According to the penalty for theft outlined on Tan's wanted poster, it would take only half a moment to amputate a thieving hand.
The idea of watching his lifeless digits drop to the floor made Tan's stomach convulse, and he flexed his fingers involuntarily at the thought of it. The city at the heart of the desert seemed innocuous enough from the outside, but on the inside its law enforcement had become notoriously unforgiving of late.
And with justifiable reason, now that he'd heard the news. The invasion of blood-thirsty ghûls breaching the citadel had shaken the population more so than usual, and he felt Farba's collective nervousness seeping into his skin like a toxin. It meant that committing a crime in Farba'al Mar would be bold, foolish, but he saw no viable alternative, as much as he'd rather drink sour milk than return here...
Or so he'd half-joked. Of all the cities on the continent, why did it have to be this one after everything he'd done?
It was for Shara, the woman he loved from a distance, so shaken with tears as she begged him that he'd obliged her biggest request yet. If only he could learn to say no to a pretty face he might not be back here at all, cornered in a city where all eyes were on him - and one where he may never show his face again for fear of execution. It was no small task, he had warned her, but she'd only pleaded him harder.
He elbowed Shara from the forefront of his mind and concentrated on the task she'd entrusted him, letting the current of people sweep him into the heart of the market. The canopies wove a maze of narrow avenues, filtering the public through only four abreast at an infuriatingly slow pace.
Hundreds of dark eyes searched his bright blue ones, glancing at his stolen red silks with misgiving.
"Quit staring," he growled in his own tongue. He yanked the excess material of his headscarf over his eyes a little more.
Though Tan's own tribe considered his stature average, he barely levelled with the chins of the Farban women, and the men dwarfed him at near seven feet. Their faces were dark and solemn and beautiful, and both sexes wore their hair in braids, hanging from beneath exorbitant headdresses. They gazed down on his child-like face in equal parts uncertainty and fascination; quite likely they'd never seen an Almysi tribesman in the flesh before.
Fittingly, with the viewpoint of a child, he struggled to see ahead for what it was he sought, though prevailed with his snail-paced search and happened upon an earthy-smelling stall that looked promising. And best of all: quiet. Some might consider it eccentric behaviour of a crook to approach his prey face-to-face before making a steal, but Tan's confidence as a thief had soared to near arrogance over the years. He eyed the stall for a beat and barged out of the heaving tide.
Best get this over with.
YOU ARE READING
The Venomancer
Fantasy[Fantasy/Novel/Slow Updates]The world believed the Venomancer was dead. And since his disappearance the deserts have slept soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that the sorcerer from the forests will never return. But Tandei IS alive, now a youn...
