Rules for Thieves

by Alexandra Ott

  It’s too late for Lady Atherton, but maybe not for Ariannorah. Not if we get her a healer in time.

  “Beck,” I say, “do you think you can run and get—”

  Beck is by the window. He whistles—our signal to Jiavar, who should be waiting just off the pathway. The necklace glitters around his neck.

  “What are you doing?” I say, even though I know what he’s doing. “We have to help her.”

  “How?” His voice is desperate, wanting an answer and knowing there isn’t one. And it really hits me. We cannot help her and ourselves. Beck knows this. He’s already thought it through and arrived at the logical conclusion. We cannot help her.

  But we have to. My poor bandaging effort was useless. Everything is stained: the bandage and her arm and her dress and the floor and me. My palms are red. Her death is all over my hands.

  Jiavar pulls up to the window, and Beck looks at me. “Can you walk if you lean on me?”

  In the near-darkness of the room, the bloodstains on the floor are black.

  “She’s dying,” I whisper.

  “Alli,” he says, and I can hear how much this hurts him. He knows what I know and it’s hurting him as much as me. But Beck is nothing if not practical. He will follow the rules. He knows how to survive. “If we go for help, they’ll arrest us. They might even kill us. There are other guards around.”

  “If we don’t, she’ll die.”

  “Someone will come in here any minute now. Someone will find her.” I can’t tell if he really believes this. It’s a possibility. But that’s not enough.

  I want to just leave through the window. I don’t know what they’ll do to me if I go for help, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll die. I’m out of time. I don’t even like Ariannorah anyway. . . . It would be so, so easy.

  But I know what the right thing to do is.

  And I can’t look at Beck because I already know what he will do.

  Rule number nine: Fall behind, get left behind.

  I remember the first time I met him, in the shop where he saved me from a protector. How he held a knife to an innocent man’s throat like it was easy, like it was nothing. And I admired that. I thought it was strength.

  But what Lady Atherton just did for her daughter, that was strength.

  Maybe sometimes loving someone means you have to leave them. Or let them go.

  Beck’s at my side now, taking my hand, helping me to my feet. I can’t put any weight on my injured foot, so I lean against the nearby nightstand. “Come on,” he says.

  “No.”

  He stares at me for a long moment. Fear and pain and desperation are all wrapped up in the silence, in his eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You can’t even walk.”

  “I don’t have to go far. Just far enough to call for help and have someone hear me.”

  “Alli, you’ll die. Don’t do this.”

  I have to do this. A mother who tried to save her child is dead, and it’s our fault. And that child is dying, right now. But there’s no point in saying this to Beck. He already knows it. It’s all over his face. But for him, that’s not enough. He wants the Guild too badly, and he will never get another chance. Someone who’s spent his whole life trying to survive won’t throw it all away now, when escape is only a few feet away, through the open window.

  You must be willing to take from anyone. From everyone. That’s the first rule of survival. Someone’s loss is another’s gain. Someone’s death is another’s life. The king knew this would happen. He was trying to warn me, to tell me what it would cost, but I didn’t understand until it was too late. I knew there would be a price, and I knew Beck’s first rule. But I didn’t know the price would be so high. I didn’t know I, and innocent people, would have to pay it.

  My right hand is black.

  I will die if I don’t go to the Guild now, but I could never live with myself if I did.

  “Beck!” Jiavar’s voice, from the window. “There are guards coming!”

  Beck looks into my eyes. “I don’t want to leave you behind.”

  “Then don’t leave.”

  “Alli—”

  “If you’re going, you’d better go.”

  “I’ll carry you into the carriage.” It’s more of a threat than an offer of help.

  “Beck.” My throat’s all choked up. “I’m staying.”

  He pauses. “I’ll come back for you.”

  It doesn’t matter. It will be too late.

  He hesitates, like he’s going to stay something else. Then he reaches up and brushes his thumb against my cheek, softly, for the briefest of seconds. “Good-bye.”

  He turns and walks away.

  He climbs through the window. He does not look back.

  And he’s gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I still can’t stand, so I have to hold on to the bed with one hand and shuffle along on my good foot. My right hand isn’t working anymore, and I’m dizzy. From the bed, I grab hold of the sofa, then a dresser, then I’m finally at the door.

  This whole time, Ariannorah hasn’t moved. I almost point out to her that there’s nothing wrong with her legs, but then again she’s bleeding so heavily that movement probably isn’t a good idea. Not to mention the fact that she doesn’t seem to have the firmest grip on reality at the moment. Her face is frozen, blank, like she’s just shut herself off.

  “It’s okay, I’m going to get help,” I say, but I don’t know if she hears me.

  I limp through the little parlor and barely reach the dining room before I’m all out of energy. And I have to go all the way around the dining table to get to the door. So I do the only thing I can do. I scream.

  “Help!”

  The sound echoes around the room. I can only hope it drifted through the door to an inhabited part of the house.

  A few beats of silence.

  Footsteps.

  I scream again, no words this time, just holding it out as long as I can so they’ll know where I am. I scream until my throat threatens to rip apart.

  The door crashes open, and bright lights shine on my face, blinding me.

  “What the—?”

  “Ariannorah. In the bedroom. Needs help.” My throat’s so raw the words scrape against it and come out in a rasp.

  Blurry lantern lights dance as the room sways.

  Voices surround me, but I don’t know if they’re in the room or in my mind. I am too tired to look. Too tired to move.

  The injury to my leg has only made all the cursed parts of me hurt worse, and now everything is burning. Pain racks my legs and my arm and my throat and my eyes.

  I wonder, detachedly, if this is what it feels like to die.

  It’s funny, really, in a pathetic sort of way. I spent my last few days of life trying to outrun death. If only I’d known it would catch me anyway, I would’ve spent my time differently.

  From the direction of the bedroom comes a woman’s scream.

  Then, a familiar face appears in the doorway. Lord Atherton. I expect him to recognize me, but he doesn’t even look. He’s running for the bedroom.

  There’s shouting and running in all directions as hundreds of people, it seems, pass by me, running to and from the room, and in all the shouting I catch words like “healer” and “bleeding” and “dead.” Somewhere, someone is sobbing.

  My good leg is giving out. I don’t have the strength to drag a chair all the way out from the table, so I collapse against it, falling on the armrest, not caring that it hurts. I just want to sleep; why won’t they be quiet?

  A man rushes in from the parlor and past me. He’s holding a little girl in a lacy white dress. And she’s awake. She’s alive. I don’t remember why that’s important, but something tells me it is, or it was. . . .

  Someone’s yelling. A man. Lord Atherton. Yelling in a way that’s angry and scared and confused all at once. The room floods with light. And guards, all around me. Their lanterns throw light everywhere. The walls of the room are red.

  In fr
ont of me, a woman. A maid, I think. “Here she is. The girl who was screaming.”

  Lord Atherton looks at me for the first time. His eyes widen. “The thief.”

  He walks over to me, practically shoving the maid out of the way. “What have you done?” His yell stings my ears. “What have you done?”

  Before I know what’s happening, he slaps me across the face.

  “Lord Atherton.” A low voice at the door. Disapproving.

  Atherton spins around. “Is she all right?”

  “She is weak,” the voice says, “but she will live.”

  Atherton sinks back against the wall, a balloon that’s been deflated. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. She’s lost a fair amount of blood, but the wound is not fatal, and I was able to stop the bleeding. She will recover. Now, I was told there was another . . . ?”

  Atherton looks at me, half collapsed against a chair, unable to stand. “Never mind.” Almost in a whisper, he adds, “She killed my wife.”

  I try to protest—it wasn’t me, I didn’t kill her—but I can’t remember why those words aren’t true. Maybe I did, maybe it was me, that’s why I had to stay behind. . . .

  “What would you have us do with her, sir?” asks another voice. A guard?

  Atherton hesitates. He’s going to tell them to kill me. He wants to, I can tell. But he looks at the doorway, toward whoever is standing there, and he won’t say it.

  “Call the protectors,” he orders. “And no one let her leave this room.”

  There are murmurs of assent.

  “Sir,” the voice says, “she does not look well. I could heal her—”

  “I wouldn’t have you waste your magic on a murderer.”

  The voice says something, but I can’t catch the words. The room swirls around me, the lanterns throwing shadows against the walls, and all I can see are flashes of light against the darkness before it all goes black.

  • • •

  I open my eyes and everything is white. The walls, the ceiling, the floors, the sheets, the thin gown I am wearing, the curtains over the window that filter in white sunlight. The bars of the bed I am strapped to.

  I yank back the sheets and look at my injured foot, which doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s completely wrapped in white bandages.

  I try to find things in the room that are not white, but the only thing I find is me.

  I will not think about Beck. I will not think about how his mouth twitched at the corners when he tried to hide a smile, or the way he called me Allicat, or how he annoyed me with all his plans and his backup plans and his smirks and his rules. I will not think about the way he touched my cheek or wonder what that meant. I will not think I have lost him.

  A nurse comes in, wearing, of course, a white uniform and apron. “You’re awake,” she says cheerfully. Like waking up a prisoner in a strange place is worth being cheerful about.

  “Where am I?”

  “The House of Healing, of course,” she says.

  The House of Healing. In Cerda. At the Healing Springs.

  “How . . . ?”

  “You were hit with a fairly nasty curse, dear. Xeroth’s Blood. Only the healing waters of the Springs will put it right again. Another curse hit you in the leg, but that one should heal up quickly.”

  “I know,” I say. I look down at my chest. The dark lines of the curse are there, peeking above the neckline of my nightgown, almost to my heart. I haven’t been cured yet. They must’ve already done something to help with the pain, though, because it doesn’t hurt as much as it did before. “But . . . I can’t afford it.”

  “Oh, no need to worry about that. You’ve been paid for.”

  “What? By who?” No one would do that for me.

  “It was an anonymous donation,” she says. “You were in a hospital in Ruhia, and someone just dropped off the money, with a note insisting that it go toward a trip to the Springs.”

  Beck.

  He must have made it, then. He must have taken the necklace to the Guild, passed the trial, collected the money . . . and given most of the money to me.

  “Okay,” I say. “When do I get to leave?”

  She laughs. “When you’re healed, of course.”

  “And how long will that be?”

  “The Springs will only heal one person at a time. You’re next on the list. Should be any moment now.” She pushes over some kind of cart with lots of funny objects on it. “In the meantime, let me check your bandages.”

  “I don’t need bandages. I’m not bleeding or anything.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me. “Who’s the healer here?” But she doesn’t say it like she’s angry, just amused.

  I glare back at her, but I’m not really angry either.

  “Now,” she says, bustling around her cart, “time for you to eat.” She plops a huge tray of food onto my lap.

  I stare at it for a couple of seconds without saying anything.

  “Everything all right?” she asks, looking at the tray like there’s some kind of problem.

  “This is just for one person?” I say. “I can eat all of it?” This must be some kind of joke.

  Healing Lady looks confused. “Yes, of course,” she says.

  I pick up a fork, but I’m not sure where to begin. There are so many choices. There’s steaming soup and brown rice and meat covered in creamy sauce and a pile of little blue fruits and a bunch of other unfamiliar things I can’t name.

  “I can have them make you something else,” Healing Lady says uncertainly.

  I lift a massive roll of bread off the tray. It is whole and fresh and perfect. I am afraid to take a bite of it. I just hold it for a second and inhale the fresh-baked-bread smell. My stomach rumbles.

  Healing Lady’s watching me like she wonders if I should be in the mental ward instead of hers, but I don’t know how to explain it to her. I’ll sound pathetic if I confess that I’ve never had a whole roll of bread like this before. Not one this big, anyway, or this fresh.

  Finally I set it down at the far end of the tray, saving it for last. Then I devour everything else. Healing Lady, apparently satisfied that I am eating like a normal person now, leaves the room, promising to return in a few minutes to take the tray.

  Everything is delicious, but when I get to the bread I’m glad I saved it for last. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

  A few hours later, they bring me another whole roll with dinner.

  • • •

  It’s finally my turn to visit the Springs, and Healing Lady pushes me out in a wheelchair. Outside, it’s even more beautiful than I imagined. The water is deeply, beautifully blue, bubbling softly in pools that stretch on as far as I can see. Smooth white rocks frame the pools, and around them tufts of bright green grass pop up. The vivid expanse of sky overhead stretches on uninterrupted, seemingly endless.

  Healing Lady lifts me from the wheelchair and gently places me at the edge of the water. Without hesitating, I push off from the rocks and submerge myself. The water is the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt, so soft and cool against my skin. I close my eyes and feel the blackness of the curse seeping out, feel what remains of the pain in my leg and arm and hand slowly ease. Healing.

  “Alli Rosco?” someone says.

  I do not want to move.

  “Alli, dear,” Healing Lady says. “You have a visitor.”

  I lift my head from the water, blinking. “What?”

  Mead stands at the edge of the pool, holding a small brown package in his hands. “Hey, Rosco, how’s it going?”

  As Healing Lady leaves us alone, I stare up at him in disbelief. “It was you? You paid for this?”

  Mead laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only the delivery boy. For some reason he wanted to see you—why I have no idea—but your friend Atherton’s got every protector from Ledrea to Ruhia looking for him, so you get me instead.”

  “He made it, then? Beck passed the trial?”

  “Yeah, he’s in.”

>   His tone isn’t what I expected. “You sound disappointed.”

  “Not at all,” he says, but this time his flippancy is fake. “I was just surprised, really. I thought Reigler was too good for the Guild.” He says it with derision, but there’s a hint of something else, too. Admiration.

  It makes sense now. Why people in the Guild like Ser and Mead and Jiavar and Rosalia all seemed protective of Beck, and treated me like a threat. They saw something in him that the Guild members had lost. The kind of goodness that motivated him to help some orphan girl from Azeland just because she needed it.

  But I was never the threat to Beck. It was always the Guild.

  I wish I’d known it sooner. I wish I’d saved both of us from it before it was too late. But maybe it was already too late for Beck. He made his decision long before that night at Shoringham. There is goodness in him, but the Guild is in him too.

  How long will it take for Guild life to change him? To suck out all the good? I hope it can’t, but I don’t know. He will have a hundred more Ariannorahs.

  “I dropped off the money right away, as he instructed,” Mead continues, “but I needed to deliver this personally, so I had to wait until they said you could have visitors.” He holds out the package.

  Slowly, I lift my hand from the water. For a moment, I marvel at how smooth it is. The black veins are gone.

  I take the little package from his hand, and he steps back. “Well, if that’s all.”

  “Wait.” I meet his eyes. “I’ve been dying to know—why did you steal that ring from Jarvin?”

  He holds my gaze for a long moment. “You want the truth?”

  “Please.”

  “I didn’t want the ring. I just grabbed something that I knew would trigger the spell. I gave it back to my sister the next day.” He pauses, waiting to see if I get it.

  I think I do. “You didn’t need to steal anything from Jarvin. It was . . . it was part of the tour.”

  He wanted to show me what the Guild was like. What being in the Guild meant. It was a risky, reckless thing to do—it really could have killed me, probably. But that was the point. He was willing to take a risk with my life, and willing to leave me behind to save his own skin. Any Guild member would, if it came down to it.