1 Chapter 1) A Curse

Washing blood from his clothes is something that Arrin was happy he didn't have to do anymore. He had worked his way up in the world and was finally getting his due. There were many amenities in his new life that he had grown to love but didn't think that he would ever get used to.

Warm bread in the morning. Having someone wash his clothes for free. There were other truly insane changes that he could never have imagined, like a steel sword on his hip or walking the streets in broad daylight without fear of reprisal.

Arrin and his brother Arris had raised themselves as best as two young boys could on the harsh streets of the capitol. In the alleyways, gutters, and slums of the great city Pheran, something as simple as clean clothes would be a luxury for the commoners that made their lives there.

The old washerwoman looked down at the pile of his blood-stained clothes and sighed, "Pants too."

Hooking his thumbs into his trousers, the young thief-taker peeled them away from his body. The edges of the blood had begun to dry but in the middle where the material of his pants was padded the blood had soaked in enough to still be damp and sticky. Congealing blood resisting the separation of the skin and cloth that it had glued together is a quiet, unique, and altogether horrid sound that Arrin could live the rest of his life without hearing ever again. But he knew that was an impossible desire to fulfill. He clenched his jaw and reminded himself, warm bread and clean clothes.

"Could you try not to be covered in blood just once?" The old woman asked, picking his clothes up and plopping them into a bucket.

"You never ask if any of the blood is mine, it's a lot of blood, it certainly could be," Arrin stood nude and smiling, spots of dry and damp blood all over his body.

"If I saw someone covered in this much blood and thought it was theirs, it would be a corpse I'd be askin' questions of. I try not to go about asking corpses questions. It makes ya seem mad." The washerwoman's delivery was deadpan and came with a wry grin.

"That's a solid point, Mary. But I could have been nicked. Not all this blood would have to be mine." Arrin tested the soapy water with his big toe. It was hot but if he waited until he was happy about the temperature he would be bathing for just a few minutes before the water was then too cold. He put one foot in the bath and exhaled through his teeth. His second foot followed and he lowered himself fully into the hot scented water.

"Oh brave brave thief-taker. Do you have any wounds? Should I send for an herbalist? The Kings sorcerer? A learned old man from the university? Mayhaps the witch-woman at the outskirts of town? Or. Oh Gods!" She put her hands in her grey greasy hair and fixed an exaggerated fearful look on to her face, "Is it a priest I should be calling? Will you and your endless stream of idiots japes and bloody clothes be moving on to the great hereafter?" She dropped her hands to her breasts before they shot up to cover her eyes.

"Oh deary. Say it isn't so!" She let out few sobs and some sniffling to really lay it on. She waited for a beat before peaking between her fingers.

"No. Not today Mary. You would never be that lucky. " He settled his wiry blood-spattered body into the wooden tub. Just some clean clothes and a drink."

"I'm glad to hear that you'll be surviving your grave wounds Mr. Arrin." She smiled a genuinely warm smile, "I'll be back at the end of this hour with some clothes, an ale, and a bite to eat."

Grabbing the bucket of bloody clothes in both hands Mary left the room humming an old soldier's tune. Mary had been in Arrin's life since he and his brother first landed in this city. She hadn't always been the most benevolent of figures but she had done far less harm than good in their lives and that made her the closest thing to family that the brothers had outside of one another.

Arrin found himself suited for a thief's life at a young age. Arris, with his badly healed leg, did not. Mary had looked after Arrin and Arris, not for free but she didn't grind them for every scrap they were worth. Arris never discussed with Arrin what work Mary had put him to, though the implication of what kind of work a crippled young boy is capable of left Arrin happy for the lack of transparency in the matter.

Arrin on the other hand became a fixture in the underworld early on. Known for getting to places thought unreachable, stealing items seen as untouchable, and completing his burgling while remaining undetectable. He was the toast of the town in the beginning. For a time he thought he would use his curse to help him climb atop the underworld but the pecking order, even at the bottom of society, was not to be upset.

Acquaintances always seemed to become adversaries. Comrades transformed into competition and friends became foes. As it turned out, there is no honor among thieves, at least none that Arrin had met.

There finally came a time when Arrin realized he would never rise to the top of capitol's dark underbelly. The people on top were unwilling to budge, dangerously unwilling. He had been betrayed and stiffed so many times that Arrin made the choice to change professions. Everyone knows that the best thief-takers are former thieves so it was an easy transition to make.

He started small and was eventually working with lenders and nobles, contracted to catch thieves and retrieve stolen goods. Life was good. With the good, always comes the bad.

Betraying the loose network of ne'er-do-wells that ran the seedy aspects of the city garnered him a lot of hate. Attempts on his life were frequent enough that he slept in a different place each night.

When he had received his invitation two years back to become a thief-taker for the city watch, Arrin jumped at a chance at safety and acceptance. He thought to find friends and allies inside the guard. It was not to be, they all knew him as a thief. His youth had been spent burgling and getting away with it. The guard had arrested him a dozen times on suspicion but he always found a way out of it. Despite now being a boon to the city, he was treated poorly by the guard even if he was paid well.

After a year of working with the City Watch Arrin had made no headway towards becoming anything more than a tool they hated using. A pristine blade a perfect weapon whose handle was forged from a turd.

It was not worth it to do this work any longer if he was to be treated like an outcast everywhere he turned. Arrin had decided he would leave the city and start anew somewhere else. A bit of money saved up but no idea where to go.

It was a night like all of his nights had become, he was hunkered down in an abandoned home that he'd chosen at random. Arrin was standing near the fireplace when he was approached with an offer that he did not refuse.

The person that propositioned him was a woman, he guessed her relatively young by the delicate and unweathered look of her hands. Other than that, he could tell very little about the woman. She was missing one thing that just about everyone had.

She was broad of the shoulder with two arms, two legs, two feet, and two hands. She even had a neck and head. The torch she held made it very clear the one thing that she lacked possession of, the woman had no face.

In place of her face, she had a mass of scars, no sign of eyes, a few holes where a nose should be, a slit no larger than that which a dagger would make where her mouth should be. The hood on her cloak was pulled up but it was clear she had long dark hair pulled back.

If he had not seen it up close he would have thought she was a mummer with a mask. But when she approached him with her torch held out in front of her he could see that it was no mummers trick. It was mutilated flesh.

"Arrin, it is good to finally meet you." The voice was smothered and muffled.

He did not move as she walked from the doorway to where he stood. The demoralized thief-taker thought about shifting his shape into something that he could escape as. The shift he had prepared wasn't something that was ideal for this situation. Were he to become the forest cat he could escape from her easily, but he would also have to kill her. His greatest power was that his power was secret, he had killed before to keep it so and would kill again. Killing someone that had so far only just surprised him seemed a rash choice so instead, he waited.

"Forgive me if I don't remember you. I don't think I would forget it if we had met." He relaxed and formed the image of the forest cat in his mind.

"We have met, in a roundabout way. You stole from me years ago. I found it impressive. And impossible. What's your trick. your hidden talent?"

She breathed in through the slit and out through her nose holes, the sound of a wetted whistle disturbed Arrin.

Arrin stood, his body at ease, arms hanging loosely at his side, "You have me mistaken, I'm a thief-taker, not a thief." The image of the large black feline loomed large in his mind until there was space in his thoughts for little else.

"I have not come for the return of my goods or for revenge. Keep your trick secret. I don't need it, I have use for it. I come with a job offer." She produced from her coat a letter sealed with a wax insignia. It looked like the royal seal of the crown.

Arrin pushed the image he had been focusing on to the back of his mind and took the letter. The insignia was a damn good forgery. Perfection really.

"Is this city watch work?" Arrin asked, irritated at the possibility.

Looking at it closer he was certain she hadn't handed him such an expensive forgery for him to open in a dingy abandoned house. This faceless woman must be a nobles pawn looking to undercut a rival. The frivolity of those people knew no bounds.

"A plant job then?" He'd had this work before, stirring up trouble with fake letters slipped into the right places.

"You are to take that to the palace gates tomorrow and plant it into the open palm of Pallum Hitchen, The Kings Shield." She breathed in through her nose and the wetted whistle sound was even worse than when she had exhaled through that nightmare of an orifice.

"And?" Arrin asked, there had to be more.

"You will be hired on as thief-taker for the royal court. You will be treated with respect, you will be given permanent lodgings and in return, you will do as you are told." She wiped at her brow with a cloth from her free hand. Arrin realized her non-face was slick with sweat.

"Just like that?" He'd asked, ignoring his turning stomach.

"You will report to Hitchen and listen to his word as if it is your religion. However, your post will be more than that of a simple thief-taker. The King has need of men like you, I will find you and explain once you are a fixture in the palace and have proven your loyalty. Always remember, you serve the crown. Protect the royal family and the royal family will protect you." She coughed wetly and wiped her mouth.

Not yet twenty Arrin had lived with the burden of a shapeshifters curse. He had worked against the law and for it. He had seen magic open a door to the bottom of a lake and watched a dozen armored knights drown. He had killed scores of humans and a few of those weasel creatures from the north. He had stolen fortunes from others only to have them stolen from him. In all of that, Arrin could think of nothing that made less sense or was more unlikely than a faceless woman hiring him to be a thief-taker for the court and an agent of the crown.

The torch she carried drooped and she stepped towards him.

He took a step back, "Tomorrow I go to the palace gates and give this letter to Pallum Hitchen. Just like that and I'm in?

"Yes. There will be more in time. Show your loyalty and you will be brought into the fold. When the King trusts your loyalty he will find reward you with a position more suited to your true skills." Her head moved slowly from side to side as if she had eyes and was searching his face to lock hers with his.

"This would be a really weird and elaborate way to have me killed," Arrin said. Humor invaded his vocal cords at the most inopportune times.

"You would not see your death coming if it was to be by my hand." She made a harsh hacking sound.

Arrin decided that it was an attempt at a laugh.

"Take the letter. Take the job. Be loyal to the King and his righteous rule, keep his family safe and your life will be better than you have ever known." When she said those words, Arrin believed her.

"Just like that? That simple?" Things were never as good or as true as they seemed, especially things as good as this.

"Your life will not be simple Arrin. There is trouble brewing in the palace and much to be done. There are rumblings that, there are rumblings," She cut off her own words and a second later sucked up some spittle that had escaped her mouth but not quite her mouth hole, "it is best that I not tell you too much. Traitors sit in the highest places and you will be helping to expose them."

She had the wrong man for the job and he knew it. But he wasn't about to throw away this chance.

"I'm the man for the job." He said, he stood up straighter and tilted his chin up. Arrin reached out and took the letter.

The next day Arrin met with Pallum Hitchen. Things were just as she said. His life became much better but not simple.

Though they never spoke, Arrin was given secret messages with missions from the King via the faceless woman. Some tasks left him covered in blood, some tasks did not. Arrin did everything he could not to learn the specifics, he wanted to keep things as simple as possible.

In idle moments his mind worked of its own accord and he drew some dangerous conclusions concerning the royal family. He brought it up to the faceless woman and she told him never to speak of it again. He was more than happy to oblige. But his suspicions did not go away.

As he pondered if his life had actually become better or worse the young thief-taker ducked his head under the water and bubbles. Warm and wet and everything he needed right then. He pushed the complicating thoughts to the side.

In an hour's time, Arrin finished up a meal of mystery jerky and bread and after washing it down with an ale he began to get dressed. The new clothes were a good fit and once again the customary letter and payment note had appeared in the trouser pocket. That faceless witch had some tricks he wouldn't mind learning.

Arrin brought the letter to his nose and smelled the wax on the royal seal. Nothing else quite like it. Breaking the wax he unfolded the letter. It read:

"Meet me in the purple garden an hour after dawn. Just you and I. They will be moving on me soon and we need your loyalty now more than ever. - King Allouicious Purgess III

It was finally time to meet the King himself and Arrin could not have wished harder that the last sentence of that letter didn't exist. What was he getting into? Would he survive it?