Part 3: On a Timeout

Minutes seemed to roll into hours and the longer I stood against the wall, the more tortured I felt. I wondered how long Costa planned to keep me like this. He seemed to have a thing against thieves; perhaps he planned to keep me here for a few days to try and teach me a lesson. Or maybe he wasn't going to let me go at all. He could have been plotting to take my power and push me into the arms of the Baron's Watch. After he called the guards at the Bertellis, wouldn't be surprised if that's what he really planned to do.

I struggled for a bit to test the strength of my restraints. The shackles were solidly fixed into the wall and the belt barely moved. My head and feet weren't chained down but with my arms how they were, I wasn't going anywhere. All I could really do was stare down at my boots and shake the burs off my pants that must have attached themselves to me when I fell in that bed of grass.

Being unable to move gave me too much time to think. I started to wonder if my anger towards the Queen of Beggars was misplaced. She had always been helpful to me in her own way, but she did get me killed, and now I was sure I was being held prisoner because of her.

That wasn't what upset me, though. I put so much trust in her advice over the years and I was angry at myself for it. She wasn't always there for me but when I did talk to her, she seemed to have the right comment to lead me in an interesting direction. Maybe that was her subtle way of getting me to learn the things I saw in that book. It would make sense; after all, she couldn't have actually taught me any of the skills I'd developed. Not at her age.

Thinking along those lines made me wonder if she ever knew these skills herself at one point. Just who was she before she became the Queen of Beggars? She always looked old to me but she had to have been a young woman once, like the one who chased me down. I tried to imagine her doing things like that and chuckled quietly to myself. I was definitely going stir crazy from being pinned against the wall for so long.

My eyes were starting to be affected by the passage of time. I thought I saw the burs dancing around on the floor.

They were dancing. Three of them were moving in circles in front of my feet. When their circles brought them together, they broke open and twisted into a vine that reached out and wrapped around my right leg. I tried to shake it off but that just gave it the traction to grow upwards and work its way to my hips.

I thought about calling for help, until I watched the path this plant was traveling. It coiled around the iron belt and wrapped a tendril around the pin that kept the belt in place. As it continued to grow, the pin was pulled up and away. Someone was trying to free me. I didn't know anyone who had power over plant life, but I was glad for the assist. If Costa really meant to let me leave here, he wouldn't have left me in such an uncomfortable position.

The vine made its way up the right side of my torso, settling on different parts of my leather and eventually winding around my right arm. By then, it began to grow sweet-smelling flowers from stems that wouldn't normally be on a plant like this. The stems on the flowers started to grow thorns once it reached my wrist. The stem closest to my palm grew a black thorn so long and thick it might as well have been a lockpick.

I was able to get my fingers around it and with a little effort, the spike snapped right off the stem. Yes. The lock on the first cuff took time but once my right hand was free, the left was barely a factor. I pushed out of the belt and brushed the vine from my body. All I had to do now was get out of the dungeon and I could send myself back home.

I glanced at the floor and saw the vine changing again. Its tendrils and stems dissolved into a bed of moss that crept towards the door of my cell, leaving another blackened thorn behind. This one had a curved tip that was appropriate for digging into more advanced locks. I used it to open the cell door and watched the moss travel to a storage room down the hall. Somehow it wasn't leaving a trail; all of the moss that could have been left behind withered into dust in its wake. I followed it out of curiosity and found myself stepping into the room where all my equipment had been stored.

The patch of moss politely waited while I put everything back where it belonged on my person. "After you," I told it once I was done. I must have been losing my mind all over again.

We made our way up a flight of stairs and moved down a hallway in a building made of marble. There were a lot of pillars and open doorways but I wasn't inclined to do any sight-seeing, especially when I could hear Costa's voice through one of them. The mossy patch moved right past the room he was in. I started to duck past the door but when I heard the Queen of Beggars' voice, I stopped to listen in on the conversation.

"It's not right to keep him like this, Costa. Whatever his crimes, they are out of your jurisdiction. Send him back to The City."

"Not like he is. Not with what he can do, and I don't mean his grand theft."

I knew Costa never meant to release me, though from the sound of things my business practices were only part of his issue with me. I glanced through the doorway and saw that his back was conveniently turned in my direction. The Queen of Beggars was facing me, which meant for the time being I was practically invisible.

She told him, "He is needed, I don't care what your opinion is of him."

"He refuses the responsibility and unlike our predecessors, we can't afford to humor this Garrett's unwillingness. There are no prophecies left to tell us if he'll eventually come around. You have to find someone else to transfer his power to."

"No one is better born for this than Garrett. He should keep the power he absorbed. It is as much a part of him as it is a part of The City."

"That would be very unwise. You did not see him draw above the door with his bare hand, and tearing away the primal ink of a glyph? It is a lost art, known only to the pages of books I doubt I'll be able to salvage from the old library. If left unchecked, there is no telling what disaster he may achieve."

It felt good knowing that Costa saw me as dangerous. He never seemed to have any fear in him, but I wanted him to be afraid of me.

I was also surprised by how much the Queen of Beggars stood up for me in this conversation. If it was possible for them to take my power and give it to someone else, it wouldn't be hard for her to find a replacement. For her own reasons, she still wanted me. She probably didn't want all that time she spent leading me around by my curiosity to go to waste.

"Enough," Costa said in his barking tone. "We can't waste anymore time planting seeds of wishful thinking! You called me to help you resolve this matter and that is what I am doing. Find someone else, and once we have transferred his power into a more willing participant, your pet thief can go free."

What a taffer. I wanted to sneak in there and knock him over the head just to make myself feel better, but then I looked down and noticed that a vine had grown up from the moss and wrapped around my forearm. It was trying to tug me forward like a child.

I took one last look through the doorway and saw that the Queen of Beggars was staring right at me. Not that she could actually see me, but something told me that she knew I was there. She made that same subtle hand gesture she made when I was a ghost—to signal me that it was time to move on—then extended a hand to Costa so he would be compelled to escort her to a table in a far corner of the room. Perhaps it was time for me to forgive her after all.

"There may be someone else I can call on," she told him. "Come, sit with me while I think for a moment."

"All right, but try to think of someone who is not a criminal. I swear, you are far too attached to the unlawful."

The moss migrated to an open window at the end of the hall. It evolved into a vine again but grew thicker and stronger as it trailed down the outside wall. I took the hint and used it to climb down to the streets.

It was nighttime in Costa's city, which meant no one would see me or the vine that now withered and dropped dead from the wall. It left behind three burs like the ones that had stuck to me in the first place. When I reached down to pick them up, my hand nearly touched a pair of bare feet that approached me. They belonged to a heavily-tattooed boy wearing only a loincloth. Interesting. He held out his hand and I passed the seeds to him for no other reason than I assumed they were his.

A woman with wild hair stepped out of the shadows next, gripping a staff that was embellished with natural trinkets. She reached into the folds of her green robe and took out a stick that had a creature's talon attached to it. After saying something I couldn't understand, she cut the air behind her with the talon and tore a gaping hole in the fabric of reality. There was no better way to describe it than that. The boy took me by the hand and lead me towards it. Considering the fact that they had just helped me escape one of the worst sleeping positions I'd ever been in, I decided to step through the tear and see what I'd be doing to repay the favor.