The Theft

It took a special breed of woman to withstand boiling summer heat and still make black silk look comfortable.

Dustfire was not one of those women.

Short, curvaceous women were not made for the heat. She slid a look behind her at the wispy troll girl carrying her packages and fanned herself hard with a bit of parchment. Trolls were made for heat. They were bred to it. That was why they made such good laborers. Dustfire envied the girl's barefoot comfort before deciding that the heat had gone to her head – to think, a woman of her beauty and power envying the help over a few lucky genetic traits! That girl would go her whole life with knobby knees, unmanageable hair, and asymmetrical tusks.

Really, she thought, shaking her head and clucking sympathetically with her tongue, it's surprising the poor thing gets out of bed at all.

"Dis your place now, lady?" the girl asked, and Dustfire realized they had stopped in front of her boarding house.

Hot and annoyed at her lapse, she said, "Of course it is, stupid. You've been here often enough before. Come on." And she flounced inside and up the stairs to the second floor and her room.

The door fell open under her touch, unlatched, and she stood transfixed in the doorway.

"Oh me," said the troll girl, looking around the packages in her arms, her eyes bulging. Part of Dustfire's brain noted it as another unattractive trait, but the rest of her brain had scattered into disarray.

Her room had been ransacked.

"You want I should run an' get someone?"

Dustfire nodded, but the motion felt wrong, stilted and jerky. Her jaw felt too tight. She vaguely noticed as the girl set her packages down and raced back down the stairs, fleet-footed.

She stepped into the room, took in the wrecked loom by the door, the gaping chest that had held her hand-woven cloth and a few precious magical tomes tucked in the bottom. Someone had turned it over, but nothing spilled out. Nothing remained. The shopkeeper had assured her the chest's lock was impregnable.

She turned to her bookshelf, noted the lack of tomes, scrolls, and magical apparatus, the remaining items dumped on the floor in a broken mess. A steamy romance novel had splayed on top, the pages crumpled beneath it. She brought a hand to her mouth as she remembered the lexicon of power she'd bought just a few days before and had left tucked behind her books. She'd meant to take it to the city bank to store it properly, had kept telling herself she'd do it soon, a few more days wouldn't hurt.

Twenty-five thousand gold. Gone.

Sick, she slid her hand to her throat and held it there, as if the pressure would make the feeling go away.

They hadn't taken any of her paintings, but they'd defaced them. She went to the painting above her piano and touched it, her family portrait marred by a knife slash. Perhaps a restorer could . . .

She whirled. The light in the room hadn't felt quite right, but she'd attributed that to the mess, to her own sense of horror. She hadn't thought . . . they wouldn't have!

The delicate golden birdcage was gone, twisted from its stand so hard that the graceful hook bent at an odd angle. Dustfire grabbed at the piano to steady herself, her knees threatening to buckle. She wanted to sit but couldn't tear her eyes from the empty space where her pet used to shimmer and chirrup, and the piano stool had been kicked over anyway.

The bright heat of the day beyond the window seemed unreal now, not a part of her. The sky shone so blue it hurt to look at, dust motes shimmered around her and floated to the floor like tiny crashing civilizations.

She withdrew from the sights around herself and steadied the trembling in her legs, annoyed at herself for showing weakness. She picked up the stool and moved it to her writing desk, which still stood in reasonable repair despite the great ugly black splotch covering the left side. Righting the inkwell, the source of the black mess, she fished under the desk for paper and her quill. She ignored the new bend in the quill and dipped it into the ink, carefully plying her round dark calligraphy to the page. The letters came out warped because she couldn't get her hand to stop shaking, but she kept dipping and writing, methodical, occasionally lifting her head to check some corner of the room and then moving back to the page.

That was how the troll girl found her.

"Quite a mess," said the guard she'd brought, and Dustfire hated him before she even saw him.

She tossed sand on her parchment to dry the ink and turned, back straight as a soldier's and eyes just as cool. "Here is a list of the items I've lost. I'm not sure if it's complete, but the most important are at the top."

The guard took a cursory look at her list and raised a maggot-eaten brow at her. "You put a pet above a lexicon of power?"

She raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, challenging him. "Yes."

He shrugged like he thought she was stupid. "Okay, then."

He took a statement from both of them, then from her fellow tenants, and took his sweet time about it. By the time he left, she itched to flay his eyeballs from his skull, to put a pain in his rotting ass, to . . . to . . . to do anything to make him move faster! Didn't the stupid thing know that someone was getting away right then with her most valuable possessions? Didn't he know he had to hurry to catch the thief?!

Her hands had curled into claws and she had the feral urge to scratch something.

The troll girl hesitated inside the door. "I hate to be askin' but . . ." She shifted and looked down at the small decorative box by her foot. Dustfire distantly remembered all the imbued jewels she'd collected over the years and that she'd forgotten to include them in her list of stolen items. "I'll be needin' me payment."

Her hand twitched, and the girl flinched, but she wasn't going to cast a spell. She touched the money pouch at her belt and noted that it still felt heavy. She still had everything she'd stored in the city bank, including some of her more valuable jewels.

"Yes, of course," she murmured, pulling the strings open and taking out the appropriate amount of silver. Dustfire was nothing if not a pragmatist. The world continued to turn, services rendered still required payment even if her own life had been turned upside down. She paused and dropped the silver back in the pouch, drawing out a glittering gold coin instead. "Here," she said, holding it out for the girl without standing.

The girl's eyes bugged again, but she stepped hesitantly forward to accept it. "It's too much," she protested. But her hand wrapped tight around the coin.

Dustfire didn't have the energy to fake a smile. "You fetched the guard, and I kept you longer than either of us intended. I'm not a generous woman, but I'm fair."

The girl had catered to her too often to argue. Dustfire rarely paid more than the minimum tip for services.

"Let me help clean, den," she said and, after tucking the gold coin away, she began to straighten furniture and shuffle parchment into neat stacks.

Dustfire blinked. "You've been paid for your services. You're not required to stay."

"I know." The girl looked up and smiled a crooked-fanged smile. "But I sees ya brokenhearted ‘bout yer bird and I'm thinkin' ya need some help."

"I'm not paying you any more money." If the little monster wanted more cash, she could go get it out of someone who hadn't just been robbed.

The girl smiled again and even dared to laugh. "I won't be needin' it." And continued to clean.

Baffled, Dustfire watched her. If she had to be honest, there was nothing left to steal except for her purse, which she'd tucked back into her skirts, or her new packages, which only contained borderline-cheap wine, a replacement pestle, and rich runic thread.

So she shrugged, turned her back on the girl, and began to clean the area under the desk. She'd made her way to the pile of books and broken apparatus when the landlady arrived, fluttering about like an outraged hen and thoroughly damning the cretins who'd robbed the place. Though it most probably made the landlady feel better, it wore on Dustfire's already frayed nerves. It required an incredible force of will not to say or do anything that could get her kicked out of the boarding house.

The landlady left and eventually the troll girl stopped and surveyed the room. "I tink that's all I can do," she said, hands on her hips.

Dustfire looked up from where she sat on the floor, her hands on a few unhurt books. There really hadn't been much left worth saving. The troll girl had had to carry most of it out as trash.

"Thank you," Dustfire finally said with a nod, still suspicious that the girl would ask for more money.

But the girl just smiled, nodded back, and left.

Mystifying.

"Have you ever slept with an undead?" Dustfire asked Tylana over a goblet of spiced wine, giving her shoulders a delicate shudder. "He let me have the lexicon for half market price, and I know part of that is because it was stolen, but for sun's sake I paid for it. His skin was loose, it actually slid around when I touched it, and the dangling eyeball really helped the mood, I assure you." She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and glared at the far wall, hands clenched around her goblet. A tauren in the way looked confused and quickly shuffled to his table. "Somebody is going to pay."

Tylana looked at Kizmet, a delicate blonde they kept around out of pity, who set her cup down as if she'd lost her appetite, ran her pink nails over it, and grimaced. "You actually . . . did it . . . with one of them?"

Dustfire pressed her lips together. "Don't tell Nevari. I'd never hear the end of it." She shifted in her chair and allowed herself a smile. "Though, to be honest, I bet she'd be jealous. She has a thing for bags of bones."

"Kinky," said Tylana.

"Disgusting," said Dustfire. "At least I saved money off of the deal. She'd do it for fun."

"Was it really worth the money?" asked Kizmet. Her face had flushed bright red and she hadn't looked away from her drink.

"I saved twenty-five thousand," said Dustfire.

"Worth it," laughed Tylana. A human man at a nearby table watched her chest as she laughed. She had admirable curves and a come-hither mouth. Normally, Dustfire would hate her, but they got along too well.

Dustfire nodded at Tylana, the shared bond of pragmatists.

Kizmet raised her eyes and Dustfire mentally sighed at her. If she wasn't going to be more active in the conversation, why did they sit with her? Honestly, was it too much to ask that she at least be interesting?

She leaned back in her chair and ran her fingers over her abdomen, taking a moment to stretch. The man who'd stared at Tylana glanced her way and smugness uncurled in her stomach. "I'm going to have to start healing again," she said, toying with the embroidery at her neckline. Tylana noticed and subtly surveyed the room, turning back with a knowing glance when she found the man staring at them. "You know how I loathe it. But there's no money in dark magic these days." She pushed red hair behind one long ear and her earring tinkled. "Speaking of dark magic, have either of you seen Manasseh lately?"

"He was in here last night, with my sister," Kizmet said.

"Ugh," said Tylana, shaking her glossy dark hair out and drawing the man's gaze her way. Dustfire suppressed annoyance. She always did that! "Those two are so creepy. It's unnatural."

"They're not really together," said Kizmet, always eager to defend her sister. In a quieter voice, she added, "Though I do think it would be sweet, fearlessly crossing racial boundaries for love."

Dustfire wrinkled her nose. "Have you been hanging out with the white robes behind our backs again?"

Tylana laughed. "Of course she has. She's a priest, isn't she? You can't get away from white robes at the cathedrals. They swarm."

"They're nice people," murmured Kizmet.

"Speak of the devil," said Tylana.

They turned toward the door as a blank-faced elven woman entered the bar. She carried a tall, plain priest's staff and wore a simple silver coronet on her blonde hair. Following protectively behind her, an orc in plate scanned the room and frowned when he caught sight of their table.

Dustfire raised her goblet to her lips and murmured low enough for just her friends: "Just like murlocs, always traveling in packs."

Tylana chortled and rested her elbow on the table and chin in her hand. Kizmet stiffened in her chair.

The priestess made her graceful way toward them, her bulldog of an overarmored orc following close behind. "Priestess Kizmet," she greeted. Her voice was light and ethereal, her expression detached from the dim ordinariness of the room.

Kizmet stood and performed an awkward curtsey. "Priestess Hoenu."

"We missed you at prayers this morning."

"Yes," she said, a panicked look entering her eye. "I . . . I . . . My friend was robbed!"

Dustfire sent Kizmet a sly glance. The robbery had happened well after prayer service.

"Oh?" said Hoenu, sympathy invading her aura of distance. She turned to Dustfire and Tylana. "I'm so sorry."

"Thank you," said Dustfire, tilting her head coquettishly and offering a smile that she hoped would make the priggish Hoenu uncomfortable. She'd found years ago that any sign of sexuality would fluster a proper holy priestess. Her teachers had despaired of her, especially after she'd corrupted her third priest, and her parents had finally sent her to train in the ways of the shadow. She knew enough of healing to get a moderately well-paying job, but she frankly preferred (and had more skill in) the black arts. They were so much more fun.

Hoenu didn't seem to notice anything amiss, bade them good day, and wandered toward a table and a smiling barmaid.

Once they'd gone, Dustfire handed Kizmet her goblet, vexed that Hoenu had ignored her. "Buy me more wine. I've had a horrible day."

Kizmet picked the goblet up and hesitated. "The bartender scares me."

Dustfire just stared at her until she hung her head and left. "Honestly," she said to Tylana. "It's like she doesn't want me to feel better. And what's so frightening about the bartender? He's just a death knight."

"He's undead. It's unsanitary for them to even be near food," said Tylana.

Dustfire considered. "No," she decided, "I can't let you talk like that. Even if you have an excellent point, you should never say anything to offend the person who handles your drinks. You don't know what they might put in it."

The two women shared a look and turned as one to watch Kizmet with the bartender.

Some drunk jostled Dustfire's chair and she craned her neck to glare at him.

"Sssorry," he hissed, barely glancing at her. He'd almost passed their table when the bar owner, Velandrea, grabbed him by his tunic. She was sturdy by blood elf standards, which meant well-defined muscle along her slender body, a wide stance, and a no-nonsense expression.

She held out a hand. "Her purse."

He glowered and handed Dustfire's remaining pocket-money to the woman.

Dustfire stood so fast her chair fell backward and lunged, too enraged to even remember she had spells. "I'll kill you!"

"No killing in my bar," Velandrea said, grabbing Dustfire and holding her with her free arm, the one with the money.

"Did someone mention killing?" a familiar voice asked from the entrance. Light spilled in and cut off as the door closed. "Can I watch?"

"You can help!" Dustfire snarled, scratching ineffectively toward the thief, who'd skipped nimbly out of reach and left Velandrea alone to hold Dustfire. Her feet didn't touch the floor anymore. She gave a good, hard wriggle and received a bruised rib for the effort.

"Oh good!" said Manasseh, coming forward and following her gaze to the thief. They sized each other up, the thief wary, Manasseh cheerful. "Can Luudy join?" A plump red beast trotted up and rubbed its spiky head under Manasseh's hand.

"No one's killing anyone," said Velandrea.

Manasseh looked at her and frowned, muttering sullenly under his breath. "I could kill you."

"Just go over there and sit down."

Dustfire allowed Velandrea to set her on her feet, annoyed that she stayed between her and her prey.

"Here's your pouch. No harm done, now sit down." Dustfire immediately opened it and counted the coins. Velandrea turned her head. "You. Brainiac. Get your bony butt out of here before I call the guards."

He slouched off, the expression on his face unreadable. Dustfire memorized him, his clothes, the way he moved, the hissing way he spoke. If she ever saw him again . . .

Her hands flexed with the desire to hex.

Visibly disappointed at the lack of violence, Manasseh wandered toward the bar. Dustfire turned on her heel and followed him.

"You want to do me a favor," she said, sliding onto a bar stool beside him.

The bartender slid Manasseh a mug that smoked. He looked into it. "Not that I remember." He tilted his head. "But I don't remember well. Do I want to do you a favor?" He asked it to his mug.

"Yes," she told him. Crazy moron. But this crazy moron was the most powerful spellcaster she knew, so she tamped down her annoyance and plastered a smile on her face.

"That's interesting," he murmured, sipping at his mug. "I thought I didn't. Hm." A moment more, and he smiled. "What favor do I want to do for you?"

She smiled. "You want to help me find out who stole my things."

He frowned. "I don't know why I'd want to do that."

She touched the back of his gloved hand. "Then you want to help me kill them. It will be a game. Your . . . pet . . . can even help." She looked at the fanged red beast curled on the floor by Manasseh's feet and grimaced. She hated fel hounds. All teeth, no brains.

He perked up. "When?"

"Tonight."

Dustfire led Manasseh through the lantern-lit streets and down darker and darker paths. The night had a warm, balmy feel to it, pleasant after the broiling heat of the day, but she still wore a thick dark cloak clasped at one shoulder.

Under the cloak, she'd dressed to kill.

In her bank vault were her finest silks, her most expensive gems, even a headpiece that had set her back a sack of gold and a month's worth of flirting.

She had visited that vault just before twilight and donned every item of power: enchanted gems weighed down fingers, wrists, ears, and throat; her gown had been cut from ensorcelled fabric woven on a mana loom by blind monks and mute nuns; a simple golden headpiece held a charming ruby set to dangle just so in the middle of her forehead. Most of these items had been given to her as gifts over the years from rich lovers or craftsmen she'd either charmed or conned. Even the cloak had been imbued with power.

The sorcerers on the streets melted away before them, and even those who could not sense power chose to let them pass unmolested. She had no illusions that it was because Manasseh stayed close at her right, his smile unsettling because it contained no malice, his fingers clicking through his repertoire of curses. He cheerfully tossed a few at rats as they scurried away and his pet, Luudom, burrowed into corners after them.

"I invited a friend," he murmured as they stopped in front of the dark, unmarked shop that was her goal. He smiled and patted his thigh bone for the fel hound to stop rooting through trash and join them. "He's been following us."

Dustfire sighed. Now she had two morons to watch. "Fine."

She pushed into the shop, not bothering to look back to find Manasseh's friend. If she hadn't noticed him, he could not be seen.

There was only one person who knew of her lexicon. Only one person she'd spoken to before she could tuck it safely into her bank vault. It was impossible that she'd been robbed so soon after buying it by coincidence.

"Durell."

The undead behind the desk looked up from a ledger as she entered, a monocle over one eye, the other dangling halfway down his face. He picked his bad eye up and pointed it at her. "Dustfire." His voice came out warm, and his slack jaw moved into a grimace that she recognized as his smile.

He pointed his eye at Manasseh, entering behind her, and stopped smiling. Turning his eyes back to her, he asked, "And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

"I missed you," she murmured, swaying to his desk and trailing her fingers along it. "And I have a problem."

He glanced toward Manasseh, who had found a centipede and seemed engrossed in watching it crawl along his fingers, and then at Luudom in the floor, sticking his sharp-toothed muzzle into nooks and crannies.

"Anything for my favorite customer." He remained wary.

She slid her hip onto his desk and leaned in. "Someone robbed me." She trailed a smooth red nail down the front of his tunic. "They took my lexicon." She hooked her finger in the neckline of his tunic and gripped it. She stopped smiling, pulled him closer, and murmured, "They took my phoenix."

She'd always wondered if undead could sweat. It looked like he wanted to.

"I, uh. Well. Damn." His good eye shifted one way and then the other. "That's lousy."

She smiled again and made her voice soft and inviting. "It's not half as bad as what I'm going to do to you if you don't tell me who it was."

He released a single, nervous laugh and she ignored the foul wave of his breath. "Why do you think I'd know?"

She kept smiling, confident in her warmth and softness. She saw him sway toward her, an unconscious reaction. "Manasseh," she said without turning, her voice taking on dreamy properties. "Hurt him."

Manasseh approached, putting the centipede between his teeth. Luudom followed, all teeth, and wagged his tail.

"Nothing fatal," she warned, holding the now-struggling shopkeeper by the front of his tunic. She had some difficulty keeping him, but anger gave her strength.

"I'll hold him."

She turned to a grinning tauren, his shoulders massive in the small space, and stared. "Yes, you will."

"Hi, Equil," said Manasseh.

"Hey." He got around the back of the desk and took Durell easily from her hold, pinning his arms back to give Manasseh full range.

Why do all tauren have to smell like wet dog? she mused, then focused on the shopkeeper. If she didn't stay alert, Manasseh would get carried away and she'd never get her answers.

"Now," she said a few minutes later, when the screaming started to annoy her, "who did you tell about my lexicon?"

"Augh!"

She glared at Manasseh. "When I speak, it means you stop."

He picked a centipede leg out of his teeth. "You should have said so."

His tauren friend just looked bored, though it was hard to tell on his heavy bovine features.

"Now." She smiled and turned back to Durell, who moaned and shook his head. "We can be friends, or we can be enemies."

Durell stared at his monocle on the desk. It had fallen off sometime during the torture. "I don't know his name." He gasped to breathe. "But I know where he'll be."

Once she had her information, she took Manasseh to the back to check the storage areas for any of her lost goods. She found her jewels and three lost tomes and returned to wave them under Durell's nose. "These are mine," she murmured.

"I . . . I didn't know that. I didn't know he'd rob you."

She smiled and stroked the side of his face. "Of course you didn't."

"I didn't."

"I know. And for that, I'm going to let you live. All I ask is that you contact me if someone brings you any more of my things. Yes?"

He nodded eagerly. "Yes."

"Because my friends really want to kill you. And they'd be just as happy to do it later as now."

The tauren flexed his muscles and Durell winced. "I understand."

"That's my boy." She turned to Manasseh. "Wreck his shop."

He grinned and produced a handful of fel fire, but Dustfire stopped him with a hand to his shoulder.

"Not starting with Durell. You there, take him outside and release him. We can come back and kill him if we need to."

The tauren sighed. "This is the most boring fight I've ever been to."

"Don't worry." She settled more firmly on Durell's desk as Manasseh set the shop ablaze behind her. She picked up the monocle, wiped it off with a clean handkerchief, and tried it on. "We'll have a massacre next."

Coming Soon.