I was happily contemplating how much coin I would get for my stolen goods, when the unthinkable happened. Someone slammed into me from the left and we both went crashing down. My right foot got jammed under me and twisted painfully as we both went sprawling on the rooftop.

A familiar mop of tangled red hair greeted me and I knew exactly who had crashed into me.

“Karl! You idiot! Why’d you slam into me?!” I snarled as I struggled to stand back up. My right ankle gave a painful twinge when I tried to rest some weight on it.

“Hiya, Jak! Nice evening, isn’t it? See you later, bye!”

The fourteen-year-old thief rolled to his feet after colliding with me and was already running away. It didn’t take me long to figure out why. A group of teenagers, members of a local thief gang, were chasing him down. As they ran past me, I caught a whiff of rotten vegetables.

Mentally cursing Karl, I grimaced when my ankle gave me another reminder it’d been hurt.

“And it was promising to be a nice evening,” I grumbled as I began limping homeward, towards the slums. Located near the southern part of the wall that encircled Navar, capital city of the great kingdom of Palay, you could feel a change in the air the closer you got to the slums. To say nothing of the smell: a combination of rotten eggs and unwashed bodies with a bit of wet dog hair mixed in. Ah, home.

It took me twice as long as usual to reach the crumbling two-story building I called home. Made of a combination of wood and stone, my house had definitely seen better days. The stone was slowly falling to pieces and the wood wasn't much better. Inside the house, the stairs had rotted away long ago, which turned out to be a good thing. Past inhabitants of the house, both human and animal, had made the main floor of the house unfit to live in. As for me, I’d been living on the second floor the past few years, but I should probably start looking for a new home; I don’t know if my home would last another year.

Sliding down the large hole in the tiled roof, I landed on a pile of old straw mats I’d scrounged from the trash. Wincing when my right ankle hit the floor a little harder than necessary, I dragged my injured leg closer to take a look.

Peeling off the worn brown shoe on my right foot, I examined my ankle. It was definitely puffy, and the skin around it was red and irritated. “Ouch!” I hissed as I looked it over. What rotten luck! And here I’d been thinking my fortunes were taking a turn for the better.

My day had started off bad enough, with me almost getting caught by a pair of city guards for trying—and failing—to steal a loaf of bread earlier this morning. From there, my day had gone from bad to worse: I’d been whacked over the head with a broom, had a bucket of night soil tossed at me (luckily, I was not hit), and had rocks thrown at me. I’d never had such a bad run of luck; even when I first started stealing, I’d been more successful.

When I finally decided to call it quits and head home in defeat, I stumbled across that open window, which led me to my current situation of a badly injured ankle. Having suffered from broken bones before, I was pretty sure my ankle wasn’t broken, but I had still injured it pretty badly. Scratch that, Karl, had injured it pretty badly. I swear, if I run into that brat again, I’m pushing him off the nearest rooftop to see if he bounces.

But enough about Karl, should I go see a healer? I snorted, I was acting as if there was more than one healer I could go to, when, in fact, there was only one. Or rather, there was only one healer I could afford. There was more than one healer who didn’t mind not asking questions when treating a patient, but they charged double, if not triple.

The Rat-Healer, as he was so fondly called, was the cheapest healer in the slums, and he did a relatively good job. You just had to make sure you visited the elderly man when he was sober, which was about three days out of seven. And if you were stupid enough to ask a drunk healer to help you, then you deserved the end result, whatever that may be.

The only question was, did I want to spend the money on him? Reaching inside my patched shirt, I took out my hard-earned catch.

Tossing the red velvet pouch up and down, I mulled it over. I should probably check and see what was even inside before making a decision. Judging from the effort that was spent to retrieve it, I was betting it was worth a small fortune, whatever it was. I should be able to pawn it off for enough coin to visit the Rat-Healer and have plenty left over for myself.

Stretching my wounded foot away from me, I loosened the tassels sealing the pouch and upended it.