Untitled Thief Novel
an excerpt

I focused on where I was walking, feet leading me back towards my keep where it would almost be time for lunch to be served. I preferred walking around my territory to riding a carriage, because it allowed me to build up an appetite for whatever meal Mosond had gone to his usual extraordinary lengths to prepare for me that day. I dared not miss a single one of his meals, or arrive at the table without sufficient hunger to leave him with the impression of a thoroughly enjoyed meal. His sulks were legendary, and could last for weeks.
Carriage was quicker, but walking also allowed me to tour my property, which I didn't get to do often enough nowadays. I could be imagining things, but it sometimes seemed that I could pick up on things that were happening at the street level just by walking down them, get a sense of the general mood and how it might affect my interests. If I walked along a border street, I got a similar chance to soak up impressions of how my neighboring Lords tenants were faring.
“Tucat!” a boisterous, familiar, and unfriendly voice boomed accross the street at me.
Speaking of neighbors...
“Haundsing...” I remarked dryly, watching the large and ominous figure cross the street towards me, his huge strides making short work of the journey. The two knights on either side of him, cloaks adorned with the glyph of a howling wolf over the left shoulder, found themselves having to run awkwardly just in order to keep up. I quickly stifled a grin, and waited until he was close enough to see me rolling my eyes before doing so.
He stopped and stood in silence not two feet away, bristling. Both knights, earnest looking young men, looked at their Lord and took their cues from him, turning towards me and bristling as well, glaring at me with a baleful hatred that they assumed was proper, given the look Theodore Haundsing was giving me at the time. They were good, too. I swear, one of them actually seethed at me somehow.
When enough time had passed that everyone involved had begun to feel awkward, I broke the silent stalemate.
“Uhm ... Yes?” I have this way of making the word 'yes' about five times longer than it ought to be. I find that it annoys people.
I watched Theodore become annoyed.
“You know perfectly well why I'm vexed with you, Lord Tucat.” he spat, becoming ... bristlier? I'm not entirely certain how to describe it, really, possibly because I've never witnessed apoplexy first hand. “And yet here I find you, walking down the street just as ... “ he stopped mid-sentence, trying to think of the appropriate thing to say.
“Natural as you please? Bold as an arrow in flight? Wait ... I know.” I said, furrowing my brow as I pretended to consider the matter.
He growled, gleaming white teeth hard to ignore.
“You meant 'walking down the street just as your mother does', right? Or no, wait!” I affected a surprised look of dismay, “We're nowhere near the docks, are we?”
One of the young knights made a motion as if he was about to draw his sword, managing to stop himself just in time. His eyes looked to his Lord, then to me, then narrowed with anger.
The hounds were particularly sensitive today, it appeared. I smiled cheerfully at the young fellow, wondering if he would actually draw on me. It'd serve him right if he did, really.