Fantasy makes crime no less shabby and thieves no less thick. Brick, ex-soldier turned tavern bouncer, lets loyalty and a woman involve him in a caper. Glum Arent, alcoholic poet, needs only greed and wine-addled imagination. Magic, treachery, and bad decisions drive a simple heist from farce to tragedy. Can any of the thieves survive the mishaps and double-crosses? The Haptha, a seven-foot tall superhuman race, won the trade war. Several of them live in the capital city of the defeated Clackmat Confederacy. Some under the terms of the peace treaty--some not. Shib, a Haptha with a criminal past, runs a tavern that serves as a front for certain of his less than legal enterprises. When he sees a chance for a heist--and a bit of mischief--he recruits a team to pull it off. Brick, with a bum leg and a quick fuse, lets loyalty and a woman involve him in the caper. Glum Arent, alcoholic poet, information broker, and occasional lock-pick, needs only greed and wine-addled imagination to entangle him and inspire plans of his own. Add Dahlia, a conflicted, sword-wielding bodyguard who betrays her employer and has eyes for Brick, and Nahl, a Haptha burglar with a penchant for violence and poor impulse control. With a crew like this, events are liable to spiral out of control. With a nod to the novels of Elmore Leonard, the dean of American crime fiction, "Thick As Thieves" is gritty, street-level swords and sorcery from the author of "Reunion" and "Under Strange Suns."