Jupe squatted and balanced herself against the keep's interior walls. Bitter cold clawed through both her nightgown's thin material and her fur. Her shoulderblades ached, yet she waited in the narrow hallway for her scheduled visit. Always at moonset, always in ankle-length white, always her gray fur brushed to a high sheen. Her ears curled around the sides of her face for warmth, a closed lily surrounded by darkness.

Jupe reconsidered her plan. Swim the moat, walk on foot beyond Van Reidaught's parish and depend upon the kindness of farmers' wives for sustenance until she found employment as a... Comical. Pathetic. She's wind up bubbling in a stewpot. She knelt between high, extinguished oil lamps in the oldest Free Trader's hallway and sighed. She swished her whiskers like a scythe.

His Honor Van Reidaught commanded that the murder of Tmob Free Trader not alarm the Trade Syndicate. Tmob aged without aches, grew wise not infirm. A quiet man powerful like a mountain with only one path, his way.

Next week the moon turned away its face, a signal Jupe's fertility would return. The thoughtless procreation urge overrode education, willpower, greed, even survival. Only Van Reidaught's infusion prevented Jupe's total dissolution. She had to close the trader's account before he made an interest-bearing deposit.

Jupe rubbed her sandaled toes. Poison, impossible with Tmob's hired infant taster. A slow-acting toxin would overwhelm a child's body. Stopped heart, unbelievable. Tmob lasted hours at orgies. He never rode horses, never drank alone, refused hunting invitations from friends and rivals.

A sudden heaviness weighted the night air. Jupe's ears sprang up, swiveled and cupped around the barest suggestiion of scratches. The sounds traveled from the junction of hallway and Tmob's private chapel. Jupe glanced at Tmob's closed bedroom door. No sound. The trader smelled like old man sleep.

Jupe rose and removed her nightdress. She slid the material to the floor and kept only a knuckle ring from Van Reidaught. Jupe tensed her powerful legs, then dashed down the hall.

She held her breath and listened by the chapel font. Footsteps lighter than silk retreated from the chapel toward the keep library. Sticks drawn across boards? Jupe inched her way to the door and squinted between the chapel door and hinge. She stifled a laugh. Her whiskers tickled her hand over her mouth until she wanted to scream with mirth.

A hard-muscled child robbing the parish's most powerful trader! Ash, smeared over neck and head, hid his scalp and thin blond fluff. A human, Jupe judged from his bandy-legged stance and tapered shoulder to pelvis line. The thief wore gray and dark brown wool over leather braces. His hands steadily slid books half off the shelf, tilted to check th espines, then gently replaced them.

Jupe frowned. The thief didn't know what he wanted. If he found a gold leaf placeholder or a promissory note marking a page, he bagged the prize. Silver coins tossed onto the hearth mantel entered his cotton-stuffed belt pouch.

A man. A half-length man stealing loot. Not a professional assassin like her, not at all. No tattoo behind his ear. he wasn't a thieves' guild member.

The thief spun a brass sextant with his finger. Either a pride-blinded genius or a talented idiot savant. A valise of trade caraban route maps and time table estimates also entered his bag. Worth big gold to the right pirate.

By the barred window, he found a gold tube, Tmob's kaleidoscope. He faced the chapel door, the curiosity to his eye. Jupe didn't blink. The thief twisted the tube a few times. Jupe's eyes burned. He sucked a molar, then dropped the kaleidoscope into his large bag. He bent and lifted throw rugs. He smelled of sweat and sourdough bread with a mince spread.

Jupe wanted him. Wanted him blamed for Tmob's imminent vicious murder.

When the thief returned to Tmob's desk and started rifling through drawers, Jupe darted back to Tmob's door. Heavy metal studs decorated the door. Faint snores now stole into the hallway. Jupe pressed her palms against the paneled studs. Tmob with his lust for sex at sunrise. Tmob shaking like a palsied hound between her legs. Every night, "what big eyes, what big teeth." Every night.

Jupe shoved until she created sufficient space, then squeezed into the bedroom. A sparse room: hearth washstand bureau bed. Tmob lay upon a mountain of embroidered cushions. Muslin curtains protected him from stinging insects and night vapors. His hearth cradled angry red embers buried in ash.

Jupe fisted her right hand. Van reidaught's ring extended over her first joint, a carved long-stemmed rose atop a metal band. Garnet formed the petals. With her thumb, Jupe popped the flower ffrom its thorny anchors. Her left hand pulled her rose. Steel thread attached to its stem uncoiled from her ring band. She walked with soft deliberate steps to Tmob's bed. She took care no shadow fell across his face and woke him.

She parted the curtains like a breeze. Tmob's withered chest poked into the air like a chicken's gnawed breastbone. Jupe whispered, "Tmob."

He jerked and groped for the short dagger under his pillow. Jupe looped thread twice around his throat, planted her foot against the bed frame and shoved backwards with all her might. Tmob decapitated in complete silence. His death spasms splattered the bed and curtains with hot blood. The thread retracted with a wet hiss. Jupe snapped her rose home. She removed Tmob's gold Free Trader earring. Slick blood eased his signet ring's removal. She closed the door and carried the articlees into the chapel.

No thief in the library. No thief in the chapel, no thief anywhere at all. Jupe followed her nose to the chapel sentry window. She tested the thin window ledge. The thief's grappling hook was gone, unless he rock-climbed four storeys. Jupe heard steps smack the flagstone garden path. Carefree and careless man.

She climbed into the window. She twisted up and sideways so her hips could squeeze through the narrow slit. Jupe judged the height and jumped. Her legs absorbed the fall well, although her toes tingled. She blocked the discomfort. She needed to contribute to the thief's bounty.

Parish militia patroled the low ceremonial wall which separated Tmob's estate from a public park avenue. The mandatory parish draft brought unsavory males too close for Tmob's comfort. A second, private garrison policed the patrol. Crouched behind an ornamental bench, Jupe watched the intruder approach the estate's border.

This half-length thief timed Tmob's forces. Twenty-three paces, turn, greet each other, turn, 23 paces. He belly-crawled under a boxwood hedge and passed the first hurdle unscathed.

The undisciplined parishers proved another story. The thief climbed the wall like a lizard. Fingers and toes found incredible purchase infissures and invisible cracks. He hung and waited for his chance. As he swung his leg over the top, however, the kaleidoscope swatted and clanged the rocks. Jupe kicked a tree in anger.

The freelance amateur dropped to the public side. He landed beside an impenetravle bush which twisted and pulsed with his movements.

"Halt! Identify yourself and your business!"

All the militiamen, brandishing pikes or pitted short swords, surrounded the shrub. Jupe crossed the fence unobserved and gained a better view in an oak's branches.

The thief stepped backwards from the shrub. He refastened his leather breech ties and laughed. "My business? Clear ain't?" He elbowed a sharp tip away and finished tying with a large floppy bow.

"How do it, Kev? Vin," he greeted two particular militiamen. Twin brothers.

He feigned a private piss. Jupe twisked her whiskers.

"'lo. Cold night," Kev said. He nodded and clapped the thief's shoulder. "This young'un serve with me and Vin at Red Bank." The crowd grumbled and dispersed with yawns to their posts.

"through patrol?" the thief, fully clothed now, produced three bronze rounders from a deep pocket. "Let's a round. Sun's most up."

"Aye."

Jupe watched the three comrades stroll toward the red lantern district. Two idiots and a cnning runt, wealthier than yesterday. She climbed down and searched until she found his large bag underneath the shrub. Jupe planted Tmob's bloody jewelry in the cotton-filled bag. Let him try and sell them inside Van Reidaught's authority. The thief would retrieve more than expected when he returned to Tmob's wall. Almost she felt sorry for her half-length human.

Almost.

HOME PAGE

FICTION