The fog of the Whispering Market clung to Lutz like a second skin, the psychic residue of a hundred forgotten deals and the ozone tang of crossed boundaries. He emerged from the wreck of the Sea-Sorrow not as a wide-eyed novice, but as a man who had just bet his entire existence on a single, dizzying throw of the dice. The memory of Lorelei's teasing was a fleeting, warm ember in the vast, cold cavern of his thoughts, extinguished almost instantly by the pressing weight of his reality.
He was broke.
The thirty Gold Hammers he'd paid her were nearly his entire capital, the final, brutal withdrawal from an account already bleeding from the costs of the Market's other offerings. The coins in his pocket now were a pittance. The artifacts—the ring and the stiletto—were promises of future power, but promises wouldn't fill his belly or buy the next potion ingredients.
He walked through the pre-dawn streets of the Salt-Weep district, his senses, still humming from the Market's otherworldly atmosphere, now automatically cataloging the mundane world. His eyes, without conscious effort, tracked a dockworker stumbling out of a tavern, the bulge of a coin purse clear against his trousers. His fingers twitched with the instinct to brush past, to relieve the man of his night's wages. It would be so easy. A blur of motion, a shift of weight, and the coins would be his.
He let the man pass.
Petty theft from drunks and laborers was the sustenance of a common cutpurse. It was reactive, opportunistic, and ultimately, a path to stagnation. He, Lutz Fischer, was a Beyonder. A Marauder. The difference wasn't just in power; it was in scope and ambition. Stealing a few Shields from a dockworker was like scooping single grains of sand from a beach when what he needed was to carve out the entire dune. Theft on the streets was a slow, grinding poverty of its own. To build the capital he needed—for survival, for advancement, for the resources to ultimately bury the Baron—required a businessman's approach, not a beggar's.
He needed to go hunting.
First Principle: Low Risk, High Reward. The targets couldn't be under the direct protection of a major power like the Church, a powerful Beyonder, or a rival gang with sharp teeth. That meant avoiding anyone too closely tied to the Vipers, the remnants of the Gray Sharks, or the emerging Church of Steam influence.
Second Principle: Exploitable Weakness. The ideal target had wealth but lacked the means or will to defend it fiercely. They would have something to lose—reputation, family, standing—that was more valuable than the stolen goods, ensuring they were less likely to pursue a violent, underworld retaliation.
Third Principle: Isolated and Predictable. He needed to know their patterns. When they slept, when they were away, who else was in the house.
He ran through the ledgers of his memory, cross-referencing tavern gossip, snippets of conversation from the library, and the boasts of merchants he'd eavesdropped on as "Elias Vogler."
Three names surfaced, each a perfect specimen for his new methodology.
Herr Weiss, the Spice Merchant. The man he and Rudel had "shaken down." Weiss was portly, comfortable, and his security was a performance for his neighbors. More importantly, he was a coward. If robbed, he would likely assume it was the Vipers and simply pay up again, too frightened to report it. The risk was minimal, the take predictable.
Barrister Edelmann. A man with a greasy smile and a reputation for losing evidence for the right price. He didn't keep vast sums of coin at home, but he did keep a ledger. Lutz had heard him, deep in his cups at the Gilded Quill, lamenting the "precariousness of his records." That ledger, a catalog of corruption, was a different kind of currency. It was leverage. He could sell it back to the barrister for a king's ransom, or use it to blackmail others on the list. The man was arrogant and believed his legal status was protection enough. His weakness was his pride.
Old Man Hemlock, the Retired Shipwright. A rumor, persistent in the Rusty Nail, spoke of a final, secret commission for the Feysac navy, paid in raw gold. Hemlock was a recluse, a craftsman who trusted no one. He had no family in the city, no powerful friends. He was a node of wealth, isolated and unprotected. His weakness was his isolation. No one would miss him for days, and no one would fight for him.
A plan crystallized. Not a frenzied spree, but a surgical campaign. Three nights, three targets, each one teaching him something, each one refining his craft.
After going to the warehouse to sleep, he woke up the next day and pulled his gear together. He examined the dark clothing, checking for tears or light colors. He ran a thumb over the soles of his soft shoes, ensuring their silence. He unrolled the lockpicks, their metallic glint a promise of entry. Each tool was inspected, cleaned, and approved. This was not the desperate preparation of a man fleeing his debts; it was the calm, meticulous ritual of a professional readying his instruments.
He was no longer just surviving. He was investing. He was building capital, not just of coin, but of skill, intelligence, and cold, hard nerve. The street thief reacted to the world. The Marauder carved out his piece of it.
He visualized each entry, each corridor, each lock. He was no longer a rat in a cage. He was the predator who had learned the shape of the maze. And tonight, he would begin to take it apart, one stolen piece at a time.
The fog was his accomplice, a thick, greasy smear of grey that swallowed sound and sight alike. Lutz Fischer moved through the Salt-Weep district not as a man, but as a fragment of the gloom itself.
His attire was a study in calculated anonymity. He wore a pair of dark, coarse-spun trousers, dyed a deeper black with soot and cheap ink. His tunic was a matching shade, tight at the wrists and throat to avoid snagging. Over it, he wore a sleeveless, hooded jerkin of supple, oiled leather that did not creak. On his feet were soft-soled shoes, their seams carefully re-stitched to silence any tell-tale squeak. His hands were bare, the pale skin smudged with dirt to break their outline. In his belt was a roll of lockpicks fashioned by Henrik from hardened wire and a slim, weighted leather blackjack. His knife on his belt was a cold, comforting presence against the small of his back, a promise of lethal finality he hoped not to use.
The Spice Merchant's Strongbox
He approached from the rear alley, a fluid shadow against the darker shadows. The merchant's back wall was a patchwork of uneven stone and rotting wood. A lesser man would have sought a drainpipe. Lutz simply found the story of the wall with his fingertips. A chip in the mortar here, a protruding knot of wood there. He flowed upwards, his body a perfectly balanced instrument of ascent. His feet found holds that seemed to offer no purchase, his weight distributed so precisely that not a single pebble was dislodged.
The second-floor window latch was a simple iron hook. From his roll, he selected two picks. He didn't look at his hands; he listened, his head cocked slightly, the metal extensions of his nerve endings. Through the picks, he felt the minute vibrations of the mechanism. A gentle pressure, a subtle twist that would have been impossible for any hand but his, and the hook lifted silently from its eye. He slid the window open, the space just wide enough for his lean frame, and slipped inside.
The room was a child's bedroom, empty and smelling of dried lavender. He paused, letting his eyes adjust and his other sense—the one that whispered of value—expand. The house was asleep, the rhythms of deep breathing a faint cadence from the master bedroom down the hall. But from below, from the study, came a silent, persistent pull. It was a cold, metallic itch in his mind, a siren call of stacked silver and gold.
He ghosted down the stairs, avoiding the third step from the top that his memory—both Lutz's and Andrei's combined—told him would groan. The study door was locked, a more sophisticated tumbler lock. This one took him thirty seconds of concentrated, silent work, the pins yielding to his insistent pressure with a series of barely audible clicks.
Inside, the pull led him directly to a heavy oak desk. He ran his fingers over the smooth surface, his touch so sensitive he could feel the infinitesimal seam of a hidden drawer. There was no visible lock. He pressed, he twisted, he slid various panels. Nothing. The complication was mild, but it was there.
Then he leaned in, his nose almost touching the wood. Beneath the scent of beeswax and ink, he caught the faint, coppery tang of old blood. Another's blood, a component of his potion. His eyes narrowed. He examined the carved lion's head that served as a drawer pull. One of the beast's eyes was deeper, darker than the other. He pressed his thumb against it, and with a soft click, a section of the desk's side panel slid open.
Inside was a heavy strongbox. The lock on this was a challenge, a complex series of levers. But his fingers were already warmed from the previous work. They danced over the metal, feeling for the subtle counter-pressure of each lever. It was like a conversation in a language only his fingertips understood. A minute later, the final lever gave way and the lid sprang open.
The gleam of coin was dull in the darkness. Hammers and Shields, perhaps two dozen in total. He didn't count. He transferred them to the leather pouch at his belt, the weight a comforting burden. He also took a small velvet bag containing a pair of emerald earbobs that hummed with particular value to his senses. He left the family portraits and the merchant's ledgers. He was a thief, not a vandal.
His exit was as clean as his entry. He was a ghost, and the Weiss household slept on, unaware they had been haunted.
The Barrister's Ledger
The second house, in the slightly more respectable Merchant Quarter, belonged to a barrister with a known habit of taking bribes to lose evidence. This was not a job for the Vipers; this was Lutz's own enterprise. The house was taller, narrower, with a facade of clean brick. The doors and windows on the ground floor were formidable, but the barrister, in his arrogance, had a weakness: a rooftop terrace.
Lutz scaled a neighboring building, his ascent a silent, vertical scramble. From the roof, he surveyed the gap. It was a jump of maybe eight feet, over a three-story drop into a cobbled lane. He didn't hesitate. He took three running steps and launched himself, his body coiled like a spring. For a heart-stopping moment, he was suspended in the fog-shrouded void, then his feet met the opposite parapet with a soft thud, his knees bending to absorb the impact. He dropped into a crouch, motionless.
The terrace doors were latched from the inside with a simple bolt. From his roll, he selected a long, flexible pick and a thin strip of hardened leather. He slid the leather between the doors, working it upwards until he met the resistance of the bolt. Then, with painstaking slowness, he angled the pick alongside it, nudging the bolt back. It was a game of millimeters, of feeling the friction through two layers of material. The bolt slid free with a final, soft scrape.
He was in a study, far grander than the merchant's. The air smelled of pipe tobacco and old paper. The pull here was different—not the cold lure of coin, but the dry, intellectual allure of secreted paper. It drew him to a section of shelving filled with legal texts.
His fingers trailed along the spines. One book, a thick volume on Feysac inheritance law, felt… wrong. The leather was too new, the weight slightly off. He pulled it out. It was a dummy, a hollowed-out shell. Inside lay a single, slim ledger.
This was the prize. This ledger, he knew from tavern gossip he'd curated as "Elias Vogler," contained the names of every official the barrister had bribed and the cases he'd fixed. It was worth more than a chest of Hammers to the right people. He was about to tuck it away when a floorboard creaked in the hall.
Lutz froze, melting back into the deepest shadow of the room, behind a heavy velvet curtain. The study door opened, and the barrister himself, holding a single candle, shuffled in. He was a portly man, his face puffy with sleep. He went directly to a sideboard and poured himself a measure of brandy, his back to Lutz.
Lutz didn't breathe. He calculated the angles, the distance to the terrace door. If the man turned, he would see the open door, the disturbed curtain. The barrister drank deeply, sighed, and then, to Lutz's horror, began to amble towards the bookshelf.
His heart was a cold, hard stone in his chest. His hand drifted to the blade at his belt. He would have to be fast, a single, precise blow to the temple before the man could cry out.
The barrister stopped a foot from the curtain. His hand reached out—not for the dummy book, but for the one next to it, a tome on maritime law. He pulled it out, grunted, and shuffled back out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Lutz waited a full five minutes in the silence, the only sound the frantic beating of his own heart. Then, he moved. He slipped out onto the terrace, closed the doors behind him, and made the return jump with the ledger secured inside his tunic. The complication had been mild, but the stakes had been terrifyingly high.
The Shipwright's Retirement
The third target was a ground-floor workshop and attached living quarters belonging to an old shipwright who was rumored to have been paid a small fortune in gold for his last, secret commission for the Feysac navy. The man lived alone, and his security was physical, not architectural.
The workshop had no windows, only a heavy, iron-banded door. The lock was massive, a relic from a warship. Lutz examined it for a full minute, running his sensitive fingertips over the cold iron. It was beyond his skill to pick quickly. The complication was the door itself.
So, he went for the roof. It was a single-story, tar-papered affair. He hauled himself up, his muscles burning faintly after the night's exertions. His senses reached out, searching for the dense, heavy aura of raw gold. It came from directly below, a potent, sun-warmth glow in his mind's eye.
He found a skylight, a single pane of dirty glass set in a wooden frame. It was nailed shut. He used the tip of his thinnest pick to carefully work the putty away from one corner, then pried the nail loose. He repeated the process with three others until the pane was free. He lifted it out and set it silently aside.
The drop was fifteen feet into darkness. He hung from the frame by his fingertips for a moment, then let go, landing in a roll that dissipated the force. He came up in a crouch, in the center of the cluttered workshop. The scent of sawdust, pine tar, and old man filled the air.
The gold called to him from a floorboard beneath the main workbench. He knelt, his fingers finding the hidden seam. He pried it up with the blade of his pick. Beneath, in a hollowed-out space, rested a fat leather purse. He didn't need to open it; the weight and the psychic hum of the contents confirmed it was all gold Hammers. A fortune.
He was securing the purse to his belt when a guttural voice rasped from the doorway to the living quarters.
"Thief."
The old shipwright stood there, a massive, rusted belaying pin held in knotted, shaking hands. He was a silhouette of wiry strength against the dim light from his room.
Lutz didn't speak. He didn't run. He stood slowly, his hands held away from his body, showing they were empty.
"The money," the old man croaked, taking a step forward. "My daughter... it's for her, in Loen. Get away from it."
Lutz looked at him, he felt nothing. No pity, no guilt. "I've heard about her, you killed her while drunk when she was 10 years old."
In one fluid motion, too fast for the old man's eyes to follow, Lutz bent, snatched up a heavy metal caliper from the workbench, and threw it. It wasn't aimed at the man, but at a stack of delicate ship models on a shelf to his left.
The caliper struck true. Wood splintered, and the intricate models cascaded to the floor in a symphony of destruction.
"NO! MY WORK!"
The old man cried out, a sound of pure anguish, and instinctively lunged to save his life's work, dropping the belaying pin.
It was all the time Lutz needed. He lunged forward and landed a side kick on the old man, making him roll on the ground. The old man grunted in pain, in a flash, Lutz took out both of his knives and repeated a ritual he had already done once, he plunged them both into the man's ocular frames, his body went limp instantly.
Lutz then retreated his weapons and wiped them clean on a piece of oily cloth nearby. After that, he was at the skylight in three strides. He leaped, caught the edge of the frame with one hand, and hauled himself up and out with a strength that belied his lean frame. He didn't look back at the old man. He replaced the skylight pane, a ghost retreating into the fog, his pockets heavy with the means to his revenge.
The 3 nights were a success. The legends of the Indaw Harbor Butcher fed. His skills honed, and his funds restored. But as he melted back into the shadows of Indaw Harbor, the only thing warming him was the cold, comforting weight of stolen gold.