Skate the Thief

by Jeff Ayers

  Skate the Thief

  For Brittany,

  who never gave up on the magic.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SKATE THE THIEF

  Copyright © 2020 by Jeff Ayers.

  Cover design by Nada Orlić.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at contact@thinklingsbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Thinklings Books

  1400 Lloyd Rd. #279

  Wickliffe, OH 44092

  thinklingsbooks.com

  The Rag and Bone Chronicles, Book 1

  Skate the Thief

  by

  Jeff Ayers

  Thinklings Books, LLC

  Wickliffe, OH

  Chapter 1

  In which a question is asked, a blanket is acceptably cleaned, and a deal is struck.

  Chapter 2

  In which a reunion occurs, a threat is made, and a game of darts is interrupted.

  Chapter 3

  In which a book is delivered, a secret is revealed, and a backpack is brought downstairs.

  Chapter 4

  In which a destination is reached, a trap is bypassed, and a man is kicked in the groin.

  Chapter 5

  In which a parcel is delivered, a room is explored, and a pancake is dropped on the floor.

  Chapter 6

  In which a history lesson is given, an identity is questioned, and a bag of coins is measured.

  Chapter 7

  In which a theory is tested, a secret room is explored, and some soup is set on the floor to cool.

  Chapter 8

  In which fried eggs are swallowed whole, a command is ignored, and a lesson begins.

  Chapter 9

  In which a schedule is studied, aspirations are discussed, and a confession is made.

  Chapter 10

  In which a term is defined, disguises are explored, and the man in the ball is explained.

  Chapter 11

  In which a disguise is employed, a plan is altered, and something explodes.

  Chapter 12

  In which a girl wakes up, a worry is soothed, and a snowball smacks someone in the face.

  Chapter 13

  In which a report is made, a change of plan occurs, and a brawl breaks out.

  Chapter 14

  In which an unknown pub is patronized, a prisoner is visited, and a spinning trinket is stopped.

  Chapter 15

  In which a non-word is written, a title is read, and art is admired.

  Chapter 16

  In which graffiti is discussed, a trap is sprung, and cake is nibbled.

  Chapter 17

  In which a courier goes walkabout, a library is alphabetized, and a floor is dirtied.

  Chapter 18

  In which someone says “I told you so,” clairvoyance is explored, and a snowball is thrown with some ice in it.

  Chapter 19

  In which a lady with a lisp almost falls over, a tale is told that no one knows, and a warning is delivered.

  Chapter 20

  In which coffee is made, a story is begun, and a name is revealed.

  Chapter 21

  In which a story is finished, bibelots are explained, and bacon is served by the fire.

  Chapter 22

  In which reading begins, a conversation is surveilled, and the Big Boss appears.

  Chapter 23

  In which a tune is sung, a letter is delivered, and a knot is untied.

  Chapter 24

  In which alchemy drives one to tears, ethics are discussed, and geography is puzzled over.

  Chapter 25

  In which a domestic dispute occurs, an unwelcome thief appears, and a toad knocks over a bookcase.

  Chapter 26

  In which a spy is sent skyward, a confession is made, and stomach fires are deliberated.

  Chapter 27

  In which a thief is followed, a heist is thwarted, and a trap is sprung.

  Chapter 28

  In which magic is discovered, an adventure undertaken, and a heading chosen.

  Epilogue

  In which a mess is cleaned up, and a mess is made.

  Chapter 1

  In which a question is asked, a blanket is acceptably cleaned, and a deal is struck.

  Skate peered into the shadowy room through the window. She sniffed and brushed a snowflake off the end of her nose, careful not to shift too much of her weight around. Twitch grunted anyway, muttering under his breath. She ignored him. His job was to hold her up, and there was no avoiding some movement, especially in this cold.

  Some people liked the snow. Those people are stupid.

  “Well?” Twitch asked, his small voice straining to both be heard clearly and stay quiet. He managed to do neither, so Skate shushed at her feet while she dug her heel into his shoulder.

  She turned her attention back to the dark room. A glow from a light upstairs helped her see shelves upon shelves of books lining the walls, with unidentifiable shapes resting with them. That junk could be valuable, maybe enough for the pair of them to meet their quota for the week, even the month. The books were treasures, but the Boss didn’t like trying to find buyers for stuff like that.

  “I’ll go in and grab what I can.”

  Twitch nodded his blond head impatiently. Skate pulled a wire from the waist of her shabby pants. She slipped the thin piece of metal through the hairbreadth crack in the window. There were not many windows that this sort of simple device would work on in the area, but this building was old and showing its wear; the stones and large windows showed it to be older than anything around it.

  The pair had observed the house for a week and determined that the tenant was a shut-in, an old man who spent all of his time in his upstairs rooms. He only came downstairs to get a new book off one of his shelves. Though elderly, he seemed spry, carrying heavy-looking volumes up and down the open stone stairs set in the wall with ease. His upstairs light stayed lit all night. Twitch had guessed that the old man liked to have it on in case he woke and needed to use the chamber pot. Skate had agreed and pointed out that the white color of the light probably meant it was magical. Magic in the house meant money. It was a good mark, and Boss Marshall would be pleased with whatever they could grab. They just had to get Skate in first.

  “I’ll leave the window open and toss down what I can. Once I’ve grabbed my fill, you’ll need to help me out—”

  “I know,” Twitch hissed, his voice strained with effort. “J-just hurry up!” He was starting to shake, and it wasn’t only from the cold; his muscles were clearly tiring.

  “Oh, fine, you big baby,” Skate said, and the soft click of the latch disengaging shot through the alley. The window swung outward, and she caught it to keep it from slamming against the outer wall. “Lift up,” she said, pulling herself over the threshold and rolling silently into the shadowy den.

  As she scanned the room, Skate heard a noise from upstairs: the crinkle of paper. The old man was still awake, and apparently reading. The room was as icy cold as it had been outside, and her breath formed puffs of cloud. There was a fireplace here, with a full rack of firewood beside it, but the hearth was empty, neglected, and forgotten for some time—covered in a thick layer
of dust and choked with cobwebs.

  Even though the Boss didn’t want books, Skate was drawn to them. She ran a finger along the spine of the nearest tome, then shook her head. The trinkets were the better target; besides, she couldn’t read any of the stories.

  A statuette above the fireplace caught her eye. It was roughly the length of her forearm, and depicted a woman dancing—or maybe swimming; it was difficult to make out clearly from her vantage point in the dark. Leave it, she told herself; get smaller stuff first.

  Three objects were among the books on the nearest shelf: a silver locket, a sheathed dagger, and a delicate-looking sculpture of metal. Skate pocketed the locket in the fold of the thin rags she was wearing, and examined the dagger. It came free of its jeweled leather sheath with silent ease. It was sharp, suffering no signs of wear or neglect. There were markings etched along the flat of the blade.

  Skate nodded and put it back into its protective leather. It should be worth a few scepts, at least, she thought, smiling at the prospect of handing Boss Marshall more than a month’s worth of payments for one night’s work. She stuffed the blade into her belt and moved on to the third treasure. The golden thing was a complicated moving sculpture studded with diamonds. The shape warped slightly when she picked it up, but quickly returned to its original circle shape.

  The thing was heavy in her hands; the gold was not merely plating. She had never held something so obviously valuable, whatever it was.

  Another page turned upstairs.

  Skate kept the golden object in her hands as she looked around for more. There was a desk at the far end of the room, on which a small ornate box sat slightly ajar. She was careful that none of her pilfered treasures made any noise as she walked toward her mark. Had the floors of this place been made of wood, they would undoubtedly have creaked. The cold stone, however, made no noise under her practiced feet.

  Skate gingerly opened the box the rest of the way and suppressed a gasp of giddiness at its contents: ten polished red stones on black velvet cloth. A jewelry box. In the shadowy cold, the gems almost glowed.

  Closer examination revealed flaws in the interiors of each, but her disappointment with the faulty goods was short-lived. The stones held images, not flaws. Her nose an inch from an orb, she saw a pair of open hands within, reaching toward some small person.

  “Please don’t touch those.”

  Skate dropped the golden thing and squawked at the clatter it made. She locked eyes with the source of the voice.

  The old man stood in the middle of the long room. He was wearing a rich dark green robe trimmed in bands of gold and black and matching slippers on his feet. His eyes were heavy with suspicion, and he was holding a heavy tome under his arm. A glint of red flashed in his eyes as he stared her down.

  Skate closed the jewelry box and put it back on the desk.

  “Come here.”

  She did not move except to shudder at the cold.

  The old man was unbothered. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Skate placed a hand on the large chair next to her and glared up at him defiantly. “These are yours?”

  The old man ignored her mockery and set the book on the desk. He gestured in Skate’s direction, and the golden thing floated off the ground back to its place on the shelf.

  She gaped only for a moment. “You’re a wizard!” Wizards were not common, even in a city as cosmopolitan as Caribol; producing dangerous wonders was a skill that took years of training and education, and payment for apprenticeships was expensive. Only fools and the mad would try to steal from such a person.

  “Did you take a locket? I’ll have that back, too.” He held out a hand, and the locket was tugged from her pocket. It landed in his hand, and he stuffed it into a pocket of his own. The old man scanned the room and nodded, apparently satisfied. “Right. Now, why were you trying to steal from me, young lady?”

  Skate bristled, despite the dangerous situation. “Young lady”? Make fun of me, will you? A quieter, darker voice whispered in her head, He forgot the dagger. “I was going to sell some stuff in order to pay for a room for the night, maybe a meal.”

  It was a lie, but not too far from the truth. His face became less severe. “You have nowhere to stay?”

  “No. Me and my friend,” she said as she nodded toward the open window, “we got nowhere.”

  The wizard turned to walk toward the window, and Skate took her chance. She charged forward and almost dropped the knife from her belt. She snatched it up and, at the same time, pushed the old man out of her way. The old man grunted as she ran past him through the open window and took a flying leap, hoping to land against the other wall, then blunt the rest of the fall into the snow.

  Three feet outside the window, Skate slowed, then stopped. She spun slowly in midair, suspended by nothing. Twitch was where she’d left him and was staring up at her, mouth agape.

  “Run!” she said, before flying back through the window. The midnight alley disappeared in a blur, and the window clicked shut behind her as she, for the third time that night, passed through it. Dizzy from the sudden shifts in direction, Skate skidded to a stop near the middle of the room, a few feet from the fireplace with the small statue. She scrambled to her feet and found herself staring into the face of the old man.

  She didn’t have the dagger anymore; the sheath was lying on the floor a few feet from her. The old man was glaring at her. He impatiently gestured again, this time toward the rack of firewood, and three logs slammed into the hearth. With another flash of his hands and some words that Skate couldn’t make out, the old man stretched a palm out. A thick blast of fire flew from his crooked fingers into the fireplace with such force that the logs almost came tumbling out to land on her. They didn’t, and the room now glowed orange and red from a crackling fire.

  “What were you thinking?” the wizard said, gesturing toward the window. “That is at least eight feet off of street level. You could have broken a bone!” He walked over to the window and looked down below. “Surely, you didn’t think the snow would help—”

  There was a metallic click against stone, and he stopped talking. He looked down at his side, and in the shadowy illumination, Skate could not see what he was looking at. Then he took three unsteady steps closer, and she gasped. It was the blade, buried right up to the hilt into his side. In her mad dash out the window, it had flown out of its sheath and stuck him.

  No blood stained the robe yet. The old man was staring at the knife in disbelief.

  A wave of nausea washed over Skate. Don’t think about it. He’ll fall, and I’ll run. I’ll yell for help on the way, and maybe the healers at the church can help him.

  The wizard placed a hand on the hilt and stuck his chin out pugnaciously. “You stabbed me.” He stomped right over to her. “You stabbed me! What is wrong with you? This could have hurt me!” He pulled the jeweled blade out. It was clean. With another wordless gesture from him, the discarded sheath clattered off the floor and floated over. He put the knife back in its holder and then placed it on the shelf. “Explain yourself!”

  “I—I—what do you mean, ‘explain myself’?” Already confused, Skate found a scolding too much to handle. “You’re a wizard, and obviously a hard one,” she said, waving a hand at the fireplace, “and you’d just caught me trying to nick your stuff. I had to get out, didn’t I? I just tried to knock you down, not cut you. And how aren’t you hurt?” She pointed an accusatory finger toward the apparently harmless wound in his side. “Is it a fake dagger or magic or what?”

  “Don’t go trying to change the subject, young lady,” the wizard said. Skate felt the flush of heat as her cheeks turned red in embarrassed anger. “You can’t just go around stabbing people you’re afraid of.”

  “Who else are you supposed to stab?” Skate asked, throwing her hands up. That she had not actually meant to stab anyone had temporarily slipped her mind.

  “Well, if you’re going to insist on stabbing other people, then you can cross
my name off your ‘stab if you feel like it’ list, because I won’t have any more of it, and it won’t do you any good anyway. What’s your name?”

  “What?”

  “Your name.” His tone was less offended now, and back to being merely haughty. He ran his hand across the fabric of his robe, and as he did so, the jagged cut disappeared. “You’ve got one, haven’t you?”

  “Skate,” she huffed, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  “That’s not a name.”

  “Is so. It’s the only one I got.” The only one I got now.

  The old man rolled his eyes. “Fine, ‘Skate.’ Were you lying about a friend outside? I didn’t see anybody.”

  “Yes.” Twitch needed to stay away from this man. He hadn’t hurt her yet, but no wizard was ever truly safe to be around. Her eyes reflexively darted to the fireplace. “There’s no one.”

  “Why?”

  “To get you to go look so I could escape.”

  “So you could escape by stabbing me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and now it was her turn to roll her eyes. “I’m so sorry for stabbing you, mister, okay? Even though it was an accident, even though it didn’t hurt you at all, even though it didn’t even scratch your clothes for very long, I’m sorry for using your own knife—that I stole,” she added, seeing him about to interrupt and correctly guessing what that interruption was going to be. “That I stole from you. I am very, truly sorry that I accidentally stabbed you to try to get away from your home. Okay?”

  A long time passed in silence. “Okay.” The wizard went over to the front door and put his hand on the handle, but checked his movement. He turned toward her, the hint of a red glare still in his eyes. “Do you really not have anywhere to go?”

  “No.” She could return to one of the Ink’s hideouts around the city, but showing up empty-handed after a job was frowned upon amongst the thieves, thugs, and murderers who made up the rank and file of the group. Boss Marshall wouldn’t be happy, certainly, especially after she and Twitch had promised a sizable score. The half-truth seemed a safe bet. “I don’t. I really was stealing in order to survive.” This last part, she took some small pride in, was absolutely true. Easy to lie with some truth mixed in.