Shayde's Secrets

Agent Hassi looked up from the half burned book. Around her were a dozen crates, each hastily clad and welded shut in plates of steel. For the last half hour she had noticed a faint glow but engrossed in the book she had thought it was the rising moon, for the crates were camouflaged from above only by some light netting. It slowly occurred to her as she read the steamy romance ‘Steelhold Temple of Iniquity’ that it was nowhere near a full moon. She shut off her cap’s built in reading light and looked up to notice a seam on one of the crates had come very slightly apart, just a tiny sliver shone through. She sighed. The workmen had been in a hurry when they had sealed up the airship’s power cores and of course the energy within would find a way out, this was entropy as magic would have it.

The sound was abrupt and he did not have time to turn around before something struck his back. He felt the chill of it, spreading down his spine until he could not keep his feet. He fell to his knees, helpless to stand as his muscles shuddered. He guessed at the poison, how it worked and that next his lungs would ache as they started to fail, he would struggle to breathe until he passed out. Last of all his heart would stop, but he would mercifully not be conscious to feel it. He took a long, raling gasp, his hands were on the ground now, holding him up like a wounded animal at bay.

Something wasn’t right. Shayde put another fig into the sling and took dead aim at Goseldt – he was an easy target so her mind could wander to her senses and intuition. She let the fruit fly, noting with satisfaction when it hit his distant form with a wide arc of goo. She felt exposed on the edge of the cliff and a watchful silence had settled over the canyon,  the birds in the fig tree, earlier not phased by her harvesting of its limbs, abruptly took flight over the canyon with a panicked shriek. She pushed the slingshot between the roots of the fig tree – she might come back for more target practice if this was a false alarm.

“Don’t you dare.”

“What?”

“I know what you are thinking.” Shayde said, “Don’t do it.”

Goseldt turned around with a smile, all innocence as he stood with his back to the yawning cliff. Down below was deep blue water. He had made such dives before but for some reason Shayde objected to his habit of viewing all cliffs as possible dive sites. It could be that he might hit a rock or tree on the way down. He personally trusted his abilities and he loved the rush of hitting the water.

Fake cover I did for a magazine in a fantasy world. The one magazine a thief has to read. ;)

Step 1: Check pockets for Pulse.

Khanjar Dagger

Dated: 19th century

Culture: Indian

Medium: steel, nephrite, gold, emeralds, rubies, diamonds, ray skin

Measurements: H. with sheath 15 11/16 in. (39.8 cm); H. without sheath 14 5/8 in. (37.1 cm); W. 3 3/8 in. (8.6 cm); Wt. 15.8 oz. (447.9 g); Wt. of sheath 1.8 oz. (51 g)