The Grand Prize

A long-time thief steals his most ambitious trophy yet.

As the sun began to set, Tor dressed for the night’s work. Over the black fabric of his blouse, which was laced to the collar, the strings pulled tight and folded against his neck to keep them from catching on anything, he pulled his harness on, feeling the weight of the enchantment carved into each fortified leather panel settle on his shoulders. The leather was tightly fitted against the curve of each of his shoulders, fastened with a loop just above his elbow on each side. They supported the muscle underneath, helped prevent any strain after an unexpected fall or a sudden leap, and they felt as natural as anything to wear, after so many years fitting against his body.

The belt around his waist was made of the same dark brown leather, and once he’d buckled it into place, he played his fingers over each loop on it, over the small pouches that hung at each hip, his blades, his pick set, and the spyglass that rested at the small of his back.

His boots, the lightest pair he’d ever owned, were tightly laced, and as he did every night he was working, he leaned forward on his toes, ensuring he heard no creak in them, that he felt no unexpected give.

He heard none.

Looking to himself in the mirror, he touched his fingers for a moment to his moustaches, to his small beard, and fiddled with the bun he wore his hair in. Ordinarily, it was a fact that as a thief, he would not be seen — he didn’t normally care so much about his appearance.

Tonight, though, was the grand prize.

Tonight was different.

Taking in a slow, deep breath, Tor closed his eyes for a moment, and then exhaled.

He looked around the small room he had been renting, taking in the sheets he’d thrown hastily back over the bed, the furniture neatly put back into its place. He’d already hidden his knapsack behind a set of loose bricks in the wall of an inn an hour’s walk outside of the city,

He just hoped he’d reach it — he’d have to reach it.

The sun had nearly sunk entirely beneath the horizon by the time he had finished his sweep of his room, and having already paid up his last night’s stay that morning, he left via the window.

Swivelling on the window ledge, he curled one hand around the heavy metal drain pipe that ran down beside it, climbing the two storeys further up to the inn’s roof, and then, a good way’s above the quieting bustle of the street below, he treated a thick rope of bunting as his tightrope, and made his way to the next building over.

The city of Shorehaven was built on a peninsula, with the palace itself build up high on the end of what was affectionately called the city’s spoon, that it might enjoy the highest security, and that its towers might look over the sea wall to the bustling sea port some half a mile out from the peninsula’s edge, where the water deepened.

It was a huge building, not sprawling, but neatly contained, and as gargantuan as it was, it stretched upward rather than outward, a multitude of platforms, floating gardens, and towers. In the past few weeks, he had spent quite some time secreted in one gap or other facing the palace, looking through his spyglass, watching the regular circuits of the guards, taking note of where the lattices reached, where the trees grew, where a leap could be made, in a pinch, from one ledge to the next.

He didn’t think he’d ever spent quite so long studying one location for a mark — but then, when had the prize ever been so great?

He didn’t feel ready.

He didn’t think he’d ever feel ready.

Quiet as a cat, he scaled one of the guard ladders, one of the rarely-used ones that was half-shadowed by an oak tree, and slipped over the outer wall, diving through a gap in the battlements and rolling when he hit the grass.

Making his way through the sprawling gardens toward the palace proper was the easiest part, creeping through the underbrush and hiding himself in the edges of the hedge mazes, always keeping out of sight, always ensuring obvious movement was hidden in shadow.

This was the first thing he’d learned, as a young man schooled by life in the ways of thievery: as important as it was to learn to be still, to be able to freeze oneself so entirely as to become a part of the shadow one was hidden in, it was important, to, to follow motion already flowing, so that the watchful eye scarcely noticed the thief hidden beneath its glare.

With the breeze, Tor moved, so that the rustle of a bush could be passed off as merely the wind; as one guard moved on the upper path, Tor slid forward in the shadow, so that if another guard’s eye was caught, he would think it was only his colleague; once he was in the water, he surfaced only with a rising swell, and kept himself sunk well out of any gaze’s reach.

The night air was uncomfortably cool as hauled himself out of the water, clambering over the great stones that led up to the initial wall of the palace proper, but when his fingers slipped on the grey, unhewn surfaces, he simply dipped his fingers into one of the pouches on his belt, and scattered the white dust in it over his fingers to help him make his grip.

He remembered his games as a young boy, before he ever learned to pickpocket, trying to creep through the streets unseen — and how easy it had been back then, no bigger than a street cat himself, and easily made invisible. There had once been a sort of storm drain at the edge of the main street, and he’d be able to cram himself into the tiny little gap at the edge of the street, and once you were into the drain itself, well, you could crawl along without even getting on your belly.

The gap, though, that proved difficult.

He had gone a few months without playing any of his street games, when he’d snuck onto one of the canal boats and gone upriver, spent some time stealing around someone else’s town, and then when he’d come back, like usual, he’d slid himself in, and stuck.

It had taken three city guards to pull him out, he’d caught at such an awkward angle. He’d had the grazes on his newly fat little ass for days.

The ass was good for some things, though: he dropped a few feet down onto a lower ledge, landing hard on the cushion of his buttocks, managing to land at a sufficient angle not to send a painful quiver up his coccyx, and then he braced his soles against the wall underneath him, launching himself across the six feet gap to the next tower, his dust-gripped hands catching at the window lattice, making it give a dangerous creak, but the bolts held.

For a moment, he stood very still, balanced on his teetering toes, leaning his weight into the wall so that he wouldn’t fall the two dozen feet onto the cobbled stone beneath him, where he could hear a guard’s footsteps on the stone.

He waited, scarcely daring to breathe, not daring to look down, and gripped tight to the lattice as he listened to the steps pass by beneath him, and fade away around the corner. He inhaled through his nostrils, and then began to climb the lattice, keeping his weight spread as wide apart as he moved, so that the wood wouldn’t creak as much under his movement.

The lattice was very securely bolted — thank the gods, Tor thought, for a high palace budget.

He came up in the queen’s rose garden, and clipped one of the violet roses from the bush, peeling off each thorn before he put the stem in his mouth, gripped it between his teeth as he made his way forward. The queen’s garden was unlit, the lanterns empty of their candles, and it made it easy to creep through the darkness, finding the locked gate at the edge corner and plucking the picks out of his belt, he worked them inside.

It was a large lock, but there must have been small teeth on the key, because the pins fit tightly against his picks as he rotated them in the tumbler, tilting his wrist until he felt the lock click.

His clothes were beginning to dry as he walked under the arches of rambling roses, each arch in a new colour, and instead of unlocking the gate at the other end of the tunnel, he dusted his hands again, and began to climb the thickly-bricked side of the tower on the far side. It was one of the oldest parts of the palace, he thought, because the bricks were loosely mortared and parts of the stone were crumbling away, like a tower made of footholds.

It was fucking tall, though.

Every few feet, he took a caliper from the pouch on the other side of his belt, and settled it in place in the gaps in the stone: once he’d climbed a little bit higher, he’d slam the steel toe of his left boot into the caliper’s loop, punching it forward with a spray of brick dust and antediluvian cement each time.

He tried to get them properly spaced apart, but it was hard to judge, as he climbed higher, and even with the braces on his shoulders, he knew that tomorrow, and perhaps the next day too, his arms would ache, his shoulders, his back. There wasn’t any point in thinking about it now — the night was long, and there was a lot of work in it yet, but it was a fact, and a heavy one.

He had packed thirty-five calipers into his pouch, and had left a grace of twelve feet before he began to punch them into place, but he had started too early, or perhaps put them too closely together: there was a good twenty feet between the last of them and the window that would be his entry point, but it was far too late to think about that now, and he didn’t have time to go back and fix it.

Something was better than nothing.

The window was not, as he had hoped it would be, open, and he curled one dusted hand around the edge of the ledge, hanging for a moment by one stiffened shoulder, feeling the awful agony it wrenched up his one side: with his other hand, he pushed a long pin through the gap in the window frame and undid the loose latch holding it closed.

The window swung open.

The first thing he saw, dropping his elbow onto the cool stone of the ledge and hooking his palm against its inside edge, was the pile of hair on the floor.

It had been braided before it had been shorn off, one long tail of hair collapsed on the floor like a dead snake, and evidently it hadn’t been cut short enough, because a lot more hair was scattered on the ground around it, little locks of it cut off and dropped piece by piece.

In the grate, a fire was burning, and as he pulled himself over the ledge’s edge, he could see the purple fabric strewn about its edge, still burning. He sat his ass down on the inside ledge, and watched the prince as he stepped from behind the screen, dressed for the first time since Tor had met him in men’s clothes: his breeches were a tawny brown, tucked into sensible boots, and over the green chemise he wore, he had packed on a leather waistcoat, the better to hide the shape of his figure underneath. On the bed, a little satchel was stuffed so heavy it looked like the seams were ready to wrench apart, and a coat was folded beside it.

The prince caught sight of him, and his gasp was audible, a sharp little intake of breath as he looked at Tor, his eyes wide.

His hair was a mess, cut uneven, with more weight on the left side than the right, and his bruised lip was still healing from where his mother had backhanded him a week ago, the flesh slightly plump, the scab almost healed. Would he have agreed to this, if she hadn’t done that? Would he have begged for it, like he did?

“Do I look,” he asked, his voice hoarse, and he coughed. When he spoke again, his voice came from lower than Tor was used to in his throat — he’d been practising, evidently, and coupled with the cropped hair, the stolen clothes, it really did make a difference. “Do I look… alright?”

“You look like the most precious thing I’ve ever tried to steal,” Tor said, honestly. “My grand prize, your highness.”

The prince did not blush. His nerves faded with little more than a flirtatious look, and he gave Tor a haughty look well-worthy of the royal he was, a look that made Tor shiver despite himself.

“Well,” said the prince, dripping with sarcasm. “So long as I’m that, Tor.”

“Got the rope?”

“On the end table,” the prince said, gesturing. “I thought I’d let you tie it. Is the brick very slippery?”

“No, you’ll be fine,” Tor said, beginning to tie the rope severely around the ceiling beam, tightening the noose he’d made. The rope was long — longer, even, than they’d need, and he wondered how the prince had snuck it into the tower with him. “I put some footholds into the brick for you, too, to make it easier. Sure you’re ready for this?”

“To be taken prisoner by a rakish thief?” asked the prince, watching as Tor pushed a chair under the tower’s door handle so that it could be turned, and then helping him push the bed in front of it.

“Or set free by one,” Tor said, meeting his gaze. “To-may-to, to-mah-to.”

The prince stared at him, his lips parted, and then, after swallowing once, he smiled a close-lipped smile, and gave a nod of his head. “Will you catch me?” he asked, letting Tor lead him by the hand toward the window. He reached into the pouch on Tor’s belt himself as if it was his own, the intimacy making Tor’s head spin, and began smearing dust over his palms. “If I fall?”

“Always, your highness,” Tor said. The prince leaned in to kiss him, and Tor put his hands on his shoulders. “No,” he said. “When we get to the bottom.”

“No,” the prince replied, and pressed their lips together. Tor sighed into the other man’s mouth, and the prince pulled back, smiling. “Alright,” he said breathlessly. “You first.”

“Only in this,” Tor promised him with another kiss, and dropped back over the ledge.

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“They say the princess has gone missing from Shorehaven, you know,” said the barkeep, and Tor watched Heid’s face as he raised his eyebrows in polite interest, focusing on counting out his coins. It had been a few weeks, and they were two kingdoms over, but word travelled almost as fast as they did.

“Gone missing?” he repeated. “How does a princess go missing? She’s not a lucky penny. What, she fall out of someone’s pocket?”

“Disappeared right from her tower, they say,” said the barkeep excitedly, with the cheer of any man who peddles in gossip. “Kidnapped, probably. Maybe,” he added, waggling his eyebrows as he leaned on the bar, with unseemly — but amusing — relish, “she’s already dead.”

“I bet the kidnapping is just the story the palace is selling,” Heid said, unbothered. “Probably killed herself.”

Tor tried to stop himself from laughing at the way the barman’s eyes widened, watching the delighted grin on his face.

“Yeah,” he said, visibly inspired. “Maybe.”

“Twelve, is that right?”

“Call it ten,” the barman said, and left two coins on the bar as he took the rest, giving his two guests a bright, charming beam.

“Well done,” Tor said admiringly as the barman walked away. “You sick bastard.”

The prince laughed. “Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s go to bed.”

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