The hard sandstone walls stretched up infinitely above his head, but Gribly was not especially concerned: he had his secret.
“Speed. Silence. Stealth,” he recited to himself. An old pickpocket had given him the motto when he was eleven, and he had never forgotten it.
Slowly, shivering with anticipation, Gribly lifted his hands to touch the wall. Then things began to go wrong. The sound of tramping feet reached his ears from somewhere just past the closest bend in the wall. Guards. His eyes darted in all directions, looking for a sufficient hiding place, but there was nothing nearby. Thwarted but not afraid, he edged quickly along the wall in the opposite direction, hoping for opportunity to present itself.
Nothing. Soon he was nearing the gates into the royal market. Every survival sense in him was throbbing for him to flee, but something inside told him that this would be his only chance to get inside. If the guards were up and about so soon, there must be something special going on in Ymeer- a crackdown on the city’s criminals, perhaps. That would spell disaster for Old Murie getting her healing balm.
Gribly continued on his course around the edge of the rounded wall, but in seconds he heard the frightening sound of booted footsteps again- from the direction he was headed for.
“Blast, blast, blast,” he growled, using the desert's own name as a curse. He was directly in front of the gates now, and with only seconds to act. Throwing his eyes upward and shielding them from the sun, he saw an unexpected way out. The gates were huge and solid, banded and hinged with spiked iron: impassable. But the gateway arch was just a smidgen too big; the gates were spiked at the top and didn’t fill up the space. If he could just climb up there…
Half a second before the two groups of guards stepped into view from either edge of the walls, Gribly slipped out of sight and into the recess where the gates stood. He stepped to the right edge, where the arch began at the ground and shot up straight before curving inward. It was time to use his secret. His gift.
The sandy-haired youth adjusted a saggy pouch hanging at his hip, then raised his arms and placed his palms on the sandstone where it was chilled by the gateway’s shadow.
Let it work, he pleaded in his mind. Let me climb fast and sure. Then he slid his palms up as high as they would go, and pulled himself up after them. His hands stuck to the wall as if they were part of it, and his feet followed suit. He climbed up the sandstone arch hand over foot over hand, like one of the myriad of small desert spine-geckoes that ran about outside the city and sunned themselves on sun-baked stones on the sand dunes of Blast. Gribly had always felt a connection to the tiny, speedy creatures. When he had discovered his gift, the connection had become almost certain.
Gribly’s gift was climbing. He could pull himself up the wall of a house as easily as any gecko, and, if the mood took him, he could even scramble across ceilings like a spider. It worked on many, but not all surfaces: stones, sand, and mud were all stickable, and because almost every structure in Ymeer had at least one of the three, Gribly was able to venture almost anywhere he wanted without discovery. Even Old Murie didn’t know about his gift; she only knew that he had a natural talent for pickpocketing or “borrowing,” as she preferred to call it. Gribly’s gift was also his secret.
He had strung his pouch from his belt so that it wouldn’t hang down when he reached the top of the arch. After a tense minute of climbing he neared the summit, and with a few more steps and reaches he was hanging in the small space between the iron-spiked top of the gate and the very middle of the arch above it. With ease born of long practice, he took first one foot and then the other off the sandstone, placing them in the space between two of the gate’s spikes. His hands followed, and in an instant he was perched, curled up in a ball, on the very top of the great double-doors, looking down into the other side of the gateway.
The tramp of guards’ feet was louder than ever. In a moment they would be at the gate. Gribly paused, his whole body tense. Everything depended on the next few seconds.
He leaned forward ever so slightly, but it was enough. He dropped off the other side of the gate, landing lightly on the huge, flat metal bar that served as a latch for the great double doors. Without pausing he sprung off again, twisting in midair to land in a perfect roll that carried him head-over-heels and launched him forward into the great sandy courtyard where the royal market was held.
Just as it had when he’d first come there, the market stunned him with its sheer magnificence. A wide lane led from the gate to the central tower of Ymeer. Heaped up haphazardly on either side was an unbelievable assortment of stalls, booths, displays and every sort of wondrous construction to block out the sun. Under the canopies buyers and sellers of every shape and size boasted, bargained, and wheedled. There were stalls for food and stalls for tools, stalls for pottery and smith-work, embroidery and artwork, armor, wigs, and candles.
Every kind of useful thing- and many that were useless- could be found there, and not just things, but animals too. There were cages far off to the right; they were out of sight, but Gribly could hear the roars, squeals, and general cacophony from the exotic beasts, which were sold for entertainment and sometimes as pets.
The young thief was lost amid the mercantile jungle in an instant, hiding himself in a large coil of ropes and nets near a stall where fish from the far-off Eastern Ocean were sold. The smell all around was awful, for the fish rarely kept well. Gribly knew he had less of a chance of being bothered there while he took a half-minute to gather his wits.
There were people everywhere in the market- which was actually good, now that he was here. The more confusion and chaos, the less chance of one of the nobles or well-to-dos taking offense at the glimpse of him, and the more chance of them not taking notice of him at all. Several dozen of the poor were always enlisted to assist the merchants with their wares anyway (for pitifully small wages), so he could blend in with the grunt-workers if he had to.
Gribly peeked out from his hiding place at the bustle of the royal market. It was a particularly busy day. Good! He had timed his trip well. The market was held every day for the convenience of the town’s rich, but only at certain times or on certain feast days would it be so truly crowded. The boy pushed his wild yellow bangs to the side to clear his vision, contemplating where to begin looking for Old Murie’s healing balm. He knew it was here… but where?
He decided to head further into the belly of the market. Waiting until the burly proprietor of the fish stall bent over to pick up a gutting knife he’d dropped, Gribly hopped out of his hiding place and sped to the next booth, where a tall, thin man with dark skin and an oiled mustache was selling fine onions and other bulb-plants to a fat, pompous cook in a white apron. As seller and customer were engrossed in a purchase, the nimble thief scrambled under one of the tables on the near side, where the dark man evidently kept his extra stock. Gribly crouched under the low wooden planks, staring through a stringy curtain of green and brown from bulbs that were piled precariously overhead.
For a few moments he allowed himself to rest, his back against the wood square while he listened to the monotonous tones of the two men near him and the raucous melody of the market beyond. His eyes were nonetheless wide open as he watched the feet of the onion-seller from under the table, waiting for an opportunity. As soon as he was certain from the position of the man’s feet that he was faced exactly in the opposite direction, Gribly snaked his hand out from under the table, felt around for a bulb, grasped one, and plucked it from its brethren. He quickly pulled his hand back under the silky fronds and examined what he’d stolen.
It was an onion, or something like it: papery white skin with a tint of green-brown, round as a ball, with withered, twisted strands a half-foot long growing off the top. He sniffed it, peeled a bit of the skin off, and bit into it cautiously. The lad had never eaten an onion before. The bitter taste surprised him, and he ate only a very little before stuffing the vegetable into his pouch for later. Perhaps he would be able to steal some cheese or
bread to go along with it.
It was time to plan his next move. Gribly crouched lower under the table to get a better look of the stalls around the onion-seller, when his eyes began to water from the spiciness of the thing he’d just tasted. That in itself did not bother him, but he began to sneeze.
“Ahh… Ahh…” he gasped, trying to stay quiet. Inside he cursed his stupidity in trying the strange vegetable so close to trouble. Now he was in real danger. A sneeze would give him away, for sure. “Ahh…”
Quickly he pinched the place above the bridge of his nose; pinched hard, in spite of the pain, and closed his mouth in an attempt to suppress the feeling. He even squeezed his eyes shut, murmuring in his head the numbers Old Murie had taught him as a child. One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six… Eight- no, Seven… Eight… Nine… By the time he reached Fifteen, the sneeze had gone away and he could survey the world outside the onion stall in peace. It would be more difficult the farther in he got, but for the moment his only worry was where to go, not how.
Chapter Two: Cleverly Disguised
After determining where he wanted to go, Gribly lost no time in slipping out from under the table and away into the hustle and bustle of the market. He ran and hid; crawled and hid; slunk, rolled and hid- one or two or three stalls at a time. Finally he made it to the section where linens, clothes, and other accessories were sold… but it wasn’t easy. The farther in he went, the more people paid attention; the more they guarded their wares as the wares became more valuable.
Finally, while hiding behind several large, upright rolls of carpet, the thief was struck with an idea. Across from the upholstery booth where he hid was a stall specializing in long, fanciful cloaks: colorful and exquisitely embroidered, in every sort of variety and every kind of style. A pale man in a large silk turban was trying one such coat on, and the merchant assisting him was entirely occupied with it.
I could use a warm-up, reasoned Gribly. At that very second he saw a quick break in the throng coursing up and down the dirt lane between the stalls; in an instant he was through the gap and behind the cloak-merchant’s booth. Peeking past the striped canvas that made up the tent, he spied the merchant still fitting his customer’s order… and between them, rack upon rack of elaborate cloaks. It was time to take a chance.
~
The merchant heard nothing and saw nothing when one of his finest garments was stolen from out of his tent, not five feet behind him. He continued measuring the pale, black-robed nobleman in front of him, anxious beyond compare. This was a most unusual and highly affluent man he was serving, indeed. A voluminous black hood enveloped his head, and black silk was draped all around his body in a style that spoke of simple comfort only the richest could afford. With the merchant’s scarlet longjacket and collar over it all, the man reeked of arrogance and power. The merchant was afraid of him, yes, but the gold coins the man had jingled under his nose held too much appeal, and he was anxious to please.
Suddenly the mysterious noble stiffened, turning his head towards the merchant with an unnatural, jerky motion. The merchant, a portly, over-dressed man, glanced up from where he had been taking in the man’s cloak at his waist. The longjacket was bloody red, shot through with veins of silver. It was the merchant’s most expensive work simply because it was so strange, and it would bring him nearly three-hundred gold coins if the transaction went well. The merchant glanced up at the man to see what was wrong: all he caught was a glimpse of the sharp, pale skin and a strand of hair dyed unnaturally dark.
“Is something the matter, M’lord?” The man did not answer, but from the position of his hood he was keeping his gaze fixed on some point in the merchant’s tent. His jaw clenched with some violent emotion, but his face stayed shrouded in shadow. “M’lord?” repeated the uncertain merchant, unbending to look the man in the eye.
“He is here…” Had he imagined it? The merchant thought he heard the pale man speak, but his lips had not moved. Was this man a sorcerer? He seemed too young…
“My Lord?” The merchant quavered, suddenly and unreasonably afraid.
Without a word, the pale man hit the merchant with the palm of his hand. The unfortunate fellow was thrown back over his own table and into the racks of clothing beyond, snapping the central tent-pole and bringing the entire structure down on him as he fell. The sorcerer remained impassive, but the injured merchant under the tent could hear his voice as distinctly as if he were shouting.
“The thief is here…”
The terrified cloak-seller stayed perfectly still where he lay. He heard the sorcerer search frantically among the wreckage of the tent, and something heavy and hard smacked his hand where it lay protruding from the colored canvas. Hurried footsteps sounded nearby: first of the pale young man fleeing, then of a crowd of astonished onlookers coming quickly closer to see what had happened. When he was sure that the danger had passed, the portly, sweating merchant emerged from the mess that had become of his livelihood.
Slowly, painfully, he stood up. The crowd around him gaped at his ruined booth and the wounds from the blow he’d been given. Utter shock prevented the merchant’s giving any coherent explanation of what had happened, at least at first. When he looked at the heavy object that had hit him during the fray, however, his mood was infinitely improved.
The cloaked sorcerer had left behind his pouch of gold. The merchant quickly stuffed it into the pockets of his own garment, hoping no one would take much notice. This was turning out to be a most interesting day. He hoped the gold in the pouch was worth the trouble it had cost him.
~
With the long, flowing cloak and heavy, lumpy turban he’d stolen, Gribly passed off rather well as an aristocrat. Striding through the crowd with an affected swagger, he tried to make his face look cleaner and meaner- as if he really was rich and snotty, like those around him. He stayed towards the middle of the wide, crowded lane leading between the mishmash of shops, careful to blend in and not attract attention. It wasn’t hard, and soon he began to think he would make a very fine lord indeed, if he was ever given the chance.
“Lord Gribly, Prince of Thieves,” he snickered to himself under his breath. The title sounded good… very good. He whispered it to himself several times as he made his way through the mob of gentility towards Ymeer’s central tower, and in a short time he was confident enough to try a new plan. Why waste time looking for Old Murie’s balm if he could just ask for directions? He looked genteel enough, he hoped, that he could simply pose as a nobleman’s son and be directed to it, rather than waste time sneaking around looking for it.
A trio of guards in bronze helmets and breastplates sauntered past, hefting their short spears and complaining about the afternoon sun that the greedy market-goers seemed immune to. Gribly found himself hiding his face and detouring far out of their way to avoid any chance of being discovered. When he chanced to look up again, he was actually in the shadows of Ymeer’s highest tower, which sat in the center of the inner walls, behind the courtyard, leading the way into the great fortress of Ymeer: an infinitely high mountain of walls, palaces, and towers, all made out of the same pale sandstone that reacted so strangely to Gribly’s touch.
I’m in over my head, the young thief realized. Careful to remain in the enormous shadow of the royal fortress, he tilted his head back in an attempt to see the top. He could not.
“Young Maister?” a wheedling, wobbly voice called out to him. He looked down again; not ten feet from him was a portable wooden skeleton of a shop, with canvas stretched across the beams to stop the sun when necessary. The caller was a hunched little man whose skin was shriveled and red from a life spent in the desert. His wares were precious pearls and gems of every shape and color- mostly fake, if Gribly knew anything about merchants of this kind. He wore the puffy, complicated dress of a noble, bunched at the elbows and knees with tight, white boots and gloves to match. They looked over-worn and old, though well-pressed.
Gribly inclined his head slightly, as he though
t a nobleman would, and stepped over to the jeweler’s booth. The wrinkly man rubbed his calloused palms together and then ran his fingers through thin, greasy brown hair flecked with white.
“Ah, Maister,” he began, “You looked, how I should say… a bit, ah, lost?”
“Not at all,” sniffed Gribly in his best nobleman’s accent. “I am merely looking… searching for a particular… a particular item which I hath not yet borro- not yet found.” The lad could have kicked himself for almost giving away his plans, but he thought his accent was well-pretended enough.
“Ah…” replied the wrinkled man, rubbing his chin now. He winked at Gribly in a way the boy didn’t like, almost as if he knew what was going on. “And this item, ah, might be it found here, among my humble collection?”
“I don’t believe it is so,” answered Gribly, and now he knew he sounded wrong.
“Ah…” shrugged the wrinkled man again, and the youth had just decided to make his escape when he began again. “You don’t, ah, seem to speak the tongue… quite like a lord, Maister. Why, ah, may that be?”
Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) Page 2
