Though Allana itched to go out again, to roam the markets and track down another merchant with too much arrogance and not enough sense, to see if she could draw another round of intercession from either her pursuer or her benefactor, she obeyed Tenebres’s request. She spent the next few days primarily relaxing with Cadence, accompanying the celestial on their ventures throughout the city.

  “Correntry is insane,” Cadence gushed. “It’s been more than a month, and I still don’t think I’ve seen all of it.”

  “It’s fine,” Allana told her with a shrug.

  “Fine!?” Cadence stuck out her lower lip in a pout. “You grew up somewhere just like this, right? I’m sure it’s not all that impressive to you.”

  Allana idly looked around. They were walking along a small road in a residential neighborhood. Though the homes were small and humble, they were clean, far cry from Emeston’s ramshackle tenements. The people moved with purpose, and whether they were focused or relaxed, they lacked the furtive watchfulness common in most of Lowrun. “No,” she decided, “it was nothing like this.”

  “But it was just as big, right?” Cadence clarified.

  “A little bigger, I think” Allana told her.

  “Bigger!?”

  Allana chuckled at the reaction, and Cadence’s pout returned.

  “The village I grew up in had less than three hundred people in it,” she explained. “And it’s considered big by heartland standards. Jellis was the only town I saw that was bigger. But this place… I just can’t even wrap my mind around it! Every day, I find somewhere new - my wanderer gift is gaining experience without me even needing to leave!”

  Allana raised her eyebrows. “Really?” She had to admit, the place was colorful. Emeston was certainly a little larger–she had heard Geoffrey claim the city held over thirty thousand people, compared to half that in Correntry. But where Emeston was bifurcated into two main districts, Lowrun and Highwalk, Correntry was cobbled together out of what seemed like dozens of neighborhoods. There were the markets, the noble districts, the company neighborhoods for the various large trade houses, the bank district, Artisan’s Row, Peacekeep, Cinderpits and the other slums, and who knew how many more besides.

  Allana pulled up short when she saw a small stall, little more than a few boards stacked together, with jars and baskets stacked on top of them, tended by a withered old crone of a woman. “One sec,” she told Cadence, ducking over to talk to the junkmonger.

  #

  Cadence watched Allana with interest as she twisted together a simple length of bronze wire, knotting it at the top to make a little hook and loop. Then she turned to a pouch of small, colorful pebbles, all rough and unpolished, sorting through them until a bright blue one caught her eyes. She snatched it up and began to tie a neat twine cradle around it. She hadn’t worked on her jewelry in ages–it was another habit that had fallen away in the blood-soaked, death-riddled streets of Emeston–and it felt good to be able to fiddle with the assortment of little oddities she had purchased in bulk from the junkmonger.

  “I never pictured you as much of an artisan,” Cadence observed. Allana had scattered her projects across their table at the Grime, leaving her little to do besides watch.

  Allana tried to force down the little points of heat she felt bloom in her cheeks. “Nothing that fancy,” she insisted. “It’s just a hobby, I don’t know. It’s fun.”

  Cadence nodded, watching with obvious interest as Allana fed a hooked ring into the knot she had just tied off. Already, Allana had an idea for what to make for her first new ornament in so long.

  “So I guess you’re having a good day,” Tenebres observed, taking a seat down at the same table. The boy reached to move a little jar of glass beads and marbles, but Allana shot him a venomous look, and he left it alone, accepting the fragile sliver of table she had been kind enough to leave empty as room enough.

  “Well,” Caden observed with a grin. “I think this is the first time in weeks I’ve seen you leave the library without one of us having to drag you out.”

  Tenebres rolled his eyes. Allana looked up, thoughtful, looking from his white hair to his red eyes. She could’ve sworn… While Cadence and Tenebres talked, she grabbed the jar of little marbles, rattling them around, looking for one in particular.

  “Hmm?” Allana asked, suddenly realizing the conversation had pivoted to her. “What was that?”

  “Is she always like this when she gets working on these things?” Cadence asked Tenebres.

  “I don’t know. She had stopped doing it by the time we met–I just remember noticing her bracelets.”

  Allana frowned at the pair and narrowed her eyes, a little embarrassed despite herself. “It’s rude to talk about someone like they’re not here, you know.”

  Tenebres flashed a bright grin, and he gestured for her to continue. “Don’t worry. I was just telling Cadence I found an answer to your question from the other day.”

  Allana's eyes went wide. “The veil?” She suddenly realized that, for the first time since that day by Elwyss, she had forgotten about the mysterious strangers who had chased and saved her, and about the research she had asked Tenebres to do. Had her little ornaments really been that distracting?

  Allana forced herself to put down her project. “What did you find out?”

  Tenebres’s smile got a little sad, and he reached over to take her hands in his. His fingers were, as always, so smooth and soft, weak but sure, as they guided her back down to the discarded hoop of wire. “Come to the library with me tomorrow, and I can show you, okay?”

  Allana looked from the half finished bracelet to her friend and back, before she nodded nervously. “Okay.”

  “Keep working,” Tenebres told her. “It’s fine–I want to see what you can make.”

  Allana frowned and she picked the bracelet back up–but despite his reassurances, she couldn’t quite get herself to work again with their eyes on her, and she started packing away her spoils.

  Tenebres and Cadence traded an awkward look. Allana wasn’t sure she would’ve picked up the subtext of their expressions before her charm boon, and she likely would have overreacted to it too, but now she got it. They knew that they had embarrassed her and felt guilty about it.

  Good. Next time, they can let me fiddle without their little comments.

  #

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Okay, so what’ve you got for me?” Allana asked the next morning. Once more, she was in Tenebres’s study room.

  The boy hustled over to his deck, moving aside some diagrams and sheets of equations so he could pull down yet another large tome. How did he make his way through the damned things so quickly?

  “It wasn’t easy, but I think I got a lead. I started from your gift of stealth,” he tapped another book on his shelf, labeled The Gifts of the Paragon: Ensouled Items. “Turns out that gift transmutation is better documented than I thought. Especially for two particular gifts: the gift of stealth and the gift of resolution. I guess at some point a few centuries ago, the Rogue and Arbiter were in more open conflict, and those gifts were go-to’s for Novices who enlisted in their factions, since they could be easily transmuted into a variety of gifts from the two archetypes.

  “As part of this, those two ensouled items somehow tap into some of the magic normally unique to that dichotomy of archetypes. The gift of resolution, for example, gives its gifted access to vows, a more limited version of the axiom magic used by full Arbiter gifted.”

  Allana waved a hand. “Seo, stop, you lost me. What is axiom magic? And what does this have to do with anything?”

  The boy sighed. “Sorry, I forgot. I know you’re not exactly a gift scholar. Okay, so you know the schools of magic, right? Like the sort I get from the Mage.”

  “Sure,” Allana told him. “I know there’s force magic, like yours, and healing, and summoning.”

  “Evocation, animism, and sorcery, exactly. The Mage also gives alchemy and artifice, but since those aren’t combat gifts, they tend to get sorted into another category. These sorts of magic are defined by not just being inherent abilities, like the kind your gifts give you. They require study and research and understanding to use properly.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far.”

  “Right, so those aren’t the only schools of magic, they’re just the best known ones, because the Mage is such a common archetype. The Rogue and the Arbiter each have their own schools, which a few rare ensouled items imitate.”

  “That’s the gift of resolution you mentioned, right?”

  “Exactly! The gift of resolution imitates the law, or axiom, magic of the Arbiter. All the Arbiter gifted have access to some axiom magic, but only magisters have full access to it, the same way I do to evocation.”

  “So then the gift of stealth works the same way, but for the Rogue?” Allana chewed her cheek thoughtfully, thinking about the mysterious person who had saved her most of a week before. If he was another Rogue gifted, that made a certain amount of sense.

  “That’s what it looks like. The gift of stealth’s veils are an imitation of true phantasm magic, the art of illusions. You even have a piece of that same magic already, with that pattern ability of yours.”

  “So you think whoever saved me was one of these phantasm casters?” Allana asked.

  “Illusionists, they’re called. And yes. It makes as much sense as anything I’ve come up with. They hid themself from both of you, then used illusions to distract the guy chasing you and make him think you ran somewhere else–but the illusions were in the mind of the person being targeted, so you didn’t see anything.”

  “But this means, whoever he was, he was gifted by the Rogue, right?”

  “As best as I can tell, yes. No one else I’ve heard of, short of some high-level Sage gifted, can pull off those sorts of illusions.” Tenebres closed his book, and returned it to the shelf. “Sorry I couldn’t turn up anything more.”

  Allana shook her head. “This is plenty,” she told him.

  At the very least, now she knew where to look next.

  #

  Correntry, so pretty and clean and prosperous, didn’t seem like the place to have slums. And to be fair, even its worst neighborhoods lacked the squalor of Lowrun, much less Undercrawl, but they were still there, just as they were anywhere else. One thing Allana gave credit to the city for was a general attitude of industriousness, with many of Correntry’s most destitute crediting their station to “bad luck.”

  But that didn’t mean they didn’t need help, and the mercantile interests of the city did little to support those who needed assistance to get that chance at improving their luck. Allana had, somehow, found herself filling that gap since she had arrived in Correntry, taking what chances she could to rob the most arrogant and abusive of Correntry’s merchants and… Well, Olivia referred to it as “wealth redistribution,” and that seemed as good a term as any.

  Since Allana hadn’t hit anyone lately, she didn’t have too much to spare when she went to visit Cinderpit, a small slum on the edge of Emberelm Market, home to many of the poor employees of the market and its merchants, ungifted people who were stuck with menial cleaning and maintenance jobs. Still, she worked out a deal with the owner of the Grime and Glory, and so she had a sack of bruised apples and another of day-old rolls she brought with her.

  While the residents of Cinderpit had been sullen and distrustful at first, Allana’s frank demeanor, frequent charity, and willingness to fight the bullies endemic to any poor area had quickly earned her the trust of the populace. Allana had caught some references implying that others had rendered similar assistance to the various destitute neighborhoods in the past, but that they had become more rare of late.

  Today, Allana asked some more pointed questions, and though the answers she got were vague and reluctant, she had soon pieced together a decent picture of what was going on.

  It was around then that the hairs on the back of her neck started prickling. Cautious looks and attempts to shake a tail didn’t change the vague feeling that she was being watched, but neither did they reveal anyone on her tail.

  Well. I did assume they’d catch on eventually. Allana looked around, and soon found herself ducking into a nearby alley, little more than a narrow crevice between two large, communal living spaces. A quick glance, and then another, sent her up above CInderpit and to a nearby rooftop, where she leaned against a smoking chimney.

  “Want to come out?” she asked the empty air a few minutes later.

  For a few seconds, nothing happened–and then there was a whisper of noise, something between an exhaled breath and the movement of cloth against cloth, and suddenly, there was a person standing in front of Allana.

  They were older, on the late end of middle-aged, and dressed in simple work clothes. Their black hair was short and functional, streaked with enough white to give it a salt-and-pepper shade. Like Cadence, they were notably androgynous, and at a glance, Allana couldn’t read any specific gender in them.

  “Well, well, well,” the person greeted Allana, “someone’s getting better.”

  Allana’s eyes narrowed, catching their implication. “How long have you been following me?”

  Their mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. “A bit over two weeks, on and off.”

  Allana’s hands lifted to her daggers, but the observer held themself calmly, carefully making sure they didn’t do anything to provoke her. “Okay,” Allana said, her voice as tense as the rest of her, “would you like to share why?”

  The celestial–Allana was increasingly sure that they, like Cadence, held that identity–lifted a skinny, long-fingered hand in a placating motion. “Curiosity, mostly. A new thief, appearing out of nowhere, doing as we used to? That’s the sort of thing I can’t help but be intrigued by.”

  “And by ‘we,’ you mean the Thieves Guild, right?”

  The celestial, whoever they were, had spent enough time on the street that they were able to disguise their reaction to the name, merely inclining their head in acknowledgement. “You really have been studying up, haven’t you?”

  The Thieves Guild was a name that had come up more than a few times in Allana’s trip through Cinderpits. A collection of outlaws, they had done much the same as Allana did for a long time, serving as the silent protectors of Correntry’s most vulnerable, ensuring they had the safety and necessities that the trade city’s laws failed to provide. Only in the past year or so had they begun to pull away from their usual ways. Their methods had become increasingly more ruthless and less charitable, and the shadowy organization now found itself in the crosshairs of the wardens.

  “A bit. I’ve learned all about phantasms, too,” Allana told them, earning another small nod of respect. “But I still have a few more questions that I think you might be able to answer for me.”

  The old thief’s eyes were intent, wary. Allana was convinced that, even with their lack of obvious weapons, this person was dangerous. “For a fellow rogue… I don’t think I have any problem with that. But come–this isn’t the right place for that kind of talk.”

  Allana frowned. “You can understand that I’m wary of following you, right?”

  “Relax, relax,” the thief reassured her. “There’s a bar a few blocks over where I have some arrangements. We can grab a glass of something good and a private place to talk. On me.”

  Allana hesitated–but she decided, after a moment, to trust her instincts. “Fine. lead the way.”

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