The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung

else. He began mumbling to himself, in no language I recognized. I sat quietly, sipping my wine. One of the privileges of being a mage, I suppose, is that you can be as strange as you like, and nobody dares comment. Finally he shook himself and took a deep breath. He smiled a small smile at me.
    “Would you mind terribly leaving it with me? I’d like to probe this mystery a bit further. It’s very odd, almost as if—well, anyway, would you mind?”
    “Not at all. You’d be doing me a favor. Another favor, actually. Just watch yourself. Apparently it’s worth killing for.”
    He smiled an unpleasant smile. “I’ve ample protection, believe me. Anyone able to defeat my wards will have earned whatever they can take from me. Give me a few days, Amra, and I’ll see what I can see.”
    I spent a few minutes being licked to death by Bone, then took my leave. Holgren waved distractedly, pondering the lump of gold on the table and, presumably, the old evil it represented.
     
    ~ ~ ~
     
    Finding the villa Heirus had rented wasn’t terribly difficult. I hired a hack and told him I wanted to take a leisurely afternoon ride. I put a gold mark in his horny hand and pointed him down the Jacos Road. He was happy to oblige, with a week’s wages in his fist.
    Walking it would have been better, but there was a much higher chance of me being noticed. There isn’t much traffic that far down the Jacos, and anyone walking down and then back would have been noticed by a relatively alert guard.
    There were dozens of villas along the Jacos Road, ranging from weekend cottages and love nests to full-fledged farm concerns. But only three backed onto the cliffs. They were all relatively small, and crowded in on each other. It’s not a huge cliff. The villas were built for the view.
    The first, I happened to know, belonged to Gran Ophir, a shipping magnate. The second turned out to be deserted, and had been for years, by the look of it. Which left only the southernmost.
    It looked innocuous enough at first glance. Ivy-covered brick walls about twice my height. A wrought iron gate, all curlicues and blunt spikes. Glimpses of a two-story structure screened behind lush vegetation. But the ivy was actually adder-tongue, a thorny, semi-poisonous climbing vine, and if you looked close enough you could see the occasional tell-tale glint of broken glass mortared into the top of the wall. And beyond the whimsy gate, two visible guards, armed with sword and crossbow.
    I let the hack go on about a mile further, until we came to a quaint little country tavern. I had a drink in their beer garden and watched golden bees do their thing in the late afternoon sunshine. I let my mind wander.
    I had seen what there was to see, and knew better by now than to try and force any sort of plan. It would all fall into place soon enough. Theft is as much art as it is craft. Reconnaissance work was a big part of that art, that craft. The villa’s security, from what I had seen, was professional. I’d circumvented worse. But I hadn’t seen anything but the surface.
    I realized I was about to break one of my own rules. I was going to rush a job.
    Usually I took at least a week to plan a break-in. I liked to observe the comings and goings, scheduled and otherwise, familiarize myself with faces and body language and study the peculiarities of the layout. To see what doors were used, and when, and by who. Which windows were opened, and which were never opened. To see if a guard had a tendency to nod, or drink, or even scratch his arse. I like to get to a place where I can grasp the rhythm of a household intuitively. The smallest thing can give you an insight which can lead to a plan. But there was no place to loiter and observe along the Jacos Road, and I had monsters trying to crawl through my window in the middle of the night, and I was willing to bet that the only way to make sure that kind of thing stopped was to kill the mysterious Elamner behind those villa