Tamzin and the Viper

“The unlikely hero always wins through in the end, so they say. The outsider who flies in the face of convention is finally proved right, and the student whom nobody thinks should have gained entry to the school graduates top of the class. Always. Except, not always.

I arrived in the city of Chaskandrah as little more than an ordinary traveller, paying my way with music and magic tricks. I had no idea what I was about to get into, or how much one particular meeting would change me. At that time, the City Council was fighting to control the unrest caused by the infamous Viper Shanathan gang – and after Tamzin signed up for the Council’s new thief-taking scheme she was quickly marked as a threat by the city’s criminals. Soon, we were both dragged headlong into a dangerous race to get to the truth behind the gang’s audacious heists, before they caught up with us.

But, while I might have a part in it, this is less a story about me than it is a story of two people who hadn’t succeeded in their bid to defy tradition: one who was struggling to fit back into something like a normal life, and one who had spectacularly refused to move on from old resentments.”