Post Two
By: Marlea
Karanya had never been very good at being a thief. She wasn't great at covering her tracks, and she hadn't mastered the art of looking like she wanted one thing while taking what she really desired.
"KARANYA!" The strong bass voice bellowed, echoing through the stone corridors of the library.
Karanya wasn't stupid enough to answer the shout.
She scurried down the hall to her rooms, trying to gather things as quickly as possible. Her apartment would be the first place he looked. She stuffed
the three scrolls she had stolen into a bundle of shirts, shoved the shirts into a sack, then piled a few sets of pants and a decent dress on top of it
all. She glanced about the room, taking stock of what was left and needed to come with her.
Lian, her enuriel, and Enloa, the library's enuriel, chirped at her from her desk. She giggled, tipsy from the adrenaline coursing through her veins and
the excitement of being in trouble; she hadn't done anything this fun since she and Alannah had played that trick on the snotty daughter of one of the
village elders. Lian turned on his back and wriggled in delight at her mirth, and she rubbed his belly. Enloa flicked her tail jealously. "We have
to go, you two. Levin discovered that those scrolls are missing, and I'm in big trouble," she whispered, then grabbed each in a hand and stuffed them in
her shirt. They slipped down to rest by the hem of her pants, in the little shelf made where her shirt was tucked into her trousers. "Don't claw me!" she whispered again.
Heavy footsteps and shouted words, slurred into gibberish by the voice's anger, echoed toward her down the long hall. "Damn!" Karanya shoved her few bound books of plant and animal sketches, her pens and pencils, and her notes on her research into her bag. She looked at her surroundings again, trying to decide if that was everything.
The room was small but comfortable, with a nice hearth and its own wash room. The closets in which she had kept her nicer dresses were empty; lower scholars had few calls to attend formal dinners, or even semi-formal dinners, so she had sold them to have a few crowns on hand when she needed them. The stone floor had a large rug covering it, with intricate patterns
and soft colors; it would have fetched a large price, but it wasn't hers to sell and she had enjoyed having something between her bare feet and the cold flooring when she awoke in the mornings.
None of the furnishings mattered to her, though, and she had everything she needed.
Another shout, this time much closer, just a few doors away, caused her to jump. She slung her sack onto her back and adjusted the strap. There would be no way to escape down the hall; Levin was a large man, and her room was one of the last on this wing. She looked at the window and sighed. She really didn't want to jump the two stories to the ground. Two levels of a library were a very significant distance, as shelves tended to be very tall to accomodate as many books as possible. She hurried to the window and shoved it open, shivering as a cool breeze hit her. She gulped at the height of her window--it was such a long way down.
The breeze blew again, stronger, rattling the leaves and trellis on the wall. Karanya laughed again, quietly, in relief. She could climb the trellis, if she hurried.
She sat on the sill, turned to face the room, then started to pick her way down the wall, reaching up to close the windows so her escape wasn't so obvious. She got all the way to the change in the brick pattern barely discernable under the cover of the leaves, marking the start of the first level, when she slipped and fell into the bushes, landing on her back with a
rustle and a grunt. She shifted to take her weight off her sack, being careful to do nothing that would harm her scrolls or books, caring little for her clothing, and squirmed towards the edge of the bushes. Enloa and
Lian squeaked in protest a few times, and she winced as their tiny claws dug into the soft skin of her belly.
She landed on her feet on the soft earth next to the shrubbery, and brushed herself off, looking back up the way she had come. The bushes stretched above her--she thought if she stood on her tip-toes and reached up with her hand as far as she could, she might be able to touch their top--and the library towered behind them, a massive building. A huge dark shape paused in front of her window, and she stopped breathing for a moment. Levin threw open the window and glared down; Karanya shrank to the bushes and tried to keep quiet, resisting the impulse to giggle again. He growled something unintelligible and slammed the window shut again.
Karanya dashed across the lawn, making for the forest at the edge of the academy's grounds.
~~~
Levin was not a happy man.
Those had been his scrolls. He had only let that wench at them to see if her knack for understanding ancient texts would carry over to them. They had been his pet project, rumored to have clues about things from the ultimate spells to the ultimate recipe for fried fish.
And now they were gone. He wouldn't get the prestige for being the only man able to decipher them. He wouldn't get whatever power their contents would
give, whether it be that of a great mage or of a great chef. He would get nothing, besides an unemployment stipend when the director of the academy found out that those scrolls were gone.
She had even taken the library's enuriel. Now they'd have to buy another one of the pesky creatures, or lose some of their stock to the rodentia that would become braver in Enloa's absence.
He had sent several of the groundskeepers and some of the lower-ranked scholars, little more than pages currently, to search the rest of the building and the surrounding area, but he knew she was gone.
He knew he shouldn't have trusted her. She was a sly one, a dangerous one, and the spiteful bitch had never shown the least bit of gratitude for everything he'd done for her. It wasn't like he hadn't offered her plenty of opportunities to show her gratitude, either.
Women.
He sat heavily in the thronelike chair behind his desk and tried to think of something to do to head off the disasters approaching.
~~~
Karanya ran, panting, through the forest, batting at leaves and branches as they hit her, putting as much distance between herself and the academy's grounds as possible.
Levin had sent out some of the groundskeepers to look for her, and one had almost stepped on her when she had hidden in the shadows of some foliage. Luckily, he had missed her, and she had been able to slip away and start running.
She had no idea how she stayed so fast and nimble, when she sat in a library researching all day every day. But she was very, very glad she'd stayed that
way.
She tripped on a root and stumbled, catching herself on the trunk of the tree the root had been feeding. She turned around and looked back the way she had come. Darkness. Silence. She tried to breathe deeply. She had no idea where she was, beyond somewhere to the east of the grounds.
Lian crawled up and poked his head out of her shirt and chirped at her, as if to ask, "What now?" Enloa wriggled and squeaked from her hem.
"Sorry, darlings. I need to catch my breath, then we'll figure out what to do." She sat, shifting her pack from her shoulder and leaning back against
the tree. She closed her eyes, thinking over what to do now. She had money and clothing, but no food. She thought there might be a village further along, but she wasn't sure.
She looked up at the canopy of leaves overhead and sighed. What now, indeed.
The breeze blew again, and the total darkness of the forest lifted. The moon, three-quarters waxing, came into view. Karanya took the moment to look around, and almost laughed aloud.
She was sitting on the path, and the forest ended a few yards from her, in a wall of brush and brambles. She patted Lian's head, which was still sticking
out of the neckline of her shirt. "Looks like this bit of our escape's over, isn't it?" She got up, brushing off her pants, and started down the path.
CRACK!
Karanya's head whipped around, catching the end of the motion: a large figure had just stepped out of the brush. "Damn," she whispered, and started running for the edge of the woods.
The figure followed.
~~~
Karanya had managed to elude whichever groundskeeper had caught up with her ever since she had reached the town. However, that was, at best, a temporary situation.
She slunk into an alley and looked at the buildings around her. On the left was a store, she guessed, judging by the boxes stacked along its walls. On
the right was an inn, if her ears and eyes were not deceiving her.
An inn.
She grinned and started climbing up the barrels stacked by the wall, and stood on the top one, looking into the deserted room separated from her by a single pane of glass. She shook her shirt and whispered at her chest. "Hey, guys, come on, get out so I can wriggle into this room." The enuriels scrambled out, perching on her shoulders, causing her to giggle a little at the tickling.
Karanya played with the window for a moment, then pushed it up, cringing at its creaking. When it was up far enough for her to slip through, she took a deep breath, glanced behind her, then started to climb into the room beyond.
She dusted herself off and decided that her clothing was beyond repair but that she didn't care. She took her bag from her shoulder, set the enuriels down on a corner of the bed, then collapsed onto the bed herself, clutching the bag containing the much sought-after scrolls to her chest, and began to sleep.
Unbeknownst to her, the room was just then being allocated to a small woman by the name of Mei'Nyx Tacita Lena'Rai d'Shrow.
