Pocket Stories: Stolen

In any other mission, she would have been grateful for the natural cover, but tonight it made her uneasy.  If she could hide, so could her enemies.

Breaking into the royal treasury wasn’t difficult. The guards were sloppy and paid more attention to their wineskins than they did their surroundings. They hadn’t even noticed when the first shift never returned, they just took their places and paced from habit. Who would be stupid enough to rob the royal treasury, they probably thought.There were five checkpoints and countless guards between the entrance and the loot.

And I passed by them all, Salitha thought as she clung to the rafters, high above the heads of the lazy guards dawdling below. The sticky tar on her fingers and toes kept her from slipping, but it left its mark on the beams she used, a trail leading from the outermost window to her present hiding place.

I can’t believe this is working, she thought. She had been trying for months to make it to the treasury. Flirting with the guards had only given her the slightest glimpse of their routine. Pretending to be a new guard had gotten her nowhere, only the unbribable guards made treasury duty. That didn’t mean they were smart, they just couldn’t be bought.

The dimwitted guards moved past her, and she shimmied carefully to the floor; the slightest sound could ruin the whole thing.

The lock to the vault was impressive, but so were her skills. Not even a minute later she had broken each tumbler and the lock snapped open. She stashed the lock in her cloak pocket and  eased the door open. The fools didn’t even bother to make it squeak on purpose, more luck to me.

She shut the door gently behind her and turned to view her success. Gold and silver glittered softly in the low lamplight. Rubies, emeralds, and sapphires added their glorious colors to the rainbow that shown on the ceiling.

Her bare feet made no sound as she tip-toed through the aisles looking for her mark. She needed to be quick, the guards would finish their full circuit in only a few minutes.

At last she found it, the Enchanted Sword of Rumadin. It was rumored to hold the souls of its previous wielders, given its possessor their combined strength and wisdom. What the Duke wanted with it, she didn’t really care. The money he was willing to pay would more than cover her preferred lifestyle for the remainder of her days.

She grabbed the sword and wrapped it carefully in a cloth, covering its splendor from the quizzical eye of possible passersby. She strapped it carefully to her back and left the same way she entered, step for tar-covered step.

The night had truly fallen by the time she made it out of the keep. With shoes now covering her feet and gloves covering the mess from her tarred hands, she made her escape. The clouds covered the moon, given her plenty of deep shadows to hide in when someone came too close. Goosebumps crawled up her back, leaving her uneasy and cautious.

She wasn’t the only one the Duke had tasked with stealing the sword, she knew that already. She even knew each of the imbeciles he had hired and had purposefully led them away from the royal treasury. Some of them had even fallen for her false trails. The smarter idiots chose to hide out instead of tracking her the rest of the way.

Her worries began to grow. If she could hide this easily, so could her enemies, her competition, and they all hadn’t been offered the same reward.




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