Lockpicks and Lycanthropy Chapter One (Off)

Athkatla, the City of Coin. Usually someone else’s coin, but I can spend it just the same. My name is Manch, stealer of other people’s purses. And I’m currently doing just that. I ever so painstakingly lift the coinsack, and quickly slice the strings away. The merchant before me doesn’t notice, and a cringe as I pocket his money. His cloying perfume covers not the stench of fish clinging to his silk draped frame. I swing away, and lunge down a darkened alleyway. As nice as Waukeen’s promenade is, some alleyways are as black as a Drow matron’s negligee, this one included, and I use my infravision to count the money I’ve acquired.

Past the glorious sounds of clinking silver, my ears catch the sound of a quiet argument being conducted further into the side street. Looking down, I see three people. One, a heavyset man, speaking with what surely must be a woman. The third figure is a rapidly cooling body sprawled across the ground.

Suspicious, I creep closer, slinking into the shadows, and tilting an ear towards them. I catch a snatch of their conversation.
““…hit him so hard, Xandria? Now we’ll never get the location from him.”
“How was I to know he’d be so fragile, Alemander? I only…”
Definitely a woman. She stops, and lifts her head, as if sniffing the air. Before I know it, the woman has me pinned to the ground, sitting on my chest. The fall winded me, and tears fill my eyes as I try to refill my empty lungs. Her weight is hampering my attempts though, and black spots dance across my sight, the infravision knocked away by the drop. Despite the pain, and the impending blackout, I can feel a blade at my throat. Not helping my oesophagus.

I hear a few brief words exchanged between man and woman, and she eases back, sitting on my stomach now, but leaning over, her face by mine. Air floods my lungs, and my vision slowly returns.

Long copper hair hangs down past my face, and sharp features are scrunched up into a feral snarl.

“Who are you?”

“Manch” I gasp
Her blade lowers slightly, gently breaking the skin of my neck. The sight of the blood which trickles along her blade seems to affect her, as she leans back, and releases the dagger’s pressure on my neck.
“What did you see?” she growls
“Nothing, I swear!” I’m not a coward, but the prospect of having my throat fills me with terror, and I can only think to answer her as truthfully as I can.
“Nothing?”
“Only your companion and you arguing over a body.”
She catches my eye again, and stares straight into them. For one horrifying instant, I understand what it feels like to be caught by the hunter, to become prey, then she climbs to her feet, and sheathes the dagger. Looking to her companion, who nods, she helps me to my feet. Incredulously, I take her hand, and brush the dirt from my clothing. Her comrade steps past her, drawing his own blade, but she grabs his arm as I shy back.

“It is unnecessary, Alemander.”
“He may…”
“No, not when he finds out whom it is.”

Looking past her, I notice with horror who the body was. Gavo. My…boss, for want of a better word.

“This man” she begins, kicking the corpse “is named Gavo, a notorious slaver and thief. While we took issue with him, we have no quarrel with you. You may go.”

I should have kept my mouth shut, but I didn’t. “I know Gavo” I blurted.
In an instant, the dagger was back at my throat.

“How?”
“He frequents an inn near here, The Rusted Anchor, near the docks. I keep rooms near there, so I see him in the tavern occasionally.” Technically, that is true, but not the whole truth. She seems to believe me though, and withdraws the blade again.

She’s about to ask another question, when a whistle blows at the mouth of the alleyway, and I hear the shouts of a patrol of guards. I would run, as I’m carrying a stolen purse, but I can see that they’re too close. Still, the two run down the alleyway, and as they turn the corner, the woman twists, and gives me a last look. Even arranged into a fearful gaze, her features strike me.

“Beautiful” I breathe, wondering why a woman who could have killed me seems so attractive. I feel a hand land on my shoulder, and I dismiss all thoughts of her.

* * *

An hour later, I’m back in my rooms. The patrol had seen her attack me, and had assumed I was being mugged. I was not searched, and was let away soon after telling them a suitably innocent version of the truth.
Moving to a seemingly blank part of the wall, I gently tap a small stain, and it swings away, revealing a wooden box. Opening it, I place a handful of the coins into the box, and keep about a third.

The situation will be complicated. Gavo was not necessarily my boss, but rather my contact. I pay a daily tithe to the thieves’ guild, license money for my continued ability to steal, and my continued ability to breathe. With Gavo dead, the line is confused. I only know one thing; I must find someone to pay, lest I find myself sprouting daggers.

Luckily, I had already paid Gavo for the day, and needn’t pay him till the morrow. The merchant had been a last (and lucrative) job before sundown. Now, I’m free. Time to hit the tavern. Not The Rusted Anchor, it’s too rough for me, but another not far from there. It’s not much better, more the kind of place where the knife you get stabbed with is cleaned afterwards.

I’ve been in there for less than a few minutes when I hear an all too familiar voice behind me and a hand touches my shoulder.

“Are you following me, Manch?”
Oh Mask. I can remember that voice. True, the memory brings back images of a knife at my throat, but I can’t help but turn around. It’s her, the woman from the alley. She’s wearing exactly the wrong kind of outfit for this place. This might not be the tavern I directed her to, but this place is certainly rough enough to be bad news for her. Still, the thought of a blade at my throat makes me less willing to share information than usual.

I turn, and sure as coins sound sweet, it’s Xandria. I gulp, and quickly drain my ale. She smiles, and sits next to me at the bar. I shrink back from her unconsciously, before I realise what a damned cowardly Tethyrian I’m being, and my Amnian manhood reasserts itself. I order another drink though, and after a pointed look, one for her.

Regretfully, she orders wine, and after several incredulous looks, I have to explain exactly where she is, and she is given the same watered-down slop as the rest of us. Fair play to her though, she does drink it, and she doesn’t even gag. I am quietly impressed. I was sick the first time I drank that stuff, and it had taken a month or two to get used to it.

She returns the mug to the bar, and smiling, asks for another.

“So, Manch, can I ask what you are doing here?” She asks in that husky voice of hers.
“I might ask you the same thing. This isn’t the Rusted Anchor.”
“Alemander is there. I came here to do some research, and found a familiar face.”
“Oh, you can remember it can you? I only remember your knife?”
“Come now, my dear Manch, surely you can forgive me that?” She asks, circling a finger round the rim of her mug.
Damn her, but I can. Those green eyes stare at me seductively, promising danger, and I get the feeling that it’s no empty promise. At this moment, I hate her almost as much as I desire her, and I curse my damned emotions, even as I nod and assure her that I do.

It’s at this moment that the tavern door opens, and a Cowled Wizard strides in. I feel the instinctive terror that most Athkatlans feel with a mage in the room, and look away.

He sniffs the air, and loudly proclaims “I smell magic.”
“It’s your own!” Someone yells, but they hide in the crowd, showing the bravery of the anonymous.

The wizard scans the crowd, and naturally his gaze falls on Xandria. It would, her rich red dress and fur stole mark her out as far too rich for this tavern, and her features draw any man’s stare.
“You” he points at her “You have magic.”
Xandria tenses, her hands falling to her sides, and one sneaking round behind her.

The wizard advances, and shifts his hand through a series of passes, and his voice reaches a crescendo of heathen words, before he fires a cascade of light, which hits Xandria, and blinds us all. When the tavern collectively regains its sight, we see her differently. Her features remain exactly the same, but her clothes have changed to the tunic and breeches of a woodsman, and twin red dog’s ears sprout from her copper mane of hair.
She’s a werefox.

“Damn you!” She spits at the wizard.
“Seize her!”

As two men move forward to grab her, the wizard’s gaze takes me in too.
“And that man with her, we will question him too.”
“I’m not with her!” I feverishly protest.

“Manch, come on!” Xandria grabs my hand, and pulls me towards the door. She unsheathes a dagger with her other hand, and the man who had been blocking it moves hastily away as she makes a half-lunge.

Outside, she drags me down an alley, up another, up a ladder, down a flight of stairs, round a corner, into a building, through a window, past more houses, over a bridge, the journey continues till we wind up somewhere I’ve never been before in my lifetime in the city. Finally, she pushes me into the window of a building, drags me up the stairs, kicks a door open, and slams it shut behind us. I look around in the darkness, and realise that she stands between me and the only exit. I turn to find her watching me carefully, hair mussed, face sweating and chest heaving. Where the situation not as it was, I’d probably jump her right there, and even so, I find myself aroused by this woman, even as her nature and magic repels me.

She finally composes herself, and stands straight.
“Alemander will be back soon. I shall prepare a meal.”

She moves off to a corner, and lights a fire. Now that the room has some measure of light, I see that we are in the office of an abandoned warehouse. The walls and floor are stone, so there is no threat of the fire burning the building down. In two of the corners are piles of furs; obviously Alemander and Xandria sleep separately. Strangely, the knowledge that they are not lovers pleases me, and I thrust this darker side of myself away. I’m in danger here; this is no time for a rush of hormones.

She hangs a small kettle over the fire, and soon brings me over a mug of some hot drink. I shy away as she moves closer.
“Away, sorceress” I mutter, scared beyond belief.
“Manch, come now. You need to drink this, if only to get some heat back into you.”
I can see her logic, this far into winter, in a stone building with only a small fire, I’m colder than a guardsman’s heart. I reluctantly take the cup, and shiver again when she sits next to me, close enough to be touching me, and pulls a fur over both of us. She silences me with a glare, and I’m forced to comply with her. I might have my shortsword at my hip, but she has magic, and she’s a werecreature.

When her head falls onto my shoulder, and she begins to snore, I almost soil myself. How the hells do I get out of this situation?
I’m sat there rigid, when the thought strikes me that half an hour ago, I’d have killed anyone in the tavern to sleep with this woman, and now she’s leaning against me asleep, and I’m terrified. It is with this thought that my mind shuts down, and sleep claims me. My head falls onto Xandria’s and my snores rival hers for volume.