Jeff Crook - The Thieves’ Guild

“But I can’t see her,” Alynthia broke in.

“Her eyesight isn’t good enough to tell exactly where you are looking, it is the direction you are facing more than anything, but as I was saying, as long as you maintain eye contact…” He continued talking, as he stooped to pick up his weapons.

At that moment, the water exploded. A long, dark missile, bristling at the fore end with rows of dagger-long teeth shining in gaping jaws, shot from the water as though launched by a catapult. Gimzig only had time to stand upright and raise one small fist in defiance. He disappeared in a spray of water and flailing black-scaled hide, hooked claws, and spined tail. In a flash, the monster was gone, the water boiling, and Gimzig still stood at the brink of the water, his fist raised in defiance, his eyes closed and head turned slightly aside. Again, the monster rose up, breaching the black water, its massive jaws pried firmly apart by a man-tall rod of steel, then was gone. A few large bubbles broke the surface, their ripples swept quickly away by the current.

Gimzig opened his eyes and grinned. “Crikey! I told you she was a big one! Caw! Did you see the size of her? She was beautiful!”

“What did you… how did you?” Alynthia was flabbergasted.

“Self-extending weakened-timber-bracer,” Gimzig explained. “I did a little work for the navy.” He shrugged. “It was supposed to be useful for bracing bulkheads stressed and leaking from ramming attacks, but it had an unfortunate tendency to poke holes in the bulkheads it was supposed to brace. I also developed this,” he said as he showed her the mechanical spider, “for opening salt-crusted portholes but of course it… look out!”

He flung the shining silver box at her head. For one horrifying moment she saw the thing’s legs unfolding in flight, and then a hand grasped her tunic and pulled her down.

Justin time. The spider completed its weird transformation a split second before it would have reached her face. Its long bar- or porthole-gripping fangs extended and made a rapid staccato noise as it flew over her head. She glared at the gnome as though he had gone mad and reversed her dagger to aim it at his throat before Cael pulled her closer and weakly grasped her wrist and pointed.

The spider continued its strange flight, landing atop the long, fangy snout of a second sewer monster creeping up silently on stubby legs behind the beautiful captain of thieves. As the spider’s metal fangs penetrated the hide and muscle and bone of its snout and the spring-powered legs began their awful business, the monster reared up fully half again as tall as the tallest man, its nose smashing into the stone ceiling. It dropped with an agonized roar into the sewer’s rushing stream, ivory-spined tail thrashing the surface into a froth.

Alynthia stared in horror at the place where it had vanished. Then she turned to the gnome. “Well, uh, thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it, my fault, really, I forgot that these beauties always travel in… threes,” Gimzig said with a smile. They were his last words.

Behind him, the water exploded once more. A beast rose, jaws gaping, behind the distracted gnome. He instinctively leaped to avoid harm, but he was not fast enough. The awful jaws clamped down on one leg, and in the blink of an eye, he was dragged backward into the water. Cael caught a last sight of Gimzig’s face twisted with terror, eyes starting out from beneath his bushy eyebrows as he was sucked beneath the current. He didn’t even have time to scream. A few yards down- stream, the current swept up a slick of papers covered with drawings and design ideas. They lingered on the water’s surface for a moment, then swirled away.

Alynthia knelt by Cael’s side and helped him to rise. He lay against her, nearly unconscious. She doubted her ability to carry him to safety, but there was no question of leaving him here to go for help now, not after what she had just witnessed. With one last terrified glance at the water, she led Cael away.

Cael awoke to the distinct sounds of someone moving about the room in the quiet fashion of someone trying not to wake a sleeper. A clink of a cup, the soft rutch of a drawer closing, a swish and rustle of long, heavy cloth across a wooden floor. The noises that propelled his mind back to his half-remembered childhood, of waking from a long illness to the patient care and heartwarming delight of his mother.

He opened his eyes and slowly turned his head. A figure stood with her back to him beside a simple dresser of pale wood, setting candles into a wooden box. She was short, dressed in a black dress that dragged the ground, hiding her feet. Over her head she wore a hood of similar material. She moved with the slow and deliberate care of the old, placing each candle in the box as though carefully counting them out.

Beside his bed stood a severe, straight-backed chair, and beside the chair a low table with a clay pitcher and battered pewter cup, and a wooden bowl over the lip of which dangled a wet rag. He lay beneath an open window, and outside the window the spreading branches of an elm were dappled with the sunlight Opposite this was another window, also thrown wide, which, judging by the seagulls gliding in the blue empty air outside, overlooked the bay. Beside the dresser stood a door, opened a crack.

The old woman finished her task and placed the candle box into a drawer, then slowly slid it shut, making as little noise as possible. She started for the door, glancing quickly at the bed before leaving.

The face that peered out from the hood was not old but that of a girl. A few strands of dirty blonde hair spilled from the hood’s depths. Her eyes opened wide with surprise and delight, seeing Cael awake.

“Hello, Claret,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

In answer, she flew to the door and jerked it wide. “He’s awake!” she shrieked, then dashed to his side. He feared for a moment that she would throw herself atop him, but she paused, and instead gently touched his arm beneath the coverlet. “How do you feel?” she asked softly but with excitement.

“Hungry,” Cael said. “I feel thin as a wight.”

“I can fix that!” Claret said, grinning. She turned to the door at the sound of a small, joyous gasp. Cael followed her gaze.

Alynthia stood in the doorway, one hand covering her lips. She wore trousers of brown homespun, a simple blouse, and her feet were bare. She had cut her hair, shorn off all her tight ringlets, leaving her with an unruly mass of short black curls.

Her hand shook as she lowered it. “It’s about time you woke, you old lazybones,” she said with feigned anger. The sparkle in her dark eyes revealed her happiness.

“Elves never sleep,” he answered. “I was merely faint from hunger and torture.”

“Well, then you fainted for a month and a day,” Alynthia laughed.

“How long?” Cael cried in surprise as he rose up in bed-and found he couldn’t. He fell back heavily, gasping.

“You should rest,” Claret said to him as she glared at Alynthia. The captain of thieves approached the bed and laid a hand on Cael’s forehead.

“Your fever only broke yesterday,” she softly said to the elf. “Claret is right. I’m sorry.”

“A month and a day!” Cael sighed as he let them rearrange his coverings. “What happened?”

“What do you remember?” Alynthia asked.

“Not now!” Claret barked. “Let him rest. He needs food, then more sleep.”

“No, I want to know,” Cael protested. “Tell me.”

“Where do I begin?” Alynthia asked as she slumped wearily into the chair beside the bed.

“I’m going to heat some broth,” Claret said. She left the room, her long black dress swishing over the wooden floor.