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  Take A Thief

  ( Valdemar (05) - 3 )

  Mercedes Lackey

  Skif was an orphan boy who's care was in the hands of his Uncle Londer's. His uncle did not care about or even like Skif. He put the boy to work and had him in rags. One day, while Skif was "foraging" for some extra food, he came upon a boy named Deek. This boy was a pick-pocket and a theif. Deek took Skif to meet his master, a crippled man named Bazie who took led and cared for the boys. Skif decided to become a theif. When Skif was 12, he was the most skilled cat burglar in Bazie's gang, but something went horribly wrong. Bazie was killed in a fire because he had no way to get out. Skif was then on his own. Until, one night he saw a finely decked-out white horse standing by itself (which was weird) in the middle of the street. He decided to "steal" it and hope he could get a reward or sell it for a high price. Little did Skif know that this so-called "horse" was a companion and that he was about to become a Herald of Valdemar.

  Takes a Thief

  Mercedes Lackey

  “GERRUP.”

  Skif's dreams shattered, leaving him with vague fragments of being somewhere warm, cozy, and sweet-scented. A toe scientifically applied to Skif's rib cage with enough force to bounce him off the back wall of the under-stair cubby he called his own reinforced the otherwise incomprehensible order that he wake up. He woke, as ever, stiff, cold, and with a growling stomach.

  It was the beginning of another beautiful day at the Hollybush Tavern.

  An' good mornin' to you, too, bastard.

  He scrambled to his feet, keeping hunched over to avoid hitting his head on the staircase, his ratty scrap of a blanket clutched in both hands. His uncle's eldest son looked him up and down, and grunted — probably disappointed that Skif was awake enough that a “pick-me-up” cuff to the side of the head wasn't going to be necessary this time.

  Skif squinted; Kalchan was a monolithic silhouette against the smoky light from the open kitchen door, narrower at the top and swiftly widening where shoulders would be on an ordinary human, his only distinguishing characteristics from neck to knee being a pair of pillowlike arms and the fat bulging in rolls over his waistband. Skif couldn't see his face, which was fine as far as he was concerned. Kalchan's face was nothing he cared to examine closely under any circumstances.

  “Breffuss,” Kalchan grunted, jerking his head over his shoulder so that his greasy locks swung in front of his face. Skif ducked his head and quickly folded his blanket, dropping it on the pad of rags over straw that served him as a pallet. He didn't need to dress; in the winter he slept in every stitch of clothing he owned. Satisfied that Skif was on duty, Kalchan went on to awaken the rest of the tavern staff.

  Yah, an' do not a hand's worth of work, neither.

  “Breakfast,” was what Kalchan had said, but he hadn't meant that it was time for Skif to partake of that meal.

  As soon as he was out of the way, Skif scuttled out into the kitchen and began the tedious business of lighting the fires, hindered by the fact that his uncle's penny-pinching ways were reflected in every aspect of his purchases. For firewood, he relied on the rag-and-bone men who swept out fireplaces and ovens in more prosperous households, sifting out the ashes for sale to the tanners and soap makers, and selling the clinkers and partially-burned ends of logs to people like Londer Galko, keeper of the Hollybush Tavern. Nor would Uncle Londer actually buy a decent firestarter, much less keep a candle or banked coals going overnight; Skif had to make do with a piece of flint and one of some other rock. The fact that at least half of this “firewood” had been doused with water — which was, in fact, the law — before the ragmen picked it up didn't make it any easier to light.

  Before he could do anything about a fire, Skif went to the pile of sweepings from the floor of the common room that he'd collected last night after the last drunken lout had been rolled out the door. Every bit of dust and fluff that looked as if it might possibly catch fire became his tinder. At worst case, he'd have to sacrifice a precious bit of the straw stuffed into his boots for warmth.

  Heh. Sommun' been trackin' in straw. Hayseed from country, prolly. Oh, ayah — here be nice dust bunny, too.

  Swearing under his breath, Skif hacked his two bits of rock together, trying to generate sparks, hoping one of them would land in the tiny patch of lint and fluff. When one finally did, and finally cooperated with his efforts, he coaxed it into a tiny flame, then got the flame to take hold of the driest of the wood. He nursed it tenderly, sheltering it from the drafts along the floor, begging it to take. Finally, he set it on the sooty hearth, surrounded it with what was left of the dry wood from last night, and slowly fed it until it was large enough to actually cook over.

  Only when the kitchen fire was properly started did the slattern used by Uncle Londer as a cook, dishwasher, and general dogsbody finally shuffle down the stairs from the loft where she slept into the room, scratching head and buttocks at the same time without ever dislodging any of the vermin who called her “home.” Skif often wondered why so few people who ate here died. Perhaps it was only because their stomachs were already full of the acidic potions his uncle sold as wine and beer, and once a stomach was full of that rotgut, nothing that came in from the food lived long enough to cause sickness.

  The kitchen door stood open to the cold courtyard; Kalchan came in that way every morning, bringing the day's supplies. Uncle Londer never bought more of anything for the inn than he absolutely had to. Now Skif braced himself to head outside into the cold.

  Where 'ud it hurt if 'e bought for a week? Wouldn' 'e get it cheaper that way?

  Skif ran out into the courtyard to unload the wagon — hired for the purpose by the candlemark, together with a boy to drive it. The quicker Skif unloaded the thing, the less Uncle Londer would be charged — and if he didn't save Uncle Londer every possible pennybit, he'd learn about it when Kalchan's fist connected with his head.

  The boy stared at the ears of his donkey, studiously ignoring Skif, who was so much lower in the social scale than he was. This boy had a coat, new boots, both clean.

  Ah, stuck up! Skif thought, and stuck out his tongue at the unresponsive back.

  First off, a half-sack of flour, followed by a tub of tallow grease thriftily saved from cookshops where they skimmed off the grease from roasting and frying, and resold to those who could not afford butter and candles. Maisie would be put to taking peeled rushes and dipping them in the melted grease to make the tallow dips that served the tavern as lights, and the cook would use the same grease in baking and on the bread.

  Skif moved it carefully and set it down beside the flour; sometimes the stuff was still liquid underneath, and he didn't dare spill it.

  Then came a bucket of meat scraps, which would serve for the soup and meat pies.

  I don' wanna know what that meat came from. Reckon it might meow…

  Next, a peck of withered, spotty turnips, another of dried beans and peas that were past their best and smelled of mold. Last of all, two barrels of beer and one of wine. Both represented the collected dregs from barrels all over the city, collected last night from one of the large merchants who supplied goods to other inns and taverns. Needless to say, this was the cheapest conceivable form of beverage; it even cost less than the sweet spring water collected from outside Haven. It was so awful that Guild cooks wouldn't even use the stuff in sauces; stale and loaded with sediment, it smelled sour even through the wood of the barrel. Skif got the barrels off the wagon quickly, and the boy turned the wagon just as quickly and sent his donkey trotting out into the street. Skif lugged the food into the kitchen where old Moll, the cook, took charge of it all. Only she or Kalchan were allowed to touch the food and drink once it came off the wagon.

  Skif had no intention of
touching any of it. He never ate here — not that Uncle Londer encouraged him to.

  He wasn't done yet; he had to bring in enough water from the courtyard pump to fill the half-barrel in the kitchen — one bucket at a time. He stumbled on the rutted, frozen dirt of the courtyard; his boots, stuffed with straw for extra warmth, were far too big for him. He didn't care; better too big than too small.

  Leastwise they don' pinch.

  Now Skif went out into the common room to ready it for the first customers, lighting the fire there with a brand from the kitchen fire, arranging bits of wood on either side of the hearth to dry, taking the benches down off the tables, and the shutters off the windows. The oiled paper in the windows didn't do a great deal to keep out the cold, but with snow in the street outside, there was some light getting in this morning, so it was just as well that oiled paper hindered more than it helped in that direction. Skif would never want to see what the common room looked like in the full light of the sun,

  As horrible as the food and drink here in the Hollybush were, there were two customers waiting for Skif to open the door. He knew them both by sight; two men who would down a minimum of six mugs of foul beer and choke down a slice of stale, burned bread with a scraping of nameless fat before shambling off somewhere, not to be seen until the next morning. Presumably, they had jobs somewhere and this was their breakfast.

  They slumped down on the benches nearest the door, and Skif yelled for Maisie, the fourth member of Uncle Londer's tavern staff. As usual, she emerged from her own cubby of a blocked-up stair that once led to the second floor (which, unlike Skif's, had a flap of patched canvas for a door) followed by Kalchan. As usual, she said nothing, only scuttled into the kitchen for the customer's beer and bread, her face set in a perpetual mask of fear. Kalchan hitched at his trews and grinned, showing yellowed teeth, and followed her into the kitchen.

  Skif shuddered. As awful as his position was here, Maisie's was worse.

  This was a tavern, not an inn, and the kitchen and common room were all there was of the place. The tenement rooms upstairs, although they belonged to Uncle Londer, were not available for overnight guests, but were rented by the month. There was a separate entrance to the rooms, via a rickety staircase in the courtyard. This limited the tenants' access to the inn and the fuel and food kept there. Uncle fully expected his tenants to pilfer anything they could lay their hands on, and they responded to his trust by doing so at every possible opportunity. Not that there were many opportunities; Kalchan saw to that.

  Now Skif was free to leave at last for the lessons that every child was required by Valdemar law to have until he was able to read, write, and cipher. Not even Uncle Londer had been able to find a way to keep Skif from those lessons, much as he would have liked to.

  Skif didn't wait around for permission from Kalchan to leave, or his cousin would find something else for him to do and make him late. If he was late, he'd miss breakfast, which would certainly please Kalchan's sadistic notion of what was amusing.

  See ya — but not till dark, greaseball!

  He shot out the door without a backward look, into the narrow street. This was not an area that throve in the morning; those who had jobs were usually at them by dawn, and those who didn't were generally out looking for something to put some money in their pockets at least that early, or were sleeping off the results of drinking the vile brews served in the Hollybush or other end-of-the-alley taverns. The Hollybush was, in fact, located at the end of the alley, giving Uncle Londer the benefit of giving custom no chance to stumble past his door.

  There were other children running off up the alley to lessons as well, though not all to the same place as Skif. He had to go farther than they, constrained by his uncle's orders. If Skif was going to have to have lessons, his uncle was determined, at least, that he would take them where Uncle Londer chose and nowhere else.

  Every child in this neighborhood was running eagerly to their various teachers for the same reason that Skif did; free and edible breakfast. This was an innovation of Queen Selenay's, who had decided, based on her own observation, that a hungry child doesn't learn as well as one with food in his belly. So every child in Haven taking lessons who arrived on time was supplied with a bacon roll and a mug of tea in winter, or a buttered roll and a piece of fruit in summer. Both came from royal distribution wagons that delivered the supplies every morning, so there was no use in trying to cheat the children by scrimping. But if a child was late, he was quite likely to discover that his attendance had been given up for the day and someone else had eaten his breakfast, so there was ample incentive to show up on time, if not early, for those lessons, however difficult or boring a child might find them.

  Skif had no intention of missing out on his share. His stomach growled as he ran, and he licked his lips in anticipation.

  Unless luck went his way, this might be the only really edible food he'd get for the rest of the day — and there was no doubt in his mind that the rest of the children in his group were in the same straits.

  The narrow, twisting streets he followed were scarcely wide enough for a donkey cart. The tenement houses, three stories tall including the attics, leaned toward the street as if about to fall into it. There was not enough traffic to have worn away the packed, dirty snow heaped up against the walls of the houses on either side, and no incentive for the inhabitants to scrape it away, so there it would remain, accumulating over the course of the winter until it finally thawed and soaked into the dirt of the street, turning it to mud.

  But that would not be for several moons yet. There was all of the winter to get through first. At least the cold kept down the smell — from backyard privies, chicken coops, pigeon houses, pig sties. The poor tried to eke out their meager foodstuffs any way they could. Pigeons were by far the most popular, since they could fly away by day to more prosperous parts of town and feed themselves at someone else's expense. There were clouds of them on every available perch, sitting as close together as possible for warmth, and whitening the broken slates and shingles of the rooftops with their droppings. Of course, with all the snow up there, the droppings were invisible in winter.

  Skif was finally warm now, his breath puffing out whitely as he ran. He had no coat, of course, but no child in his neighborhood had a coat. There were three ways to get warm in the winter — work until you were warm, do something that kept you near enough to the fire that you weren't freezing, or — be as creative about finding warmth as Skif was.

  After six turnings, he was in a slightly more respectable neighborhood. The streets were marginally wider, a halfhearted attempt to remove the snow had been made, and there were a few dark little shops on the first floors of the tenement houses. More chimneys sported thin streams of smoke, and at the end of this final street, just before it joined one of the main thoroughfares, was the Temple of Belden. It wasn't a large Temple as such things went; it had only four priests and a half-dozen novices. But the Order of Belden was a charitable order, which was just as well, since there wasn't much scope for anything but charity down here.

  As such, one of the charitable acts performed here was to educate the poor children of the area. But Skif wasn't here because he had chosen the place, or even because Uncle Londer had picked it from a number of options. He was here because his second cousin, the middle son of his uncle's brood of three, was a novice here.

  Cousin Beel had as little choice about his vocation as Skif did; Uncle Londer wished to impress his social superiors with his sense of charity, and so Beel became a novice. Beel seemed to like the life, though — or, he liked it as much as this curiously colorless young man could like anything. Beel was as forgettable as Kalchan was remarkable.

  Skif pushed open a little side door in the chapter house next to the Temple. The door opened directly into a public room with several tables and benches in it; there were thirty or forty other children that took lessons there, and about half of them were already sitting on the benches, waiting for their meal. Skif slid
in beside one of the smaller girls, a tiny big-eyed thing called Dolly. She smiled up at him in welcome; he was her protector and kept her from being harassed by any of the more aggressive children who would try to bully her outside of classes for anything that they thought they could get from her.

  He took her cold little hands in his and held them until they warmed while they waited for the last of the children to straggle in. Skif heard her stomach growl while they waited; his answered hers, and she gave a little giggle.

  Finally a small bell rang somewhere in the Temple marking the end of the First Service, and a door at the back of the room opened. Beel and one other novice entered, carrying baskets. The delicious aroma of bacon wafted gently to where Skif sat, trying not to fidget; every eye in the room was riveted on those baskets as Beel and the other novice left and returned with steaming pots of tea and thick clay mugs.

  Cor! Can they move any slower?

  It seemed an eternity before the last of the paraphernalia of breakfast finally was brought in and arranged to Beel's liking. Only then were the children permitted to come up to him, one at a time, and receive their rolls and mugs. By then, of course, the rolls were stone cold and the tea at best lukewarm.