Summer in Xhorhas is pretty much as wet and grey as the rest of the year. Nott has not learned to hate it yet, but she’s getting there.
She’s standing out of the rain, staring up at a locked door in the compound they’re supposed to be scouting for Wacco. She could unlock the door — easily — but something has caught her eye that’s making her hesitate. It’s etched into the upper door frame, stark white against the low light.
“Wacco said this belonged to a shady guild, right?” Jester is saying in the back somewhere. “I wonder if there’s any loot.”
For once, talk of loot isn’t piquing Nott’s interest. She squints at the interesting Something above her and makes a very quick decision.
“Jester! Watch my stuff,” she squawks, and then her satchel is discarded and she’s crawling up the wall.
“Wha-?” But Nott is already perched on the small lip above the door, hanging her head down to peer at the Something. She’s vaguely aware of Jester drifting forward to look too, but she knows she won’t be able to parse what Nott’s looking at.
A line of small symbols are carved into the underside of the top jamb, highlighted with faded white paint. Their translations come slowly but clearly to Nott’s mind.
Kin of the shade. Turn back. Danger within.
And then there’s a symbol Nott is acutely familiar with, a circle with a slashed X running through the center.
Foolish mark. Unwise heist. The reward is not worth the risk.
It’s Thieves’ Cant: the patchwork language of rogues.
“Wow.” Nott gives a low whistle and skitters back down to the ground, landing silently in her toes like a cat. Jester is staring at her with an excited expression, while Caduceus does his Caduceus thing where he just stares and doesn’t look like he’s listening.
“What did you find, Nott?”
“A message from the guild,” Nott says, dusting off her dress. “I think they wanted to warn fellow criminals about danger.”
“Why would they do that?” Jester asks.
“Honour among thieves and all that, I suppose,” Nott muses. “That room has them worried.”
“Or what’s in it,” Caduceus says, because he had been listening after all. The three of them fall into uneasy silence, broken by the sound of a crash from a few rooms over.
Weapons are drawn immediately, but are just as quickly lowered when the crash and ensuing shouts of their companions subside into the muffled tones of a bickering argument. Par for the course.
“I’ll go see what this is about,” Caduceus says. “You stay here.”
He vacates the room, leaving Jester and Nott to their own devices, or rather, leaving Nott to Jester’s. Blue hands are clamped on her shoulders in an instant.
“What is that cah-raaaazy language, Nott!?” Jester squawks. “Is it just for goblins? Or all thieves and stuff?”
“A-all criminal folk, I suppose.”
“I didn’t know criminals had a language!”
Nott is hesitant to say we , but she says it anyway. “We do, but, uh, it’s not a very traditional language.”
“Could I speak it?”
“It’s not just words, Jessie,” she says, putting a little green hand on Jester’s larger blue one. “It’s symbols, signs, whistles.... other stuff, too.”
Privately, Nott gives Jester’s question some more thought. Out of all of the Nein - even Caleb and Beau with their human knack for languages — Jester would probably be the one who’d suit Thieves’ Cant the most. She’s tricksy; Nott can picture her clambering up to hard to reach alcoves, painting the language of rogues in her swirling, loopy script with her bright paints. It’s a fun image.
“Where did you learn it?” Jester asks, releasing Nott from her grip.
“You really wanna know?” Jester nods. Nott smiles.
“Okay," she begins slowly. "It was the middle of summer…”
Summers in Felderwin are uniquely hot and despite living their her whole life, Veth hates it. She’s had a lot of time to learn.
She’s standing outside the apothecary, wedged underneath the door in the small shade offered by their thin awnings. The entire building is open, with all the windows and doors flung wide to let the day’s sparse breeze filter through — flutter the curtains — rustle the dropcloths — dry the new paint on the new walls.
The apothecary is new , and Veth can’t go in yet. So, she’s relagated herself to lounging by the back door in the blessed shade.
“Sweetheart!” Yeza calls from the other side of the building. They’re split up, manning both entrances to the house to stop the neighbourhood kids from running through.
“Yes?!” Veth calls back, her voice will carry easily through the nice oak walls.
“Micah just arrived! He says you’re wanted down at Jorgen’s!”
Oh. Damn. That means she has to move. Veth sighs, and peels herself off the wall and out of her shelter. Immediately her skin begins to prickle with the heat, and she grumbles as she wanders around to the front.
She tries to look grumpy as she rounds the corner. Yeza is standing under his own awning, talking to a very sunburned human boy in a big straw hat.
“Why am I wanted at Jorgen’s?” She says, as a way of announcing her presence.
Micah, the young human who works at the general store, shrugs. Then, remembering his manners, he tips his large straw hat to her. “I-I dunno, Mrs. Brenatto. He just says he’s needing your help with the crates.”
Veth and Yeza share a glance. Jorgen and his partner, Roland, are traders, responsible for supplying the general store (and now their store… wow that’s weird) with out-of-town goods. Jorgen is a tough man - capable. What he wants Veth’s help for they can’t even begin to guess.
“You all good if I leave?” Veth asks softly.
“Please,” Yeza says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “The alternative is literally watching paint dry.”
She smiles. “Got it.”
It does not take long to get to Jorgen’s. Felderwin is small and Veth is fast. Jorgen’s storage barn — where he receives his goods — is located on the edge of town, but she can get there quick as anything.
The sun is blistering. As she approaches, Veth sees a cart parked outside, halfway through the process of being unloaded, but no Jorgen. She sighs; It’s too hot out for this nonsense.
She’s just about to call out for him when a deep voice rings from behind her.
“Veth! I’m glad you’re here.” Veth’s ears prick up at that; it’s not something she hears often.
She turns on her heel to see Jorgen approaching from a nearby garden shed. He’s a dwarf and he’s taller than her by about a foot. Though he is imposing with his big red beard and tattered left ear, he’s not an unkind man. Veth doesn’t shrink away.
“Nice to see you, Jorgen,” she greets, straightening out her rumpled skirts. “Micah said you called into town for me.”
Jorgen grunts, and then looks her up and down, as if appraising her. “Your man said you’re handy with picks. That true?”
It takes her a moment to catch his meaning. Picks? Oh! Lockpicks. The thin sticks of metal feel heavy in her apron pocket.
“Uh, yeah. Sort of.” She worries the toe of her boot into the dirt. “Not really. I dabble.”
“I’m gonna ignore the fact that’s four answers.” Jorgen turns and kicks one of the crates on the ground by the cart. “Can you open this?”
Veth ducks around to get a look at the one he means. It’s smaller than the others being unloaded — though it’s made of the same pale wood. The only real thing that sets it apart from the others is the thick bands of metal wrapped in a criss-cross pattern around its entire surface.
“Wow,” Veth says, giving a low whistle. “That’s locked tight.”
Jorgen taps the front on the crate, where an ornate metal lock is woven into the criss-cross metal. “We got the other locks off but we’re thinking this is the lynchpin. It’s harder to crack than the others. Can you unlock it?”
Veth hums and pulls the picks out of her apron. “I can certainly try.”
She had learned to pick as a child. She had a knack for fiddly things and a penchant for collecting, two traits that had turned her childhood bedroom into a minefield of little trinkets and contraptions and sharp things.
She’d found the first lockpicks when she was eight, and had managed to amass an entire collection by the time she was twelve. She had a hearty collection of locks already, but she didn’t learn to pick them properly until she was fifteen.
It was just something to do, just something to fiddle with. It’s not a talent, she thinks, no matter what Yeza says.
(Even if she is a little proud of it.)
It takes all of ten seconds for her picks jam in the lock.
“Shit,” she hisses. She hears Jorgen’s disappointed grunt and her heart sinks. Her eyes flick around to the spaces around the locks, wondering if something is interfering, or she’s done something wrong…
There’s a small symbol by the lock, carved lightly into the wood.
“What is this?” She asks, tapping the little engraving. It’s a circle with a rough, downwards-pointing chevron shape slashed through it. It’s very small, and Veth thinks she probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been right up at eye-level with the lock.
“Thieves’ Cant,” Jorgen says.
“Thieves can’t what?”
“No. Thieves’ Cant. It’s a language smugglers and shit use.”
Veth traces the delicate symbol with her finger. “What’s it mean?”
“Roland said ones like these are for directions. Don’t ask me how he knows that. This one means down.”
Down. Down. Down. The word twists and turns in Veth’s mind. It twists and turns like the motions of her picks. Picks that won’t work. Unless…
Veth kneels down next to the lock and draws her picks again. They find purchase in the mechanism easily, but there is immediate resistance when she tries to move the pins. Of course, she thinks now, I’m not following instructions.
Veth is no locksmith, but she knows the general trend with most picking processes is to raise the pins. That’s just how keys work. Except, maybe, the ones that don’t. Veth twists the picks so she can hook the pins from below, and she works them downwards.
After a long time — in which Jorgen leaves and comes back again with an ale — the lock clicks. Veth can’t hold back her exuberant cry.
“Well shine my shoes and call me the King,” Jorgen chuckled. “Yeza was right about you!”
Veth blushes under the compliment. “What’s in the box?”
“‘Fraid that’s for me to know and you to, uh, not know, Veth.” Jorgen pries the top open and Veth has to physically hold herself back from peeking. “But there might be something in it for you.”
He digs around for a moment before producing a small, semi-translucent fabric bag. He passes it to Veth, delicately, and she looks inside to see a little blown-glass sculpture of a bird about the size of her palm. Her breath catches in her throat.
“I can’t take this, Jorgen,” she says softly.
“Nonsense. Consider it a housewarming gift, and a thank you.”
Veth beams, gently pocketing the little bird into her front apron pocket. She has one more thing she’d like to ask before she leaves for real.
“You said Roland knew some Thieves’ Cant?”
“Aye,” Jorgen says. “Keeps it in a little journal.”
“Do you think I could borrow that journal?”
Jorgen looks at her for a long moment, and then his face splits into a smile. “You’re a funny one Veth. Sure thing, I’ll go in and ask him.”
A few hours later, Veth is leaning against the back door of her new apothecary, flicking through notes on a language she’s never seen before.
It’s a lot more interesting than watching paint dry.
Caduceus returns with Beauregard, Fjord, Caleb, and someone else. Beau is carrying a struggling kobold, who thrashes under her arm wrapped in a baggy, overlarge cloak.
“Stop squawking,” Beau hisses at it.
All three of them look a little worse for wear, clothes rumpled and dirt (more than usual at least) smeared over their coats, as if they’d all fallen over. They’re also sporting scratches — Beau has the most; thin lines dashing up her exposed arms, but Caleb and Fjord each have long scrapes, on the face and collarbone respectively.
Nott snarls at that. “Are you-”
Caleb holds up a hand, and it’s weirdly not condescending coming from him. “We are okay, Nott. Just a tussle with the local pickpocket, I think.”
“It tried to steal from us when we were investigating the next room,” Fjord explains. “Came at us with a knife when we caught it.”
“Just wasn’t as sneaky as you, Nott,” Beau chuckled. The kobold squirmed under her arm, but it didn’t even look like it was phasing her.
Nott spluttered. “It came at you with a KNIFE?”
“These are all just scratches,” Caleb says, gesturing to the thin red line on his own face, then to Beau and Fjord. “From claws. They’re fine.”
“Actually I think this one was a knife,” Beau says, pointing to a cut on her shoulder.
“Wait, really?”
“Anyway ,” Fjord says, cutting off his two fellow kobold victims. “It won’t talk to us, but we bet it knows things. We’re not sure if it doesn’t understand us or if it’s just… being difficult.”
Nott quirks an eyebrow and all the little pieces begin to fit together.
“A thief, huh?” She says, skittering over to Beau. “Put him down.”
Beau obliges after a moment’s hesitation. Nott wastes no time grabbing the lapel of the suspiciously too-big cloak and turning it over, examining the lining. The kobold squirms.
The inner lining of the cloak is embossed with a repeating symbol. A swirling, fluid symbol of intersecting slashes and quick lines. An emblem. One she didn’t learn from Roland’s books and her own dumb luck. No… this one she learned from stories — ones whispered around campfires by goblin thieves more far-travelled and world-knowing than her.
It makes her stomach do a little flip, and not the good kind.
“Who’d you steal this from?” She asks.
The kobold knocks its knuckles against its chest.
“No. It’s not yours . It’s too big for you.”
The kobold repeats the action.
“I have a hard time believing you’re a member of the Clasp.” This earns a strangled choke from Beau, undoubtedly recognizing the name.
“They wrote that.” She points at the symbols above the door. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
Nothing.
Nott narrows her eyes.
She holds her hands out loosely in front of her, palms down, then flips them out, palms up. She brings her index fingers together, pointing to the ground, and traces a square in the air. She nods to the door for good measure.
Nott ignores the strange looks she’s getting and focuses on the thief.
The kobold huffs, and for a moment Nott thinks he won’t answer, but then he clicks his tongue three times and holds his little clawed hands out in fists, tapping its inner wrists together.
“Oh,” says Nott. “It says it’s where they kept prisoners.”
“Is it empty?” Beau asks. “You said the Clasp, right? Nott, that’s fucking cra-”
Nott turns back to the kobold and clicks her tongue twice. Its eyes snap back to her, and while she has its attention she pinches her index finger and thumb together and sweeps them in a wide circle in front of her chest. She nods to the room — the prison.
It taps an open palm to its chest, then brings it up to cut an imaginary line across its throat.
“It could be lying,” Nott says. “But it says everyone is dead. So yeah. Empty.”
“Hopefully,” Fjord mutters. “This place is creepy enough as is.”
“Maybe there’s loot though!!” Jester squeaks, as one-track minded as ever.
Beau cracks her staff down on the ground, bouncing on her heels with nervous energy. “Cool cool cool cool. Can we please go back to the fact the Clasp were apparently here? In fucking Xhorhas ? Tal’Dorei’s, like, here-” she gestures to the left of an invisible map “-and we’re like, here.” She mimes to the bottom right. “That’s just… way too far to travel to not be up to something.”
Caleb frowns. “It's not that far. The world is not shaped like a map , you know. It is rou-”
“I will fucking neck you, Widogast,” Beau hisses. “They’re a fucking thieves’ guild . If Wacco knew this she was purposefully withholding information. What if they’re still here? What if they left traps?”
Nott has already left the conversation and skittered over to the door to the prison. She lets the argument fade into the background, feeling the pins and tumblers inside bob and turn and twist at her gentle nudging. Her eyes skirt the outside of the lock, instinctively looking for any Cant symbols that may indicate a shortcut for the picking process.
(She does that for every lock she picks. She’s done it every time since that hot summer day in Felderwin.)
Not for the first time, she wonders what kind of business Jorgen and Roland had been up to.
After about 20 seconds, the picks click easily into the lock, breaking the background argument into silence. The door creaks as it opens inwards an inch, a rich darkness almost oozing from the other side. Nott turns back to the group.
“Are we going in or what?”
Unwise heist? Really? The Mighty Nein are many things, but wise has never been one of them.
They head in. Because that’s what they do.