane. Blood splattered and joined the stained blotches of beer on the wooden floor. “Because of your unseemly behaviour in that chapel, the ninja managed to pick up a breadcrumb trail and accosted us in the Gargoyle’s tower.”
The Queen of Thieves tightened her grip and pulled on the cane. Flecks of blood from Rafe’s nose dripped on the bronze magpie, making it weep crimson tears. “The code I was referring to was ‘do not steal from anyone owning less than two-thousand Denarii.’ Did you think that the Pax priestess owned over two-thousand Denarii, Rafe?”
He gurgled and grunted but managed to wheeze out his last words. “J-J-Just be d-done with it…” It was a tragic shame that Rafe only managed to earn an ounce of respect from Victoria during his final moments. He knew the penalty and accepted it. The Thief Queen pulled the cane back and grabbed Rafe by the collar as he toppled over, dragged him to the open window behind and flung him from it. He never fought back and never screamed. The thud below sounded squishy.
The whole tavern sat in deathly silence. The plump bard awkwardly fumbled his sausage fingers around the flute’s handle. The thieves at Rafe’s table looked at one another uncomfortably. Borico continued collecting glasses and pretending nothing was amiss and Brie the Blind looked in Victoria’s general direction from the far corner with those empty grey eyes. Perhaps observing, perhaps judging.
Dudley raised a pouch of coin from the fallen thief that he had slyly pickpocketed during the encounter. “The next round is on Rafe, ladies and gents.”
Everyone cheered again.
They stayed for two more rounds until the moon grew fuller, the dogs outside howled, and the stars died, and then they knew it was time. They accessed the hidden passages under the city only known to the Thieves Guild. And now the Inferno Clan, Victoria thought sadly. They made their way through the tunnels until they entered the bowels of the city. The city sewers were a maze themselves. Endless, dark, cavernous, and with an everlasting foul smell that would creep and linger under the nose. They were inevitable to avoid when roaming through the unseen underground. Alas, thieves were rats and sewers were a rat’s ally.
When they arrived at the damp meeting point deep within the underbelly of the New Jade sewers, they found Sonya Greyheart waiting for them by a dimly lit sconce. Her scarlet hair was luminous by the torchlight. She was still adorned in her studded jacket with red and pitch-black stripes slashed across the shoulders and torso. Her red eyepatch was a pool of blood that held some strange secrets within the scarlet waters that Victoria did not wish to see. Alongside her was her giant metal guardian. The Samurai stood still like a statue in his black and gold-plated armour and kabuto. The spiked silver mask he wore made him look like a steel ghost welded by a giant.
Baraz Hackett was also there once again, seemingly impatient and angered to have been kept waiting by them. The fact that someone whom the Queen and King of Thieves had once stolen from was now reluctantly working alongside them was still ever so amusing to Dudley. Victoria found it less so. It was one more person eager to stab them in the back when given the opportunity.
But the one who was bringing the most attention to himself was Lord Haytham Cutter. His oval face was already beet red when she and Dudley arrived and he was pointing his finger back and forth as if it were a sword he was duelling with, his brown peruke swaying around manically as he gestured. “This is your doing, you Arkovian witch!” he ungracefully yelled at Lady Greyheart. “If you weren’t in the city, those ‘Night Fangs’, as you call them, wouldn’t have intruded into my castle.”
Sonya Greyheart responded calmly. “Lord Cutter, forgive my impudence but from the tale you just told me, it seems that you already had another assassin locked up in your own private dungeon before we had even met.” Her perfect teeth glowed as she grinned at him. “I can account for all of my assassins, alive and dead, and she is not one of them, nor anything to do with us. It sounds like you have brought this upon yourself.”
The Crime Lord’s fat face only turned redder. “Yes, yes, but would these ‘Night Fangs’ even be in this city to begin with if it weren’t for you?”
“You say ‘Night Fangs’, as in more than one of them?” Lady Greyheart asked inquisitively, an eyebrow raising above her scarlet eyepatch.
“Yes! A ninja with a ghastly snarling horned tiger on his chest, and a woman archer in a blue hood with even ghastlier black scars across her face.” He ranted on. “They broke into my castle, scared away my whores, beat up my guardsmen, and freed my prisoners!”
Dudley started laughing uncontrollably.
Haytham Cutter set his beady and vindictive little eyes on the Thief King. “Glad to see you find this so amusing, rat.”
“Oh, I find it highly amusing,” the King of Thieves answered. He turned his gaze to Greyheart. “The former Night Fang tried to give us some bother at the Gargoyle’s tower the other night, but did not cause any damage to our operation. He did, however, leave with quite a few bruises and a fractured ego to boot.”
“I would be more impressed if you had left him dead,” the red-eyed woman said icily. The flame from the torch behind her sharply flickered.
Dudley shrugged indifferently. “We’re trying to get his blade. That is the only outcome regarding him we care about, and your narcotics are being peddled successfully enough. We’re not the assassins.”
Victoria thought of Rafe and how she had flung him from a window a mere hour ago. Haytham Cutter’s purple cloak flapped about as he strode to the red-eyed lady and pointed his finger mere inches from her face. Despite his plumb body, the bony thing had the structure of a crooked pencil. “I refused to have anything to do with you and yet I find myself back here in this foul-smelling sewer that does not befit me. Your leader has a lot to answer for, witch! And I shall have my a-”
They were interrupted by the sound of steel screeching against stone. It was a piercing noise that made Lord Haytham Cutter slap his hands over the sides of his peruke in a timid attempt to block the stab of sound. Baraz Hackett winced and raised an eyebrow, but did all he could to retain his composure. The steel Samurai remained motionless. Victoria wondered if there was anyone even in the giant armour. The screeching lingered and skidded down the sewage tunnel.
“What is that ghastly racket!” the pompous Crime Lord cried out.
Sonya Greyheart’s lips curled into a playful smirk. “Why it’s the sound of your wish coming true, Lord Cutter.”
The source of the screech emerged from the opposing shadows. A raptor’s claw made of steel was dragging against the stone wall, orange sparks flying and lighting up a hooded figure in a jacket as red as Greyheart’s scarlet eyepatch. The buttons that clasped it were in the shapes of reptilian claws. The steel raptor’s claw was attached to a leather gauntlet over dark red gloves, replacing the missing index finger of the figure’s right hand. He swiped the claw off the wall with another sharp screech and walked into the torchlight. Under the red hood was a helm in the shape of a raptor’s skull as white as fresh milk. The teeth were razor sharp, and the eye sockets were filled with darkness.
“Sonya, this saddens me greatly.” The Hooded Raptor’s voice was hoarse and sharp. Victoria noticed the strangeness of the accent. It was not native Arkovian or even a mixture of that and the midlands but sounded like someone from the rough boroughs of New Jade City, moulded by crime and poverty. “Here I thought our business partnerships were flourishing and yet I find our new friends squabbling with each other and yelling at you.” The white raptor skull shook in disappointment.
Victoria noticed Haytham’s dismay. Just the sight of the ghastly masked figure seemed to have finally shut the Crime Lord up. His mouth gaped open at a loss for words. The Hooded Raptor waltzed over to Baraz Hackett in boots as black as coal and slapped his clawed hand on the Pirate’s shoulder. Baraz’s eyes widened and seemed as if they were about to burst out of his own head to escape. “Are you satisfied with our partnership, Sir?” the Hooded Raptor asked with what sounded like genuine concern.
“Yes, my Lord,” Hackett answered immediately and timidly.
“Wonderful!” the masked figure rasped in delight, raising his hands in victory as if to embrace him. Instead, he turned his gaze to the master thieves. “Are you both satisfied with our partnership, My King and Queen?”
Dudley smirked. “Can’t complain, mate. The Denarii are flowing ever brighter-”
“I’m not satisfied!”
The insolent yell came from Haytham Cutter. The white raptor skull slowly turned towards him like a doll newly possessed by a demon. The Crime Lord twitched and fidgeted, moving one leg then the other as if he were some petulant child with a full bladder. “I am not satisfied, Sir!” Haytham Cutter went on, “Your red witch is unbecoming and speaks far above her station. You partner with bandits and thieves. You hide in the shadows, just like those hooded rats you align yourself with.”
Under the pointy red hood, the white raptor skull studied him with bottomless pits of darkness. “I am most hurt to hear this, My Lord.” The Hooded Raptor walked closer to him with the posture of a crooked ghoul. He placed his clawed hand on Haytham’s shoulder in solidarity. “Please tell me of your woes. Perhaps we can fix this. We can brave this city more strongly if we all stick together.”
“It is because of you that those damnable ninjas ran rampant in my castle,” Haytham prattled on, seemingly oblivious. “The archer, gods what a she-beast, she slew two of my men as she took my cargo from me. I curse you assassins! Inferno, Night Fang, Sisterhood, I curse every one of you and I demand strong compensation from you for the profit that I lost that night-”
As the fool ranted on, the Hooded Raptor looked back to Sonya Greyheart and replicated a jabbering mouth with his left hand. With his right, he slashed his raptor’s claw carelessly across the Crime Lord’s throat. Lord Haytham Cutter looked dismayed again as the broken dam of blood erupted from his throbbing neck. His last words were gargles, and he dropped to the wet floor, his red liquid now mixing with the puddles of sewage water. Baraz Hackett’s hard wall fell, and he reacted by jumping back in shock, grunting with frantic eyes. Victoria looked towards her King, but he still had the same sly grin that even she sometimes struggled to decipher.
The Hooded Raptor’s skull was splashed with blood, red blotches, and dots scattered across the white canvas. It was the early stages of a painting. The empty eye sockets looked down upon the body, still gargling and twitching. He observed his bloody raptor’s claw. “I’m dreadfully sorry. Sometimes I forget I have this.”
“Hackett,” Lady Greyheart snapped. At this point, the Pirate had shrunk into some sort of scared dog backed against the wall about to be reprimanded by its owner. “The shipment you sent me was short on Shimmer Leaf.” Greyheart walked right up to him, her professional courtesy as dead as the Crime Lord that lay on the piss-puddled floor. “I need that just as much as the other ingredients. Your next shipment will make up for this and the King and Queen’s thieves will keep a watchful eye on you as well as my loyal Samurai, who stands behind me. Else you shall get a nice look under my eye patch again.”
The Pirate nodded and grunted in response.
The Hooded Raptor sauntered back into the centre of the torchlight, his bloody skull now eyeing the Queen of Thieves. Victoria felt as if the darkness in those eyeless sockets was burrowing into her soul. “Sonya, you’re too hard on these two. They’ve proven their worth, even held their own against a Night Fang.” He waved his clawed hand. “Bring the crate.”
Victoria could not say how many Inferno had been watching further back in the darkness as two more assassins walked into the torchlight in bronze demonic masks, carrying a large wooden crate with iron gauntleted hands. They dropped it by Haytham’s body with a thud. Blood and sewage water splashed around it.
“How about another mutually beneficial deal?” The Hooded Raptor croaked the question. His voice was a blade against granite.
“Depends how much more Denarii we get,” Dudley answered coolly, echoing Victoria’s thought. They truly were one.
“Oh, you’ll get more Denarii.” He walked past the crate with his clawed hand behind his back. “I want you and your thieves to keep this crate somewhere hidden and safe. You may not look at the crate’s contents or our relationship will go the way of Lord Haytham’s.”
Victoria looked down at Haytham Cutter’s body. It was no longer twitching, and the mixture of blood and sewage water created a ghoulish lime colour that crawled across the stone floor.
“Do this for me,” the Hooded Raptor concluded, “and your earnings will go from doubling to tripling. I promise this to you.” He walked a crooked walk towards Victoria. She did not flinch, show weakness or so much as blink. The demonic figure did not place his clawed hand on her shoulder but instead offered it to be shaken in agreement. “Do we have a deal, My Queen?”
The hand felt like hot coals when she touched it.