Cethin Ray didn’t take uncalled-for risks. Calculated risks, where he understood the odds to be in his favor, were a different thing and tonight, at the first Kritarchy Symphony orchestra’s outing, the line demonstrably blurred.

    “Where are the bathrooms?” asked an Ohio Theater patron.

    Cethin held up his lantern cradling a long, yellow, beeswax candle, and waved toward another usher in a matching black coat and black tie who stood near a flight of stairs which rolled down and away from the main floor.

    “When you reach the gentleman there, go down the steps and to the right.”

    “Thank you very much,” the woman answered him.

    The feather lining around her collar hung heavy with rain drops which matted together what otherwise would have been a light and carefree affair that danced on the air currents. He hadn’t seen such a luxurious outerwear in years, if ever. Her shoes glittered and matched gold bracelets around her wrists, inlaid with what he took as semi-precious cut stones. Far to chunky in his opinion for a woman her age, and he felt no guilt helping part her from a terrible fashion choice.

    “The hall is expected to be very warm this evening, if you wish to leave your coat with the coat check just off to your right before you head to your seats.”

    “I will, thank you.” 

    He had faith his coconspirators in the coat room would know to pick their targets judiciously.

    How had the Kritarchy paid for the entire event? It drew more people dressed like her, than not. Fifty ushers milled just to keep the event lit and direct the foot traffic. Another dozen technicians prepared and aimed parabolic hammered-tin dishes which illuminated the stage for the performance and sent lighted lines up walls in strategically chosen locations. Everything about the evening spoke of an out-of-character extravagance by the local archbishop but Cethin and his crew were grateful for it.

No formal orchestra had played in any major Kritarchy cities since the Fall. Every tavern had its minstrels and singers, and more than a few traveling bands came and went through the world’s broken remnants, but the Kritarchy was making a statement this evening. This formal performance had brought violinists from as far as Chicago’s Dome, and trumpet players from as far as the Kritarchy’s eastern edge in Pittsburg. The rumors said there were even several cello players who had come north, from the Southern States.

    Cethin chuckled.

    For a group of people who claimed not to rule, they were certainly making sure the local Assemblers and Production Guilds understood where the power stemmed from. Cethin suspected the local bishop planned the entire affair from start to finish. Reverend Kendrick had always been more publicly outspoken about direct rule than the archbishop, but so long as he stayed within the archbishop’s bounds he wasn’t chastised, at least not publicly. Cethin noticed the absence of both of them this evening. A shame, as their presence could have served in the need for distraction.

    He bowed his head as two Production Guild deputy chiefs walked past. Each man wore several rings, sometimes two per finger, which would have fetched a fortune, and their entourage flashed gold necklaces, silver earrings and even a modern-made inlaid breastplate all no less flamboyant in appearance. He felt several baubles he pilfered throughout the night tumble over one another in his pocket as he righted. A light appetizer for events to come and insurance against problems the evening may present. Cethin considered it an already implemented plan B.  

    He calmly ran his fingers through his hair, which he’d cut short for the evening. His usual distinctive shoulder-length blond locks gave him away to the wrong people and, much to his regret, had fallen out of fashion. Blend in, don’t stand out.

    Inside, the sounds of stringed instruments gently crescendoed, as everyone tuned their instruments, and the building resonated with the hum of an incidental harmony. Women hurried to their seats with awkward short steps in rarely worn high heeled shoes, and tight-fitting dresses. Men wheezed like overstuffed pigs in suits that, while ostentatious, squeezed too snuggly against love handles.

    “The show is beginning soon,” he announced. “Please, everyone begin to head inside.”

    Cethin followed the last stragglers, and guided them to their places in the main hall’s numbered rows. He stopped at the top of the aisle and looked over the recently restored theater. Rain and neglect had taken its toll on the unused building, but somehow, they had brought the place back to life in a matter of months. Proof, that when you say the words, “money is no object,” and mean it, you can get amazing things done.

    Red velvet seats rose at a steep angle from the floor to the roof in three tiers. Parabolic candle lamps illuminated the walls, which gave the building an ambiance electrical lighting lacked. The walls were adorned with stencils of gardens, flowers and nature scenery in the ancient Victorian style; they were so new the paint had barely dried. Every ten feet an alcove cradled small statuary and church icons. Balconies overhead, conveniently identified and isolated the richest patrons whose eyes were transfixed on the orchestra.

    The stage had been resplendently restored. Hardwood floors looked new, and the formerly collapsed red drapes had been carted away. Scroll work along the proscenium was polished to the last finial, and the old black mold and rot were filled in by new wood as detailed as the original.

    The conductor, a small woman who stood atop a tall black box as to be seen by the orchestra cued the musicians, and classic Beethoven sonata notes rang out true and clear in the theater’s warm night air. Built for acoustic perfection, even with the crowd’s murmurs the music carried him away for just a moment, and in that instant, he understood some of what the Kritarchy tried to achieve.

    Music filled the world once. It became cheap and ubiquitous, in every ear all the time. Stories were told by the elders who lived before the Fall that the music lived in small earbuds like earplugs, and so every person possessed a personal minstrel army. When the world went silent, people missed music, and society’s survivors sought out musicians. Amateurs, or at best retired and second-rate professionals, they served a substitute while the world waited, for tonight.

    The perfect harmony lifted his spirit. His heart pounded and his breathing quickened. The music imparted a sensation he’d felt only on failure’s razor edge in his professional career. Something more than excitement and less than adrenaline when a single misstep would cost him jail time, or worse, depending on where exactly he burgled. The crowd became enraptured, several looked on the edge of tears. A religious experience, were the first words Cethin conceived.

    He imagined the speech that would likely be given at the break or end of the show perhaps, about God’s power making it all possible. He may not have noticed a bishop, but there were several priests and deacons in the front rows with their telltale red stoles about their shoulders, including the famed Father Rhys, his distinctive height noticeable from a distance.

    He almost felt bad about interrupting it all.

    Two more pieces, and then he pulled himself away from the evening affair to find his position at the stairwell’s bottom, in a hall which led to the restrooms, along with several more of his crew. He enjoyed the music, but he had fostered an illustrious career, and cashed in on more than a few favors for such a large job this evening. He meant to see it completed with appropriate skill.

    Subtle nods were exchanged when he arrived.

    Circumstances forced Cethin to widen his usual five person assembly to a barely manageable fifteen people. Even so bloated, he wasn’t certain he had enough to do the job right, but any more and he tread dangerous ground, using men and women he didn’t know, hired due to their reputation alone.

Details were the linchpin of a thief’s success, and Cethin had been very successful in life.

    A young man nearest him fidgeted. His shoes did not fit him correctly and twice in five minutes he bent over to tie them tighter. Two ushers across the white marble floor flirted with each other, stood too close together, and whispered short sweet things, eyeing the dark corners around the way which led to the storage and maintenance tunnels under the main floor.

    Two more men stood on the scarlet center carpet and watched other washroom level ushers with extreme interest. They didn’t blink, and their heels clicked too close together, touching like soldiers at attention. The candles held within their wide-open lanterns barely flickered, giving away the stillness with which they waited. Their eyes gave away their real attention. Their gaze moved over the evening’s volunteers, and rested a second too long on Cethin’s coconspirators.

    When the pair’s eyes moved across Cethin, he reached a hand up and tugged at his collar and the bowtie, swallowing hard to show off his ill-fitting attire. He shifted his weight from foot to foot while he did so, and scratched the back of his shin with his opposite heel. Awkwardly, he bent to brush dust off his pant leg, dripping waxy droplets to the floor before he righted himself. When he stood again, their eyes already passed over him, but his attention remained fixed in return, and recognition dawned. Svizzera. The Kritarchy’s Police.

    Had he ducked their attention with his buffooning?

    A third serious looking usher joined the first two at the base of the stairs, and the three of them nearly blocked the passage. This man with his smooth, dark, blemish-free skin looked a decade younger than Cethin knew him to be. Aidan Patton, the man who vigilantly led the Columbus Svizzera.

He’d expected Svizzera here to fill their role as priesthood guardians. But this was wrong. They were undercover, like his own crew. Why not wear their colors? 

    Cethin’s heart pounded as the music upstairs stopped and doors opened to let out enraptured listeners. He had only minutes and he tried to catch his foot soldiers’ eyes. The two nearest him watched his free hand carefully and he flashed them the signal to abort.

    Time for actual Plan B.

    Cethin’s fellow thieves walked up the stairs, just as the sound of opening doors and people praising the performance reached them, with smiles firmly set on their faces. The two Svizzera ushers peeled away from Aidan and followed them barely three steps behind. Two more men in modern suits joined Aidan on the stairs, and Cethin’s every instinct screamed that to leave now would guarantee his capture but to remain guaranteed the same.

    Maybe they had followed his men coincidentally? No. Coincidence got thieves caught. Assume Patton knew who he looked for. 

    Scratch Plan B, a few extra jewels just became inconsequential. Plan C. Get out without his crew, immediately. In the end, as every thief knew, it was every man for himself.

    People trickled down the stairs in pairs and triplets and broke off to the bathrooms on either side. Cethin’s remaining team member’s followed, ostensibly to light the way, and provide direction. In fact, their smash and grab had begun.

    He abandoned his own position at the men’s room. One of his regular crew scrunched a brow at him, which Cethin acknowledged with a negative shake of the head, and immediately regretted it.

One simple mistake, and he knew it the moment his head twisted.

    Undercover Svizzera ushers behind him stared into his skull. He had given away his affiliation. He calmly blew out his candle, placed his lantern on the ground and completely ignored questions and patrons alike.

    Among footsteps, voices, laughter, and the first confused protests, he picked out footsteps in time with his, following him. He moved away from the restrooms, and around the corner where the crowd could not see him. Jogging on the balls of his feet he minimized his retreating sounds. Two well-dressed strangers aggressively making out in the dark against the wall, clearly having started their particular rendezvous since before the half-time mark, never even slowed their session at his passing. Any other night, he’d avail himself of such easy marks.

    He needed only a moment alone to achieve his end.

    Slipping into the opposite corner where the shadows hung like velvet curtains, he whispered Latin phrases, his chosen Idemancy magical tongue. Escaping the Svizzera with it was deliciously ironic. Shadows around him deepened. He leaned against the wall, flattened to the surface, and crouched low. He dropped a veil over himself, like a thin cloth shrouding his head and vision. A reputation as The Shadow was, he mused, well deserved.

    His secret rested in an abandoned house’s dark basement, in a lightless box, where none watched. There, his visage, expertly sculpted in wax, molded with scraping from his skin, and dolled with clippings of his hair, created the perfect target for Idemancy. People feared Iconomancy because they imagined it used against them. Such a doll would be a terrible weapon in an aggressor’s hands. Too short sighted. In his possession, it magnified his whispered magic a hundred-fold.

    The muffled grunts emanating from the bathrooms became louder. He heard the targets yelling now, as they were all hit at once. A dozen men and women were ushered into the bathrooms, stripped of their goods at knifepoint and left in the stalls while more were then brought in, and targeted in turn. Upstairs, in the private balconies, a similar scene undoubtedly played out as false servers offered drinks to targets and then stole away their jewels and valuables. It had been a simple plan, in and out, but they had been made.

    He heard footsteps scuffle before three men hurried around the corner. Plosive air burst from an usher, collapsed under a pair of bodies in a tackle. Then, Cethin, The Shadow, held his breath as Aidan turned the corner, a lantern in hand. He stepped past the arrest his men made, indifferent to the street soldier, looking for the planner of the affair.

    Adian’s light exposed a white dress still held far too high as the middle-age woman protested and pushed the even older man away from her with mock confusion and indignation in equal parts.

Aidan pointed his finger to them and then to the stairs, dismissing them out of hand, clearly caring nothing for their tryst. Cethin understood the Svizzera man’s targeting. Authority radiated palpably and his face suggested a man who expected obedience. Fifteen years’ experience serving the Kritarchy rested in Aiden’s eyes, and Cethin knew, Aiden had experience detecting hidden prey. The lantern light passed over the room in a cursory flash and then the holy guards’ leader walked calmly around the wide hallway where the corner turned to go beneath the stage. He tugged at the locked door to the performance floor’s underbelly, twice, and poked his lantern toward every dark corner.

    The light shone directly in Cethin’s eyes as he knelt, in perfect stillness, and he didn’t dare breathe. His magic matched his local shadow to his wax simulacrum at home cast in darkness, not silence. Aiden’s gaze passed directly over him, lingering for a half a heartbeat on his position, his boots only a few inches from Cethin’s. His ears filled so completely with the sound of fatigued, vibrating muscle tissue he didn’t understand how Aiden, with his close proximity, couldn’t hear it too. Thirty seconds after Aiden had left, Cethin took his first real breath.

    He could only trigger his spell once before he returned home, and his mind raced. He could pick the lock behind him, and wait it all out. They seemed to be arresting people quietly, as there were no further sounds of a fight around the corner. No doubt the Kritarchy would want this handled discretely, but that also implied information ahead of time. The warrior deacons had been waiting for the hit, which meant they might know to look for him personally.

    No. Waiting it out here constituted more danger than a quiet exit.

    Plan D. Look like you belong and walk out.

    Still under his shroud, Cethin removed his suit, turned it inside out, and revealed a custom-made lavish forest-green cloth. He pulled his bowtie free, drew a matching verdant green tie from his pocket, unrolled it and looped it about his neck with practiced ease. He ran his fingers through his short hair, flipping the natural part the other way with equally practiced motions and drew glasses from his formerly inner, now outer pocket, and slipped them on.

    He rose, adopted a tilt to his head, a slight left leg limp, and dropped his concealment. He peered about the corner. A woman, alone and confused at the base of the stairs, muttered to herself probably about the events witnessed. Several young and equally confused ushers remained, herding the uninformed local populace back to their seats as the musical intermission came to an end. Cethin approached, took the confused woman gently by the arm, and tilted his head away from her, muttering about his leg, and the dreadfully confusing night it had been, asking her to help him up the stairs.

She complied, out of confusion, a concrete task to focus on or perhaps good nature.

    Placing her deftly between himself and the remaining undercover stairwell guard, who once again pretended to be an usher, Cethin shortly found himself on the main floor. To his right, several dozen local constabulary escorted his crew out the front door, checking them carefully. Cethin’s instinct screamed they looked for him too. There would be no going out the front.

    “Thank you,” he said to the woman. “I’ll manage from here. It was just those stairs. I must catch my breath,” he said as she gestured to the doors to the orchestra pit and nearest seats. “You enjoy the rest of this show and baffling evening,” his mock old man voice trembled.

    He walked away a short distance without waiting for her to answer, and lingered just long enough after she went up the stairs to be certain she did not follow. Then, moving faster than a patron should but far slower than a master thief could, he walked away into the theater’s unused recesses, toward the old concession stands, and the distant door he had prepared the night before as another alternate exit.

Twenty minutes later, sitting on a roof two blocks away, finally confident he had not been followed, he felt some remorse for hitting a guard over the head on his way out. They had known his escape routes. That meant not only had the crew been ratted out, the rat was probably among them. He had told two people about his tertiary escape plans. Conveniently neither appeared to have been arrested that night, but he wasn’t foolish enough to ferret out which had betrayed him. He would be lucky to get back to his private hideaway and retrieve his few possessions before he skipped town. Dad always said, never overstay your welcome.

    Louisville was an up-and-coming place in the Southern States of America. Time for a new crew perhaps. Maybe work solo for a while. He had a few days’ walk to consider it, and between his small stash and pilfered gold chains in his pockets, funding a new start always lived in the cards. 

    Plan Z, live to steal another day.