sford564 on 20/12/2008 at 23:06

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I wrote this a year or so ago, and I was going through my old stories and found it again. I think it's really good. :D It's only 6 chapters long...not too long. :)
I was playing a fanmission one time where Garrett got caught, and I was pondering what would happen if you were a thief and you got caught...thus the begining...
It's comedy/adventure/mystery.


The Nameless Thief
By: Sarah Ford


Chapter 1: Prison

His eyes were shut. He didn’t want to open them. His sensitive nose – curse it – could smell the rotting flesh of the corpse below him. It could even smell his own blood, hardening around his gaping wounds. His perfect ears – curse them – could hear the rats scurrying around the room and quenching their hunger on his lifeless companion. His arms – curse them – felt as if they were going to tear. The metal around his wrists and ankles, and the cold, damp rocks against his shirtless, wounded back, felt like cubes of ice. He did not know for how long he had been hanging from the walls, for how long he had been bleeding and shivering in the night’s bitter frost, but he knew that the sun’s warm rays only brought his final doom. In his half senseless state, it seemed as if he had been hanging for nearly a year now. And yet for only for a minute now.
Then he felt it. A warm sensation. He slowly opened his sore eyes and looked at the barred window ahead. The window lay directly in front of him, as if to gloat about his fate. As if to torment him, to let him see the stars fade and the sun rise, knowing that at any moment he would meet his doom. He did not know if it was placed there for that purpose, but it tormented him anyways. Curse it.
He closed his eyes again. He would not let it torment him. He could feel it, but he would not watch the sun rise. Tears swelled out of his swollen eyes, rolling down his cheeks and onto his chest. They stung him so badly that he cried even harder.
He could not remember the last time he had cried before today. He had never let memories or feelings get in his way – curse the nuisances – because if he did, he would never have been able to live.
The air was getting warmer and warmer. He had cried too much to cry anymore. He had shivered too much to shiver anymore. The morning sun was rising, but things were getting darker. He was dying: good. Now those bastards wouldn’t get the satisfaction of lopping his head off. Curse them.
The cold night air was now nearly all gone. The sun could be seen on the horizon. And, suddenly, he could see nothing; he could feel nothing. His body went limp.


Chapter 2: Freedom…sort of…

Darkness. The first thing he could see was a ceiling above him. It wasn’t his cell’s stone ceiling, it was wooden. He was warm. Very uncomfortable. Were the Mechanists right, then? Had he entered Hades harbor?
Wait. Whose voice was that? It was a girl’s, soft and soothing, whispering words of comfort into his ear. Had he then gone to the Builder? No, he refused to believe there was such a thing. He would not give into Hammer superstition. He hadn’t died: he couldn’t have.
As if to confirm this, he felt a soft hand gently caressing his face. He tried to say something, but his lips didn’t move. He tried again. This time his lips moved, but the words didn’t come. Her finger touched his lips to silence him.
Things went dark again.

* * *

It was several weeks before the thief could get out of his bed and a few more before he could move around. Everyday he saw her, but she refused to talk to him other than to tell him to refer to her as his “hostess”. His “hostess” lived in an expensive house: he was served his meals on gold, glass and bone china. All the food she and her servants fed was rich and delicious wines, fruits, meats and pies. He didn’t like to think that he had any weaknesses – curse them – but he knew he had one for fine food. This recovery from the torture wounds inflicted by the Mechs was spoiling him, he told himself, especially when his hostess served him every, or nearly every day.
As the thief examined the gold-rimmed cup of wine in his hand, he pondered that if his hostess wasn’t so beautiful and if he wasn’t so wounded, he would rob her mansion clean.
He heard many voices in the rooms beside and below him. Some nights they woke him from his sleep by their party laugher and yelling. Other times it was just servants by their cleaning.
Several times a man came to see his hostess. One night, when the thief was at the beginning of his recovery, he actually saw the man. That was the only time he saw his face, though.
He was awoken from his sleep by low voices; this was one time he did not curse his ears for being so sensitive. The stranger and his hostess were standing at his bedside. The stranger was asking her to tell him as soon as he was well.
“Do you think he’ll do it?” she asked.
“What choice does he have?” the stranger asked. “We saved his life. If he’s an honorable thief, he’ll want to pay his debt back.”
“ ‘An honorable thief?’ ” She scoffed slightly at this. “And what if he isn’t an ‘honorable’ thief?”
“We’ll give him back to the Mechanists.”
“We paid enough to get him; I mean, a thousand for a half dead petty thief. You’d think we were getting Garrett,” she said. The thief didn’t like her description of him very much, but the last phrase pleased him slightly.
“Yes…” there was malice in the stranger’s voice. “I would give the world to have Garrett now.” After a few seconds pause, his hostess motioned the stranger to leave.
“We’ll wake him if we talk too much,” she told him. “He’s still badly wounded. I’ll keep you informed of his progress.”
As they were leaving, the thief caught a glimpse of the stranger. The stranger was a tall man, some where in his fifties, he thought, with a nice head of white hair and a clean-shaven face. There was something about his face that the thief didn’t like, though. There was malice, hatred in it, not aimed at anyone in particular, but at the world on a whole. In that sense, the stranger had a creepy similarity to his old landlords.
From that day on, the thief didn’t see the stranger again. He heard him and his hostess talk outside his door from time to time, to check up on his progress. He even heard the stranger curse the mechanists from torturing him so badly. But he never saw him again…


…Until the stranger paid him a visit one night, quite unexpectedly. It was not the type of night anyone would like to be out – not even a thief. The frequent lightning flashes illuminated half the city. The thunder cracked so loudly that, if he was a superstitious person, he might think that the Builder was waging war in the heavens. And the cold spring rain fell so heavily that they felt like little arrows.
That should have warned the thief that something bad was going to happen, but he didn’t seem to notice any of it. His hostess was in the same room, warming herself by the fire. Although she didn’t say anything, he knew she had been outside. Her wet shawl clung to her shoulders and her wet hair clung to her face. A big puddle of water lay at her feet. The thief just sat in his chair, his eyes fixated on her. He slowly sipped his glass of wine, his eyes never leaving her face. She blushed slightly when she noticed that he was staring at her. This made the thief slightly uncomfortable, so he looked away. Then, for the next five or so minutes, she stood there drying her hair by the fire, pretending not to notice that he was staring at her.
Then the stranger came in. No knock. No warning. He gave the hostess a quick, questioning, disapproving glance and sat in her chair across from the thief. She did not object to this rude action, but in response to his unspoken question, explained: “The cat ran outside. I couldn’t let him be found.” The cat she was referring to was a thin, wet, black cat at her feet. The thief’s hostess couldn’t let her pet out for fear that he would be found: black cats were considered evil by the Hammers and white cats by the Mechanists. More Hammer and Mechanist superstitions…
“Well, he’s alive,” the stranger commented as he glanced over the thief, waiting expectantly for the thief’s thanks.
The thief just nodded to the stranger. “You’re very observant.”
Although the stranger didn’t find this particularly amusing, he didn’t show it on his expressionless face.
“Our friend here is the one who saved you,” his hostess informed the thief. She waited for his reaction; there was none. No signs or sounds of gratitude. He was as expressionless as the stranger. “He would like to ask a favor of you,” she continued. Again the thief did not say anything. He was going to let them talk.
“What is your name?” the stranger asked the thief.
He was silent for a few seconds and then said, “My clients always call me ‘He’ and ‘the thief’.”
His hostess and the stranger looked at each other. “That’s what he told me,” she informed her friend. It pleased the thief to guess what they must be thinking.
“Your real name…” the stranger asked warningly.
“When I was younger,” the thief answered, “the guards would just call me ‘boy’. The people I begged from would call me ‘brat’ or ‘scum’. The merchants I stole from called me ‘thief’ or ‘hey you’. But my clients call me ‘He’ or ‘the thief’. Take your pick.”
The two hosts glanced at each other again. There was a mix of disgust and disappointment in their faces, although hers seemed a little softer; it seemed to say, ‘We could have gotten someone worse’. The stranger frowned and nodded slightly. They were saying more to each other by not speaking than they were by speaking.
“Now that I’ve told you who I am, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me to who you are?” the thief asked. The stranger and the hostess looked at each other again.
“We are investors,” the stranger slowly began.
“Then you must think I’m a lousy investment,” the nameless thief said with a chuckle, noting that his question still wasn’t answered.
They didn’t deny or confirm this, but the stranger continued, “Sometimes things happen that weren’t supposed to. Then the perpetrators have to pay.”
“We had invested in something big…” the hostess continued. “Our client met an untimely end. We were never paid.”
“And you want me to…?”
“If we cannot have our pay, we will be paid in the blood of our enemies,” the hostess said, smiling slightly. The thief was taken aback by this. They did not save him because they wanted his skills as a thief; they saved him because they wanted an assassin. He glanced at his hostess; suddenly she didn’t look as beautiful as she did a moment or two earlier.
“I’m a thief. Not an assassin,” he told them.
“I don’t think you’re in the position to decide what you want or don’t want to do,” his hostess said sweetly.
He nodded. “What makes you think I’ll do this? I won’t just disappear and you’ll never see me again?”
“Because we saved your life. Because you’re an honorable thief, and you are going to pay your debt. And, if you don’t, I’ll have you hunted down and killed.”
The thief chuckled slightly and contemptuously at this. “So, who am I to kill?” he asked. “Or do I need to prove myself before you will tell me that?”



Chapter 3: The Test

His test was a nuisance. He couldn’t believe he was working for such scum – curse them. He would have been glad to repay his debt if they wanted him to steal anything. But murder? No. True, he had killed a couple of people, but he would not kill someone because they ‘ruined someone’s deal’. Ordinarily he would have split now and disappeared into the night…but he had a great curiosity to find out who they wanted dead. He knew they weren’t telling the truth, and he was determined to find out whom these people were and what their real reasons were for wanting someone killed.
Besides, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Rob a big mansion. Find some incriminating evidence on Lord Ramsford. Steal the ring from off his finger. Don’t kill the Lord or his wife. Get 1,000 gold. For an ordinary thief that would be nearly impossible; for him it was sissy stuff…more of a nuisance than a challenge.
Still, he couldn’t be too good, or else they might realize he isn’t as lousy as he pretended to be… Maybe, he thought, he shouldn’t get as much gold as they wanted him to…

* * *

It was much warmer that night than the night before. The moon was full, though – curse it – illuminating everything. The thief carefully made his way through the city via the thief’s highway, i.e., the rooftops. He stopped once or twice to give his sore body a rest. He couldn’t believe how much like a sissy he felt; a little whipping, a little torture shouldn’t have affected him so much.
The Ramsford Manor was situated at the end of the city, separated from the old neighborhood and its timeworn buildings by several acres of land. It wasn’t hard for him to make his way off the rooftops through an abandoned building, and to find a crack in the stonewall surrounding the Ramsford’s manor large enough to crawl through. So far everything was easy enough. Sneaking into the building would be a little more difficult, though.
Up the winding road to the main entrance of the manor were at least half a dozen patrolling guards. The moonlight made it harder to pass by them; he was even nearly spotted once. At the front door stood four guards: he wouldn’t be able to come through this way. Curse them.



The best way to enter was through a small shed attached to the back of the building. The door was easily picked, and there were no guards inside – of human form, at least. Instead, there were several spiders – curse them. Maybe Lord Ramsford won’t be as upset with him, the thief thought, when he finds out that he took care of his spider problem… Maybe not.
The manor was poorly guarded – many other places he had visited, including tiny town houses – were better guarded than that this. The Ramsfords must have very little money, he decided. Maybe it’s just as well that he wasn’t going to steal from them. He intended to ruin them enough as it was…
It was sissy stuff making his way from the back of the building to the cellar and then up to the first floor. No servants, no guards. Just a few rats, old furniture and some storage crates. There was a picture down there that looked as if it could have been worth a lot; after careful inspection, he decided it was. The thief had to pull himself away from it and head to the first floor.
There were a few guards on this floor, but they were easily avoided. There was nothing special to be found there, either, but some freshly baked bread in the kitchen, which must have been left out for the patrolling guards. It had such a delicious aroma that the thief had to steal one of the slices on the platter. He might have been a slimy money grubbing thief, but he had a weakness for fine bread. He thought on this a little as he searched the cabinets for a platter of butter or a bowl of jam. If he could have seen into the shadows behind him, he would have seen a slouching figure tensely watching him.
After washing three pieces of bread and jam down with some fresh water, the thief quietly cleaned his mess and headed to the next floor. As he was creeping up the shadowy stairs, trying to be silent incase this was a guard’s patrol, he heard someone’s careless footsteps behind him. This wasn’t the first time he thought he had heard someone, and now he was sure he was being followed. Silently and expeditiously he climbed a few stairs to turn the corner. Leaning against the wall in the shadows, he waited for his stalker to follow him. He did. Grabbing his nemesis, the thief slammed him against wall while covering his mouth and pushing a sword against his throat. The stalker wasn’t a ‘he’ at all, though. It was a girl. It was his hostess. She was clothed completely in taffer garb and had a dagger and blackjack at her side. Other than that, she was completely weaponless.
“What in hell are you doing?” he whispered hoarsely.
Shaking herself free of him, she whispered back, “What in hell do you think you were doing eating that bread? At any moment you could have been caught by a guard. Do you think he’d just ignore some taffer sticking his bread into a bowl of jam?!”
“I was hungry.” It wasn’t the best excuse he could have given, but it was the truth. “That’s beside the point. What the hell are you doing?”
“Following you!” That answer was already a given, so she went on to explain, “I thought I might have been sending you out to your death. You seem like a decent taffer, so I thought I’d help you get out of trouble. I thought I’d have to rescue you after the first five minutes, but you’ve been doing fine now…until you stop for a snack.”
He looked at her with an expression that said he was less than pleased. “I’m fine; now go home.”
“Ordinarily, yes. But I can’t trust you after the stupidity I saw.”
That was not the answer he wanted. Pushing her down a step, he warned, “Leave now.”
“Or what? You’ll call the guards on me?”
There was no time to answer as they heard the sleepy muttering of a guard as he walked toward them. He was muttering, “Too tired. Can’t stay awake. Need a snack. Must have some of Maria’s bread.”
This made the thief smile a bit as he pushed his hostess against the wall. The guard sleepily walked past them, not even aware of their existence.
“Come on,” he whispered hoarsely, tugging on her sleeve. She might have been there to make sure that he didn’t get into any trouble, but he didn’t trust her for alerting the guards – especially after how pathetically she had been trailing him. If she did get caught, she would probably squeal on him, too. This meant that he would have to baby-sit her throughout the entire mission. He growled a bit under his breath at the thought. Curse her.
There were several large rooms on the second floor and an impressive balcony reaching across the length of the house. There was only one guard patrolling on that floor, and he had already gone downstairs for the remainder of the bread the thief had left him.
The thief and his hostess visited all the rooms but the main bedroom – each being less than impressively furnished and decorated. Then, instead of going into the main bedroom, the thief stopped in the shadows and told his hostess to follow him onto the balcony.
“What?” she whispered hoarsely. “Let’s go get our objectives over with: we need to find some evidence on them and get the lord’s ring.”
“I know – just do as I say, okay?” he answered.
She followed him onto the balcony. They made sure it was clear of all guards before they made their way to the far corner of it. All the while his hostess followed him, quite bewildered.
Then, in one swift move, the thief grabbed her by the arm, pushed her over the balcony railing and held her swaying there by his firm grasp.
“What…what are you doing?” she cried. “Let me go.”
“Fine.” He let her arm slip through his hand and then caught it again. She let out a shrill gasp. “You have to be quiet or else you’re going to get us both caught,” he scolded.
Trying to grab onto the balcony with her other hand, she threatened him in a quieter voice; “I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t let me up right now.”
He smiled slightly at this. “I don’t think you’re in the position to decide what you want or don’t want to do,” he quoted.
“Let me go,” she answered.
“Not until you tell me who you are, who our slimy friend is, and who you want me to kill.”
“I told you all that you’re going to know.”
“My arm is tiring,” he said, loosening his grasp on her.
“Wait! Wait!” she gasped.
“Yes?”
“What…What do you want to know?”
“Your real name.”
“Is that all?” she asked rather perturbed at the triviality of the question.
“I’d like to be able to call you something more personal then ‘hostess’ before I drop you,” he answered.
“Fine. It’s Alexandra.”
“And our slimy friend’s name?” he asked, referring to the stranger.
“Gregory.”
“And who do Gregory and Alexandra want me to kill?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you,” she answered.
Her arm slipped from his hand and he grabbed her again. “Ooops,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to catch you next time.”
“Okay, okay. We want you to kill a thief.”
“Who?”
“Garrett.”
There was a long silence as he looked at her questioningly. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow – I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. I swear. Just let me go now.”
He stared into her eyes again to see if she was lying. He didn’t think she was – he was good at reading the truth in people’s eyes. “Let me up,” she begged.
“Fine – I’ll take your word on it, as an ‘honest’ murderer.” In one smooth movement, he lifted her up over the railing and onto the balcony. “Let’s go,” he told her and turned toward the master bedroom.
Alexandra was not going to put up with someone treating her like that, though. She grabbed the dagger from her belt and lunged at him. He drew his sword and hit the dagger out of her hand and off the balcony. It bothered him to see such an expensive dagger being wasted; maybe, he pondered, on the way down he could find it. Or, if he had just dropped her, he could have taken the dagger off her belt later and it wouldn’t have been wasted. Oh, well. Pushing his sword against her throat warningly, he told her, “Let’s go.”
The master bedroom was the largest room in the entire house. Lord Ramsford and his wife were sound asleep when Alexandra and the thief entered.
The thief had found nothing at all that could be used against the Ramsfords, and the only other place to look would be in their desk. He pondered how he was going to search through it and get the lord’s ring off his finger without waking them up.
Alexandra had an unusual solution to their problem. She lit a candle and, borrowing the thief’s sword (which he was very reluctant to let her have), pushed the sword tip into the throat of Lord Ramsford. The lord woke up immediately, and, after being warned to be silent, woke his wife up. They were both very compliant and did not make a sound.
He could have been wrong, but it seemed to the thief that Lord Ramsford recognized Alexandra: looking at him and then at Alexandra, Lord Ramsford asked, “What’s going on here, Al-”
“Shut up and hand me your desk keys,” Alexandra commanded. He obeyed.
“What’s going on?” Lady Ramsford whispered to her husband. “What is Alexa-”
“Shut up,” Alexandra warned, as she rummaged through his desk. Noticing that the thief was watching her intently as she skimmed over the Ramsford’s letters, she snapped, “Get his ring.”
The thief frowned slightly at her tone of voice, but complied. Ramsford willingly surrendered his bejeweled fingers to him. “Sir Gregory sent you, didn’t he? If you give him my ring, he’ll use it to incriminate me,” Ramsford whispered to him. The thief ignored him and took a ring off his finger.
He heard some logs crackling and turned to see Alexandra standing next to the fireplace reading more letters. Not satisfied with what she found, she charged at Ramsford. Grabbing him by his nightshirt, she thrust the sword into his throat. “Are these all the letters you have?” He shook his head to confirm it. “Nothing else? Listen to me, damn it! Where are the other letters?” There was urgency in her voice.
“Did you look behind the clock?” he asked. “I’ll show you.”
Above the fireplace was a handsomely carved clock. Taking its back off, Ramsford produced a pile of letters. He handed them to Alexandra. She glanced at them, then at him, and muttered, “Well, these are no good.” She tossed them into the fireplace.
Things were starting to feel uncomfortable. Something was going on, but it definitely wasn’t finding incriminating evidence on the Ramsfords. It seemed to the thief like it was just the opposite; she was trying to destroy incriminating evidence.
He probably would have said something, if the door wasn’t slammed open at that moment. Two guards entered. Alexandra grabbed Lord Ramsford and put the thief’s sword to his throat. “Drop your swords and leave the room, NOW!”
The guards looked questioningly at their master. Ramsford motioned for them to leave. “Go,” he instructed. “Get out.”
They slowly and reluctantly started backing up. “Drop your swords,” Alexandra warned. Again they looked questioningly and reluctantly at their master. He nodded; they obeyed.
As soon as the door was shut, Alexandra released her prisoner and snapped, “Let’s go”.
The thief and Alexandra couldn’t go through the main doors because there were two unarmed guards waiting for them. They ran out onto the balcony. A guard ran towards them from the other side of the balcony. The thief heard the other two guards open the master bedroom doors and retrieve their swords. They were surrounded; Alexandra looked around, panicked. There was nowhere to go.
The thief grabbed for his sword. “Give me that.”
Alexandra resisted, though. “No, I’m a good fighter.” They both struggled for the sword; the three guards charged at them. Grabbing Alexandra (who still held the sword), the thief flipped her over his shoulder and jumped over the balcony railing. “What in hell are you doing?” she cried. He let go of the railing and grabbed onto the balcony itself. She yelled again. The guards were baffled by these sudden movements and were slow to react.
“Hold on,” the thief told her. And then he flung himself off the balcony toward a large, old tree. Grabbing a rope from somewhere on his belt, he lassoed a long branch. The weight of the two broke this branch and they went falling. It happened so fast that he himself was not even sure how he did it afterwards, but the thief grabbed onto a branch with one hand and grabbed onto Alexandra with another as she slipped off his shoulder.
He was scratched, stabbed, bruised and bleeding in several places, but he refused to feel a thing. His ears – curse them – were still ringing from when Alexandra had screamed in them. He had no idea someone could yell that loudly or that shrilly. His arms were also rather tired. She was definitely not a heavy woman, but he was getting sick of holding her up.
He slowly lifted his arm up until Alexandra could grab onto his waist and cling to him.
Meanwhile, on the balcony, one of the guards had gotten his bow and was aiming into the tree. Lord Ramsford held the guard’s arm back and signaled him to stop. The whole house had been alerted by the commotion, and the guards were searching around the yard for the intruders.
“Don’t kill these criminals,” Lord Ramsford told the archer guard. “I want them alive.” To the other guards, he said, “No matter what, do not kill these two!!”
The thief made his way from branch to branch until he was several feet above the ground. Two guards had found them and started climbing up after them – this was especially difficult for them because they were both slightly overweight and in heavy armor.
To the right of the tree was a pond – it was deep enough for swimming. Making his way across a thick branch, the thief jumped into the pond. The guards, who had nearly reached them, now had to make their way down to get them. One fell and didn’t get up for several seconds. The other slowly climbed down.
While they were doing this, the thief and Alexandra climbed out of the pond. Alexandra had gotten some water in her mouth and could not stop coughing and choking. The thief had to drag her out of the pond and along the grass for a ways because she was coughing so hard.
The Ramsford Manor was in an uproar as the thief and Alexandra made their way across the trail, through the gate, and back onto the thieves’ highway.