You're Gonna Want To Know Me In This Town (2/24)

 Woah, a fiction story that's not cyberpunk? Writing some more stuff that takes place in my DnD setting. I enjoy the lore and worldbuilding but sometimes it's hard to integrate all that into a play session. So here I am now!

        One would not anticipate piety from a thief. Such types tend to shy away from drawing attention from any authorities, forget the highest authorities there were. But Avek, who crept silently along the rain slick roofs, was pious indeed.

He had trained as a thief since he was age eight, and he had survived the century since through cunning, skill, and obsequiousness to the powers that be. He had no time for Gods, as they had no time for him. He nursed a secret anxiety that the moment he rose to the God’s attentions they would slap him out of the sky like a gnat. Better to go smaller, to the divinities that understood what it was like to be mortal. They would, perhaps, give more leeway to his missteps.

Avek was a devout Panoplist, a worshipper of the boundless Saints who had ascended to demigodhood, and always made sure to pay homage to the right ones. No need to pray to Saints of Life and Prosperity. They were too occupied with the prayers of every other poor soul on the planet begging for the same thing. No, Avek played it smart. He was more practical than pious, and he had piety to spare. He knew which theological side streets to saunter down, which less trod paths would get him to the ear of the right Saint. His religious and professional lives were very intertwined in that way.

His boot scraped against damp tile and yet he felt no rush of adrenaline, no call of the void in the yawning maw of the alley below.  He had a slot in his right boot which was currently occupied by the fingerbone of Saint Aurelius of Santhiel. Saint Aurelius was an obscure member of the Panoply, a humble patron of tile layers and roofers, and typically only invoked by those occupations. At the end of construction, the laborers would often burn a candle or toss a coin into the rattling collection tray to ensure the tiles laid didn’t slip or break. Avek had the same concerns, though for very different reasons. Every year he honored Aurelius’ Feast, eating the traditional fare of roasted pigeon and mint, offering up the juiciest morsel to the saint himself. His devotion had been well rewarded it seemed; he’d never once had a tile slip out from under him.

Tonight, Avek crept over the tangled rooftops to the warm glow of the gambling house known only as The Labyrinth. He’d prepared himself well for this job. Next to his lockpicks hung a small ivory fetish of Saint Etienne, patron of craftspeople and toolmakers. Let his lockpicks never bend, let his pliers never rust. He had dabbed the fetish with a drop of oil, in accordance with the Saint’s decrees. He prayed constantly to her under his breath as he worked.

His faith did not come from a lack of confidence in his own skills. He did not need divine intervention to make up for any shortcoming of his own. He was a good thief. A damned good thief. If everything went his way he could steal the nose hair from a sleeping king and have it pawned off to a fence before the monarch ever stirred. The unfortunate fact of life was that things rarely went as planned. He could not control whether a tile slipped, or a lockpick snapped, or if a guard dog sniffed too deeply of the air where he had once been. The intercessions he looked for were merely to allow him as few variables as possible. He needed the saints to ensure that things he could not control were handled by a higher power. He prayed often, and genuinely, enough that he felt he’d earned some small measure of grace.

He caught his breath at the top of a brothel, making note of how far he had come, and what distance he still had left to cover. He’d splashed wine at the foot of the altar to Saint Theodorus, Saint of Travelers, before leaving his apartment in the slums. The Saint had been sluggish in his response, Avek realizing with frustration he was hardly ahead of schedule at all. He was, insultingly, exactly where he should be exactly when he should be. It was his own fault for using such a cheap vintage, the stuff was basically vinegar. He would be sure to buy a finer bottle with the funds from tonight’s excursion. Let that dusty sack of bones refuse to offer aid then.

Across the city rose Resting Titan, a jagged slash of stone that divided the city in two. On the near cliff face was the Labyrinth, the lights in the window indicating that it was a busy night indeed. Avek was satisfied. He’d prayed to an array of saints, imploring each for different intercessions. The Saint of birds so that the racing hawks flew swiftly, keeping eyes on the track instead of on the windows. The Saint of Prosperity, that everyone who entered would have their pockets filled with gold. He even threw in a quick prayer to Saint Alessia, patron of arrogance, that the haughty patrons in the casino wouldn’t deign to look at one as scruffy as him for any longer than necessary.

He thumbed his prayer beads as he watched the crowds mill about the entrance.

Click, click, click

 Heavily armed orc guards turned away the riff-raff, letting in only the wealthiest and well to do. The city had been a hotbed of violence this past year, the gangs were at each others throats more often than not, all of them blaming the other for some perceived slight or the other. It made his job easier more often than not. A little heightened security was a small price to pay for the assurance that any gang was likely to blame another rather than spend time and resources hunting down an independent operator.

Click, click

Five beads, the sacred number of innumerable saints. Tonight he was praying specifically to Saint Inez, patron of debtors. He had bills coming due, and he valued his body parts too much to part with any of them over something so paltry as a lapsed payment. He hoped Inez would smile at this particular member of her flock, bedecked in dozens of charms and relics, and aid him in rising out of debt.

All that stood between him and that were a few rooftops, a dozen or so guards, and a safe so impossible to reach it had been rumored they never even bothered to lock it.

Easy enough work. He was a good thief. A damned good thief. All he needed was for his accomplices to pull their weight.