The Shadow Thieves

by Alexandra Ott

  “Of course,” he says. “Happy to help. But, er . . .” He glances down at his cart.

  “I’ll watch your cart for you,” I say quickly. “I’ll just be over there, at the”—I turn around and glance at the cart across the street—“perfume place.”

  “Well, all right, as long as you keep an eye out. There are thieves in this market, you know.”

  I try not to laugh. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Who am I looking for?”

  “Um, a girl about my age, with blond hair and, um, green eyes, wearing a pink jacket,” I say, making up the details at random. I point in the direction I came from. “Two blocks that way. She was buying some, um, bread, last I saw her.”

  “All right. I’ll go look.”

  “Keep her from coming this way, just for a couple of minutes,” I say.

  As soon as the man disappears around the corner, I rush behind his cart. I don’t have time for stealth, so I just start shoving fabrics out of the way. He’ll know I ransacked it, but I can’t worry about that right now.

  The top two shelves of the cart are covered in nothing but bolts of fabric. The cart itself is smoothly carved wood, with no nooks or crannies that might be hiding a coin. Short of carving holes in the shelves to see if they’re hollow, I don’t think the coin is there.

  The final shelf is the one hidden from customers’ view, walled in on three sides. There are a few personal possessions here—a pair of eyeglasses, a wallet, a jug of water. There’s nothing else, except—

  A coin pouch.

  Small and red with a drawstring top, and absolutely brimming with coins.

  I don’t have time to dump them all out and hunt through them to see if they’re anything other than ordinary jamars. The vendor could be back at any second, once he fails to find someone fitting the random description I gave him. But there’s nowhere else on the cart that the coin could be hidden.

  I’ll have to take the whole pouch.

  My heart pounds. I remember this rush, the spike of adrenaline that comes with the risk, the feeling that comes with a good theft—

  My stomach twists. I don’t even know who this guy is or why the king suspects him. Maybe he’s innocent, and I’m stealing his entire week’s earnings. Maybe his entire month’s earnings.

  But I’m all out of options.

  I take a deep breath. If the King’s Coin is in here, then this pouch could be the ticket to stopping the Shadows and keeping Ronan safe. I just have to steal this last thing, and then I can finally stop being a thief.

  I just need to steal one more time.

  I shove the coin pouch into my bag and run.

  My heart pounds harder as I head in the opposite direction from where the silk vendor went, but the market doubles back on itself, and eventually I circle all the way around and end up in almost the same spot where I began.

  By the time I finally make my way to the chapel, the wind has turned biting and my feet ache. But finally, at long last, the steeple comes into view in the distance.

  This, of course, is when it starts snowing.

  I shiver, pulling my coat tightly closed and wishing for like the hundredth time today that I’d worn some gloves. The dead grass and leaves crackle under my feet as I make my way up the hillside, watching little flakes of white snow drift down from the cloudy gray sky.

  I shove my way through the trees and emerge into the clearing, panting from the exertion. I shuffle forward quickly, glad that I finally get to see Beck—

  Something is wrong.

  The door is open.

  It’s just a crack, really. Just a little crack of light where the door isn’t quite closed tightly. I didn’t leave it like that, but of course Beck has been in and out since then. But why would he leave the door cracked open? He wouldn’t be so careless as to do it accidentally. This is Beck, after all. But why would he do it on purpose? It’s letting the cold in.

  Unless Beck didn’t do it at all.

  Unless someone else has been inside the chapel.

  A shiver that has nothing to do with the cold races up my spine. I don’t know what to do. Someone might be in there right now. I might be walking into some kind of trap. But I can’t just leave, either. Beck might be in trouble.

  I take a deep breath, summon all my courage, and walk forward.

  The whole way up the steps, I check for signs. Signs that something is wrong, or that something happened, or that Beck left me a note or a warning, anything. But everything looks fine, except for that glowing crack in the door. It seems wider now that I step closer, a lot wider. There’s no way it’s an accident, no way Beck hasn’t noticed.

  I reach for the door and shove it all the way open.

  Snowflakes blow in through the opening, twirling down to rest on the floor and the pews. Sitting sideways in one of those pews is Beck, his eyes wide, looking at me.

  And standing in front of him, in the center of the aisle, is Rosalia Peakes.

  Chapter Nine

  The last time I saw Rosalia, I threw a large object at her head. Two large objects, actually. So it’s no surprise that she scowls as soon as she sees me.

  “No need to break the door down, Rosco,” she says dryly.

  “Someone left it open. I thought Beck was being attacked!” I look suspiciously at Rosalia. “Is he being attacked?”

  “It’s fine, Alli,” Beck says, sounding weary. “I asked Rosalia to meet me here.”

  “And why would you do a stupid thing like that?”

  Rosalia’s scowl deepens. Aside from the fact that she constantly looks like she’s swallowed something sour, she’s pretty, with long waves of brown hair and delicate features. She’s only a few years older than Beck and me, but the way she carries herself, all regal and poised, makes her seem more grown-up. She’s dressed down from when I last saw her in the Guild, though, replacing her fancy gowns with plain street clothes and a heavy coat. She can’t have been inside the chapel for very long, as snowflakes still cling to her hair.

  “For your information,” she says icily, “I’m here to help Beck.”

  “No, that’s what I’m doing.” I take a few steps forward, trying to get a better look at Beck without getting too close to Rosalia. She held a knife to my throat once, and I’m not particularly eager to repeat that experience. Although, she could probably kill me from across the room just as easily. She might look delicate, but she’s a Guild thief through and through.

  Beck seems distracted, gazing off into space. His legs dangle off the side of the pew, his shoes scuffing patterns into the dust coating the floor. He looks even worse than the last time I saw him. Dark circles have deepened under his eyes, and he’s hunched in on himself for warmth, his arms drawn across his chest. A piece of debris, possibly ceiling plaster or a bit of gravel, is stuck in a tuft of his messy hair.

  “Did you find the coin?” Beck asks eagerly.

  Rosalia’s eyes widen. “You sent her after the King’s Coin?”

  I ignore her. “I found the cart and grabbed a coin bag off it. Haven’t had time to go through it.”

  I take out the drawstring pouch and dump its contents onto the nearest pew. The rattle of coins echoes through the room.

  Beck crouches beside me, and we quickly sort through them. An ordinary jamar, and another, and another . . .

  Rosalia looms over us, but she doesn’t deign to actually bend over and help. “Do you even know what the King’s Coin looks like?”

  “We know what regular jamars look like,” I mutter.

  Beck tosses the last of the coins down with a sigh. “It’s not here.”

  “It couldn’t have been anywhere else on that guy’s cart. I checked.”

  Beck leans back on his heels, looking disappointed. “That’s okay. It was a long shot anyway. The king said he didn’t know for sure if that guy was involved in the Shadows.”

  “So we’re no better off than when we started,” Rosalia says. Someone needs to tell her that I’m supposed to be the negativ
e one around here.

  “At least I tried something helpful,” I say pointedly.

  “No, you tried something and it failed to be helpful.”

  As usual, Rosalia’s pretty much right. And as usual, I hate her for it. If only I had another heavy object handy to throw at her head. “I’m sorry, what exactly has your contribution been?”

  Rosalia doesn’t respond, and Beck doesn’t defend me. I glare at him. “I’m so glad I bothered trying to help you. Apparently you don’t care, because thank goodness Rosalia is here to save you. What happened to, ‘Oh, I need you, Alli. You’re the only one I can trust!’ Remember that speech?”

  Beck starts to speak, but I steamroll over him, letting my anger fill me up and push the words out. “I stole for you today, Beck.”

  A shadow falls over his face, and now he looks properly ashamed of himself. He knows that I don’t want to steal anymore.

  But Rosalia doesn’t know, and she’s looking at me like I’m a piece of trash stuck to the bottom of her shiny black boots. “So what?” she asks, casting a glance at Beck.

  I glare at her. “Some people don’t just go around stealing things from other people. Or normal people don’t, anyway. Saints, I am so tired of you thieving, rotten Guild members!” I spin away from them and pace across the tiny aisle.

  Rosalia casts a second, sharper glance at Beck. “She’s not going to agree.”

  Beck shrugs. “We haven’t told her yet.”

  I stop pacing. “Told me what?”

  Rosalia crosses her arms. “Believe it or not, Rosco, I’m not here to bring Beck piles of ordinary coins, since you seem to have that so well taken care of.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  She smiles. It’s possibly the only genuine smile I’ve ever seen from her, and it’s a sharp and terrifying thing, like the edge of a knife. “I’m here,” she says, “to help take down the Shadow Guild.”

  I look at Beck. “Do we actually want her help?”

  He hesitates. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

  “Oh God. It’s never good when you say that.” I sit down on the edge of the pew across from him, draping my feet over the edge just like his so that I can look him straight in the eyes. “Start talking.”

  “There are places in the city where Guild members leave messages for one another. It’s how we communicate with the guildhall during assignments and how those who live in the guildhall communicate with those who don’t. I’ve been checking some of these spots, just because . . . well, I need to know what’s going on up there. Anyway, Rosalia left me a coded message, saying she knew I was working for the king to infiltrate the Shadows and that she wants to help.”

  I give him an incredulous look, raising my eyebrows as high as they will go. “And you believed her?”

  Rosalia levels her steely gaze at me. “Just because you don’t like me doesn’t mean I’m a Shadow.”

  “It doesn’t mean you’re not one.”

  Beck closes his eyes and rubs his temple. “Can you two work this out later?”

  But I’ve just realized something and give Rosalia another suspicious glance. “Why would you want to help, anyway? What’s in it for you?” I might not know her well, but I know this isn’t like her. Even if the Shadows threatened her the way they did Beck, she’d just disappear into the night. Or possibly slit someone’s throat. Seeking Beck out and offering to help him isn’t her way. It isn’t the Guild way.

  She hesitates, like she’s debating whether or not to tell me something. “The Shadows have stolen a lot of people,” she says finally.

  It takes me a second to put it together, but then it clicks. There’s one person who I know Rosalia cares about. “Your brother,” I say quietly. “Did they hurt him?”

  Her mouth twists. “They recruited him.”

  For a second I almost don’t believe her. I remember her brother, Peakes—a smiling, cheerful kid about my age, one who was teased by the others in the group but who was always good-natured about it. We ate dinner with him in the Guild and raced against him on sleds in the ice caves. Of all Beck’s friends there, Peakes is the one who seemed the least . . . thieflike. How could he possibly be a Shadow?

  But I look at Rosalia’s face, and I know it must be true. Somewhere, behind her scowl, she looks upset. And angry.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she says. “He left the guildhall, to help them. They got to him somehow. And I don’t doubt they’ll kill him once he outlives whatever usefulness they think he has. Maybe they already have. But dead or alive, I’m going to find him.”

  I remember the coldness of her knife against my throat, and I believe her.

  Beck’s story makes sense now. He knew about Peakes, and that’s why he trusted Rosalia when she sent him that message. That’s why he told her to meet him here. He knew she’d want revenge.

  “So what’s the plan?” I say. This is Beck, after all, so of course there’s already a plan. “And more importantly, how does it involve me?”

  “It’s not just about Peakes,” Beck says quietly. “There’s your brother, and every other name on that list, and every other thief they’ve targeted. The Shadows have to be stopped. They’re ripping the Guild apart from the inside.”

  “Why are they doing all of this anyway? I mean, what’s the point?”

  “Power,” Rosalia says. “Whoever the leader of the Shadows is, they want the power that the king holds. And they’re using Kerick’s unpopularity as an excuse. Many of the thieves they’re recruiting probably don’t care about Kerick one way or the other; they see this as an opportunity to gain a more powerful position within the Guild. Others might hold a grudge against Kerick, or against some of the thieves who are loyal to him, like Durban.”

  Beck grimaces. “We’ve got to find a way to take them down, once and for all. But to do that, we need more information to pass on to the king.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “We still don’t know who their leader is,” Rosalia says. “Beck and I can identify some of their members, but too many of them are still a mystery. We need to find out who’s leading them, and how they’re recruiting people like Peakes. We need to know what they’re planning to do next. And we need to know how to stop them.”

  “Not to mention we have to find out where the coin is,” Beck adds. “And figure out who put your brother’s name on that list.”

  “So, basically, we know nothing and we need to know everything. Great.”

  Rosalia lets out a sigh, as if to demonstrate just how much suffering my presence is causing her. “The problem isn’t so much the lack of information as the lack of a way to gather it. I’ve already made myself an enemy of the Shadows. I was . . . vocal about my opposition, when Durban was killed. Members of the Shadows would kill me sooner than they’d trust me, and we can’t even be sure who is and isn’t a member.”

  “Okay, but I’m not really seeing the problem,” I say. “Beck can still pretend to let the Shadows recruit him and spy on them like he was already planning to do. What difference does it make if you can’t help?”

  Beck taps his toe against the edge of the pew. “When I was checking for messages from the Guild today, I also checked for messages from the Shadows. They sent me information about their next meeting date and location. But here’s the catch—they’re testing me by asking me to recruit someone else to bring to the meeting.”

  “In other words,” Rosalia says, “he can’t show up to the meeting by himself. But I can’t go with him, because they’d know I was a spy.”

  I really don’t like where this is going. “Oh?” I say, my voice coming out a little higher pitched than I’d planned.

  Rosalia pins me with a steady gaze. “You’re going with Beck to infiltrate the Shadows.”

  Chapter Ten

  I look back and forth between Beck and Rosalia, waiting for one of them to say, Ha-ha, just kidding! But no one does.

  “Maybe you haven’t heard,” I say finally, “bu
t I’m not actually a Guild member. So how can I pretend to be a Shadow Guild member if I’m not even in the regular, reasonable-amount-of-shadows Guild?”

  “We thought about that,” Beck says. “But the thing is, most people in the Guild don’t even know who you are.”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s my point. They don’t know that I’m a Guild member, because I’m not one.”

  “But,” Beck says, leaning forward, “they also don’t know you’re not a Guild member.” Some of the light has returned to his eyes, and they’re shining with excitement in a way that’s painfully familiar. Beck loves a good plan. Or, rather, a bad plan that’s most likely going to fail. “Not very many people know that you didn’t pass your trial, because not very many people even know you had a trial at all. Some of the people you met in the Guild asked me about it when . . . when I got back. But otherwise, nobody knows. You can tell the Shadows you recently passed your trial, and they won’t know any different.”

  “Right, so I can just walk up to some thieves and say, ‘Hey, guys, I’m in the Guild too! Trust me with all your most dangerous secrets!’ ”

  Rosalia glares daggers at me. “Obviously not.”

  I open my mouth to say something rude to her, but Beck cuts me off. “They’ll believe you’re a Guild member,” he says, “because you’ll have one of these.”

  He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small object. It’s a golden pendant shaped like a coiled snake, with a massive emerald set into the center. Even in the dim light of the chapel, it sparkles. It’s a key to the entrance of the guildhall in the ice caves of Arat, as well as other Guild hideouts. And, now that I think about it, Beck told me once that it’s how Guild members recognize each other. The pendants are enchanted, so that they can’t be seen by just anyone, and they can’t be stolen.