(Pronunciation: The "Th" is pronounced as in "thanks" or Scottish "Thane," and the full name rhymes with "axe.")
Thaqz doesn't know who his parents were -- his father was nowhere around by the time he was born, and he has no memory of a mother. The tale he heard when he was growing up on the streets was that his mother had died in childbirth, and he's taken it for truth. Sometimes, when he wants to make a certain impression on someone, he'll say, "The first one I killed was my mother, before I could walk." If the stories with which he grew up can be relied upon, his mother had nothing to leave him but long-suffering friends, and his father neither knew nor cared that Thaqz existed. He was raised for a while by a disorganized chain of women, some married, mostly not, who lived in the streets of Venighas, poorer than the dirt in which they lived. One would-be mother would care for him for a while in spite of his not being her own, then hit worse times than usual, and need to cut costs somewhere, and pass him off to some other woman who also knew his mother. The city had a very well-maintained orphanage, but Thaqz never wound up there; the loose network of street livers to which his mother had belonged had a kind of code of honor that meant taking care, such as their care was, of their own. Thaqz ran away from time to time as he got older, but didn't like what he saw of the world, and got hungry, and came back again and again ... until he finally found an outsider he was willing to trust.
Glaxtiks was twelve years old when he first spotted Thaqz, not yet ten, scrounging for food in a refuge pile. There was something feral about Thaqz, especially the way he was burrowing for scraps, more animal than human, young and all but helpless. As slowly and cautiously as with a strange dog, Glaxtiks approached him, and quietly announced his presence. "Hey." Thaqz spun and backed away, sending refuse tumbling, but didn't back far. Glaxtiks kept to his poised, non-threatening stance, and said neutrally, "You're digging too deep. This pile's ten days old. Rats and bugs've eaten anything worth eating that far down."
Thaqz was listening, uncertain. "Who are you?"
"Glaxtiks," he answered, simply enough. "Take a look." He looked up near the top of the pile and found something fetid and dripping and best left undescribed. He took a broken wooden handle from lower in the pile and started digging through the mess. "You find something grown-ups don't want to even touch. Even animals maybe; most of them can't get at the insides without eating the nasty part." After a moment, he pulled out a chunk of slime-covered, moldy bread and even a piece of meat, tossing them on the ground. You'll want to wash them, maybe even cut off the outside. I don't know about the meat, but it'll probably be all right if you cut it thin and burn it through. Been a long time since I ate this stuff."
Thaqz was all attention by then. "What do you eat now?"
"What I take, or what I buy if I take somebody's money." He watched Thaqz, who mostly just looked impressed. "I'll show you. Come on."
Thaqz never went back to the women who raised him. He doesn't believed he was missed. He was simply in awe of Glaxtiks, more than two years older, and far more capable, than he. Glaxtiks shared food and warmth and shelter with the child, and most important of all, his knowledge. From awe that never entirely left him, gratitude, and respect, Thaqz developed absolute and undying loyalty. Glaxtiks had found someone he could trust enough to care for -- someone at first nearly helpless and feral, and soon deeply faithful to him. Thaqz had found a mentor, a father figure, a source of better living than he was used to, and someone who would never just pass him on to another stranger. In keeping with his own code of honor, having found someone he could finally trust, Glaxtiks would never abandon or betray him.
Thaqz learned from Glaxtiks to live on the streets, and they found ways to work better together than they could have on their own. At first, Thaqz was just a decoy in their mutual operations, but Glaxtiks taught him, and he learned, and he became more and more Glaxtiks's assistant, and then partner in crime, as they grew. The first time Thaqz saw Glaxtiks kill, he beamed with pride: His chosen mentor was capable and strong. He'd been warned not to scream if he saw blood or death, but had no need for the warning; it wasn't his way to scream. Thaqz killed a man himself, finishing a street thug Glaxtiks had hamstrung and pinned, before he was in his teens. The thug had come to take the boys' money. He enriched them instead when Glaxtiks sold the skull and a quantity of blood to an unscrupulous apothecary. As they got older, they suffered fewer attempts to steal from them; no special word got around, but anyone who looked at them could see that in spite of their youth, they were not easy prey.
Glaxtiks was careful and clever and observant, and trained Thaqz to be a skilled lookout as well, especially when they worked somewhere with no animals for Glaxtiks to watch and confirm that all was well. He chose their targets carefully, and took as few risks as he could manage, whether that meant avoiding confrontation or killing without mercy and disposing of the body. He and Thaqz were successful for years, sometimes injured, always recovering with the resilience of youth, and never caught by anyone who survived. They might have been successful longer still, but Thaqz looked at killing differently from Glaxtiks. What his mentor regarded as a sometimes-necessary means of continuing survival and freedom, Thaqz considered a pleasure and a proof of strength and skill. Out scouting one evening, he spotted what looked like easy prey for a quick take, didn't think through the situation as Glaxtiks would have, and struck. Someone spotted him from a vantage he hadn't considered; an alarm was raised; he tried to escape, but enforcers arrived on the scene, and he was caught. Unlike Glaxtiks's father, he didn't try to fight them; Glaxtiks had warned him again and again never to fight against overwhelming force. Escape if you can; surrender if you must, and wait for another opportunity to get away. Thaqz ducked and dodged, and was tackled, and let the enforcers take him to prison.
It didn't take Glaxtiks long to find out what had happened when Thaqz failed to return. He retraced Thaqz's route, kept his eyes and ears open, and asked questions where he knew they'd do him no harm and might get an answer he could use. Freeing Thaqz from prison would involve more risks than he ever liked to take, but it couldn't be helped, he believed. He made the attempt, and was caught in the act, and was thrown in a cell of his own. He took it stoically, accepting his own advice, and communicated with Thaqz in a code they had used for years: "Wait. Be patient. We will have another opportunity."
Thaqz was a child, still in his early teens, and the magistrate's horror at his bloody deed left no doubt of the outcome. He could no more order the execution of a child than he could ever allow him to return to the community. Glaxtiks was little older, and was not known to have committed any other crime than trying to break his "brother" -- as they insisted they were -- out of prison. His sentence of exile was a practical matter; it was clear that if he ever were set free again, with Thaqz on Lost Souls' Island, he would only end up stowing away on the next exiles' boat. The magistrate didn't like either sentence, but felt he had no choice. The two therefore waited in prison while other criminals with like sentences were gathered from around the city and the kingdom, waiting for the next departure for the isle.
