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Allanmere then to speak of, let alone a Guild. My tribe would hardly have
taught me to steal from them, and we didn't mix with the other tribes, so
there was no such thing as a professional thief. Trespassing and poaching
and spying, I'm afraid, is the best I could do then, but I did plenty of that."
"For your tribe?"
"For my own 'insatiable curiosity,' " Shadow corrected. "I guess even
then I was leaning toward thievery, come to think of it. But it wasn't until
a couple of centuries later that I took it up as a living."
Blade did not prompt her to continue, but her expression was not
totally disinterested, and Shadow decided that the sound of her own voice
was better than silence.
"When I left the Heartwood, I traveled east," she said. "Sneaking
around the woods through everyone's tribal boundaries, I sometimes
heard rumors of what the border tribes had seen. None of the humans
who ventured into the Heartwood ever made it as far as the Western
Heart Songwater, now, that is before some elvan patrol either killed
them or chased them out of the woods. I was excited at the idea of seeing
humans, maybe even walking among them, and I had a vague idea of
selling my carvings to earn a living.
"By the time I reached my first human city the idea had lost a lot of its
charm," Shadow continued wryly. "The first humans I met were
highwaymen. They beat me senseless and took all my carvings, everything
else I had. I couldn't even understand their language. I'd have gone back to
the forest after that, but it was too far to make it without tools, weapons,
or food. Fortunately a caravan of human pilgrims took me in and took me
as far as Wyndermere, which was a good-sized city then. By the time we
got there I'd picked up a little of the humans' language, not to mention a
few hundred fleas from a couple of the pilgrims. Apparently the tenets of
their religion didn't include bathing. They gave me a little money, though,
and a lot more information, I think, than they intended."
"Wyndermere," Blade mused. "That city was burned and sacked by the
wave of barbarians moving south during the Black Wars, was it not?"
"The very same," Shadow nodded. "But at the time it wasn't too much
different from Allanmere smaller, fewer temples, fewer elves, and no real
Guild, but otherwise not much different.
"Wyndermere was where I started stealing," Shadow sighed. "It was
that or whoring, and I hadn't been that impressed with my first sample of
humans as bedmates. I had no training, though, and I was miserable at it.
Seemed like I was forever getting beaten around by somebody better
thieves, the people I was trying to rob, constables. I thought as soon as I
got enough money to buy weapons and a little food, I'd head back to the
Heartwood, but I couldn't even seem to manage to do that. Whoring
started to look better every day.
"Then one day I met an old, old elf in the beggars' plaza," Shadow said.
"His name was Doreth, and he'd once been a thief before age and a
strange crippling disease had ruined his bones. He struck me a
bargain that he'd teach me the art if I'd turn over half my take to him
every day. I agreed why not? and ended up staying in Wyndermere for
more than forty years while Doreth taught me. Quite an education, too.
"Doreth died about three years before the Black Wars came to
Wyndermere," Shadow said, shaking her head sadly in recollection. "The
last five years we'd spent most of our money on healers for him, but it
didn't do much good he had almost twenty centuries, and enough is
enough. Then his mind started to fail, and he decided too much was too
much. I spent the last of my money on the best poison to be bought, and
he thanked me for it. It was quick, at least, and painless.
"After that I didn't want to stay in Wyndermere, even though they'd
started up a Guild by then, and I moved east. Good thing for me, too,"
Shadow remembered. "If I'd stayed, or gone north, I'd have been killed
with the rest when the horde from the north came through. As it was, I
was far out of their path by then, following rumors of the sea. Imagine, a
body of water so vast that nobody knew what was on the other side! I
traveled with caravans, mostly, stealing enough at the towns to pay my
way or doing odd jobs to earn my keep. Then I traveled along the coast for
a few years, enjoying the sea and learning my trade. When I learned about
the wars I came back west, but seeing what had been left behind
elsewhere "
Shadow was silent for a long moment.
"Anyway, by that time I was a good enough thief," she said, changing
the subject, "that I could support myself wherever I went, and that's what
I did traveled from town to town, Guild to Guild. That was quite an
education, too. Do you know, you can walk into a human city, get to know
it, go away, come back a hundred years later and it's a completely
different place?"
"Mmm," Blade said noncommittally. She stared out at the night. "Had
you blood kin in the Heartwood? Before the wars?"
"All the Silverleafs were blood kin, more or less," Shadow shrugged. "In
the sense you mean, my mother Elia, her brother Frost, my mother's
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