SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Show it first,” said someone who had an air of authority around him. “No deal until we see it work.”

The gnoll took out something that glinted in the light. Jadie stepped closer, keeping behind a tree and making sure the moss shut out all sounds of her footsteps on the cobblestones, and saw that it was a knife. The gnoll picked a copper off the table and dropped it on the blade.

It split cleanly in two.

Jadie’s mouth dropped, and the leader whistled as the others murmured. “And you can get us, what, fifty of these things?”

“More than that. They don’t care if gladiators are importing weapons, since we’re professional fighters. Got a hundred in town already, and if you need more I can get another shipment. Price is ten gold per.”

“That’s outrageous,” said one of the men. “Ten gold for a knife? I—”

“Do you want a dagger that can cut through the armor of the Duke’s personal guard, or don’t you?” asked the gnoll. “Because if not, just say so and I’m out of here.”

“Deal,” said the leader, before his men objected again. Jadie heard clinking as a bag of coins hit the table. “There’s your money. Next time, we’ll have a thousand gold for you—if you have the weapons to sell us.”

Jadie froze as the impact of what they were saying hit her. This wasn’t just a weapon deal. They were plotting some kind of attack on the Duke.

The Westwick Thieves Guild had instilled in her many values—chief among them loyalty, cleverness, and a love of money, not necessarily in that order. But patriotism was in there too. Westwick survived thanks to special dispensation from Victor Raleigh himself, and no man, woman, or child within it would stint anything in upholding the kingdom. If there was a plot against the nobility, she owed it to her town—and her Guild—to stop it.

Her grin returned, fiercer than ever. This was going to be an even better mission than she’d hoped for.

She walked up to the group and offered the chrysanthemum-garnished drinks. “Would you like any?” she asked, bowing her head as a good servant would. “Special vintage. The innkeeper’s best.”

“Sure it is,” muttered Hwarl, but he nodded anyway. Jadie’s finger brushed the chrysanthemum in his glass as he took it, and she just had enough time to focus on her magic. Quick! Release your pollen! It’s urgent! Then she lost contact as he took the glass and drained half of it in one gulp.

Which was when the flower blasted pollen into his face.

Jadie’s plan worked better than she could have guessed. He let out a mighty sneeze and dropped the glass, spattering his ill-fitting tunic with sweet, sticky wine. Jadie was by his side in an instant, wiping him down and pretending not to notice his retreating companions. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “Please, allow me.”

Hwarl looked at her, then shrugged. “Like I care,” he muttered.

“Sir, if I might make a suggestion, the fruit flies will be attracted to the wine.” She tugged at the tunic. “We have excellent laundry facilities. Please, allow me to have this cleaned. It will be returned to your quarters tomorrow morning. I promise.”

The gnoll scowled but eventually stripped the tunic off. “More comfortable like this anyways,” he said, raising a mocking eyebrow at the men who were now standing several paces away. “Fine. Send it to the gladiator quarters by the Coliseum. Room 318.” He turned and walked away.

Jadie watched him and his companions leave in different directions, then headed back towards the inn. She still needed to wait for Lady Trefaer and so could not pursue right away. But the next day, Jadie Rivers, newly minted Thieves Guild member, was going to save the country.

Best mission ever , thought the thief, before chuckling and returning to the crowd.

The Coliseum was one of the star attractions of Atalatha. A towering structure of marble and granite, it was easily the largest building in the city, and it could be seen from almost any road within Atalatha’s walls. The fights were attended by large crowds of people, and those people had equally large amounts of money for gambling, concessions, and souvenirs. Pickpocketing her way through the Coliseum was definitely on Jadie’s list of things to do before returning to Westlick.

But not yet. At the moment, she had a tunic to return and a conspiracy to deal with. She just had to get into Hwarl’s room, she thought, and uncover his weapons cache. Then she could expose the conspiracy and save the day. There would be time to loot the city later.

Truth be told, she was slightly annoyed that Lady Trefaer had never showed up at the treaty party the previous night. It surely wouldn’t be held against her that the rumors of her appearance were inaccurate, but the very idea of returning to her teachers without completing the mission rankled. Still, she was going to stop Hwarl and his conspiracy. That would hopefully outweigh her failure.

The gladiator quarters, a four-story building with dozens of rooms and a courtyard for sparring, were located two blocks from the Coliseum. Jadie reached it just before lunch, having checked to make sure that Hwarl was scheduled for a duel at that time, and made her way to his room. She reached his room and examined the lock for a moment before knocking to make sure nobody was home. Her right hand was already fingering the silver lockpick in her pocket.

But footsteps sounded from within the room, and Jadie only just managed to fix a smile to her face before the door swung open to reveal a massive human. She saw two more guards in the room behind him, sitting and eating sandwiches, but the man at the door moved to block Jadie’s vision. “You’re not Stebbins or Rawlston.”

Who? Jadie passed Hwarl’s tunic to the man. “Laundry for Mr. Hwarl. Is he in?”

“He’s dueling,” said the man. And he began to shut the door.

“Sorry to disturb you!” Jadie managed to chirp just before it closed. “Nobody told me he had people here. I was just going to leave the tunic on the door—”

“We’re new,” snapped the man. “And we’re just here for the week, so if you have any more laundry you won’t need to worry about ‘disturbing’ us after that.”

New? He must have got them while he’s waiting for the deal to go through, thought Jadie. “Actually,” she began, but the door had already shut in her face.

She stared at it for a moment. Okay. He has guards in his room, and it sounds like more are guarding him personally. If I want to search the room, I’ll have to fight them. She paused. That could be a problem.

Jadie wasn’t bad in combat, at least as far as thieves went. She knew about fighting like a thief fought—a push at the top of a ridge, a knife in the back from the shadows, a few drops of poison into an unguarded chalice of wine. But if she broke into Hwarl’s room, she’d be stuck in a heads-up fight against several brutes. She wasn’t likely to win that one, magic or no.

Sighing, she left the gladiator quarters and walked to a local park. Sitting with her hands nestled in the flowers, nudging them into pleasing patterns as she rested, she went over her options. Fighting all his guards wasn’t an option. Nor was going to the authorities. She wasn’t that well versed in politics, but even she knew that the government would be reluctant to arrest a gnoll from Warus the day after signing a treaty with one of the most influential gnoll packs in Warus. She’d need hard evidence before risking that, and she didn’t have it.

But she still had to do something . The entire reason that Westwick was permitted to exist without paying taxes to the crown was that, as her teachers had drilled in to her, the Thieves Guild had another duty besides simply enriching themselves and their community. It was their job to deal with threats to Raleigh, its cities, and its people that couldn’t be handled by the authorities. If she failed, she would let down her whole community—and the Thieves Guild, which had permitted her to join their ranks at an unusually young age, proclaiming that they believed she would be an asset to their team. Giving up was not an option.