The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids (Amra Thetys, #1)

by Michael McClung

“What kind of meat tonight, Atan?” “Edible,” he grunted, fanning the charcoal. “Sounds like something my mother would have said.” His broad, craggy face grew even more morose than was usual. “Yes, compare me to a woman. Why not? I cook, I must not be a man.”

Bloody bloodwitches. I’d rather deal with mages any day, if I had to deal with magic at all. At least mages generally didn’t bother with cryptic nonsense.

I’ve heard wolves calling to each other across snow covered hills, mournful and lonely. This was nothing like that. This was grief made audible.

Ultimately, I think, the kind of power a mage dealt with on a daily basis pushed him, eventually, beyond mundane considerations such as right and wrong. He tended to think more along the lines of 'possible' and 'impossible', and the 'impossible' list was a lot shorter for a mage than it was for you or me.

Sometimes theft can be as simple and direct as a fist in an unsuspecting face, and sometimes it can be as complex as a military operation. And just like a bar-room brawl or a pitched battle, whatever plan you went in with, simple or complex, was bound to be stretched and twisted as events played out. But you’d better have some kind of plan, or you were going to get trounced.

Every room in my house has easily accessible knives. I’d had a lover for a short time that found it off-putting. He went. The knives stayed.

One of the privileges of being a mage, I suppose, is that you can be as strange as you like, and nobody dares comment.

I realized there was a hole in my life, a place where a family was supposed to fit. Like a missing tooth. Or a severed limb.

“You think I didn’t love my brother?” I heard a hint of roughness in his voice. “I have no idea.” “You’re right. You don’t. The Corbin you knew was a different man.” “That’s my point exactly. The man whose death you came to avenge was already dead. I don’t know who killed Corbin Hardin det Thracen-Courune. I do know who killed Corbin Hardin, the thief. That’s who I have a score to settle with. Who do you have a score with, Lord Osskil?”

Prison, I found, was wonderful for clarifying your priorities.

“What did you want, anyway?” “It’s about that toad you left with me. Actually, it’s about what’s inside the toad.” “I’ll bite. What’s inside the toad?” “I’m not exactly sure.” The thing about Holgren, he doesn’t realize when he’s being frustratingly cryptic. Probably doesn’t. “There’s a vein that throbs in your forehead. I’ve never noticed that before. Your hair must have hidden it.”

Daruvner usually gets what he wants, if for no other reason than he has the patience of a stone.

“Blade, can you end hunger? Poverty? Deformity in children? Can you heal the sick? Can you do one useful fucking thing other than destroy?” Silence. “You’re bloody useless, aren’t you?” I am the hate of a goddess made manifest. I am a Power. “You know what I think? I think she discarded you because you were useless. No, more than useless. A hindrance. A liability.” I could extinguish the sun. I could rip the world in twain. I could drown nations in rivers of blood. The stones of the gate tower trembled. “But you can’t fill one child’s empty belly, or cure a cough, or even get a stain out of linen.”

Fate is a slaver, bloodwitch, and I refuse its chains.” As I walked out her door, she spoke in a quiet voice. “That is why fate has singled you out, Amra Thetys.”