The Thief’s Tale

In this story, we follow the adventures of Wyn, lone female member of the Tallywags, a den of thieves, as they plan and execute various heists. We first meet Wyn breaking into her city’s palace. When she finds she can’t steal the royal jewels, she settles on the queen’s underwear. The garments prove to be almost as valuable, fetching a large sum for Wyn and winning her some local fame. Wyn and her colleagues form an odd family, living together, relying on and complementing each other’s strengths. Wyn’s expertise is in climbing and picking locks while her peer Desmond’s is in making molds and copying keys. All are masters of disguise. They slide easily into various uniforms and identities to get inside wealthy homes to perform their jobs. Wyn was orphaned young but places her age at approximately seventeen. She has an uneasy relationship with her femaleness, abhorring women’s dress and “weakness” and seems to be content being treated as one of her male counterparts. This, however, begins to change as she feels her first sexual longings and is taken back into the past she has so long shut off. On another front, Ratter, who kidnapped Wyn as a young child, and has control over the group, is demanding increasingly impossible jobs to pull off. This will eventually force the climax as the group is brought into confrontation with the mythical and feared Hawk.

The story is set in a timeless and mythic city of Albyn. The details of the plans and the execution of the various heists provide satisfactory suspense. However, the story pushes beyond its genre of fantasy/adventure, especially in the depth of the character of Wyn. Wyn makes a sympathetic heroine—tough on the outside from years of fending for herself in a man’s world. However, as more of her backstory comes out, and we find how she wound up in her current profession, we see the more vulnerable side she struggles to hide and her emerging sense of womanhood. The Tallywags meet all of their challenges successfully if not without some losses.