Peri walked aimlessly from place to place, looking around at the revelry and occasionally joining in. She watched a gypsy man swallow a sword, for once not trying to explain it and just enjoying the show. After all, tonight was a night for magic. The man, short and mousey-haired, slowly drew the steel blade out of his mouth and, once the tip was clear, he waved it in the air, drawing cheers and few crowns out of the crowd. He bowed theatrically and tossed the sword to a small, ratty boy standing off to the side. The watchers gasped, then applauded when the boy caught the twirling metal easily by the handle. Glancing at the darkening sky, Peri slipped away from the show and began to make her way back to the square.
Along the way she passed a vendor selling fireworks and, on a whim, she bought some, not really sure what she would do with them. She slipped the explosives into her cloak pocket and felt the pearl handle of her dagger, an old family heirloom from her absent parents. Peri's mood plummeted at the thought of them. She could still see the day they left, even though she had only been five. The tears staining her mother's cheeks as her only child clung sobbing to the hem of her dress. The anger in the ophanage woman's eyes as she dragged her away, tossing her to the ground. The cloud of dust left behind when Peri lifted her head again. Gone, just like that.
Peri tripped over something lying in the street and she barely caught her balance in time. She glanced back at the object and realized it was a person, drunk and passed out in the middle of the street. She rolled her eyes in disgust and strode away, swearing for the billionth time never to get drunk enough to humiliate herself like that.
She reached the square just past sunset and casually leaned against the clocktower building, studying the Lodge from across the square and, more importantly, the buildings around it. None of them were close enough to the Lodge for her to safely leap across, but nothing about this job was safe. Might as well get some adrenaline rush out of it. She decided the town hall would be the shortest jump and straightened. She meandored across the square, pausing from time to time to join in the festivities so she didn't look suspicious. Well, any more suspicious than she already looked with her black cloak and hidden face. Maybe she should have left that at home? Ah, well, too late now. Peri finally reached the town hall and slipped inside with hardly a sound.
Inside, the town hall was dark and empty, a slap of sanity after the chaos outside. Peri took a moment to settle herself, breathing in, then out, and set off towards the stairs in the far back corner of the room. She passed a few empty rooms, offices for big officials who were probably out drinking at this moment, making fools of themselves. Peri resisted the urge to snoop around; she needed to stay focused. Reluctantly, she kept going, reaching the stairs and taking them slowly, testing each surface before putting her full weight on it. She never knew who might be in here, and a random creak would definitely raise the alarm. But she made it up the stairs safely and stepped out onto the second floor. Now she had to get to the roof.
Peri scanned the dark room to make sure no one was up here watching and went to a window in the side of the building that opened into the the alley between the Lodge and town hall. Before she eased them open, she reached into her cloak and drew out a vial of grease she kept for situations like this. She dabbed a couple drops on each hinge and stowed the vial back in her cloak. She popped the lock on the window and slowly pushed it open, flinching at the slightest squeak and waiting for minutes at a time before moving again. After a while, she had the windows wide open and lying flat against the outer wall of the building. Peri stuck her head out and glanced up and down the alley to make sure she didn't have an audience, then stepped up onto the windowsill. With practiced ease, she siezed the frame and swung herself out of the window, her free hand finding an impossible handhold in the stone. She braced her feet against the stones and hauled herself upwards, scaling the wall in a matter of seconds, finding purchase in the tiniest of cracks. By the time she reached the roof, her fingers were aching and it hurt to flex them, but she had made it and that was another section completed. She pulled the rest of her body over the edge and lay flat against the tiles, her cloak spread across her body.
Suddenly, the space between the two buildings seemed impossibly far, and the drop seemed all to real.
"Deep breaths," Peri murmured, her voice barely above silence.
She laid there for five hundred heartbeats, then rose and backed up five steps from the edge. She took one last breath to steady herself and broke into a loping run, picking up speed with each stride. The gap approached with frightening suddenness, but Peri refused to let herself chicken out. She'd leaped much farther than the distance between the buildings. It was only the dizzying drop that she would experience if she failed that- NO. Don't think about it, she chastised herself, and launched herself across the void. She threw her arms wide, for a moment feeling like a bird in the wind, the cloak her wings. And then her foot landed on the roof of the Lodge, the shock traveling up her leg. Her right leg wasn't so lucky and it dropped with nothing to support it, slamming into the wall. Peri's weight pitched backwards and she lunged forward, clawing at the barren surface and just barely dragging her leg up onto the roof before she lost her balance completely. She flopped down on the cool surface, her breath coming in heaves as her heartrate started to slow.
"Why couldn't they just stick a nice, sturdy bridge right there?" she panted in between colorful swearing. "Make it a little easier for me."
Before long, she had to get up and keep going, because the longer she sat here on the roof, the more she risked discovery. She rose to her feet and made her way silently across the flat surface, searching for the door the Riders used to get up here. A chilly wind ripped through the still night air, and Peri's head jerked up, searching the skies for dragons. She didn't see any, but that didn't mean they weren't up there, watching, warning their Riders of a strange presence just above their heads. Peri picked up the pace, her keen eyes sweeping around the space. And then she saw it.
Small, wooden, and sloppily disguised, the door was so obvious that she was surprised she hadn't noticed it before. She went over to the trapdoor, which was set in the center of the Lodge's roof. A sleek handle was attached to the sturdy wood, but there was no sign of a lock. Before she tried the door, she laid down flat on the roof, pressing her ear to the wood and straining for sounds of people or elves. Peri could make out voices, but they were muffled and, thankfully, not in the room below her, so she sat up and wrapped one hand around the cool metal, easing it open just a crack. No one cried out in alarm, so she lifted the trapdoor higher, revealing a tiny set of stairs that descended into a dark, empty room.
"No turning back now," Peri breathed to herself, barely making any sound at all.
With that, she stepped onto the stair case and closed the trapdoor above her head, sealing her fate.
Peri slunk down the stairs, eyes straining for movemen in the shadowed gloom of the room. Shapes sprang out from the black, distorted by the lack of light, and she couldn't tell what they were until she moved closer. She carefully explored the room, making sure she knew the exact layout of all the furniture in case she needed to make a hasty escape. She found that the room was mostly empty except for a book shelf in the far right corner and a table covered in papers in the far left, which made memorizing it a heck of a lot easier. There was only one door out of the room and it was directly in between the bookshelf and the table, so she crept over to it and pressed her ear to it, listening intently for any signs of people on the other side.
"Come on, Dareth, you can't sit up here alone while everyone else is having fun." Peri recognized the friendly voice of Iridessa.
"Watch me." That would be Dareth. Such a charming man.
"The whole point of being here is to make nice with the people of Algaësia, not hide in the Lodge as often as you can."
"I'm not hiding! I could go outside and celebrate for hours if I wanted to." There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor and footsteps as Dareth left the room. Moments later, Peri could hear his footsteps clumping down the stairs, maybe a little too loudly. Iridessa's softer footsteps soon followed, right out the front doors of the Lodge and into the night. What luck! Peri felt like celebrating, but she couldn't lose focus now. She carefully nudged the door open and peered inside.
The room, like the one she had just come from, was mostly empty save for a table surrounded by four chairs, except this one was lit by an unnatural ball of swirling flame that hovered in the center of the table, casting flickering shadows across the walls. Mesmerized, Peri walked towards it, leaning in close to see each individual tongue of fire. Suddenly she realized it gave off no heat, and she frowned. The flames lost their appeal, and Peri turned her back on them, searching the rest of the room for signs of the elaborate chest that held her prize. Finding nothing in that room, she moved on to the next one, emerging at the top of a flight of stairs that led straight down to the front door. The hallway extended to her left and to her right, with about five doors in each direction. Peri was debating which direction she would search when a door on her right creaked open. Peri quickly stepped out of the doorway, where her shadow would be visible thanks to the strange ball of cold fire, and shrunk down into a crouch.
A servant emerged from the open door down the hall, holding a large object in his arms that, despite its size, seemed very light. Peri tipped her head in curiosity, but remained still, flattening herself to the wall. As the servant started down the hall towards her, she prayed he wouldn't suspect any intruders and therefore wouldn't be looking for any. On the outside she was frozen in place, her breath silent, but inside her heart hammered in her chest.
The servant, a boy of about fifteen, a few years younger than Peri, kept walking, oblivious to the heart attack he was giving a certain thief only a few steps away, whistling happily. The sound grated on Peri's already frayed nerves, but at least it covered the sound of her breathing and any other noises she might accidentally make. When the boy reached the stairs, he turned and walked down to the first floor, still whistling, leaving Peri alone again. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and rose, smirking a little. If you stayed below or above eyelevel, you were less likely to be spotted. She'd learned that early in her career. The darkness helped too.
Steadying herself, Peri turned to gaze down the hall the servant boy had come from, and nodded to herself. The Lodge staff wouldn't be cleaning an empty room, so Dareth and Iridessa were probably staying in one of the rooms down the right hall. Without any further thought, Peri crept down the dimly lit hallway, making for the half-open door the servant boy had emerged from and slipping inside.
Like the rest of the Lodge, the room Peri stood in was mostly empty, the only furniture being a bed, bookshelf, desk, and a chest that sat at the foot of the plain wooden bed. Peri looked closer at the chest but was disappointed to find that it was a simple oak one used for storing clothes. She checked it anyway, sifting carefully through the few garments that lay inside. From the looks of them, they were Dareth's clothes, with a definite elvish flare to them. Once she had deamed the chest empty of dragon eggs, Peri shut the lid softly and searched the rest of the room. She found a sword and sheath, both the same shade as Freida's scales, but she left them where they were. The rest of the room yielded the same results: nothing. Biting back a sigh of frustration, Peri slipped out of the room, careful to leave to door exactly as she had found it.
After a quick scan of the halls, Peri moved to another door and cracked it open, but this room truly was empty, with no signs of anyone living in it. She gave it a quick search and moved on, crossing the hall to the room opposite the empty one. This one was empty too, and the next, and the next. With two doors unexplored, Peri was getting anxious. What if Iridessa and Dareth came back before she could find the eggs? They'd probably kill her, or worse. With newfound urgency, Peri peaked into the next room.
She let out a disappointed breath as she scanned the space, and shifted her weight to pull the door closed, when the moonlight coming in through the stained glass window sparked off of something and caught Peri's eye. Hardly daring to believe it, Peri opened the door all the way and stepped inside, closing it behind her. She crossed the room, made her way around the simple bed, and stopped, eyes fixed on the hynotizing patterns that decorated the box's surface.
It was just as beautiful as it had been earlier, maybe even more so, with the colored light of the moon reflecting off its jeweled surface. Peri reached out with one hand, which trembled with the weight on this moment, and placed her palm on the chest's lid, running her fingers along the smooth metal and sharp edges of the gems. She might have stayed there forever, except for a loud bang in the street as a firework jetted into the sky, exploding above her and jarring her out of the trance this box put her in. She blinked and pulled her hand back, then set to work trying to open the chest.
It was locked, that much was clear, but there was no keyhole visible, which presented a problem. Peri couldn't pick a lock if she couldn't see it. She placed one hand on the top of the chest for support and leaned down, peering at the sides of the boz, when she heard the faintest click. Sitting up sharply, she removed her hand and siezed the lid, but when she pulled up, the box remained locked.
"Huh," she murmured, sitting back on her heels. "I could have sworn…" Her eyes drifted along the top of the box and came to rest on one jewel that was bigger than the rest, an enormous blue sapphire polished smoothly into a round oval. She looked closer at it, driven by a feeling in her gut, and she spotted a smudge on it… from her hand. Her eyebrows shot up and she touched it again, listetning carefully. Silence.
"Of course, since you're already touched it."
She searched the box again and found two other gems like the sapphire; big, round, and smooth. One was a blazing red ruby and the other was crystal clear, a diamond. Peri touched her hand to the ruby and was rewarded with a barely audible click. She felt a surge of hope and reached out towards the third and final jewel. The instant her fingers touched the smooth surface, a click resounded, louder than the rest, and the sound of gears working came from inside the chest. When the sound stopped, the box sat there, looking the same as it had when she'd found it. Cautiously, she grabbed the edges of the lid and lifted, and to her surprise and delight, it swung open on silent hinges, revealing the treasures inside. Peri could hardly breath as she examined its contents.
There were three eggs, nestled in a bed of wool, and strapped into place so that they didn't bump around, and Peri was amazed at the variety of colors. One was a soft shade of lilac, with spidery veins of black streaking through it, another was a midnight blue with silvery specks, and the last was a simple creamy white. Instinctively, Peri reached for the blue egg, then snatched her hand back.
Which egg would Smoke want? Again she reached out for the midnight egg, but a feeling a lot like nausea hit her at the thought of handing that egg over to him. Instead, she moved to pick up the cream egg, when, inexplicably, she found herself running her fingers along the midnight egg's leather restraints. No, not that one, she thought firmly at her body, but even then her mind's voice was growing weaker. The cream one, it called from afar, but Peri couldn't make herself listen. She seemed to fall deeper and deeper into the egg's murky depths, until she realized her forehead was inches from the shiny surface. Sit up, she commanded herself, but her body did the opposite, and she touched her forehead to the blue egg, eyes open wide.
As her forehead met the cool shell of the silver-flecked egg, the world shrunk to just her and the egg. Her heartbeat pounded in her chest and her breath came in desperate gasps, like she'd just run across the city at a dead run. Something shifted in her mind, some unknown part she hadn't been aware of before, and feelings that weren't hers invaded her mind. Happy… found her… Rider.. mine… The fragmented thoughts came faster and faster, blurring until Peri couldn't understand them anymore and her head hurt with trying. She tried to pull away, but some unknown force held her in place, unable to move. All of a sudden, the torrent ended and one thought boomed above the others, echoing in her mind.
Her name. Peri.
Peri's eyes rolled back in her head and she fell back, hitting the floorboards with a muffled thump as she lost consciousness.