Skate the Thief

by Jeff Ayers

  “Sorry I called your book stupid.” The apology was feeble and a little silly sounding, and she knew it, but she didn’t know a better way to phrase it. “It’s not stupid. I just don’t understand any of it.”

  Skate thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch a fraction of a hair upward. Belamy raised his head so that it was no longer hovering over the pages. The cold edge was gone from his voice when he spoke. “That’s all right, Skate. Forget about it. I understand that this sort of information is not interesting to everybody. The fault was mine for trying to lecture you when you are my guest, and a welcome one. Would you like a fire going?”

  Soon, the room shimmered with orange-red flames as the fireplace crackled and popped with Belamy’s endless supply of wood in the hearth. The old man had called Rattle down to cook dinner, and the flying thing was now happily banging away in the kitchen, preparing whatever it liked for Skate to consume.

  “How’s the reading going?” Skate asked, having to raise her voice to be heard over the cacophony.

  “Quite well!” Belamy said, rising from the desk and gesturing at the open book. He appeared to be halfway through the text, a wooden bookmark resting on his current page. “The account is very thorough; Bereziah seems to have been quite a stickler for specifics and details. A catalog of rations, injuries, deaths, and so on for pages and pages. Very interesting—to some people,” he added with a smile.

  Skate smiled back, and it took several seconds before she remembered she was almost certainly smiling at a monster, a creature from a children’s tale come to unlife. It reminded her of her plan, and she felt around in her pocket until she found something round and ridged. She closed her fist around it.

  “Hey, Mr. Belamy, catch!” she said, tossing the object at the old man, easily enough that he could catch or escape it. He chose the former, shooting a sleeved arm out to catch the item in mid-descent. He brought it close to his face and sniffed.

  “Garlic?” he asked, curiously turning it over in his hands. “Why did you give me this?”

  “For Rattle to cook with,” Skate said immediately. It was the lie she had concocted on the way over, and she was pretty proud of it. If he had been a vampire, he would have been exposed and she could have run away. If not, she could just claim she’d gotten it to eat. “I figured that since you don’t eat much, you must need stuff like that from time to time while I live here.”

  The old man laughed—a throaty, windy sound. “Oh, we’ll do all right, don’t you worry. Come on, I’ll show you.” He walked into the kitchen, still chuckling and causing the noise of Rattle’s preparations to get louder for a moment until the door swung shut again behind him. Skate followed him in and felt heat before taking in the scene.

  She had only seen the kitchen once before, and it had been dark. At the time, she had also been focused on Belamy’s guests, and hadn’t had attention to spare.

  The room was narrow, with a countertop and a wood-burning stove. Rattle sprawled in front of this latter fixture, all legs fully extended and doing the different tasks required to prepare the meal. With one leg, it stirred a pot, while two more rolled out dough behind it on the counter. The three remaining arms were busy cutting up a series of vegetables and dumping them into the boiling pot. Skate stood agape, struggling to follow each of the different activities. She shook her head and turned her attention to Belamy, who was reaching toward a pair of cabinets.

  The wizard swung the doors open to reveal a jumbled assortment of spices and seasonings; small green, yellow, orange, brown, white, and red jars; bottles; canisters; cups; and bowls from top to bottom—all drunkenly leaning on one another, some sideways or upside down. Skate could see small labels with writing on each container. The effect of the contrasting colors and general disarray was overwhelming to both the eyes and any sense of order. Belamy chuckled as he put the bulb into the cabinet and shut it. “Thank you, Skate; it looks like we were running low after all.”

  Skate stood, temporarily stunned. That amount of spice would cost a small fortune; spice merchants were among the wealthiest of that class in all of Caribol, and that was in large part because their wares were sold at a dear cost. “How…why do you have all of that?” She pointed an accusatory finger at the old man. “You said you don’t eat! And the eyeball there doesn’t even have a mouth!” She poked a thumb at the bat-winged chef-thing. “Why did you spend the chestful of scepts it must have cost to buy all that stuff if you don’t even eat?”

  Belamy nodded. “I don’t get much use of them now, it’s true. I did, however, get quite a number of delicious meals out of my stock before I did my magic. I used to love food, you see,” he said, patting his belly, “though you might not guess it by looking at me. Not as a glutton enjoys it, though; I didn’t gorge myself, and I didn’t spend all of my wealth on it. But I loved good food, and so I made sure I’d never be too far from it.” He looked wistfully at Rattle as it worked. “I never learned to cook myself, but Rattle has the touch and the practice to compete with the finest chefs in the land.”

  “How long ago did you make yourself not need to eat?” Skate asked nervously, hoping the distance between now and then was not terribly long.

  “About twenty years or so. Why?”

  Skate stuck out her tongue in a look of disgust. “You mean it’s been cooking with stuff that’s more than twenty years old?” She gagged and spluttered at the thought. “I ate some of that!”

  “Yes, and it was delicious, wasn’t it? Here,” Belamy said, reaching into the cabinet and pulling out a bottle containing fresh-looking, sharp-ridged green leaves. “Smell. Go on, take a deep breath.”

  Skate skeptically looked between the bottle and the old man before gingerly sniffing the contents. The smell was inviting. She sucked in deeper, and her nostrils felt pleasantly chilly. “Okay, what is that?”

  “Mint leaves,” Belamy said with a satisfied smirk as he recapped the bottle and placed it in a random place in the shelf. “Mint leaves bought fresh and bottled two decades ago.”

  Skate looked at the cabinet. “Magic?” she asked as much as stated.

  “Of course!” the old man said with a laugh. “Anything placed in these cabinets will last indefinitely, refreshed as the day it was put in with each new rise of the sun. I’m glad these flavors will be enjoyed by someone instead of sitting here trapped in an endless cycle getting a day stale and reverting again. Had I thought more about it at the time I was preparing to go through my experiment, I might not have bothered with the preservative spells for food, but…” He waved the thought away and pointed to Rattle. “I know Rattle’s glad to have some more cooking to do. The pots had been unused for years.”

  Rattle fluttered its bat wings to show approval before turning its attention back to the tasks at hand. Most of its legs were now being used to steady the heavy pot as it continued stirring. The smell coming from within was delicious; Skate thought she detected the aroma of meat, either beef or pork. “It is good at it,” she said, more to herself than to her host. “I had a question,” she added as she moved to the kitchen door, the heat from the stove becoming too much to bear. “You’ve got a lot of money, right?”

  Belamy looked taken aback by her forwardness. He stuttered a few times, and finally managed to say, “Well, I, ah, don’t know about ‘a lot,’ but I have enough to live quite comfortably.” He looked around the room as he spoke, a shine coming to his watery eyes as he looked on his books, his fine desk, and his comfortable chair. “Yes, quite comfortably. Why?” He arched a feathery white eyebrow as he tried to size up his guest.

  “I was just wondering where you got it from,” she answered easily, another lie prepared well before she’d broached the subject. “Did you inherit it or win it or work for it or what?” The thin draft poking through a closed window gave her some relief from the boiling cauldron that was Rattle’s kitchen.

  “A combination of working and winning, I should say,” the old man said, clasping his hands behind his back. “In my you
nger days, I was something of a treasure hunter. As I grew older, I had acquired enough wealth from those travels to ‘retire’ from such a life and begin selling my services as sage and wizard to the local population. Of course, only the nobles of the city and the wealthy merchants who had begun to rise in stature could afford the cost of magic, so these were my clientele. They could afford much, so that’s what I charged them. I still do occasional alchemy work or spellcasting, but more as favors to old friends and clients than any real need for the work or the money.”

  Alchemy? Skate thought but did not ask; instead, she said, “Old friends? You can’t have too many friends as old as you. No offense.”

  “None taken.” He smiled as if to reassure her. “You’re right, of course. The friends of my youth are long gone, though I have made many enduring connections in my older years with those of the younger generations. Some of them pay visits every so often; the trio you evaded two days ago are among them. Wise and capable, and magic users in their own right, they have much to offer even a well-read old coot like me.” He smiled contentedly, a vision of pride and gratefulness. “I’ve known them for years,” he added, moving back toward his customary seat at his desk.

  “What’s alchemy? Is it magic, too?” This was what she was more interested in, since she had no idea what the practice would even look like. Magic she understood at a rudimentary level: wiggle your hands and say some words, and stuff happens. This new thing was unknown in even that limited sort of way.

  “Not exactly, no.” Belamy seemed to consider something, and then rose again from his seat. “Here, follow me again.” He moved toward one of his bookcases along the wall beneath the stairs and pulled a book off the shelf—except that as soon as the book leaned forward from the rest, the bookcase swung forward on unseen hinges.

  A bark of surprised laughter escaped Skate’s lips. At Belamy’s curious expression, she felt the need to explain herself. “It’s just…I’ve never seen a hidden stairway behind a bookcase before. It’s clever.” Belamy smiled back, satisfied with the explanation, and began his descent into the dark spiral descending stair. Skate felt fine about the lie, because the truth of her mirth would have revealed her association with other thieves, which would needlessly complicate her job.

  The real reason she had laughed was because this kind of misdirection was well-known among burglars, and its reputation brought nothing but ridicule. “A good thief,” Haman had once told her when the topic had come up in a common area of one of the hideouts, “knows exactly how to find such ‘hidden spots.’ They’re pitifully simple to find; just look for a place where there should be space but isn’t.” The nearby table that had been discussing the concept laughed uproariously as the mocking conversation continued. Skate had only been paying attention to Haman at the time, and did not notice the rest of their words.

  “You probably won’t ever see one,” Haman had said, resettling his spectacles and reviewing the page in front of him, “since they fell out of style ages ago; people in this city learned fairly quickly what poor protections they were.”

  Belamy had never gotten the notice, it seemed—unlike in Ossertine’s home, where the space had been a product of magic, a passage that should have led into the neighboring house but had not—this entrance was entirely mundane.

  Another giggle threatened to burst out, but Skate was ready for it this time and suppressed it.

  Belamy brought a magical ball of light out from somewhere down below and called up to her. She responded and began her descent. The stair was narrow, and the white light from below cast a grayish hue on the cut stones of the wall. The ghostly color made Skate pause. The thought that had been floating in the back of her head surged forward again. He’s probably a monster. I’m going underground with someone pretending to be alive.

  She stood on the top step. If the bookcase swung shut, she might be trapped.

  She took a deep breath. If he wanted to hurt me, he could have fifty different times.

  Skate knew her reasoning was solid, but her sense of dread grew as she took the next step. The Boss wants a big score. That did little to ease the deepening pit in her stomach as she placed a steadying hand on the inner wall of the spiraling stairs, though it shifted the target of that ill ease toward Boss Marshall.

  She came to the end of the steps.

  In front of her was Belamy, a ball of light floating over his open hand. He was fidgeting with a latch on a lantern in one wall. He turned toward Skate and jerked his head behind him. “Open that one, will you?”

  Skate saw in the other wall a lantern identical to the one Belamy was trying to open. She moved toward it, keeping a wary eye on the old man’s silhouette as he struggled with the latch. She got to hers and immediately saw the problem: the metal had started to rust. She took one of the thin pins from her hair and tried scraping the corroded metal away. It came off surprisingly easily, and within a minute, she had flipped the latch open and drawn the metal shade upward.

  Skate squinted, eyes watering, as more white light streamed into the room.

  The squeak of metal behind her made the light grow stronger still. She turned around to see Belamy smiling at the lantern he had bested, wiping his hands together to shake the red rust off. It fell in clouds until it dispersed from vision entirely. He shook his light-bearing hand, and the ball of light disappeared; the magical lanterns provided more than enough for comfort’s sake.

  Skate took in the room, then. The heat from the main room’s fireplace had not made it down to this hidden part of the house, and she was not sure it ever would, even if the fire were kept burning for days.

  This room was roughly half the size of the room they had entered from, though it looked slightly larger than that for the lack of bookshelves lining every wall. Instead, there were three workbenches with open shelving overhead for each one. Directly in front of each workstation was a metal tube with a single handle that hung down about two feet from the ceiling.

  The work surfaces were mostly clear, though each one held a bizarre instrument or two that she did not recognize. Metal canisters, stunted bottles, and other sundry oddities were stacked and lined up in rows along the high shelves. There was a hole in the wall, under which was a sizable basin. A considerable amount of dust covered everything in the room.

  “I haven’t been down here in years,” Belamy remarked in reminiscent tones. He took a deep sniff, seeming to savor the smell. Skate tested the air a bit more gingerly, and wrinkled her face in distaste. The room smelled like something sour, and the peculiar aroma stung her nostrils.

  Belamy went to each workstation and pulled its handle. Skate heard a grind of metal within each tube as he did so. “Probably better to open the vents now that we’re down here.”

  Skate looked around at the different tools and containers, some of which were empty, some of which were full. “I don’t get it,” she said, shrugging.

  “Oh, let me give you a demonstration!” Belamy walked to the foot of the slender staircase and shouted, “Rattle! Water in the lab!”

  A few moments passed as Belamy took a pair of small bottles from a nearby shelf and poured some of the contents of one onto the surface of a workstation. It looked like salt. Water began to trickle from the hole in the wall into the basin, presumably from upstairs at Rattle’s direction.

  Belamy then added some of the contents from the second bottle onto the first pile. Skate saw that the second bottle’s contents were also granules of whitish stuff, though of a slightly darker hue than the salt stuff. The old man swirled the two together with his finger, then pushed the mess he’d made back into a respectable and thoroughly mixed pile. He took an empty glass from a shelf and dipped it into the small pool forming at the bottom of the basin. “Ready?” he asked, and Skate nodded, not sure what she was looking at.

  Belamy poured a small amount of water into the mixed pile. For about two seconds, nothing happened, and then there was a flash of yellow light and a small bang. Skate yelped at the sound. In
the enclosed space, she could feel the sound of the small explosion in her chest as the shockwave traveled across the room.

  “That’s alchemy,” Belamy said with a chuckle. There was little left on the workbench after the blast—a black mark and a smattering of granules that got swept by the old man’s hand onto the floor. “Mixing reagents together to get a reaction. Most of it can be done without any magic whatsoever. There are several practitioners around town, though they’re all under contract with the Baron and the Guard, and they don’t offer services to the public except for special exceptions, or ameliorative antidotes and balms. Anything dangerous like this”—he casually gestured at the black mark—“would be out of the question. However,” he said with a conspiratorial air as he lowered his voice, “some of the more extravagant merchants of the city have an eye for impressive defensive measures when they travel. I’ve made stocks for several families across the years, all for a handsome profit.”

  Skate had sufficiently recovered from her shock to ask, “How does it work?”

  “Scholars disagree. There’s plenty of speculation among those that study and work with the practice. Some say it’s spirits within the ingredients that long for or detest one another, causing the violent or combining reactions we see in the course of the work. Others say it is an act of God, or of gods, who cause the reagents to form something new upon mixing. Still others say that the question is meaningless or totally unanswerable because it’s some quality of the reagents themselves; the reaction occurs because that’s what the reagents do, just as a stone is solid and water is wet. I’m not sure where I stand on that question.” He thoughtfully crossed his arms and looked down.

  “So you can do other stuff with it?” Skate asked, seeing that he was lost in thought and unlikely to snap out of it on his own any time soon. “Not just explosions?”

  “Oh, yes. Artificial antidotes to poisons, traps, torches that work underwater, powerful acids, lubricants, adhesives—all sorts of useful tools and tricks. One must be very careful, however,” he added, his eyes wide with warning, “because any slip-up could be disastrous. Had I grabbed the wrong bottles just now, the room could be filling with deadly fumes or full of burning tar—or any number of other horrible fates. Alchemy is not to be entered into lightly or carelessly. It’s much like magic in that regard.”