Chris bit back a startled grunt when the sailors carefully dropped her in the hold of the Sea Sprite with a soft thump. She was glad she’d thought to stamp ‘handle with care’ on the sides of the crate.

The darkness that surrounded her in her hiding place was deep and almost heavy, and the cloying smell of brine, linseed oil, and turpentine quickly seeped in through the hidden air holes. She held her breath as she waited for the sounds of the sailors’ footsteps to fade away.

After weeks of meticulous planning and years of tireless training, the time had finally come for her to prove just exactly what she was capable of.

The Sea Sprite, one of the fastest clippers in the Trade Fleet, was only in port for two days. Captain Omen ran a tight ship, and commanded a small crew of disciplined professionals. Passing herself off as one of their number, or perhaps a trusted guest, would have been practically impossible. So she’d had to get creative.

When the sound of the footsteps had disappeared completely, Chris unlatched the side panel on her right, and slowly lowered it to the floor before creeping out of the crate.

She allowed herself three luxuriously deep breaths and slowly stretched to her full height to celebrate her release from the cramped confines.

Outside the crate the darkness was slightly less smothering. A potanium crystal suspended from the ceiling on the far end of the hold cast a watery, muted glow over the assembled cargo near the ramp.

Chris was making her way between the crates and cargo in the hold when a new creaking sound stopped her in her tracks. Unlike the previous noises, this one was coming from behind her.

Something was moving on the other side of the hold.

She ducked down behind a large barrel and snuck around a crate filled with large sacks that smelled of dried quivive so strongly that it overpowered the scent of turpentine and linseed oil that permeated the rest of the hold, and peered in the direction of the noise.

A few moments later, a dark shape slipped past her position. It was moving quietly, and keeping to the shadows fairly well, but she could follow its progress. She frowned and watched as the form padded across the hold, making its way towards the only exit. When the shape rounded the corner onto the ramp, a sliver of moonlight from above allowed her a quick glimpse.

It was a handsome young man in his early twenties of average height and build. His hair was dark in the moonlight, likely black or brown, and he had light eyes, most likely blue or green. The shape of his face and the angle of his jaw hinted at Verusian roots, or maybe Othoan or thereabouts.

Chris waited patiently to give this second interloper time to disappear. After a few moments she heard stealthy footsteps make their way to the gangplank. He was leaving the ship.

Chris considered this unexpected turn of events. The man had not seen her, and he did not seem to be here to burglarize the ship, as she was. Still, it was prudent to make certain he hadn’t beaten her to her target.

She climbed on top of one of the larger crates and looked around. It was difficult to make out the details in the near dark, but making a light would ruin her dark vision and could potentially give away her presence. After a few minutes of searching that seemed to last forever, she found what she was looking for. A lid sat ajar on one of the crates in the back of the hold. When she nudged it open, it revealed an interior not unlike the crate she had just climbed out of. It could only be opened at the top, which could have become a problem if something had been stacked on top of it, and it was quite a bit larger, allowing a person to sit and stretch out completely nestled in the piles of rags inside.

It wasn’t easy to stow away on a ship as well organized as the Sea Sprite. On the other hand, if one did have the means and ability to remain hidden, and the guts to pull it off, it was a preferable option to many other ships because it was so fast. Assuming the stowaway had boarded at the last stop on the main land, he’d not been in here much longer than two days. Two days of rations and supplies were not that difficult to bring along. This way he wouldn’t have had to steal any of the ship’s supplies, and his presence in the hold could have gone completely unnoticed until he could sneak away. Chris’ lips curled up into a smile.

Apparently this young man’s plan had gone off without a hitch. It didn’t seem likely that he was a threat to her own operation. Satisfied, she returned to the task at hand.

Chris had finagled her way onto the ship because Stealth, the leader of the Marked Listeners, had tasked her with the acquisition of a particular object as the final assignment to earn the title of master thief.

Her first assignment had been another acquisition, performed for the Master Hand. It had required cunning, dexterity, and slight of hand to complete. The second, digging up dirt on a contender for a position the Grand Jester wanted to fill with one of his own trustees, had required information gathering, daring, and a touch of blackmail. For this final caper, the theft of a fabled compass, Chris planned to use her superior stealth, perfect timing, and exceptional lock-picking skills.

Unlike the stowaway, who’d likely not left his hiding place until right this moment, Chris needed to cross the ship, to reach the captain’s cabin at the stern. So she snuck across the hold and again, and slowly climbed the ramp. She didn’t go up all the way to the main deck, but quietly made her way through a short corridor to the lower deck instead.

When she carefully peeked around the corner of the open door, she tried to make out any threats among the hammocks that swayed in time with the movement of the ship, and the coils of rope and wooden chests that were stacked along the hull. Most of the crew was out on leave, so the lower deck was mostly empty. One of the hammocks to her left seemed to be occupied, evidenced by the large snoring lump of shadow, and across the large space a small calico cat wiggled its hindquarters before streaking forward and snatching a rat that was almost as big at it was. There was a short struggle, which the rat lost, and then the cat dragged the rat over to a corner and cheerfully dug in. Chris padded across the deck, staying as far away from the snoring lump as she could, making so little sound that the cat never even looked up from its meal.

After traversing a short corridor, hiding behind a large barrel when one of the crew passed, and climbing a short ladder into another corridor, Chris knelt in front of the captain’s cabin door. She had to be quick now; the crew obviously patrolled these cabins far more heavily than the hold. She pulled a lock pick out of her pocket and set to work on Captain Omen’s intricately locked door. 

The two locks that secured the captain’s cabin were expensive and most-times effective. The first one was a heavy-duty double acting tumbler lever affair, fashioned in silversteel. She recognized the handiwork of a local master locksmith. She manipulated it expertly, frowning at the minute grinding sound the cylinder made when she turned it. The sound didn’t bode well for the state of the door’s hinges.

The other lock was more exotic. Chris deftly manipulated the moving plates that prevented easy access to the keyhole and narrowed her eyes. The moving plates were not the only hazard built into this contraption. Apparently captain Omen had spared no expense and installed a detector lock in his cabin door. Lifting even one of the tumblers too high would jam the mechanism, and make opening it without leaving a trace neigh impossible. A grin tugged at her lips as Chris set to work. It had been a while since she’d had opened such a challenging lock. Leave it to Stealth to really make her work for it.

It took a little longer than usual, but she managed to open this lock as well, and not a moment too soon, because Chris could hear the heavy footfalls of the patrolling crewmember behind her on the stairs.

She quickly oiled the hinges and the mechanism of the handle so she could open the door silently. It opened inward, with only a whisper of moving air. She slipped into the captain’s cabin and closed the door behind her, careful to let the handle up slowly to avoid a loud click. As a precaution she closed the simple lock as well, sending up a silent prayer to Danina that the guard wouldn’t hear the grind. Then she ducked down and hid behind the captain’s large desk and held her breath.

The guard stopped in front of the door and roughly jiggled the handle twice, but her precaution of relocking the door paid off, and the man turned around and stomped off. Chris waited for his footsteps to move away again before breathing out, and quickly surveyed her surroundings.

The captain’s quarters were located at the back of the ship. A row of high glass pane windows was worked into the back wall, and let in the moonlight unimpeded.

Until this moment she had been able to plan her operation.

Now that she was inside the cabin, the time had come to improvise.

Although everyone seemed to know that the captain had a lucky compass he treasured, only very few people had ever seen it, and no one had been able to tell her where he kept it when he was on shore.

Chris searched the moonlit cabin inch by inch, checking the most logical places first. She started with the desk and its four drawers, all neatly organized with charts and navigational equipment. She moved on to the cupboards, also neatly organized, and mostly filled with books and writing implements.

The lockbox by the bed was next. It took a few moments to open the intricate lock that protected it. Inside she found clothes, a heavy bag of coins, and a set of diamond cufflinks. Chris carefully removed all the items from the lockbox to check for a hidden bottom, but there was none. She then replaced the items in the lockbox exactly as she had found them, and relocked it before turning her attention to an ornate globe filled with various sorts of liquor, ranging from moderately expensive to absurdly exotic. It didn’t hold a compass.

That left the safe. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to open it, but now knelt down and began the slow process of cracking it. Chris pulled a stethoscope out of her bag and spent a handful of minutes playing around with the lock on the safe until it opened with a smooth click. The safe contained a few bars of gold and silver, a box of potanium crystals that looked to be pretty high-grade, and a scroll case with important documents. There was no compass in sight.

Chris frowned. She searched the safe carefully, but found no hidden compartments, keys, latches, or other indicators that there might be another concealed hiding place built into it somehow.

Chris took a deep breath to center herself, closed the safe and looked around again, searching for less obvious hiding places. She checked behind the paintings and the cupboard, and underneath the bed. She checked the floorboards and the elaborate scrollwork around the door, the windows, and the bed itself. She found nothing.

A trickle of doubt began to enter her mind. Could it be that captain Omen kept his compass on his person when he left the ship? If that were true she had wasted a lot of time here while she could have just lifted it off him in a tavern. But eventually, her eye fell on the intricately carved chair at his desk.

The two pieces of furniture didn’t match. That in itself wasn’t all that unusual, but the chair looked inordinately heavy and solid for something that was bolted to the deck to keep it in place during a storm. It was also too big to fit through the door.

The area under the seat of the chair was shaped like a large box, and decorated with small, ornate wooden panels in complex, grooved patterns.

Chris knelt down and inspected the chair up close. A smile spread over her face. The wooden panels were not fixed in position, but could be moved around the framework. She’d never seen anything like it. The closest thing it reminded her of was a sliding block puzzle. Chris carefully pushed one of the panels to confirm her suspicion. The chair let out a tiny whirring sound as she moved the panel into a new position.

A thrill of excitement quickened her pulse. The whole chair was one big sliding combination puzzle! She quickly set to work.

By the movement of the moon she estimated that at least two hours had passed when the last panel moved into position with a soft click.

A small, seamlessly hidden door popped open soundlessly.

Chris’ heart hammered in her chest when she opened it.

Inside the chair sat a beautifully inlaid wooden box about a hand span across.

Chris picked it up and undid the silver latch. The hammering in her chest was almost painful when she opened the box and finally lit eyes on the item she’d been looking for.

A resplendently engraved golden compass, set with tiny sapphires and emeralds in the shape of a stylized map of the island, glinted in the meager moonlight.

Chris flipped the compass open, and breathed a sigh of relief. The magnetic, arrow-shaped needle pointed north, off to her left. But unlike a regular compass, this one had a second needle. It was made of potanium and glowed with an almost imperceptible bluish light. It pointed straight towards her. With the compass in one hand, Chris reached into one of the pockets of her armored vest, and pulled out a jagged shard of translucent glass. As she’d hoped, the glow of the needle intensified ever so slightly, and the needle followed the movement of the shard of glass in her other hand.

Some clever alchemist had found a way to treat the potanium to respond to the presence of reef glass.

The only way to reach the island, a treacherous passage through the Glass Reef that surrounded it, was a closely guarded secret held only by the esteemed captains of the Trade Fleet. Once upon a time, not very long ago, the legendary Hanako Wo Shu had stood at the bow of her ship, and scented the wind to feel presence of the nigh-invisible shards of hardened glass that made up the Glass Reef in the water around Ithaco. Slowly, but steadily, she mapped out a safe route for other ships to follow. Some believed, speaking only in hushed whispers, that Captain Omen also possessed this mysterious power. But this unique compass was a far more credible explanation of how captain Omen was able to transverse the dangerous Glass Reef that surrounded the island so quickly. Chris grinned, and slipped the compass it into a secure pocket in her dark gray leathers. Then she placed the small white card Stealth had given her in the box and set the box back in the compartment in the chair.

Chris frowned when she considered how she could make the chair look like it had before she tampered with it, but her concern was unfounded. When she closed the door, the chair began to whir and click, and the panels automatically resumed the pattern they had displayed when she entered the room. It was one of the most devious devices she had ever seen. She resolved to find out who had manufactured it as soon as possible.

For now, all that remained was to leave the scene of the crime. She could sneak away across the deck, as the stowaway had done, but then she would have to cross the well-guarded hallway again. After all the time it had taken her to obtain the compass, she preferred a method that allowed for speed to one that relied on slow stealth. She checked the windows. Three could open, and two of them were large enough to accommodate her exit.

Satisfied with this alternate escape route, Chris closed the more complex lock on the door as well, completely eradicating all traces of her passage. Then she opened one of the windows and looked outside.

This side of the ship was facing away from the docks.

She lowered a rope out of the window and fastened it on the outside of the ship with a mechanical hook. She quickly clambered out of the window and closed it behind her before rappelling down.

As she lowered herself into the frigid water she clenched her teeth to stop from gasping. She gave the rope some slack and whipped it up sharply to unhook it. It came sailing down gracefully and landed in the water with only a hint of a splash that wasn’t really that out of place among the sounds of the ship. Chris treaded water heavily as she coiled the rope and shouldered it before quietly swimming away, leaving only the card in the box and the skeleton of the crate in the hold as proof of her trespass.

Hopefully neither would be discovered until the Sea Sprite was scheduled to depart again in two days’ time.

***

The Master Hand and the Grand Jester were present when Chris arrived for her scheduled appointment with Stealth the following morning.

She bowed her head respectfully to the two masters before presenting Stealth with the compass.

One corner of Stealth’s lips curled up.

“Fine work, Double-lock.”

“She did it?” the Master Hand demanded, moving closer to inspect the compass. “She’s only nineteen years old!”

“So it seems,” the Grand Jester agreed. “We underestimated you, Double-lock.”

“What do you mean?” Chris asked curiously.

“Five other would-be masters were sent on this same assignment before you,” Stealth explained. “Two of them failed to gain access to Omen’s cabin, and only one other succeeded in discovering the nature of his wonderful puzzle box. You’re the only one who managed to open it.”

“When you set her on this assignment I suspected you set her up to fail,” the Grand Jester said. “We didn’t actually think it could be done.”

Chris shrugged.
“No-one told me it was impossible.”

Stealth grinned. 
“And clearly it wasn’t. I had full confidence in your abilities, Double-lock, or I wouldn’t have called in the two other masters required to attest to your promotion.”

Chris bowed her head respectfully in thanks.

“Do you still wish to maintain your independence from the Marked Listeners?” the Master Hand asked. He made no effort to hide his disapproval of her previous decision to remain unaffiliated.

“I do,” Chris said. Being unbound to the Marked Listeners and its structure allowed her to move freely in many circles, accepting the jobs that tested her abilities the most. 
“I prefer to choose my own assignments.” 

“You’re just like your mother in that regard,” the Grand Jester said quietly.

“She is,” Stealth said, his face beaming with fatherly pride for his adopted daughter.

“I do not understand why you condone this lack of loyalty,” the Master Hand said sourly. It wasn’t the first time this topic had come up. After all, the shady criminal organization was known for its utter intolerance of free agents.

Stealth’s face assumed a neutral, mask-like quality at the comment.
“Nor am I likely to ever do so again. But I do not question her loyalty to me.” 

The Master Hand shrugged, and dropped the matter somewhat ungraciously.

Stealth turned back to Chris.
“It saves us a bit of time and ceremony,” he said, ignoring the Master Hand’s residual frown at the breach of tradition.

Chris had never attended an official induction ceremony, but she had enough friends among the Marked Listeners to know that it could be a tiresome affair; depending on the echelon the newcomer had chosen to be part of. Stealth seemed to genuinely appreciate not having to lead one right now.

“Congratulations, Double-lock. The Artist will set your master’s mark when you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Chris said solemnly as Stealth shook her hand.

“We’ll celebrate afterwards,” the most powerful man on the island told her with a quick wink.

***

“I had a dream about you,” Samira said quietly when Chris entered her studio.

Chris’ eyes widened.
“Does that mean anything?” 

Samira smiled with a flash of white teeth.
“I believe so,” she said. “I made this batch especially for you.” 

Samira handed her a small glass vial with a tiny amount of mercury-like liquid inside.

“Shade’s Whisper Grey?” Chris asked.

Samira nodded.
“The same formula as I used on Stealth’s mark when he recruited me to help found the Marked Listeners.” 

The old mark on Chris’ shoulder itched as Samira spoke.

The Artist mixed mysterious alchemagical effects into the inks she used to tether full-fledged thieves more strongly to their True Path for the Marked Listeners. Chris had drawn quite a few incredulous stares when she’d foregone the powerful effect when she’d received her mark five years ago.

“Can a true path change?” Chris asked carefully.

Samira considered that for a moment. The itching of the mark on Chris’ shoulder increased until it was almost throbbing.

“The path itself remains as it always was. I believe our understanding of it may change with passing time and growing wisdom,” she said.

“You worry about your true path.” The last was more statement than question.

Chris sighed and removed her jacket. She unbuttoned her blouse and bared one shoulder, pulling away the flow of her hair to uncover the mark Samira had given her five years before. It didn’t surprise her that despite the steady pulsing, the mark looked just as it had for the last five years. Elegant dark grey lines and shapes embedded into her skin, without any redness of irritation to account for the discomfort she was experiencing at the moment.

“It frightens me,” she said quietly.

Samira’s gaze softened.

“Is this still the image you see when you dream of me?” Chris indicated the dark pattern.

Samira looked at the mark, displaying a stylized padlock with the rune of sorrow instead of a keyhole intertwined with a similar padlock with the rune for freedom. She slowly traced the outline with a delicate finger.

The image had always worried Chris; from the moment Samira had first revealed it to her. She felt that she’d had every right to raise an eyebrow when the Artist, the closest thing the Marked Listeners had to a mystical authority, told her that the freedom that brought her so much joy would always be chained to sorrow. She’d been young when the mark that symbolized her True Path had first been revealed to her. And even then she couldn’t deny that the image spoke to her on the deepest level. But she’d immediately railed against it. She’d played it off as arrogance at the time, declining the alchemagical enhancement in the ink, and the permanence it symbolized, by claiming that she wanted her abilities to be entirely her own.

It had been the talk of the town, or at least the dark and hidden sections of it, where the Marked Listeners held sway. Together with the unprecedented freedom Stealth had given her by allowing her to remain independent of the Marked Listeners, and the fact that she’d only been fourteen at the time, refusing the benefits the enhancement would have given her had catapulted Double-lock into infamy. She never told anyone about her hopes of escaping the sorrow that may still lie in store of her.

Arguably she was still young now, but she’d had some time to think about it, and the answer Samira gave her did not surprise her, because despite the fact that the absence of the special ink meant that it was ‘just an image’, Chris had often felt it tingle or itch in the five years that she’d possessed it. Much like it was doing now. She didn’t doubt its power, or the connection it had to her.

“It is, Double-lock.”

Chris bit her lip. “I want to believe that the rune of sorrow represents only the loss of not one, but two mothers in my life.” Her voice trailed off into a thoughtful silence.

“It may well be,” Samira said.

Chris almost flinched when she heard the hesitance in the older woman’s voice.

“My dreams lift a tip of the veil, but no one can ever know the full extent of their True Path until it is completed,” the Artist continued.

For a moment Chris wondered what would happen if she called Samira out and pressed her to say more, if she revealed her suspicions that she knew more than she was saying. But even if she did, would any knowledge Samira might think she had help her avoid anything?

More importantly, should she even want to?

“Can I escape my fate?” she asked instead.

Samira let out a long breath.

“Not if you want to be your true self,” she said sadly.

Chris nodded slowly.
“Will you complete my mark?” she asked, forcing her voice to take on a more cheerful note. 

“With pleasure,” Samira said fondly. “Have you decided on the ink?”

Chris smiled ruefully.

“Better make it the Shade’s Whisper Grey,” she said. “Something tells me I’m going to need it.”