Shrine of the Desert Mage: The Parsina Saga Volume One

One
The Thief

The night was dark but clear, and the waning moon still had not showed its face above the horizon. In the shadows along Ironsmith's Road in the northwest quarter of the city, a figure moved stealthily along the base of the wall. The figure was cloaked in black and shod in soft leather boots so his footsteps would make no sound as he slipped through the night like a ship through a tranquil sea.

Hakem Rafi was, both by nature and by choice, a fulltime thief and an occasional murderer. His fate had been sealed by his birth as the son of a whoring mother and an unknown father in the city of Yazed some sixty parasangs southeast of Ravan. Sickly and weak as a child, often neglected and left to survive as he could, he lived by his wits and the quickness of his hands and feet. He envied those who had more than he did, which was everyone, and early in life swore a vow to reduce the rest of the world to his own level of moral bankruptcy. To this end he lied and cheated, gambled and whored; he stole when he needed money and he killed when he had to. He was not a cruel man, just conveniently callous. If Fate decreed him the life of a cockroach, then he would be a cockroach and defy the world to squash out his life.

Hakem Rafi had lived all his life in Yazed until three months ago, when the wali of police died of political causes. As the new wali was less corrupt and less amenable to persuasion, Hakem Rafi decided his fortune might better be made elsewhere. Having heard all his life about the riches of Ravan, he ventured to the Holy City in the hope of making a new, if similar, beginning.

Life in Ravan was difficult, however, for a man of his particular talents. Even the poorer merchants usually had one or two hulking servants guarding the merchandise in their shops, while the nobles and wealthy traders scarcely went anywhere without a full retinue of bodyguards. Hakem Rafi found easy pickings among the poor, the crippled, and the aged, but the rewards were seldom worth his efforts.

With his money spent and in vile circumstance, Hakem Rafi was desperate to change his situation -- so desperate he was willing to risk confronting the guards by breaking into the house of a rich merchant. In the past he'd always preferred speed to stealth; it was far easier to cut the strings of a purse and run through the crowd, or to waylay an unsuspecting victim in a back alleyway, than it was to climb over a wall or break through the lattice of a window when the owner might be waiting with a large knife just on the other side. Still, if the one path was impossible, Hakem Rafi was prepared to take the other.

He'd chosen as his victim a wine merchant, a man old in years and infirm in body who was known to hoard great piles of coins in secret niches within his walls. The merchant would probably die soon anyway, and Hakem Rafi merely sought to simplify the division of his estate. In scouting the merchant's house during the daytime, he had observed a break in the otherwise impassable wall at the northern edge of the house where the gardeners had carelessly knocked some bricks loose into the street; that would serve as his entryway.

As he now reached his chosen spot, Hakem Rafi paused once more to taste the air with his ears for any tang of danger. All was peaceful; not a soul stirred within the house or out on the street. With a final prayer to whatever daeva guided such endeavors, the thief gathered his strength and leaped for the top of the wall.