Thank you to the kind people who have reviewed this and also to my beta reader for spotting the silly mistakes.

Please review, and please be critical as well as complimentary. Tell me what I'm doing wrong!

I don't own Garrett. I think of him as owning himself.

I wake just before the sun sets. Golden light streams through my window. I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes.

I eat some breakfast, bread and cold meat, and I dress. I remember I am running low on equipment. Before I go to the Docks I need to pay Perry a visit.

The sun has just set as I venture out. The sky to the west is still pale blue, the clouds bruised purple and gold, but the streets are dark enough for me to pass unnoticed. I make my way to Perry's shop.

He looks up as I enter and nods his head in greeting. Perry sells the best equipment in town, but he makes most of his money fencing goods. Every time I come into the shop he's selling less and fencing more.

I spend the money Artemus gave me on everything I think I'll need. To be honest, that's not much. The house in the Docks was two storeys high and narrow. I can probably be in and out again in five minutes.

Once my gear is stowed in my cloak pockets I take to the streets again.

Summer is on its way and the nights are getting shorter and warmer. It's both a good and a bad time for a thief. More people out enjoying the warmer evenings means more empty homes, but the shorter nights mean less time to take advantage. After I'm done in the Docks I'll take a stroll into the richer the areas of the City and see what opportunities present themselves.

I enter the Docks. The streets are busy here and I follow a crowd to the end of the alley and slip in. The guard down the street doesn't see me. I listen at the house door. All is quiet beyond.

I pick the lock easily and let myself in.

I'm expecting a small kitchen, or a little entrance hall, or to walk straight into a living room. I'm not expecting to look down a vast hallway, many times longer and taller than the house is outside. I look twice.

This is going to take longer than I thought.

The house is obviously the realm of a sorcerer. It isn't just the scale of the place that gives it away. The heads of strange beasts, the likes of which I have never seen before, hang on the walls. Paintings so detailed they look like windows into frozen real life hang on the walls. A thick mist covers the floor, ankle deep. It writhes like a living thing, but the breeze from the open door does not disturb it.

Shadowed alcoves line the wall. To my left are some double glass doors, and ahead is a stairway. A small door leads out to the right.

I creep from alcove to alcove, staying in the shadows. I don't know where the Stone will be, so I set out to systematically search the house.

I take the door on the right.

Four featureless rooms later I've found nothing worth stealing and am wondering if tonight is going to be as profitable as I thought.

I reach a corridor that can only be servants' quarters. Eight tiny rooms lead from a narrow corridor. I open each door in turn. There is no sign of people living here, no small personal trinkets or discarded clothes. Even the beds are made neatly, uniformly, with no wrinkles in the faded coverlets.

The mist snakes around my ankles. Out of the corner of my eye I can make out strange moving lumps, things moving under the mist, but when I turn my head they flatten. If that's the worst thing I come across while I am here I'll count it an easy night's work.

Beyond the servants' quarters are two storerooms and a large kitchen. The storerooms are almost empty, but at the kitchen door I pause. A woman stands facing away from me. She methodically cuts something I can't see. She wears a baggy shapeless maid's dress. Her hair is tied in a rough tail. Wisps have escaped and stick out at angles. The fire beyond lights them in a ring of gold around her head.

I watch her closely. She moves away from the bench to a cupboard and I get my first look at her face.

I grimace. Her skin is grey and taut over prominent cheekbones and hollow cheeks. Her eyes are blank, staring absently at nothing. A dirty bandage is wrapped around her neck. Across the front are rusty bloodstains. She looks dead, or close to it. Rather than chance being unable to knock her out I creep past while her back is turned.

This next room seems more promising. A long table is littered with books. Jewel encrusted squat candlesticks light the room. I pinch out the candles and pocket the sticks, leaving just one lit casting enough light to read by.

I leaf through a few books. They seem to be books of spells, in a small curling hand I have to squint to read. I pick up a large tome. Two pages of the almost illegible writing make me put it back but a name catches my eye.

'Star Stone…'

I sit at the table and hold the candle close to the page. This book is a journal. I start at the beginning of the entry that mentions the Stone.

'I beached on Carenole late in the day. I could not restrain myself from beginning the search and went straight to the ruins. Isit here now as the sun goes down, trying to decide which passage to look in first. I may have to wait until the constructs have built the camp and summon one with a torch. I would not want to walk past the Star Stone in the dark.

'I have searched twenty tunnels or more and found nothing. Curse it all! Soon I will be forced to admit that it is not here at all. How can so many sources be wrong? Perhaps it was here in the past and has been found.'

I turn a few more pages.

'Back in the City four days now. I am trying to console myself, but finding the resting place of a Star Stone was my life's work, and now I am back at the beginning again.

'Word came today that a merchant put ashore at Carenole and brought back Keeper Artefacts. How can this be? I saw no sign that he had been there before me. If he was there afterwards, how did he find what I did not? Perhaps he has not got the Star Stone at all. Tonight I will search in Second Level and see what I can find. I need to get my hands on it before the Keepers do. Who knows what power I could wield with that Stone? Yet they would put it in a library and let it gather dust.'

This is the last entry. I put the book down. The other books seem to be more spellbooks and I leave them well alone.

If I had any doubts the Stone was here they are gone now. I make my way through an empty ballroom with an impossibly big glass ceiling and enter the Hall again. The sorcerer must keep his chambers upstairs.

I climb the stairs, keeping to the walls. I enter a hallway. It leads onto an open balcony. Above, around and below is starry night sky, as if nothing else existed in all the world but this circle of stone. I look over the edge, expecting to see the roof of the level below. Nothing is there but stars. I pull back, dizzied.

And I see it. Coming out of one of the two doors in the hallway is a great creature, half machine and half man. I hear the wheeze of pistons powering its legs, smell the foetid dead flesh. Its eyes glow blue in dark hollows. It is around seven feet tall, but it is out of proportion, and though whoever built it knew only roughly what a man should look like. Its limbs are too long, spindly metal arms ending in human hands hanging past its knees. Its torso is short and square, as deep as it is tall and wide. It whirrs and clicks as it walks.

I freeze. I'm covered by shadow but the slightest movement could attract its attention. And somehow it doesn't see me, just carries on through the opposite door. As the door closes behind it all sound of its passing is muffled. I breathe a sigh of relief, but know my job is harder now. As with the woman downstairs, I don't know how to put it out of action and have no time or leisure to experiment. I have to avoid it and hope it follows a set path.

The sudden appearance of this creation has set my heart hammering and I wait until I am calm again before I move. It is one thing creeping past human guards and servants but another to be faced with opponents like that. However, I don't feel the urge to leave. Tonight it is more important than ever to prove my professional quality.

I open the door the construct left through. The room beyond is dark and silent. It has moved on. I close the door behind me.

Low tables line the walls. Several items catch my eye and I move closer to inspect them. But as I reach out my hand to take a golden curved dagger my mechanical eye catches a heat haze shimmer in the air around the table.

I snatch my hand away. Taking a few steps back I string an arrow to my bow, and fire at the table. There is a flash of brilliant light. When I can see clearly again the items beyond are unscathed and my arrow is gone. I shrug and turn away. No use stealing something you won't be alive to sell.

In the next room are racks of clothes. The space is twice as large as my apartment and packed full off clothes. Strong smelling lavender pouches make my nose itch. The space between each rail is barely as wide as my shoulders. I walk down the aisle, inspecting the clothes. They are all expensive, but very bulky and I would be hindered if I tried to steal any of them. As a consolation I take two large diamond brooches from the neck of a purple velvet robe.

The door behind me opens and the construct enters. I drop to the floor, lying on my stomach, and crawl to the nearest wall. The construct walks down the centre aisle, through an archway at the opposite end of the room, and is gone. I breathe again.

The room it went into is far too well lit for my tastes. A fire blazes in the hearth and six torches illuminate the edges of the room. A great four poster bed dominates the centre of the room. The heavy curtains are drawn back, revealing a scarlet covered bed heaped with pillows. It could sleep four people comfortably. The room is dotted with antique furniture. If I could carry it all out of here I could make a fortune.

I douse the torches and make a tour of the room, looking in drawers and cupboards for any valuables. I'm careful before I touch anything to pause and see if I can see the protective shimmer, but there's nothing here. I earn myself a month of good food. I won't be too disappointed if the Star Stone isn't here. Tonight has been profitable enough after all.

The construct enters. I press myself against the wall until it wheezes out again.

The room beyond the bedroom is a vast library. Shelves creaking under the weight of huge books fill the room, stretching to the ceiling many feet above. Between the shelves ahead of me I can just make out a table with two open books. Alone in the expanse of dark blue cloth they draw my eye. The construct will be back soon, so I pick up the books and crouch between two bookcases to read them. The first is a continuation of the journal downstairs, hurriedly scrawled in an otherwise blank book.

'I have the Stone, and I realise my mistake. The Stone itself is powerless, just a rock, without a Keeper to charge it. And so the pieces of this puzzle come together and I realise why the Keepers want it so badly. They have an apprentice unable to stop raising power. She is the true source of the Stone's wealth.'

I could have told him that.

'To have the power I have dreamed of, and indeed far more than I have previously been able to imagine, I need the girl. I can use her to draw a limitless supply of magic. Perhaps here lies the key to the immortality I have always craved. If this is not the key then my last chance is surely gone. Time grows short as I grow older. I need that girl.'

So, the sorcerer wants both Caern and the Star Stone. Well, he'll have to make do with just the girl. If he needs the Stone so badly he can afford to pay a good price for it.

The second book is about the Stone itself. It tells of a great white rock falling from the sky and flattening a Keeper Temple. The surviving Keepers broke it in to small pieces and tried to bury it beneath a glyph. But they found that when the power touched the stone pieces they began to glow. The Keepers quickly realised the value of what they had found. They named the pieces 'Star Stones' because they fell from the stars.

I knew it would be something imaginative like that. I hope the existence of more than one doesn't drive down the price, although the market's hardly flooded. I put the books back where I found them on the table and move on.

The next room is the largest I have been in so far, so large that it could not be built in the real world. The opposite wall stretches out of sight, invisible in the hazy air. About thirty paces from me is a marble altar, white veins of quartz running through pure black. Fat brass censers sit at each corner of the altar, billowing out winding coils of smoke. Around the near edges of the room it is dark but I can make out shadowy shapes, stone gargoyles and heavily carved bookcases. But all this is in my peripheral vision. On the altar is a white stone and my eye is drawn straight to it. It glows, casting a circle of pale radiance around it. I walk to it, take it in my hands. It hums, vibrating gently on my skin. I hide it in the folds of my cloak, dousing its light.

I feel wind on my face, smell the all too familiar reek of the Docks, and look up. On the wall next to the door I came through is a window. Through it I can see the rooftops of the City. I walk closer and look down. Below me is a sloping roof, a long drop and street level. The tiles are slick with rainwater and algae. Rather than risk climbing down I turn to take the stairs. Another door leads of out this room and if my sense of direction has not been confused by this strange place it should lead me to the stairway.

And I realise my mistake. I have lingered too long in here. The construct has come up behind me. It stands in the doorway to the library, eyes blinking. We stare at each other. Its eyes take on a red glow, intensifying steadily.

I leap sideways just as the red beam fires from its eyes. It barely misses me. A wave of blistering air follows in its wake. The construct runs unsteadily to the door I was heading for, cutting me off and blocking my escape. Cursing, I run back the way I came.

I collide with a second construct. It slashes at me with its forearms, cutting my face and chest. Hot pain sears and blood trickles into my mouth and eyes. I push it with all the strength I can muster and it falls back, limbs waving in the air like an upturned beetle. I leap over it. I feel resistance as it grabs my cloak. Cloth tears and I stumble forward with my own momentum but am quickly running again.

I run back the way I came to the top of the stairs. I take them quickly, careless of whether I might fall or how much noise I am making. As I reach the bottom I hear wheezing above. I glance back and see both constructs there.

I weave across the hallway floor, trying not to present them with an easy target. I hear the hiss of scorching air and beams strike around me, burning off the mist in patches. Pain lances through my leg and I falter, reaching out to grab at the door handle.

I fall out of the door and limp for the gates to South Quarter. Only as I reach them do I risk a glance behind me. The street is empty.

I creep back to my apartment. I was in the sorcerer's house longer than I thought and dawn is breaking over the horizon. The streets are busy with early workers. I wipe the worst of the blood from my face so that I don't stand out, and I try not to limp too much.

Once in my apartment I peel off my cloak and throw it on the table. I put my equipment and everything in my pockets beside it, then put the cloak over them.

Wincing and swearing, I take off my shirt. Drying blood has stuck it to my chest and it tears at my wounds agonisingly. I bring the pail of water the landlord has left outside and clean off the worst of the blood. A dull trickle oozes from the scratches but it soon stops. I look at myself in the mirror ruefully. A pretty face is not a requirement for a thief, fortunately.

I put on a clean shirt and carefully roll down my leggings. My thigh throbs dully. I fear the worst but the wound is shallow and cauterised. Whatever that construct shot at me sealed the gash instantly. There is a burnt hole in my leggings. I throw them on my pile of clothes to mend and put some whole ones on. I sit back in my chair, tired but still too full of adrenaline to go to sleep.

A few minutes later the door opens. I leap to my feet, expecting to see the constructs, but instead Artemus walks in.

'You've got it,' he says. It isn't a question.

I nod.

'I need that Stone, Garrett.'

'I need to eat.'

He laughs mirthlessly. 'So you want to play it that way.'

I lift up the corner of my cloak on the table, revealing the Star Stone beneath. It illuminates Artemus licking his lips. Show a man what he's bargaining for and he'll let greed get in the way.

'Tell me what you want for it. Name your price.'

I raise an eyebrow. 'Any price?'

'Yes, damn you, Garrett. Any price. You can have free run of the City. We'll teach you glyphs that will hide you from all but the most powerful Keepers. I'll give you your own bodyweight in gold. Just give me the Stone!' He's shouting, and pauses to wipe spittle from his lips.

I allow myself a small smile. You should never show emotion when bargaining but I can't help myself. Any price?

I think hard. What is it that I want the most?

Artemus scowls. The air around me shimmers and warms. I am sucked backwards, through my floor and into Second Level. Above I see Artemus smile. He waves the Stone at me triumphantly and is gone.