<div class="floatright">(http://imageshack.us/a/img152/5924/phoenixbardtruonggiang2.jpg)</div><br/>She’d promised herself she wouldn't cry anymore but—in the darkness of her cell—silver eyes ringed with green shone and her lower lip trembled.<br/><br/>The petite, fit redhead hugged her knees and struggled to find her rage, the righteous wrath that had turned a good natured thief into a failed murderer.<br/><br/>The girl’s lips moved without sound.  Her throat was painfully dry. Her body tingled from a the pinches and fondles of a dozen guards—she’d had to try and rip off one of their balls before they’d leave her alone.  There were bruises too.  The girl licked her lips, and this time the words managed to get out.<br/><br/>“I have been denied everything…”<br/><br/>She remembered—not a tenday ago.  A town not far from here, her circus had rolled into town and performed to modest profit and roaring applause.  She and Thom weren't satisfied with modest profit.  They sought the whispers, learned who among the nobility most deserved his nose tweaked, and the night the circus left town they scaled the tower in the western corner of Lord Adorjan’s manor.  She got through the lock and trap on the window, while Thom showed her the trick she couldn't quite manage yet, how to spot and erase the magical wards that would have blasted them off of the tower to plummet three stories to the ground.<br/><br/>They raided the Lord’s abode, claiming for themselves the fruit of his corruption, jewels, magic potions, even a signet.  But the raven on the bust above a library door slipped away and roused—not just the guards—but the lord himself.<br/><br/>The lord mage.<br/><br/>She remembered the thunderous boot falls of the guards pursuing them down the hall.<br/><br/>She remembered the nobleman with his crystal in hand ordering them back and beginning to chant.  She remembered that old Thom had fallen behind her, he never could run like she could.  “Go, girl!” he bellowed as a thunderbolt filled the hall behind them.<br/><br/>She remembered the wind racing through her ears as she dove out the window.  Blinding hot light strobed over her back in a pillar of death.  She remembered flipping her feet beneath her, rolling and leaping through the grass to soak the momentum from the thirty foot fall.  She ended in a crouch, hands reaching for the blades tucked in her boots.  She remembered Thom’s form flying out the window, limp as a rag doll, breaking on the grass beside her.<br/><br/>His body was already a smoking ruin.<br/><br/>She screamed in rage, spun to face the wizard looking out the window towards her.  What had he seen?  The fury of a raging fire in the eyes of a tiny elfkin acrobat.  Her knife flashing into her hand, the one coated with a deadly venom they usually only used for monsters.  It spun through the air and took the mage in the shoulder.  He staggered back, screaming in pain, as household guards spilled into the garden and pulled the weeping girl away from the empty husk of her Thom.  Her teacher, her partner…<br/><br/>Her love.<br/><br/>She hadn’t said a word at her farce of a trial, only glared with all her hate at the lord mage who accused her, all the work she’d done to slay him negated by a few coins in the purse of a fat priest.<br/><br/>Denied everything…<br/><br/>Her lips moved again.<br/><br/>“…even my revenge.”<br/><br/>In the dark, the girl who’s soul was not yet as totally blackened as her cell mates did the only thing that could possibly keep her human.  She began to cry.  Before the tears could cleanse her, though.  Before she could seek solace in prayers to the gods, or memories of better times, or plans to escape and flee, she blinked her tears away at the sound of a woman outside, a guard crying out in forced ecstasy and the clink of a ring of keys striking the ground in her cell.<br/><br/>With will to live and fight on she didn't that startled her the redhead bolted into movement, snagging the keys from the ground—elfkin eyes made good use of even the dimmest light, and rushed to open the door and throw it open.  She moved into the hallway in an forewords roll and looked around, seeing the guard who’d cried out crumpling to the ground with eldritch power smoking in the socket of his eye.  She looked to the one who’d done in mingled horror and awe…<br/><br/>Her eyes widened as she looked up to the girl who’d thrown her the keys and found she was being offered a mask.  The intricate details of this mask seemed to draw her in.  For a moment, she felt she could spend hours studding the draconic face with empty eye holes.<br/><br/>Without realizing what she was doing, she had it in her hand and brought it to her face..<br/>