chapter 2

The lock finally clicked open as Venulus finished picking it. A cunning smile spread across his face and he pushed the window open, cringing as it squeaked. When the gap was wide enough for him to fit through, he took a quick glance around at the small bit of town before heading inside. It was nighttime, and all of the houses (which were built of a very fine, white marble) glinted brilliantly in the moonlight, including the one whose topmost window Venulus was crouched upon.

Once he slipped inside, the thin blade of moonlight caught him like a spotlight in the darkened room. His shoulders weren’t exactly broad, but he had thin, agile hips that made them look so. His hair was unruly, dark, and long. In fact, if not for his athletic build and the lack of facial hair, Venulus Kraft could have just as well been a vagabond. He was eighteen at the time, which made the fact that he was breaking and entering, all the worse.

The boy’s bare feet hardly made a sound as he walked into the room, crouched with his ears perked up, ready to dive into the shadows should someone choose to make an entrance. However, the room was empty, aside from a few white-wood dressers with elegant golden handles, a nightstand with an unused candle stub resting on a copper plate, and lastly, an enormous four-poster bed with white drapes that fluttered like a ghost from the breeze that blew through the open window.

With haste, Venulus began searching the drawers of the dressers, and in one of them was an old, dusty wedding ring enclosed in a small velvet box. The diamond inside looked like it would be worth something, but Venulus couldn’t take it. It was cash or nothing, for a reason that will become evident soon. He skimmed through the other drawers, but found most of them were empty with a thick layer of dust at the bottom. It was clear that the owner of the house didn’t use this room very much.

Before venturing to the hallway beyond, Venulus put his ear to the door for a good long while, making sure that nobody was slinking around in the dark. When he was satisfied that the hallway was vacant, Venulus turned the knob and slid into the hallway and closed the door carefully behind him.

There were voices now. So low and muffled that it was no wonder the boy’s ears hadn’t picked them up from behind the door as, even now, he could barely make them out. Venulus looked left and right. The hallway stretched an equal length on both sides with five doors along the wall and a railing that loomed over the foyer below. The voices were coming from a door at the very end of the left hallway. Venulus had a moment of curiosity in which he desperately wanted to put his ear to the wood and hear what the two (maybe three) men were arguing about. However, he simply needed some money; a few thousand pounds would sustain him and his father, Grekes for a few months, even with Grekes’ worsening heart condition that had kept him bedridden for the past few years.

I’ll be able to afford father’s medicine, Venulus thought to himself. This idea spurred him on to look rightward and to the next room, where the door opened smoothly. Just as Venulus was about to disappear into the room, the argument between the two (maybe three) men suddenly rose to a climax, and one of the burly men (for Venulus realized there were only two) marched out, and yelled, “I pray, Mortimer, that someday your brilliant mind will come to its senses, but for now, I must bid you good day, and good riddance of this nonsense. Take my advice to heart, Mortimer.” The large man continued down the nearby flight of stairs, across the darkened foyer, and out the door, without noticing the small click as Venulus shut the door to the next bedroom.

Almost holding his breath, he kneeled down at the door and listened for the other pair of footsteps that began to march back and forth through the hallway. The man was muttering to himself, but he did it with such a small voice that Venulus couldn’t make out any of the words.

Finally, a door closed further down the hall and the man’s footsteps disappeared. Venulus cursed himself for not getting a better look at the man whom he knew to be Mortimer Kult, the owner of the mansion.

The room he had stumbled in though seemed to be fuller than the last, with a leather-bound chest resting dully at the foot of an even larger bed. The dressers in this room seemed larger as well, and richer. There were carvings and designs set in them, as well as in the trimmings around the walls.

Immediately upon seeing the chest, Venulus’ eyes flickered with momentary nostalgia of the stories his father used to tell him about pirates stealing treasure from the rich and placing it all in enormous chests like this one. Oh, how wicked it would be if Venulus opened it to find gold and jewels like in the stories. However, when he opened it, his heart fell at the sight of blankets and scarves. Venulus shut the chest and scoured the rest of the room. But with increasing certainty, he figured that the money would be hidden in a safe, in a room like a study, (as Mortimer Kult would hardly be a man to leave his money out in the open, even within his own home) and the safe was more than likely to be the room into which Mortimer Kult had just vanished. Venulus tiptoed carefully out the room, down the hall and to the door, where he pressed his ear to the wood and waited eagerly for the sound of shuffling footsteps beyond.

“No, no. It’s not that at all.”

Venulus put his eye to the keyhole to see who Mortimer was conversing with, but he frowned, as Mortimer Kult was the only one in the room. The man talks to himself, thought Venulus, nearly snickering at the thought of Kult’s madness.

“And I can’t just sit around, thinking he was lying. After all, it seems that it was certainly within his abilities, even at the time,” Mortimer said, scratching his chin and looking around the room with a strange expression -- as if he wasn’t really looking at all.

By this time, Venulus had his face pressed so hard against the wood of the door that, perhaps, if Mortimer had cared to look over, he would have seen the white of Venulus’ eye. As it were, though, Mortimer seemed to be having a rather stimulating conversation with himself, though Venulus could hardly make heads or tails of it, especially with his lisp that sounded to Venulus like the man was chewing on something while he talked.

“I can’t do it myself, not after his death. It’s empty, completely. Oh, what shall I do?”

Well, Venulus thought with a smirk, I do believe Mortimer is insane. But then Venulus couldn’t have been further from the truth. Actually, Mortimer Kult was an extremely brilliant man, and of course, his hair was gray and his body was considerably thinner, so much so that excess skin hung in loose wrinkles around his neck and other places Venulus didn’t care to imagine. Oh wait, Mortimer was coming towards Venulus. The boy panicked as Mortimer was at last making his exit.

In the split second before the door managed to click and open, Venulus had darted over the banister and slid down until he was gripping by the tips of his fingers. Mortimer passed by, his feet scuffling oddly on the floor.

Venulus was holding his breath and trying not to grunt in effort as he lifted himself back up as Mortimer began to turn and start down the stairs, still muttering incoherent things to himself. Before he went into the room, Venulus paused, waiting for the final scuff of a shoe (or slipper, whatever it was that Mortimer was wearing) as Kult’s footsteps vanished into the kitchen or whatever room it was below. Then the boy turned the knob, his heart beginning to thump faster as the study became apparent, with its enormous bookshelves, large mahogany desk cluttered with fine-quality parchment, plush leather sitting chairs that accompanied an empty fireplace, and to top it all off, a beautifully detailed globe that sat idly in the corner. All of it was illuminated by faint candlelight. The transition from cold marble to soft carpet felt wonderful on Venulus’ feet as he snuck in. He immediately moved to one of the three windows and cast them open, feeling the breeze at it rushed past him and into the room, causing the flames on the candles to flicker dangerously.

Mortimer Kult was indeed a smart man -- with enough common sense to lead an entire village to salvation -- however, he was terrible with puzzles and that sort which put a strain on the mind and always left him with a headache the next morning whenever he attempted even the simplest of them. As such Mortimer kept is on-hand money in a rather uncreative place: behind a bookshelf. Venulus, who had always been good with puzzles and trivial thinking, (perhaps inherited from his late uncle), found the tiny set of hinges that lined the edge of the leftmost bookshelf, without a problem at all. Behind the bookshelf was a safe made of polished brass, or some other metal (for the light was dim and it was hard for Venulus to tell). This also proved an easy task for the boy who had played this game before, listen until you hear the tiny clicks behind the metal. Back then, of course, safes were hardly constructed as well and as foolproof as they are these days. Within two minutes and three restarts, Venulus had the safe open with even stacks of notes inside. Venulus reached under his shirt to the pouch he stashed his money in and crammed as many notes as he could into it.

When he was finished, he started out the window, but stopped on a heartbeat as the sound of breaking china filled the room. Venulus looked back, and cursed himself everyday afterwards for it. Mortimer Kult stood in the open doorframe, how Venulus hadn’t heard the door opening, he could never figure out. A broken saucer and teacup lay shattered on the floor at his feet.

“You!” Mortimer gasped, as a faint look of recognition came over his face. Venulus couldn’t figure out where he had ever met Kult face to face before, but removed it from his mind as more pressing matters were at hand. Venulus leapt off the edge of the window and down into the streets below, where a flag stuck out from a post, offering him a ledge to grab hold of before swinging to the cobbled road. From there he ran off for home not once stopping to catch his breath until he came to a back alley.

Meanwhile, Mortimer Kult was gasping for breath, not only because he had just woken the entire manor with his shouts of “thief! Thief!”, but because his heart was nearly in shock, and his greatest fears, as well as his greatest hopes were confirmed, for he did not see Venulus Kraft, but Lord Pasillus -- the same Lord Pasillus who had once told Mortimer he was developing a cure for death.

Author's Note

tell me what you think. Criticism is greatly appreciated.
Font is x12 Mongolian Baiti, my new favorite.
Also, I'm keeping them short again.

Reviews

[James Watts]

Well written, as usual. You are developing your style. That is what is important. Your voice is the key to where your work will head. As with Dutch I need to read more to really do an honest review of story. I can this is a good start and holds my interest

[Dutch Jr.]

Good chapter... don't have too much criticism, want to wait and see where the plot goes first.