I sprinted along the top of the building frantically, holding my hand on my bloody side and murmuring to myself. The dim torchlight reflected off the mists behind me, causing me to run faster. An eerie, hard breathing chased me through the shifting fog. That was it—no shouted instructions, no curses when they tripped, nothing. Of course, I had no idea who “they” were. A drop of cold sweat ran down my back, causing me to shiver. A man should curse; it was the natural way of things. I jumped off the top of the roof onto another tiled roof. My wet feet hit, and I ran up the steep tiled slope. But as I jumped onto yet another rooftop, I hit, and this time my feet didn’t grip well to the roof. I slid off the slippery dome to the edge of the roof. I caught myself on the gutter and let out a curse. As my fingers started to slip, only one thought entered my mind: what had transpired earlier that night.

I walked into the gigantic room - Stonewall Keep, but no one called it that. On the far side of the ballroom, there was a large sculpted scene from many years ago. It depicted a man striding through a battlefield, holding a stone spear.

Large fountains of water shot up and landed into stone pools. Lanterns with iron frameworks hung around the edges of the room, keeping it just light enough to see people’s faces but dark enough to keep the room mysterious and intriguing.

Waiters in black-and-white garments scuttled about the room, serving all the lords and ladies sitting at their tables, impatiently waiting for their food.

The low murmur of talking and silverware clinking filled the room. I made my way over to a set of tables tucked neatly in the corner. Graves would be waiting for me there. I walked up to the table where Graves sat in a fine lavender suit, oily hair slicked back in an obvious attempt to follow the newest trends. His beady eyes darted around the room, looking for any other people coming up on the table. There were none; I checked.

He looked at me. “Took your time in gettin’ here,” he said with his street accent. Then, switching to a more formal accent, he added, “You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago,” in a very prestigious manner.

I snorted. “Where’d you steal the suit?”

He chuckled. “Little shop on the corner of Pewter Street and 49th. Quaint little place. Cashier and I bonded over a nice mug of Brewer’s Best, we did.”

I rolled my eyes. Graves liked to get to know the people he was going to steal from before he stole from them.

“All right, who's the target?” I said.

He chuckled again and said, “Well, I’ve been getting to know many of these fine young individuals. Many are ripe for the plucking but indeed are not prepared in all facets to be despoiled by such gentlemen as us.”

I smirked at his distinguished vocabulary. It’s not easy changing your accents so fluidly, and Graves was the best at it in the entire octant, so I wasn’t complaining.

I took another glance around the room and saw a young woman in an extravagant light red dress, slender with brown hair braided and folded up into a striking bun on top of her head. Her oval-shaped face was framed by two lengths of hair. Her bright blue eyes seemed as if they were piercing my soul, making my insides writhe, and everything I’d ever stolen came to the front of my mind. I shoved down that guilty feeling and straightened my jacket, feeling a need to straighten out my appearance.

“What about her?” Graves gestured to the woman I had just been looking at. “She seems like a nice, fine young lady who has many valuable items on her person.”

I looked him in the eyes. “Yeah, let’s do her.”

He replied, “You wanna or want me to do it? I know how soft you’ve been getting lately.” He laughed a little at that last part.

“Giving a few coins to beggars isn’t ‘going soft.’ I just like to keep people on their toes.”

He chuckled harder, his face scrunched up with amusement.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Then I promptly walked off toward the direction of the target. That was how you had to think about them when you're a professional thief: targets. They’d barely care if a bracelet or six went missing. They could buy new ones.

Poor, unfortunate people like me needed a way to make a living somehow. Why not off people who threw lavish parties when there were hundreds of beggars right outside? They’d just order the guards to beat them away.

What better way to make money than to make it off the people who made all their money off of us, the urchins of the city?

Us or them, and in the mind of a thief, “us” always comes first. I reached the target and grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, offering her one of the glasses while sipping the other one. She smiled and took a glass from my hand. As she grabbed the handle of my drink, my hand deftly undid the clasp of the diamond bracelet she was wearing. At this point, it was almost instinctual, and I slipped it into my pocket.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” she said.

I responded with a laugh and said, “Well, unless you’ve been to the Outer Territories recently, I don’t suspect you have.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. The Outer Territories were very far away from the capital of the empire, Na’mor El’fir. The journey from Na’mor takes several months by canal, which is how the royalty would be expected to travel.

“You’ve come a long way for such little,” she said, looking around the room.

I snorted. “Ha, comparatively, I’d say the parties are much better. The most expensive parties we had out there were when someone bought the whole tavern a round.” I added, “And the company is somewhat better than out there as well.”

She nodded along with my words. Several minutes later, as we made some small talk, I excused myself and turned to leave.

I put my hand in my pocket, fingering the jeweled bracelet sitting there. As I walked back to the table where Graves was sitting, he remarked, “Sloppy. I saw you do it.”

I replied, “Well, evidently she didn’t, so does it matter?”

His face turned red. “Of course it matters, boy! If a guard notices you pickpocketing a person on the street, will it matter? Idiot boy.” He responded by shaking his head and taking a long gulp of his drink, finishing it off.

I turned my back to him and started to walk away.

I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, the young woman whom I had pickpocketed talking to one of the guards. She rubbed her wrist and pointed at me. The guard made a hand gesture to the guards at the front of the room.

They looked at him and started to slowly approach me, hands on the hilts of their swords. I kept walking normally, though a bead of sweat trickled down my back.

Drat. One of the guards reached out to grab my arm. I jerked my arm away from him, and as I did, the other guard drew his blade and nicked me on the side as I sprinted to the door at the front of the room.

The cut throbbed but was most likely not fatal. The guard cursed and started to run after me, the other guard following close behind. I darted through the front opening and continued to run down the long hall. As I made my way outside, with the guards still following, I looked around frantically. No use in trying to get help from Graves; he’s probably sitting at that table still shaking his head and putting his nose in a glass of champagne.

Outside, all around me, buildings rose through the misty night like guardians, condemning the poor and exalting the rich. I went into one of these tall buildings and ran up the stairs, the guards’ boots thudding behind me on the wooden floor.

I made it to the roof of the building and looked around, trying to spy an escape. I saw a nearby rooftop. I jumped onto it and hit the roof running. I saw another roof ahead of me and did the same, but somehow the torchlight that the guards bore was still right behind me. Grunting and clangs of metal chased me through the fog.

I continued this pattern until I only heard one pair of feet behind me and no clangs of metal. I jumped onto yet another rooftop but misjudged my distance and hit the slippery slope hard. I slid down the roof but managed to catch myself on the gutter of the building. As I held on, a panicked thought entered my mind.

All this for a piece of jewelry.

My fingers slipped. I fell and knocked my head hard on the ground, knocking me out cold.