Thief Catcher

This story is the rise and fall of the Thief Catcher.

I am the thief catcher. I’m not the one who reclaims your stolen goods or even rescues kidnapped loved ones. That job is for others to do. I capture the thieves before anything happens. I am the shadow that follows them, matching every movement, always there. I am what keeps them up at night.

The Thieves’ Guild is constantly moving from one city to another. Of course there are always the lone wolfs, beggars, and con-artists in every city. I am not concerned with them, they are the minnows in the waters of human existence. I go after the bigger fish. I do love a good fish fry. My target this time is a relatively small player in the Guild, a new comer who is trying to jump the ranks quickly. Someone wants them captured and that’s where I come in.

The city is dark tonight, overcast so little can be seen outside the fire globes in the streets. From the rooftops people can be seen darting from one circular area of safe, warm yellow light to another. Pathetic excuses of existence so afraid of everything and yet unknowing of the true dangers in the world. My night vision starts to fade from staring at the fire globes. I have to close my eyes for a few minutes to soak up the night again. Other catchers, sometimes they prefer being called takers, do things differently. Using plants and poultices on their eyes so they can gain the night eye faster. But those wreck your eyes, dim them during the days so that they are effectively blind. Sometimes the old ways are better.

I move across a few rooftops to a tavern. The smell of roasting lamb shanks and beer flow out of the mud brick chimney. It’s hard to ignore the inviting aroma and the promise of some companionship. But there is a job to do and I never let a target go. I move a few more rooftops over to a house that’s gone dark for the night. Probably a merchant’s or petty noble’s house based off of the multiple stories to it.

The catcher’s charm is telling me that the target is close. The charm is an ancient device. I look down and study it some. Yearning to understand the secrets housed behind the sapphire dome and platinum casing. All it needs is to touch something the target was the last person to touch. From a gold coin to a scrap of clothing, it pulls part of their essence into itself and from then on will start to dimly glow when the target is near. Once it touches the target it releases that essence back into them and knocks them out. The only catch is it has to touch skin, which sometimes is difficult in cooler times of the year. Or when they know they could be a target and intentionally hide everything but their eyes. Most of Thieves’ Guild dress this way at night. Not only do the citizens avoid them, but so do the guards by either fear or bribery.

No guards on this street tonight and some of the fire globes have been put out. This must be the route the target is going to take. I close my eyes and press the catcher’s charm to my right eye. When I open them I am able to pick out the target instantly. Another useful side of the charm to be sure. When pressed to an eye, preferably the right one if you still have yours, the target will have a faint sapphire glow surround them. I can pick out five others surrounding the target. They must be the guards and probably armed with at least a dagger or short sword. I will have to take the target out first and quickly so I don’t have to give chase. I string up a rope ladder between the two buildings so I can drop in the midst of them. This is going to fun.

“Did you take care of the guards on the next few streets? I don’t want any complicated run-ins with a snot nosed rookie guard. They always think they are responsible for the whole damned city. It gets expensive to dispose of them afterwards.”

“Yes Ma’am. The magistrate himself took care of the guard schedule. I watched him write the routes and times myself. He’s very cooperative with a dagger to the back of the neck.” The guard chuckles in a low baritone.

They are almost beneath me. I drop through a rung of the ladder and hang from my hands. This better be quick and quiet. As the first of the group passes beneath me I let go, perfectly timed to land right behind the target. I grab the back of her overcoat and press the charm to the back of her neck. She goes down in a silent heap. Quickly I slip out my hard oak club and take out the two thugs behind me with hard strikes to the temples. As the three up front turn around I throw a cheese cloth full of dry ground peppers at the farthest of the three. As he starts choking on the pepper dust the other two turn towards his noise. This gives me a precious few seconds to slip behind them and club them on the back of the head. One goes down quickly while I only get a glancing blow on the other.

I swear as this gives him a chance to lose the sword at his belt. I pull out the sword breaker at my belt. The steel claw at the end of it and notches on the shaft are perfect for breaking the cheap iron blades these lackeys carry. He swings with a loud yell and I swear again. This is getting to loud. I catch is sword in the breaker and quickly disarm him. He takes off and I let him go. Just another minnow not worth the time. By this point the last thug had stopped coughing and moved to face where he thought I was. With tears streaming down his face from the pepper he drops his sword and dagger in front of him. This is a well-known sign of surrender to the catchers.

“Please, I don’t know who this person was. I was just doing it for the money to feed my family. I surrender. Please just let me go.”

“Go to your family sir. This no longer concerns you. Take no more jobs from the Guild or you will not be so lucky next time.”

He turns and leaves with fresh tears in his eyes. Just another minnow in the sea of human existence. Born to be forgotten in the histories. Sometimes it is an enviable fate.

I pick up the target and rest her against the wall of the house on the other side of the street I came from. Still no light from the moon. I quickly tie her hands and feet and then lay back over her lap. From there I tie a tight rope between her hands and feet so I can carry her and still have my arms free. I head towards the drop point three streets down and turn into the alley. At the end of the alley is a hidden door. Pressing in two mud bricks, one on the upper left and one on the bottom right, the door opens.

“I see you have your target, thief catcher. Please deposit her in the usual cell down the hall. I have many questions for this one.”

I turn towards the voice and bow. “Yes, Guild Master.”

Working for the Thieves Guild has perks. They gave the catcher’s charm to me. Well, more like I acquired it for them and kept it. Semantics really. They wanted it, and got me as part of the deal. The Guild Master said something along the lines of I made an imprint on it and it was worthless without me and I was the most important person to him now. I bet it was a line just to get me to join, but on a twelve year old me it worked.

I am not a typical catcher, I wasn't a war orphan, a bully, thug or any of the typical stereotypes when you think of thieves and catchers. I came from the regional magistrate’s household. I wasn't a full blood child, just a b*****d, but well treated. I knew that I wouldn’t have many wants in the world. Female b******s are better treated than their male counterparts so I wasn't worried about being taken care of. 

One day the Magistrate came and took me to the back courtyard. There they were setting up for an execution. He leaned down to me and explained what was going to happen.

“You see dear, we caught a very bad man last night. He is a thief and works with the Guild. We don’t like those type of people in our city because they steal things, important things, and also bribe people to not tattle on them.” 

He smiled with a smug pride of a bird dog who just brought back a duck after a crossbow hunt. How I hated that smile. He always used to smile like that when he gave the other children something in public while I was standing off to the side being unnoticed. All that was to change today.

I snuck down into the dungeons through a crack in the foundation. I was still small enough to fit through there unhindered. I wanted to go see this bad man and find out who he really was and what he did. I snuck through the first two corridors where supplies were held, and deeper into the jail section. The guards were talking while making their rounds. I waited for them to pass twice so I could time how long they took. After their second pass I went to the cell with the prisoner. He had a dirty green hooded cloak around him. Sitting cross legged on the floor he was staring down at his shoes where he was picking at the sole of his shoe.

He must have heard my quiet shuffles because he peered up just enough so that I could see his eyes. I wasn't prepared to see his right eye glowing a faint sapphire color. In the dark no eyes should glow, but his right eye was. He popped off the bottom of his shoe and fished out something wrapped in black linen. As I walked closer he lunged and grabbed my hand. Too surprised even to scream, he made a shushing sound and pressed the black linen bundle into my hands. 

“Little one. This is my day of reckoning for all the ills I have caused in the world. Take this catcher’s charm and do with it what I could not.” He said in a gravely bass voice. 

That was all he said. I heard the guards coming back and scrambled back the way I came as quietly as I could. Shaken I unwrapped the linen and inside was the most beautiful sapphire and platinum charm. It looked like it could fetch enough coin to buy half the businesses in town. I pressed it to my chest and ran through the corridors and out the crack in the foundation. I pressed myself to the foundation to catch my breath. I looked down at the charm and noticed how clear it was. I wondered what the world would look like in sapphire blue. I pressed it to my right eye and time seemed to stop.

“Ahh, so an innocent has claimed the charm has she? How will she use it? Hopefully not like the last one, cruel things that cold man did. His death is no repayment for his crimes. Don’t be afraid child, put the charm on a necklace for now and soon someone will find you and tell you what to do.”

Time fell back on me like a breaker wave on a small boat. I stood there contemplating the voice I had just heard. I went back up to my room and pulled out the small platinum chain the Magistrate gave me for my tenth birthday. There was a setting on the crest of the charm just big enough for the chain to go through. From that day on I have never taken it off other than to put a longer chain through it. 

Later that evening the man was executed. This time his eye didn’t glow, but both were focused on me until the life faded from them. 

One day a few weeks later the Guild Master approached me while I was out running errands for the house. She had noticed that I had the charm on a necklace and stopped me. 

“So, there the charm is in plain sight. And you've made your imprint on it too haven't you. Petty girl you know nothing of what you have done.”

He grabbed me by the hand and walked into a tailors shop. The tailor took one look, went to the front and put a closed sign out and then walked out the back door.

“That man that was executed recently had something valuable of mine. Apparently either you stole it from him or he gave it to you. Which was it?”

“He gave it to me sir.”

“From now on, when I ask a yes or no question, say either ‘Yes, Guild Master’ or ‘No, Guild Master’. That charm is now worthless to me because you made an imprint on it. That makes you priceless to me. Your training starts tomorrow. Don’t worry, do well and you will no longer have any worries in this world. Everyone will fear and respect you. Forget your former family, you meant nothing to them anyway. You mean everything to me now.”

 

“Yes, Guild Master.”

The first day of training went just about as well I could have expected. It started in a small room bare of any kind of furnishing. Just plain wooden walls without any windows. I was brought to the room after a large breakfast of eggs, bacon, and porridge. I was left in that room for about an hour before the Guild Master came into the room. The Guild Master spent a good few minutes yelling about how it would have been easier if an adult had taken the charm and that killing a child would bring an end to the Thieves’ Guild. The descriptions of the different methods of killing appalled me and I quickly ran to the corner and threw up. While I was regretting what I ate for breakfast, well even that I had eaten breakfast at all, the Guild Master had gone out into the hall. When he returned he had a horse whip.

If you didn't catch the sarcasm about how well it went, well then there is nothing I can do for you. What I went through that day still creeps into even my most benign nightmares.

“Young girl, from this day forward you are a hound of the Guild. I will beat you just like a hound, break you, and make you love me through fear and hatred. You will remember this day for as long as you live. You'll keep your maidenhood until the time you choose, so don't worry about that, but I will break your body of any weakness. There will be days you are one breath short of death. I will bring you back each time and each time you will be a little bit stronger. Your training will serve ME well. Your life is expendable as my will decides. Serve me well, little hound, and you shall be taken care of better than most nobles.”

With that said he knelt down, gently held me by the shoulders and stared into my eyes. The threat of what would happen if I didn't serve well went unsaid, but was well understood. He stood up, patted me on the head, and swung the horse whip as hard as he could across my lower back. The training had started. 

I lost consciousness quickly, but by the amount of bruising the next day the training must have gone on for a while afterwards. The training didn’t consist of anything else but beatings, no lectures, no lessons, nothing that you normally associate with the word. But my body was getting stronger and bruising less.

They had taken the charm away from me the moment I walked through the door. It was never far from my thoughts and I constantly had dreams about it. One particular dream that I can still recall with clarity was about the man who gave the charm to me. In the dream I approached his hanging body, one eye still glowing, and started to grab the charm from around his neck. He suddenly seized me by the throat and all of a sudden the noose was around my neck. The necklace had turned into the noose and the man, whose eye had stopped glowing, was walking away. His parting words still haunt.

“I give my legacy to you now. See to it that the charm doesn't give you the same fate as me. Poor soul, you know not what you have accepted, what your life will entail these next few years. Death to the Guild and its Master. That is the legacy you carry now. Do what I could not. The charm is either the salvation for this age, or it is your death sentence.”

For almost two years this training persisted. I would get a few days to rest and heal and then the training would start anew. After the first solid month of training the Guild Master would stop halfway through and pull out a new weapon. I was given three minutes to study it before it was taken away. During the last half of the training the Guild Master would ask me questions while beating me. When I answered right he would give me a moment’s respite. Wrong answers were acknowledged with a whip across the bridge of my nose.

The final day of training came close to my fourteenth birthday. I was taken to the same room as any other day but this time there were weapons racks around all the walls. A small table sat in the center of the room with a sheet of paper, a quill, and an ink pot. The Guild Master was standing in front of the table facing the doorway.

“Sit young one. This will be the final day of your preliminary training. Depending on the results you will start your catcher training tomorrow.”

“Yes, Guild Master.”

Catcher training lasted three full years of daily strength building, calisthenics, parkour, and weapons training during the day and stealth training at night. I experienced more training in one week than most of the militia men get in six months. This is our best weapon. 

The training at night at first consisted of following petty thieves not associated with the Guild. I was to track their movements, targets, and what they pinched. All this was reported back to the Guild Master. Some of those thieves eventually were brought into the guild. The others, well the others ended up either in jail followed by a quick public execution or were rounded up by the Guild catchers and never heard from again. Just like the target I just dropped off. I don't expect anyone to see or hear anything from her again. 

After that, the training took on a more active role. Any thieves from the Guild that were close to getting caught by the authorities would be found by a pair of catchers and quietly escorted to one of the few Guild safe houses in that town. They then would be reevaluated by the Guild and if found worthy of staying in the Guild, they were transported to a different city and underwent training again. Those found undeserving of another chance were bound and laid at the local Magistrate’s office. 

The final days of night training were unaccompanied. I was given a target and a more experienced Catcher was to observe and report back to the Guild Master. I missed my first two targets and had to get rescued by the observer the third time. Each time earned a beating, lecture, and a week on lean rations. 

The fourth target I took down but was so weak after the fight that I had to drag him into an alley and wait an hour before I had enough strength to get him back to the Guild. The next six targets became easier after each one.

The tenth one was my last target. No observers, no help, no rescue. That was my final test. Last night I passed that test. I am a Catcher now, or so I hope.

I get out of bed and wander around the Guild complex. I walk into the kitchen and get some black coffee and a pastry. The waiting is killing me. After I was dismissed last night by the Guild Master, his aid told me to withdrawal to my quarters and wait further instructions in the morning. This morning I found a note on my floor saying that I had the day off today and further orders would come later tonight. 

I decide to walk the town and visit some shops. I could use a better wet stone for sharpening my blades, little as I use them, and sewing kit. I don't have much in the way of spare coin, but I did get some for the last three targets I fetched. These purchases took most of that coin. I scowl at the exorbitant pricing.

I spend some time walking the streets, visiting some shops, and just soaking in the sights and sounds of other people. A while later I make my way back to the complex in the late afternoon. Hardly anyone around during the day due to the night work we all do, but less people around this morning than usual. I end up at the kitchen again and lay out a small square cloth on the table. I put a small wedge of yellow cheese and a link of hickory smoked meat along with a few bread ends on it, wrap it up and head back to my room. 

I spend some time sharpening my blades and then going through my supplies. Not much in the way of personal affects, a few childhood ribbons and some jewelry, two well-worn short blades, a long belt knife, a sword breaker, one hard oak club, three small bags of whole dried peppers, and a bolt of cheese cloth. More than enough to get any job done, but more than one can easily carry into a mission. That was instilled in me during the training. 

Track your target and those most likely to be around them. Take note of any visible weapons, temperament, body build, and reactions to unplanned stimuli. On the night you plan on taking your target down, place your weaponry in multiple locations near the target’s intended route, and only take with you two or three weapons max. That way you are nimble in encounters, and can quickly reach different weapons as the situation evolves. And always send someone you trust to retrieve your weapons at a predefined time so someone is less likely to pinch them.

As the day wears on into evening, a slip of paper is pushed under my door. It is a summons to see the Guild Council. I grab a lantern on my way to a small shed in the center of the complex. Pushing aside grounds keeping tools I reach the back of the shed. I press three small planks on the side wall to the left and a trap door opens in the floor revealing stairs down.

At the bottom of the stairs is a small narrow corridor that opens up into a single room. There stands the Council with the Guild Master at the center.

“Young one. The time has come to judge you. The council will openly discuss your flaws and if they surmountable. If the Council decides that they are not, you will not leave this chamber.”

“Yes, Guild Master”

Before I knew what was happening, memories of those who held the charm before flooded into my conscious. Their thoughts, hatred, betrayal played through my emotions as if they were my own. The council was speaking of my flaws and oblivious to what was happening inside of me. Time, for the briefest of moments, stood still and faded to a dark cloudy azure. 

“Someone has finally found you.” A voice in the ether. 

“Who found me? What is this?”

“Those with the sapphire eye shall always die my dear. We are many who bear the eye. All fell to the hands of the Guild Master in ultimate betrayal. A stab through the heart while we slept. You, unlike the ones before, can right this wrong. You can kill the Guild Master with this charm. In your heart you must want him to die, pull his life out through this charm.”

All of a sudden images of those who wore the charm before appeared. The sadness and fury evident on their pale faces. As one they spoke.

“Avenge us young one.”

I knew. Though my life had not been long in the world, this was my purpose.

“I will put you all to peace. Rest and know that you meant something.”

As the world faded back into focus I rushed the council. Taken by surprise I was able to knock the three who stepped in front of the Guild Master aside. 

“Those with the sapphire eye shall always die!” 

That was my battle cry as I lunged at the Guild Master and pressed the charm to his forehead. His blade pierced my heart. I watched the life drain from his eyes quickly and we fell to the floor as one. The life draining from me, one of the council ripped the charm from my hand. He kneeled next to me and spoke in my ear.

“Child, dear child. You didn't think that was the real Guild Master did you?”

“Yes, Guild Master.”