Part I

A thin shadow eclipsed the flickering candles lights, quick as the fluttering of an eyelash.

A rumbling sound of laughter and cussing boomed from the crannies of the battered living room door. Ruth gingerly opened the door and creeped in brushing her shoulder to the wall.

The boys roared around a small table covered in filthy cards and coin piles, laughing as they blew their ill-earned gains on the game.

The young tiefling circled around the group.

Her eyes darted from one petty thief to the other as she quietly mouthed their names to herself, counting with the drum of fingertips on her sheath.

She stopped in a dark corner near the ladder. They hadn't seen her yet. Too drunk, probably, busy with their games. She had time.

Careful not to be seen she clambered up the ladder and into the musty dorm-attic, and memorized the exact position of her roommates crumpled sheets as she combed through their things.

One had been stupid enough to leave his expensive dagger beneath a loose board under his mattress. The crawling deference he received among the others because of his bulk and good looks made him cocky.

Ruth skimmed her hands over the object. Her mouth twitched slightly, like a scorpion's tale, but stilled.

The thief opened the little square window in the roof and hoisted herself on the white tiles and quickly shut the window.

The street was empty. Ruth leaned out and crawled down the wall with the same horrid, scampering ease of spiders, went around the building and came in again by the front door.

This time she yawned as she walked to the door, feeling the dull stares of her startled colleagues turn on her as she walked past them, this in a different room.

Unlike the rattled thing in at the entrance this door was dark and sturdy, with a heavy bolt and a delicate metallic pattern on the pommel. Quiet the confusing message for visitors, Ruth thought. Not that there were any.

Her eyes skimmed the nice study as she pushed it open.

It was a clean space, an orderly space, the very picture of hollow neatness.

The thief couldn't pin down anything in that room which made it as sullenly bare as it was.

It could have been the immaculate blank walls, the boxy empty shelves on which rested but a few identical gray books, the wide rectangular desk in the middle of the room with its sad wooden chair humbly tucked underneath.

She turned her head to the left, where the study's owner rested his gangly limbs on a sharp-looking armchair.

Ruth looked at his pale, glassy eyes. She decided that walls and books and desk wouldn't have been half as gloomy, if they had belonged who a man a fraction less hollow than Fagin.

She buried her hands in her shirt and tossed some coins in his lap, swirled around wordlessly and shut the door.

Behind her back, his dainty fingers snatched them mid-air in a flash, twisting around the metal as clammy, writhing worms.

The newest boy greeted her with a smirk:

"Hey Spider, how did the haul go? Not quite as many yummy babies around in winter, must be hard for you without hell-daddy's help!"

The table rumbled with laughter, young bulls' bellows faced with a mangy wolf: loud as they were, their watery eyes stayed pinned to her hands. The tiefling passed them by, indifferent.

Ruth walked to her shadowy corner and curled up on her hay bunk, her back to the wall. She glanced at the distant beds of her comrades, cramped together in small groups as tattered grey islands, each a small yet infinite wooden ocean away from her lonely spot.

As her consciousness glided into nothing, Ruth felt an unprompted ache in her chest.

The last thing her fuzzy mind perceived was a thick, cold feeling draping over her like a heavy blanket, pressing her into the ground.