Valdemar 07 - Take a Thief

by Mercedes Lackey

  Skif nodded solemnly.

  “Na, ’tis yer turn. Jest wipes, fer now.”

  Skif then spent a humbling evening, trying to extract handkerchiefs from the mannequin’s pocket without setting off the bells. Try as he might, with sweat matting his hair from the strain, he could not manage to set off less than two. And here he’d thought that he’d been working hard, hauling water and doing laundry, or going over walls and roofs with Deek! That had been a joke compared with this!

  At length, Bazie took pity on him. “That’ll be ‘nuff, lad,” he said, as Skif sagged with mingled weariness and defeat. “Ye done not bad, fer th’ fust time. Ye’ll get better, ye ken. Put yon dummy i’t’ corner, an’ leave ’im fer now. Time fer a bit uv supper.”

  Skif was glad to do so. It was beginning to occur to him that the life of a thief was not as easy as most people believed, and most thieves pretended. The amount of skill it took was amazing; the amount of work to acquire that skill more than he had imagined. Not that he was going to give up!

  I’ll get this if’t kills me.

  “So, wha’s news, m’lads?” Bazie asked, deftly slicing paper-thin wafers of sweet onion. This was going to be a good supper tonight, and they were all looking forward to it. Deek and Skif had done well for the little gang.

  Lyle sliced bread and spread it with butter that Skif had gotten right out of a fancy inn’s kitchen that very morning. He and Deek had been down in the part of town where the best inns and taverns were, actually just passing through, when one of those strokes of luck occurred that could never have been planned for.

  The inn next to the one they had been passing had caught fire—they never found out why, only saw the flames go roaring up and heard the hue and cry. Everyone in the untouched place they’d stopped beside, staff and customers alike, had gone rushing out—either to help or to gawk—and he and Deek had slipped inside in the confusion.

  Somehow, without having a plan, they’d gotten in, snatched the right things, and gotten out within moments. For one thing, they had gone straight to the kitchen as the best bet. Taking money was out of the question; they didn’t know where the till was. There was no time to search for valuable property left behind in the confusion. Without discussion, they had gone for what they needed, where they knew they would find something worth taking.

  The kitchen.

  Like the rest of the inn, it was deserted—when the chief cook left, everyone else had taken the excuse to run out, too. There must have been a big delivery not long before, since the kitchen was full of unwrapped and partially unwrapped parcels of food.

  It was like being turned loose in the best market in town. Skif had grabbed a wrapped block of butter, a cone of sugar, and a ham, and a handful of the brown paper the stuff had come wrapped in. Deek had gone for a whole big dry-cured hard sausage, a string of smaller ones, and half a wheel of cheese. Then out the back and over the wall they went, into an alley that was full of smoke and hid them beautifully. As soon as they were in the smoke, Skif and Deek pulled out the string bags they always brought with them just in case something in the nature of foodstuffs presented itself. Quickly wrapping up the articles in paper under cover of the smoke, they stuffed their booty into the bags, then came running out of the smoke into the crowd, coughing and wheezing far more than was necessary, acting like innocents who’d gone shopping for their mums and been caught in the alley. No one paid them any mind—they were all too busy ogling the fire and the bucket brigade or craning their necks to see if the fire brigade had gotten to the burning inn yet. Skif and Deek had strolled homeward openly, carrying enough food to last them all for weeks. All of it luxury stuff, too—not the sort of thing they got to taste more than once in a while. They had eggs a lot, since they were pretty cheap, with just about anyone who had a bit of space keeping pigeons or chickens, even in the city. Bread was at every meal; bread was the staple of even the poorest diets.

  Roots like tatties and neeps were cheap enough, too, and cabbage, and onions—even old Kalchan had those at the inn. Dried pease and beans made a good soup, and Kalchan had those, too, though more often than not they were moldy.

  Skif had eaten better with Bazie than he ever had in his life, even allowing for what he’d snitched from Lord Orthallen’s kitchen. Good butter, though—butter that was all cream and not mixed half-and-half with lard—they didn’t see much of that. Deek’s cheese wasn’t the cheap stuff that they generally got, made after the cream had been skimmed from the milk. And as for ham and sausages—sausages where you didn’t have to think twice about what might have gone into them—well, those were food for the rich. And sugar—

  Skif had never tasted sugar until he started snitching at Lord Orthallen’s table. Bazie had a little screw of paper with some, and once in a while they all got a bit in their tea. Now they’d be able to sweeten their tea at every meal.

  Each of them had a slice of bread well-buttered, with a thin slice of onion atop, and a slice of hard sausage atop that. The aroma of sage and savory from the sausage made Skif’s mouth water. Bazie had put some of his sprouting beans on his slice, and had taken a second slice of buttered bread to hold it all together. Skif hoped the sprouts wouldn’t taste bad with all that good stuff in and around it. They were going to eat like kings for a while.

  “Kalchan croaked.” That was from Lyle, with his mouth full. “They sez. Nobuddy sez nothin’ ‘bout Londer. I ast ’round ‘bout Skif. Don’ seem nobuddy’s lookin’ fer ’im now. Reckon they figger ’e saw t’set-to an’ run off.”

  “Huh.” Skif shrugged. “Tol’ ye about th’ fire. Tha’s all we saw.” Deek nodded agreement, but his mouth was full, so he added nothing.

  “White shirt’s sniffin’ ’round Little Puddin’ Lane,” said Raf. “Dunno why; askin’ a mort’uv questions, they sez.”

  Huh. Wonder what Herald wants down there? There wasn’t anything down in that part of town that a Herald should have been interested in; Little Pudding Lane was just a short step above the neighborhood of the Hollybush so far as poverty went.

  “Stay clear uv them for now,” Bazie advised. “They got ways’uv tellin who’s lyin’.”

  “No fear there!” Raf promised. “Ain’t gonna mess wi’ no witchy white shirt!”

  Be stupid to, Skif reflected. Not that he’d ever actually seen a Herald, except once, passing at a distance. Even then, he wasn’t sure it had been a Herald. It could just have been a pale-colored horse.

  Bazie shrugged. “Dunno they be witchy, jest sharpish. Ah, like’s not, ’tis summat got nawt t’do wi’ likes uv us. When any’un seed a white shirt down here, eh?”

  “Not so’s I kin ’member,” Raf, the oldest, said at last. Skif and Deek both shook their heads.

  “Saw ’un oncet, passin’ through,” Lyle offered, and grinned.

  “Passin’ fast, too! Reckon had burr under ’is saddle!”

  “White shirt’s don’ bother wi’ us,” Bazie said with certainty, and finished the last bite of his supper with great satisfaction. “Slavers, raiders, aye. Big gang’uv bandits, aye. E’en summat highwayman, e’en footpad, ‘f ’e’s stupid ‘nuff to murder along’uv robbin’. But us? A bit’uv cheese here, a wipe there? Nothin’ fer them. ’Tis th’ beaks we gotta watch for. But all th’ same—” he finished, brow wrinkling, “steer clear’uv ‘em. They nivir done me no ’arm, e’en wi’ me an’ the’ rest fightin’ ’em, but they nivir done me no favors either, an’ Karsites allus said they was uncanny.” He laughed. “Well, demons is wut they said, but figger the source!”

  When Skif went to bed that night, though, he wondered what would have brought a “white shirt”—a Herald—down as close to their territory as Little Pudding Lane. It had to be something important, for as Bazie said, the Heralds didn’t bother themselves about petty thieves as long as it was only a crime against property and not against a person.

  Bazie had strict rules about that, too—not the least because if by some horrible accident someone was hurt, it could be a ha
nging offense. It made no sense to court that kind of trouble all for the sake of some loot you could get another time. Better to drop everything and run if it all went bad. Even if you were one of a team, there was no point in coming to the rescue when that would only mean that two of you would be caught instead of one.

  The worst that would happen to any of them would be some time in gaol, and perhaps a beating administered by the victim; only Raf had a previous offense against him, and he would take care to give another name if he was caught. Bazie had coached Skif on this with great care. The very best ploy was to get rid of anything you had on you, so you’d be clean. If you couldn’t do that, the next best was to act scared, and cry and carry on and say that you were starving, had no job, and couldn’t get one, then produce a convincing cough as if you were very sick. None of them were so well-fed that they looked prosperous, though none of them ever went hungry either, and they could probably carry the story off as long as the beaks didn’t get involved. Lyle, with his innocent face and ability to make his eyes seem twice their size, had gotten away with that more than once.

  Wish I could, Skif thought with envy. But—Lyle was another on the liftin’ lay, and it was easier to get away with that when you were caught out on the street than it was when you were caught in someone’s house.

  Raf was sitting up with Bazie, although Deek and Lyle had already gone to bed. Their voices came easily through the shutters of his bed. “Lissen, Bazie, Midwinter Fair ’s a-comin’, an’ I’m thinkin’ we should be workin’ it in twos,” Raf said quietly. “One liftin’, an’ one t’carry. Mebbe I’m bein’ nervy, but I don’ like t’idea uv yon white shirt sniffin’ round.”

  “You reckon?” Bazie sounded interested. “Hadn’ tried that afore, hev we?”

  “Ain’t’s risky. Reckon I take’s the young’un, Lyle take Deek. An ev’ry time we gets a lift, we takes it t’ carrier. Carrier brings it here. Then no matter how wrong ’t all goes, ain’t no’un caught wi’ more’n one lift on’im.” Raf sounded very sure of himself, and truth to tell, Skif agreed with him. It would be a lot more work that way for the carrier, who would have to run back and forth between wherever the Fair they were working was being held, and here, but Raf was right. No matter what happened, no matter what went wrong, no one would be caught with more loot than a single kerchief or pouch.

  “Som’thin’ got ye spooked?” Bazie asked shrewdly. Skif could imagine Raf’s shrug. “Can’t ’magine white shirts lookin’ fer lifters.”

  “Mebbe. Somethin’ i’ th’ air. Not like white shirts t’ be i’ this t’ th’ chancy parts’uv town. Somethin’s up. An’—” Raf paused. “Lots’uv forners pretendin’ not t’be forners lurkin’ about, i’taverns, askin’ questions, little too casual-like.”

  “Na, ye stay clear’uv them, boy!” There was real alarm in Bazie’s voice. “Tha’s stuff fer th’ highborns! Ain’t no call t’get mixed up wi’ them!”

  “Eh.” Raf agreed, but he still sounded worried. “Bazie, ye gotta wonder—how long afore their bizness gets down amongst us? Ye know whut they sez—rotten apple falls fastest and futhest.”

  “On’y thin’ you an’ me an’ the likes’uv us got t’ ’ave t’do wi’ them is t’ get out uv way when they falls.”

  And that seemed to be the end of that. Skif was asleep before Raf helped Bazie into bed.

  When the Midwinter Fairs began, the first thing they had to do was try and figure out which ones they would work, because every other thief and pickpocket in Haven would be doing the same. Bazie had a shrewd way of eliminating them, based on the number of beaks assigned to each, the general level of prosperity, and the number of drunks by midafternoon. He wanted a moderate number of beaks, a slightly-better-than-middle level of prosperity, and a high level of drunks. So, not too surprisingly, he decided that they should work the Fair associated with the Brewers Guild. He also picked one very large Fair held just outside the city, where there were going to be a large number of tent taverns because it was playing host to a series of contests among performers. Not Bards; in fact, Bards were excluded. These were to be contests among ordinary musicians with no Gifts.

  He chose a third Fair for no reason that Skif could tell, but Raf and Deek grinned over it so broadly that he figured he’d get the joke when he saw it.

  The last chosen was the first Fair of the seven days of Midwinter Festival; Lyle went out with Deek early in the afternoon, with Skif and Raf following about a candlemark later.

  It was an overcast day, the still air with a soft feeling about it, and humid. The clouds hung low, so low they looked about to touch the roofs of the buildings to either side of the narrow street. Skif kept looking up as they walked down the streets, heading for the square where the Fair had been set up. Weather like this meant snow, the kind that packed together easily.

  He wasn’t disappointed; it came drifting down shortly after they got on their way, big, fat, fluffy flakes of it.

  “Is snow good or bad fer bizness?” Skif asked anxiously. Midwinter had never been more than a date to him before this; he’d avoided the Fairs, since he hadn’t any money to spend and kids as ragged as he’d been back in the bad Kalchan days were generally chased away by stall holders and beaks. Why bother to linger about the edges of a place you wouldn’t be allowed into? So he hadn’t any idea what to expect, or whether weather would make any difference in the number of people crowding the aisles between the stalls.

  Raf cast a glance upwards and smiled. “This kinda snow’s good,” he opined. “Gets people playful, belike. Gets ‘em thinkin’ ’bout fun, an’ not ‘bout keepin’ an eye out. Na, snow wit’ a nasty wind, tha’s diff’rent. Or colder, tha’s diff’rent, too. This’s near-perfek. Perfek ’ud be sun, right arter this kinda snow.” He scratched his head speculatively. “This weather ‘olds, reckon there’ll be drink stalls an ’ot food stalls down t’river, too, an’ aside summa th’ ponds i’ fancy parks. People’ll be skatin’, makin’ snow stachoos an’ forts, ’avin’ snowball fights.”

  “Kids?” Skif asked. “Littles?”

  Raf laughed. “Na, growed people, too! Graybeards, even! I seed ’em!”

  Skif could only shake his head at the notion of full-grown adults having the leisure to pursue snow sports.

  They heard the Fair long before they saw it, a jangle of instruments, laughter, loud voices, echoing down the narrow street. And when they saw it, it was just a patch of color at the end of the street. Only as they approached it did the patch resolve into people, waving banners, and a couple of tents bedecked with painted signs on canvas.

  Obviously, there was far more to it than that to account for all the noise, but that was all they could see at the end of the street.

  This was usually the cattle market, where larger livestock was bought and sold once every fortnight. Part of the market—the part where really fine horses and stud bulls and prize milch cows were sold—was actually underneath a building on ten tall stone pillars. It was like a fine house where the ground floor had been reserved for stalls for beasts. Skif didn’t know what went on in the building atop those pillars, but it was probably some sort of commerce. The rest of the place was just an open square, which on market days had rough wooden pens set up for the more plebeian stock; sheep, goats, donkeys, mules, and those cattle and horses without aristocratic lineage.

  As they came to the end of the street, the Fair filled that square and even edged onto the walkways around the perimeter. And the first thing that met Skif’s astonished eyes was a woman, in a flounced dress so short he could see her legs up to the thigh, balancing along a rope strung from the eaves of a shop to the staircase of the stone cattle stalls.

  “Na, young’un,” Raf said in his ear, “Iff’n ye kin do that, ye kin call yersel’ a roof walker, eh?”

  Skif shut his open mouth and followed Raf into the aisles of the Fair. Within a very short time, it became perfectly obvious to him why Bazie had picked this Fair for them to prowl. There were next to no women among the p
atrons, and very little besides food and drink for sale. The drink was all alcoholic; mulled ales, wines, and ciders, cold beer, cold wine, and cold spirits of wine, which Skif had only heard of, never seen. The food was all hot, spicy, or salty. The rest of the stalls were uniformly for either entertainment or games of chance. And there were more entertainers in this place than Skif had ever seen in his lifetime. Jugglers, acrobats, musicians—that was only the start of it. There were trick riders, most of them women and attired very like the girl on the rope overhead—a man who did the most astonishing things with a loop of rope—a fire-eater—a sword swallower. And girl dancers, whose costumes were even more abbreviated than the riders! Which was probably why most of the patrons here were men and boys. . . .

  The dancers, of which there were two different troupes, and a set of raree shows promising to display the most amazing oddities, held pride of place in the stone cattle stalls. They’d used their tents to fashion canvas-walled rooms beneath the roof, firmly anchored to the stone sides of the stalls, making it impossible to lift the corner for a free look, to the acute disappointment of the boys swarming the place. The rest of the entertainers had to make do with their tents.

  Raf found a good place for him to stand out of the way, just beside the stone staircase, where he also had a fine view of the ropedancers. He disappeared into the crowd.

  Wake up now, he told himself sternly. Ye’re here t’work, not gawk.

  It was hard, though—so many distractions, what with the dancers going across the rope when the crowd tossed enough in their dish to make it worth their while, with the glimpses of men on stilts at the farther edge of the Fair, the music coming from the dancers’ stalls, and the enthusiastic bawling of the tent men, each proclaiming that nothing had ever been seen like the wonders in his tent.