Take a Thief Read online

  As if there was something messing about inside his head.

  So if 'e wants ter talk, why don't 'e get on wi' it? he thought furiously. And at that exact moment, the man smiled grimly, and nodded to himself.

  "What were you doing here?" the sell-sword asked as soon as Skif's mouth was clear of the threads the cloth had left on his tongue.

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  "Sleepin'!" Skif spat, and snarled in impotent fury. If it hadn't been for this bastard, he'd have found out who Jass' employer was! He made up his mind not to tell the man one word more than he had to.

  "In a cemetery?" The man raised one eyebrow.

  Skif found angry words tumbling out of his mouth, despite his resolution not to talk. "Wha's it matter t' you? Or them? They's not gonna care— an'

  it's a damn sight cooler an' quieter here than anywheres else! Them highborns is all playin' out i'country, they ain't gonna know 'f I wuz here!"

  "You have a point," the man conceded, then his face hardened again. "But why is it that you just happen sleeping to be in the same place where Jass goes to have a little chat?"

  "How shud I know?" Skif all but wailed. "I drops off, next thing I knows, he's up there yappin' t' summun an' I wanta know who!"

  If he'd had his hands free, he'd have clapped both of them over his mouth in horror. His tongue didn't seem to be under his control— what was happening to him?

  "Oh, really?" The man's other eyebrow arched toward his hairline. "And why is that?"

  "Becuz Jass' the bastid what set th' big fire an' burned me out— an' the mun whut was with 'im wuz th' mun what paid 'im t' do it!" Skif heard himself saying frantically. "I know'd it, cuz I 'eerd 'im say so! 'Is boss set

  'im another fire t' start right whiles I was listenin'! An' I wanta know who he is cuz I'm gonna get 'im, an' then I'm gonna get Jass, an—"

  "Enough." The man held up a sword-callused palm, and Skif found his flood of angry words cut off again. Just in time, too; there had been tears burning in his eyes, and he didn't want the man to see them. He blinked hard to drive them away, but he couldn't do much about the lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.

  Wut in hell is happenin' t' me?

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  But the man darted out a hand, quick as a snake, and grabbed Skif's shoulder and shook it. That hand crushed muscle and bone and hurt—

  "Now, to me you listen, boy, and engrave my words on your heart you will—" the man said, leaning forward until all Skif could see were his hawk-sharp, hawk-fierce eyes. "You playing are in deeper waters than you know, and believe me, to swim in them you cannot hope. Your nose out of this you keep, or likely someone is to fish you out of the Terilee, with a rock around your ankles tied, if find you at all they do."

  Skif shuddered convulsively, and an involuntary sob fought its way out of his throat. The man sat back on his heels again, satisfied.

  "Jass will to worry about shortly, much more than the setting of fires have," the man said darkly. "And he will answer for the many things he has responsible been for."

  "But—"

  "That is all you need to know," the man said forcefully, and the words froze in Skif's throat.

  The sell-sword pulled out a knife, and for one horrible moment, Skif thought that he was dead.

  But the man laid it on the floor, just out of reach, and stood up. "Too clever you are, by half," he said, with a grim little smile. "Now, about my business I will be. The moment I leave, getting yourself loose you can be about. Manage you will, quite sure I am."

  He dropped the shield over the dark lantern, plunging the chapel into complete blackness. In the next moment, although Skif hadn't heard him move, the door opened, a tall, lean shadow slipped through it, and it closed again.

  Skif lost no time in wriggling over the stone floor to the place where the man had left the knife. When he was right on top of it, he wriggled around until he could grab it. As soon as he got it into his hands, he sawed 155

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  through the cord binding his wrists to his ankles. Not easy— but not impossible. The man had left him enough slack in his ropes to do just that.

  Once that was cut, he managed to contort his body enough to get his arms back over to the front of himself and then sawed through the bindings at ankle and wrist. It was a good knife; sharp, and well cared for. If it didn't cut through the cords holding him as if they were butter, he wasn't forced to hack at them for candlemarks either.

  But all the time his hands were working, his mind was, too.

  Who— and what— was that man? How had he managed to get Skif to tell him everything he knew? Why did he want to know so much about Jass?

  Why'd 'e lemme go? Why'd 'e warn me off?

  Not that Skif had any intention of being warned off. Oo's 'e think 'e is, anyroad? Oo's 'e think 'e was talkin' to? If there was one thing that Skif was certain of, it was his own expertise in his own neighborhood.

  However clever this man thought he was, he wasn't living right next door to his target, now, was he? He hadn't even known that Jass was the one who'd set that fire— Skif had seen a flicker of surprise when his own traitorous mouth had blurted that information out. He might think himself clever, but he wasn't as good as all that.

  But 'ow'd 'e make me talk? More to the point, could he do it again if he got Skif in his hands?

  Best not to find out.

  'E won' catch me a second time, Skif resolved fiercely, as he cut through the last of the cords on his wrists and shook his hands free.

  He stood up, sticking the knife in his belt. No point in wasting a good blade, after all. His anger still roiled in his gut; by now Jass was far off, and his employer probably safe in his fancy home.

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  I'll know 'is voice, though, if I ever hear it agin. Small consolation, but the best he had.

  He slipped out the door of the chapel and closed it behind himself, not caring if he left this one unlocked or not. Around him the dead kept their silence, with nothing to show that there had ever been anyone here.

  Crickets sang, and honey-suckle sent a heavy perfume across the carefully manicured lawn. Jass had picked a good night for a clandestine meeting; the moon was no bigger than a fingernail paring.

  Skif made his way to the spot where the wall was overhung by an ancient goldenoak— he hadn't come in by a gate, and he didn't intend to leave by one either. All the while his mind kept gnawing angrily on the puzzle of the sell-sword. Bastid. Oo's 'e t' be so high i' th' nose? Man sells anythin'

  'e's got t' whos-ever gots the coin! Hadn't he already proved that by buying information from Jass? An' wut's 'e gonna do, anyroad? Where's 'e get off, tellin' me Jass's gonna go down fer the fire? Why shud 'e care?

  Unless— he had a wealthy patron himself. Maybe someone who had lost money when the fire gutted Skif's building?

  Or maybe Jass' own employer was playing a double game— covering his bets and his own back, hiring someone to "find out who set the fire" so that if Jass got caught, the rich man could prove that he had gone far out of his way to try and catch the arsonist. Then no matter what Jass said, who would believe him?

  The thought didn't stop Skif in his tracks, but it only roiled his gut further.

  The bastards! They were all alike, those highborns and rich men and their hirelings! They didn't care who paid, so long as their pockets were well-lined!

  Skif swarmed up the tree by feel, edged along the branch that hung over the opposite side, and dropped down quietly to the ground, his heart on fire with anger.

  Revenge. That's what he wanted. And he knew the best way to get it, too.

  If he didn't have a specific target, he could certainly make all of them 157

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  suffer, at least a little. Just wait until they all came back from their fancy country estates! Wait until they returned— and came back, not just to things gone missing, but to cisterns and sew
ers plugged up, wells and chimneys blocked, linens spoiled, moths in the woolens, mice in the pantry and rats in the cellar! He'd cut sash cords, block windows so they wouldn't close right, drill holes in rooftops and in water pipes. It would be a long job, but he had all summer, and when he got through with them, the highborn of Valdemar would be dead certain that they'd been cursed by an entire tribe of malevolent spirits.

  No time like right now, neither, he thought, with smoldering satisfaction as he fingered the sharp edge of his new knife.

  So what if he didn't have a specific target. They were all alike anyway. So he'd make it his business to make them all pay, if it took him the rest of his life.

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  11

  Skif had every intention of beginning his campaign of sabotage that very night, but when he tried to get near the district where the homes of the great and powerful were, he found the Watch was unaccountably active.

  There were patrols on nearly every street, and they weren't sauntering along either. Something had them alerted, and after the third time of having to take cover to avoid being stopped and questioned, he gave it up as hopeless and headed back to his room with an ill grace.

  He got some slight revenge, though; as he turned a corner, a party of well-dressed, and very drunk young men came bursting out of a tavern with a very angry innkeeper shouting curses right on their heels. They practically ran him over, but in the scuffle and ensuing confusion, he lifted not one, but three purses. Making impotent threats and shouting curses of his own at them (which had all the more force because of his personal frustrations), he turned on his heel and stalked off in an entirely different direction.

  Once out of sight, he ducked into a shadow, emptied the purses of their coins into his own pouch, and left the purses where he dropped them, tucking his pouch into the breast of his tunic. Then he strolled away in still another direction. After a block or two, there was nothing to connect him with the men he'd robbed. That was a mistake that many pickpockets made; they hung onto the purses they'd lifted. Granted, such objects were often valuable in themselves— certainly the three he'd taken had been—but they also gave the law a direct link between robber and robbed.

  As he walked back toward his room, he managed to get himself back under control. Taking the purses had helped; it was a very small strike against the rich and arrogant bastards, but a strike nevertheless. Just wait till they get to a bawdy house, an' they've gotta pay— he thought, with grim satisfaction. They better 'ope their friends is willin' t' part with th'

  glim! Skif had seen the wrath of plenty of madams and whore-masters whose customers had declined to pay, and they didn't take the situation lightly— nor did they accept promissory notes. They also employed very large men to help enforce the house rules and tariffs. When young men came into a place in a group, no one was allowed to leave until everyone's 159

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  score had been paid. Those who still had purses would find them emptied before the night was over.

  The thought improved his humor, and that restored his appetite. Now much fatter in the pocket than he had been this afternoon, he decided to follow his nose and see where it led him.

  It took him to a cookshop that stood on the very border of his neighborhood, halfway between the semirespectable district of entertainers, artists, musicians (not Bards, of course), peddlers, and decorative craftsmen and their 'prentices, and his own less respectable part of town.

  I've earned a meal, he decided; taking care not to expose how much he had, he fished out one of the larger coins from his loot and dropped the pouch back into his tunic. Best to get rid of the most incriminating of the coins.

  He eased on in; it was full, but not overcrowded, and he soon found space at the counter to put in his order. With a bowl of soup and a chunk of bread in one hand, and a mug of tea in the other, he made his way back outside to the benches in the open air where there were others eating, talking, or playing at dice or cards. Hot as it was, there were more folk eating under the sky than under the roof.

  As was his habit, he took an out-of-the-way spot and kept his head down and his ears open. He was very soon rewarded; the place was abuzz with the rumor that someone had broken into the home of the wealthy merchant, Trenor Severik, and had stolen most of his priceless collection of miniature silver figurines. Severik had literally come home in time to see the thief vanishing out the window. Hence, the Watch; every man had been called out, the neighborhood had been sealed off, and anyone who couldn't account for himself was being arrested and taken off to gaol. It seemed that one of those arrested was an acquaintance of several of those sitting near Skif.

  "Hard luck for poor Korwain," one of the artists said, with a snicker. "He couldn't say where he'd been— of course. "

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  His friends nearly choked on their meals. "I told him that woman was trouble," said another, whose dusty beard and hair bedecked with stone chips proclaimed him to be a sculptor. "Two sittings, and she's got me backed into a corner, tryin' to undo m'britches!" He shuddered, and the rest laughed. " Patron of arts, she calls herself! My eye!"

  "Heyla, we tried to warn you, so don't say we didn't!" called a fellow with a lute case slung over his back. "Korwain knew it, so he's only got himself to blame!"

  "That's what happens when you let greed decide your commissions for you," put in another, whose mouth looked like a miser's purse and whose eyes gloated at a fellow artist's misfortune. "I'd rather live on bread in a garret and serve the Temples than feast on marchpane and capon and—"

  "Your paintings are so stiff they wouldn't please anyone but a priest, so don't go all over pious on us, Penchal!" cat-called the first artist.

  That set off an argument on artistic merit and morality that Skif had no interest in. He applied himself to his soup, and left the bowl and mug on the table while the insults were still coming thick and fast, and rapidly building to the point where it would be fists, and not words, that would be flying.

  At least now he knew why the Watch was up, and he wouldn't dare try anything for days, even a fortnight. Why would anyone bother to steal the collection of silver miniatures, anyway? They were unique and irreplaceable, yes, but you'd never be able to sell them anywhere, they were too recognizable, and you wouldn't get a fraction of their value if you melted them down. Oh, a thief could hold them for ransom, Skif supposed, but he'd certainly be found out and caught.

  The only way the theft made sense was if someone had gotten a specific commission to take them. It was an interesting thought. Whoever had made the commission would have to be from outside Haven; what was the use of having something like that if you couldn't show it off? Anyone in Haven would know the collection as soon as it was displayed. The client 161

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  could even be outside Valdemar altogether. So the thief, too, might be from outside Valdemar….

  Huh. That'd be somethin', he thought, keeping an eye out for trouble as he made his way back home. Have'ta be some kinda Master Thief, I guess.

  Somebody with all kinds uv tricks. Wonder if they's 'prentices fer that kinda work? He'd never heard of a Master Thief, much less one that took on protégés, but maybe that sort of thing happened outside of Valdemar.

  Like mebbe they's a whole Guild fer Thieves. Wouldn' that be somethin'!

  He amused himself with this notion as he worked his way homeward. He never, even when he had no reason to believe that he was being followed, went back home directly. He always doubled back, ducked down odd side passages, even cut over fences and across back gardens— though in the summer, that could be hazardous. In his neighborhood, no one had a back garden for pleasure. People used every bit of open ground to grow food in, and often kept chickens, pigeons, or a pig as well. And they assumed anyone coming over the fence was there to steal some of that precious food. Those that didn't have yards, but did have balconies, grew their vegetables in pots. Those that had nothing
more than a window, had window boxes. Even Skif had a window box where he grew beans, trailing them around his window on a frame made of pieces of string. It was just common sense to augment what you could buy with what you could grow, but that did make it a bit more difficult to take the roundabout path until after the growing season was over.

  It wasn't as late as he'd thought; lots of people were still up and about, making it doubly hazardous to go jumping in and out of yards. The front steps of buildings held impromptu gatherings of folks back from their jobs, eating late dinners and exchanging gossip. Most of the inns and cookshops had put benches out onto the street, so people could eat outside where it was cooler. It was annoying; Skif couldn't take his usual shortcuts. On the other hand, so many people out here meant more opportunities to confuse a possible follower.

  With that in mind, he stopped at another cookshop for more tea and a fruit pie. More crust than fruit, be it added, but he didn't usually indulge in anything so frivolous, and the treat improved his temper a bit more. Not so much that he forgot his anger— and the burning need to find out who Jass'

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  boss was— but enough so that he was able to look as though nothing in his life had changed in the last few candlemarks.

  He paid close attention to those who sat down to eat after him, but saw no one that had also been at the previous cookshop. That was a good sign, and he quickly finished his tea and took the shortest way home.

  Jass wasn't back yet. Neither were his girls— which meant that Jass probably wasn't going to set his fire tonight. Skif watered his beans and stripped for bed, lighting a stub of a candle long enough to actually count his takings.