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50th day of Summer, 510 AV
Sunberth stank. It was summer and every inhabitant was sweating beneath Syna’s heavy golden light. And the moistened folk of the ex-mining town had never put much stock in bathing. What was the point? You’d only be covered in filth and lice again the next day. So the people of Sunberth stank. And as their powerful bodily odors rose they mingled with the less than savory scents of the city itself. Manure was in the streets, fish broiled in the sun at the Seaside Market while the tide thoughtfully turned over the filth of the people so the side that had been decomposing could enjoy a bit of fresh air. All these lovely smells mixed and floated about in the air, which was still humid from yesterday’s rain and becoming frightfully oppressive in the strong afternoon sun. It was, at the very least, an unpleasant atmosphere. Even in the “rich” part of town there were piles of garbage at the corners of streets, steaming as the rain evaporated. The city stank.
Eleanor tugged at the shoulder of her grimy shirt. The fabric peeled slowly from her skin as a disappointingly warm gust of air flowed beneath. Instead of cooling the girl it swept her own sweaty fragrance toward her nose. I stink, she thought as she walked casually down the street behind the street where the merchants lived. Here houses had broken windows and doors with boards nailed haphazardly across the entrances. A street over the lower windows had bars on them and the doors had armed men behind them. There was a reason for that. Inside the houses on this street you could find the bodies of dead rats hoarding their own private collections of cobwebs and dust. In the other houses merchants sat in plush chairs counting their mizas, or at least, that’s what they did at night.
On days like today the merchants were occupied gathering the mizas they so loved to count. And Demri had told Eleanor of one man who liked to keep a portion of his goods locked up in his home, because he didn’t trust ol’ Alphonse and his storage houses, thought they were some sort of racketeering scheme. Who would ever think something like that?” the thief thought with a grin. Demri had also told her of a convenient pile of crates that currently stood in the alleyway next to this wary soul’s home.
And here it was, radiant in all of its discarded glory. The alley was narrow and cut between two of the more grandiose houses in the neighborhood, connecting the road Eleanor had been using with the one the merchant’s home let out on. Well, it would have connected the two if the crates had not been there. They had been carelessly thrown out, clogging the walkway until only a very thin soul could squeeze past if they didn’t mind receiving a slew of splinters from the cracked boards. Eleanor was a very thin soul, but luckily she didn’t want to slip by (she wasn’t very fond of splinters, you see).
Instead the youth walked quietly up to the heap and gave the lowest board a light tap with her foot. Some of the layer of dirt on her boot fell in a shower on the mucky floor of the alleyway as the plank yielded what she deemed to be a healthy creak. Climbable. With a quick glance over her shoulder Eleanor Drayton grabbed a plank belonging to one of the more balanced looking crates and began to work her way up.
The tower of boxes was treacherous, and groaned dangerously as she placed her weight on it. Some of the uppermost crates began to sway and one especially rotten board broke beneath her foot. There was no pattern to the way the boxes had been piled, and Eleanor worked her way up carefully, stepping on those that moved the least when she touched their sides and checking each board (after the one had broken) before placing her weight on it. It was fortunate she was wearing her half-fingered padded gloves, or the rough surfaces of the boards would have shredded through even her calloused palms.
The boards teetered and swayed as Eleanor reached the top, she was almost two stories high now, and the window was a little higher. Bracing her shoulder against the wall of the house and her feet firmly on each side of the highest crate the thief eased the swaying of the tower slightly. She eased her hand into the wide band that wrapped around her torso, the only thing preventing her over large shirt from becoming a billowing nightgown-like monstrosity. Well, it was already a monstrosity, but in a different sort of way…
From her belt she pulled a light hammer and wedge, standard thieving tools. Gently she worked the wedge beneath the flaking paint of the window, and nudged the tool in further with light taps of the hammer. Prying upward Eleanor shifted her weight to displace the window, and the crate beneath her feet began to shift too. The girl hung in the air, swinging her arms wildly in an attempt to stop the trembling of her perch before she gripped the window frame firmly. A moment later the miniature earthquake had stopped and she continued prying open her entryway.
