Thief of Cahraman

  Thief of Cahraman

  Fairytales of Folkshore: Book One

  Lucy Tempest

  THIEF OF CAHRAMAN – A RETELLING OF ALADDIN

  Copyright © 2018 by Lucy Tempest

  Cover Art Copyright © 2018 Lucy Tempest

  Editors: Mary Novak, Jennifer Jansen

  First edition published in 2018 by Folkshore Press

  ISBN: 978-1-949554-02-1

  All rights reserved.

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  lucytempestauthor@gmail.com

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, stored in, or introduced into a database or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Disclaimer

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For my Mother and Grandmother

  Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,

  Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide

  Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"

  And—"A blind understanding!" Heav'n replied.

  The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam

  Contents

  Introduction

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Note from the Author

  Pronunciation Guide

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Welcome to the magical world of Folkshore!

  Fairytales of Folkshore is a series of interconnected fairytale retellings with unique twists on much-loved, enduring themes. It starts with the Cahraman Trilogy, a gender-swapped reimagining of Aladdin.

  Join each heroine on emotional, thrilling adventures full of magic, mystery, friendship and romance where true love is found in the most unexpected places and the fates of kingdoms hang in the balance.

  Among the retellings will be:

  Beauty & the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hades & Persephone, The Little Mermaid, Snow White…and more!

  Map

  Chapter One

  The good part about roaming this far north in Ericura was that whenever I stole anything, its disappearance was blamed on the fairies.

  At least, it was good for household items and wash-line clothes. Or whatever food I picked up from orchards and fields as I passed through towns. Anything bigger required a more sinister being to pin the blame on.

  Missing livestock, children and men were blamed on the Horned God. Not that I would ever need to use him as a scapegoat. My thieving was mostly for necessities. But sometimes, I robbed those the gods weren’t bothering to punish themselves. Like Lady Dufreyne, the target of today’s heist.

  As the wife of the resident merchant-lord of Aubenaire, Ericura’s northernmost town, she lived in his mansion which was perched on a hill bordered by a stone wall that deterred both predators and thieves.

  Not much could deter me. Especially when I was focused on vengeance.

  My intended punishment however, would backfire if I got caught. If the wheels scraping up the stone trail belonged to an inhabitant of the Dufreyne mansion, and I was found hanging from their second-floor window with a sack full of loot on my back, there would be no blaming the fairies. My efforts to serve justice with my sticky fingers would end in being turned over to the Horned God myself.

  I shuddered at the thought, the buzz of apprehension that unfurled within me almost costing me my precarious hold on the windowsill.

  Gritting my teeth, I steadied my grip, clinging to the thought that my stake-out of the Dufreyne mansion had been meticulous, that it couldn’t be any of them.

  I knew Lord Dufreyne himself wasn’t around today. I had served him many times since I’d settled here in midwinter, the last time being yesterday, when he’d stopped by the tavern to get drunk before leaving to trade. He’d knocked back mug after mug of warm mead while slurring nonsensical rants about his late wife, his daughter, his new wife and her daughters. His drunken storytelling was always coherent compared to my usual patrons’ ramblings, and along with failed bar fights, remained the most entertainment I had at work.

  In contrast, most of my aggravation came from serving his new wife. She lived up to the common view of evil rich women, who believed themselves above uncouth peasants, equating themselves with royalty. And though I had never seen a real royal in my travels from the very south to the very north of Ericura, I doubted any could be as bad as her.

  But what had done it for me hadn’t been the many times she’d treated me, and the other tavern staff, like dirt. I was used to difficult people. It had been last week when she’d barged into the tavern, claiming that a package was supposed to be delivered there. When Miss Etheline had said that we weren’t responsible for deliveries besides our own, Lady Dufreyne had gone on a rampage. She’d knocked everything off the bar and flipped tables, demolishing half of the tavern’s crockery and glassware while thundering accusations at us of stealing it.

  To top it all off, when Bonnie had tried to placate her as she’d stormed out—with more patience and politeness than I could have mustered—she’d pushed her aside for her troubles, knocking her down into a puddle. Bonnie’s dress and book had both been ruined.

  When the package had arrived a half-day later, Lady Dufreyne had made no apologies to any of us, nor had she offered to pay for the items she’d ruined.

  I wasn’t the type to let injustices slide, and since she’d already accused me of stealing from her, I might as well make good on that claim and replace the things she’d destroyed myself.

  Now, here I was hanging out of a window, weighed down by what I stole from her home. Besides the bulging coin pouch I’d found forgotten or hidden under a bed, I’d taken two big volumes from the mansion library, two pairs of heavy leather boots, many yards of silk, and a golden, pearl-encrusted jewelry box. I’d wager none of the residents truly needed these things, and might not even miss them. But they would fill the losses Bonnie and Miss Etheline had suffered many times over. If I got away with stealing them.

  The scrape of rough wheels on gravel was growing louder, closer, pushing the panicked immediacy to the forefront of my mind. I tried pulling myself back up and into the cluttered bedroom of either Aneira or Darla. But it was a futile and sweaty-handed struggle against the wooden sill. I had to climb down as quickly as I could without free-falling into the bushes.

  A girl’s voice joined the sound of crunching, getting closer up the trail faster than I could shut the window without trapping my climbing rope’s hook.

  “But why would I need to clean the fireplace?” complained the girl, though with a lot less displeasure and a lot more defeat than my complaints usually carried. “It’s almost summer and I’ve already cleaned it three times last month. I breathed in so much soot, and we aren’t even using it—”

  She stopped abruptly, and so did the crunching
noise - what I now realized was that of a bicycle. A harsher voice cut her off, indistinct like it was traveling further away from her. I resisted the urge to pause and eavesdrop, and tightened my hold on my rope to hop further down the side of the house.

  A sharp sound of frustration from the girl shocked me into missing my footing on the wall. I slid down violently, drying my sweaty palms with an intense rope-burn as I held on for dear life. But my dropping weight knocked the hook off the sill and sent me crashing down the remaining feet.

  I bounced off the thorny bushes and hit the lawn with a chest-rattling thump, the air escaping my lungs with a choked, throat-searing cough. It wasn’t my worst fall yet, but it had been a long while since I needed to scale walls, and longer still since I was at risk of being caught.

  Hissing from the flaring pain of my burnt hands, I gathered and tucked the rope into my woolen coat before scrambling up and climbing over the border wall. I landed just in time to find Ornella Dufreyne rolling up on her rickety bicycle, bags weighing down its handlebars, towing an ancient cart full of firewood.

  Ella started at the sight of me, coming to complete stop. With her crystal-clear baby blues for once void of their usual heartache, a confused frown pinched her smooth brows while stray locks of strawberry-blonde hair threatened to unfurl her messy bun.

  “Adelaide?”

  Despite living in Aubenaire for nearly two seasons–the longest I’d ever stayed in any town I’d roamed through–we’d barely spoken in the few times I’d seen her, always rushing. Finding me across town and at her home must be inexplicable to her.

  I cracked an awkward smile and casually leaned against the wall, hoping that she couldn’t hear the jewelry box and coin pouch rattling in my backpack. “Hey, Ella.”

  Her frown deepened as she stepped off her bicycle. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I was just looking for you,” I said, quickly filing through all the tried and true excuses I’d used over the years. “You haven’t come by the tavern in ages, so I figured the best way to talk to you was to stop by your place.”

  “Why? What do you want from me?” She hunched slightly, whatever curiosity she had becoming suspicion that was edged with fear.

  I knew that feeling all too well, but I had never been on the receiving end of it. Which made me wonder; what did she experience inside this big, beautiful home that I had on the streets?

  It made me want to clean out that house even more, sell everything down to the curtain rods and paint, and then go inform the sheriff about how bad I suspected Ella’s situation was. And my suspicions were very rarely wrong.

  Those instincts had been honed during my years of roaming. For more than five now, I’d hopped from town to town, skipping each one the moment I attracted too much attention. Living out of my backpack, stealing food and other things I needed, and squatting in abandoned houses was better than any ‘home’ the law would have placed me in. Girls with no families suffered two fates in Ericura; either becoming a godswife in a temple, or being contracted to work for women like Lady Dufreyne, who treated their maids like slaves.

  From what I gathered, though she wasn’t an orphan, Ella was being treated like one.

  I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Bonnie and I have been wanting to invite you over for tea, but you never appear in places we frequent. So, here I am.”

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. Bonnie had talked about inviting Ella over. While Ella and her vicious stepsisters were barred from mingling with the rest of the town. Aneira and Darla only attended events set up by their mother and her fellow idle rich. From my stake out, I knew when the girls returned from school, when they went to events and how often their mother was with them. Ella, who seemed to be let out only to run errands, was never included in their lavish activities.

  I’d been banking on their regular mid-day absences today. It was just my luck that Ella had returned earlier than usual.

  Ella, now less frigid, picked up some of her shopping bags. “Why would you want to have tea with me?”

  That response was word for word what I’d said to Bonnie the first time she’d invited me over. Ella probably had no friends. I didn’t either until recently, but that had been because I couldn’t afford to make any friends. Not when I was always going to leave them.

  I adjusted my backpack and shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  She hunched a bit further, curling herself protectively around the bag of produce she held, hiding half her face in the leaves of celery stalks. “I don’t know.”

  I advanced to take the rest of the bags off her bicycle, and was met with a slight flinch and a tightening hug around the one she held. As subtle as it was, her reaction set my brain on fire. I didn’t just want to take her stepmother’s beloved jewels away now; I wanted to feed them to her.

  I moved away gently, giving her space. After a long moment, Ella seemed to decide I wasn’t about to pull any tricks or run off with her groceries, and led the way inside the house.

  On my way in, I made a big show of taking in the high ceilings and the décor, just to give the impression that I had never seen this house before.

  I cleared my still-burning throat to get her attention. “So, tomorrow’s the bonfire.”

  She set her bags on the spacious kitchen’s marble counter. “That it is.”

  “You coming? Mr. Fairborn helped build most of the wicker figures,” I gushed, trying to smother the pain my raw palms felt holding the shopping bags, as I set them down. “Bonnie and I are finishing our masks tonight.”

  “That’s great, Adelaide,” she said quietly, busying herself with the groceries.

  “So, you’ll come over? You can make your own mask.”

  “No, I don’t think I can…”

  “Yes, you can.”

  She snuck a glance at the sitting room behind me. I followed her gaze, found the cement-and-stone fireplace. Why indeed would they need it cleaned when it was late spring?

  This had to be petty punishment, an excuse to keep Ella busy while her step-family ran around going to events and parties. Her mousy demeanor and fearful behavior were no doubt borne out of Lady Dufreyne’s capricious temper. Then another thought struck me.

  Considering the baseless fury she’d unleashed on the tavern, what would her stepmother do to her if she found a whole box of expensive jewelry missing?

  I couldn’t bear to imagine. Which meant one thing.

  I had to return the box!

  There was no use in punishing her stepmother if it would lead to Ella being tortured. Helping her escape would be better. I just had to get her away from here first.

  “Come to tea with us, please.”

  “But I have to clean the fireplace—”

  I shook my head. “No, no, you really don’t. It can wait.”

  “But—”

  “If it can be my day-off from muck-work I even get paid for, then it can be your day-off too,” I insisted. “If today is impossible, then meet up with Bonnie while I’m at work tomorrow. You two can come pick me up for the bonfire.”

  She barely blinked, seemingly stunned speechless, the pinch between her slim brows back in full force. “But I—I never…” She stopped, eyes darting around, conflicted. Then she finally exhaled. “Oh, alright. I guess an hour or two wouldn’t hurt.”

  A thrill of relief ran through me as I started edging away from her, heading out of the kitchen. “Great! Can I use your bathroom?”

  “I—I guess so, just don’t use the one in Madame’s bedroom.”

  Madame. Her stepmother had her addressing her as Madame. A servant in her own home.

  Putting my anger on hold, I immediately shot up the stairs and back into her stepmother’s bedroom, placing the box back behind her boudoir’s giant oval mirror. I also tossed the coin pouch back beneath one of the girls’ beds. But I was keeping the silk, boots, and books for Bonnie and Mr. Fairborn. These I was sure none of them would miss.

  I made sure to flush the toilet befo
re skipping back down the carpeted staircase, backpack and guilt both much lighter.

  I rushed past the kitchen, waving on my way towards the door. “Don’t forget to go meet Bonnie near the tavern by noon!”

  “But–”

  “See you later!” I yelled as I ducked out the door and broke into a run.

  Breezing past the houses that surrounded the manor, I left the richer district of town. I shortcut my way to the east by hopping the brick-and-mortar fences that divided cottages facing the crop fields, barreling down the dusty road that snaked downhill into the town square. Once on paved stone, I ran downwards towards the end of town, where the houses of business owners sat near the greenery.

  My destination loomed on the horizon of the uphill road as I slowed my run to walk up the slope, panting loudly, my tongue drier than the dusty soles of my worn leather boots, and a stitch cutting into my side like a butcher had just dug his cleaver in it. Bothered and ragged as I felt from the events of the last half-hour, the sight of the Fairborn house at the end of the road soothed all my aches like a healing balm.

  The Fairborn’s guest room was the latest spot I’d been staying, and the first place where I had actively lived rather than squatted, in years. Not long after I had met Bonnie, she had offered—no, insisted that I come to stay with them. I had hesitated at first because never once had anyone offered me help without expecting a great deal in return. But over two weeks of regularly visiting my work and inviting me over, she’d worn me down, her consistent goodwill worming its way into my heart and reassuring me that she was telling the truth when she said she wanted nothing more than my company and for me to give the house some warmth. She hadn’t aimed to harbor me in the servant’s quarters or employ me as one. Both she and her father had me living openly among them, like I was family.