No matter how good a thief one was, undergoing reconnaissance in noble territory always involved an element of risk. Slipping amongst the poorly paid and ill-motivated state issued guards was one thing; attempting to surmount the difficulties that privately hired, professional security guards posed was quite another. Yet Galley had no choice if he was to find his way up to the pinnacle of Valuan society. Indeed, he would stake his very life on the enterprise of somehow joining this pert, stuck-up, annoying class that he despised so much, for within the ascendance to nobility lay the path to victory.
He slipped amongst the widely spaced houses of the noble elite – rich of the rich, essentially – like a stealthy tomcat, eyes and ears ready for both danger and opportunity (or both, should the case arise). Every tiny diversion he could devise gave him safe passage past otherwise implacable guards, tossing small stones and generating noises from his breast that sounded very rat-like. He'd come to be somewhat of an expert in throwing his voice, an impressive skill that served the youth well in his ventures against authority.
Sneaking into houses, too, was a risk he surmounted with a cautious yet almost casual grace, utterly sure of his abilities as Galley was. Slipping into windows that, by all rights, should have remained locked was no difficulty. Yet thieving skills meant little in this endeavour: indeed, it was necessary to choose the right houses rather than the most opulently lined. This was a foreign affair to his normally simple life of plundering, and he really had no clue as to what he should do in his quest for notoriety. Were it easy to simply find a place amongst nobility, then the poor class of Lower Valua would have ceased to exist centuries earlier.
So, he searched. He observed each family in turn, listening in quietly on their conversations (and gaining an ample amount of blackmail material, though nothing that he could really use to his advantage) and keeping a mental count of their members. None he encountered seemed willing to adopt: indeed, over the weeks that he performed this service to himself, the subject was broached only three times, and extended only to other elite families fallen on hard times. His position as a lowly street urchin was not advantageous.
Those weeks were long, and lonely. The dream had isolated Galley from himself in every way possible: he felt almost betrayed by the fact that his future was not assured. In all his visions, he'd pictured ascent to admiral as effortless, a destined spot that was simply waiting for him. The rude awakening to the truth of his situation shook the boy to his core. That he was going through the onset of his teenage years, where isolation and selfishness are sometimes paramount in a youth, also helped things little, and he often had conflicting bodily desires.
Mama never came back. Galley secretly held out hope that she would, but his place as solitary occupant of the hole in the sewer remained constant. The only familiar faces Galley encountered were that of Odin, Burger, and the various other merchants Mama had dealt with, all of whom wondered why she was sending the boy to do her business rather than come herself. It was a nice change, for Mama had been shrewd; and while Galley lacked nothing in intelligence, his experience in haggling was minimal. He cared little, however, simply content with the money he made – it kept him fed, albeit upon a poor, junky diet. Mama, at least, had always supplied the Sewer rats, and later Galley alone, with nutritious and well-made meals.
Wondering why he'd been abandoned ran upon a side-track in Galley's mind constantly, however, no answer ever materialised. Mama's vanishing act could not be reasoned by logic, which in itself made sense as Mama had been growing rather illogical in the months before departing. In the end, it simply made him hate her more.
His idle time, which Galley deliberately kept to a minimum, consisted primarily of reading. His rudimentary schooling in the lettered arts grew by considerable leaps and bounds upon the discovery of an old textbook on the subject of grammar and proper sentence structure, allowing Galley to access new avenues of thought and consideration. In time, he learned to write simple letters simply by copying what he read in the book. His learning progressed rapidly despite the lack of a mentor to supplement the information contained in Mama's books. He could hardly be considered on par with most elite children of the same age; but, then, he was far ahead anything the majority of Lower Valuans ever managed to learn. The medium contented the lad.
The practice of both magic and swordplay became important activities, as well. Having learned the intricacies of channelling his will into his silver moonstone years before, Galley quickly improved his mystical affluence with both blue and green moonstones rapidly. Now free from having to hide the stones from Mama (he'd not wanted to reveal their existence before actually using them on her), he blasted about the sewers with impunity, attacking any monsters he came across. Though he didn't know it at the time, he even came close to obliterating Squim; the now hideous young creature barely managed to skitter away from a blast of water and return to a less dangerous part of the sewers.
The sword Galley had managed to pilfer came in handy, as well: and though initially clumsy owing to his somewhat poor upper body strength, Galley quickly built up enough muscle mass to swing the beautiful blade around without much difficulty. Style, of course, would come later – he just wanted to be able to use it. Again, the numerous denizens of the cities' underbelly went a long way to improving Galley's technique, though he began to doubt as to whether or not he would ever seriously learn how to use a sword. Still, it never hurt.
And all this time, though all the practice, the lessons, the hours of quietude and hushed conversations with the cluttered walls of his abode, Galley searched. But it was a fruitless search. Finding the proper family, one that required his particular presence, seemed impossible to find. The dream of growing in importance was quickly becoming just that: a mere dream. A fancy, one engaged upon by an opportunistic and overly ambitious young mind, one not born for the slums it existed in, yet trapped there nonetheless. In short, Galley was losing hope. His vision of that powerful, hawk-eyed man was fading.
Even geniuses have their times of doubt. Galley was no different. Coming home every night to a darkened hole, etched into the walls of the sewers, began to play on his mind. His sense of fortitude was wearing thin.
And then, one night, as he was reading one of Mama's books that he'd heretofore neglected – an out of date travellers' guide to Upper Valua – the youth hit upon an epiphany.
"The Hall of Records. . .? What's this. . ."
He pondered the discovery. It was a rather innocuous looking building, judging by its depiction in the guide: squat, ugly, and stretching for what seemed miles, the Hall looked nothing like a tourist spot (perhaps explaining why its entry was afforded little more than a paragraph). A governmental facility, the executives with the Hall of Records were charged with maintaining the paperwork of every even mildly affluent family in Upper Valua, from their tax returns to records of birth. Utterly bureaucratic in nature and perfectly boring to think about, this Hall got the cogs in Galley's mind working.
Breaking into houses every night was one thing. Sure, you got a good look at each family: but doing so took forever, and seldom yielded positive results. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of people lived in Upper Valua – it was a lot of ground for one thief to look through.
This Hall, though. . . it contained records of every last one of these families. . . though observing the records would be tedious, the process would certainly be speeded up a great deal: and, no doubt, the Hall would be rather poorly guarded. After all, who in their right mind would steal paperwork?
Galley thought about that for a second. Then, quirkily, he pointed at himself, and let burst his first gale of laughter in years.
