"I'm a little surprised you were fine with just leaving them there," I said.

"Standard operating procedure with the Thieves' Guild," Faith said, as we rode back to Greenwood Village. "Unless we've got something specific to pin on them... we just leave 'em where they lie, once we're done with 'em. They prefer it that way, and it's easier for us."

"Even if they're bleeding?" Talia asked.

"Hano is willing to acknowledge that Fingers, the God of Thieves, is a full member of the Hikaano Pantheon, but is otherwise wholly unsympathetic to anyone who pledges themselves to Fingers' service."

"Man, Paladins do not fuck around," Talia said.

"Yeah, that's kinda their whole thing," I said. "Most of the Guilds are just interested in maintaining their social power, and their monopoly on certain trades. The Paladin's Guild is well-known for being different, and having a different agenda that they proactively pursue rather than reactively maintaining. Makes 'em less dysfunctional than most other Guilds, but... well. Let's just say their agenda isn't always unobjectionable."

"The War Of The Roses was three hundred years ago," Faith said.

"My goddamn dad fought in that war, so no, you don't get to act like it's not within living memory," I snapped. "Sure, three hundred years is several human lifetimes ago, but humans aren't exactly the aggrieved party here, are they?"

"I meant more, it's been three hundred years, every Paladin involved is dead now," Faith said.

"Hano is very much still alive and in charge," I said bitterly. "And he refuses to apologize or admit that slaughtering children like lambs was a bad thing, because then his Paladins might refuse to kill children for him, and he's not willing to take that option off the table."

Thunder rumbled overhead, and I snorted.

"Come down here and say it to my face, asshole."

The thunder rumbled again, but quieter.

"Yeah, 'swhat I fuckin' thought."

"I feel like the God of Paladins isn't quite as intimidated by you as you might think," Faith said dryly.

"Then you need a theology lesson," I said. "The Hikaano Pantheon aren't called The Living Gods for no reason, after all. They've died before, and they'll die again. Look up how many Gods of Thieves there've been over the millennia."

"I think maybe we should find something else to talk about that isn't going to become a huge argument that ends with drawn weapons," Talia said.

"I think that there should be a God of Gay People," I said.

"Fuck no," Faith said. "Could you imagine how humiliating it'd be to get rejected by the Faggot's Guild?"

---

"So, Saturday at noon, huh?" Dad said, once we got back from the Warehouse District.

"The King of Thieves wants to see me," I said simply. "He's got something he needs an elf for, and he's willing to pay for it. I'll get the statue back and ten million dollars for it."

"That's a trap," Mom said immediately.

"Well, obviously," I said. "Luckily, we've got time to prepare for it, so I can kick his ass up and down the street." I turned to look at Faith. "You got any complaints about that?"

"...The King of Thieves, by default, has lost all protections of the law," Faith said simply. "Whoever they are, they are always wanted by the Paladin's Guild. Dead or alive."

"Duly noted," I said.

"I don't feel good about you walking into an obvious trap," Mom said, frowning. "Even if you are my son, the fact that you can handle yourself doesn't mean you can handle everything. Are you sure this is worth it?"

"Very certain," I said, nodding. "But hey, since you need assurances, how 'bout I promise to bring you back something pretty, like the funerary effigy of Dad's hearth-mother?"

"I'll pass."

"The King of Thieves' head?"

"Now that's my boy."

"Ahem," Faith said.

"Is the Paladin's Guild willing to pay a bounty for the King of Thieves' head?" I asked.

"...Well, not as such, but-" Faith began.

"Then they're not getting it," I said. "Once I've taken it from his shoulders, it is mine by right of conquest, and they can either pay a fair price for it, or they can come down here and try to take it by force. And I don't know about you, but I don't like their odds."

"...Fair enough," Faith said, sighing. "So... what next?"

"Well, I'm the only classically-trained Mage-Knight in town, so I am about to have my hands full giving my son one last bit of training," Dad said. "You and Talia, though..." Dad shrugged. "I don't know. Catch up on your reading? Waiting is all you've got."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Well, fair enough," Faith said. "Is there... any chance we could participate in that training, or...?"

"I can only train one person at a time, and with all due respect, I'm more interested in training my son than the girl wearing the uniform of the people who killed my entire family."

"...So that's who he gets it from," Faith murmured.

"Faith, I have told you that my hatred of Paladins is born from the fact they killed my grandparents," I said. "That was a half hour ago."

"Also your aunts and uncles," Dad added. "Hell, the only reason Frederick survived is because he wasn't in the country at the time- he was off studying with the shugenja on the far side of the continent, and the Paladins couldn't kill him. Now, you, young lady, are not being chased out of here with a sword because you're eighteen, and your stupidity is as excusable as it is unsurprising. You've been lied to about the noble cause of the Paladin's Guild, and it's not completely your fault you believed them. But..." Dad grimaced a little. "Well. If you're going to be sticking around after this Sunday, I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring that uniform past my doorstep again."

"Napoleon," Talia said firmly, planting her hands on her hips.

"Talia," Dad said calmly. "I understand your position, and also your father's position. You both grew up knowing only a world where elves living under Hikaano law was the norm. I understand how and why your position is to just make the best of what we have now, and work for a better future. I can even respect that. But Talia, I cannot join you in the land of letting go, because I didn't grow up that way, and I still remember having to identify my father's crispy-fried corpse by his fucking teeth. That tends to leave a mark on a fellow!"

"Likewise," I continued, "the fact that I got to grow up hearing stories about all the cool shit my extended family did, and then be reminded that they are all dead, has also left its mark on me. At any rate, it sounds like I've got a camping trip to pack for, so... Both of you out of my house."

---

The targets all popped with a puff of smoke and a sharp noise- but much, much quieter than my own weapon should've been. They were all balloons, created from leaves and kept aloft by what Napoleon Ironheart called 'simple druidcraft,' but which would be devilishly complicated for a wizard to accomplish, despite the fact both primal and arcane magic dealt in the material. It was down to the driving forces; primal magic was powered by the Living Earth and your relationship with it, while arcane magic was all you. The Living Earth understood the natural world very, very well, better than any scholar of the natural sciences could ever hope to manage, but the truly artificial, while often conceptually simple, was often far beyond its grasp.

"I didn't have time to do it properly," Dad admitted, as I lowered my weapon. "These are just the basic charms- silencing, accuracy, and power. But they'll have to suffice."

"It's already a lot better than it was," I said. "The accuracy enchantment is throwing me off a little, but... it mostly amounts to not accounting for the arc at long range. I'll have to adjust the sights a little, get it dialed in. But for now..." I engaged safety catch, and holstered my weapon. "I like it. Thank you."

"I'm glad," Dad said. "There'd usually be a long ritual of finding the right tree, carving it into your bow and the hundred unbreaking arrows that would forever be by your side, and anointing it through three trials, but..." Dad shrugged. "Well, we don't have time for that, and you're not using a bow in the first place. We're improvising."

"And some people say elves don't understand the meaning of haste," Mom said. She'd decided to come with us, to shore up my training as a Wizard, on account I couldn't do the same sorts of magic that Dad could.

"As if elves don't deal with the same cycle of the seasons as everyone else," Dad muttered. "The one thing we do struggle with is the specific timeframe of a human life, and that's because it's so much longer than anything else found in nature, aside from elephants, tortoises, and some sea creatures. And even then, humans have lived among elves for thousands of years! Half-elves have always been a fact of life!"

"Focus, Napoleon," I said.

"Right," Dad said, nodding. "The fact we like to run our mouths probably isn't helping with that misunderstanding. Anyhow! I'm going to mark out a circular trail, and you're going to ride it on your motorcycle a few times. Once you're confident, I'm gonna put up targets, and you're gonna shoot 'em while riding your motorcycle. Ready?"

Using a ranged weapon from the back of a moving horse- steel or otherwise- was the sort of skill that was so abominably hard to do usefully that it was pretty much impossible for a human to learn it as an adult. They had to be raised in an environment where horse archery was a basic life skill- how every adult man hunted and fought, and what every boy played at from the day they were old enough to sit on a sheep and shoot a toy bow.

Now, I'd been practicing with a toy bow in a little toy wagon pulled by my father since I was four, and with this weapon on this motorcycle ever since I'd built them, two years ago. I was already pretty good, and could reliably nail even moving targets- fake riders on fake horses, constructed from leaves and twigs by more of my father's druidcraft. But I didn't strictly need long practice- I was an elf, and one of the things elves were known for was possessing a dexterity and quickness of reflex that surpassed humanity, making us far more accurate archers with the same amount of practice, for all that a human could shoot a heavier bow that would launch arrows farther and with more power behind them. With humans, archers had to be raised, not trained, and doubly so with horse archers. But with elves, those were skills that could be learned in adulthood, given that elves learned them faster and had more time in which to learn them.

So, what did it matter, that I wasn't strong enough to fight a human with just a sword and win? That wasn't the elven way. That was the human way. The elven way was to fight smarter, not harder, and pick our enemies off from afar with well-placed shots; not to fight them like men, but to hunt them like animals.

I nodded to my father. "I'm ready," I said.