Fool's Gold
This story is a medieval comedy noir. It's about a ragtag team of poor, disabled, gender-fucked thieves who steal fire from under God's nose with no ace up their sleeve. I hope some of you enjoy this one! I sure did. :)
We got away with it, too.
That, we take that to the grave. Normally it’s the sort of thing you’d say at the end of a story, but me? I’m not doing that. The others are all dead or have moved to other countries by now. Fair enough. We lived long and hard for our treacherous age, I’m not complaining about that. The king can’t reach us where we are now. We grew old without kids to pass on our story, by choice and by necessity. I figured I’d at least start leaving something of what happened for the rest of the world to find. It seems funny enough to be worth telling, in any case. Since I’m finally at an age where I can’t guess when my long and storied life will end, I’m not sure how far I’ll get in practice, so I figured I’d start with the funniest thing about it: we got the bastard. You’re welcome.
We may not have magic, we may not have what most of you take for granted, but we have skill. They can’t take that away.
I’m Wastrel, I’m a non-binary skunk, I go by they/them. I used to be court jester before the king poked my eyes out for making a joke at his expense. My cane beats a sword, but some good glass eyes would beat an eye-patch. I’m an alchemist. I got my flash powder, healing salves, truth serum, laughing gas, scratch powder, sleep gas up my sleeve at all times. Come at me, I like a good joke.
Ragamuffin’s an agender pigeon gardener who goes by xe/xem. As a courier as well, xe gets to eavesdrop on a lot of messages between people in the city that can have strategic value. Their plants help me and the others with everything to do with our trades. Xe wish xe had a hang-glider to replace the wings xe lost. Xe play the flute for xir plants, but it doubles as sturdy, elegant weaponry.
Rake’s a raccoon mason who goes by he/him. He was a harem eunuch who got his hand cut off for being a pickpocket. He’s part of a secret society that builds secret passages all over the city, coded by a system of wall symbols known to them alone. He still knows how to fight with a leftover chain from his time in jail. He hopes to be able to afford a posable clockwork hand to replace his hook.
Rascal’s a trans beaver carpenter who goes by he/him. He made his own peg leg after losing his foot a while back. He made the staff he uses as a crutch to help him walk but, in a pinch, he knows how to use it for staff fighting, limp or not. He wears a binder that Turncoat wove for him. He wants to get an iron foot to replace his peg leg and an iron tool to wear as a belt like a man would.
Ruffian’s a trans bear blacksmith who goes by she/her. As a coach driver, her whip and horses partly replace the feet she lost, when she’s not in her cheap wood wheelchair. What she’d like is one of those fancy clockwork wheelchairs, maybe even her own set of iron feet for short distances. She wants a crossbow to replace her bow and arrows. She helps make prosthetics for the rest of us too.
Scoundrel’s a clock-making bull who goes by it/its. Hornless and castrated, it found its quiet dignity in the structure of the object, a dust speck in space/time, form and function aligned. With time, it came to see its role in the redistribution of wealth as part of a deeper, underlying universal order that transcends a king’s law. It wields an iron-spoked umbrella and wants a set of iron bull horns.
Turncoat is a gender-fluid fox tailor who goes by different pronouns all the time. They used to be a priest until he was caught having sex with a chicken nun in her convent/coop. Defrocked, xe was sent to war as a front-line tailor, losing its hearing to the shells of the trenches. Back from the front, all zie wants is a hearing aid to hear people confide in them again. She wields an iron fan.
Crowbar’s an intersex ram locksmith who goes by zie/hir. Zie may no longer sport the horns that named the battering ram, but zie still sees hirself as a tool to get into places where zie’s not supposed to go. With a safe-cracker’s ear and an iron smoking pipe, zie rejects all boundaries imposed by convention. Zie’d sell hir soul to the devil for a set of iron ram horns.
It was the heist of the century. May you live as old and happy as we did.