The Thieves Guild. A Halfling's Tale, #2

Ten years before Tamsin Quickfinger stole the ledger that would threaten Renfro's powerful elite, she was a fourteen-year-old halfling surviving during a devastating plague. Disguised as a palace servant, she carried clean linens while secretly smuggling bread to hungry halfling families near the western market. Outside Queen Isolde's fever ward, Tamsin overheard Dr. Emile Corven warning Chancellor Edric Sable that the queen had ordered important records seized.
Sable dismissed the dying queen's authority, revealing to Tamsin that something dangerous was being hidden within the palace. Queen Isolde summoned Tamsin into her chamber and quickly realized she was not truly a servant. She explained that reports reaching the king had been altered, warnings had disappeared, medicine had been withheld, and grain shipments had been delayed while wealthy merchants protected themselves.
Isolde had attempted to begin an investigation, but her orders were being suppressed, and she was no longer permitted to see the king. Knowing she might soon die, the queen placed a battered locket containing a torn piece of the royal curtain into Tamsin's hands and asked her to preserve the truth. Isolde warned Tamsin that those responsible would justify their actions as necessary and reduce the suffering of ordinary people to numbers and convenient explanations.
She made Tamsin promise that the powerful would not be allowed to decide what the kingdom remembered. Tamsin escaped the chamber with the locket hidden beneath her dress, intending to return the next morning and learn more. Instead, she awoke to discover that Queen Isolde had died, the sealed reports had vanished, the queen's belongings had been burned, and the court had declared that anyone questioning the official story was disturbing the kingdom's grief.
For the next ten years, Tamsin secretly carried the queen's locket and the memory of that night while Renfro rebuilt itself and slowly forgot what Isolde had tried to expose. The kingdom restored its ceremonies and honored the dead queen while carefully burying the truth behind her final investigation. Yet small pieces of evidence survived, including the torn ribbon, the memory of the queen's warning, and even two notes from her silver whistle that eventually became a secret guild signal.
When Tamsin finally encounters the mysterious ledger years later, she possesses both the skills and the reason to fulfill the promise she made to Queen Isolde: to steal back the truth and prevent the powerful from controlling history.