by Gwynn White
“I’m sorry, children,” Mabaya’s voice trailed behind us, but Arwin slammed the door on her and Nico.
The distant sounds of the market reached my ears, and eddies of dust swirled in the air as we stood side by side in the alley. Bruha snorted and stared at us with intelligent eyes.
“I can’t believe we just did all of that for nothing,” Arwin fumed. She stamped her feet and almost punched the wall a few times, stopping short just before her knuckles could break against the brick.
“It wasn’t for nothing,” I reasoned. “We helped an old woman with her cart, and we’re a lot closer to Cleighton now than we would have been if we’d continued on foot.”
Arwin stopped to give me a quick look. “I don’t like you when you’re being reasonable. Can’t you let me stew in my anger for a minute?”
“No,” I laughed. “Come on, I’m getting hungry, and the market here is much more hectic than the one back in Mitbas. Let’s see if we can scrounge up a quick meal.”
“Well look who’s finally embracing the thief’s lifestyle,” she said proudly. Wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes as she grudgingly smiled. “You think we’ll be able to get away with it this time?”
“As long as you don’t mess it up again.”
“Hey! I would’ve been just fine.”
“That guard had you pinned and you know it. It was only because I was there that you got away at all.”
She raised her nose high in the air. “Even so, I didn’t mess up. It was a fluke that anyone even saw me nick that loaf.”
I allowed her that. Arwin couldn’t have survived as long as she had on the outskirts of Pointe, home to arguably the harshest environment and strange woodland creatures, without some measure of skill. Her reservoirs of luck were more like shallow pools, the history of her misfortune stretching back since before she’d been scarred. Her whole life had been one long experience in the art of survival, and stealthy thievery was at the core of her continued existence.
I waved the hand of my good arm. “Market’s this way.”
We walked out of the alley, leaving Bruha to snort on his own outside Nico’s door, and followed the sound of chatter and music toward the city center. Here, the banners draped from the soaring stone walls grew varied and colorful, as did the conversations that I managed to overhear.
“…just stormed out of the temple like a…”
“Cabbages! Carrots! A silver each, or a gold for an armful!”
“Did you hear? Another attack along the southern rim…”
“You, young man! Yes, you!”
I realized that last voice was shouting at me, and despite Arwin tugging at my arm, trying to pull me along, I couldn’t resist walking in the direction of the strange merchant.
He was wearing a hat unlike I’d ever seen before. It looked like a mix of fabric and metal, with gears along the wide rim that seemed to have no function at all. The rest of his attire was equally strange. Leather straps held extra bits of metal across his waist and torso, and sturdy leather boots reached halfway up his shins, their soles unnecessarily thick. He wore black leather pants, and a slender gold chain hung in a loop from one pocket. His gloves, unlike the rest of his dark attire, were as white as snow.
“Are you talking to me?” I asked when I was finally within earshot.
“Mal, what are you doing?” Arwin asked, clearly frustrated.
“Of course I’m talking to you,” the strange man said. “Please, there isn’t much time, and there’s so much I need to tell you.” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, looking around for a moment before continuing. “I know about the curse that plagues you. The one that prevents you from laying eyes upon your own form? Ah, see, I can tell by your expression that you know what I speak of!”
I stared at him with mouth agape. “How do you know?”
“How do I know what?” Arwin asked, staring at me curiously.
The man continued in a flurry of words. “I need you to deliver a message to a man in Cleighton. Name’s Pilor. Give him half of what’s in this bag and tell him the debt is paid.” He pulled a brown leather sack from one of his coat’s pockets and held it aloft. It jingled with the sound of metal.
“Wait, why? You don’t even know me. Why don’t you do this yourself?”
“There’s no time!” he urged. “It’s always about time, always. I don’t have long, certainly not long enough to make it to Cleighton.”
I thought that was strange. Looking at him, the man didn’t appear to be sick or wounded. “I…I don’t know.”
“Mal, what don’t you know?”
I finally turned to Arwin to see that her eyes held a solid note of concern in them. “Don’t you think this is all strange?”
“What’s strange?”
I turned back to the man briefly and said, “Sorry, she’s a bit slow,” before rounding on my friend again. “A strange man comes out of nowhere, tells us to go to Cleighton—Depths take coincidences that we happen to already be headed there—and offers a sack of coins to perfect strangers to deliver a message on his behalf?”
“Mal, you’ve really gone off into the Depths, haven’t you?” The worry made her voice sound pitying, so sincerely so that I wondered what had gotten into her brain.
“Come on, even you have to—” I started to say as I turned back to the oddly dressed man, but stopped when I saw that he had vanished. I glanced sharply in both directions, but he was nowhere to be found amid the hustle and bustle of the busy market.
“You just started spouting nonsense for two minutes straight,” Arwin continued. She placed the back of her hand against my forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”
I smacked her hand away. “Of course I’m not warm.” In fact, a chill was working its way down my spine. I knew I hadn’t imagined the man; I could still clearly remember his foreign attire, the frantic rhythm of his words. He had been here, but now there was no sign of him. Was I actually going crazy?
“Hey, you dropped something.” Arwin stooped down to grab something, and then yelped in surprise when she heard the clink of metal.
“See? He was here!” I snatched the leather bag from her hands and pulled the string at its mouth to reveal the gold and silver coins inside. “He told me to give half of this to some man named Pilor in Cleighton and say ‘the debt is paid.’ I have no idea what he meant by that.”
“He who?” Arwin insisted.
“The…man! I don’t know how to describe him. He was this tall”—I held up a hand a few inches above my head—“and had the strangest getup you’ve ever seen. Lots of extra metal bits and dark leather. And white gloves,” I added.
“White gloves?”
“No accounting for fashion choices.”
Arwin looked at the leather bag cradled gently in my hands. “We’re going to Cleighton anyway…did he say what to do with the other half?”
I shook my head.
“I guess it’s meant for us, then.”
I couldn’t find any argument with that logic. We needed the coin, and he hadn’t specified what needed to happen with the rest of it. Maybe it was his reward to us for delivering Pilor’s payment.
“Come to think of it, there’s nothing stopping us from keeping all of it for ourselves…”
“Arwin!”
“What? You can’t just drop a bunch of money in strangers’ hands and expect them to do your dirty work for you!” she argued. “What if this Pilor person is dangerous? We’d be walking into a trap, and for what? On some debtor’s behalf? No, thanks.” Her chin tilted up as her eyes looked toward the sky. “This is the Lord of Clouds looking out for us, that’s what this is.”
I snorted. “You don’t hold the faith for him.”
A smirk curled her mouth. “Even so, this is to our benefit. We’ll have no problem getting to Cleighton now, properly clothed and fed the whole way, with enough left over even to get us set up when we arrive.”
Again, I couldn’t find fault with her logic. It felt
dirty to go against the strange man’s wishes, but we were in dire straits. Between a stranger’s debt and our next meal, I had to think about the short-term game. Maybe we’d still be able to fulfill our end of the bargain if there was enough coin left over upon reaching Cleighton.
“All right, deal. We use this to get to Cleighton,” I said.
“Yes! Oh, Mal, I knew you’d see things the right way.” Arwin darted in for a hug, and before I could react, her arms had wrapped around tight, squeezing the air from my lungs.
“You’re…my shoulder…” I gasped, and she immediately let go.
“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. How is it, by the way?”
Truthfully, it hadn’t hurt when she’d hugged me. I just hadn’t felt comfortable with the sudden outburst of affection. Now I felt guilty for making her think she had made my injury worse.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore, actually. I think that worm thing is doing its job.”
“Good. At least Mitbas wasn’t a total failure, then.”
“Total failure? We got fed, found a way to treat what Beyland did to my shoulder, and we secured a ride almost halfway to Cleighton. Mitbas was a miracle compared to what we’ve endured here.”
“Up until now,” Arwin said, her eyes darting hungrily to the leather pouch still secured in my hands.
“Yes,” I agreed, and then slowly, deliberately, cinched the mouth closed and clenched my fingers around the small bag. “I think I’d better hold on to this for now.”
“There could be thieves in this city—”
“There are. The two of us.”
Arwin continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “—and you want the one-armed cripple to hold our extremely precious sack of Lord-given, life-preserving wealth?”
“Well, no, when you put it that way it sounds stupid. But I also don’t like the one-armed cripple’s chances of chasing down a streetwise thief who can hold her own in a fight against an imperial soldier, so I think the pouch will stay right where it is.”
I stared her down, daring her with my eyes to argue, but she reluctantly backed down, her shoulders slumping forward as her head dipped in a shallow nod. “You’re a jerk.”
“Then you’re in good company.”
Arwin stuck her tongue out at me, but I sensed her amusement beneath it. Then, after a moment, she seemed to sober up. She glanced up and down the street and then gently pulled me in one direction, vaguely heading east. “You think we can afford a horse to get us to Cleighton?”
I subtly hefted the bag of coins in my hand. It was heavy, and I’d seen more than a few gold coins among the silver. “We would need to buy two horses,” I reminded her, “one for each of us, and I’m not sure how much we’d have left over after that.” I thought furiously as we walked, and after we passed another half dozen vendors’ stalls, a thought occurred to me. “Why don’t we get Mabaya to help us? She seems motivated by coin. We could hire her on as our driver.”
Arwin scrunched up her nose, apparently disliking the idea. “That gaur of hers moves too slowly. We could ride a horse to Cleighton and back before Mabaya could get us even halfway there.”
“Bruha is hardy, though! I wouldn’t know the first thing about shopping for a horse. Would you?”
Her cheeks reddened. “No,” she admitted. “But it’s not like we’ll need one for long. Once we get to Cleighton, you can just tame some iron, I’ll find a way to sell it, and together we’ll be rich! So it doesn’t matter how much we spend now, as long as we make it there.”
I paused at her reasoning. In a way, it made sense. We had to spend money to make money, and every day we weren’t in Cleighton was another day we weren’t fencing whatever iron I could get my hands on to tame for the highest bidder. On the other hand, though, it just seemed reckless to spend money frivolously. True, we’d only just come into this bag of coins, and fortune couldn’t have smiled any more strongly on us for giving it to us, but now that I had money, I didn’t want to lose any of it, even in the pursuit of greater fortunes.
“We need to save at least half of this for Pilor,” I insisted.
“Pilor?”
“The person the strange man told me to pay off in Cleighton.”
Arwin rolled her eyes. “Oh, right, your imaginary benefactor.”
I lifted the bag of coins so she could hear them jingle inside. “Does this seem imaginary to you?” I asked challengingly.
She couldn’t argue with physical proof. “Depths take Pilor,” she muttered. “All right, fine, if it’s so drangr important, we’ll save some for Cleighton. But, Mal, we can’t get there on our own on foot. It’s too far,” she insisted.
I looked down at our feet. Hers were covered in thin straps of cloth, and mine were hardly any better; already I could see large portions where my skin showed through. My soles would be rough and thick with callouses before this trip was over. On top of that, though, I was worried about how well we would be able to run and fight, if it came to that, given the condition we were in. Our bodies had grown thinner even just over the past couple days, and my shoulder wouldn’t be healed for a few more yet. Arwin was my only protection, and if she was too weak from heat or thirst or hunger to pick up a blade, we’d be done for.
“We’ll go to the stables,” I finally relented, and Arwin practically danced with glee. Her smile made even the hideous scar near her right eye less noticeable, wrinkles of joy now blending with those caused by fire long ago. “If someone is there taking a carriage to Cleighton, we can split the costs with them,” I reasoned.
“Very wise choice,” Arwin said.
“Are you mocking me?”
“I would never,” she said somberly, keeping a perfectly straight face. “Any day where you agree with me is a day where your genius is truly showing.”
“Lord of Clouds, preserve me,” I muttered.
We exited the town by way of a different gate from the one we’d entered through with Mabaya earlier. Like the other one, though, this entrance was flanked on either side by imperial soldiers dressed in uniforms of leather and steel, with those wearing steel being of higher ranks and fewer in number. As expected, outside the town wall we found a large wooden structure that housed several horses under its slanted roof—two brown ones and a slightly lighter brown one. I didn’t know the specific breeds; nobody in Pointe had owned a horse, as far as I knew. I only knew of them by description, from stories told by Answorth or some other campfire wordsmith. The lighter horse had a mane of almost pure-white hair and a matching white tail.
“Ooh, I hope we get that one,” Arwin said.
I gave her a sidelong glance. She’d never struck me as the type to be sucked in by the physical beauty of something. But then, maybe as a thief it was in her nature to be attracted to such things.
“We’ll see first if we’re getting any horses,” I reminded her, but my words didn’t seem to dampen her spirits. If anything, her steps grew even lighter.
We approached the man who seemed to be in charge of the stables. He was crowded by four other people, presumably customers, and two of the customers were starting to raise their voices.
“What do you mean, we can’t ride with you?” one demanded.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not an express carriage,” the stable master calmly explained. “If you want to get to Briarsworth without any stops on the way, you need to buy a horse and hitch it to your own cart. These good folks are—”
The second irate customer, a woman who seemed to be paired with the first man, shouted over the stable master. “Bah, Depths take them all! We’re willing to pay good money for it, more’n you’ll make from the lot of them combined!”
“As I’ve said, it isn’t about the—”
“It’s always about the money!” argued the first man. “Codgy old bugger, tryin’ to extort more money from us…” And as his voice trailed off, the man aimed at the one wheel of the cart the stable master was standing on and delivered a solid kick.
“That’s it, you’
re out of here!”
The stable master motioned to the guards standing by the gate, as well as his own guard that he had standing by, and in short order both the man and woman who’d been shouting were being carried away. Not to be arrested, of that I was sure, but just to be far enough away that they wouldn’t cause a scene anymore.
“Wonder why they’re in such a hurry to get to Briarsworth,” Arwin muttered to me under her breath. In response, I just shrugged. There was nothing of importance in Briarsworth, as far as I knew; everywhere that had something worth doing or seeing was a major town or city in its own right. Briarsworth was hardly a hamlet, a tiny dot on the map that would be easily missed if one wasn’t looking for it.
With an apologetic look, the solid-looking stable master—he resembled a horse himself, with his big teeth and long jaw—turned to the rest of us. “I apologize for that, folks. Now, who here’s on their way to Kinston, Norwood, Briarsworth, or Cleighton and doesn’t mind stopping at those other destinations on the way?” he asked, clapping his hands together.
The remaining two would-be passengers seemed more than agreeable with the idea.
“Five, ten, fifteen, and twenty silver for each destination,” he rattled off in a bored-sounding voice. Not an unkind voice, but it was clearly something he’d said many times in the past.
Arwin looked to me. “Twenty silver for Cleighton? We could lie and say we’re going to Norwood, then just be stowaways for the rest of the trip.”
I glanced dubiously into the covered wagon we’d all be riding in together. “Nowhere to hide inside,” I said in a low voice. “Besides, with so few passengers, there’s no way he’ll forget that the two of us didn’t get off at our assigned stop. And it’s only a difference of ten silver. I’m not willing to get us kicked off the wagon entirely—or arrested, even—just to save a little bit of coin.”
For some reason, it bothered me to think that Arwin would go to drastic measures for such a small amount. If she’d lie and steal for ten silver, what would she do for fifty? Or a hundred?
