Fire and Ashes

[tam]

...I wander quietly and listen to the wind
the sweetest shadow thief am I
my lamp is the brightness of the bandit’s moon
I heed the warning of the night-birds as they fly...

Tam crouched on a rooftop like a little demon, hood pulled over to hide her face. She did not normally do burglery. It was safer to keep to the streets, lifting money that no one could claim was rightfully theirs. But Tam had been in Camelot a while now. Long enough to get to know the darker side of the market, who she could trust and who she could not.

Yesterday she had been talking with a street-boy who claimed there was a blacksmith who was immune to heat. As Tam snorted at the idea, the boy's claims became wilder until he was saying that the smith was a kind of demon. Then he had bet Tam that she could not steal something from his work-shop.
Tam was not afraid of one smith and the over-active imagination of a boy. So she had taken him on his bet.

That was why she sat here now, watching from the roof of the smith's craft-shop. She could see him sitting down there, apparently lost in thought. Good. Silently she dropped from the roof, dagger in her hand. The smith was out the front, so she would go in the back way... it look only a moment for her to pick the lock. Then she was inside, the knife still in her hand.
Tam glanced around the shop. She wanted something that would take that boy's breath away....

((I hope this is an ok reply? And I give you permission for you next post to godmod Tam a little... you can over-power her, take her knife away or whatever, if that is what you want to do.))

[tam]

...I wander quietly and listen to the wind
the sweetest shadow thief am I
my lamp is the brightness of the bandit’s moon
I heed the warning of the night-birds as they fly...

Tam was disapointed. There hardly seemed to be anything here worth the trouble of stealing. If it had been her own mission, she would have left then. But if she returned with nothing that loud-mouth boy would think she had failed or was afraid. Tam could not allow such a thing to happen.
So she half-heartedly picked up an item close to her. Some piece of armour, she guessed, but not even finished and so worth only the price of the metal. She sighed and put it back down, quick brown eyes hunting for something else.

Then she spotted a knife. Tam moved crossed the shop on cat-light feet. It was simple and plain, not worth much but at least it was finished. Or almost finished. Running a finger down the blade she could tell that it had not been sharpened. Never mind. She had been here too long already and it would have to do.
Tam slid it into her pocket and glanced around one last time to see if there was something better. But there was not.

[tam]

...I wander quietly and listen to the wind
the sweetest shadow thief am I
my lamp is the brightness of the bandit’s moon
I heed the warning of the night-birds as they fly...

The tiny hairs prickled on the back of Tam's neck. She froze. Someone was opening the door so silently it could hardly be heard... Tam spun on her toes, cloak swirling round her, two knives suddenly in her hands. Not the one she had stolen but two of her own, thin and sharp and deadly. Her eyes glared at the demon-smith. Then Tam reminded herself that she did not believe he was a demon. But he was still big blacksmith and much stronger than she. Tam half turned to run for the other door when he spoke. She paused, puzzled and glanced up at his face. He did not seem at all angry at the theif who had broken into his shop. Indeed, he was even advising her what to steal!

Tam knew that the smart thing would be to run away. But his calmness made her so curious. Why was he not wild with her?
"A sword is fair hard to run off with," Tam told the smith scornfully. "And no market-merchant is going to buy some sword from me! Know it was stolen as soon as look at it and then I'd be in some mess." Stupid the way people never seemed to think of such things. She did not steal swords. No one stole swords! Jewelery, yes. Precious stones and cloth, yes. Spices, yes. But not swords. Perhaps knives or bows if you need a weapon. The knife in her left hand she had stolen years ago and the one in her right was bought with stolen money.

"Besides," she added rudely. "If it a good price on the market I wanted, I would not have come here."

[tam]

...I wander quietly and listen to the wind
the sweetest shadow thief am I
my lamp is the brightness of the bandit’s moon
I heed the warning of the night-birds as they fly...

Tam kept wary eyes on the smith. At the first sign of threat, she would run away. Though she was very skilled with the knives that she held, Tam always chose to run away if she could. Her street-life may have taught her to act hard and to fight fiercely if she had to protect herself, it had never managed to kill the kindness that Tam hid inside. And she hid at as skillfully as she hid the fact she was a girl.

But the smith's question took her a little by surprise. Her tongue had been racing rudely in the way it always did, while her mind was hunting out for danger. Now he actually wanted to know why she was there. Well. Tam supposed that there was no harm in telling him. She did not believe he was a demon anyway.
"Chance Malone say you are some fire-demon," Tam said, naming the boy she had the bet with. "I told him he has a head of idiot fancies and so he bet me I would never dare to steal something from you." Tam gave the smith a wicked grin as though she were a demon herself. "I dare. You going to call up fire to kill me?"
That was a jeer more than a question. Because Tam did not believe the stories of Chance Malone.

[tam]

...I wander quietly and listen to the wind
the sweetest shadow thief am I
my lamp is the brightness of the bandit’s moon
I heed the warning of the night-birds as they fly...

Tam tilted her head sideways, looking remarkably like a curious little sparrow. This smith-man seemed very strange to her. He did not get angry even though she stole from him and then insulted his shop. He was also amazingly calm about being called a demon in a city where such suspicious were solved with execution.
But, Tam supposed, who would listen to the words of an urchin like Chance Malone?
"A wild imagination and the head of an idiot," Tam lightly repeated the smith's words. "You could live with him for a year and come to no better conclusion."

But when the smith calmly told her she might keep the dagger, Tam could not hide her surprise.
"You what?" she asked, amazed. "You just going to let me walk away with something of yours?" She did not believe it. Most likely it was some trap. He would follow her and then try to catch all the people she knew, or give her description to the city guards, or something.
If she was smart she would have run away as soon as she saw him... but Tam always had too much curiosity for her own good.
"Why?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "You don't seem so rich that you can afford to let some thief run off with something of yours."