Valdemar 07 - Take a Thief

by Mercedes Lackey

  Skif made his rounds in an atmosphere thick with smoke and the fug of unwashed bodies, grease, stale beer, and burned food. Light came from tallow dips held in clamps on the wall, and from the fire in the fireplace. It wasn’t much, and all the smoke dimmed the light still further. He couldn’t have made out the faces of the customers if he’d wanted to. They were just an endless parade of dark-shrouded lumps who crammed food into their mouths and went their way without ever saying anything to him if he was lucky. Every so often one would fondle Maisie’s thigh or breast, but if Kalchan caught him at it, he would have to pay an additional pennybit for the privilege.

  There wasn’t any entertainment in the Hollybush. Kalchan didn’t encourage self-entertainment either, like singing or gaming. Most of the customers didn’t know each other, or didn’t care to, so conversation was at a minimum. As for fighting—it was wisest not even to consider it. Kalchan discouraged fighting by breaking the heads of those who fought with the iron-headed club he carried at his side, and dumping the unconscious combatants outside. The drunks here were generally morose and quiet, and either stumbled out of the door on their own two feet when their money ran out, or passed out and were unceremoniously dumped in the street to free up space for another customer. Once in the street, an unconscious former customer had better hope that friends would take him home, or the cold would wake him up, because otherwise the thieves would strip him of everything of value and drop him in a gutter.

  Difficult as it was to believe, customers kept coming in, all night long. The benches and tables were never empty until just before closing; Skif and Maisie never had a moment to rest. He’d tried once to reckon up how much money—in the tiniest of coins, the pennybit—Kalchan took in of a night. There were four pennybits to a penny; beer was two a mug, bread and stew were three for a plate. Just by way of comparison, a mug of good, clean water from something other than a pump in dubious proximity to a privy cost two pennybits (but it wouldn’t get you drunk—and a mug of sweet spring water was three) and a bun like the one that Deek had bought him this afternoon was a full penny. So you could have something wholesome, though not much of it, for the same price as a full meal in the Hollybush. Evidently, bad as it was, there were enough people who felt they were getting value for their money to keep coming. The two fireside benches sat four each, and the four tables accommodated six eaters. Unless they planned a night to get drunk, the tables cleared pretty quickly. Skif figured that there were probably a couple hundred customers in here over the course of a day.

  That was where Skif’s grasp of numbers broke down—but he reckoned that the Hollybush brought in a couple hundred pennies in a night, and maybe a third of that during the day. Uncle Londer obviously had a good thing going here. His costs were low, buying cheap as he did, and the hire of his help was even lower. Maisie was a half-wit; Uncle Londer paid some relative of hers for her services. Whatever he paid, it wasn’t much, and she never saw any of it; all she got was food and a place to sleep. Skif’s labor was free, of course, and he seldom ate here. And the cook—

  Well, he didn’t know what the cook got. He never saw her getting paid, but she stayed, so she must have been getting something. It couldn’t have been that much; even he could cook better than she did.

  Maybe the attraction for her was the unlimited supply of beer. He never saw her without a mug somewhere nearby, and she had the yellowish color of someone who was drinking herself to death, although her shuffling footsteps were steady and she never seemed drunk.

  The upshot was, this place was mostly profit for Londer, that much was for sure. Skif wasn’t going to feel at all guilty about vanishing in a moon. Uncle Londer could just find himself another boy or do without.

  What Kalchan was getting out of the situation was less clear; certainly he had Maisie’s dubious charms to enjoy whenever he cared to, he did get real food rather than tavern swill, and he had his own special butt of drink that no one else touched, but what else was he getting? Every night after he locked the front door, he waddled down to his father’s home with the night’s takings, and came back empty-handed except for the box that held his own dinner. He slept in the common room on a greasy featherbed piled high with blankets that were stored during the day in the unused staircase. Was Londer splitting the profit with his son? If he was, what in Havens was Kalchan spending it on? It wasn’t clothing, it wasn’t women—not even the shabbiest streetwalker would touch Kalchan with a barge pole without a lot more up front than the penny or two Kalchan was likely to offer.

  It had occurred to Skif recently that maybe Cousin Kalchan was just as stupid as he looked, and Uncle Londer gave him nothing in return for his labors at the Hollybush. If so, he didn’t feel in the least sorry for him.

  By the time that Kalchan dumped the last of the bench warmers outside and locked the front door, Skif was absolutely dead on his feet. Not tired—he’d had that nap in the wash house—but aching from neck to toes and longing for a chance to sit down.

  Kalchan threw the bolt on the front door, and waddled out the back; when Skif heard the door slam shut behind him, he dropped down onto a bench to rest for a moment. The cook brought in three plates of stew and bread, and dropped them on the table. Skif took one look at the greasy, congealing mess, and pushed it toward Maisie, who had come to rest across from him and was already shoveling her food into her mouth as if she was afraid it was going to be taken from her at any moment. The cook had brought her own mug and picked up the beer pitcher that Kalchan had left on a table, shaking it experimentally. Finding there was still beer in it, she took it, her mug, and her plate to the fireside and settled down facing the remains of the flames, her back to her fellow workers.

  Maisie finished her plate, picked up the platter in both hands and licked it, then went on to Skif’s portion. She never said thank you, she never said anything. She never even acknowledged his presence.

  Skif shuddered, got to his feet, and plodded into the now-deserted kitchen.

  From his cubby, he took a tiny tin pot and a packet of chava leaves that he’d filched from Lord Orthallen’s kitchen. Dipping water out of the barrel, he added the leaves and brewed himself a bedtime cup of bitter chava. The stuff was supposed to be good for you and make you feel relaxed and calm; at any rate, at this time of year it made a nice warm spot in his belly that let him get off to sleep.

  He drank it quickly to get it down before Kalchan came back and then retreated to the cubby. The tin pot was shoved into the farthest corner where he kept a few other things that Kalchan didn’t think worth taking—his own wooden spoon, a couple of pretty pebbles, some bird feathers, a spinning top he’d found. Then he wrapped himself up in his cast-off blankets, pillowed his head on his arms, and waited for Kalchan to get back, feigning sleep.

  The only light in the kitchen came from the fire, and it was dying. It was the cook’s job to bank it for the night, but she forgot more than half the time, which was why he had to start it again in the morning. When Kalchan came back, grunting and snorting, it was hardly more than a few flames over glowing coals. Kalchan pulled the door shut and dropped the bar over the inside, paying no attention to Skif.

  Which meant that it had been a good night by Kalchan’s standards. If it hadn’t been, he would either have hauled Skif out and knocked him around a bit before letting him get back to his bed, or he’d have bawled for the cook and had her lay into Skif.

  Kalchan’s return was the cook’s signal to go on up to her loft. She shuffled in, dropped the curtain over the door, shoved ashes over the coals, and limped up the stairs. There was some sound of fumbling with cloth overhead, then silence.

  Meanwhile, Kalchan settled down to his dinner, which he had brought back from his father’s kitchen. In theory, half of that dinner was supposed to be Skif’s, but in all the time he’d lived here, he’d never gotten a morsel of it. Kalchan “shared” it with Maisie—that is, he dropped tidbits to her as if she was a dog, in return for which—

  Skif generally tried t
o be asleep by that time, the moment when Kalchan’s bedding was arranged to his satisfaction beside the fireplace, and Maisie was arranged to his satisfaction in it. And tonight, both exhaustion and the unusual circumstance of having had three decent meals in a day conspired to grant him his wish for slumber.

  He woke from the oddest dream that morning—a dream he couldn’t quite fathom, unless it had come from yesterday’s encounter with Bazie. He had been climbing like a spider along the ledge of a building, several stories up. It was the dead of a moonless night, and he was dressed all in black, including a black hood that covered everything except for a slit for his eyes. And he had the impression that there was a girl behind him, although he hadn’t seen any girls at Bazie’s.

  It was an interesting dream, though, wherever it had come from.

  He heard Kalchan snorting and moving around in the next room, slowly waking up; it must be morning, then. Somehow Kalchan had the knack of being able to wake up at exactly the same time every morning, although it usually took him some time to go from sleep to full wakefulness. The one and only time that knack had failed him, he’d been dead drunk after swilling himself senseless on the free wine given out at some Guild Midwinter Feast three years ago. Not that Kalchan belonged to any Guilds, but he’d somehow managed to get himself invited or sneak in, and he’d certainly drunk far more than his share. He’d gotten back to the tavern on his own two feet, but had fallen straight onto the bedding that Skif and the cook had laid out in anticipation of his return, and he hadn’t awakened until noon. Then, between anger at losing a whole morning’s custom, and the temper caused by his hangover, he’d beaten Skif black and blue, blacked Maisie’s eyes, and kept them all working and away from the temple largesse of Midwinter Day. All taverns closed the afternoon of Midwinter Day—there was no point in remaining open, since there was a Feast laid on at the temples for anyone who attended the Service beforehand. It was the one time of the year that Skif, Maisie, and the cook got a chance to stuff themselves sick on good, toothsome food, and Kalchan kept them from it, and beat them again the next day for good measure. That had marked the lowest point of Skif’s life, and if he’d been bigger or older, he’d have run away and damn the consequences.

  They never let him oversleep by that much again, not even though it meant a beating for awakening him. Not even broken bones would keep Skif from a Temple Midwinter Feast.

  He was already up and waiting for Kalchan to unbar the kitchen door by the time his cousin waddled into the room. Kalchan looked at him with nothing other than his usual irritated glare, and performed that office, then turned and went back into the common room, leaving Skif to start the fire or go wait for the pony cart in the yard as he preferred.

  For a wonder, when the cook had remembered to bank the fire, she’d actually done it right. There must not have been as much beer in the pitcher as she had thought. There was one coal left, not a lot, but enough to get some flames going with the help of lint, straw, and a little tallow. For once, Skif was done with his morning duties early, and he dashed out before Kalchan noticed.

  That meant he was waiting at the temple door long before any of the other pupils, and decided against his usual custom to go into the sanctuary and watch Beel and his fellow priests perform the service. Not that he cared one way or another about religion, but the sanctuary was a place to get out of the cold and to sit down.

  For a service like this one, where no one was really expected to come join in the worship, there was no grand procession up the center of the temple. Instead, a few priests came in from doors on either side of the altar, lit candles and incense, and began very quiet chanting. If you knew the chants and wished to join, you could—otherwise, you could observe and pray, according to your own nature.

  He was the only person in the sanctuary other than the priests, and he had found a marginally warm place in the shadows of a pillar, so they probably didn’t even notice him. They certainly didn’t make any effort to pitch their voices to carry, and the distant murmur, combined with the fact that he could lean up against the pillar, allowed him to drop into a drowse again.

  He drifted back into the dream of this morning; it seemed to be a continuation of the same story. This time he and the girl were crouched together in a closet, listening to something in the next room. The murmur of the priests at their devotions blended with the murmurs in the dream. Then the dream changed abruptly, as dreams tended to do, and he found himself incongruously staring deeply into a pair of large, deep blue eyes that filled his entire field of vision.

  Blue eyes? Whose blue eyes? He didn’t know anyone with blue eyes.

  Abruptly, the bell signifying the end of the service rang, and he started awake.

  Huh, he thought with bemusement. Haven’t dreamed this much in—can’t ’member when. Must’ve been ev’thin’ I et!

  He got to his feet when the priests were gone, sauntered out of the sanctuary, and joined the rest of the pupils now gathering for their lessons.

  But today was going to be different. For the first time ever, he put real effort into his attempts to master numbers. If he was going to have a position with Bazie’s gang, he didn’t want the authorities looking for him to clap him back into lessons. There was always a chance that they would catch him. If that happened, his uncle would know exactly where to find him.

  No, the moment that Bazie had a place for him, he wanted to be able to pass his test and get released from school. Then he could disappear, and Uncle Londer could fume all he wanted. At the moment, he couldn’t see how hanging with Bazie’s gang could be anything but an improvement over the Hollybush.

  His determination communicated itself to his tutor, and the younger boy put more enthusiasm into the lesson than Skif had expected. By the end of it, he’d made more progress in that single morning than he had in the four years he’d been taking lessons.

  When lessons were over and the bell rang, he got ready to shoot out the door with the rest, but before he could, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, holding him in his seat.

  Beel. He must have noticed something was different. Skif’s stomach knotted, and his heart sank. He was in trouble, he must be—and for once, he didn’t know why, or for what reason. And that made it worse.

  “You can all go—” said Beel, whose hand, indeed, it was—but Beel’s hand kept Skif pinned where he was.

  Only when the room had emptied did Beel remove his hand from Skif’s shoulder, and the young priest came around in front of him to stand looking down at him soberly.

  “Skif—do you do work at the tavern in the afternoons?” Beel asked, a peculiarly strained expression on his face.

  What?

  Skif hesitated. If he told the truth, surely Beel would tell his father that Skif was a regular at playing truant from the Hollybush, and he would be in trouble. But if he didn’t—Beel was a priest, and might be able to tell, and he would be in worse trouble.

  But Beel didn’t wait for him to make up his mind about his answer. “I want you to do something for me, Skif,” he said urgently, his eyes full of some emotion Skif couldn’t recognize. “I want you to promise me that today you won’t go near the tavern from the time lessons let out until the time darkness falls.”

  The look Skif wore on his face must have been funny, since Beel smiled thinly. “I can’t tell you why, Skif, but I hope that you can at least trust the priest if you can’t trust your cousin. My father . . . is not as clever as he thinks he is. Someone is angry, angry at him, and angry at Kalchan. I think, unless he can be persuaded to curb his anger, that he is going to act this afternoon. You have nothing to do with all this, and you do not deserve to be caught in the middle.”

  And with those astonishing words, Beel turned and left, as he always did, as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever transpired between them.

  After a moment, Skif shook off his astonishment and slowly left the building. Once out in the sunlight, he decided that whatever Beel was hinting at didn’t really matter, because
he had no notion of going back to the tavern during the day anyway. He was going to meet Deek, and get his first lessons in the fine art of thievery!

  Deek wasn’t lurking anywhere on the way to the building where Bazie’s “laundry” was, but Skif remembered the way back to Bazie’s, including the secret passages, perfectly. He suspected that this was his first test, and when he rapped on the door in an approximation of Deek’s knock, it was Deek himself who opened it with a grin.

  “I tol’ ye ‘e’d ’member!” Deek crowed, drawing Skif inside.

  “An’ I agreed wi’ ye,” Bazie said agreeably. “If ‘e hadn’, ’e wouldn’ be much use, would’e?”

  There was new laundry festooning the ceiling today—stockings and socks. Only Lyle was with Bazie and Deek; the third boy was nowhere to be seen.

  “’J’eet yet?” asked Lyle, as Deek drew him inside. At Skif’s head shake, the other boy wordlessly gestured at the table, where half of a decent cottage loaf of brown bread waited, with some butter and a knife. Beside it was a pot of tea and mugs. Buttered bread, half eaten, sat on a wooden plate next to Bazie. All in all, it was the sort of luncheon that wouldn’t disgrace the table of a retiring spinster of small means.