Willam awoke to the sounds of laughter and clinking glassware. This was not, in truth, what he had expected the afterlife to sound like, and he'd always imagined the mattresses would be a bit softer than the lightly padded rock slab he seemed to be resting on now, but he was certain he must be dead. He had, after all, seen Elayna, his one true love, pull a weapon on the most feared assassin of all time. Death was the only logical conclusion. Now it was just a matter of sorting out where he'd ended up.

He had led a decent if not somewhat morally ambiguous life, as thieves tend to do. He also hadn't gotten into the proper parts of the job yet either, having been cut down while still in his schooling. Willam wondered if he got extra marks in the plus column for being stopped before he could get into any real mischief, his sin accumulation called early on account of being stabbed repeatedly.

He knew he'd never killed anyone, never robbed from the elderly, only dozed off in class once or twice (and he wasn't sure those counted in the grand scheme of things, but decided to include them in his personal tally for the sake of being thorough). If he hadn't made it to any of the good eternities the various religions were always talking about, Willam figured he'd at least land in a nice, temperate one, with a decent view and decided lack of sulfurous lakes.

"He truly is a very sweet boy, and more intelligent than he often appears at first..." The voice drifted over to Willam from somewhere on his left and sounded remarkably like Elayna's. Since she had always equated to an angel in his world, he began to suspect that maybe he'd scored higher on the ultimate final exam than he had hoped.

"Spend a great deal of time looking out for him, do you?" This second voice, however, had already become synonymous in Willam's mind with very real visions of what hell could be.

He sat bolt upright, to find the love of his life and the world's most wanted man having tea on the room's miniscule dining table, while poring over a very thick book. They were periodically giggling.

"Elayna?!"

"Willam, you're awake!" The girl rushed over and took up a spot on the bed next to him, grabbing his hand partly out of affection, and partly to take his pulse with a worried mother hen expression on her face. "You were so pale, you had us concerned!"

"Us?!"

"Of course, Mr. K'hras here and myself. We were beginning to wonder if you hit your head, or ruptured something in all the stress."

"Mr. K'hras?!"

Elayna sighed. "I can see we're not going to get anywhere until we start this over again properly. Willam, this is Albanos K'hras. As it turns out, if he's not holding a contract with your name on it, he is a very nice man with very good taste in tea."

Behind her, Albanos waved at Willam with a very nearly sheepish expression on his face. Something about being patiently introduced to this frightened boy as "a very nice man" caused a great deal of cognitive dissonance in a brain fully aware of the things it had done in its life.

Elayna tended to have that effect on people. She was remarkably intelligent and good-natured for a thief, with a personality that made you wonder if she couldn't simply walk into someone's house and ask for the item she'd been contracted to retrieve. Her curly brown hair, blue eyes, and radiant smile exuded cheerfulness so efficiently that it shot straight through the annoying brand of perkiness possessed by the naive and sheltered, and into a new realm of transcendental happiness which, against all better judgment, actually made you happier, too.

Knowing she had this ability, while simultaneously being aware she'd been trained in an Academy emphasizing extensive knowledge of concealed weaponry, multiple theories on advanced infiltration, and a whole range of poisons on top of it, terrified anyone who stopped to carry that equation to its logical conclusion. At least until she smiled at them again. Then it just didn't seem to matter anymore.

"Come on now Willam, don't be shy," she chided, leading him from the bed to a seat at the table next to Albanos, where she poured him a cup and sat back down across from their guest no less casually than if she had been hosting a book club meeting. "We were just looking over some of the bounties people have posted on Mr. K'hras."

"Albanos, please," he interjected. "Titles make me break out in hives."

He reached into his cloak to scratch an imaginary itch for comedic effect. When his hand came back out, Willam jumped enough to spill a few drops of his tea. The people on either side of him sighed once more, in stereo.

"Anyway," Elayna pressed on, "it's ridiculous the kinds of things he's being blamed for. Small uprisings, bad harvests, plagues of locusts, untimely eclipses, anything that goes wrong for someone with too much money and too little imagination immediately becomes Albanos' fault. Like here," she pointed to a random entry on their current page, urging Willam to lean in for a closer look. "One of the tribal barons north of Solai came up missing two of his daughters and a goat one morning, and claimed--"

Albanos coughed politely over his cup. "Well...statistically, if you put enough charges in one place, there becomes an increasingly significant chance that at least some of them are rooted in truth."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Both students lapsed into a perplexed and somewhat embarrassed silence, until Willam, his natural curiosity overcoming his bladder-clinching terror of the man, verbalized the question hanging in the air.

"Why the goat?"

"It was Ruby's pet."

"Oh...and Ruby was?"

"The baron's eldest daughter."

"And...you...er...stole them?" Willam's thief mind worked very hard to break potentially disturbing thoughts down into terminology he was more comfortable with.

"Hmm...in a sense, I suppose. Look, I'm quite tired, and while it's been lovely meeting you two, I simply must get some sleep."

"Of course, Mr. K'hr...Albanos," chimed Elayna in her innocent, sing-song voice, beginning to collect pieces of her tea set, shaking them dry before squirreling them away in her satchel. "I expect we'll be seeing quite a lot of you once you're officially announced as principal."

Albanos, who had been kindly but persistently aiding with her efforts, stopped cold. Willam, unsure of what was transpiring but susceptible to sudden changes in the temperature of a room, steadied himself on a bedpost to be on the safe side. Elayna finished packing, still smiling in her friendly, "You can't stab me because I'm too cute" kind of way.

"And what makes you think I would ever, in a thousand years, be principal of this place?" Albanos said, trying to keep his face as blank as possible. "If I'm not mistaken, you're trained how to kill me here."

He could see those blue eyes flickering over him, watching for tells. Oh, but this girl was far more dangerous than she looked.

"Was just a guess, sir," she ventured, slinging the rest of her belongings over her shoulder and tightening her cloak.

"Rumor's been going around for ages now that Mr. Hagglit's looking to retire. The faculty make it very clear to one another in the teacher's lounge that they don't want the position. Say it's like a bull's-eye on your back nowadays. Suddenly you show up, in the last place I imagine you'd ever want to come voluntarily, right back in your old room, secret and safe as could be. All this just after that nasty business with the spy in the forest. So many concerned parents saying we need to do something to make sure the students are kept safe, until they're getting paid not to be, at least. So much paperwork that Mr. Hagglit does so hate dealing with."

She shrugged, her curls bouncing in her inimitable, deceptively disarming way. "It all seems incredibly convenient if you ask me."

Albanos found himself smiling, wholly despite himself. Perhaps there was hope for the next generation after all. He'd ended so many of them without much effort that he'd earnestly begun to wonder...

"Well, Elayna, while I appreciate your theory, the flaw remains that no one has asked you."

"Actually, you said 'What makes you think--"

"Good night!" And with one final push, they were out of the door, finding it nearly slammed shut behind them. Elayna's grin threatened to separate the two halves of her skull.

"What a nice gentleman. Much more pleasant than they make him out to be, I'd say. Come on Willam, let's leave him be and head out to the village. I'm starving."

The door suddenly flung open behind them, causing Willam to plaster himself against the far wall. Albanos stood there, staring at an unmoved Elayna, with a confused expression on his face.

"I have to know...why does your password knock translate to 'fuzzy bunny rabbits'?"

Elayna just gave him another disarming smile. "I happen to like rabbits." She shifted her satchel to reveal the stenciled smiling rabbit face on one side

"Oh...so it...doesn't have anything to do with what the two of you were planning on using my room for, then?"

Elayna looked shocked. "Of course not, Mr. K'hras! What kind of people do you think we are?"

"Teenagers," Albanos replied curtly and closed the door, an unseen bolt sliding into place.

Willam tapped Elayna on the shoulder.

"You mean, the password doesn't have anything to do with us--"

"Hush, you. Let's get to town before the Staggering Shadow gets too crowded."

Willam watched her creep down the hall and wondered, not for the last time, which was worse. Knowing the kinds of things Elayna was capable of when she put her mind to it, or knowing that he had probably not even begun to scratch the surface of what kinds of things she might be capable of if push came to shove.

His rare moment of waxing philosophical having passed, he realized he was now standing very much alone in front of the door to Albanos' room. As quickly as he dared, he scurried off after her.