Quill of Thieves

Chapter 1

Legends claimed that Eilibir was a fishing village without any fish.

The story told that when magic had breathed through the seven realms with an exhale of wind from the skies above, and Scribes had chased after the power like leaves caught up in the breeze, they documented in their books that Eilibir wasn't so much a fishing village as it was a singing one. Apparently, at the single call from a fisherman, schools of fish would simply leap from the waters straight into the singers' awaiting hands. Without the sound of their voice, however, the creatures would remain hidden in the shadowy depths of the surrounding lakes, never to be seen by the untrained eye or caught by the untrained net.

It was a nice tale, Sebastian supposed, even if it wasn't true.

Sebastian frowned below at the crystalline shore of the Ember Sea, just visible through the trees. Voices called out from below, but no magical beasts jumped from the waters at the sound of them, mostly because Sebastian knew magic belonged to stories alone. Those stories certainly did not belong to his reality, where men below hauled in tangled nets with muttered curses, barely catching one trout, let alone hoards of them. It was to that reality where Sebastian should be, his stomach churning unpleasantly from the motion of the small boats, fighting down his meager breakfast as he pretended to know what he was doing.

Not that he didn't know what to do on a boat. In fact, he did know how to fish. He'd read all about it. Perhaps the correct thing to say was he would be forced to pretend to enjoy it.

Instead, Sebastian sat alone in the small clearing, which he deemed much more enjoyable than being on a fishing boat, even if the only thing he could do was stare at the shadows the evergreen trees casted on the dusty ground. He brushed a hand impatiently through his dark mess of curls, tossing his head back to stare into the sky. It hadn't rained for a good span of days, and he followed the lazy motion of stranded clouds above with fathomless, hazel eyes.

"Cumulus," he muttered. "Perhaps it will rain." If the lower range of those clouds were anything to judge by. Carefully, he moved his books further beneath the protective shade of a rather large blackberry bush, just in case.

He leaned back on his hands, counting the clouds overhead, calculating their position in the skies with what he'd studied of celestial navigation, though with the stars still hidden by the light of day, his game was challenging even for him. His neck tilted further back until it cricked, and he nearly snapped his spine entirely as a voice appeared over his left shoulder.

"Hiding out again, are you?"

It was only because she'd chosen to announce herself that Sebastian could now hear her approach like he hadn't been able to before. Leaves crunched beneath the careful tread of the intruder's booted feet as they shuffled a beat closer and kicked out at his bent elbow. Sebastian collapsed fully backwards, but his heart stuttered to a regular pattern, knowing who it was before he even opened his eyes to stare up at her.

Abel stood above him, one slim eyebrow cocked towards the silvery scar in the middle of her forehead, a half-smirk flickering across her freckled cheeks. Her auburn hair lay tangled down her back. A hunting knife was attached to the strap of leather that wrapped around her back and held her homemade bow of yew. A quiver full of arrows that she'd whittled herself hung from her shoulder.

Sebastian turned back to his view. "I'm not hiding," he said. "I'm studying."

She plopped down beside him, yet even a motion that would have seemed unceremoniously clumsy on anyone else, Abel accomplished with the silent flourish of a hunter trained in the art of sneaking. Her smirk grew as she glanced from him to the ocean below to the encroaching clouds with a dramatic sigh.