Chapter

Twenty-Eight

Brin exited the forest and ran straight across the open plain between the trees and the walls; there was no cover out here, but there was also no reason to be out here looking in this direction. He should be safe, but still he ran quickly.

He decided to climb up the guard platform. Sure, he could simply climb the wall, but the town walls were just big straight logs with sharpened tips all pressed together. It would be a little awkward, and jumping down the other side would make a sound. Probably not an issue, but he didn’t want to start the night taking needless risks.

Once he got to the wall, he threw his grappling hook up to the platform up on the watchtower. It hit with a noticeable clack, but not so loud that anyone would hear it unless they were right there. Hopefully.

He waited for thirty seconds and when he didn’t hear any sign of movement on the other side of the wall, he started climbing.

He climbed to the top with Marksi and the backpack on his back, and it wasn’t difficult at all. It still surprised him all the things his body could do with Dexterity after the first threshold. Sure, he’d been close for a while, but he had a whole lifetime of experience in his old body, and it still adjusted his perception on what was possible. It made him more careful than he needed to be. That might be a problem someday, but for tonight, it was perfect.

He got to the top, wasted no time in rolling up his grappling hook and stashing it away, and then crept down the stairs. Hogg’s sound circle had disappeared the instant he’d started on the road away from the house. Clearly Hogg didn’t plan on helping him with this. He was wondering if the old guy was even watching, or if he was determined to ignore the whole thing in the hopes it would give Brin a better achievement. Either way, he couldn’t depend on him.

Besides, he didn’t really need the sound circle. It had been a useful training aid, but it had served its purpose. He walked down the stairs silently.

At the bottom of the watchtower, the only thing in sight was the backs of the nearby houses. Before he could second-guess himself, he walked up to the nearest house and pressed his hand against the doorknob. He turned it slowly. It wasn’t locked.

He crept inside and closed the door behind him. The interior was dark but he could still make out the shape of obstacles. He was in a hallway that went straight through to the street, with a staircase on the left and a doorway to the kitchen on the right. The only obstacle was a little entryway table.

He ran his hands along the entryway table and found that it was the kind with a little drawer. He opened it and felt inside very carefully so that whatever was inside wouldn’t roll around and make a noise. He felt a hand mirror, a pincushion, and then a cheap deck of bark-paper cards. He took the cards.

There was no achievement. He hadn’t really expected there to be one, but he’d hoped.

There could be two reasons. The most obvious, and the thing he hoped was the problem, was that he hadn’t gotten away with it yet. He needed to get out of the house, probably out of the town, before he could count this as really “stolen.”

That was easily testable. He left the house the way he’d come, then walked up the watchtower and rappelled down the other side. He walked into the forest.

To his surprise, he got a notification.

Congratulations!

You have gained an achievement.

Thief (Common)

You have temporarily stolen something with every intention of giving it back.

There was no reward. Just like his Blessing of the Hidden Guardian achievement, it acknowledged his accomplishment, but didn’t give him any rewards.

Unlike the other achievement, this one gave him a very obvious clue as to what he had done wrong. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had every intention of giving the cards back.

Curse himself all he wanted, but he knew he was going to give everything he took tonight back, hopefully before the owner realized it was gone. He could tell himself all he wanted that he was going to keep these cards forever, but as soon as he got the achievement he’d probably change his mind.

This wasn’t going to work unless he changed his determination. Or his strategy.

He made his way over the wall, same as before. He walked through the same house. He thought about giving the cards back on his way through, but giving heed to morality was no way to start a night like this.

He walked through the hallway and opened the front door just a crack, to look at the street beyond. Nothing in sight.

The moon was only a thin crescent, and it was behind the clouds, which gave him a wonderful darkness to work with. The streetlamps were somewhat scattered, only one for every ten or so houses, and they weren’t the bright electric streetlights of his home, so there were more than enough areas still cast in shadows for him to move around without being seen, even if there were anyone to see him.

He started walking on the boardwalk, careful to keep his footsteps silent, close enough to the side that he would be able to easily duck into an alleyway or doorstep if he needed to get out of sight.

People rarely moved around at night, but that didn’t mean they never did. The fact that they had streetlights at all meant that they recognized there might be reasons to be outside past nightfall.

Also, with winter, the nights were so long that there was a weird midnight culture. Instead of sleeping through the night, people would wake up for an hour or two in the middle of the night. They’d mostly read, or work, or do other… nighttime things. But some people would go on walks. He figured he had about two hours until then, but he didn’t really know what to expect. He’d never been out this late in town; he only knew what he’d picked up from conversation.

The public house would be open for that, so Brin was going to stay away from that entire section of town. That meant he couldn’t steal from Perris, but honestly he didn’t want to. Except maybe to take all the stuff he’d already paid for, but that probably wouldn’t help him get an achievement. If he didn’t get the stuff by the time his exile was over, he’d go talk to Perris again.

Random nighttime walkers were a concern, but his biggest threat was the lantern-man.

Lantern-man was a job, not a Class. Every night, someone would light the lanterns in the evening and then douse them again in the morning. Then during the night they’d patrol the town, walking up and down the streets. This was the closest thing that Hammon’s Bog had to a police force.

Zilly’s dad was one of the chief lantern-men, because of all his Skills relating to charcoal. He could basically mass-produce it and make it burn longer and brighter, to the point where the town’s lanterns were charcoal burning instead of oil, which is what Brin thought they were in his world’s equivalent era.

Hopefully Zilly’s dad wasn’t the lantern-man tonight. How embarrassing would it be to get caught by his friend’s dad? Another reason not to get caught.

He kept his eyes scanning, ready to pick up any amount of approaching light. He didn’t see any moving light and no one on the street, until he got to his first destination. The [Weaver’s] house.

After all, if there had to be victims tonight, why shouldn’t they be the people that Brin really didn’t like?

This was probably the most dangerous target for tonight, so he figured to get it out of the way first. He’d either succeed or fail right here.

He had a brief moment of panic when he remembered that Hogg had ordered the Prefit to watch Tawna day and night, but no, only day. The Prefit was supposed to watch her whenever she left her house. He wouldn’t wait outside her door all night.

Brin approached the house. Just as he was in the middle of the free space between the house and other buildings, the moon came out of the clouds, and the world lit up. He looked around in panic, but no one seemed to be around. And besides, even if there were someone around, they probably wouldn’t see him. It looked bright to his night-vision-adjusted eyes, but still dark enough. He kept walking. He stopped by the house and pressed up close to the woven fibers so that his profile would blend in with the house’s.

He heard two sets of heavy breathing inside. They were asleep. He backed up, back to the side of a building.

He needed a conversation with Marksi first. He should’ve planned this out earlier.

“Marksi, listen,” Brin whispered. “We need to get in there, but there isn’t going to be a doorknob. She opens and closes the door with her Skills. Except Myra doesn’t have Skills and there’s no way she can’t get in and out of her own house, so there’s probably something else that triggers it automatically. Can you help me find it? Find something that opens and closes the door.”

Marksi twitched his tail for “yes” and then disappeared. Brin crept to the house, and when he got there found the door already open. That was quick. Good job, Marksi.

He approached from the side and waited next to the door, listening for the sound of breathing.

Only one set of heavy breathing. Someone was awake.

He waited. He heard a click.

A beam of light shot out of the doorway, so bright that it made Brin shield his eyes. Probably just normal lantern light, but blindingly bright since he was so used to the dark by now.

He didn’t run; that was the dumbest thing he could do. The light wasn’t shining on him, so it would actually make it harder to see him.

Someone had woken up, probably Tawna feeling one of her Skills move. Would she know the reason? If so, he might be in trouble. He slowly started to walk around the side of the house so that if she did notice the door was open and peeked outside she wouldn’t see him.

The light turned back off. He waited.

Ten, fifteen minutes later, he heard both sets of heavy breathing again. She was back asleep.

He walked into the house. The entire thing was one large room, and the woven floor and walls and ceiling gave the place a nefarious feel.

In the center of the room, hanging in the air, he saw something awful. A shifting, writhing monstrous tapestry took up the center of the room. The threads that made it up wriggled like worms and changed colors like Marksi, changing the picture. He saw Hammon’s Bog, black and crumbling. Due to fire or something else, he couldn’t tell; the image was very stylized. Those red threads could be fire, but those light blue ones might mean lightning. For some reason, Brin expected to see himself in the picture, but he wasn’t there. The only human figure was a black-haired girl that could be Myra, hiding in a well.

The moon must’ve gone behind a cloud, because the room darkened to the point he couldn’t see the picture anymore.

What even was that thing? Was that some kind of augury for the future? Hogg had said that [Weavers] couldn’t actually see the future, but what else could it be?

He could think about that later. He needed to steal something and leave. He couldn’t see much anymore, but he’d gotten a pretty good look at the room before the moon had been shadowed, and he knew there was a table to his left.

In the darkness, the breathing of Myra and Tawna made them seem much closer. Right, there was a woman and a girl in this house, right over there, while he snuck around in the same room. He’d thought being a thief would make him feel cool, but honestly he kind of felt like a creep.

He ran his hands along the table, hoping to touch something he could take. He needed something normal; he wouldn’t take anything that might be touched by Tawna’s power. He found a little brass table lamp and grabbed it, then retreated from the house as quickly as he could without making a sound.

One last look inside, and the moon peeked out long enough to give him another glimpse of the demented tapestry. It was all chaos except for four figures. Cartoonish renderings of Elmon, Hogg, Tawna, and Toros the [Smith], judging by their hair and clothes. They were lying down and had black X’s on their eyes.

He wanted to stay and watch, but forced himself to move on. He had what he’d come for.

Outside, and with some distance between him and the house, he asked Marksi to close the door again. He waited in silence until he felt Marksi’s familiar weight climb up onto his shoulders again.

A light, coming down the street. Still faint, but a lantern-man was coming this direction. Brin hustled around towards the back of the houses, then walked alongside the waste canal until he came to another alleyway and went up. There was a light over here, too.

The alleyway was full of tall grass; things were always growing in Hammon’s Bog unless someone cut them down. He walked slow enough to move through it without making a sound, then got down to crawl the last little bit. He spied on the street through the grass.

There were two lantern-men. Curse his luck. Was that every night, or had something tipped them off? Either way, there were two out tonight, at least two, and he needed to deal with it.

He had the table lamp in his backpack. He probably wouldn’t give it back, right? He’d keep it. Start a lamp collection. Except, he’d have to keep it hidden while he lived in Hammon’s Bog. Zilly might recognize it. Aw, who was he kidding? There was at least a thirty percent chance he’d end up feeling guilty and returning the lamp. He needed better.

He needed to steal from someone he’d never see again. He needed to rob the merchants; they would leave soon and he’d never get a chance to return what he took.

He watched the lantern-men. They talked in the middle of the street, both carrying high poles from which their lanterns hung. Neither were armed, but honestly that didn’t matter. If they saw him, it was over. He couldn’t see either of them well enough to tell if he knew them, not without sitting up more for a better look, and he wasn’t going to do that.

He waited until they separated, both going in a different direction. When they were well and truly out of sight, he started to move again, but froze when he heard a sound.

A door on the street opened, and Brin lay down flat. Someone walked out and down the street, and he resisted the urge to get up for a better look.

Another door opened a moment later, and five minutes later another. People called “hello” to each other on the street. Apparently this “midnight stroll” thing was a real event.

Any other night, and he could just walk down the street as well, but tonight there was too good a chance that someone might recognize him. Hopefully the added difficulty would make his achievement better? He wished he had a better idea of how that worked, but apparently not knowing worked in his favor.

He lay in the grass for an hour, until the midnight strollers returned to their beds, and then until the lantern-men passed by again, and then ten minutes after that.

Crime was much more boring than he’d expected.

When it was finally quiet and dark again, he got up out of his hiding spot and walked down the street towards the center of town.

The merchants had circled their wagons together and shut them tight. A man sat on the endboard of one, holding a pipe. He looked relaxed, like he’d just stepped out for a smoke, but he didn’t actually seem to be smoking, and he didn’t leave even after Brin watched him from a hiding spot for twenty minutes.

He was a lookout. The merchants knew they were targets for theft, that people who would never consider robbing their neighbors might not extend the same courtesy to them.

Each of the wagons had lanterns on the front and back, so there was no area that was in shadow in a wide ring around the wagons. There was a blind spot, though, directly behind the lookout.

Brin would just have to walk straight into the light, right here in the middle of town. Brin scanned the surroundings, trying to peer into every window, searching for any eyes he might be missing. There was never going to be a guarantee. He needed to take a chance.

He walked straight up to the wagon, focusing only on being quiet. He reached it, somehow. Adrenaline screaming, he forced himself to carefully climb onto the roof instead of the mad scrabble his body wanted to try.

He made it. Thankfully, the wagons were strong wood all the way around, and he got on top without a single creak. He could hear snoring inside from up here, and nothing else.

He lay there, internally freaking out at how scary that had been, forcing down the panicked scream and the relieved laughter that was fighting its way up his throat.

When he was ready, he reached over to take the second big risk. The lantern on the far end of the wagon was a gas lamp, and while it had a little twisty switch to turn it on and off, that would make a clicking sound. Instead he opened the glass door, leaned precariously over the edge of the wagon, and blew it out.

He waited, but the watchman hadn’t seemed to notice the lamp back here had gone out.

Brin tried to pick it up, to lift the loop off the hook on the end, but then he noticed a link of metal chained the lantern to the wagon. How paranoid. Who would steal their lanterns? Well, he would, for one.

He brought out the file and started to saw. He went slow enough that it wouldn’t make a sound, but that meant he was going slow. He couldn’t stay up here all night.

He put two fingers in the little metal link and pulled with all his might. It wasn’t one piece—there was a little gap—but as soon as he stopped pulling, it closed again.

He tried again, pulling the metal link open just enough to get it off the hook. It scraped the metal a little, but barely made a sound.

When he got the link off, he accidentally dropped the lantern completely, but managed to snatch it with his other hand, just in time. He put it in his bag, got down from the roof of the wagon—probably too quickly, but his nerves were shot—and darted away into the blessed darkness.

The blessed darkness didn’t stay blessed for long. A light was moving up a side street. In literal seconds, he was going to be trapped between a lantern-man on one side and the caravan lights on the other. He ran to a building and pointed up, hoping Marksi would remember the commands.

Like a moving shadow, Marksi grabbed the grappling hook and slid up the building. Brin felt the rope catch on something, and climbed up. He barely pulled the rope up and got to the other side of the roof in time before the light from the lantern-man cast that side of the building into clarity.

Brin climbed down the other side.

He followed the canal down a ways and nearly stumbled right on top of a man who’d gone out back to relieve himself. He waited until the man finished and went back inside before moving on, but that had raised his pulse even more than stealing the lantern from the caravan had. He was on high alert the rest of the way back, so it was almost a letdown when he got back to the watchtower without issue.

He rappelled down the side, and Marksi undid the hook and tossed it down before jumping down himself. Brin caught them both, then started the walk back home.

He didn’t get a notification when he reached the forest. Well, if he had he would probably have turned right around to give all this stuff back. Particularly the lantern. He was feeling bad about that already. If Hammon’s Bog got the reputation for stealing from merchants, it would be hard to get more caravans to come out here, and that was already a problem.

He didn’t even get a notification when he got back to the house. He opened up his pack to look at his gains. A deck of cards, a lamp, and a lantern. How ugly. Worth a few measly silvers at most. This is what he got for selling out his morals?

He waited. He paced back and forth. He watched the night sky, waiting for it to get brighter. He debated going back. He was so pathetic. This wasn’t even that big of a deal. Nobody would probably even notice they were gone.

Hogg didn’t get up when he arrived, just stared into space, which meant he was focused on his illusions.

Brin waited, until finally the barest hint of light appeared on the horizon, warning that morning was nearly there.

It was too late. The merchants would leave in the morning. He’d lost his chance to give the lantern back. Whatever was going to happen, would happen.

He got a notification.

Congratulations!

You have gained an achievement.

Thief (Rare)

Without aid or instruction, you have snuck into a hostile territory and stolen from right under the nose of a lookout.

+10% Dexterity. Improved hearing. Improved darkvision. You can estimate the approximate value of things.

He couldn’t help but smile. That last one was probably the most valuable part of this, at least to him. He knew what things were worth in his old world, but had a hard time relearning it all in this one.

Hogg’s eyes focused on him. “You got it, didn’t you? You get a certain look on your face, like you’re mad to be interrupted but also really excited.”

“Yeah, I got Thief,” said Brin.

“Obviously, but what did it give you?” said Hogg.

“It’s not always the same?”

“It depends on the circumstances.”

Brin recited the achievement’s description.

“Nice,” Hog said, drawing it out. “That value estimation, that’s going to be a lot more useful than I bet you’re thinking right now.”

“Really? Because I thought it was going to be a game-changer,” said Brin.

“Oh, good.” Hogg nodded. “All right. Hand it over. I can still put this all back before anyone notices it’s gone.”

“Wait. Really?” asked Brin.

“Yep. Unless… you wanted to keep it,” said Hogg.

“No! Please, take it all back. I’m not cut out for this,” said Brin. “The cards⁠—”

Hogg cut him off. “I was watching. I need to get at this quick though. Be back soon.”

Brin watched him go.

Behold!

Anshar spits at your lack of resolve.

Achievement: Thief has been confiscated.

His heart sank. Well, it was probably better this way. It hadn’t sat right with him to⁠—

Behold!

Solia smiles upon your act of contrition.

+10% Dexterity bonus from Thief transferred to Dextrous I.

Improved hearing, vision, and value estimation merged with [Know What’s Real].

Checking his Status, he saw that Dextrous I now had a 10% Dexterity bonus. The description for [Know What’s Real] had updated as well.

Brin went outside, into a dark part of the forest, the darkest he could find. Yeah, he really could see better in the dark. Only a tiny bit better. But a small bit of light went a long way in absolute darkness.

He sent off a quick prayer of gratitude to Solia. It was only right.