Thief's Curse

by C. Greenwood

  Ada was pacing the floor, I realized. She was talking, not to me, but at my back. She insisted I was maddened by grief and didn’t know what I was doing. That was the only possible explanation for my defiance of the thief king by openly carrying his stolen sword.

  “What does it matter?” I grumbled from the floor. “Why do you care so much whether I get myself killed?” Somehow it had never occurred to me before to wonder why she had always taken such interest in my well-being, why she was always questioning, prying, and scolding.

  Although I couldn’t see her face from this angle, I could tell by her pause that she was taken aback by the question.

  “I care because you’re my friend,” she finally said. “Because Ferran was my friend. And although it may seem a foreign concept to you, this is what friendship means. It’s looking out for each other.”

  Then she resumed her pacing, going on about how she was going to pack our things and take me straight away from this city, away to Dimmingwood. We could stay with her family, she said. We’d be concealed in the forest and forgotten by the guild and its vengeful leader.

  I let her rattle on and build her plans as a tide of drowsiness washed over me. I didn’t have the energy to argue. Deflated after my brief rush of anger and rebellion earlier, I was again crushed beneath a weight of remorse for failing Ferran. I drifted off to sleep with Ada’s voice droning on in the background. In my dreams I roamed the shaded paths of Dimmingwood, a peaceful, solitary spot where there was no burden of guilt, no responsibility to protect anyone but myself.

  * * *

  When next I woke, the late afternoon sun was slanting through the grimy window, falling across my blankets. I was disturbed by the sounds of somebody bustling around the room.

  “I’ve let you sleep as long as I dared,” Ada said, a hint of apology in her voice. “But you have to get up now. I’ve packed all our things while you rested. We’ve got to get out of town while there’s still enough hours of daylight to make progress on our way—and before the thief king notices the loss of his blade.”

  “Get out of town?” I mumbled, yawning. “What are you talking about?”

  I rubbed my eyes, which felt dry and gritty. I had slept for hours, but it only seemed like minutes. It wasn’t until I stretched and felt the protest of my aching muscles that it all came rushing back to me—my reckless attempt to rescue Ferran, my brother’s death, my rebellion against the guild leader. I sagged beneath the load of it. If I had been unable to feel my grief earlier, I felt it now, a great weight pressing down on my chest.

  Oblivious to my pain, Ada reminded me of her scheme to flee the city. All the while, she hurried around the room, stowing away the last of our possessions inside a pair of canvas traveling sacks.

  “We can’t bring that trunk with us,” she said, indicating the wooden box under the window. “I’ve dumped all its contents into a traveling pack for you. Here, get up and put your boots on.”

  She handed me the boots that she must have pulled off my feet after I had fallen asleep. She used to do this for Ferran, I remembered. Hustling him around and getting him dressed in the mornings. I didn’t protest being treated like a child. Just now I was in no condition to complain of anything. As if in a dream, I let her prod me along. I ate a hasty meal she set before me, put on my cloak, and had a last look around the room for anything we might have forgotten. The precious leather-bound book where I kept a record of my past was tucked safely inside an inner pocket of my cloak, alongside my map of the four provinces. My magic amulet was already in my traveling pack. The only other thing I valued, my father’s silver-and-jasper signet ring, was worn on my thumb.

  I picked up my bow and the stolen Thief’s Blade that had been propped in the corner. Ada objected to that. She wanted me to abandon the sword that could bring so much trouble down on us if we were caught with it. But I clung stubbornly to the idea of taking the weapon. Keeping the blade was the one thing I was clear on. All the rest of her plans I complied with in a fog, hardly caring where I went or what I did. In the end, Ada bundled the sword up in an old blanket, hiding it from any curious eyes we might encounter on the street.

  We descended the crooked stairs and skirted the noisy common room, avoiding the patrons who were beginning to gather. We had no desire to run into fellow guild members just now. Ada led us through the back door and into the enclosed yard. As we passed by the storage shed on our way toward the gate, I hesitated. Scratching, snuffling noises could be heard from behind the closed door of the building.

  “I have to check something,” I told Ada, turning toward the shed.

  Without awaiting a response, I left her standing in the yard while I opened the door and ducked into the shadowed interior of the shed. I was met by the eager yelps of Ilan the hound. She wagged her tail and licked at my hands. I pushed her away absently. I moved aside some bags of dried oats in the corner and kicked at the loose straw on the floor beneath them. Something metal scraped across the floor. There it was.

  I bent and picked up the valuable necklace studded with blue stones that had been concealed beneath the hay. I couldn’t see them clearly in here, but I knew the gems would gleam brilliantly in better light. This was the necklace I had stolen from a certain noblewoman as part of my initiation into the thieves’ guild. Shortly before my hanging, I had swiped it again, this time from the treasure room of the thief king.

  I had forgotten it in all that had happened since. But there was no point in abandoning the jewelry on our way out of the city. Someday we might have need of the money it would bring. I concealed the necklace inside the torn lining of my cloak, before slipping out the door and back into the afternoon sunshine.

  Behind me, the black-and-tan hound whined as I was about to shut her up in the shadows again. I hesitated. Ferran had loved the animal. It had been cruelly abused and neglected by its original owner. For my brother’s sake, I would take it with me. I held the door open and gave a low whistle. The excited dog came running and followed Ada and me out the yard gate.

  We took a long route out of the city, avoiding the busier roads where we might encounter familiar faces on our way. We passed the market and exited the city gates without incident. The long bridge spanning the lake was crowded with foot travelers and horse-drawn wagons lining up to get into the town. Selbius was on an island a little distance from the lakeshore and accessible only by boat or bridge. Little streams fed in and out of the lake, at least one of them flowing all the way to Dimmingwood. This was how I had first visited the forest, carried there on the raft of an old riverwoman.

  But we traveled afoot now. That meant we had a good two days’ trek ahead before we would reach the shadows of the forest. With my bow and covered sword strapped across my back and my traveler’s pack on my shoulder, I led Ada across the crowded bridge and toward the dusty road that would eventually take us to Dimmingwood.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was an easy journey, and we covered the distance quickly. With every mile we put behind us, Ada seemed to relax. I knew what she was thinking—that we had escaped the guild. No angry thieves would be coming after us here to reclaim their leader’s symbol of power. As for me, the distraction of my new surroundings kept me from thinking about all that had happened in the past few days.

  When we eventually reached the edge of the forest and the cool shadows of Dimmingwood closed over our heads, I felt a surprising sense of comfort. It was as if I had come home. I had spent only a few days in these woods before. It was here that I was once injured and hunted by a madman who I finally killed. But this was a place I didn’t associate with Ferran or the past. For the first time, my spirits climbed a little out of the pit they had sunk into and I entertained the idea there might yet be a life ahead of me. Could I build some sort of future here?

  As if sensing my flicker of interest, Ada began talking to me about her family, something she had never spoken of much before. I learned that she had parents, an old grandmother, and a slew of distant relatives who
all traveled together around the province, living close by one another in temporary tents and covered wagons. A family of tinkers and traders, they stopped briefly in different places but stayed nowhere long. Apparently, this was not unusual for descendants of the Skeltai tribes that lived in the wild lands across the border from the provinces. Locals distrusted the silver-haired, pointy-eared folk or sometimes resented their magic, encouraging them to keep moving. But Ada was confident we would find her family where she had last left them. Considering she had run away nearly a year ago, I wondered how much trouble she would be in on her return.

  I didn’t have to wonder long, because we found Ada’s parents on our second day in the forest. Ada knew Dimmingwood well enough to lead us directly to one of the tiny woods villages dotting the area. We came across her family camped just outside the ring of cabins. It was a ragged collection of tents and wagons that met our eyes. But there was no doubting it was the right place. A handful of children, each with the same silvery hair and fair skin as Ada, were playing among the trees. When they caught sight of us, some ran off to inform their elders. Others surrounded us, chattering and seeming generally joyful at our arrival. They were particularly delighted with Ilan the hound. Ada told me above the noise of the babbling children and the happily barking dog that these were some of her little cousins.

  Soon adults joined the children. There was much hugging, weeping, and welcoming. No one scolded Ada for running away. Perhaps they were just pleased to have her back. Then again, maybe it was the accepted practice for younglings of her age to stretch their wings and strike out on their own. I took the opportunity to study Ada’s parents. I saw little resemblance between Ada and her father, a tall man whose oversized nose and broad forehead were his most prominent features. But her mother, a petite woman, reminded me of an older version of Ada.

  When the excitement of her relatives had subsided enough, Ada introduced me to her parents as a friend from the city. They received me kindly enough, for a stranger who was intruding on their family reunion. But I noticed Ada’s mother—her name was Myria—eyed me speculatively, doubtless wondering what sort of friendship I had with her daughter. I was told I would be given a place to stow my belongings and then I must join the family for dinner. Although the hour was late, I had no appetite and said if it was all right I would prefer to rest.

  At that, Ada’s mother made one of the young boys move into his parents’ covered wagon and gave me the small tent he vacated. It seemed Ada’s father and mother had no room in their own crowded tent. Ada would be put up in her old grandmother’s wagon nearby. Seeing how closely together these folk lived and how freely they all wandered in and out of each other’s camps, I was relieved to have a space of my own, however small.

  “You’re sure you won’t eat with us?” Ada asked as we parted. I could see she was worried about leaving me alone.

  I assured her I wasn’t hungry and would see her in the morning. With a last doubtful glance, she left me to join her relatives, Ilan trotting off with her. Evening was falling, and little campfires were springing up all around as I ducked into the shadows of my tent. The interior was too small for standing, so I had to shove my belongings in ahead of me and then wriggle inside feetfirst. Pulling the flap closed behind me, it was a relief to be alone in the darkness. Ada’s people were kind but overwhelming, both in numbers and in noise. More than that, it was unexpectedly depressing to see her surrounded by family. It made me remember that I had none.

  I pulled my small leather-bound book out of its place in the inner pocket of my cloak. It was too dark in here to read, but I lay on my back and flipped through it, following the indistinct scrawl of my handwriting across the pages. I tried to remember what I had been thinking and feeling as I had recorded my time in the Eyeless Tower. But I couldn’t. I had drowned once, and the magic amulet had revived me. I had been hanged, and again the amulet had brought me back. Every time it saved me, the magic charm, or perhaps just the process of dying itself, wiped away a piece of my memory. There was increasingly little left.

  I retained a genteel accent and a few courteous and fastidious habits—the ingrained manners of my childhood. But I had lost my sense of who I was. When I closed my eyes, I could no longer picture the family castle where I lived my earliest years. I could no longer recall my mother’s face or voice, although I carried a lock of her pale hair inside a tiny compartment in my ring. The ring was my father’s signet and bore the symbol of the congraves of Camdon, a pair of battling stags. I wore the bulky piece of worked silver and jasper above the knuckle of my thumb now, because it was too big for my other fingers. My father’s hands had been large. Sometimes I remembered things like that about him, details beyond what was written in the book. Other times, they came to me only in murky, confused dreams. One day soon Ferran would fade into the shadows of my dreams as well. Then I would no longer be sure whether he had existed at all. I carefully returned the leather book to my pocket, grateful I still had at least this one connection to my past.

  * * *

  The following morning I slept late. I was finally awakened only by the smell of smoke and cooking food. The rumbling of my stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. I crawled out of the tent and looked around, trying to remember which of the many enclosed wagons nearby Ada had gone off to last night.

  I bypassed those closest and headed for a wagon painted in garish red and yellow colors. I seemed to remember it had been pointed out to me as the grandmother’s home.

  When I rapped at the back entrance to announce my presence, the door swung inward. It wasn’t Ada’s face that appeared before me but a round, wrinkled face with pale eyes that stared sightlessly out at me. I vaguely recognized the tiny old woman as Ada’s grandmother, although I hadn’t had much chance to speak to her when we were introduced last night.

  “Good morning, mistress,” I said politely. “I’ve come to see Ada.”

  Despite a few gaps where she was missing teeth, the blind old woman flashed a smile that was as bright as the orange scarf in her hair. “Well, I didn’t think it was me you came to see, young man.” She laughed. “Come in, come in!”

  She stood back and held the door wide. I didn’t immediately enter. From what I could see of the crowded interior of her home, there was no one inside but her.

  “Ada is out gathering wood for the stove,” her grandmother explained. “But she’ll be back soon. We can wait for her together.”

  I didn’t have any desire to sit alone with the strange old woman, but there was no way to refuse the invitation without giving offense. Reluctantly I stooped and ducked through the narrow door into the tight space inside.

  There was very little room to move about. The area was packed with furniture and baskets and decorative odds and ends. There was a thick rug on the floor. A tiny bed was built into a cupboard in one wall. The other walls were lined with shelves and a table that seemed to fold back when not in use. It was hot and stuffy in here, probably due to a tiny stove in one corner where a fire raged, despite the warmth of the day. As I hovered uncertainly just inside the door, I brushed against a curtain of beads and bells suspended from the ceiling, setting off a soft tinkling sound.

  “Don’t just stand there. Sit down, sit down,” urged the old woman, gesturing to a low stool near the stove.

  I already felt sweat breaking out on my forehead from my proximity to the fire. All the same, I obediently removed a stack of wooden bowls resting atop the stool and sat. I hoped Ada would return soon.

  “So! You are well rested from your hard journey?” asked my elderly hostess, taking a chair opposite me.

  “I slept very well,” I answered politely. “But the walk from Selbius wasn’t a difficult one.”

  She bobbed her head eagerly, reminding me of an excited bird. “Aye, but you and I both know you’ve come a much longer way than that. It is a far distance from a prison tower to the forest of Dimmingwood.”

  Startled, I nearly flinched at the word
s.

  She laughed, a painful high-pitched sound.

  “You wonder how I know from whence you come,” she said gleefully. “You wonder what else I know. Well, I’ll tell you. I see a great deal more than folk think. You might suppose I’ve been unlucky in losing my sight. But I was born with a second, better sight, as was my mother before me. Instead of viewing what lies here now, it’s the past and the future I glimpse.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this outrageous claim. The old woman was obviously mad, yet I must humor her.

  “That sounds interesting,” I said. “Is Ada coming back soon?”

  She grinned, again revealing the gaps between her teeth. “You think me a liar, a useless old lunatic. But how else do I know you were born in a fine castle, the eldest son and heir, now the last of a noble line? A child of good fortune they called you once. But none call you that anymore.”

  I stared, feeling the blood rush to my head. Ada couldn’t have given her this information. Ada knew only the vaguest details of my past. Surprise and confusion whirled inside me. Most of all I felt threatened.

  “Who told you these things?” I demanded, not caring how sharp my voice had suddenly become. I nearly grabbed the old woman, as if I could squeeze an answer out of her.

  “You told them to me, congrave’s son,” she said with maddening ease, as if oblivious to my change of mood. “When you arrived with my granddaughter last night, I saw your past as soon as I met you. Yes and your future too, which is far more interesting.”

  I glared, knowing she couldn’t see my menacing expression. “You must speak of this to no one,” I commanded. “I am trying to begin a new life in this province. I have no wish to be haunted by old enemies. I’m done with the past.”

  “Yet the past is not done with you,” she said. “Neither is this the last time you will cross paths with my family. One of my blood, an orphaned girl child, will be a hound at your heels and a thorn in your side. But that thread belongs to a different story in your life and is not for years to come.”