Skate the Thief

by Jeff Ayers

  The front door was unlocked as usual; the warm orange glow of the fireplace was a welcome change from the cold white of outside. She dropped the books and without preamble threw off the useless house shoes she’d taken from whatever unlucky servant happened to be close to her size. The boots that had been jabbing her every step of the way were dug out of her shirt and thrown next to the blanket-bag, which was wet from the melting snow. She handled the dress with more care, refolding it delicately and resting it on her shoulder.

  Belamy wasn’t downstairs; he must have either been reading upstairs or working in the lab below.

  Stretching out in front of the fire brought enormous relief from the lingering bite of the cold. Her tingling toes were giving renewed signs of life, previously muted by exposure to the hoary elements. Eventually, she got comfortable enough that she hooked one leg on the other and lay all the way down on the stone floor, which had been warmed by the crackling flames for hours before she’d gotten here.

  Her mind wandered, still fluttering with the exhilaration of the heist well done. Three weeks of lessons. Three more weeks to find the goods. Three more weeks of warm meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rattle should be ready to whip something up soon.

  “Rattle!” Skate scrambled to her feet, scooping up her dress as she went, and bolted up the stairs, running as fast as she could into her own room. Sterile white light poured out of Belamy’s library, but she didn’t pause to greet him or make herself known as she passed; the rest of the load was stuck outside in the snow, and she had to let it in.

  Sure enough, silhouetted in the dim light from the street below, Rattle bobbed back and forth in the night air, tapping against Skate’s window at regular intervals, bumping the bulk of its body against the glass to be let in. When she opened the window, it flew in calmly, setting the two books on her empty desk. It gave a great shake to remove any clinging snowflakes, then bobbed out of the room with bat wings on still air.

  “Rattle.”

  It turned toward her, single eye fixed squarely on her face.

  “A snack?”

  It clicked once, and moved off for the staircase.

  Steps approached, and soon Barrison Belamy, the lich in disguise, poked his head into the room. “I take it the hunt went well, then?” he asked, nodding at the short stack on the desk.

  Skate nodded, and pinched the blouse she was wearing. “You might want to get rid of this, though. If anyone finds the stuff I had to take from that place here, you’d be in trouble.”

  “We’ll burn the clothes in the fire and drop a bag of helms by their door in a week. That should be enough.” He waved at the pair of books on Skate’s desk, and they floated off after Rattle. “Get changed and bring them down; we’ll destroy the evidence tonight. Well done!” He clapped her on the shoulder and left.

  Alone again, Skate hustled to get the finer clothes on after throwing the servant’s uniform off. She was barefoot but didn’t mind; she’d have her feet by the fire again soon enough. She gathered the discarded clothes in a bundle and went to meet the wizard downstairs.

  The sound of cupboards opening and closing reached her ears first, followed by the popping fire and the heavy thud of books landing on a desk. Belamy had taken all six books and placed them in one impressive stack on his desk. He was bent over reading the titles, chuckling and smiling as he went. When he noticed Skate, he turned toward her and said, “You were very productive this time! I thought the plan was to only take four.”

  “I thought of a way to take more. Rattle helped.”

  “Well and good.” He turned his attention back toward the books. “A fine haul indeed. I knew Gherun was holding out on me; every time I’ve asked for any new books, I’ve been rebuffed. ‘I’m sure your collection is more extensive than mine,’ or ‘My library’s a pale imitation of yours, Barrison,’ or a dozen other flattering lies. But I knew!” He laughed and slapped his knees. “I knew it, and I was right. He had more, didn’t he?”

  “Had more that aren’t in your collection, you mean? Yeah, probably. This is just from two of the shelves, and they were the first two we looked at.”

  “What a cad!” Belamy slapped his knees again. “Selfish, lying cad. Well, the truth will out, won’t it? That’s the wisdom, anyway.” He fell into muttering to himself as he scanned the titles again, as if to commit the names to memory. Rattle brought out a small plate of crisp bread and thin slices of cheese, which Skate took with a nod of thanks.

  “I’m sure you’re happy, then,” Belamy continued. “Not a bad night’s work, with three more weeks of home and hearth at your disposal, and lessons alongside to boot.”

  “Yeah.” Three more weeks to find what you’ve hidden. “So what did we get anyway?”

  “Four that I’m familiar with, but two I’ve never even heard of. An Account of the War of Five Kings—that one’s a history of an ancient war between the elves and the dwarves by a dwarven scribe. There’s The Kiyilid, an epic poem from the ancient land of Jyone about a king off to war. Fire: Theory and Practice is a book on magic theory, specifically how to use fire in creative ways. The fourth is another history, The Reign of Kas Tomir, about the life and times of a dwarven king centuries ago.” Belamy moved each one into a second stack as he named them. “These next two are unfamiliar. One’s Elvish, and I don’t recognize the script of the second.” He picked the Elvish one up and examined the spine, where text was etched into the hard leather, flowing loops that crisscrossed one another, looking nothing like the twenty-six letters Skate was getting familiar with.

  Belamy spoke slowly, translating as he read. “The Last…Days of the…Burithim? I don’t know what that means, ‘Burithim.’ It’s a plural noun, but that’s all I can draw from it. Reading the text will clarify that, I’m sure.” He set it on the pile with the rest, and picked up the final, unknown book. Its title was not on the spine but emblazoned on the cover. Unlike the Elvish script, this book’s language appeared more jagged, with hooks and sharp curves on almost every character. “How strange. This isn’t just stylized Elvish or Dwarvish; it doesn’t look like any language I’m familiar with. How intriguing. See?” He held out the book, the front facing Skate directly. “This,” he said, pointing to the first character, “could almost be an ‘A,’ if you squinted at it and used your imagination, but I don’t see anything else in the title that could be mistaken for a letter common to men, dwarves, orcs, goblins, or elves. How odd.” He moved around behind his desk and put the book down.

  Skate, curious to be part of the discovery of what she and Rattle had claimed from Gherun’s home, looked at the upside-down tome.

  Belamy opened the cover and revealed a page with many similar runes all over the page. “No, wait—”

  Belamy’s voice was drowned out as a flash of red heat engulfed him. The fire raged outward toward Skate, but she was moving far away, shoved back by an invisible, powerful hand pushed into her chest. She grunted as she landed against the stone wall, and spinning blackness took up her vision. She thought she could hear the sound of wind, and then knew no more.

  Chapter 12

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

  Hearing came first. Wings were flapping softly nearby. Then came feeling. She was in a bed. The back of her head throbbed. The soft pillow she was lying on helped somewhat, since it felt worse if she tried to move; but the pain was there, dull and constant, even if she relaxed.

  Skate opened her eyes, desperate for vision. A white light shone nearby, the same light that she and Twitch had noticed in Belamy’s upstairs library. She was seated slightly upright, with an easy view of her surroundings. She tried to sit all the way up and groaned for the effort before flopping back down not on one pillow, but on the several that kept her propped up.

  Rattle turned toward her at the sound. It was floating by her bed, a book open on the desk. Seeing her awake, it left the book behind and flapped out of the room. “Hey,” she groaned after it
, but it didn’t stop, and her head ached from the effort, so she stopped calling after the first try.

  Alone and unable to move without tremendous effort, Skate became utterly bored within seconds of Rattle’s exit. The book was too far away for her to even begin to try to recognize anything within, and so it offered no possibility of alleviation. Not having anything else to do, she looked for a problem to work through, and found one: she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. Judging from the lack of light outside, it had either been a short amount of time, or else far longer than she would have first guessed. Snow still flew past the window, though it had slowed since her outing.

  So, I’ve either been out for a couple hours, or for a whole day. She ran through a list of clues that would tell her how long she’d been out. I’m not hungry. I’m only a little thirsty. I don’t have to pee. A few hours only, then.

  Her door, which had been left open, creaked and caught her attention. There stood Belamy. He appeared whole and healthy—though the latter part of that was an illusion, anyway—and unburned, despite the conflagration from the strange book. He was stone-faced, his expression frozen into one of grave concern. He said nothing.

  Skate spoke, and this time the pain was less pronounced. “Did you fix your clothes with magic again?”

  His look softened, and he managed a smile. “No need. Ever since you started using the fireplace, I’ve been prepared for unexpected fire outbreaks. The flames washed over me and my clothes with what felt like a cool breeze. So, I suppose I protected with magic, rather than repaired.”

  “Lucky you.”

  He nodded. “A bit of preparation makes the easiest luck, I find.”

  “The book was trapped?”

  “All six of them were.” He pointed to the book on the desk. “Unlike Laribel, Jack took the time to have retributive glyphs inscribed on the first page of each book, which were set to explode in the face of anyone who opened them without first speaking the protective word. It was an ingenious trap, really; the flames were designed only to burn the opener of the book and anyone nearby, but not the book itself or any other books that might be around. The flames did singe my desk, but a little work cleared it right up.”

  “Why do I not feel burned? The fire was coming right at me.”

  “Well, I managed to, uh, throw you back,” he said, scratching the side of his head. “Though in my haste, I may have flung you a mite too hard. Here, lean up.”

  She did so. The pain was there, but she was prepared for it this time. She winced but managed to stay up. Belamy poked and prodded the pillow behind her, then ran a bony finger on the back of her head. That hurt, but again she only winced.

  “Okay, back down. Gently,” he added after she flopped backward. “Well, you’ve got a healthy bump but no blood. You should be fine.”

  “I thought getting knocked out was bad for you.” She knew thieves who liked to brawl in their spare time for extra money, and the most avid pugilists went funny in the head after a few years. Haman said it was because getting knocked in the head too much bloodied the brain.

  “It can be. Here,” Belamy said, raising a hand with four digits extended, “how many fingers, Skate?”

  “Four.” She chuckled at the silliness of the question.

  “You’re probably fine.” He smiled at her mirth, and moved to collect the book on her desk.

  “I’d like my lesson again tomorrow.”

  “Of course.” He took his lamp out with him, leaving Skate in the wintery dark. She groaned as she rose and put her dress on the back of the chair, then flopped back into bed. The pain was almost entirely gone now. It wasn’t long before she drifted away, this time into a natural, restful sleep.

  Skate woke to the familiar sound of Rattle’s cooking bouncing up the heat vent in the floor. As she got dressed, she ran a hand on the back of her head and felt the tender welt there. Lucky he thought quick. Burns would have been much more unpleasant than a tiny bump on the head.

  Skate moved toward the stairs and froze. Familiar voices reached her ears; Belamy and Gherun were talking. As she had with Ossertine, she snuck to the edge of the stairs and listened.

  “…telling you, Barrison, I was targeted! These people went out of their way to steal from me in particular.”

  “You don’t know that, Jack. For all—”

  “I don’t know it?” Gherun’s thin voice was agitated and sounded more like a growl than anything else. “Barrison, I live on the fourth floor of one of the most exclusive buildings in the most well-protected portion of the city. I could name on one hand the number of places it would be more difficult for a random thief to get into in all of Caribol, and two of those belong to the Baron himself. This was not random!” He punctuated the last word by slamming his hand down hard on something, presumably Belamy’s desk.

  “Okay, Jack, fine. Someone deliberately went to your home in particular and stole some of your books.”

  “My rarest books! They took some of my rarest books, which aren’t set apart in any special way from the rest. I’m telling you, I’ve been marked. This is a message from someone, a message that I’m not safe.”

  “Come, now, you don’t know that for sure. Did they leave you a message of some sort? A note or a messenger?”

  Jack groaned. “No, they didn’t leave me any kind of message. That’s what I’m telling you—this burglary is the message. ‘Make a deal or lose all your books.’ That’s why they didn’t take more.”

  “Make a deal? Make a deal with whom?”

  There was a pregnant pause, wherein Skate heard only the crackling of the fireplace and Rattle’s banging in the kitchen. Jack’s voice was quieter when he spoke, but no less emotional. “There are…people I know, Barrison. Rough people, though they can put on a veneer of gentility if they need to.” His sneer could be heard with every word. “They approached me last month. We’d met at a party put on at Lady Flandel’s to celebrate her birthday, and they seemed like very fine people. I don’t know how they know Lady Flandel; they were invited, though. They wouldn’t have gotten in without an invitation. They must have her in their clutches already.

  “Anyway,” he said, and the sound of one of Belamy’s chairs scooting on his floor squeaked out, “we got to talking in the parlor, where the gambling tables had been set up. We played several hands of Fleece, then moved on to Tiles. They were wonderful conversation partners, and I thought we’d gotten on fine by the end of the night. I don’t know whether I came up on top in our games overall or not, but it didn’t matter much. This man and his friends were perfect gentlemen, come win, lose, or draw.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I didn’t get a straight answer other than names out of them; the leader of the trio called himself Lord Hajime, and he was my principal partner and opponent as we played. Even when matched with others at the table, he sought me out for conversation—you know, comments and quips about the game, or observations at this lord’s shoes or that lady’s bodice, the sort of normal fare at such a gathering. The other two were untitled, though they had rather common names: Marshall and Haman. The former was a large fellow, and seemed a bit rough in character, though dressed quite well, while the latter chap was too quiet to get much of a sense of him, though he seemed much more refined than the other. As I said, Hajime was the leader of the troupe and my main acquaintance for the evening. I do not know over what province he kept a lordship or if he was involved in any other distractions than parties and soirées.”

  Skate’s breath had caught at the mention of the name “Hajime.” That was one of the aliases the Big Boss used in public. Lowlings like Skate didn’t know his real name, but they were familiar with his most common sobriquets: Hajime, Doughton, Kingfisher, Ouriole. At the mention of Marshall and Haman, all doubts disappeared: Gherun had met with the Big Boss, and Skate assumed the Big Boss had used that meeting to insinuate himself into Gherun’s life in order to lean on him. It was a very common tactic among the thieves of the Ink: introdu
ce yourself, imply a threat, and suggest a monthly payment for “protection.” Haman called such agreements “extortion,” but Skate thought the protection racket was smart. It was free money, and you didn’t have to do anything to get it; just say some stuff and rake in the scepts. And someone like Gherun would have a lot of scepts to hand over each month.

  “A few months later, they showed up at my home. I was glad to welcome my new friends, but the conversation took a most unwelcome turn very soon. They began to talk about how vulnerable I was, how easy it would be for people to come take what wasn’t theirs. They told me—he told me—they could prevent that from happening, but I’d have to pay, since such services ‘did not come for free, even for friends.’ Friends, indeed.”

  Skate smiled. She knew exactly how the Bosses’ minds worked, including, apparently, the Big Boss himself. Gherun must have been a hefty mark indeed to draw the audience of the BB, and she found that she took some pride in the fact that she’d managed to successfully steal from such a bigwig.

  “Did you pay them?”

  “Of course not! To be set upon by ruffians in disguise in my own home, only for them to demand money out of me every month? Ridiculous. I told them where they could stuff their offer, that I was not interested, and that I didn’t wish to see them anymore.”

  “Did you inform the Guard?”

  Gherun clicked his tongue. “No. After I’d expressed my disinterest, Lord Hajime intimated that I ought to avoid doing that. ‘We’ve ears amongst the law,’ he said, ‘and we don’t like them getting involved in our affairs so unnecessarily.’ A common ruffian is all he is!” His voice was suddenly booming and full of hate rather than nervous and agitated. “I doubt he’s lord of anything save vice and thievery. He said they’d ‘be in touch.’ This has been their touch, Barrison; I’m sure of it.”