The merchants of Highwalk liked to pretend that they stood apart from the rogues, outlaws, thieves, bandits, scoundrels, and helpless civilians of Lowrun. They acted like their money, their mansions, their high walls and their alert guards, all separated them from those who lived below. They lied to themselves that Highwalk was a different city than Lowrun.
And yet, they never put windows on the ground floors of their fine manors.
A thoughtful or philosophical woman might find something curious in that dichotomy, but Lain was neither of those things. For right now, at least, she had only one focus on her mind: her job.
Eggert Lowen relied too much on his wall, believing it an effective enough defense that he could skimp on hiring actual guards. That was a mistake. Sure, a lesser thief might look at a wall like that around Lowen’s estate, ten feet tall, studded with iron spikes, well lit by torches and covered in subtle, clever runes to repel intruders, and move on, searching for a softer target.
Unfortunately for Lowen, walls had never proven much hindrance for Lain, and it had only taken her half a night to map out the patrol patterns of his skeleton crew of guards and slip onto his grounds.
Now, she hustled across the well-tended lawn of the manor, coming to stop in a crouch behind some concealing bushes. Another foolish fixation of the wealthy. The decorative topiaries may have been pretty, but they provided perfect hiding places, too.
Lain crouched in place, every muscle still and frozen, as a guard patrol paced by, lanterns in hand. As she so often did, she wore clothes of dark green and brown, loose-fitting around the joints but tight on the rest of her lean, hard body, and she seamlessly blended into the slender strip of garden around her. The two guards were too busy discussing a doxy one had been impressed by to search the shadows along the manor too carefully, and soon they were gone.
Seven and a half minutes, Lain thought to herself. That was how long she had until the next patrol, this one with a guard dog, came by.
More than enough time.
Lain turned to the wooden support beam behind her. Though the house was largely made from brick and stone, great wooden beams still remained, the skeleton of the house’s original framework emerging from the obdurate shell that had been built around it. Maybe the beams were exposed for some structural reason, or maybe Lowen thought them a rustic decoration. It mattered little to Lain.
She held out a hand and mentally reached for her quintessence, the immaterial source of power the Primal had given her with the gift of wood–and the lumber seemed to shift, a nearly inaudible creak coming from the wooden beam as Lain coaxed it into shape, a shallow handhold quickly emerging from the solid wood.
[Flexible Growth] - Active, Manipulation - Shape wood into simple shapes with a touch. Quintessence cost depends on size and complexity of manipulation.
The gift of wood turned the manor’s smooth support beam into a ladder for Lain, and the thief easily climbed her way up. Handholds appeared as she reached for them, remained behind as footholds, and then vanished once she had left them behind.
[Leave No Trace] - Wood, Thief - Passive, Manipulation - Manipulated wood may be set to return to its original shape a short time after contact ends.
The augment, produced by the interaction between Lain’s gift of the thief and gift of wood, ensured that no conspicuous bumps were left behind her, leaving the wooden beam unmarred by the time she settled against the wall between the beam and the nearby window.
Lain blew out a slow breath. The ledge she was on was shallow, and it was stone, so she couldn’t bend its shape to her will. Still, gifts aside, Lain was a skilled thief, and this was far from the first precarious ledge she had patiently passed long minutes perched on in her years of thieving.
A few minutes later, the next guard patrol came by. Two men, each bearing lanterns, walking a big hound on a leash. The dog paused a moment when it passed the bush Lain had hidden behind, sniffing curiously–but the smoke she had sat in before starting this job successfully hid the remains of her scent, and thirty feet in the air, neither the guards’ lanterns nor the dog’s nose could quite find her.
One guard jerked on the leash, and the dog padded after them.
Lain relaxed–and then she heard one of the guards curse.
“Blimey! Ello, what’s that?”
Lain froze as still as she could, and she slowly turned her head to regard the guards. What had she gotten wrong? How had they seen her? Or had it been simple bad luck? Rogue knew it wouldn’t be the first time fortune’s fickle grace had failed her on a job.
No. None of the above. They hadn’t seen her.
There, up the hill a little bit, there was a girl scrambling out a window, trying to climb down a bank of ivy that clung to the wall below an open bay window. Her dress kept getting caught on the vines, though, even as her limbs got tangled in the bag she had hastily slung over her shoulder.
“Well, lookit that. Whaddya think we should do?” Ello asked the other guard.
The first guard snorted, and then kept walking. “A whole lot of nothing,” he replied. “We ain’t wardens. Lowen’s paying us to protect his place, not to look out for Brooker’s manse.”
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Thank the Rogue for lazy guards. The two soon moved on, and Lain held her position, rhythmically clenching and relaxing the muscles of her legs and forearms in a way that helped to avoid cramping. Eventually, the rich girl, whoever she was, made it down from her window, apparently without alerting any guards who actually cared, and soon, the night returned to silence.
Only then did Lain move. She didn’t know how long she had–that distraction had thrown her off of her carefully prepared timetable–but she didn’t let haste make her clumsy. Calmly, smoothly, she reached out and ran a finger along the wooden sill of the window.
It was a simple thing, as she expected, four panes of glass put together in a two-by-two square, bordered by wooden frames. The glass, no doubt, would be enruned, and probably imbued too, filled with magic to make it difficult and noisy to break–so it was a good thing Lain didn’t plan to just break the glass.
Her finger ran along the center frame of the window instead, the gift she had earned from the Primal coaxing the wood to subtly flex and shift until the panes of the window just fell out of place. Lain caught each pane, one at a time, and carefully placed them on the interior sill. Once they were safely out of the way, she directed the frame to widen, making a gap large enough for her to slide through.
The thief’s lean muscles bent with languid ease, her arms easily supporting her weight as she shifted over to the window, her legs effortlessly slipping through–and then she was inside Eggert Lowen’s study.
The room was dark and empty at this time of night, its master out drinking and whoring away the night, leaving it vulnerable to Lain’s depredations.
But first things first. Cover the trail.
Lain had two packs slung close to her body, their straps holding them tight to her back despite the bulky items in one and the heavy items in the other, but now she took them off.
Out of one bag, she pulled out a heavy set of boots and two bundles of cloth. The former were the shoes of well-off sailors, captains and bosuns and the like, while the latter were the shoes of a sailor that had spent their wages on beer rather than clothing. Similar cloth wraps covered Lain’s own feet, and she took a minute to walk around the room, pressing the spare shoes into the plush carpets, dragging them over the hardwood, making their tracks obvious.
One of Lowen’s biggest rivals, Seth Saltcrest, was a shipping magnate with a score of boats under his control. With tracks like these left behind, as well as the coarse fibers Lain scattered around, tiny pieces of sail cloth and hempen rope, it would be natural to assume that Seth was behind the robbery.
That done, Lain put the shoes back and made her way around the room again, this time collecting petty valuables. The torches on the wall, glowstones attached to weighted rods that could control their illumination, were first, followed by a handful of bright silver quills made from some kind of magical bird, a few fine ink vials, a slender tube of eldrite dust designed to make unimpeachable contracts, and several similar curiosities. Though they’d collectively only be worth a few mantles to a fence, they’d help further sell the story of some undisciplined sailors being behind this.
As she grabbed each item, she passed them into the air, where they vanished into her Loot Bag.
Loot Bag - Utility - Access a moderate-sized extradimensional storage space. Only stolen goods can be stored in this space. Living beings, as well as items with high magical density, may be rejected by the storage space.
The ability was handy, but as it could only store things she had stolen, she had to carry her supplies on her person. Still, it meant that her two bags only got lighter as she continued.
Next. The desk.
A few drawers were unlocked, each holding insignificant sundries Lain idly shuffled around and displaced. A few more minor valuables went into her Loot Bag. The bottom drawer was locked as securely as she had expected–but once again, Lowen had focused his security on the enchanted lock, rather than the actual wood of the desk. Likely, he had thought the dense ironwood resistant to tampering–but to a woman of Lain’s skills, it posed little more obstacle than the window frame had.
It only took a few minutes for Lain to warp the wood in a way that snapped the inner mechanisms of the lock, and then the drawer was free. Two fine wax seals went into the Loot Bag, as did a heavy ledger book. Lain had no interest in either item, but once again, they would keep eyes pointed at Lowen’s merchant rivals rather than a freehand thief.
Only then, with her tracks safely covered, did Lain turn to her real prize: the bookshelf.
She ignored all the books but one, a heavy tome of blue dyed leather, embossed with silver fittings. As the client had said, the book’s binding read “Stellar Constellations and Their Effects on Weather Patterns in the Second Century Realm: a Treatise.”
Lain wasn’t much of a reader, but even so, she couldn't imagine a more boring topic for a tome.
Apparently, Lowen agreed, as the book was hollowed out, its interior pages cut away. Inside, disguised by the hypothetical weight of such a massive volume, were three heavy, white-silver ingots, along with a fourth, more slender piece of burnished silver.
The three larger ingots were astral silver, a rare and extremely expensive commodity, while the smaller was a keyed bar of mundane silver. In the hands of a skilled smith, those metals could create weapons and tools capable of vanishing and reappearing at the command of their owner–and between them, they were a haul worth hundreds of mantles. Enough gold that, even after the fence took his cut and she recouped her expenses for this job, Lain could live comfortably for a year or two.
Lain quickly removed the ingots, replacing them with four fake ones she had ready in her second mundane bag. Though the replacements looked identical to anything but the most gifted of senses, they were merely polished iron wrapped around clay molds. The book went back on the shelf, just where it had been.
With luck, it would take months, if not longer, for Lowen to realize what the actual object of the robbery had been, as Lain’s cover would draw attention from the counterfeit metal bars.
Smiling to herself, Lain took a grappling hook from her gear bag, the same one her spare shoes had been in. She hooked it to the sill and let the rope dangle over the side of the window, offering an explanation for how the sailors had gotten into the office, then she slung her bags back over her shoulders and left the same way she came in.
Within mere moments, she was blocks away from Lowen’s mansion. Another night, another job.
Lain didn’t whistle, didn’t celebrate, didn’t even smile with the satisfaction of another job well done. Sure, the haul from Lowen’s place would keep her comfortable for months to come, but she was a woman of simple needs, already more than able to live off what she had saved.
Yet she kept going, kept spending her nights planning and surveilling and burgling. It was all she was good at, even if it had lost any real purpose years before.
Oh well. At the very least, Lain decided, she deserved a drink.
