The Dungeoneers

In memory of Niru Shah, an adventurer, hero, and rogue
who taught us all what to treasure most

“Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.

Teach him to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.

Teach him to steal, though, and he won't have to eat fish every day for the rest of his life.”

—
Darrius Snowthorn,
The Rogue's Encyclopedia,
Volume One

C
olm Candorly had nine fingers and eight sisters. He was born short the finger and quickly learned to make do without it. He would trade five more of them and the better portion of his toes for a moment of peace and quiet.

They came in bunches, the girls, as if they couldn't bear to be alone, even for a moment. Triplets first, then a set of twins bracketing each side of the Candorlys' only boy, and finally the baby, Elmira. Mrs. Candorly insisted little Elm would be the last, but Mina Candorly was an indisputably healthy woman with biceps the size of house bricks and hips the width of an oxcart, who loved her husband very much and her children even more, so no one was holding their breath. Least of all Colm.

Except when they made him. Hold his breath, that is. The
sisters
, that is . . . pinning him down near the meadows outside
the Candorly farm and thrusting handfuls of pollen-packed posies into his face until he turned red and blew snot all over himself. It was their idea of torture.

“They do it because they love you,” his mother would say. “You're their little brother.”

Which was true for the five older ones, but not for the three who came after. They treated Colm like a child despite the fact that he was twelve already and taller than most of them (save the triplets, who were well into their teens). Only baby Elmira deigned to leave him alone, though she was nearly walking already and would soon join her sisters in their daily persecution of the only boy in the house. Already they used her to trick him, making her cry by pinching her legs so that he would come check on her, and then cornering him so they could braid his hair. Colm had learned to keep it cut short. A flop of wheat-colored locks trimmed close by his mother's only shears, hard to stick a ribbon in.

“Don't complain to me,” Colm's father would tell him. “You only have to live with them. Try raising them. They are more cunning than wolves.”

Some days, Colm would have preferred the wolves.

It was a daily gauntlet he was forced to run—the cutesy names and the rolling eyes, the stealing of his underwear (he once found it hanging on the fence for the whole village of Felhaven to see), the incessant giggling about nothing funny at all. Girls were like that, he discovered. Colm spent most of his time in hiding, lurking in shadows, escaping into the
nearby woods, always planning for his next escape. Tiptoeing through the back door. Hiding in the cupboard, scrunching his body and wedging beneath the usually empty shelves. Covering himself in leaves as a disguise and holding his breath as the gaggle of Candorly girls traipsed by. He could count on both hands the number of times they locked him in the cellar (fewer than ten, at least), until he taught himself to pick the lock using a hairpin that he kept hidden beneath the stairs.

Not that he was completely innocent. He teased them mercilessly at the table, where the presence of parents kept their retribution in check. He had learned to pilfer small items from his sisters' dressers and the secret wooden boxes they stashed under their beds. He had even learned to steal the pins and combs right out of their hair. He used these little treasures as collateral, wards against future torture. “Let me go and I will give you back your brush.” “Give me back my pants or you will never see your rag doll again.” He loved them, of course; they were his sisters, and the torment was just their idea of affection and family bonding, but it still taught him a few tricks in the arts of subterfuge and avoidance. With so many sisters, it was simply a matter of survival.

For Colm's parents, the challenge was of a different sort. Feeding a family of eleven on a shoe cobbler's salary required the most precarious balancing of coin. Rove Candorly, Colm's beefy, rough-skinned father, was an industrious man, handy with nail and awl, well respected by the villagers of Felhaven and many of the neighboring villages besides. Everyone in
a twenty-mile reach enjoyed the comfort of a well-stitched sole, and the wax candles beside Rove Candorly's workbench always seemed burned to the nub from long hours he spent huddled over split heels and busted boot toes.

But it wasn't always enough, and the Candorly children, from Carmen down to little Elm, made do with what little they got. Each of the girls had precisely two outfits—though a shared skinniness not inherited from either parent allowed for trading between them. The rooms were cramped, the triplets commanding one, both sets of twins sharing another, and the baby cribbed alongside her parents. Only Colm had his own room—the benefits of being an unmarried man, his father told him—though it was little more than a closet, with just enough space for a hammock, a shelf, and a trunk. He had a window, at least, that he would often stare out of for hours. And his boots were in top-notch shape.

Still, for all of their wanting, the Candorlys found contentment. Mina Candorly and her capable daughters tended to the small garden and doted over the chickens and twin cows (most everything Candorly came out in twos or more). The older girls brought in extra coin through stitchcraft, and Cally, the fourth oldest (or fifth depending on how you looked at it) had discovered a hidden talent for baking, often spending the whole day in the kitchen whipping up concoctions to sell down on the square. Even Celia, the second to arrive of the second set of twins, did her best to keep the Candorly spirit up, though her mischievous smile and infectious laugh did little to fill the larder.

For his part, Colm helped his father when able. The hope was that someday soon Colm would apprentice with his father, and then would be able to take over the family cobbling business when Rove Candorly was no longer able. Colm was certainly nimble fingered enough for the cobbler's trade, lithe and lanky like his sisters, adept at picking up and tinkering with small objects. Colm was obviously cut out for finer work than farming or blacksmithing; his frame and mind-set called for something requiring concentration and dexterity. The problem was, he had absolutely no interest in shoes. He would stand at his father's workbench thinking only of the nasty, noxious, boil-crusted feet that the shoes were pried off from, and his stomach would churn. Colm's father had lost his sense of smell long ago.

Yet Colm knew he shouldn't complain. His parents were doing their best. There were many nights when he would sit and listen to them pooling the family's earnings, counting coin by coin. Often necessities turned into luxuries. Some nights Celia would sneak into his room and the two of them would eavesdrop, cheeks pressed to the wood door, eyes on each other, listening to the clink of copper on copper, followed by his father's gruff resignation.

“I think we might have to do without sugar this week,” Rove Candorly said one night after they'd sent Colm and the girls to bed and Celia had tiptoed down the hall into Colm's closeted space.

“Cally will be disappointed,” Mina Candorly replied. “I suppose we can send the girls to gather honey, though you
know how Celia feels about bees.”

It was the same conversation as the week before, except then, instead of sugar, it was soap. And butter the week before that. There was always something they wanted and couldn't have. Beside him, Colm's sister shuddered. Her nearly strawberry-colored hair fell down the back of her nightgown, chaotically curled. During the day she always wore it up, bundled and tacked into place with her favorite silver butterfly pin, the only thing she owned of any real value. Celia was a firebrand, with a temper that didn't seem to come from either side of the family, and she was often the one found stranded in a tree that she was skilled enough to climb into but not out of, or torturing the chickens by chasing after them. She was once caught putting rotten eggs in the toes of everyone's shoes. Of all his sisters, Colm liked Celia best.

Celia turned and whispered to him, “I'm not going near any bees.” Colm shushed her. She was so good at getting into trouble; she needed to learn better how to stay out of it.

“I just don't see how we will make it work.” Colm's father sighed. “There are only so many feet in the world, Mina. And each of 'em only ever wears one shoe at a time.”

“Then people will just have to start having more children so that you can shoe more feet,” Colm's mother said brightly. Somehow his mother's voice was always cheerful, even when discussing dire subjects. Colm heard her drag the weary cobbler out of his chair, telling him there was nothing to be done about it tonight. Colm listened for their door, then turned and
slumped against his own.

“It's not that I'm afraid,” Celia said, slouching beside him. “I just don't like getting stung, is all.”

“No. You're not afraid of anything,” Colm teased her.

“I'm not afraid of
you
,” she said, punching him in the arm. Then she gave him a fierce hug and slipped out of his room.

It didn't pay to fret, but on nights like these, Colm couldn't help but lie stretched out in his hammock and think about how unfair it was that there were nobles born with purses already in their fists, swaddled in fine silks and never needing to work in their whole life, while his father grew calluses on top of calluses mending shoes, hoping for a tip that didn't come as often as it should. Colm lay back and imagined a world where you didn't have to scrabble for every last coin. Where you could just take whatever you wanted whenever you wanted, without anyone the wiser.

He knew it was possible. There were tavern tales—though to Colm they sounded more like myths—of men and women, warriors, gallant knights, and studied wizards, who ventured far into the unmapped wilderness, into the caverns and hollows leading deep beneath the ground, to vast subterranean passageways riddled with no end of vile and nasty creatures—goblins and ogres and spiders so big they bit your head off to feed to their young and wrapped your body in silk for leftovers. Trolls and giants and wolves and dragons and warlocks and hundreds of other foul fiends that might give a grown man nightmares, all lurking in endless corridors capped with
enchanted doors. A host of unspeakable horrors, all guarding the same thing.

Treasure.

Endless treasure. Gobs of it. Heaps of it. Silver and gold and gemstones that had never seen the light of day, mined and hoarded, kept in chests stacked twenty high. Colm had heard several stories of poor sots who ventured into dark and dangerous places and came back rich as lords.

Or didn't come back at all.

But to Colm, they were just stories. He had never met anyone who had even seen a goblin, let alone stolen its gold. Such places were far from Felhaven, some of them across mountain ranges or vast oceans, nearly impossible to reach. There was no fabled treasure to be had here, unless you counted the collection of worn stones that Elmira insisted could grant wishes. Once, several years ago, when he was first learning to help his father, a man had come in with a pair of well-worn boots in sore need of repair. He looked much like the characters described in Colm's stories, from the scabbarded sword to the scabbed knuckles and the sack thick with coin that he used to pay in advance. Colm was certain this man had seen the kinds of things he had only read about, but before he could ask, Rove Candorly had sent his son back to the house on some trivial errand. By the time Colm returned, the man was gone.

No, there was no hope of finding adventure here. There were no dungeons near Felhaven, not that he was aware of,
anyways. There was no fabled treasure, only farmlands.

But there was money.

After all, not everyone had eleven mouths to feed. Some people only had the one, and had more than enough to feed it with. There were still lords and ladies in town with fat velvet purses, bags bursting with silver, dripping from belts like ripe apples. Gentlemen with billowing satin pants and pockets plump with gold. Girls with pearl necklaces too tight to be comfortable. He had seen fine gentlemen reach into silk bags so heavy they could barely hold them, just to give his father a single coin for a half day's work. Sometimes it just didn't seem fair how much of it was out there, sitting in pockets, gathering lint.

If only you could get it.

From the room next door, he heard one of his older sisters cough.

Seysha was sick.

She was the one heard coughing in the night. By morning she was shivering and sweating both. Mina sent the older set of twins to fetch Felhaven's resident healer, while Colm stood by Seysha's bed with the rest of the family.

It wasn't the first time. Seysha was one of the triplets—the second to emerge—and thus one of the three who suffered the most from strange illnesses. The rest of the Candorly clan was hardy as hickory, but the three oldest sisters were waifs. Skinny even by Candorly standards, and pale, hair more their
father's tarnished gold than their mother's fiery red. It was inevitable that every few months or so, one of them would fall victim to some infection and be bedridden for a week.

The healer would visit, trailing her wooden cart of unguents and herbs—garlic and ginger root and witch hazel and others with more potent properties whose names she never said. She would chant and blow smoke and generally fill the house with a noxious fog, and then she would give Colm's parents a jar of paste or a bottle of some black stuff the consistency of pudding and charge them a pocketful of silver. The old crone was no wizard—not that Colm knew what one of those looked like either—though her potions and poultices were worth the steep price.

It took most of the morning to find her. But hardly any time at all for her to work her own special kind of magic. Seysha would be fine, the healer said after she'd finished rubbing her chest and neck with some oily liniment and placed a cool cloth on her head. The medicine should be enough, but it was possible she might need more, that the illness could linger. Or that she might need something even stronger (meaning, Colm knew, even more expensive).

Colm saw the look in his father's eyes: relief that his daughter's ragged breathing had steadied, but soon replaced with other concerns. The money he paid for that little bottle of glurpy syrup could have fed the lot of them for a week. Rove Candorly paid the healer out of last night's meager stack, then kissed his daughter's forehead and ran all ten fingers through
his bushel of hair. “I guess I'll be in the workshop,” he said, and turned to leave.