“Where might I find the King and Queen of Thieves?” she politely asked the man whom she had hanged upside down. His russet hood was flapping about and dangling behind his greasy head. His eyes had grown wide in fear. He kept flailing his arms up and down, attempting to reach the tightly knotted black rope that bound his restrained ankles. His determined struggle was admirable, but not a satisfactory answer. Arrowcat whacked him around the face with the side of her sapphire bow.
“They’ll kill me if I tell you anything!” he finally sang. They were deep within a remote and desolate alleyway in the forgotten outskirts of the Shards. No one would be close enough to hear his pleas and anyone who did would be more likely to pretend that they only heard the wind and move on instead of calling the City Watch. “They have strict codes and fatal consequences for any thief who breaks them!”
She hit him with the brunt of her sapphire bow again and he swung wildly, like a fly dangling from a spider’s web. She pulled him close to her face, which was streaked with dark war paint. “You might have heard about the other Night Fang that attacked your king and queen in the Gargoyle’s tower. He has much more restraint than I do, and a rather vexing moral compass. For instance, he would never be willing to do this…”
She stabbed a sapphire arrowhead into the Thief’s shoulder. He howled and a nearby stray dog must have heard because another howl had joined him in harmony under the moon. She slowly twisted the arrowhead. The Thief tried pushing her away, but Arrowcat had no qualms about overpowering him. He shrieked and his teeth as she continued to twist the arrowhead deeper into his flesh.
“If you want the pain to stop, then simply tell me where they are residing.” She had already checked the Gargoyle’s tower and left a trail of unconscious hooded thieves in her wake, yet none of them were the King or Queen. She made sure not to kill any of them. That would only have pissed Hideo off further and she needed this blood debt paid. For all the talk Hideo gave of her callousness, she still had her own code of honour to uphold. She was bound with Hideo to relinquish the Inferno Clan from the city, and she wanted it all over and done with sooner rather than later Arrowcat had swooped every level, every room and secretive chamber, but it had appeared that the King and Queen of Thieves had grown tired of the tallest tower in the Shards. Arrowcat did not fault them for it. Owning the best tower in the Shards was akin to owning the prettiest goat in the barnyard. It was hardly the best possession one could get in life. “I’m going to start pressing the arrowhead deeper,” she calmly warned her hanging captive. “Are you certain you are not willing to give up your king and queen?”
“They’ll kill me when they’ve found out what I’ve done!”
“Then you have two choices,” Arrowcat diplomatically explained. “The first is to tell me where they are hiding and then immediately leave the city.”
“And the second choice?” the Thief asked in pain.
Her lips curled into something unpleasant. “You should pick the first choice,” she suggested.
The Thief nodded in agreement. She quickly ripped the arrowhead out of his shoulder. He grunted and pressed his hand against the bleeding wound. “Very well,” he said as he slowly swung from side to side. “They are in Dorfchester-”
“Wait, wait, don’t tell me,” Arrowcat interrupted him as the pin had already dropped for her. “Are they in the castle Lord Haytham Cutter had previously occupied?”
The Thief nodded frantically.
The Thieves Guild really are the Inferno’s favourite little pets, aren’t they? “Watch your head when you drop, or you’ll break your neck.” She cut him down with the used arrowhead and he thudded into a muddy puddle. She then kicked him in the forehead before he could thank her for sparing him. She did not care to have an awake thief following her.
The level of security was a different tale in Dorfchester. There were increased City Watch patrols down multiple streets. She had to sneak past a dozen patrolmen around the sparser end of the borough, near where the deceased Crime Lord’s castle lay. Sneaking around the watchmen was no great challenge. The flaming torches they carried with them through the dark made them easy to spot in the distance and they would often talk loudly and obnoxiously, making their presence known to everyone nearby.
Arrowcat took refuge in the same abandoned household that she and Hideo hid in a few nights ago, before all the following chaos ensued. The momentum addict was still there, curled into a ball, fast asleep beside a wooden chair. An empty needle was sticking out of his arm. She ignored him and peaked outside the front door.
The green and gold Greenfire flag was still adorned over the castle’s walls. The bear’s eyes were alive and fierce and the jade flames around its crown were so detailed they appeared to be truly ablaze. The castle stood alone and ostracised from the nearby run-down houses and had a foreboding silence surrounding it. Revisiting the sight of the ominous castle made Arrowcat think of Neoma. She wondered where she could have been during the cold night. Are you back with the sisterhood, safe and warm? She pondered, or have you got yourself captured by another fat fool? She pined for her and loathed her at the same time. If she hadn’t gotten herself apprehended in the first place, then I wouldn’t be here sneaking through the muddy streets at night. And despite her sacrifice, she had still lost her. All she had left was a blood debt with a fang who hated her…
She approached the castle as swiftly and silently as a panther and leapt onto the wall, defending the courtyard. By a small bed of roses, two thieves were arguing with one another in dark leather armour and black and russet hoods. They were both rummaging through an assortment of wooden crates that had been left under a bench, each one bearing a strange painted X in the centre. “Careful,” one of them warned the other in annoyance as he took hold of one of the boxes. “You break any of them, then you’re pissing off the Queen, the King, and the red-eyed witch.” He began lugging the crate towards the back entrance.
The other thief followed, haughtily carrying two crates at once. “No need to caution me. All three of them frighten me
Arrowcat watched them from above with curious eyes until they disappeared through the backdoor. She landed into the courtyard and studied the castle above, marking any noteworthy crevasses and edges that she could make use of to climb the looming castle. She had already learned the hard way that sneaking through the back entrance was not a wise approach. This time she climbed the castle from the outside, grabbing onto protruding stone bricks, unused arrow slits, and the cloth of a smaller Greenfire flag to make her way further up the tower. She had made a note that the King and Queen of Thieves liked to be at the highest level of whichever tower they occupied. Obtaining Cutter’s castle would most likely have inflated their ego and boosted their haughtiness. She planned to make use of that.
Arrowcat slinked in through an open window in the tenth story of the castle. She found herself landing beside a balustrade that overlooked a large dining hall. Paintings of Lord Haytham Cutter and various nude women and some nude men adorned the walls. She had almost forgotten that this place was a front for a brothel, in addition to an illegal and unsanctioned dungeon. Lord Haytham certainly had his share of skeletons hidden away, though they were all fodder compared to what the Inferno could be hiding.
The dining table had been left elegantly decorated, with unfilled goblets and wine cups arranged orderly in front of a dozen cushioned chairs. Behind the beautifully displayed table, there was a large glass window overlooking the Dorchester borough. The blurry and incandescent lights in the distance made the squared window appear like a painting itself, with streaks and swirls of starry light composing the frame. What appeared less extravagant were the opened wooden boxes of narcotics sprawled out in a pile by the table side. She noticed packaged kilos of gleaming red momentum, misty azure cloud crystal, and crumbling pink purestar in transparent bags.
Two more thieves, a large bulky man shrouded by a brown hood and black scarf over his mouth, and an unhooded dark-haired woman with a ponytail and a dark jacket were heaving more of the crates onto the pile. “What they did to Rafe was ill-done,” the large man said, his deep voice muffled behind the scarf.
“He knew the rules, and he broke them,” the thief with the pony tale said with a shrug as she lifted another crate. “Didn’t they threaten you with death when you first joined?”
“I swear, since they aligned themselves with those assassins, they have turned colder,” the large one said with disquiet. He carried two crates at once under each arm, which were as thick as tree trunks.
The thief with the ponytail frowned. “If you wish to voice your concerns to them, be my guest. I prefer living.”
“Aye, that’s the problem,” the large one said pointedly. “We never used to fear them like we do now.”
When Arrowcat heard the chamber door shut behind them, she leapt over the balustrade. She thoroughly inspected the crates of various narcotics, hoping to find some trail or lead to their assassin suppliers. Each crate bore an X painted in red, yet there was nothing to confirm the Inferno’s connection or any trace of where they could be. She would need to do as the ponytail thief suggested and voice her concerns to the gracious king and queen in person. She climbed back over the balustrade and picked the lock of a door with a steel hinge. The locked doors always had the most delicious secrets.
Arrowcat was disappointed to see that it led to a small library. It vexed her greatly. She had already stomached her fill of literature after that hideous night in Reynard Woodard’s little book house. She glided past bookshelves of blackened wood with the silent grace of a blue ghost as she overheard more voices gossiping with one another beside a large burning hearth. Two hooded thieves were facing the fire and vigorously rubbing their frozen hands together. “Did you catch a look at her?” one of them asked the others.
“Aye, she looked enchanting,” another responded from afar with a younger and gullible voice.
Arrowcat climbed onto the top of a tenebrous bookshelf, basking herself in a blanket of shadow. She obtained a clearer view of the three thieves. She saw more drug crates beside the flaming hearth and a table with discarded playing cards and half-drunk tankards of ale. One of the thieves had laid a small line of purestar dust beside one of the tankards. Dozens of the grains sparkled beside the candlelight, causing the pink sand to glisten. He leaned the tip of his nose over the dust and snorted firmly. When he spoke, his voice had grown more energetic. “I have half a mind to ask for her hand.”
“Don’t let her looks deceive you, boy,” the third and biggest of the three thieves warned as he lowered his hands closer to the hearth. “People say the same of sirens. I heard that she is some sort of witch. That she can turn into something so hideous that you can never allow yourself to close your eyes again for fear that you might dream of her.”
“That’s horseshit,” the younger thief contended, sniffing his nose that twitched like a rodent’s. “Just because the poor lady lacks an eye, everyone calls her a monster.”
“Aye,” the largest thief agreed. “Could be. Or perhaps they call her a monster because she’s a murderous drug lord!” He spat into the fire. The flames flickered defensively.
“Whatever you may believe,” the third thief furthest from the fire interjected, “I knew one of us who defied her recently, in front of the King and Queen O’Thieves, no less.”
“And does he still live?” the larger thief asked curiously.
“Aye,” he answered. “He does. In Clayhold Asylum.”
They fell silent beside the fire. Arrowcat grew tired of them and left to continue with her search. The chambers and stairways seemed to be boundless and eternal. She climbed spiral stone steps and drifted through long empty corridors with portraits of lords and ornamented weapons adorning the walls.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She made sure to stop and spit on the portrait of Lord Haytham that was hanging regally. She soon found a stairway that another thief was patrolling. Arrowcat quickly, and non-lethally, dispensed of him with a few slick and sharp jabs from the end of her bow. When she finally ascended, she was met with an open doorway and a looming, cavernous hall. It was there that she finally found the King and Queen of Thieves.
The highest hall of the castle was certainly fit for a king and Queen. There were empty suits of shining silver knight armour, each set standing guard next to glass cases of jewels and gems. Jade and ruby amulets with silver chains hung from plaques on a mahogany wall. There was even the welcoming scent of lavender and incense, smells fit for the Royalists themselves.
Under a large landscape portrait of a prongdeer drinking from a crystal-clear lake in a snow-capped forest were two thrones. The Queen of Thieves seated one, reading a leather-bound book uncaringly. Her chestnut hair had elegant curls about her shoulders. One would not expect a beggar queen to possess. She wore a black domino mask with golden streaks. A cane with the bronze head of a crowned magpie knelt against the side of her throne.
She barely paid any notice to her King, who was idly barking orders at two more thieves carrying a crate larger than any of the boxes that were stacked throughout the castle. Ingrained into the centre of the mysterious box was a ram’s head, as crimson as the darkest of dusks with black voids for eyes. Arrowcat knew the insignia well. The ram’s head was the Inferno’s signature, since they had first declared independence from their feudal rulers centuries ago.
“Place it under the painting beside the suit of armour,” the King of Thieves commanded. “No, not the one of Haytham Cutter on the unicorn! We are removing that one. He would have crushed the poor thing in real life.” A bandana as black as night shrouded most of the Thief King’s face. A crowned raccoon was displayed across the forehead that seemed to smile just as gleefully as the owner did. It was an unsettling grin that could put wild wolves on edge and hesitate.
The two underlings dropped the box with a thud under a painting of a nymph playing a flute under a great oak tree overflowing with leaves of jade. Something rattled inside the crate. It sounded like glass, but it was hard for Arrowcat to distinguish from afar in the shadows. “I told you to be gentle!” the King of Thieves raged, flailing his cane which brandished a crowned raccoon on its end. “And no bloody peeking inside! We’re no fools. We know that some of you do it with the other boxes, getting high on the supply.” He violently tossed one of many small pouches of coin from his belt at one of the underlings. It jingled and chimed as it bounced off the henchman’s nose. “It’s sickening,” the Thief King condemned darkly.
“It wasn’t us, My King!” one of the thieves protested as he scrambled to pick up the coin pouch and offer it back to his King. He bowed as he held the gold high above his head in an attempt of appeasement. The King of Thieves whacked the token of peace out of the henchman’s hand with the crowned end of the raccoon cane.
“Funny, that’s what all of you have been saying,” the King of Thieves said in wroth. “If Lady Greyheart discovers that some of you have been skimming from the top, then I won’t be able to help you.” He tucked the pointed ends of the crowned cane under the thief’s chin and gently lifted his hunched head up. “If you think I’m scary to deal with, then you haven’t seen Greyheart angry, nor the Velociraptor, for that matter. That one has a particularly fiery temper.”
Arrowcat had heard enough. She stood from the shadows with a steel arrow nocked. She felt a simmering fire within her hands and small blue sparks began to fly out of her scarred fingertips. Her sapphire bow glimmered as she sent the first arrow gliding. It hit the admonished thief in the lower leg. He shook and spasmed, stiffening like a dying fly, and toppled over. That had earned her the King of Thieves attention.
She launched another arrow at the second obsequious rat by the crate. It hit him in the shoulder and blue sparks flew around the azure plumes of the arrow. The thief shook and trembled and hit his head on the edge of the Inferno crate as he fell.
As the King of Thieves sauntered closer to her, Arrowcat wondered who had the slimiest smirk, the Thief King, or the unpleasant raccoon on his forehead. She raised her sapphire bow, pulling another arrow back sharply enough that he would hear the string stretch. “Not another step,” she said calmly, reflecting the same fearless and nasty grin.
The King of Thieves chuckled heartily and turned back to his Queen, who was still reading her leather-bound book on the small, homely throne. “Oh Darling,” he called cheerily, “we have a guest.”
The Queen of Thieves snapped her book shut with one sharp movement of her hand. She stood and snatched her crowned magpie cane from the side of her throne, donning her russet hood over her chestnut hair. She approached closer, observing, and studying Arrowcat as if she was a rare creature she had found in the woods. “My-my, that’s a pretty little bow,” she said as she stood beside her King. “We could make over a thousand Denarii for it. It’s sapphire, and an ancient weapon to boot.”
“No, no, My Queen,” the King of Thieves disagreed, playfully shaking his head. “I believe this is rare enough to go on the trinket pile in our bedchamber.”
“The man in the raptor skull mask,” Arrowcat broke in, putting an end to their irksome taunting. The string of her bow cracked and hissed as it was pulled to its breaking point. “Where might I find him?”
“Neither of us is his bloody mother,” the Queen of Thieves said heatedly, eyes aflame.
Arrowcat gestured with the tip of her nocked arrow towards the demonic crate displaying the crimson ram’s head.
“That’s the Inferno Clan’s symbol. I know that you are in league with them. Surely you can at least point me in their direction?” Her voice was polite as if she were asking a merchant for directions around the city.
“No, I think not,” the King of Thieves said jovially as he reached down for something inside his boot. “Instead, I believe we shall be taking that enchanting bow from you.” He withdrew a small dagger from the confines of his boot and threw it. Arrowcat deflected the blade with her bow and the weapons chimed sweetly. The King and Queen of Thieves were on her like the savage animals their canes represented. Arrowcat parried the Thief King’s raccoon cane with her bow and withdrew an arrow from her quiver to knock away the magpie cane that came down on her from behind. She kicked the King away and, in a pirouette, she parried another jab from the Queen’s magpie cane with both bow and arrow. She locked the crowned magpie in place with her two weapons. She looked up at the Thief Queen, smiled at her, and then spat in her face.
“Vile creature!” the Queen of Thieves yelled as she withdrew and retreated a few steps to wipe the spittle off the ends of her domino mask.
Arrowcat turned her attention back to the King who was charging at her with the raccoon cane, holding it as if it were a spear. She spun into a glide and clashed her sapphire bow with the pointed edges of the raccoon crown. The crowned raccoon smiled as if it was immensely entertained by the fighting. Clangs and chimes echoed across the cavernous hall. With each deflection against the raccoon cane, Arrowcat took a confident step forward, slowly nudging the Thief King closer to one of the many suits of knight armour at the end of the hall. The fool hardly seemed to notice. She thrusted and brought the sharp edges of her bow down from side to side. The King of Thieves dodged and thwarted every hit, but his concentration was swept from under him as he felt his back press against the empty suit of plated steel. The hollow knight began to topple, and the Thief King made the mistake of taking his eyes off the Assassin for even just a second to glance at the armour. She knocked the cane out of his hands with one hard strike of her bow.
Instead of appearing surprised or afraid, the King of Thieves once again made that vexing grin appear on his face as he pulled the empty knight’s sword from the steel wreckage. He swung upwards and diagonally with the long, great sword with such strong force that Arrowcat had to roll out of the way in order to dodge. The sword crashed into a glass case and amulets and jewels fell to their demise onto the hard floor. Miniscule shards of jade, ruby and amethyst shattered and exploded. That was the first time Arrowcat saw the King of Thieves appear discernibly upset. His jaw turned hard and serious, and his eyes flickered in disbelief. He was pained to see his precious treasures die in front of him. What made it sweeter to Arrowcat was that he was the one who smashed the glass case due to his own reckless swings.
“You can hardly blame me for that,” Arrowcat said with a knowing smile.
The King of Thieves lifted the great sword and moved in for another heavy swoop. Arrowcat rolled sideways, narrowly escaping the great lumbering sword that crashed and embedded itself into the floor. As the Thief King struggled to pull the giant weapon free from the thoroughly wedged position, Arrowcat kicked him in the head. The Thief King skidded and slid into the Inferno crate, his back colliding into the face of the crimson ram.
Arrowcat turned to deflect another jab from behind. The Queen of Thieves’ magpie cane pecked at the Archer fiercely with repeated and rapid jabs of the bronze peak. She hooked the crowned magpie into her bow and charged her hands. It was a brief spike, enough for the lightning to travel through her fingers, across to her bow, and into the cane. It was enough for a sharp bite to shock the swift Thief Queen away in a shriek.
The magpie cane fell to the floor as the faintest and quickest of a blue spark flickered from the bronze bird's-eye. Arrowcat seized the moment that she had to take control of the situation. She nocked another arrow and turned to aim it at the King of Thieves, who was still on the floor beside the mysterious crate. “Not another step,” she barked. She was looking at the Thief King as she said it, but the words were meant for the Queen. “No closer or you’ll be ruling the Thieves Guild alone.”
She could hear the Queen of Thieves halt her attack from behind. The King of Thieves wiped a thin line of blood from the edge of his mouth as his lips pursed at the Archer.
“Tell me where the Inferno Clan are hiding.” The string of her bow made a viper’s hiss as she tightened her grasp. “I’ll settle for any of them. Come now, Your Thieving Kingliness, are they really worth dying for?”
The King of Thieves seemed serious and wroth at first. It all broke apart, and he released a faint chuckle. “No… No, I suppose they are not.”
“Don’t be a fool, Dudley,” Amaya could hear the Queen of Thieves calling out from behind. “We don’t want to anger Greyheart.”
“Then your King dies,” Arrowcat said candidly as she pulled the string back, ready to loosen.
She felt the cold end of the magpie’s beak press lightly against her neck. It felt surprisingly sharp and seamless. “Don’t. You. Dare.” The Queen of Thieves hissed every word. “If you harm him, I’ll make every second of your death a misery.”
“Suits me just fine, anything to wipe that grin off his face.”
“Enough!” the King of Thieves yelled. He lightly raised his gloved hand in a placating manner. “Fine, Night Fang. I’ll tell you what little I know.”
“Dudley… what are you doing?” The Queen of Thieves’ voice sounded shaky from behind. Almos trembling.
The Thief King gazed over Arrowcat’s shoulder. “I could not bear the hurt I would give you by departing from this world, My Queen,” he said warmly. He then turned his piercing hazel eyes back on the Assassin. “We only meet with them to exchange goods at the end of each week at midnight. We take their drugs to sell, they take the weapons and some strange herbs for the red-eyed witch-”
“There’s no such thing as witches,” Arrowcat interrupted, keeping her bow and arrow thoroughly aimed.
The King of Thieves shrugged. “I’d advise avoiding her, regardless. But you won’t because assassins like to kill other assassins and they never listen to reason.” The Thief King’s eyes glinted behind his bandana. “We meet at Hook Harbour in Dorfchester where a knuckleheaded pirate named Baraz Hackett docks his boat, The Waling Siren.”
“What a pretty name,” Arrowcat said with pursed lips.
“Now, my dear assassin, you are at an impasse,” the King of Thieves said smugly. “For you must realise the moment that arrowhead moves away from me, my darling Queen will attempt to kill you no matter what I try to say to her.”
Arrowcat nodded in agreement. She gestured with the sapphire arrowhead pointing from her bow, but not far enough that it was taken away from the Thief King’s direction. “What’s in the crate, then?” she asked, deflecting his valid threat.
“We were explicitly ordered not to peek into its contents,” the King of Thieves said. “They’ll know if we’ve broken the lock.”
“They can hardly punish you if you’re not the ones to break into it.” She released her arrow. It blew the golden lock on the crate asunder. It collided with such a force that the crate’s lid swung wide open. The crimson ram’s face seemed peeved and disappointed with its black-painted eyes. Arrowcat felt the bronze magpie's beak dig into her throat. She snapped her hands around the cane’s handle, attempting to pry it away from the Queen of Thieves. Arrowcat turned and swung a fist at the Thief Queen. The Queen of Thieves grabbed it with ease and started to violently twist. Arrowcat felt her wrist burn and then she felt her own hand burn from within in response. A blue spark escaped her fingertip.
“Wait!”
The Queen of Thieves loosened her grasp on Arrowcat’s wrist. The dark eyes behind her domino mask gazed over to where her King was standing. The King of Thieves was looming over the crate, not appearing the least bit amused by what was inside it. “Darling,” he said in a grave tone, “look at what they have burdened us with.”
Their conflict was as forgotten and distant as last autumn. The Queen of Thieves joined her King to gaze into the ominous box. They both peered into what felt like a void into a dark world. There were rows of them. Dozens of overlapping cylindrical vials with transparent glass, each containing a gaudy red substance, all frozen as if imprisoned in ice. It was indiscernible to identify if it was solid, liquid or some other strange and alien element that was unknown to most of the world. The vials glowed and emanated so much that they illuminated a harsh and hellish red against the wall beside the torchlight. “What is it?” the King of Thieves asked Arrowcat in trepidation. When he was met with no response, he turned to face her, but the Archer had already vanished away into the darkness.
Around some dusty and forgotten corridors, Arrowcat had found an open window that gifted her a scenic spot atop a large stone gargoyle that overlooked the city streets. Lights flared and shimmered over the horizon and the goliath towers from White Raven and Stone Sparkles shined like beacons that could have grabbed the attention of the gods. Arrowcat sat and admired the view for what felt like hours. For the first time in an exceedingly long time, she felt an emotion that was strange and peculiar to her. It was an emotion that she had not felt for so long that she struggled to truly process what it was at first. For the first time since Star Snow, she felt afraid.