Chapter 3

Dangling one handed from the third floor balcony, Marcos’s free hand
searched through the pack around his waist for an extra the last karabiner
he had brought. He had packed light, with an extremely unforgiving
estimate of his needs. His thin gloves offered little comfort as the cold,
rain covered steel of the balcony worked its way to his bones. He hated
the rain, even if it did mean there were far less people out that might be
able to tell the police anything after he’d gone. 

Marco hadn’t chosen the life of a thief as much as it had been chosen for 
him. It was the family business, and throughout a history far longer than 
anyone remembered, his family had always found themselves on the wrong 
side of the law, human or otherwise. This was the exact reason his 
employers had hired him for this job, the family name. That and who but an 
elf with a family history of bad choices and better luck would be willing 
to steal from the royal line. Even the norms knew that they should stay 
away from the houses around here, people had a tendency to disappear, or 
worse, reappear having lost more than a few of their marbles. 

Marco found the clip he had been searching for, let out a sigh of relief, 
and secured his rope through it. He slowly let the rope slip through his 
hands as he descended. His eyes darted up to where the rope had been 
fastened around the marble posts along the edge of the balcony and then 
down to the ground monitoring his slow drop. He had it on good authority - 
as much as one could expect information from a gnome to be good - that the 
room he’d need to enter was directly down the hall from the window just 
below him, and there was no easier way in.

He swung carefully towards the window, his feet bracing against the frame 
with an almost inaubable tap.  He looped the rope around the lock on his 
belt to keep him from slipping farther down the building and pulled a 
small silver instrument from the black satchel around his waist. Looking 
through the window to make sure all was safe, he began to cut at the outer 
edge of the upper right pane of glass. Marcos began chanting beneath his 
breath as he cut, calling for protection, and to disable the alarms that 
couldn't be taken out with a patch kit or a wire cutter.  As the cutter 
crossed the glass, smooth and flawless, Marcos slipped a thin metal sliver 
through the opposite side and opened a small, thin fingerlike apendage on 
the other side to prevent the glass from falling into the hall.