A Tale of Yalerion

Aewen Wael took the job in Scornubel because he was unknown there.  In Evenshade, he bore a noble name associated with a well-known face.  Here, he was merely a coat and a hood and a steady hand.  He had left behind the name Rafin Evenshade perhaps two years past, and yet he still failed to register "Aewen" when someone used it.

Yalerion met him under the hook-lanterns on Caravan Row, the Red Fang’s smile slim as a pen stroke.  “Simple,” he said, passing Aewen a thick old book, bound in leather boards.  “A Ravencloak pinch went sideways.  We’re reclaiming a codex and returning it to the Scribes’ Guildhall.  A good deed that carries a profit margin.”

“Returning it,” Aewen repeated, liking the taste of that idea.  He could thieve from thieves and still look himself in the mirror.

The handoff was supposed to be at the river steps below the Countinghouse of Weights, where Chionthar fog rolled in like milled silk.  A courier in dark green would arrive by skiff, and Aewen would make the clean exchange: codex for coin, and no need for absolution.  He rehearsed the exits in his mind as they waited on slick stone in the damp night.

The skiff's oarlocks whispered in, neat and timely.  The auburn-haired woman was hooded in a green that reminded Aewen of hemlocks in the Reaching Wood.  She approached them, crossing her hands and crooking a couple of fingers.  To the uninitiated, it might seem she was merely trying to warm them.  Yalerion responded by stroking an eyebrow; Aewen by tugging an earlobe, indicating they were free of nearby "eyes and ears."

“Payment,” the courier said, still-faced.  She presented a coinpurse soundlessly.  Very professional, Aewen thought, to stack and tie the coins.

Yalerion hefted the purse, feeling its weight, then opened it, peering inside.  He nodded, satisfied.  “Codex,” he said, and reached under his coat.

Aewen kept the book tight under his coat.  “Guildhall first,” he said, reasonable, calm.  “We sign it back to rightful owners, then—”

The courier’s mouth tilted, mockingly.  “Rightful.  What a charming notion.  You have a paladin in your crew, now?”

Yalerion’s hand moved simply and smoothly, as if turning a page.  He produced a leather-bound book, which he handed to the courier.  "Apologies for that.  Codex."

Aewen pulled out his own book in surprise and opened it with some difficulty.  In his astonishment, he only slowly realized it was a leather-bound tobacco-box filled with sticky mud, giving it stable weight.  The handoff from Yalerion was merely theater to measure Aewen's scruples…or his attention to detail.  The Red Fang didn't recruit thieves, but they did calibrate them.  He looked back up to see the skiff already backing into the water.

“You—” Aewen rasped.

“—adapt,” Yalerion murmured, smoothing Aewen’s collar as if they were kin.  “The Guildhall hoards knowledge. The Ravencloaks sell it.  Everyone takes, and believes they're right to do it.”  He turned Aewen toward the river, gentle as a tutor, and swept his hand toward the disappearing skiff.  “Woe be to the fool who bought that book, though.  Some necromantic thing.”

The skiff slid into fog.  Aewen stood frozen between right word and right move.  "Bought the book?" he asked.  "It isn't bound for the Guildhall?" 

"Guildhall!" Yalerion snickered.  He glanced at Aewen and shook his head, disbelievingly.

"Wait, you just peddled a necromantic codex?  To some random passerby?"

"Well, not random, of course!  I've dealt with her several times.  And she was wearing the right color.  Also…coin?"  Yalerion pulled the tied coin stack out of the purse.  It was perhaps twenty coins thick, and he removed two of the coins from the stack, handing them to Aewen.  "This is your share.  You'll note that you're lucky to get this much, given you failed to notice my ruse.  Completely.  Add to that, who knows how you might have botched the transaction, had you actually possessed the real book."

“You’re an idiot,” Aewen said finally, voice small and bitter.

Yalerion actually smiled. “No. I’m downfallen.”  He said it like a proverb from a book Aewen hadn’t read.  “Fallen from a higher state.  Of innocence, perhaps.  Or morality.  Some other damned thing.  In any matter, that kind of fall only hurts if you do it all at once."  He laughed sharply, "I've fallen my whole life, and I have yet to land!"

Aewen crossed back to Berdusk the next week and mentioned nothing to his mentor of Scornubel.  For years after, when Yalerion’s name surfaced over ale or in alleyway whispers, Aewen would snort, “Idiot,” with the practiced ease of palming a blade.  Although he avoided sharing the story because the shame still smarted, he took comfort in the idea that he could measure his actions against the downfallen.