A Jewel Among Thieves

Chapter 1: The Job

Safia stopped at the edge of where the bridge that spanned the ornamental stream began, eyes narrowing. In the moonlight, the wide stone structure was leached of all colour, only the riot of shadows from the balustrade and potted plants interrupting the silver gleam. She studied the area for a few more moments. No movement. Good. The information she'd bought had been right then, and the owner was gone, not even leaving staff. Rumour painted him as a copper-pinching show-off, which was fine by Safia. It certainly made her job easier.

Running a finger along the pouches on her belt, she stopped at the one closest to the buckle. She popped it open and pulled out the crystal inside in one fluid movement. Safia held the crystal up to her eye and squinted through it. No light showed through and she felt her shoulders relax. So she hadn't wasted the trip all the way out here. She hadn't been sure, but with what she'd heard about Lord Catus, she'd been betting he wouldn't have ponied up the money for a dispel on his manor. And that gave Safia all the opening she needed.

She glanced around again before looking down at herself. Safia sighed. There was no help for it. She reached out, touching each of the vials on her belt until she found the one marked with the single dot on top. Carefully opening it, while she might get it for free by getting the ingredients, it was always a massive hassle to do, she let four drops fall onto her tongue.

She shuddered at the taste even after all this time. But the taste was well worth being invisible. Safia held a hand in front of her face and saw nothing. Well, nothing but the edge of her sleeve.

Grimacing, she reached down and pulled her shirt over her head, silently cursing the potion as she always did. No matter how many times she'd asked Gana, the mage still hadn't found a way to have the potion affect her clothes as well. It only worked on her body. If the other forms of invisibility weren't so much more expensive and harder to get, she'd have stopped with the potion long ago. But here she was.

She put her shirt on the ground and only then unbuckled her belt and placed it on top. The last thing she needed to do was lose that, with all her tools on it. She'd paid a hefty price and had Drysi bring it in special for her. Safia could just picture the expression on the smuggler's face if she said she'd lost the invisible belt and needed a new one. There had already been one too many near-misses for her to be willing to take any more chances.

In a matter of minutes, Safia was completely naked as well as invisible. She was glad the night air was warm and windless. Buckling her belt back on, she kicked her clothes under a nearby bush to be dealt with later. She wrinkled her nose at her shadow, another thing Gana hadn't managed to fix about the damned potion. The mage had a whole long explanation about how the potion made the user perfectly transparent, but their mass was still there, blah blah blah.

Safia turned back towards the stone manor that loomed on the other side of the bridge. Low, curving hedges done in spirals housed the gardens that lay in the green centre before the building, which was in turn surrounded by the wide cobbled road designed to handle carriages. Safia was grateful for the cobblestones as she crossed the bridge. The last job she'd done had involved crossing a gravelled drive and her feet had not been pleased about that one.

She kept her head turning as she moved forward, not trusting the apparent emptiness of the area. Careless thieves were dead or imprisoned thieves, and she didn't intend to be either. But by the time she'd reached the front of the manor, she still hadn't seen anything. Safia ignored the front door and the potential alarm spells in favour of one of the wide windows that covered the face of the building. Each had a wide ledge that all but begged her to climb up on them.

Safia studied the third one down from the door, looking for some kind of opening. The narrow line between the two halves of the window was promising. She pulled herself up onto the ledge then felt along her belt until she came to her tool pack. Her fingers had the placement of each of her implements memorized, and it was a matter of moments before she had the flat and thin metal hook she used for just these kinds of things.