Skate the Thief

by Jeff Ayers

  “I dunno,” Skate said, the anger on the old man’s face stamped firmly in her mind.

  “He won’t care, so long as you don’t break it.”

  There was no deception in Petre’s voice, but the anger of the wizard was too fresh for her to be so easily convinced. “He seemed really mad.”

  “I’m sure he is, but he’ll cool down. He wasn’t mad at you, for what it’s worth. You brought up something very painful for him, though you couldn’t have known how painful it was. I did warn you not to bring it up, but without a reason given, your stubbornness all but guaranteed you couldn’t help but ignore the warning. Having said all that, have I steered you wrong regarding the old man yet?”

  Skate considered the question. He had not seemed to lie about Belamy, and had so far been plain about secrets being kept, though he kept them still. She shook her head slowly.

  “Well, what say we try it? Some people have a knack for seeing, while others struggle. You may get it right away, or you may not be able to see more than your own reflection.”

  Skate nodded and sat in Belamy’s chair, placing Petre on her right. The golden enhancer continued its spinning, throwing firelight around the room in fits and starts. “So, what do I do?”

  “Look into the glass. Picture the person you want to look for. You could pick a place instead, but a person is usually easier to do, especially for a novice. You need to know their name, and it works better the more familiar you are with them. A friend or a family member, perhaps.”

  “All right.” The best person to fit those categories was probably Twitch. “I know who to try. He’s a friend.”

  “Good.” Petre’s voice was calm and soothing. “Now, relax. Keep the image of him firmly in your mind. Don’t think of anyone else. Concentrate on his name and his appearance. Think of his voice. If you need to repeat his name aloud to help you stay focused, that can help. And look into the glass.”

  Skate stared into the glass ball, seeing only a warped reflection of herself and the rest of the room. Twitch. Blond hair. Ratty clothes. Has a stutter. Twitch. Thief. Taller than me. Can’t read. Twitch. Blond hair… She repeated the mantra a dozen times, trying desperately not to let her mind wander, but nothing happened.

  “It’s not working.”

  “Be patient. It takes time. I doubt even Barrison could find someone in the time you just tried. Keep looking. Focus.” Petre’s tone was as cool and soothing as it had been before.

  She tried again. Twitch. Blond hair. Ratty clothes. The inner repetition droned on, and her mind began to wander. Where was Belamy going? Would he cool down, as Petre supposed, or had she managed to poison his opinion of her permanently?

  “Focus,” Petre said again. “Your eyes were glazing over. It won’t work if you don’t focus.”

  “All right, I got it.” Twitch. Blond hair. Ratty clothes. Show me Twitch. He has a stutter. He’s a thief. He’s taller than me. Show me Twitch. She was focused. Her mind did not waver. She was aware only of Twitch and the passing of time. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. Her breathing was steady and regular. The glass was inert.

  As Skate ran through her list of descriptors for perhaps the hundredth time, something tugged at her mind. It was not unlike what she’d felt when Ossertine began to question her about her motives: a presence in her thoughts that was not her own. This time, though, it did not feel like an invasion but like a helping presence, a guest invited in. She did not have time to question it before an image began to take shape in the glass ball.

  The hair came through first, a blond chunk of hair shooting out of a ragged gray head-wrap. The image quickly filled in around the hair, and she was looking unmistakably at Twitch. His immediate surroundings were in the ball as well, but only a few feet in any direction was visible. She found that she could will the image to move around him to try to get a better sense of where he was. Sound began to come out of the crystal. It was a crowd; Twitch was hovering around the edge of a crowd. He looked like he was trying to get through but was having trouble finding a gap.

  “Have you found him?” Petre’s voice came from far away. For a moment, Skate worried that responding to him might break her concentration. Something—the comforting guest in her head perhaps—led her to guess that this concern was misplaced. The finding was the hard part, like searching blindly in the dark. Once found, she simply had to hold on to it.

  “Yeah,” she said, not taking her eyes off the image. He had made it into the crowd and was pushing and slipping his way forward. “I found him. Can he hear me?” He had jerked his head around and looked in her direction.

  “No. Some seeing devices exist that allow such communication, but this isn’t one.”

  “Who else is in here?” She brought a finger to tap on her head.

  “You’re probably feeling the enhancer at work. It would feel like a warmth or a comfortable pillow.”

  “A guest.”

  “Sure. It’s there to help you, and it looks like it has.”

  “Yeah. I felt it as soon as I found him. Or right before.” Skate’s words felt fuzzy coming out. She was too busy watching her friend to pay much attention to the conversation anyway. Twitch had made it to the front of the crowd. He was evidently pleased watching whatever was there, because he started laughing. It was contagious, and she couldn’t help but join in.

  “Well done. Well done indeed.” Petre sounded pleased, even impressed, with her success. “You’ve done it. Most people who try give up in frustration after a few hours the first time they try. I’ve only met one person who did it faster, and she was…well, she was special. You should feel proud of yourself, truly.” He chuckled.

  Twitch continued to look with wonder at something. Skate guessed it must be some street performance, one that used lights or fire; every few seconds, different colors would flash across her friend’s face as he stared and laughed. “Now then, it’s time to pull back. Let the image recede from your focus.”

  “Why?” The image in the glass seemed to grow larger. If she had thought about it, she would have realized that she had moved closer to the crystal. She did not think about it.

  “Because,” Petre said gently, “you’ve been three hours at the crystal. You need to eat.”

  “Three hours?” She repeated the number without much energy. It hardly mattered to her.

  “Yes, three hours.”

  Skate heard the flapping of wings and the clicking of legs, but that also hardly mattered. A single metallic clink caught her attention. The comforting warmth in her mind winked out like a candle. The image in the crystal ball began to waver and fog over.

  “No!” she said, putting all of her effort back into concentrating. Twitch. Twitch. Blond hair. Show me Twitch. The obscuration of the picture slowed not at all. Twitch. Don’t lose Twitch. Show me Twitch. His laughing face clarified for an instant; then everything in the ball faded to nothing. Skate was looking at her own scowling face and the distortion of the room she was in once more. She looked at the enhancer, which was lazily swinging on one of its axes. Rattle had taken its leg away and floated near the desk, staring blankly at her. “I wasn’t done!” she said to it, rising from the chair much as Belamy had, though it did not scoot back so far.

  “You needed to be,” Petre said, no anger in his voice. “Three hours is quite long enough, especially for a neophyte to the practice such as yourself.”

  “Who are you to tell me what to do?” Heat was rising in her cheeks, and she could feel her arms shaking in impotent rage.

  “Skate. Stop, and think. Did you hear what I said? It’s been three hours.”

  She was about to ask “So what?” when she stopped and realized why that information mattered. The ache in her abdomen told her she was hungry, her mouth was painfully dry, and she needed the chamber pot very soon. Her eyes ached, and her rump was sore from the seat. “It was three hours?”

  Petre closed his eyes and nodded. “Seeing, or clairvoyance, is a strain for even practiced users. It’s
outright dangerous for novices.” Skate turned from Petre’s blue glass sphere to the empty one she’d been engrossed with only moments earlier. She felt the urge to chuck the thing across the room; she felt betrayed by it. “People have collapsed—even died—of starvation and exhaustion, caught in the allure of the sight.”

  “Why?” She knelt down to eye level with Petre. “If it’s so dangerous, why’d you let me do it?”

  “I was here to guide you. So was Rattle—who has made, incidentally, a fine warm dish it learned from a traveling Deruvian chef, exiled from his homeland on suspicion of espionage. I never could determine whether he was guilty or not, but his food was amazing. Rattle’s imitation will be perfect, as always.”

  Skate ignored the remarks about the food. “You said it wasn’t easy to do. I thought magic took years to learn.”

  “It does, it does,” he said, his azure-rimmed eyes bobbing up and down in a nod. “This is just a small bit of what magic can do, when learned and directed carefully. Anyone can do what you did with practice and the right tools. As you saw, the enhancer helps tremendously, and you need a specially made clairant device besides, like Barrison’s crystal. It can be done without special tools—I’ve seen an old woods witch do it with a brackish puddle of water—but that takes a spell. That would be beyond you.”

  Skate pulled the chair back up to the desk. She folded her arms on the desk and put her head down, if for no other reason than to give her eyes a rest. “It didn’t bother Mr. Belamy.” Her voice was muffled by her arms, but she was heard.

  “Barrison is an incredibly skilled and experienced wizard, and unliving besides. He doesn’t get tired, sore, or hungry. It doesn’t strain his eyes or his mind because neither of them are capable of being strained anymore. Being unbothered by clairvoyance is one of many perks of being what he is. In some ways, though, it can be even more dangerous for him for all that.”

  “What do you mean?” Her eyes were closed, but she was in no danger of falling asleep; her stomach and bladder were making sure of that.

  “He could, if he had the urge to, sit in that chair and search and find and watch for as long as he wanted. He’s told me that the draw—that feeling of needing to keep watching, keep looking no matter what—is just as strong as it always has been even though he’s not really alive anymore. If he were to fall into it completely, he might gaze for days, weeks, or months at a time. He’s done so before.” Petre shook his head, sending the fog rolling around his prison in shimmering swirls. “He knows how dangerous it is. That he’s willing to do this to find his friend’s bullies speaks volumes about his determination on the matter.”

  “Is all magic that dangerous?”

  “Yes. Not necessarily always in the same way, but all magic carries dangers with it. Think of a sword—or a knife decked in jewels, if you like,” Petre said with a wink. “It’s useful for all kinds of things—cut rope, defend yourself, skin a deer after a hunt. But it’s dangerous, too, as you well know. Magic is much more useful than a knife, and it’s correspondingly more dangerous. The study of magic can yield marvels but should not be undertaken lightly.”

  With monumental effort, Skate pulled her head up and stared at the crystal ball. Its interior was clear still. The enhancer sat nearby, its motion arrested by Rattle’s intervening touch. Would I have stepped away on my own? It was entirely possible that she’d have been sitting here for hours more if they had not kept her from it. “People have collapsed and died.” Would I have been one?

  “I don’t think I could’ve done it,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “If it weren’t for you and Rattle, I don’t think I’d have walked away.”

  “Ah, well. Barrison would have returned eventually, and he’d have been able to pull you out of it. The danger was minimized, you see. That’s why anyone who learns any magic must be taught and guided by a teacher. Self-teaching magic is asking for trouble, though some fools take the risk anyway, thinking the rewards of their studies worth the risk. Learning magic without a teacher is like biting into a hunk of meat only to find it painted stone: you’ve learned something, but it was probably not worth the pain it took to get there. Those who are self-taught have decided they like stone food just fine and have never turned back.”

  “Anybody who’d do this without help is stupid.”

  “Or desperate or too ambitious. People do insane things all the time, for reasons that seem good enough to them in the moment. I’ve given up trying to understand why people do the things they do; it’s a waste of effort, and even when you find an answer, it’s always unsatisfactory.”

  Skate excused herself to use the privy. Rattle came back into the room at the same time she did carrying food. She didn’t recognize it by sight, and the smell was also unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. There was the comforting smell of garlic among the swirl of nose-tickling scents, so she quickly dug into the orangish goop. It was a soup, with hunks of meat (probably chicken) floating within. It was hearty and somehow sour.

  “This is delicious.” She slurped it down greedily, and Rattle looked on. “Thank you.”

  It turned toward the stairs.

  “And, Rattle,” she said, pushing the quickly emptied bowl aside, “thank you for earlier, too. For stopping—stopping it.”

  If Rattle was emotionally moved by her words of thanks, she saw no hint of it. It clicked once and moved up the stairs as planned.

  Skate stood and took Petre toward the fireplace. She set him down and threw another log on before rejoining him. “Petre, I have a question.”

  “If this is about AB again, I—”

  “No, it’s not that.” Based on Belamy’s earlier reaction, she guessed that it must be a person: he had almost asked where she’d heard those initials; she was sure of it. However, she didn’t want to press on that particular nerve anymore. If Petre wasn’t going to tell her then, he certainly wasn’t going to now. “It’s something else.”

  When he arched an eyebrow and remained silent, she continued. “Is Mr. Belamy a good man?”

  Petre started, somewhat taken aback by the question. “What? What do you mean?”

  She sighed. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Wait—” His voice cut off because she’d left him on the desk. She took the steps two at a time, despite her fatigue. She poked her head into the library and interrupted Rattle’s reading.

  “Go grab Petre off the desk. He probably wants a better view.” Without waiting for a responding click, she turned toward her room and eased the door shut.

  What am I gonna do? The way she saw it, she had at least three distinct problems of three totally different kinds with no easy answers. First, she needed to figure out how to keep Belamy from finding any more information on the Ink without being culpable for the interference. Second, she needed to figure out how to get Gherun’s books back to him anonymously, since if Ossertine had been any indication, just leaving them at the door would lead to complications. Third and most troubling, she needed to figure out what to do about Belamy and the Ink overall. The first problem was professional, a question of how to protect her business interests and those of her crew. The second was practical, a puzzle she’d be able to work on and solve given the time and attention. The last problem, though, was moral, and it weighed heavily upon her.

  It was more than a simple question of right and wrong. It was a question of who she was. On some level, she understood that her choice was to be a defining crisis of her life, that to choose one way or the other would take her down avenues she would not readily find herself free of. To defy the Ink was unthinkable; to betray her teacher was unbearable. She could not make either choice without breaking something inside her, and she dreaded that more than she could describe. No matter what she did or put her mind to, she could not pull herself from thinking of it and dreading the crisis. Momentary distractions were all she’d been able to find: stealing, reading, walking, and the newest one given in the crystal ball.

  Another such distraction shook her from her m
usings. A thump on the window left a spray of white powder behind. A second snowball hit before she had a chance to get there, exploding with a harder thud that revealed the hunks of ice smuggled within.

  Skate opened the window and looked into the half-expected face of Twitch, the glow of the smile she’d seen in the crystal flitting around the corners of his mouth. He waved her down and pointed in the general direction of their nearby familiar meeting spot. She nodded and closed the window.

  Skate rubbed her eyes before she climbed back down the stairs. Rattle was in the library; it must have quickly bobbed its way down and back, because Petre was not where she’d left him. She stuffed her boots on and wrapped her coat around her before stepping back into the cold.

  She trudged across the street, past the street lamps toward the spot. The flickering candles within each lamp worked with the others to provide a mostly steady orange glow for her trek, helping her avoid the already frozen puddles left by the melted snow. Judging by the renewed chill in the air, those puddles were likely to remain as they were now for a few days.

  That suspicion was reinforced as small flecks of white began to drift down from above. The remaining large piles of snow would become monstrous mountains soon enough.

  Twitch was below the dingy awning, peering out at the night sky and grimacing. He nodded at her when she approached, but resumed his skyward grouching almost immediately. “Gonna be a l-long winter if this keeps up.” His voice was low. He was talking that way on purpose; even with his attempt to conceal it, the crack in the voice was unmistakable.

  “Yeah, and it probably will.” He’s laughed himself hoarse. Whatever he’d seen must have a been a sight to behold. “What’s the deal? Why are you knocking at my mark’s window while I’m in the house?”

  “Your mark? Listen to her,” he said to an audience of none—“when we were in it t-together just a few scant days ago!” He smiled, and his left cheek twitched violently for the effort. “I came to tell you about something amazing that I-I got to see. There was a street performance today—”