Business expenses. (Closed)

[Ulrich Craggenmoor]

Ulrich walked down the board-walk. The vacuum created in the crowd behind him, filled with the flapping tails of his coat. This one had a destination. Whether it was clear on his face, or it was just something that a crowd can sense, on an instinctual level that someone had somewhere, important to be. This day, the sun just vanishing behind the skyline of the city painting the clouds a deep blooded orange, it was Ulrich Craggenmoor, Professional Wizard, long coat and short stubble. Who had a quick evening to complete, before blasting off back into the heart of the city.

Knocking shoulders with the final pedestrian, and the scene instantly changed from thronging with life, to eerie quiet. Long shadows stretched out, casting the whole city into a cold twilight while the sky still blazed above him. Turning his head over a shoulder, he managed to catch the final living person vanish from the street. No one else was going his way. No one else was nearby. It wasn't a comforting realisation. But when the sun set in salvar, you didn't have long until the cold truly set in.

Ulrich had perhaps, an hour of time before it got uncomfortable.

Above his open hand, Ulrich created a source of light and willed it into the shape of a flickering flame. But he didn't have the skill, or the will to force it to give out heat. Fire was wasteful, he knew. Light and heat was wasted energy that gummed up a spell beyond it's use. It was to show off.
Nothing more.

His feet hit the boards until it stopped, and dropped off onto a cobble stoned square. Walled with the high buildings and stone balconies which was the style in this part of the city. The centre was filled with a gothic fountain, it's pumps shut off and the water that had been laying within the basin, frozen over. Ulrich's untidy hair waved with the breeze which cut through both himself and the square as he looked around, examining the buildings nearby with a keen eye. Deep shadows stared back, thick glass reflecting what little light there was back out. And above him, a stone edifice of a vicious faced deamon, Bat-like wings of stone folded against the length of it's short body. Like it was ready to sweep down and take your head off in a single sweep. Carrying you out into the night.

Probably stop staring at the thing. Waste of energy that it is.

Ulrich was meeting someone here. After hearing only good things he had decided that The Guild was going to need to start serving a purpose. The artifact coming tonight was going to be sealed in the vaults. Too dangerous for any single person. So to get it, a Thief had been hired. Not just a apprentice black hand.

[Thorne]

He was sweating.

It dripped down his brow, the cold night air almost freezing the droplets as soon as they appeared. They slid down his back, dampened his palms inside his gloves and every time he licked his lips, all he could taste was salt. Thorne pulled himself tighter against the wall, trying to slow his breathing, to slow his racing pulse. He wiped his brow clean with a forearm hastily before he returned his grip to the rough stone wall.

The thief risked a glance down, not quite regretting it as he realised he was still some thirty feet up off the ground, clinging to the side of the tower, the bitter Salvaran cold starting to truly set in. If he didn't hurry up, the cold would either kill him through exposure, or numb his limbs until he simply dropped.

Remind me why I took this job again, he thought, shaking his head as the answer, the same as it ever was, became clear.

Money.

The rogue was being paid handsomely for the item currently nestled in one of his many belt pouches, and unfortunately for the master thief, he still had to eat. He adjusted his weight carefully, licking the salt from his lips one more time as he continued his descent. His muscles burned from exertion, but he was more than used to the sort of rigorous exercise his profession often entailed.

The job had come his way a few nights ago; he had returned to his small room in one of Knife's Edge lesser quality inns, a nice pouch of pilfered gold and silver snug against his hip, and some nicely cut jewels removed from the few stupid enough to wear their valuables openly. Dawn had been burning its way across the sky as he finally sat on the lumpy mattress and started the slow process of removing his gear. Bracers, greaves, lockpicks, weapons... the myriad tools of his trade were laid neatly on the small table taking up the space not occupied by what he had no trouble imagining might be the world's most uncomfortable sleeping pallet.

And then had come the note under his door.

Thorne had waited silently, as still as a statue until the footsteps outside receded, before he padded over to the folded paper. Only two people knew where he was sleeping for the next few nights so the note could mean only one thing. A paying job.

As usual, he had done some checking on the job, looked into the background of the client and generally assured himself this wasn't some ploy meant to lure him out into the open. Paranoia and pragmatism were one and the same to the Aleraran, so long as his trade stayed as illegal as it had ever been. Not to mention the fact his former master was still out for his blood. But, the work was legiti-- the work was safe, so he had met the client and accepted. Another night of checking out the location of the heist and taking note of security, guard presence and general difficulty, and the master burglar was ready.

The item itself had been held in the collection of an.. acquirer of illicit objects, by the name of Lord Randall. Rumour held the former noble had blown his family's fortune buying up rare and illegal items either stolen from museums across the world, located in long-forgotten tombs or.. procured from the vaults of the remaining Sway Church compounds throughout Salvar, and had been disowned by his family in the process. While the religious fanatics - do they come in any other form? - had lost much of their power after the civil war, they still possessed vast hoards of untold wealth.

But Thorne knew enough to avoid them. He didn't particularly enjoy having anything to do with magic. It was messy, unpredictable and often better off locked away. And it tends to bring out the most colourful sides of people, he mused wryly.

Security hadn't been much of an issue; his lockpicks had been busy for the night, and the thief grimaced as he remembered he needed a new double-ball pick after an unfortunately well-crafted lock had bent his. The guards had been as vigilant as could be expected in the fifty foot tower of a wealthy eccentric, but this was far from the moonlighter's first theft, and he slid around them with little more than the whisper of his padded boots to mark his passing.

Lord Randall, like most of his kind, kept his treasures on the top floor of the place. Close to his heart and far from his servants, he smirked.

Locating the vault hadn't been an issue in the slightest; as a rule, the Thieves' Guild taught their recruits there were three common locations for a vault in any building: The highest tower, the lowest chamber, or behind the largest, most unsubtle, heavily guarded door. Luckily for Thorne tonight, it had been the former. He had slipped in unnoticed, helped himself to some of the easier to fence items in the room, and found the loot his client had specified. Taking the other valuables was another Guild-trained habit, so long as a client never specified otherwise. It gave the thief a little extra money on top of his pay, but also helped obfuscate what the original target of the robbery was.

As he climbed down the wall, his callused hands and booted feet easily finding holds in the rough stone, even in the pitch-darkness, he allowed himself a moment's curiosity as to what it was and why his client wanted it; it was a small, lead box, trimmed in goldleaf in intricate traceries. There was no clear way to open it. But, with a soft shake of his hooded head, he banished the errant thoughts. It wasn't his concern what he was stealing for who - it was his concern about getting paid at the end of it. Finally, after what seemed like an age, his feet touched solid ground and the weary rogue slumped down for a few moments to let the burning ache leech out of his limbs.

But he didn't have time to sit on his ass - the cold set in almost as soon as he stopped moving, cutting through his clothes and the armour beneath like a knife through butter, freezing the layer of sweat on his pale skin. Sighing as he dragged his mottled black-and-grey clad body up again, he set off in a low, loping run towards the meeting point for the client, his body exhausted, but his pockets pleasantly heavier than when he woke up this evening.


***

Another hour passed by under the cloudy night sky, a light rain starting to fall on the city of Knife's Edge.

The thief tugged his hood further over his face, warding off the slightly unpleasant prickling of icy water spitting down on him from above, his boots padding through the soon-to-be-slush on the cobbled streets.

At least it held off this long, he mused, casting his mismatched eyes over the shadows in every alleyway, every figure glimpsed in the distance. He was good, but even the former Thieves' Guild protégé doubted his chances of surviving a downward climb, unaided, on a stone wall in the rain. He ignored the thoughts as irrelevant; he had completed his work, so there was no sense in worrying about what could have been. No. Now there was only one thing for him to focus on before he could return to his hideously unpleasant bed for some well-earned rest.

Payment.

He slipped into the small courtyard, instinctively seeking out the deepest shadows in which to cloak himself. His boots barely disturbed the bed of long-dead flowers frozen in their final moments as he edged around the outskirts of the open ground, his mismatched eyes narrowing as he spotted the client, a light held cupped in his outstretched palm.

Well.. isn't that just wonderful? You've gone and got yourself involved with a wizard. This can only end well, he thought with a sneer.

But, biting back his reservations, the thief emerged from the shadows, appearing at the spellcaster's side without once making a single sound.

"I have what you asked for. Where's my money?" he asked, his voice as soft as his footsteps.

[Ulrich Craggenmoor]

His back tensed as soon as the thief let his presence known, the only sighn of fright which the wizard gave out in the dark night air. Despite the rouge's soft voice, soft enough that ulrich doubted he would have heard if he was only a single step away, it had sent a shock of tension up his spine. With the temperature around them was still falling rapidly, the deal was close to being done. Any reservations which he may have had about hiring this thief quickly evaporated as thoughts of potential disaster, wroght by the trinket itself, filled his head. He had reason to have it removed from the collection. No, it was safer for everyone if it was locked away in the guild's vaults.

The thief, or Thorne as the stret contact had informed him in the crumbling remains of a back alleyway was all buisness until a job was done. Contacted by proxy but recieving payment in person as any sane man should. The more the street rat had talked about Thorne and how the job; if accepted; would go down, the higher Ulrich would think of him. Anyone willing to dive into a rat hole and religiously avoid fataly or grievously wounding anyone there was both a man of extreme character and impeccably skilled at his job. It was of course the knowledge that thorne would slip in and out without a single alarm, the shadow of a ghost, which prompted the agreement to his rediculous rates. His sudden appearance beside the Professional wizard in the middle of an open square...

Only served to compund the knowledge that he had aquired the right man for the job.

They stared at each other for a long moment before either of them broke it again. Ulrich produced a leather bag of gold from the depths of his coat and held it infront of his chest. The treated hide bulged awquardly as the coin inside was packed inside, drawstring around it's neck was tied tight and as he raised it towards the thief, proving that he had the money to exchange for the goods, he recognised him.

"And this stuff isn't going to evaporate like the the one you lost in the peacefull promenade a few months ago in sacre brae."

If the thief recalled Ulrich from the crowd he did little more than grimace of distaste at the recollection of the bothed deal. A lesson learned then, trade-offs done in person. Drops wouldn't be done and the situation ceases to become a problem. Easy peasy.

From a pouch in his belt, the thief pulled out a small lead box etched in decoration and trimming. It was what he was after all right. Not what was inside, but the box itself. It served a very specific purpose and that purpose was better served in a deep dark corner in the tower's basement back in Raiaera. Where no collector was sitting on a ticking box. Grubby hands inchies away from... Lets not think about it. On sight of the prize, Ulrich passed the coin in a slow underarmed lob in Thornes direction and it sailed in it's arc through the air. Slapping solidly into the gloved hand of the thief. Safe enough for Ulrich to make the first move, the thief had a reputation to protect so if Ulrich wanted to go first it would have just looked dis-ingenuous.

Hands pulled at the leather noose around the coin pouch, full as it was, as it was resting on the sturdy box raised in the other hand.

Ulrich was already nervous.

"Can you not?" He called out, moving closer to the Professional thief, who's eyes moved up from the task in hand and locked onto Ulrich in a death stare. After the pay is counted, they dont have to meet again, pleasantly or otherwise.

"No." And the thief returned to the task at hand while ulrich reached out for the cube. His finger's grasping around the side as Thorne's coin counting ways continues, stacking a couple on the box itself.

Gold brushing gold.

Knife's edge winking out of existence.

Replaced by something else. A wide expanse of grass, encircled by a stone wall, smooth, as smooth as if it had been fashioned by a single massive boulder which had been dropped onto the grass and hollowed out from above. A single tree stood in the middle of the area which streatched around forty paces in diameter in a near perfect circle. In the middle, under the wide branches of the tree were two men, one with a bag of gold and both of them with a lead box.

"Oh shit."