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The Princess’s Ransom

  By Margaret Gregory

  Copyright 2014 by Margaret Gregory

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  Please note that I use Australian spelling throughout. You will see ou’s (colour) and ‘ise’ not ‘ize’ (realise) as well as a few other differences from American spelling.

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  The Princess’s Ransom

  By Margaret Gregory

  A slender white hand reached under the pillow and without disturbing the sleeper’s rhythm of snores, withdrew a soft leather pouch, a hands span wide. Nimble fingers felt the small hard objects within the leather and in a moment of introspection traced the metallic threads embossed on the leather – the Royal sigil! Recalling the job in hand – the pouch disappeared through a slit in the intruder’s black, hooded cloak and settled into a secret pocket at the waist of the jerkin below.

  The ghost like prowler backed silently away from the bed, going towards the door of the room to listen for sounds without before leaning down for a large leather sack that had been placed within reach; the chest where it had been hidden, was locked again. A novice thief would have found that lock simple – surely some sort of magic warding would have been more appropriate.

  The coins in the sack clanked softly but the sleeping man’s breathing did not change. The oval face beneath the hood of the cloak was smiling as the thief passed through the soundlessly opening door and into the passage.

  There were two guards in the passage. They were clad in formal livery that looked black in the faint candlelight. Both were staring vacantly into space, no more aware of anything than their comrades who were sleeping in the taproom down the stairs.

  The cloaked figure paused and looked up at the rigid guards.

  “In the space of forty heart beats you will wake and remember nothing!”

  It was a soft female voice that spoke from under the hood and same voice muttered a simple cantrip and disappeared from view as she walked softly back to the stairs.

  “Oi! Lady, who are you?” a childish voice demanded, in a loud voice.

  The now invisible thief turned but could not see the owner of the voice. The door opposite was open a tiny slit. Muttering again the cantrip for a glamour of invisibility – the figure ran lightly down the stairs followed by the voice now yelling, “Thief! Thief!”

  The guards in the taproom sprang awake, reached for their swords as they rose and looked around them. Four sprang for the stairs to go the messenger they had a duty to protect. They were unaware of the invisible figure that dodged them with a dancer’s agility by leaping over the stair rail and running lightly over the tables pushed to the side of the room.

  The guard leader called out orders for lights to be lit. Angry shouts were audible from the room upstairs.

  Only speed and good night-vision had enabled the invisible thief to jump down from the tables and weave her way across the room before it became chaos. Now she waited in a corner near the main door but with lights being lit, it was not safe to stay. The glamour of invisibility, stolen from a second-rate sorceress two towns back, was not perfect. In light, a person still cast a shadow. Not only that – the special oil that had silenced the squeaky voices of the hinges would soon lose its efficiency; by dawn there would be no traces left.

  Within the tavern, two people stood still amidst the confusion. They were both tall and dressed in brown travelling robes with hoods pulled over their heads and so far, no one had realized they were not men. Two pairs of blue-green eyes were scanning the room with intense concentration.

  “In the corner – by the door. A shadow,” a woman’s voice said quietly.

  The second, only slightly shorter than the other, nodded and began a low voiced incantation but before it was completed three shadows preceded two guards from the inn. The brown robed travellers followed quickly and any one sensitive to magic would have felt the tension of the incomplete spell. Outside the spell was completed.

  “Reveal thief!”

  Night became like day, a slender cloaked figure could be seen and heard running down the stone paved street and between the grey stone dwellings. The chase was on! The witch light followed the thief but she knew a trick or two yet! With the dark blue liveried guards rapidly approaching, she ran to the nearest sewer tunnel and crouched to enter. Once inside, the tunnel sloped downwards for several wagon lengths, and eventually the roof was high enough to stand in. The light followed the thief, but by taking the first few turns at random, it would not be seen from the entrance. The guardsmen would soon be helplessly lost.

  She had the advantage of knowing the sewer tunnels well and the light let her run rather than walk along the paved edges of the sludge filled channels and she made the most of it.

  A river outlet was her destination but she did not emerge there. To do so would let the witch light illuminate the predawn sky.

  Removing her cloak, the thief wrapped it around the sack of gold coins and the pouch of jewels. A muttered incantation caused the bundle to take on the colour of its surroundings and when pushed into a pile of rocks snagging a mass of sludge it became just some more unidentifiable rubbish. A second chant would enable her to find it again even if this mass of sludge dislodged with the next rain.

  The girl thief, now clad in only trousers and belted jerkin, made use of the witch light to travel more tunnels to yet another part of town; this time to where the river eddied to form a back pool.

  Feeling safe, she emerged from the tunnel and dived into the deep water. The witch light hovered for a few moments then followed her – only to be extinguished.

  With the return of darkness, the girl surfaced and swam to the far side of the pool, rinsing the sewer sludge from her clothes and with it the putrid smell. When she had crawled out onto dry land and walked in amongst the tall trees, the thief laughed with sheer exhilaration and began the long walk back to the lodging house of the Thieves Guild. However, she would not be telling them of this nights work!

  The brown-cloaked travellers from the inn followed the thief at a safe distance and waited when she entered the sewer. Although they hoped otherwise, they were not surprised when the guards lost her. They knew the ways of this thief who had visited the Crescent Moon Tavern in various guises five nights in a row. The girl used the sewers like they were the King’s Highways and had managed to lose the two travellers, skilled trackers both, in those foul tunnels on the first two nights.

  Subtle questioning of a guild-bonded thief, with tongue loosened by strong spirits, had given them a clue to the location of the Thieves’ Guild House and confirmed that the girl was also guild bonded. The man had not known her name but he had commented that for a slip of a girl her skill was a hairsbreadth short of magical!

  Magical indeed, if she had been able to use a stolen glamour and had learnt that her victim would be staying in the tavern tonight!

  Even with the thief’s hint, it had taken another two days to locate the outlet from which the thief emerged. This night, the travellers one a swordswoman and the other a sorceress simply rode their horses to the far side of
the back pool, opposite where the sewer opened out and waited in the shadows amongst the trees. The brief moment of light between the thief emerging and diving into the pool was enough to see she no longer carried the gold. They watched her swimming across and disappearing into the trees nearest the road.

  “It’s time we found out exactly what she knows,” one of the travellers spoke, only loud enough for her companion to hear. “We’ll have to get her before she reaches her guild house. If she invokes their protection we will never find out if she knows where our sister is.”

  “What if the guild itself is involved?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Finora! The Thieves’ Guild is officially outlawed, even if they probably pay the local guardsmen to look aside. If we heard about the Kings Messenger, you can bet they knew too. However I doubt that the Guild master is a total fool – he wouldn’t risk the King’s anger and no one can bribe the King’s Own Guards!”

  “What’s your plan Leanne?” Finora ignored the implied rebuke.

  “Scare the truth out of her!” Leanne told her twin sister and outlined a plan for ambush.

  Some minutes later, the