I had wanted everyone to know that I was the finest thief since mortal men were made, and I must have come close to accomplishing the goal. As part of my plans for greatness, I had bragged without shame about my skills in every wine store in the city. The guards looked in at me as they passed on their rounds, a tribute to my reputation. There was nothing else in the cell except myself and the chain and, twice a day, food. My bed was there at the back, a bench made of stone with a thin bag of sawdust on top. I had enough chain to allow me to pace in an arc from a front corner of the cell out to the center of the room and back to the rear corner. To take my mind off my daydreams, I practiced moving around the cell without clanking. After a while it was less painful just to leave the manacles on. At first I pulled the cuffs off my wrists, but since I sometimes had to force them back on quickly, my wrists started to be rubbed raw. So I had chains on my ankles as well as the iron belt around my waist and an entirely useless set of chains locked around my wrists.

Even if he didn't remember my name or whether I was as common as dirt, he didn't want me slipping away. I was certainly none of those things, but I suppose it's safe to say that the king disliked me. Few prisoners wore chains in their cells, only those that the king particularly disliked: counts or dukes or the minister of the exchequer when he told the king there wasn't any more money to spend. The large iron ring around my waist had grown loose, but not loose enough to fit over the bones of my hips. I was thinner than I had been when I was first arrested. I reviewed over and over the plans that had seemed so straightforward before I arrived in jail, and I swore to myself and every god I knew that if I got out alive, I would never never never take any risks that were so abysmally stupid again. To pass the time, I concentrated on pleasant memories, laying them out in order and examining them carefully. In the evening, as the sunlight faded, I reassured myself that I was one day closer to getting out. Every morning the light in the cell changed from the wavering orange of the lamp in the sconce outside my door to the dim but even glow of the sun falling into the prison's central courtyard. The days were all the same, except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before. I didn't know how long I had been in the king's prison. See all of librarian Nancy Pearl's Sci-Fi and fantasy picks.

The thief turner