AN AGEING FLOORBOARD CREAKED as Ada stepped closer to the small knife she’d hidden behind the shop’s counter. She’d never killed before, but her customer was coming dangerously close to discovering her secret. The man, whose name she didn’t care to remember, was an old friend of her father. He rolled a ruby pendant between his fingers and peered closer. Too close. Ada pushed out her extra sense and touched it to his chest, checking for any change in his pulse. Calm, for now. That sense was the only good thing to happen to her since the ash plague. A gift she alone possessed.

“It’s richly coloured for a garnet,” the man said. Ada sensed his pulse quicken, but she couldn’t tell whether it was from excitement or suspicion.

With a smile fixed on her face, Ada set her hand on the knife’s hilt. “My former supplier tried to pass that garnet off as a ruby so he could charge more. Fortunately, I’m as honest as my father was.”

Ada hated invoking her father’s memory as part of a lie. He’d been a good man, and his reputation as a skilled jeweller had ensured both his daughters lived an easy life, before the ash fell. His legacy allowed Ada to remain unwed, and she would do whatever it took to keep the shop open. Even use her father’s name to sway customers.

The man set a weighty purse on the counter. “I believe this is a more accurate reflection of the piece’s value. The setting isn’t up to your father’s standards.”

Ada released the knife and peered into the purse. Barely two-thirds of what she’d asked. She would have to use guilt. “I was, after all, only seventeen when the ash plague took my family. But if this is all you can spend on your wife’s gift, I’ll have to accept.”

The man cleared his throat. “No price is too high for my Celia, even in these times.” He set some silvers beside the purse. Two more than Ada’s original offer.

“If she has need of more jewellery, do visit again.”

As the man left, Ada was genuine in her silent wish for him to escape the notice of thieves. The last thing she needed was anyone scrutinising that necklace. The man had been right to question if it was a garnet. She’d rather have sold it for its true worth, but she could hardly have admitted it was a ruby. Its former owner kept calling on any lady in possession of new jewellery, if the rumour mill was to be believed. Eavesdropping on servants at the market had never let Ada down before.

If only she’d done more than change the setting from gold to silver. She could have altered the cut or split the gem for earrings, then she might have got away with selling it as a ruby. Unfortunately, she’d been in a rush. She was running out of time to gather the coin she needed.

As if to rub that fact in, her landlord’s lackey approached the shop. Tomas shoved the door open, almost smashing its small panes as it crashed against a display stand. He strode in with his usual swagger, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other grasping his belt buckle. Ada seethed at his presence, but she kept her hand far away from the hidden knife. Fighting him wouldn’t end well for her.

“What do you want?” Ada said.

“Saw your customer leave, didn’t I. Clutching his pocket. I assume you’ve made a sale.”

Ada scowled. “Only a garnet necklace.”

“Should be more than enough to cover what’s left of this week’s fee.”

Ada bristled. Her father’s lease on the shop and attached house had passed to her, with added clauses she’d had no power to fight. She was still paying off the damage looters had caused during the riots near two years ago.

“How many more instalments are there?” Ada asked, fully aware it was eight. She wanted to see if Tomas thought her a fool.

“Should be finished by the time the lease comes due. Two months, Ada. You better have the coin ready.”

“I’ll have it.” She tossed her customer’s coin purse at Tomas, aiming for his head. He snatched it from the air and weighed it in his hand before adding it to a large pouch hanging from his belt. The clink of coins betrayed that she wasn’t his first victim that day.

“Be sure you have it all. Don’t want to end up on the streets, do you.” He looked her up and down, eyes lingering on her flat chest. “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about your virtue.” He chuckled to himself as he left, as if he found himself remarkably clever. If he were, he’d have known the men who prowled dark alleys didn’t care what a woman looked like, only what she had beneath her skirts. Ada locked the door, which failed to shut out the chill Tomas had brought into her shop.

After packing away her few display items, Ada replaced them with cheap decoys. Without them, looters would ransack the entire building like they had during the riots. She’d rather deal with Tomas demanding payment for repairs than have looters find her secrets.

Going through to the house, Ada fetched three keys from their hiding places and went to the storage room where she slept. There, she shoved a box off the basement hatch and used each key in the trio of locks. After lighting the lanterns below, Ada shut the way behind her, eager to return to her most important work.

She plucked a pale sapphire necklace from a box of recent additions and got to work prying it from its setting, which had unusually long prongs. It didn’t take long to discover why. A great score marred the back of the sapphire. Ada tossed it onto the workbench and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. She’d hoped to pass it off as blue topaz, which wasn’t worth the time it would take to cut the sapphire into smaller gems. Damn the elite. They’d grown crafty with hiding their jewellery, but she never imagined they would damage their precious finery to catch her.

Despite the loss, that particular night’s work hadn’t been about the jewellery, though the pieces were a welcome bonus. Ada unrolled her sketch of the manor’s layout and studied her notes about the patrols of her true target – an identical manor higher up Haranor Hill. Her heart beat faster. It was time to take revenge against the man responsible for her life of crime.

Tamir Alzahar. Ada would never forget that name. His flowing signature adorned the contract shown to her by the owner of Felgen’s mine. A contract that superseded the one Ada should have inherited. She’d had no chance of arguing against it. Tamir was a wealthy merchant who spent much of his time in the capital, and his contract bore the seal of Asorea’s king.

Thanks to looting during the riots and losing the rights to the mine’s gems, Ada had run out of jewellery to sell, leaving her finances in ruin. Shadows curse Tamir for ruining the last thing she had of her family. Though she hadn’t faced their rooms since their deaths, she couldn’t bear to part with the house. All her memories of her sister were tied to that building. The two years left on the lease had seemed like plenty of time to raise funds to renew it. Yet working the fields paid a pittance, despite the extortionate cost of food, and she’d never had an interest in the tedious skills society expected women to have, like embroidery or dressmaking. Her options as a woman had been far too limited, and she would never marry. Not when she’d be expected to bear children.

Ada glanced at her father’s sword where it leaned beside the stairs. It was a tatty old thing, a relic of her father’s time as a travelling merchant. He’d forbidden Ada to train with weapons regardless of her interest. Even learning jewellery crafting from him had been like cutting a diamond with silk. Still, that sword had set her on the path to survival and revenge.

Ada traced a finger across her sketch of the manor, coming to a stop over the room most likely to be the private study. Her original plan to get inside as a guard had failed, yet she would succeed now. Months of planning would see to that. Tamir was in Felgen after a long absence. Finally, she would get her revenge, and hopefully the coin she needed for the lease.

Eager to get moving, Ada went to a chest by the back wall and dug out two packs. Inside were Ada’s two other identities – the foolish youth who longed to work as a mercenary, and the most wanted thief in Felgen. She stripped, bound her chest flatter, and dressed as the scrawny boy who looked barely of age – sixteen rather than Ada’s true nineteen years. Adam had yet to find work guarding the homes of Felgen’s elite, ruining her original plan to access Tamir’s home. But some real mercenaries had taken pity on Adam and trained him with a blade. The skills had proved a valuable defence for the thief, before her extra sense had emerged.

Bringing the other pack with her, Ada grabbed her father’s sword and left the basement, locking it behind her and hiding the keys. She strapped on the sword belt and donned an old leather coat she’d originally found with the sword. Worn though it was, it kept out autumn’s chill well enough. Adding a final touch, Ada pulled her light brown hair into a low tail, then shouldered her thieving pack and made for the high-walled rear garden.

At the back of the garden, past thriving weeds, Ada paused by the gate. She couldn’t risk anyone seeing her leave as Adam, and she didn’t trust the lack of noise coming from the alleyway. When she’d first turned to thievery, she’d almost been spotted by an old man sleeping behind some rotting crates. But that was before her strange ability had developed.

Eyes closed, Ada pushed her awareness out from herself. She’d first noticed the ability a year before, when she’d misjudged the oil levels in the basement lanterns. She’d reached out to find the wall, only to sense it first. It was a little like touch, because as her ability grew stronger, Ada began to feel the shape and texture of whatever her sense brushed against. Now, as she pushed that sense through the gate, she recognised it not only as wood but oak.

Ada spread her awareness along the alleyway, sensing a spark of life like a flame to the right. All living creatures carried one, but this flame was too small to belong to a human. Ada tossed a stone over the wall, and the creature fled. When nothing else stirred, she slipped out into the night, risking the quieter streets until she was beyond her neighbourhood.

It was a long walk from her home on the western side of Felgen to Haranor Hill in the east. Eventually, the hill’s silhouette blotted out the stars in the moonless sky. Rising from the ground like the fin on a fish’s back, the hill ended in a towering cliff on its western edge, overlooking Lake Kalantane. Such a beautiful view meant the wealthiest elites lived at the top, and Tamir Alzahar was the wealthiest of them all. He had to be if he could afford to move to Asorea by ship from Loka far to the west. Only a fool would make the journey by land. The Rin Empire was busy trying to swallow its neighbouring countries while chaos left by the ash plague still remained. The middle continent was no place for a wealthy traveller. Guards drew the wrong kind of attention, and Tamir’s manor was the most heavily guarded of all.

Haranor Hill was steep enough that the elite used carriages to reach the peak. Ada didn’t have that luxury. She would have to climb. Rather than take the main road, where she risked crossing paths with her clients, Ada made for a switchback path halfway along the hill’s northern side. Enough mercenaries used the path to warrant it having a checkpoint of its own, but Ada had no trouble getting through. She’d long ago learnt that friendly conversation could get you most things, as much as she found it tedious.

Out of sight of the checkpoint, Ada pushed through undergrowth to reach the sheer hillside and tied her thieving pack to a rope she’d disguised as a vine. Once it was secure, she continued up the path.

“Still trying to get a night shift?” a guard said as Ada approached the checkpoint. It was Jaxon, who’d snapped up her story that Adam was an orphan looking for work. It was hardly a lie, beyond the name.

“I may as well keep trying. Never know when someone’ll be off sick. Maybe then I can drop the backbreaking farm work.”

“You’ll have no work if you keel over from lack of sleep. I can talk to some mercenaries I know. Might let you take a shift for them.”

Curse his kind nature. The only mercenary work in town was guarding the rich, which didn’t pay enough to cover the lease renewal. “They’ve done enough already, training me and all. I won’t take their coin.”

“Fair enough. Good luck.”

Ada nodded farewell and braced herself for the climb. At the first switchback, she hauled up her pack, and from there on, she kept her extra sense spread to keep watch ahead and behind. She had a fair range, more than enough to give her time to toss her pack into the bushes. Fortunately, she met no one on the way up.

At the top of the hillside, Ada rested her burning legs before carrying on. A short way along the clifftop path, she entered a small copse that pressed against a garden wall. Towards the back was an abandoned badger sett, which Ada used to stash her gear. She sometimes left her thief pack there and went up to The First Ray to train or eavesdrop on mercenaries who drank at the tavern after their shifts. This night, however, she had all the information she needed.

Ada swapped her white shirt for a black one, her brown leather coat for a dark one with a hood, and her sword belt for one bearing twin butchers knives. She was strapping the ends of their makeshift sheathes to her thighs when torchlight flickered across the trees and stopped. A guard stood just beyond the treeline, staring in Ada’s direction.

Without pause, Ada dropped to the ground, letting her hood fall over her face as she shoved her father’s sword hilt-first into the badger sett. Not daring to look up, she focused on her extra sense. It reached the guard, but it was a stretch. She couldn’t make out more than his shape. Was he still looking at her? Shadows curse her for not covering the sword sooner. It wasn’t the first time it had given her away. Last time, a quick change of coats and shouting at a guard for interrupting her taking a piss had saved her. If this was the same guard, it wouldn’t work twice.

Ada barely breathed, fearing the slightest rustle of a leaf might draw the guard closer. Time flowed like tar. All Ada could tell from her extra sense was that the guard’s arms moved. Then, the sound of water on leaves reached her. When the stream eventually stopped, the guard moved on.

Once the torchlight faded, Ada added the rest of her mercenary gear to the badger sett and hurried on before the guard could return. Ada shook her hands, trying to ease her tension. Though it gave her a headache, she pushed her extra sense further and hid behind bushes the moment she sensed a human-sized life flame. As the guards passed, Ada studied their flames, still curious how everyone’s was subtly different. Most guards gave a sense of nettles or thorns. A few brought to her mind the sound of a blade running across a whetstone. She took more care around those guards.

The walk to the top of Haranor Hill seemed endless, making Ada glad she’d targeted homes nearer her cache while developing her skills. She’d been afraid during her first break-in, and guilt had churned into a storm that clouded her focus. The guilt had fled the moment Ada saw a kitchen full of food left to rot after a party. The fear remained until she’d realised she was good at this line of work, even before she’d gained her extra sense.

When Ada finally reached the rear wall of Tamir Alzahar’s garden, she sent her sense over it, unable to press it through stone the way she could wood. As she’d expected, there were several life flames – guards patrolling the most obvious entry point. Their routes hadn’t changed, which bolstered Ada’s confidence as she took a small road up the side of the property. The manor’s side of the road was clear of plants, while the town council had let bushes grow beside the wall around their grounds. The plants allowed Ada to hide from the road’s single guard, who often lifted his gaze to the stars. He only worked once a week, which was why Ada had chosen that night.

Passing the stargazing guard with ease, Ada quickly reached the manor’s goods gate. Beside it, a single metal pin jutted from the wall. One pin was all Ada needed. She pressed her back to the wall and sent her sense over to locate the two guards beyond, while her eyes watched for Stargazer. Everything hinged on their patrols aligning, which only happened a few times an hour.

Torchlight grew closer, marking Stargazer’s approach as the two guards beyond the wall passed each other. One went to check inside a shed past the goods gate, and the other disappeared around the corner of the manor. They would soon return. Ada set her boot on the metal pin and scaled the wall, grinning as she swung over the top.