There were, unfortunately, more than two thieves in the warehouse, and so me breaking Sandpaper's legs wasn't enough to put ao the fight. If I'd been fighting alohat might actually be a problem for me. As it stood...

  "Hano, now," Faith whispered, before a suit of full Padin pte shimmered ience over her body, made of translut golden light, while a sword and shield of far more opaque golden light formed in her hands.

  It wasn't a surprise to me that Padins could wield divine magic; they were one of the Grand Hikaano Guilds, sponsored by Hano, the God of Padins, and that meant at least some of them had some holy magic at their disposal. Hell, sidering what the Padins were like, I wouldn't even be surprised that all fully-fledged Padins were clerical spellcasters of some sort.

  But that Faith, who had joihe Padin's Guild a month ago, was already a cleric of Hano?

  Yeah, that was just the ti bit surprising, to me.

  "Talia?" I asked.

  The roar of a brown bear was all that I received iurn, as Talia had apparently decided that the best use of her magical abilities wasn't to, say, jure vio restrain her foes, or jure flowers with an ented smell that would charm them to sleep, but to turn into a fug bear and maul them.

  Which, in fairness, probably was her most effective option. We weren't really in an envirohat was ducive to primal magic, sidering we were inside a stone-and-steel building in the middle of a city. If we were in a forest, though, these guys would've been fucked.

  I sighed, a my head on a swivel for any thieves who decided to use ratacks, like- aha, that one iwalks with the crossbow. I cast a simple cutting spell, snapping the b right where it looped over the end of the bow, prompting it to whip bato the thief's face for the briefest moment as it released all that tension in the worst possible way.

  I looked around for another crossbow-wielder, and only mao duck out of the way just in time to avoid catg one of Sandpaper's throwing ko the face.

  "Yyyooouuu... motherfucker!" Sandpaper ground out, pulling ahrowing knife.

  "I don't care," I said dryly, before smming her with another force bolt, which seemed to finally break her enough that she gave up the fight. Still breathing, but... well. I doubted she'd be in any shape to throw another k me.

  I turned and watched, as Faith ducked under ohief's swing with a club and ended up between two thieves. A, rather thaing fnked and taken down by people who knew how to fight dirty, what instead happened is she took both thieves down with a simple yet well-executed strike from both her sword and her shield- her of which seemed to actually cut into live tissue or even break skin, but did leave glowing, smoking marks on their victims.

  Talia, meanwhile, was absolutely tearing through these people, cws ah gleaming in the dim light as she spilled blood every which way. The thieves learned quickly that they did not in fact want to fight a bear to the death, and ended up running away- some of them towards me, where they got put down with force bolts to the face, some of them towards Faith, where they got put down with a holy sword to the face, and one of them, most sensibly, through an open window.

  "You son of a bitch," John Courser growled as he nded on the warehouse floor, far enough away from Faith and Talia that I couldn't t oaking him down for me. "Everywhere I go, you show up to ruin it for me."

  "I don't care," I said. "Shut up and fight me, pissweasel."

  He snorted like a bull, and charged at me, fist cocked back... and received a swift kick across the ankles for his trouble, as I decided that, actually, I was gonna fight this motherfucker barehanded. I knew how to fight, and while I might not be as strong as he was... well. Elves have had ways of w around that for a very long time.

  I grabbed his shoulder as he fell, and threw him into the ground, before following that up with an elbow drop to the stomach, driving the wind out of his stomach, and e with a knife held against his throat.

  "So, John," I said calmly, well aware it'd just take a flick of the wrist to open his jugur and start bleeding him dry. "You know anything about the burgry of Magister Brown's office?"

  "Fuck you," John spat, eyes narrowing into a squinting gre.

  "Because I've got good reason to believe you paid one Robert Thorn to break in and steal the statue," I said, one of my knees now pressing pretty firmly against his sternum. "You handed him a bag of s, he handed you a bag of statue... Where'd that statue go, John?"

  "I ain't tellin' you shit, knife-ear," John said.

  "Knife ear?" I asked. "Well, if you insist." I lifted my knife, before I plu downwards, carving through the cartige and flesh of John's left ear, until the useless k of flesh came away in my hands. "Now, I know your other ear works just fine," I tinued. "So I know you hear me say I need an answer." I paused. "Y'know. When you're done screaming."

  "This isly standard operating procedure for Padins," Faith pointed out.

  "Yeah, well, we're not Padins," Talia said with a shrug, having turned bato an elf after she ran out of thieves to maul. "Also, we know John. He's an asshole who's been pushing us around for years, and doesn't quite seem to uand that he got away with it because we let him, because it wasn't worth putting him in his pce. But now we're not in school anymore. And our patience has finally worn out."

  "You ready to talk, John?" I asked.

  "Fffffuck... yyyyou..." John rasped out.

  I sighed, preparing to stand up and kick him around some more.

  "You fug... rich bastard," John tinued. Fuck, was he about to start monologuing? "Never had tle a day in your life. Don't know what it's like to be nothing but a poor, worthless human in a world of magical elves and strong dwarves and ing orcs. Just another disposable cog in the mae. The Guild... The Thieves' Guild, it's my way out. Make something more of myself. Get me a good woman, so my kid doesn't have tle like I do. But you kept standing in my way... Gettiween me and Talia... Made her hate me."

  "John," Talia said softly, as she approached him. This time, I did stand up, knowing instantly where she was going with this. "John, I... I'm sorry, I... No, John. Joseph didn't make me hate you."

  "...Talia?" John asked, a flicker of hope igniting in his eyes.

  With a meaty thud, her heel nded right where John's legs joiogether.

  "No," Talia tinued. "You did that all on your own, you piece of shit. Whenever you weren't chasing after me like I was just a trophy, you were drooling over me like I was just a pieeat. I was never a real person to you. Never someone you wao talk to, get to know, be friends with, but just... That one elf chick with the huge knockers who you wanna take as your wife so she have your awful fug babies. And then you joihe Thieves' Guild, so you could, what, steal me away from Joseph? Newsfsh, asshole! I am not some fug thing that you steal! I am my own fug person, with a brain and a heart, and from the bottom of that heart, I want nothing more than to say: I hate you. I hate you so, so fug much. You are everything wrong with how humans treat elves all ed up into one shitty little self-absorbed asshole."

  And with that, Talia turned and walked away.

  "Huh," I said, nodding slowly. "Would you look at that? Turns out I'm not the person who hates you the most of all iire world."

  "You know, Mr. Courser," a voice said from within John's pocket. The hell? Did he have some sort of speaking stone?

  I reached into John's pocket, and pulled out a fist-sized box made of... some straerial I couldn't identify. It was lightweight, fairly rigid- a bit stiffer than wood, but without any obvious grain dire. On it were two circles, each partially covered by a horizontal grille of thick bars of the same matte bck material. The rger circle seemed to be where the speech was ing from; presumably, the smaller circle was where you spoke into it.

  "When I asked if you knew Mr. Iro, and you said yes, you ed to mention your retionship was adversarial."

  "Y- yhness, I," John gasped out.

  "Shut the fuck up, you worthless shitbag," the voice said ftly, the polite veripped away. "It was a simple pn: Joseph Iro wahe statue from Magister Brown, so we would steal the statue and offer it to him as part of a deal. All you had to do, after your man handed over the statue, ass along an invitation to talk to Joseph Iro, and do you know what happened instead? You made him e to you as part of a fug Padin's Guild Iigation, and got a dozen of my operatives pointlessly wounded in the process! You are the most worthless, unreliable scumbag I've ever had to work with, and sidering I am The King Of Thieves, that is fug saying something!" A bit of heavy breathing came through the speaking stone. "Well. At any rate. Mr. Iro, are you still there?"

  "You're the King of Thieves?" I asked.

  "The one and only," he said.

  "The fuck are you doing ier?" I asked. "Hikaan is like two thousand miles east of here."

  "To duct my business with you, as a matter of fact," the King of Thieves said. "Now, I would like to offer my apologies for hiring quite literally the worst person in the world to tay ignorance has no excuse. Would you be willing to speak with me in the red warehouse at 5th and Tira sometime soon?"

  I gruhat retty nearby... "What're you aiming for, here?"

  "I need a man of your precise talents and nature for a very simple and brief job," the King of Thieves said. "I'm willing to pay handsomely- not just in the form of yrandmother's effigy, but also in the form of two million dolrs in cash."

  I blinked.

  One dolr was enough to buy four monthly ic books, a day's worth of hot meals from street vendors, or a week's worth of dry rice from a greengrocer.

  Ten dolrs was enough to pay rent on a det apartment, buy a new bicycle, or even buy a horse- although you'd need more than that to feed it.

  A thousand dolrs was the kind of mohat'd buy you a house. Even a nice house, fit for an upper css family, was only about ten thousand dolrs.

  With two million dolrs? I'd have the kind of mohat only aristocrats and the Mert's Guild see. It wouldn't quite be "I am now the peer of Duke Redwater," but it would be enough that I could demand to speak with him and it'd be inveo tell me no.

  Well. There was only ohing I could say to that.

  "I don't believe you when you say all this hostility is John's fault," I said. "Make it ten million, paid in advance, and then we'll talk."

  "...You drive a hard bargain. Fine. Remember: the red warehouse at 5th and Tira. This Saturday, when the clock strikes noon. Don't be tardy, Mr. Iro."