Jade Mouse

Chapter 8

Yup, it was still raining.

With the various herbs I'd ingested to keep myself from sneezing explosively (not the sort of thing you want to do when trying not to be noticed) I was feeling okay, but I knew that feeling would pass fairly soon. We'd started quite a bit later than we had the previous night, believing the thief would stick to within a couple of hours of his previous successes - right around two hours past midnight. That was about when Theo estimated he'd gotten robbed, as well as the time when Cyrus had taken his ill-fated trip to the kitchen the night my book had gone missing.

My book and a few other things, as it turned out. Theo's intuition had been correct – I had lost some other nick-knacks the night Dad's journal was stolen. Among the missing items were a heavy silver ring that had been scorched on one side (funny story, that), and a pair of sapphire cuff-links, neither of which I'd bothered to invisibly mark with the Tucat seal.

The thief had also walked off with about thirty grey marks. I had almost completely overlooked the fact that coins had gone missing, mostly because the stack of gold coins they'd been sitting beside had not been touched.

That was the thing that made me want to scream in frustration. I'm the kind of guy who needs things to make sense, and everywhere I'd looked lately things were most definitely not making sense. Why would a thief take thirty greys when they could have just as easily walked off with three gold instead? There had been more gold than grey sitting on the desk – I probably wouldn't have noticed a few coins in the gold stack going missing, even if I'd been looking for it. Why burden yourself with more weight and make your theft more obvious by stealing an entire stack of coins if you can grab a couple from a larger pile that are worth the same exact amount? Why not take all the money, since there was no way I'd be able to identify the coins later?

Of course, I refused to even entertain the nightmarish thought that had been leaping around my brain once I'd noticed the gold had been untouched. Wraiths were nothing more than pseudo-religious nonsense talked about by flitleaf-smoking boys who wanted to scare themselves silly with fireside stories, perhaps hoping to encourage a girl to huddle a little bit closer to them. It'd take much more than a stack of grey marks going missing to convince me of the existence of gold-fearing spirits like wraiths, or any other sort of superstitious garbage.

Besides, I've always heard it was bad luck to be superstitious . . .

The two hours of pondering on a rooftop hadn't dredged up any explanations or shed insight into my various unanswered questions. There were a frightening number of knights roaming the street this evening, all brandishing ferocious scowls in addition to the Blackstaag crest, the symbol of two antlers on a yellow ocher background adorning the front of each of their cloaks. Yet another frustrating thing – I was actually trying to do something nice for a fellow Lord for a change, and my effectiveness was being impaired by the knights of the very Lord I was trying to help. I could avoid them easily enough, it was true . . . I just hate trying to do two things at once.

My wristband began to buzz. It was time to check in on Theo. So maybe it was more like three things at once . . .

I stowed away all of the things I use to observe from a distance, perched as I was on the top of the stately manor I'd chosen to nest upon that evening. The roof had a wicked slope, so it wasn't exactly a smart choice considering all of the rain and the increased chance of slipping, but it had the best view of Blackstaag's keep. I also prefer sneaking about in unlikely or dangerous places, because nobody thinks to look for people there.

Theo was on the other side of Blackstaag Keep watching the side I couldn't see. I checked the small little rooftop snare trap I'd hooked up to cover my blind side, briefly debated bringing my silver tea canteen with me before deciding to leave it hidden away from the rain, and headed towards Theo's spot.