Valdemar 07 - Take a Thief

by Mercedes Lackey

  He slipped easily back over the Temple walls and got into his bed in the loft in plenty of time for a nap. When the bell sounded and woke him, if he wasn’t fully rested, at least he didn’t look so exhausted that anyone commented on it.

  Although the meals he’d shared with the Brethren yesterday had been shared in silence, evidently there was no actual rule of silence, for the noon meal brought a flurry of gossip from the outside world.

  “The Master Thief struck again last night,” said one of the younger priests to the rest of the table. “The streets are full of talk.”

  “And he must be from somewhere outside Haven, so they say,” added another with a shake of his head. “Singularly careless, he was; he left a trail of dropped objects behind him, I heard. I can vouch that there are so many people scouring the alleys for bits of treasure that some of the highborn have asked the Guard to drive them back to the slums.”

  “I hope,” said the Prior, with great dignity, “that the Guard declined. The alleys are public thoroughfares; they do not belong to the highborn. Neither is the Guard answerable to those with noble titles who are discomfited by the poor outside their walls. There cannot be any justification for such a request.”

  “Since there are still treasure hunters looking in every nook and cranny, I suspect they did decline,” the young priest said cheerfully. He seemed highly amused, and Skif wondered why.

  The Prior shook his head sadly. “I know that you have little sympathy when rich men are despoiled of their goods, Brother Halcom.”

  “If the gods choose the hand of a thief to chastise those who are themselves thieves, I find it ironic, but appropriate, sir,” Brother Halcom replied evenly. “This Master Thief has so far robbed two men who have greatly oppressed others. You know this to be true.”

  “Nevertheless, the thief himself commits a moral error and incurs harm to his soul with his actions,” the Prior chided him gently. “You should spend less time gloating over the misfortune of the mighty and more in praying that this miscreant realizes his errors and repents.”

  Brother Halcom made a wry face, but the Prior didn’t see it. Skif did, however, and he noted when the young priest rose from the table that his leg ended in a dreadful club foot. The priest had spoken in the accents of someone who was highly educated, and Skif had to wonder how much Brother Halcom knew personally about the two who had “officially” been robbed.

  And whether he knew anything about the one that Skif had despoiled. . . .

  For one moment, he wondered if the young man had really meant what he said. He’d sounded sympathetic.

  Fah. He’ll have no time fer the likes of me, no doubt, he thought, hardening his heart. Well, look who’s stuck muckin’ out the stalls, an who’s playin’ with the broke-winged birds! Push comes t’ shove, money an’ rank stands together ’gainst the rest of us what always does the dirty work anyroad.

  He finished his meal and went back out to clean kennels.

  With the Master Thief out last night—and everybody and his dog hunting for the goodies that Skif had let fall—the last thing Skif was going to do was to go out again tonight. No, things would have to cool down a bit before he ran the rooftops again. It gave him a great deal of pleasure, though, to lie back in the sweet-smelling hay and contemplate last night’s work. The only thing that spoiled his pleasure was the thought that this unknown Master Thief was going to get all of the credit for his work.

  On the other hand, it would probably anger the Master Thief to be saddled with the eventual blame for all of the vandalizing Skif had done.

  And at the moment, no one would be looking for a mere boy; they’d be trying to catch a man. This Master Thief was proving rather useful to Skif’s campaign.

  I s’pose I oughta be grateful to ’im, Skif thought, but he didn’t feel grateful.

  In fact, after a while, he realized that he wasn’t as satisfied with last night’s work as he thought he should be. It just wasn’t enough, somehow. He was thrashing around at random, blindly trying to hit the one he truly wanted to hurt and hoping that somehow in the chaos he’d connect with a blow. And even then—how did putting holes in someone’s roof measure up to burning down a building and committing cold-blooded murder in the process?

  It didn’t, and that was that. I want him, Skif thought angrily. I want the bastard what ordered it!

  Nothing more—but nothing less. And right now, he was settling for less.

  Still, that Brother Halcom had a point, too. He’d seemed to think that the two highborn nobles that had been robbed had pretty much deserved it and probably Lord Rovenar had done a dirty deed or two in his life, and Skif had been nothing more than the instrument of payback. That wasn’t a bad thought.

  Brother Halcom knew the highborn. . . .

  Brother Halcom might know enough to give Skif a clue or two to the identity of the one highborn that Skif really wanted. So maybe Skif ought to see if he could get Brother Halcom to talk.

  Finding someone to hurt that he knew deserved it might feel better than this random lashing out.

  And maybe, just maybe, Brother Halcom would know who the smooth-voiced highborn was.

  Skif watched Brother Halcom from a distance for a full week before making a tentative approach. He learned two things in that time; Brother Halcom was from a highborn family, and he was here because he wanted to be. Not that his family hadn’t tried to get their “deformed” offspring out of sight, but they’d chosen a much more comfortable—and secluded—Temple for him to enter. Halcom had stood up to them, and threatened to make a scene if he wasn’t allowed his choice.

  That gave Skif a bit more respect for the man, and Halcom’s value rose again in his eyes when he realized that Halcom didn’t shirk the dirty work after all. He just did the small things, rather than the large. He did his share of cleaning—usually cleaning up after the Healer Trainees when they’d finished treating a sick or injured animal. When there was a beast that needed to be tended all night, it was Halcom, like as not, who stood the vigil. And when an animal was dying, it was Halcom who stayed with it, comforting it as best he could.

  Finally, Skif found a moment to make a cautious overture to the young priest. Halcom had hobbled out to the stable to assist, not a Healer Trainee, but a farrier who often donated his time and expertise, and Skif was also called on to help. The injury was a split and overgrown hoof on a lamed carthorse; Halcom was asked to hold the horse’s head, since he, more than anyone else, was able to keep animals calm during treatment. And Skif was there to hold the hoof while the farrier trimmed it and fastened a special shoe to help the hoof heal.

  When the farrier had left, and Skif had taken the horse back to its stall, Halcom seemed disinclined to leave. “You’ve been doing good work here, friend,” Halcom said, looking around at the rest of the stable without getting up from the hay bale he was sitting on. “I’m glad you came here. Poor old Brother Absel just isn’t up to the heavy work anymore.”

  “Thankee, sor,” Skif said, keeping to his persona of country bumpkin, and bobbing his head subserviently. “Would ye might be a-givin’ me a character, too? That be what’m here for.”

  “I could probably do better than that, if what you want is stable work,” Halcom admitted, but with a raised eyebrow. “I’ve no doubt I could recommend you to several people for that. Is that what you want?”

  “Oh, aye, sor,” Skif replied, feigning eagerness.

  “Balderdash,” Halcom countered, startling Skif. “You’re better than that. You don’t really want to be a lowly stablehand for the rest of your life, do you?” His eyes gleamed with speculation. “You are much too intelligent for that. What are you aiming at? Master of Horse? Chief Coachman?”

  “Ah—” Skif stammered, before he got his wits together. “But I’ve got no training, sor. Dunno much but burthen beasts, and never learnt to drive.”

  Halcom waved that aside as of no consequence. “Nor have most boys your age when they go into service. As small as you are, th
ough—learning to handle the reins could be problematic. I’m not sure you could control a team.”

  “I be stronger nor I look, sor,” Skif said, stung.

  Halcom laughed, but it didn’t have that sly, mean sound to it that Skif had half expected. “Oh, you’d make a fine smart little footman, sitting up beside your master on a fashionable chariot, but I’ll tell you the truth, lad, there is not a single highborn or man of means and fashion that I’d feel comfortable sending you to in that capacity. The good men have all the loyal footmen they need—and the others—” he shook his head. “I won’t send you to a bad master.”

  “Ye might tell me who they be, sor?” Skif offered tentatively. “If I didna know it, I might take a place I was offered—”

  “So you can avoid them?” Halcom nodded thoughtfully. “That’s no bad idea. Clever of you to think of it.” And he proceeded, with forthright candor, to outline the character of every man he thought Skif ought not to take service with. He was so candid that Skif was, frankly, shocked. Not at the litany of faults and even vices—his upbringing in the worst part of Haven had exposed him to far worse than Halcom revealed. No, it was that Halcom was not at all reticent about unrolling the listing of faults of his “own kind.”

  As Halcom spoke, Skif found himself at war within himself. He wanted to trust Halcom, and he had sworn never to trust anyone. More than that, he wanted to like Halcom. It seemed to him that Halcom could easily become a friend.

  And he did not want any more friends.

  “That leaves plenty of good masters to take service with, mind,” Halcom pointed out when he was finished, and smiled. “And for all my differences with my own family, I can quite cheerfully recommend you to take service with them. They’re quite good to those who serve them well.”

  Huh. It’s only their own flesh’n’blood that they muck about with, eh? Skif thought. Guess you’n’me have more in common than I thought.

  “It was your own uncle that turned you out, wasn’t it?” Halcom said suddenly, startling Skif again with his knowledge of Skif’s “background.” Halcom laughed at his expression, wryly. “I suppose we have more in common than either of us would have suspected.”

  “’Twas your nuncle sent ye off?” Skif ventured.

  Halcom nodded, and his face shadowed. “My existence was an embarrassment,” he admitted sourly. “My uncle feared that my presence in his household would cast a shadow over some pending betrothal arrangements he was negotiating. My father—his younger brother—has no backbone to speak of, and agreed that I ought to be persuaded to a vocation.”

  “What?” Skif asked indignantly. “They figger you’d scare the bride?”

  “My uncle suggested that the prospective bride’s father might rethink his offer if he thought that deformity ran in my family,” Halcom said bluntly, his mouth twisting in a frown. “Since my parents are dependent on his generosity for a place, I suppose I can’t blame them. . . .” He sighed deeply, and his expression lightened. “In the end, really, I’m rather glad it happened. I had very little to do with myself, I’m really not much of a scholar, and—well, needless to say, I’m not cut out for Court life either. I’ve always loved animals, and neither they, nor my fellow Brothers, care about this wretched leg of mine. And I did manage to shame my uncle into making a generous donation when he dumped me here.”

  Skif nodded his head, concealing as best he could that he was racked by an internal struggle. He really, truly wanted to be Halcom’s friend. And he really, truly, did not want to make another friend that he knew he would only lose.

  I ain’t stayin’ here forever, he told himself sternly. He wouldn’ be so nice if he knew what I was. Hellfires, he’d turn me straight over to th’ Watch if he knew what I was!

  But he could almost hear the place whispering to him. It wanted him to stay. He could have a friend again. No one here would care what he had been, only what he was now, and what he might become. Oh, he’d never be rich—but he’d never starve either.

  He steeled himself against the seductive whispers of peace. Him? Bide in a place like this? Not when he had a debt to repay! Not when there was someone out there that was so ruthless he would do anything to anyone who stood in his way!

  Besides, this place would put him to sleep in a season. He’d turn into a sheep inside of a year. And if there was one thing that Skif had no desire to become, it was a sheep.

  “Well, I imagine you’ve heard more than enough to send you to sleep about me,” Halcom said, hauling himself to his feet again. “And I still have my charges to attend to. I won’t keep you from your own duties any more, lad—but do remember what I’ve told you, and that if you want a second letter of commendation to go with the Prior ’s when you leave, I will be happy to write one for you.”

  That last, said as Halcom turned to go, had the sound of a formal dismissal, superior to inferior.

  There, you see? he taunted that seductive whisper. I ain’t a friend to the likes of a highborn, even if his people did cast ’im off. A mouse might’s well ask a hawk t’be his friend. Hawk might even say yes—till he got hungry.

  Another week passed, and the city was struck with a heat wave that was so oppressive people and animals actually began dying.

  The Queen closed the Court and sent everyone but her Privy Council out of the city. But there was nowhere for the poor and the working classes to go, and even if there had been, how could ordinary people just pack up and leave? How would they make a living, pay their bills, feed their children? Life in Haven went on as best it could. As many folk as could changed their hours, rising before dawn, working until the heat grew intolerable, enduring as best they could until late afternoon, then taking up their tasks again in the evening. The Prior knew a clever trick or two, though, and the Brethren began going through the poorer neighborhoods, teaching people what the Prior had taught them—for although it was the Lord of the Beasts that the Brethren served, nevertheless, Man was brother to the Beasts.

  Water-soaked pads of straw in windows somehow cooled the air that blew through them, so long as there was a breeze. And if there wasn’t, the cheapest, more porous terra-cotta jars filled with water and placed about a room also helped to cool the air as the water evaporated from them. Stretching a piece of heavy paper over a frame, then fastening that frame by one side to the ceiling and attaching a cord to a corner created a huge fan that would create a breeze when the winds themselves didn’t oblige; there were always children to pull the cord, and they didn’t mind doing so when the breeze cooled them as well. And the same cheap terra cotta that was used for those jars could be made into tiles to be soaked with water and laid on the floor—also cooling a room or the overheated person who lay down on them. It helped; all of it helped.

  People were encouraged to sleep on flat rooftops or in their gardens or even in parks by night, and in cellars by day.

  But there was always someone greedy enough to want to make a profit from the misfortune of others. Suddenly the dank and dark basement rooms that had been the cheapest to rent became the most expensive. Not all landlords raised the rents on their cellars, but many did, and if it hadn’t been so stiflingly hot, there might have been altercations over it.

  But it was just too hot. No one could seem to get the energy even to protest.

  Skif was terribly frustrated; it was nearly impossible to move around the city by night without being seen! And yet, with all of the wealthy and highborn gone, it should have been child’s play to continue his vendetta! Why, the huge manors and mansions were so deserted that the Master Thief must have been looting them with impunity, knowing that no one would discover his depredations until the heat wave broke and people returned to Haven.

  Hellfires, Skif thought grumblingly, as he returned from an errand to the market, through streets that the noon heat had left deserted. It’d be easier to make a run by day than by—

  Then it hit him. Of course! Why not make his raids by day? He was supposed to be resting, like everyone and eve
rything, during the heat of the day. No one would miss him at the Priory, and there would be no one around to see him in the deserted mansions, not with the skeleton staffs spending their time in the cool of the wine cellars, most of them asleep if they had any sense!

  That’s pro’lly what the Master Thief’s doing! he thought with glee. He was delighted to have thought of it, and enjoyed a moment of mental preening over his own cleverness.

  Well, he certainly would not be wearing his black “sneak suit” for these jobs. His best bet was to look perfectly ordinary. The fact was, he probably wouldn’t even need to get in via the rooftops; the doors and windows would all be unlocked. After all, who would ever expect a thief to walk in the kitchen door in broad daylight?

  He brought the bag of flour and the basket of other sundries he’d been sent for to the kitchen and left it on the table. The Brother who acted as cook had changed the routine because of the heat. A great many things were being served cold: boiled eggs, cheese, vegetables and so forth. Actual cooking was done at night and in ovens and on brick stoves erected in the kitchen courtyard. The biggest meal of the day was now breakfast; the noon meal was no longer a meal, but consisted of whatever anyone was able to eat (given the heat, which killed appetites), picked up as one got hungry, in the kitchen. Big bowls of cleaned, sliced vegetables submerged in water lined the counters, loaves of bread resided under cheesecloth, boiled eggs in a smaller bowl beside them. There was butter and cheese in the cold larder if anyone wanted it, which hardly anyone did.

  Skif helped himself to carrot strips and celery and a piece of bread; he ate the bread plain, because he couldn’t bear the thought of butter either. The place might just as well have been deserted; the only sign that there had been anyone in the kitchen was the lumps of bread dough left to rise under cloths along their shelf.

  Skif wasn’t all that hungry either, but he ate and drank deeply of the cooled water from yet another terra-cotta jar. Then he went straight back out, as if he had been sent on a second errand. Not that there was anyone about to notice.