The Republic of Selegania Boxed Set: Volumes One through Four

by Daniel Lawlis

  As for the rope trailing behind them, that likely would have garnered some undue suspicion, but perhaps if the bulls started with a taut line right next to the building by the time they got enough distance away for that long rope to start really becoming apparent, the coach was likely dangling high on the side of the building, and the acrobatic crooks were quickly rappelling down to recover the booty; thus, at that point it would have been a question of just cutting the rope on the oxen loose, creating a marvelous distraction via their stampede.

  As for the pulley at the base of the building, that would have likely gotten some attention when it was being thunderously pounded into place. Ah—the food stand! That owner had to be either in their gang or either paid off or threatened—

  “Interrupting a busy night?” Koksun heard a voice say, interrupting him from his pleasurable analysis of the wondrous drama he’d seen unfold earlier that day.

  He swiveled around inside his humble abode of boxes and saw one of them had been removed, and staring at him was one of the young rascals who had tied the wagon up that afternoon. Koksun felt afraid that he was about to get killed right then and there, for the eyes studying him seemed intelligent and seemed to look right through Koksun.

  “No,” he said, almost adding “sir,” but he was after all speaking to a young kid about his own age, and he feared it would have sounded a bit smart-alecky. And his senses, which he was already learning to trust more and more after just a few months of living on the streets, told him he didn’t want to be smart-alecky to this kid, even if by himself he was not all that imposing. It had already been made clear earlier that afternoon that this kid worked with others.

  “Good. I’m right glad to hear that.”

  Koksun had to swivel around again because the voice came from six o’ clock. It was another one of the rascals he had seen tie up the wagon wheels. Koksun started to turn again to see if the first kid was making any kind of hostile gestures, but he only got halfway through his swivel when he saw another face gleaming down on him in the moonlight.

  “The Triad at your service,” the face said, a subtle smile at the corners of the lips, and perhaps even a hint of a smile—a genuine smile—in the eyes, but there was more to the eyes than that, something that said, I can be nice, but I can also not be nice.

  Koksun felt truly boxed in now. He felt afraid, but not terrified. He got the impression that if the three rascals wanted to beat him to a pulp they’d have probably already started in earnest by now. Something told him they weren’t sure yet what they wanted to do.

  “You’ve been watching us a lot lately,” said one. “Our boss wants to meet you, but not yet. He sent us to decide if it would be worth his time. What did you think of our little show today?”

  “Those were the angriest bulls I’ve seen in a while, but I’ve seen worse,” Koksun said, not particularly sure if feigned ignorance was the best route.

  “Angriest bulls, you say. So, the dangling stagecoach and acrobatics you won’t see at the circus didn’t really catch your eye?”

  Koksun saw it was no use fibbing now. “Look, you guys are good; what else can I say?” He felt nonchalance was the next best thing to fibbing in a moment like this.

  “There’s no reason for you to get scared. Lots of people saw too much today. If we were to deal with everyone that saw too much, we’d have to take out about three city blocks. The thing is you’re one of the few—if not the only people—who seemed like they really put the whole thing together. The boss really didn’t like it when you took to running after him.”

  Koksun gulped nervously.

  “But, he kind of admired it too. The stampeding bulls stole most people’s attention even better than we stole that chest of gold, but it didn’t seem that you paid them too much attention. So—”

  Koksun was beginning to feel nervous, expecting at any moment to see a gleam of a switchblade in the silvery moonlight, then a sting across his throat, and then, finally, a warm bath of blood being pumped from his throat down onto his chest.

  “The boss sent us to size you up.”

  Koksun didn’t feel it, not even a little, but he thought this might be the moment to act a little tough.

  “Well, I ain’t big, but I can swipe an apple, and I could sure as heck tie a rope.”

  He was relieved that the latter part was actually true. His father, although a mere government clerk, had a fondness for an odd assortment of hobbies.

  (that is, before he was—)

  He cut the voice off. He didn’t need a graphic reminder of how his parents had been murdered. His discovery of their bodies had haunted him a sufficient number of times already.

  One of the hobbies his dad had was tying ropes, and he had begun teaching Koksun various knots when he was just five.

  “You can tie knots, huh? Let’s see you do a crazy eight!”

  He handed Koksun three sticks and a rope. Koksun bolted upright, causing The Triad to startle. Their shock at his abrupt act of standing was nothing, however, compared to what they saw next. As if he were an experienced baker’s apprentice, twirling dough around like it were second nature, he began tying what was a rather difficult knot. Like a spider weaving its web, he moved each stick into the right position, intertwining the thin rope—just barely too large to be classified as string—with the precise number of wraps in the right places around the sticks and then quickly began inserting the end of the rope through various loops inserted throughout the jumble. He then gave the both ends a good tug, and, by the powers, there it was: two nearly perfect circles attached to a thick center.

  One of the toughs grabbed a circle, and with no need of giving one of his cohorts instructions on what to do next one of them immediately grabbed the other side of it, and the two began yanking in opposite directions. The knot stayed tight, and both circles remained their original sizes. The two squatted and arched their backs giving every ounce of strength they had, but without effect.

  Doing his best to act unimpressed—which was not very good—one of them stated, “Let’s see you do a slippery eight, and tell me which way it will slip.”

  This was a bit of a trick. But first there was perhaps a bigger obstacle—untying the crazy eight. Koksun pulled out a long, sharp needle without blinking and jammed it through a section of the knot with the self-assurance of a veteran tailor. Then, he pulled out a thin piece of steel, stuck it through a narrow hole at the base of the needle, flipped it upside down, grabbed the rope with both hands, lowered it towards the ground until the flat piece of steel intersecting the steel touched the ground like an upside down T, and then jumped with both feet onto the rope.

  Since the needle became thicker and thicker towards the base, as Koksun jumped on the rope and pushed the needle deeper into the knot, it loosened the knot slightly. He then stuck a small rod between the small opening in the knot, grabbed it on both sides, braced the rope with both feet against the ground, and then pulled on it. It came loose. The rest was a cinch. A few tugs in the right places, and in just a few seconds he had a knot-free rope in his hand.

  This time, The Triad did an extremely poor job at hiding their reaction—the tension around their eyebrows as they attempted to keep them from raising of their own accord to the tops of their foreheads was plainly visible.

  But Koksun didn’t stop to bask in the thinly disguised admiration. He barely gave it a glance before he began working on the requested slippery eight knot. This time it almost looked like a whirlwind of fingers and rope had descended upon this slummy locale. Suspecting trickery was not far off, he intentionally made one circle just slightly smaller than the other, though to the unpracticed eye it appeared there were two perfect circles again, just as with the crazy eight knot.

  “Okay,” one of the toughs said, grabbing the rope, “Veril here’s gonna pull on that end, and I’m gonna pull on my end. Which way’s the knot going to go?”

  “Towards you,” Koksun said without hesitation.

  Veril and his as-of-yet un
named pal began pulling, and sure enough the knot went away from Veril and towards the one who had posed the question.

  “My name’s Rolen,” he announced. “I’ve already introduced Veril to you, and the ugly one here’s Silder. Who are you?”

  “Koksun.”

  “You know how to tie a mean knot, Koksun.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Why are you on the streets, Koksun. Your parents disown you?”

  “Did yours?”

  Rolen, who had by now demonstrated himself sufficiently in Koksun’s eyes to be the leader of this rascal pack, looked like he was about to tear into Koksun, but Silder and Veril grabbed him and said, “Easy, Rolen. Calders said size him up, not beat him up.”

  “It’s okay,” Rolen said, looking calmer. “A little attitude’s to be expected. It’s just if we were to recommend you to Calders I want to make sure you really do live on the streets and aren’t just some temporary runaway. If I introduce you to Calders and you go runnin’ back home—if you have a home—that wouldn’t be good for me, and so it wouldn’t be good for you. Are we understanding each other?”

  “They’re dead,” Koksun said.

  Rolen looked at him carefully, and Koksun saw intelligence and cleverness radiating from them. Rolen and his two pals looked to Koksun like they were somewhere around ten to twelve years old.

  “You enjoy the rest of your night. Tomorrow, at noon, at the food stand where you saw us earlier today, there will be a man wearing a red hat, a white shirt, and blue pants. He’ll be carrying a gold watch in his left pocket. If you can swipe it before he grabs your hand and cries ‘Thief!’ we’ll be visiting you again tomorrow night. If he yells ‘Thief!’ don’t ever come within ten blocks of here again. If you don’t show up tomorrow and try to grab his watch, don’t ever show yourself within thirty blocks of here ever again. Do we understand each other?”

  “I’ll be there,” Koksun said.

  Koksun spent a sleepless night tossing and turning inside his small shelter. He knew he could run to another side of the city. There were plenty of places inside Metinvurius more than thirty blocks from here. He could have started off right then and there. It wasn’t as if he had a lot to pack. He had a few odds and ends hidden underneath some of the boxes that formed the exterior of his shelter, but everything that mattered to him—which was little—was in his pockets at that very moment.

  No, he was nervous because he knew he didn’t want to run anywhere. He wanted to become a part of something, and one thing he knew for certain was that these guys had talent if they could pull off heists like the ones they did today. Being accepted by these guys meant not only the possibility of companionship and belonging. It also meant the possibility of learning things that he felt at that moment he would give anything to learn.

  But to do that, he had a task ahead of him. A very important one.

  Think, Koksun. Think! he told himself.

  Chapter 10

  It is often the case that Sleep imparts to her dozing companion the answer to some trouble that is vexing him. In this case, she became an accomplice to crime—and to many future crimes—as the issue in question was the most efficient manner to part a gentleman from the burden of his wallet.

  While Sleep wrapped her loving arms around young Koksun—sleeping dirty, half-fed, and unwashed in an alley in the capital city of Metinvur—a dream came to him. Not a revelation of something to come. But rather a dream in which he recalled a detail his conscious mind had overlooked both when it observed the event in question and when his troubled mind began searching aimlessly for the solution to what was likely to be a tricky bit of business.

  But as is so frequently the case, what befuddles a conscious mind to no end is resolved handily by the unconscious mind.

  To Koksun’s delight, he woke up with a sense of confidence, the dream still crisply viewable in his mind—unlike other dreams that slip from the awakened mind’s grasp like slippery soap from oily fingers. In it, he recalled a demonstration of pickpocketing finesse that at the time he had not himself even realized for sure it was an act of such. He had suspected it was an attempt, but the subtle body language that seemed unimportant to him then now appeared to be coming from an instruction manual on magic in which each step of a trick is explained in full detail.

  With this in mind, he set off confidently—at least far more confidently than he could have imagined the night before when he had considered himself doomed to fail—towards the location in question so that he could be ready in case the target came early. Also, he had a certain item to get.

  As he neared the location, he swung by the area where he had noticed a pulley the day before firmly welded into the side of the massive concrete building. To his shock, he saw not only was it gone, but there wasn’t even the slightest trace it had been there. It was at that moment, he realized that food stand owner was either in outright cahoots with The Triad and their higher-ups or was at least paid off to look the other way on this occasion.

  He didn’t have a lot of money with him, but he decided to buy a few morning papers. They were going to come in handy for the idea he had in mind.

  It was now around 10 a.m. He suddenly decided maybe it would be best not to wait around in the area in question, as those who would be evaluating would likely be waiting for him as well, and he felt he needed to catch them off guard to the best extent possible. He went back to his box home until around 11:15 a.m., then took off briskly towards his destination.

  At around 11:45 a.m., he was a stone’s throw from the food stand, keeping as low a profile as possible, hoping to see his target without being seen himself.

  Sure enough, at around 11:58 a.m., he saw the aforementioned gentleman with his red hat, white shirt, and blue pants approaching the food stand. He took off hastily in the general direction.

  He only had three papers in his possession, and he had the unpleasant task of looking like a genuine newspaper boy while simultaneously making sure he got to his target with at least one paper left before it was too late.

  He took the papers out of his coat pocket once he was around fifteen feet away from the gentleman, who was now surveying several fine cuts of fish and steak.

  “PAPER! GET YOUR MORNING PAPER!” Koksun said, feeling terribly unconfident, yet unsure of how he was perceived.

  But he knew that there was no turning back now, so like a man driving a wagon down a steep hill he tried to steer it as best he could.

  “Would you like a morning paper, sir?”

  The gentleman turned around with an annoyed look to see what street vermin was molesting him.

  Koksun felt a wave of contradictory emotions when he immediately concluded with near certainty that this was the man who had been a police officer yesterday, although he was now a thick moustache short, not to mention his hair had grown six to eight inches over the night—no small feat. Thus, Koksun had near absolute confirmation that he wouldn’t be stealing from a genuine victim but a pretend victim. The flip side to that coin, Koksun’s mind immediately told him, was that that did not at all imply the job would be easier or that the man would hesitate to yell “Thief!” and have him arrested on the spot.

  His heart now thumping with the rapidity of stampeding horses’ hooves, he suppressed his fear as best he could and briefly made direct eye contact with the gentleman, saying, “You see, sir,” before then carefully swiveling around to where he and the gentleman were standing side by side with one another, and then pointed out the headline with utmost interest to the gentleman:

  DARING HEIST!

  THIEVES LIFT THE GOLD . . . LITERALLY!

  “You see, sir,” Koksun continued with utmost interest, standing side by side still with the gentleman, “you get to read all about it in this morning’s edition.” Koksun’s right hand came towards the headline and an interesting illustration there for emphasis, and as he did so, his right arm was pressed lightly against the gentleman’s left side. As Koksun’s hand shot back—having done its job of po
inting out the headline to the gentleman—his right shoulder lightly pressed against the gentleman’s left side in the same general area his arm had been a moment earlier, although it wasn’t there now; it had made a quick detour down Pocket Lane and grabbed a quick little something in the blink of an eye. As soon as it had done so, he leaned his shoulder away from the gentleman, swiveled back towards him, and said with feigned annoyance, “Well, sir?”

  “Scat, you little sewer rat! What’s another crime to read about anyway? I have better things to do with my time!”

  A bystander would have thought the poor boy would have likely been brought to tears, but Koksun had perhaps never heard such kind words in his life. In his mind, he had heard, translated: Not bad, kid.

  Koksun went scurrying off and then did in fact manage to sell all three papers and picked up a little extra merchandise from two of his three clients, employing a technique he felt likely to come in handy many, many times. Good, exciting times were surely ahead.