Better Cities:Rat the Thief, vol 1, Book 3

Book Information Rat the Thief, vol 1, Book 3
ID	xx011200
Prev.	Book 2	Next	Vol 2, Book 1
	3		1.0
Locations
Found in the following locations: On a bookshelf in Riverside Junk Shop On a shelf in Hector's Sundries

Rat The Thief, Volume 1, Book 3

A story about a thief named Rat

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r. Gravely had always been an odd, fickle man, and Rat knew not to take offense from his quick exit. But at the same time, she knew the reason he'd avoided her was because he hadn't been able to accept Uncle Linus's goods - the ones she'd stolen from the warehouse last night - for resale, and her heart sank. Her aunt and uncle spared her the majority of their private worries, but she knew that things hadn't been going well for months, and they'd needed this sale - they'd been counting on it - because they had no other choice.

At first she didn't realize what she was doing - her feet seemed to be moving of their own accord, while she thought about her hard-working aunt and uncle, who seemed every day to sleep less and work more.

It occurred to her where she was, finally, when the noise of the market fell off to a distant hum, and her footsteps began to echo through the wider streets, and back-and-forth up between the high walls. The avenue was smooth-polished, well swept, and utterly deserted (how did rich people get from one place to another - you never saw them do it?). Rat had wandered into the middle of the finest neighborhood in the city, and her immediate reaction upon realizing this was to dive into an alley, to find a shadow to hide in, and a wall to put her back against. Even the alleys, here, were stark and shadowless, and disconcertingly without hiding-place or purchase for escape. Rat had to crouch low, panting, and catch her breath - nothing to do with how fast she'd been walking.

After she'd regained some of her calm, she stood up and considered her surroundings. The alley she'd darted into was flanked by two high walls. One of them was many times her height, and revealed no part of what lay on the other side. The other, built of a different stone, and presumably belonging to another estate, was shorter, and varied in height with one section low enough to allow a few very tall tree branches to peek out over the other side. Rat, instinctively starting to calculate possibilities, approached the foot of the wall. The trees would be no help, as their branches curved upwards far out of reach, and their boughs looked too flimsy to support even her weight. Nonetheless, as her fingers stroked the surface, they found promising texture - not grippable, but enough to facilitate - and better yet, cracks wide enough between the stones, where the mortar had worn away, that she could jam her narrowest of climbing tools into them.

Rat made up her mind, before the question had even formed itself. She hunkered down in the most sheltered section of alley she could find, pulled out tools as she devised the first part of her plan, and waited for nightfall.