Every morning, a mail cart moves through the Greenlands of Hertaris, destined for the White Cliffs where the nobles sit. And every morning, Millicent Auclair intersects with it to see if there is anything worth stealing.

  In an ideal world, no one would need to steal in order to better themselves. But magical education and materials do not come cheap. A single magical item can be worth more than twice an average worker’s yearly salary, or a dozen of Millie’s other less reputable ventures. For that, it is worth checking the mail cart every single time.

  Ten months ago, she found a bracelet with a simple enchantment that keeps one warm. Ever since then, she hasn’t been unable to resist conjuring an illusory disguise, casting a spell that detects magic near her, and taking her morning walk in a very specific path. Just in case.

  And for ten months, there has been nothing at all. Until today.

  Something lights up in the detection spell. Millie nearly cracks her neck snapping to look at the cart, when she’d been doing so well feigning disinterest. Could it really be? She’s trained herself to expect nothing every time.

  It’s small. But it is definitely there, an odd pulse of amber light in her mind’s vision as her magic reflects it. Not in the main cart, but in the satchel of the courier.

  Stealing is wrong, Millie’s father taught her long ago. And everything is better earned. But… sometimes the circumstances of the world make it that the fairness of earning is not as simple as others claim.

  Fairness. He spoke of fairness. Her father, the teacher, who taught her and hundreds of others a dozen things every day, for decades of his life.

  Fairness laughed when someone else’s mistake killed him. A mistake that would have seen anyone locked up for manslaughter… if they hadn’t been a member of the Halbert family.

  So instead, Millie had sat in her living room and forced herself to smile as great apologies were given and opportunities handed to her talented sister as platitude. All the while, bitterness carving a permanent home for itself in her chest, an infection in her heart she can never cure.

  Things should be earned. It only means anything if everyone follows the rule.

  With the confident stride of the lanky teenage boy she’s disguised as, and making sure to look uninterested in the cart as she comes up alongside it and the courier hops off for the next delivery, Millie forces breath out of her lips. She keeps her focus on her detection spell as she reaches over the cart seat, stepping up onto the side when her short stature proves an obstacle to reaching the satchel.

  She has seconds, but seconds is all she needs.

  The satchel is filled with envelopes and some small packages. One of the envelopes sings to her spell, shimmering. As Millie grabs it, there is more weight to it than a mere letter.

  She glances up. This stretch of the Greenlands main road is quiet at this time of morning, all the shopkeepers busy arranging their stalls for the day. The courier is busy laughing with the produce seller he’s just handed a package to, but he’s starting to step backwards. A turn is imminent.

  Millie lurches back, letting herself fall the small distance between the cart and the ground, shoving the envelope into her coat.

  She turns, and keeps walking the way she’d been headed, but as soon as she can, she ducks into a small gap between shops along the street.

  Millie presses herself against the wall, catching her breath, while her heart races like a child tearing through a field on a sunny day. Joyous. Light. Making her laugh softly to herself.

  With every success, every risk she takes that pays off, she feels so fucking alive. One hand runs through the short red hair hidden under the illusion while the other covers where the envelope rests in the pocket near her heart.

  Oh, she should not enjoy this sort of thing so much. But she does.

  And now, for the not getting caught part. Millie is no expert when it comes to magic, with only a few years of study under her belt. But what she does have is a powerful grasp of illusory and teleportation fundamentals, having devoured the same two books in the library over and over when she could afford no others.

  It shouldn’t be so easy to simply reach for the magical potential around her, the magic that sits in the essence of the world itself. Or to twist her hand in a short, practiced motion, and using that magical potential, instantly shift the disguise. The little she’s dared share with others who dabble in Disciplined magic, the more clear it is that it should take more time, more words and actions, like the other spells she knows.

  When she tried to show her diagrams to Ms More, the magic specialist of the thieves’ guild, the peculiar older woman had blinked at her with astonishment.

  Since then, Millie has kept her affinities at a need to know basis.

  The illusion she conjures now is a woman in her thirties with long dark hair and a lovely navy blazer—a far cry from Millie’s vertically challenged, scruffy self. An alias she calls Juliana, if anyone asks her name.

  Millie walks with painstakingly straighter posture out the other end of the alley and back into the street, laughing quietly to herself as she makes her way to the dive bar The Morning Shade. The old man behind the bar nods at ‘Juliana’, who has been in a couple of times before. He’s not part of the criminal underground’s guild, but he’s excellent at not asking too many questions, which endears him to the guild’s faction within the Greenlands.

  Making her way to a booth at the back of the bar, with a convenient pillar that provides additional cover from the door, Millie slides into the seat. Now out of public view, she can afford to have her favourite accomplice.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  With a soft snap of Millie’s fingers and an uttered arcane word, a beagle dog appears on the booth seat next to her.

  “Hey you,” Millie says, patting the dog’s head. The disguise magic is no deterrent—she knows her mistress in any form, being a ritually bonded wizard’s familiar. “Look what I found, Evie.”

  Taking out the letter from the coat, Millie shows it to her because it feels polite to do so. Evie nibbles at her pinky finger instead of offering an opinion. Millie smiles, then looks at the scrawled, hurried handwriting that outlines the recipient.

  To Zoe Tempete—

  Millie’s jaw drops. Her heart, already racing from the thrill of her thievery, kicks up a notch.

  Tempete. One of the high noble houses—the one in charge of Hertarisia’s trade and port. That alone should make Millie afraid of the consequences, but she finds herself grinning.

  Map is enclosed, along with the key (yes, you were right, it is most certainly a key). Thank you for letting me examine it, I hope this leads you to something worthwhile.

  Your friend, Lolan Leafstride

  The return address is in Kirch—an entirely different capital, in a country to the northwest. Weeks by road to travel from Hertaris, and days by the Storm Rail because it travels south first.

  “Good, so they’ll take a while to contact when this doesn’t arrive,” Millie says to Evie, one corner of her mouth curling.

  The map shows the coast to the north of Hertaris, with a location marked near a beach Millie has visited before both in her childhood and over the last year. In recent months, she’s had more reason to take to the waters around her home. There’s a small note next to the mark stating ‘underwater cave—will likely need waterbreathing magic’.

  Waterbreathing magic. How easily this person speaks of such an expensive thing. But then, to a high noble, to this Zoe Tempete, it likely isn’t an obstacle at all. Word is there’s a magical shop in the White Cliffs above that sells all manner of things.

  If it was any other kind of magic required, be it resistance to some kind of poison, invisibility, or flight magic… Millie’s caper would be over before it began. (Although she’s hoping to figure out invisibility soon.)

  But this thing is underwater. Millie bites on her tongue gently, not quite daring to believe how this has turned out. If this is not some strange joke of fate, or perhaps a strange attempt at a repayment for the last five years…

  Millie’s hands shake as the situation threatens to overwhelm her. She doesn’t believe in fate. She doesn’t. She can’t, because then her father dying was always going to be what led to her current path, and she can’t accept anything that says his death was supposed to be.

  But what are the chances of this?

  The weight in the envelope is a metal disc that slides out and into Millie’s palm. It has a pearlescent quality across the top but is plain on the back. The detection spell has faded, but there is no doubt that this is what set it off.

  “What do you think?” she asks Evie, holding it out to her. “Worth looking into?”

  Evie licks the key. She blinks her large eyes—brown for the most part, but with passing flecks of the brightest colours Millie has ever seen, hints at her true nature. She makes a soft noise, one that Millie tends to take as an agreement.

  “Looks like we’re taking a walk. We should probably tell Claude,” Millie says. “Come on.”

  Tucking the letter and key into her coat pocket, Millie leaves the bar and takes another backstreet before finally donning her own face.

  She glances at her reflection as she heads deeper into the shopping district. A messy bob of bright ginger hair frames a thin, shrewd face. Her skin is pale, her ears slightly pointed, and hazel eyes guarded. Her favourite piece of clothing, a long suede lilac coat, makes her smile and strut with every step, hands in her pockets.

  As a lifelong introvert with a workaholic nature, Millie has precisely one friend. Claude. While she’d thought he was a more casual friend, at first, when she turned up on his doorstep two years ago with nowhere else to go, he’d taken her in without so much as blinking. She’s lived in his spare room ever since.

  Millie does not deserve a friend like Claude, but she hopes one day to repay his every kindness.

  “Millie!” He says with delight as soon as she steps into the homeware store. The most beautiful person she knows, inside and out, his white teeth gleam against medium brown skin. His dark eyes shine with warm contentment, and his hair is a mess of dark curls that somehow still looks perfect. “What brings you in here?”

  “I’ve found something,” Millie says, lowering her voice as she pretends to look at an eggbeating device on the shelf. “Something strange. I don’t know when I’ll get home. I’d say if I’m gone for a whole day, be worried, but otherwise—”

  “You’re exploring. I hope… it’s something you’re going to tell me about when you get home?” Claude asks.

  “We’ll see,” Millie says. There are not many things she keeps from Claude, but one of them sits heavy on her finger, and she fiddles with the ring in question. Claude does not know what it does, or what it cost her, and she is too scared to admit to either, even to him.

  Claude’s hand touches her chin, pulling her gaze from the shelf to him. “Are you okay?”

  “I may have stolen… from a high noble,” Millie whispers. “But in my defence, it was an accident.”

  Claude blinks, then laughs uproariously. “Oh, gods. You’re amazing.” He glances back towards the counter, where an older man now waits with an armful of jars. “You’ll have to tell me all about it later. Good luck, and be safe. You look after her, Evie.”

  The dog barks, her tail wagging, and he smiles before kissing Millie’s cheek in farewell.

  Millie heads back out into the bustling main street of the Greenlands, and continues on to the northern gate leaving the capital.

  As she walks, Millie cranes her neck to look up. There is only one thing to see—the towering, cylindrical pillars of white stone that cast shadow over the Greenlands every morning. Each one is hundreds of feet tall, and wide enough to house dozens of buildings on its top, each connected by sturdy bridges. The White Cliffs are only accessible by the grand lift, and are the home to all high noble houses except for the one Millie despises the most.

  As such, the White Cliffs are the home of one Zoe Tempete. No doubt, she will soon be wondering what has happened to her letter and key.

  Millie grins up at the cliffs.

  “Sorry, Miss Tempete,” she says, with an ugly, petty satisfaction curling in her chest. “Finder’s keepers.”

  With Evie at her heels, she walks out of the city and along the northern road. It runs parallel to the coast, giving her a view of the endless ocean without the White Cliffs blocking it out.

  In her research on how to learn Disciplined magic, since her self-taught fumblings will surely only get her so far, Millie found that the only true magic school is over the sea in East Feronia, and she allows herself exactly three moments of imagining getting on a ship before she shakes her head. There is no escaping the mainland for the time being. But perhaps this new venture could make all the difference.

  Pulling out the map from the letter and looking over it again, Millie follows the zig-zagging of the cliffs for about half an hour before spotting the recommended path just up ahead. The location is marked as apparently in a cave under the surface. So, instead of taking the path suggested, she walks onward until she’s directly over the spot in question.

  “Wish me luck,” Millie says to Evie, before snapping her fingers to send the familiar to her pocket dimension.

  Magical as Evie might be, she cannot breathe underwater.

  Millie knows these waters well, but she still leans over the edge to check her memory of what lies beneath the waves. No rocks to land on. Good.

  Her chest seizes with the instinctive fear of falling, of taking a leap of any kind. But the ring on her right hand tingles, as if to say it’s alright, come on in.

  Millie leaps off the cliff edge and laughs as she plummets to the water below.