Six weeks ago…
“Thieves Guild” was a rather grandiose title for a score of aging adventurers, shiftless grifters and brash young cut-purses lounging around the stained, scarred oaken table in the back room of the Saucy Sirine, but to Nikolai, it was home. Had been, anyway. This was to be his last night with the guild, his last time swapping friendly insults and outrageous lies in the company of his fellow thieves. The Strumpet’s Ambition made sail at dawn, just a few hours from now, in fact.
“Ay, Nikko,” proclaimed Andjan, raising his glass in a theatrical salute, “Veshlak won’t be the same without you. The larcenous lifestyle will have lost some of its–um–charm.”
Nikolai grinned.
“You’re a poet, Andjan. Not a very good one, but a poet all the same.”
“I’m still too sober to be a poet,” replied Andjan, peering mock-mournfully into his empty glass.
“I can take a hint,” said Nikolai, reaching for the first of the two bottles he had brought with him. Calbrian brandy of an exceedingly rare vintage, stolen this very afternoon from the captain of the Ambition, even as Nikolai was making the final arrangements for his passage to Kunjan-Dari. A needless risk, that was, impulsive and unwise, an entirely appropriate exploit for his last day in town.
“Luster,” barked old Mumbling Lem, through teeth clenched with the effort of uttering the correct word. “Luminance!”
The guildmaster’s head was battered, scarred, and in one spot terribly, unmistakably dented.
As Nikolai eased the cork from the bottle, the old man lapsed into his familiar, meaningless mumble: “Anchovy horsehair barrel-staves digging sky gloves of liquid sagacity.”
Nikolai poured the first glass of brandy and presented it to Mumbling Lem, who tasted it with due ceremony and nodded his approval.
Once the guildmaster had received the first share, as was his right, and appraised it and found it worthy of his thieves, as was his duty, the table was cleared of lesser bottles and the brandy was distributed to all. Mumbling Lem stood with a great creaking and popping of joints and raised his glass in salute of Nikolai. The others did the same and were about to drink when the old man surprised them all by actually managing to bark out a toast in his harsh, halting speech.
“Tonight we bid! Farewell to the best! Thief the city of! Veshlak has ever known,” and here he grinned wickedly, “except for me!”
The assembled thieves roared their applause, much of it for Nikolai, but most of it for their guildmaster. The thieves loved Mumbling Lem, loved him fiercely and freely, this mad, majestic ruin of a man who could speak meaningful sentences only with great effort and who could write not at all, though he still read voraciously and could craft forgeries of uncanny accuracy. They loved him like a father (and indeed, to one or two he might have been, for there were women of the city who loved him as well), this man who led them with nods and glances, who praised them with his great booming laugh, who chastised them with stern glares that stung more deeply than any shout or slap, whose cunning pantomimes could paralyze them with laughter or move them to tears.
And it was out of love for Mumbling Lem that Nikolai had to leave.
The thieves guild was changing. Its recent successes–many of them due to Nikolai–had drawn new members to its ranks and would continue to do so in the future. Mumbling Lem wasn’t getting any younger, and how long would it be before one of these ambitious young thieves began to wonder how much more successful the guild might be under new leadership?
For a while, the problem would correct itself. The foolish would get themselves caught, as they always do, while the too-ambitious would overstep their bounds and be put in their places by Mumbling Lem or one of the other older thieves. But eventually, inevitably, someone would suggest that perhaps Nikolai should lead them. After all, it was true: Nikolai was the best thief in Veshlak, save for Mumbling Lem himself–who hadn’t been an active thief since before Nikolai was born. More importantly, Nikolai was possessed of the sort of reckless creativity and daring, the ability to hatch wildly improbable schemes which actually worked, that the younger breed of thief would look for in a potential leader.
It might not happen next week or even next year–Nikolai was, after all, only twenty–but it would happen soon enough, and when it did, Mumbling Lem would willingly accede his position. Nikolai would be a worthy successor, and the old man would be well provided for in his retirement; the guild was his life, he would always have a place of honor at the thieves’ table. But he would become nothing more than a curiosity, a living relic of a bygone era, a mascot. It would kill his spirit, and Nikolai would suffer any torture imaginable before he would ever allow that to happen.
If it was up to him, Mumbling Lem would never die. Failing that, he would die peacefully in his sleep, in his rightful position at the head of the table, after a long night of carousing with his thieves. With Nikolai out of the picture, that might very well happen.
And it wasn’t like he was going into exile. He was on his way to Kunjan-Dari, to seek his fortune in a city of great wealth and limitless opportunity for adventure. To be hailed as the greatest thief in Veshlak was something to be proud of, to be sure, but Veshlak was still just a minor port city, a brief waypoint for merchant vessels on their way to the great bazaars and trading houses of Kunjan-Dari. To make a name for himself there, that was the real challenge.
Kunjan-Dari. Just the sound of the word filled Nikolai’s head with a buzzing, shifting sense of potential, more intoxicating even than Calbrian brandy.
They finished the bottle, and the next. The celebration slowly wound down as one by one the thieves staggered home, or slumped over in their chairs, or curled up on the sooty, wine-stained floor. Finally only Nikolai and Mumbling Lem remained awake. The guildmaster, incredibly, brought forth a third bottle of Calbrian brandy he’d had stashed away somewhere. It was a more recent vintage, lacking some of the subtle complexities of Nikolai’s stolen bottles, but a fine brandy nonetheless. The two sat together for the rest of the night, drinking and staring into the fire in companionable silence until, as the first blush of dawn crept like a thief into the cloud ribboned sky, Nikolai noticed that the guildmaster was snoring gently, his half-full glass still cradled gingerly in his strong, gnarled fingers.
Ever the thief, Nikolai plucked the glass from Mumbling Lem’s hand, drained it, then crept across the room, weaving silently between his slumbering companions, stepped out into the cold, damp, salty dawn, and made his way to the harbor.
