The city of Wolf’s Head was a bustling place and Nienna loved it. She loved the smell of the marketplace, even on Wednesdays when the traders from the eastern Wyelands brought in their barrels full of reeking fish. She loved to sit on the rooftops and watch people going about their business. She loved being down there with them, right in the centre of the swarming crush of people. Most of all, she loved stealing from them.

She had a hood pulled up over the short blonde curls that stuck up in every direction from the top of her head. Her fingers were around the base of a merchant’s coin purse and she was working a small knife through the cords that held it in place.

It was tough, well-made rope and it was taking more time than she would have liked for her dull blade to saw through it. Her instincts were telling her to let it go and find an easier mark, but her racing heart was telling her otherwise. As usual, she was listening to it.

The purse came free with a snap. She allowed herself a wide grin, then drew it under her cloak and turned away, scanning the crowd for a specific familiar face. Her partner in crime was too short to spot in any crowd of people, so Nienna began to walk. They’d meet later at the rendezvous.

Out of nowhere, somebody grabbed her sleeve. Her heart leapt into her mouth as she tore her arm away. She wheeled around with her hand balled into a fist and came face to face with Vaelwyn, who grinned the small, easy grin that so often graced her striking face.

“Vael! I figured I’d lost you in here,” Nienna said, lowering her hand. Relief tingled in all of her extremities; she tried to avoid punching people in public whenever she could.

Vaelwyn was the opposite of her in most ways. She was short and svelte and beautiful, with piercing green eyes and thick auburn hair. Nienna was stocky and her hair looked like springy spaghetti stuck at odd angles to her scalp.

“You’d lose your arms if they weren’t attached, honey,” Vaelwyn said. Nienna had barely opened her mouth to respond when a cry went up not far behind them.

“Thief! Thief! Someone’s had my gold!” Nienna glanced backwards, and the chubby man with the iron-roped coin purse was pointing a meaty finger directly at her. Without sparing one another more than the briefest of sidelong looks, Nienna and Vael began to run.

Nobody ever stopped a thief in Wolf’s Head City. A victim could yell loudly enough to shatter glass and point directly at the perpetrator but the general populace would remain steadfast in their disregard for one another’s problems. Nienna hadn’t put much thought into why people were the way they were. She wasn’t about to bite the hand that fed.

They burst through the edge of the crowd.

“Split up!” Vael called, shoving her to the right. She didn’t need to be told twice, veering off course down a narrow alleyway. She hopped lithely over a homeless man, almost tripped on a cat she hadn’t noticed and shot out of the other end of the street like a bolt from a crossbow.

She skidded to a halt and turned to look down the alley. The chubby man was doubled over at the other end of it, but his sausage fingers were still pointing and now he had the attention of a guardswoman. Worse, it was a guardswoman she recognised.

Her name was Annaia Keller. She was quick and strong and she had been trying to bring Nienna in for years. She didn’t even get angry any more. Most of the time, she just looked exasperated. Today however, she was angry.

She yanked her short sword from its sheath as she marched down the alleyway. Nienna wiped the smirk from her face, picked a random direction and ran; she had to lose Annaia before she could head towards the rendezvous.

She clambered up onto a barrel and jumped, gripping hold of the edge of a low-hanging roof. She hauled herself up onto the window ledge and slipped, catapulting her legs through the open window.

“Shit!” She just about kept her grip on the eaves. She felt all the muscles down her sides yank painfully but she persevered, scrambling back out onto the window ledge and climbing up onto the roof.

“Nienna!” she heard Annaia yell from the ground. Nienna paused with her hands on her hips to look down at the guardswoman. Annaia’s sword was pointed directly at her. Her brows were stuck together in such a frown that it must have been causing her face considerable discomfort and there was a wild fury in her eyes, but there was no way Annaia could follow her onto the rooftops in plated armour.

A strong gust of wind blew a sheet of rain directly at her and Nienna flailed her arms, desperately attempting to retain her balance. She managed and turned, scrabbling over the rooftops and away.

The roofs were uneven and treacherous, prone to loose tiles and small, nesting animals. In the rainstorm they were much worse, but it made her more difficult to spot. She was thankful when the time came to hop gracelessly down from the edge of a roof and land bodily in a pile of garbage in another, smaller alleyway.

“You’ve got to stay on flat ground, honey,” Vaelwyn said, helping Nienna fish herself out of the rubbish.

“Yeah, well, your face’s gotta to stay on flat ground.” Nienna poked her tongue out at her best friend and immediately regretted it; her lips had been splashed by something brownish and unpleasant tasting. “Bleurgh,” she said, spitting and wiping her face on the back of her hand.

“Nice comeback. Have you been working on that one all day? Come on,” Vael said, nudging Nienna in the ribs with her elbow. Nienna winced, eliciting a worried frown from her companion. “Hey,” Vael said, taking her by the elbow. “You okay?”

“Just fell through a window a bit, I’m fine. Let’s go home.”

***

Annaia’s expression had remained sour all the way back to the barracks and the vast majority of her colleagues had the good sense to steer clear of her. The only exception was her husband, Nathaniel Keller, who crossed the dingy courtyard crammed between two rows of tall townhouses to meet her.

“Not now, Nate,” she sighed, batting his hands away.

“What happened, Ann?” he asked, persisting. Eventually, he succeeded in leading her away from the crowd of onlookers and into a quiet corner. “That thief again?”

“She is an idiot and I do not understand how it is that she keeps slipping out of my grasp!” Ann snapped, her voice blurting out of her mouth as though it had been desperate to escape for hours. She rubbed her forehead, pushing her nut-brown fringe out of her face.

“You’ll get her,” Nate said, his voice as calming as it always was. No matter her mood, Nate remained level-headed. He wasn’t intimidated by her temper. He was the only person she knew that had ever seen her as anything more than stubborn, unapologetically loud and angry. He even seemed to love her for it.

“Thank you,” she said, the tension in her muscles easing in his presence.

“For what?”

“You know. Things! Being... you,” she said, suddenly flustered. She felt the colour rising in her cheeks and scowled as though it would scare the grin off of Nate’s face. It wouldn’t. It never did.

“Keller!”

They both turned at the sound of the guard captain’s voice. He was an older man, balding, with the beginnings of a beer belly applying pressure to the midriff of his armour. His name was Groat but the guards called him Weasel. His personality had earned him the nickname, but Annaia could see it in his looks; his darting eyes and fidgeting fingers, the way he sucked on his lips when he was nervous or angry. He was angry now.

“Not you,” he muttered, waving a narrow hand at Nate. “The inept one!” He pointed at Ann, then beckoned. “Come with me.” He turned and stormed back into the barracks without waiting for any indication that she would follow.

“Good luck,” Nate said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll see you at home. I’ll cook.” She gave him a strained smile of appreciation and followed the guard captain through the barracks and into his office.

“I hear you screwed up, Keller,” he said, eyeing her from across the desk. “I hear that cutpurse is still on the loose. I don’t really understand how that can be, considering she’s just. A. Sodding. Thief!” He punctuated each word by slapping his palms down on the surface of the desk. She turned her face away ever so slightly to shield her eyes from the cascade of spittle that accompanied the captain’s every raging shout.

“She knows this city. She is a lot smarter than she looks, and she isn’t working alone, Captain, I-”

“I didn’t ask you to speak, Keller. Just shut up and for once in your damn life, listen. You are on your last strike, you hear me? I have to report to someone too you know. It looks bad on me if my people can’t even catch a cutpurse. I don’t give a rat’s arse what it takes. She gets away from you one more time and I swear you’ll be out on your arse quicker than you can say ’oops I fucked up again’. Got it?”

“Yes, Captain,” she said, thinly.

“Good. Get out of my office.”

Annaia didn’t need telling twice. She pulled the door open forcefully and slammed it shut behind her. She could feel the eyes of every other guard in the barracks upon her as she stormed through the building, her back straight and her head held high. Her eyes were stinging and she could feel a burning tightness in her throat but she would be damned before she let any of them see her cry.

Nate and Annaia were the only two guards in the city who consistently pulled their weight and yet it was always her that Weasel came down on. If it wasn’t for her innate stubbornness, she might have quit a long time ago.

She didn’t allow her posture to slip at all until she got home. She pulled the front door closed behind her and leaned back against it, letting out a long breath. It was a breath she felt like she had been holding for hours and as it left her, her entire body seemed to deflate.

For a long time she stood still, eyeing the muddy pool of rainwater that had collected around her boots. When she finally found the strength to look up, Nate was watching her from the kitchenette of their small home.

He didn’t have to ask what the captain had said and he didn’t need words to disagree. He let go of the panhandle he was holding and enfolded her in his arms, paying no heed to the water that began to soak through his clothes. She buried her face into the front of his shirt and wept.