Page 4 of A Thief Among Fae

My hackles rise. This man puts her on edge, and all attraction I feel is doused by suspicion. The glimmer in his gaze is overly charming. He’s too tall, too broad-shouldered to be mesmerized by an impecunious village girl with a tunic no more flattering than a burlap sack.

He eyes me and returns Evie’s hand to her side. “Until we meet again.” With another wink, he leaves.

I approach the draper and set the eight silver marks on the counter. “We’ll take four yards of the brocade and the ribbon. My sister has the rest.”

The draper takes them with a faraway stare, then shakes her head just a second too long. “Let me fetch my tools.” Her shoulders are tense as she walks into the back room. Something’s wrong.

“He was dreamy,” Evie sighs.

I have an unsettling hunch that feels like a rock in my throat. “Check your coin purse, Evie.”

“My purse?” She pats her belt, then pales. “Wait! I feel something in my pocket!” From it, she pulls out a single silver mark.

“He’s known for that,” the draper says as she returns. Her voice quivers. “Not leaving a pickpocketed victim markless, as if that makes it any better. Or a shopkeeper without extortion over their heads.”

Shit. Shit! I sprint outside and search the market, but he’s vanished like smoke through my fingers. I whirl back into the shop. “Who was he?” I demand.

“Guildmaster Erickson,” she whispers.

“Of what? The thieves’ guild?” I snark.

She nods.

“For gods’ sake,” I mutter. Those six silver marks were all of my legally garnered savings. Months of odd jobs, gone with a thief’s sleight of hand.

“But they aren’t just pickpockets.” The draper’s tools quiver in her hands. “They’re shillabers. Racketeers! Rumors say they’ve even got an assassin in their employ.”

I ignore her. It doesn’t matter how despicable Erickson is. He’s already gone. “Can you make a dress with three and a half yards?” I ask Evie.

My sister tears her gaze from the doorway and wipes her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Cyn. You trusted me to carry your money and I. . .”

I hug her. “It’s alright. How much do you need?”

“Less than four yards isn’t enough for a dress, but I could sew a skirt. Why does it matter? He stole all our money.” She looks at me with sorrow.

“Then you’ll have a skirt that will turn even the gods’ heads.”

“How?”

“I sold some stuff.”

She raises a brow, but before she can ask, I step away to complete the purchase. A few minutes later, we stride through the market with an unwieldy bundle of fabric, sans ribbon. Evie regards the bustling cityscape with wariness, no trace of her earlier enthusiasm. When a hawker calls to her, she turns away with a sniff. “I’m ready to go home, Cynthia. Don’t you miss how tranquil Nettlerock is?”

“Do I?” I echo with a sardonic laugh. She doesn’t hear it over the strike of a hammer on an anvil. Do I miss how each day is the same, the only marker of days passing being the change of the seasons? If the moon didn’t wane and wax, if infants didn’t grow into farmhands, our village would seem trapped in time. Like a fly in amber. The sawyer is a sawyer because his father was. The miller is a miller because her grandparents lived and died grinding grain.

If I don’t escape Nettlerock, I will spend every day of every year stooped in the fields with nothing but my thoughts for company as I plant, weed, and harvest. Sure, my parents will argue that the monotony is broken by the traps we set and check, the darning of socks, the pickling of crops for winter, and the fleshing of hides. If they knew what I do for fun, they’d flesh my hide, too.

Even worse is my parents’ pressure for me to settle down. I’m twenty-six, growing ever-closer to spinsterhood. But even if the most handsome farmhand in all of Avedor moves to Nettlerock, it won’t tempt me to stay.

“Do you miss it?” Evie repeats. We’re so close to the gate.

I look back at the pages scurrying through the streets and guards in gleaming chainmail. A sign for an adventurers’ guild creaks in the breeze. My feet drag. Beneath it is a bay window, and inside sits a girl wearing a vest embroidered with the guild’s compass emblem. She looks out with a dreamy smile, and envy twists my heart until it burns. In another life, that could’ve been me.

Evie tugs on my arm. “Yes,” I say, looking back at her. “I miss it so much that it hurts.”

We fall silent as we begin the trek home. Evie asks, “How can I help you earn the marks back? The Ash family might need help digging up their potatoes.”

I almost tell her not to worry—the words are on the tip of my tongue. But there is something I can’t do without her.