Skate the Thief

by Jeff Ayers

  Chapter 16

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

  Skate awoke several hours later. She had not actually meant to fall asleep, but only to rest her tired eyes. Her body had betrayed her, though, and she had slept. She had dreamt, too, and it had been a good dream: she brought the robes, the statue, and the gemstones to Boss Marshall, and Twitch was with her. She was laughing; Twitch, the Boss, Haman, and even Kite were there laughing; and the three things turned into a pile of gold coins, the scepter of King Rajian stamped on each one. It was a growing mountain of gold, and Belamy was suddenly there, seated in the corner reading a book. He lifted his hands and more gold flowed out, a fountain of coins from each of his loose-hanging, red-and-gold sleeves. He was wearing the robes somehow, and he, too, was laughing. He said something, but she couldn’t remember it now. The rest of the dream was fading, and the more she tried to remember of it, the more it dissipated. She shook her head and tried to forget it. Real life was calling, and she had no time for dreams.

  Skate looked out the window to see the sun much closer to the horizon than its zenith. It had done its work fairly well for the day, making the snow piles smaller and the puddles of water larger. These would freeze overnight and melt again tomorrow, unless the warm breezes stopped, which was bound to happen soon. Winter was less than half over, and more snow was sure to come to shut everyone in once more.

  Through the door, the ruffling sound of a page turning told her that Rattle and Petre were likely right where she’d left them.

  Skate put her bare feet on the floor and walked over to her desk. She pulled out her slate and began mindlessly running through her letters, writing small enough to fit all twenty-six on the smooth black surface. After her third erasure using her discarded old rags, she decided it was time to get Ossertine’s book back to her.

  Skate put the slate and chalk nub back in the drawer of the desk and stopped. The letters in the back corner of the drawer caught her attention again. This time, she could read them. It was two large letters together. “AB,” she muttered, saying the names of the individual letters.” Is “ab” a word? She thought about it and decided that if it was, it was a stupid one. She’d never heard of any such thing, so she guessed it to be letters carved into the wood as some sort of sign or mark, not a word.

  She closed the drawer and went to the library. “What’s AB?” she asked, standing right behind Rattle and Petre. The bat thing turned, but Petre’s prison remained smoky. She assumed he’d turned toward her, but couldn’t be sure; she’d found that he couldn’t make himself seen at all until his home was held, and could only make himself heard with great effort if he wasn’t in your hand. She walked over to him and picked him up, and his eyes came into view.

  “What?” he asked, confusion plain on his face. “They’re the first two letters of the alphabet. I thought Barrison said she was an expert with the letters by now.” He looked at Rattle for confirmation, but the flapping creature only clicked once and stared at her.

  She rolled her eyes. “I know that. I mean, is it a word?”

  “Is ‘ab’ a word?” Petre repeated, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “No, I don’t think so. Well, it is in the language of the dwarves. It means ‘and.’ Have you been trying to read some bizarre translation where they kept the original word in place by spelling it out in a different alphabet?”

  “No, nothing like that. There’s some letters carved into the drawer of my desk. It just says ‘AB.’ Capital letters, kinda jagged, up in the corner.”

  Petre and Rattle shared another look, this one heavy with meaning. Petre retreated into his smoke while Rattle looked back at her.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that, Skate. Just some graffiti. Surely you’ve got more important things to worry about, right?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Best get to it, then, eh? Deliver your book, and all that?”

  “You’re acting weird.”

  “No idea what you mean. Off with you, now.”

  Skate put him back on his perch. Rattle looked between the pair of them, then slowly turned back to the book. “I’ll just ask Mr. Belamy about it when he gets back.” She had a finger on the glass, so she’d be able to hear what Petre said.

  “You do that,” he said, feigning disinterest. She took her hand away and walked down the stairs.

  Ossertine’s book was right where Skate had left it that morning. Her plan for returning it was straightforward: bang on the door as loudly as she could, drop the book on the stoop, and haul tail to a nearby alley where she could watch and confirm that the haughty woman had found the package. It was a much easier proposition than getting the book out had been.

  Skate pulled on her boots and wrapped her fur-lined coat around her to brace against the chill outside; while it wasn’t unbearable, there was still a bite to the air when not in direct sun. She put the book and burlap in her pack, then put the pack over her shoulder and went out into the street. Maybe Rattle would have dinner ready by the time she got back.

  The streets were busy, but few were stopping to chat or dawdle. Carts and wagons and carriages trundled down the streets, and the pedestrians of Caribol swarmed around one another in tightly gripped cloaks and coats, scarves and hats twitching in the comforting warm breeze that occasionally died out entirely, leaving everyone to attempt to wrap up tighter still. Ossertine lived much closer than the other marks had, so the shivering crowds were not a notable concern. The walk to her home was uneventful, and Skate found it as she’d left it, nestled tight in a row of homes just like it. Some of the stoops had been cleared of snow, while others had kept a slathering of the stuff at their doorstep, their owners too busy or unconcerned to bother pushing it away. Ossertine was among the latter, though a warm bouncing light through the window told Skate the woman was home and had lit her fireplace.

  Skate walked to the doorway with a practiced ease, a deliberate way of moving that neither invited suspicion nor tried to deflect it; in a sense, she walked as others did, as if she were doing whatever normal people went about doing—visiting a relative, perhaps, or delivering something to a friend. The window was iced over, since it had not received any appreciable sunlight.

  Skate pulled the burlap sack out of her pack and set it down gently. She banged on the door twice as hard as she could, then turned to flee into the shelter of the alley across the narrow cobbled road. An unexpected problem arose, however: upon turning to flee, she found herself unable to take another step. Indeed, she could move not at all. Her arms, still out to her sides, bent slightly with the turn. She could not put them down. She could not speak.

  Panic welled up within her and crashed around like a wild animal. Her eyes darted around, searching desperately for an answer or an escape. She saw light, blue and cold at her feet. The sight calmed her, not because it was a welcome development, but because it was an explanation. She’d been trapped by magic, some sort of snare obscured by the unshoveled snow.

  This calm was tempered with a new shock of fear as she heard the door open behind her. I can still hear. I can still see. I can breathe. These truths were something to hold onto to keep the wild animal calm, and her thoughts somewhere near rational. The familiar and expected voice sounded pleased when it finally spoke. Ossertine sounded as imperious as ever.

  “A pleasant afternoon, thief. Won’t you join me inside for a cup of cider? Or warm milk, perhaps?”

  The world shifted around Skate. She was off the ground and moving backward. Into Ossertine’s house. No one had grabbed her, and this, too, was a familiar sensation; it felt exactly as it had the night she’d tried to jump out of Belamy’s window and been caught by his magic. Ossertine had magic of her own, it seemed.

  The door, her escape, closed in front of her when she landed back on the ground, like a statue picked up and shifted. She maintained her standing position, but she couldn’t be sure if that was because of Ossertine’s magic or her own stance. She did not see
the burlap bag anymore.

  “Let’s have a look at you, then, shall we?” Ossertine moved in front of Skate, surprise and recognition evident on her face. “Why, you’re Belamy’s pet urchin, aren’t you? I’d never have recognized you without your ratty…clothes. Well, get seated and you can calmly explain why I shouldn’t hand you over to the Guard for flogging or whatever it is they do to children who take what’s not theirs from their betters.”

  Before Skate could even begin to try to respond, her view shifted again. The rest of Ossertine’s narrow living room opened up in her field of vision. There was a thud as the back of her foot caught the small table in front of the cushioned sofa she was being forced onto, and the pain made her want to cry out, more from surprise than the actual discomfort. All she could manage was a sharp expulsion of breath.

  “My apologies. I’m not used to guests that I need to arrange like this.” Ossertine walked into view from Skate’s left and smirked as she continued past her out of sight once more. Skate could do nothing but stare ahead and wait. She decided to take stock of her surroundings as much as she could, one sense at a time.

  She started with the least helpful: taste. There was little to know from it since she had no control over tongue or mouth. All she could taste was salt and dryness; shock and fear had scoured all else away.

  Smell was more helpful: other than the dusty odor from the last time she’d been here, she caught a surprisingly comforting aroma. Ossertine was making coffee, and the warm dark flavor of the beans had wafted into the living room. It was accompanied by a sweeter smell she didn’t recognize but found no less appetizing.

  Feeling, too, gave her something to work through. She was no longer in her awkward standing position, but had been placed like a doll into an unassuming and polite sitting posture. Other than the dull intermittent throbbing of her leg, she was comfortable.

  While the smell of coffee and sweetness got stronger, Skate moved on to the big senses: seeing and hearing. Sound was not hampered as her vision was, but there was little to hear. There was the clinking of glasses and the sound of liquid pouring from the kitchen, an occasional pop from the crackling fire, and the rush of blood pounding in her ears.

  With her least inhibited tool unable to discern more, she scanned the room. Being prevented from moving her head a hair’s breadth in any direction, she nevertheless found plenty to see. The closed door she’d bolted out of over a week ago had not changed, though she supposed Ossertine could have placed some new traps around it. The table in front of her had likewise been here before, a delicately designed thing with thin curving legs and intricate patterns etched along the sides. On it were two oil lamps not yet lit. Most of the light in the room came from the fireplace to her right. Skate could only see the very edge of the hearth, and even that took considerable straining. She assumed the painting she’d had to move was back in place behind her, covering the small passage into Ossertine’s hidden library. In front of her were the woman’s more common books and a much larger painting.

  The thing was massive, taking up all the space between the two rows of bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Skate’d seen it before, of course, but had paid it no mind. She’d been here for books, not art. Now, however, she found herself engrossed in its examination.

  Its principal figure was a long-faced man clad in metal armor from head to toe. It was neither chain mail nor the scaled armor meant to mimic the body of fish, but the full plate mail worn only by strong knights on horseback. Such armor was absurdly heavy and cumbersome, which made it ill-suited to someone without a mount, as this fellow seemed to be. Nevertheless, the long-faced man wore it well, unconcerned with the five stone of metal weight. Emblazoned on his chest was a design that she didn’t recognize, but she knew the type well enough to pick it out as heraldry. It was a black bird of prey in flight, talons extended and beak gaping downward in a permanent silent shriek. It was set against a blue field which itself was bounded by a gold-and-black border. Full plate armor was expensive, worth hundreds of scepts; an art piece like what the man was wearing would have been worth many thousands.

  He bore no shield before him, but carried a blade and polearm. He glared and gestured with his blade off toward the side of the painting. There, a horde of shadows was charging toward him, eyes red and full of hate and teeth long and bared in snarls and bites. Nothing else about the figures was given any definition, with the effect being that of a dark blob of teeth and eyes opposing the armored man. To the right of the painting behind the man stood a high hill, and perched at its top sat a magnificent walled city, shining with white and yellow light—a contrast to the dark forces on the other side of the man. In the middle where he stood, the bright and dark intermingled in the sky as roiling gray clouds.

  The hand that did not hold the blade held a spear upright—or rather, downright. He was standing atop something she’d at first mistaken for a nondescript mound of earth, but the spear was imbedded into it and drew red from where it struck. The mound of earth was actually some great slain beast of sinuous scaled body rolled in on itself. Where the man had struck looked like its neck, since its pointed, monstrous head was nearby and still attached.

  Skate had no idea what specific event this was referring to, but the meaning of the painting was clear enough to her: the brave warrior in the middle had slain some monster and fought off an army of enemies alone to defend a city.

  Art theft, particularly that of paintings, wasn’t encouraged by Boss Marshall, so Skate knew little about the value of the thing in front of her. “They’re too easy to ruin, and they’re a pain to hock,” he’d told her once, when she’d first started working for him. “They’re too easy to trace, see? If some Lord Tiddlewinks buys some Lady Bumfart’s stolen masterpiece, he’s gonna want to display it, and word gets around that he had to have gotten it from a thief. And that comes back to us, eventually, doesn’t it?” This one looked well done enough to her, but that didn’t mean it was worth anything. Why Ossertine had this particular piece of art was anybody’s guess, but she was obviously quite proud of the piece, considering how prominently it was displayed in her home.

  The smell was stronger. Ossertine came back in from the kitchen and sighed contentedly as she sat down next to Skate. She placed a plate of dark brown cakes onto the table in front of them. The glint of a ring caught Skate’s eye, which she took note of without being conscious of the effort; years of thievery had ingrained the behavior into her as a reflex, as automatic as drawing breath. It was of a silvery metal and held a dark green stone set within. It’s not fake, she thought. Or if it is, it’s a good fake. Ossertine did not strike her as the type to wear costume jewelry if she had access to the real deal.

  “Well, now,” the woman said, “this won’t do unless you’re able to talk. I’m going to set the charm on your body loose. When I do, you’re not going to make any attempt to flee or assault me in any way. You’ll stay seated, and we’re going to talk. Do you understand?” She paused as if waiting for an answer. “Know that I can force you to stay if you try to leave, and I can hurt you if you try to attack me. I hope you’ll be smart, though I wouldn’t mind trying out some magic I rarely get to use if you’re not.”

  At the last word, Skate felt her body relax as if she had been set on the couch unconscious, her limbs becoming looser and more flexible. Her head even lolled, as she had stopped trying to keep it in position, since there was no need and the effort had become more of a distraction than anything. She put her arms beside her legs to steady herself on the cushioned sofa, and shot a hateful glare at the woman. She made no other movements.

  “I see that you are intelligent after all,” Ossertine said, smiling and gesturing to the brown cakes. “A sweet treat?”

  Skate said nothing, but shook her head. Like I’d take anything made by you. It’s probably poisoned or enchanted. She didn’t know what Ossertine would have to gain by poisoning her, but she took no chances. Ossertine took her silence for the refusal it was, and went on.r />
  “Very well. I’ve got coffee brewing in the kitchen, so maybe you’d like some of that when it’s ready. Or perhaps you’ll continue to refuse good things offered to you like a spoiled child. The choice is yours, I suppose. In the meantime, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Why did you steal my book?”

  Skate looked away. “Dunno what you mean.”

  “I’m being perfectly clear.”

  “No. Do you mean, ‘Why did I steal from you, instead of someone else,’ or ‘Why did I take that book in particular,’ or ‘Why am I stealing books at all’? How am I supposed to know which one of those you meant?”

  “Cute.” Ossertine took a brown cake from the plate and nibbled at the edge. “All three. Answer all three of those questions.” When Skate said nothing, Ossertine swallowed the piece of cake she’d bitten off and said, “If you don’t want to talk to me, I can hold you while the Guards come. Maybe you’d rather have the conversation with them. Or,” she said, grabbing Skate’s face in a clawlike hand and turning her to face her directly, “I’ll just draw what I want out of your mind, like pulling thread from a frayed dress.”

  The woman’s face was iron. Her eyes searched Skate for fear and saw a bit that leaked through her façade. She smiled. “It hurts. The mind is not meant to be pulled in such a way, but will yield to the magic just the same. It starts as heat in the back of your head.…” When she trailed off, Skate felt the burning, and it did hurt. “It will only get worse as it spreads through the rest of your mind, tearing and pulling—”

  “Okay!” Skate shook her head from the woman’s hand, and the heat dissipated. “Okay, fine.” Ossertine said nothing, but took up her cake and gestured for her to continue. “I stole from you because I figured you’d have books if you were friends with Mr. Belamy. I stole that book because you hid it better, so I figured it was worth more. I’m stealing books to make money. I got a buyer who throws scepts away for those stupid things,” she said, waving at the books on the shelf.