Take a Thief

by Mercedes Lackey

Just like Skif.

  Skif smiled at the thought. It was the last smile he would wear for a very long time.

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  9

  Smoke drifted over the heads of the customers; it wasn't from the fireplace, but from the tallow dips set in crude clay holders on the tables and wedged into spaces between the bricks around the room. Skif sat as far from the door as it was possible to be, in the "odd" corner of The Broken Arms, a kind of rectangular alcove just before the walls met, into which someone had wedged a broken-legged stool, making a seat hemmed in on three sides with brick. The brick was newer here, so this might be an old entrance; gone now, since the next building over was built right up against this one. Or maybe it had been a window slit; you couldn't have used it as a door, not really. It was too short and too narrow. Maybe a former fireplace, before the big one was put in, before this room became a tavern. No, it wasn't big enough for a man to be comfortable sitting here, but it was perfect for him. Here he could spend hours unnoticed, the wenches had gotten so used to it being empty.

  Before things got so crowded, he'd bought himself a jack of small beer and a piece of bread and dripping, so his stomach was full but not full enough to make him drowsy. Meanwhile the number of customers rose, and the place got warmer. This nook was a good place to tuck himself into when he wanted to eavesdrop on conversations. Eavesdropping was almost as good as paying for information, and it cost nothing. He'd become adept at being able to sort one set of voices from all of the babble and concentrate on them. Once in a while one of the wenches would notice that he was there, and like this afternoon, he'd buy a mugful of small beer and a piece of bread so that they'd leave him alone, but that was only when the place was less than half full. When it was crammed tight, as it was now, he'd be overlooked all night.

  He'd already wedged himself up onto the seat, knees just under his chin and his arms wrapped around them, so not even his feet were in anyone's way. Every bench and stool at every table was full; not a surprise with rain coming down in barrel loads outside. Not a good night for "business,"

  except within walls.

  Not that anyone in the Arms was going to do any business. That sign over the door wasn't there for a joke. That was what made and kept the Arms so 127

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  popular; when you walked in here, you knew you'd come out with your purse no lighter than the cost of your food and drink. The women wouldn't try and get you drunk so they could talk you into paying for wine for them either. The wenches here weren't hired for their looks, gods knew—absolute harridans, most of 'em. They'd been hired because they knew the liftin' lay, and how to spot someone at business. One whistle from one of them, and the miscreant would find himself on the street with his own arms looking just like the ones on the sign. It was a good dodge for the wenches, for certain-sure; a young thing, plain though she might be, would still have an excuse to come sidling alongside of a fellow with a bit of an invitation. An old hag wouldn't; and though her fingers might still be wise, they weren't as nimble as a young thing's, so if she tried the old dodge of stumbling into a fellow, the odds were that he'd be clapping his hand to his belt pouch before she could get into it. And if he didn't, and she got it, her feet wouldn't carry her as far or as fast anymore. The older you got in the trade, the likelier it was you'd be caught that fatal third time, and unless she got herself a gaggle of littles to teach the trade to— taking everything they lifted, of course— there wasn't much an aging woman could do to turn a penny. There weren't a lot of women who learned the high roads or the ketchin' lay, professions that could keep you going for a long time, so long as you were limber enough to climb or bold enough to cosh.

  Not that Skif held with the ketchin' lay. Bazie'd turned up his nose at it; didn't take a mort of skill nor brains to take a cosh to a fellow's head and make off with his goods. And the Watch and the Guards didn't give a third or even second chance to anyone caught at that trade; caught once, you saw ten years of hard labor for the Guard.

  The women Skif knew didn't hold with the ketchin' lay either, though he wasn't sure what the difference was between laying a fellow out with a cosh and taking his goods when he was drunk dead asleep. Whatever, that was still another trade, and an old hag couldn't ply it either.

  So it was good business all around for "Pappa" Serens. He had the reputation now, and always had himself a full complement of cheap serving wenches, seeing as he gave them all bed space, drink, board, and a couple of coppers now and again. They got free access to the cheapest beer after closing, as much as they cared to drink, and to the dregs of every barrel and mug of whatever price during the hours of custom, so 128

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  long as they didn't get drunk. Every one of Serens' four "girls" had her own pottery pitcher back in the kitchen, and no mug belonging to the tavern ever went back out to the custom without being drained— every drop— into one of those pitchers. Since by this point in their lives what they were mostly interested in was a warm bed and enough drink to knock them out every night, nobody was complaining about the low wages. The drinking killed them off, of course, but the moment that one was carried out the door on a board, another came in on her own two feet to replace her.

  Serens supplied a unique commodity for this part of the city. You could go to a dozen taverns to lift skirts, to a dozen more for a cheaper drunk than you got here, even to a couple for a bigger meal at the same price. The Arms, however, was the only place Skif knew of where you could set yourself down without worrying about fingers at your belt pouch, have beer that wouldn't choke you and a meal that wouldn't sicken you, and talk about anything to anyone, unmolested. The wenches were ugly, but they kept their mouths shut, and their eyes on their own business. There were occasional fights, but it was generally some young bullyboy trying to prove something, it usually went outside, and the older, wiser sell-sword he'd picked would settle him down quick enough. And if it didn't go outside and racketed among the benches, Seren himself, big as a bull and quick as a stag, would settle it, and The Broken Arms would have another gutterside advertisement of how the proprietor treated those who broke the rules.

  Tonight, with waterfalls pouring from the clouds outside and the wind in the right direction so that the chimney drew properly instead of sending smoke into the room, there wouldn't be any disturbances. Everyone was too comfortable to want to find himself out in the dark and rain. Skif could stay here tucked up until closing. And he would; right now his doss was a stable garret, cheap enough and cool enough even by day, now it was summer, but boring. Worse, with the rain pouring down; it'd lull him to sleep and mess him up. He slept by day, not by night, and he didn't need to find himself starting to nod in the middle of a job because he'd let his sleeping and waking patterns get messed up.

  Besides, if he wasn't going to be able to work tonight, he might as well see if he couldn't pick up something interesting.

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  In the months since the fire, he'd made some progress finding out who was responsible— not anywhere near as fast as he'd have liked, but not so little that he was disappointed. He'd traced the money and responsibility up the line from the immediate "landlord" to whom they'd paid their rent, through two middlemen, both of whom were worse off for the loss of the building and neither of whom actually owned it. There, he'd come to a dead-end, but someone had given orders it be burned and someone had carried out those orders, and there weren't too many who were in the business of burning down buildings. Skif had, he thought, identified them all.

  He had no intention of going up to any of them and confronting them about it. In the first place, there was nothing he could offer in the way of a bribe or a threat to get them to talk. In the second place, doing so would likely get him dead, not get him answers. So he was taking the slow and careful path, much though it irked and chafed him; coming here as often as he could to listen to their talk. For here was where all dubious business was conducted, and
here was where the one who was really responsible might come to commission another such job.

  In point of fact, as luck would have it, one of Skif's targets sat not a foot away from him tonight, making it absurdly easy to pick out his words from amidst the babble all around him.

  So far it had been nothing but idle talk of bets won and lost, boasting about women, tall tales of drinking bouts of the past. On the other hand, the man hadn't been talking to anyone but his cronies. He was a professional, and well enough off by the standards around here; he didn't have to spend his evening in the Arms. He could get himself a woman, have a boy deliver a good tavern meal to his room, or find a better class of place to drink in. So maybe, just maybe, he'd come here tonight to make a contact, or even a deal.

  When he got up to ask someone at one of the two-person tables if he'd move to the seat he had just vacated— for a monetary consideration— and take his comrade with him, Skif felt a thrill of anticipation and apprehension. He was meeting someone!

  The door at the front of the tavern opened and closed, and there was a subtle movement in the crowd. It wasn't that the tavern patrons actually 130

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  moved away from the newcomer, but they did make room for him to pass.

  They hadn't done that for anyone since Skif had been sitting there, which meant that whoever had come in was respected, but not feared. So he wasn't one of those half-crazed bullies, he wasn't someone that people feared could be set off into a rage. But they gave him room. You earned that here.

  When the man made his way to Skif's part of the tavern, Skif knew why people gave him room. He didn't know the man's name, but he knew the face— closed, craggy, hard. The man was a sell-sword; he didn't start quarrels, but those that others started with him, he finished, and he was so good he never actually drew his sword when fights were picked with him.

  After the third bullyboy to go outside with him wound up in the dust, finished off by a man with two knives against their swords, no one picked another fight with him. Defeat was one thing; anyone could have a bad day and get beaten in a fight. Humiliation was another thing altogether.

  You could live down a bad day; you lived with humiliation forever, if only inside your own head.

  So nobody bothered this man anymore.

  He took his seat at the little table across from Skif's target with an attitude that said— quite calmly— that he had expected that the seat would be free and would be kept free for him.

  But to Skif's disappointment, even though he strained his ears as hard as he could, he couldn't make out anything more than an occasional word, and none of them had anything to do with the fire.

  "Rethwellan" was one word. "Vatean" was another. The first was a country somewhere outside of Valdemar; the second he recognized as a merchant— a very wealthy merchant— and a friend of the great Lord Orthallen. Skif still filched food from Lord Orthallen on a regular basis; he'd gone back to it in the wake of the fire, after his three moons had run out. It was hard to go back to the roof road, and the liftin' lay didn't pay enough for him to have a room, buy drinks to loosen tongues, and eat, too.

  So all this winter past, he'd lifted silks and fenced them, lived in a little box of a garret room tucked into the side of the chimney of a bakehouse—wonderfully warm through the rest of the winter, that was— and went 131

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  back to mingling with the servants in Lord Orthallen's household to get his food. Only now he knew far, far more. Now he knew how to slip in and out of the household, knew how to conceal more and what to conceal. He knew what delicacies to filch and trade for entire meals of more mundane foodstuffs. That, perhaps, was the best dodge.

  With educated eyes, he soon learned how to get into and out of the storage rooms without being caught. The easiest way was to bribe one of the delivery boys to let him take what had been ordered to Lord Orthallen's manse. Now these days he no longer bothered to disguise himself as a page. While the cook or the butler was tallying what had come in on his pony cart, he would carry foodstuffs into the storage room and leave a window unlocked. Then he would come back once the frantic work of preparing a meal had begun, slip in, help himself to whatever he wanted, and slip out again. He wasn't buying a lot of food anymore.

  When the bakehouse room became unendurable in late spring, he packed up his few possessions and found his new room over a stable that supplied goats and donkeys for delivery carts. Cheap enough, with windows on both sides, it caught a good breeze that kept it cool during the day while he was sleeping. The animals went out each day at dawn— when he got back from his work— and came back at sunset, by which time he was ready to leave. The goats and donkeys took their pungent smells and noise with them, and by the time he had finished eating and was ready to sleep, there was nothing but the sound of the single stableboy cleaning pens and very little smell. It was a good arrangement all around, and if his landlord never asked what he did all night, well, he never asked why on nights of moon-dark a certain string of remarkably quiet donkeys with leather wrapped around their hooves went out when he did and arrived back by dawn.

  By spring he had gone back to roof work, although he kept his thefts modest and more a matter of opportunity than planning. What he did mostly was listen, for it was remarkable what information could be gleaned at open windows now that the weather was warm. Some of that, he sold to others, who trafficked in such information. Why should he care who paid to keep a secret love affair secret, or who paid to avoid tales of bribery or cheating or other chicanery quiet? It was all incidental to his hunt for Bazie's murderer, but if he could profit by it, then why not? When a valuable trinket was left carelessly on a table in plain sight, though, it 132

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  usually found its way into his pocket, and then to a fence. His own needs were modest enough that these occasional thefts, combined with his information sales and garden-variety raids on laundry rooms, kept him in ready coin.

  The beauty of it all was that the three activities were so disparate that no one who knew one of them was likely to connect him with the other two.

  If it became too dangerous to filch silks, he could step up his roof work. If he somehow managed to get hold of some information that proved dangerous, he could stop selling it, and filch more laundry. And if rumors of a clever sneak thief sent the Watch around on heightened alert, he could stop going for the trinkets and confine himself to listening at chimneys, which sent up no smoke in this lovely weather, but did provide wonderful listening posts.

  Unfortunately, although he had cultivated acute hearing, it wasn't good enough to enable him to hear what it was that the dour sell-sword was saying.

  However, it did seem as if the man was buying, not selling, information.

  When the surreptitious motion that marked the passing of coins from hand to hand finally took place, it was the sell-sword who passed the coins to Skif's target, and not the other way around.

  Might could be I could sell 'im a bit, if's Lord Orthallen he's wantin' t'

  hear about, Skif thought speculatively. He decided to investigate chimneys at the manse at the next moon-dark. They might prove to be useful.

  "Fire," he heard then, which brought him alert again, and he closed his eyes and put his head down, the better to concentrate.

  "Bad enough," the sell-sword grunted. "Ye'd'a seen me a-passin' buckets that night."

  Skif's target, who Skif knew as "Taln Kelken," but who the sell-sword addressed as "Jass," laughed shortly. "Could'a bin rainin' like 'tis now, an'

  ye'd nawt hev got it out," he replied, with a knowing tone. "Reckon when 133

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  a mun hev more'n twenny barrels uv earth tar an' wax painted on mun's buildin', take more'n bucket lines t'douse it."

  Earth tar! Skif had heard rumors that the reason the fire had caught and taken off so quickly was because it had been tarred— but this was the first he'd heard of earth tar and wax! Ordinary pine tar, or pitch, as it w
as also called, was flammable enough— but the rarer earth tar, which bubbled up from pits, was much more flammable. And to combine it with wax made no sense— the concoction would have been hideously expensive.

  Unless the point was to turn the building into a giant candle.

  Only one person could know that about the fire. The man who'd set it.

  Now Skif had that part of the equation, and it took everything he had to stay right where he was and pretend he had dropped into a doze with his forehead on his knees. Anger boiled up in him, no matter that he had pledged he would not do anything until he knew the real hand behind the fire. The bullyboy sounded proud of himself, smug, and not the least troubled that whole families had died in that fire, and others been made bereft, parentless, childless, partnerless.

  And my family—gone. All gone.

  "And just how would you know that?" the sell-sword asked. His tone was casual… but there was anger under it as deep, and as controlled as Skif's.

  The bullyboy didn't hear it, so full of himself he was; maybe only someone with matching anger would have. It shocked Skif and kept him immobile, as mere caution could not have.

  "That'd be tellin', wouldn' it?" the bullyboy chuckled. "An' that'd be tellin'

  more'n I care to. 'Less ye've got more'v what brung ye here."

  The sell-sword just grunted. "Curious, is all," he said, as if he had lost interest. "Don' 'magine th'lad as ordered that painted on 'is buildin' would be too popular 'round here."

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  "What? A mun cain't hev a coat've sumthin' good put on 'is property 'thout folks takin' it amiss?" the man known as both Jass and Taln said with feigned amazement. "Why man, tha's what's painted on ships t'make 'em watertight! Mun got word inspectors weren't happy, 'e puts the best they is on yon buildin'! Is't his fault some damnfool woman kicks over a cookstove an' sets the thing ablaze afore he kin get th' right surface on't, proper?"