Ramagar nodded his head slowly. “There is no doubt as to the beauty of your prize,” he said. “Or even its value.” As he spoke he poured Vlashi another glass. “But tell me, have you found a buyer for it yet?”
The pickpocket’s eyes twinkled like a child’s. “Finding a buyer is easy,” he said with a giggle. “A hundred merchants in the Jandari would beg me for the chance to own such a gift. But finding one who will meet the right price, ah, Ramagar, that is a different matter. A very different matter. I must not be hasty. No, not hasty.”
Ramagar hid his amusement. “I agree. So have you come to ask my help?”
“I have. Unless of course,” he said slyly, “you might wish to purchase the prize yourself.”
The rogue among rogues, thief among thieves, smiled and leaned back in his chair. All the while that Vlashi looked him in the eye Ramagar’s mind was clicking. He studied his companion, wondered if a bit more wine might not lower his asking price, and just how much he would really have to pay for it.
“How much do you want?” he asked directly.
Vlashi frowned and gazed at his glass. “For a quick sale, and for a friend, I can let you have it for a nominal sum. Yes, a very nominal sum.”
Ramagar became stern. “How much”
“A hundred pieces of silver,” to which he hastily added, “and ten of gold.”
The thief grimaced. “Your price is preposterous,” he said with irritation. “No man would pay so much.”
“You take me for a fool, my friend. It’s worth that and more. And you know it!”
Ramagar was at a loss to disagree. The prince who had the prize forged might have paid as much as a hundred pieces in gold. “Take it somewhere else, Vlashi. I cannot meet your price.” And the thief rose to leave.
“My friend,” replied the pickpocket, “resume your place, please. The night is young, and we have yet to begin our discussion in earnest.”
Ramagar sat down, pretending to be vexed. His first ruse had worked, for he had no intention of giving up easily.
“Let me see it again,” he said gruffly.
Reluctantly, as if parting with a part of his very being, the pickpocket once more handed over his prize. Ramagar, sheltering it from the prying eyes of others, held it up to the light and slowly turned it round and round. He slid the blade out from the scabbard and held his breath in wonder. The steel glowed ice-blue. Ramagar knew this blade had been forged with the care that a craftsman gives only to a king. The edge was so sharp that the slightest touch of his finger against it brought forth blood.
Ramagar slid the blade back, handed it over. “Fifty in silver. Not a copper more.”
Hurt showed on Vlashi’s pockmarked face. “You play games with me, thief. Twice the price is a bargain.”
“Then sell it—if you can,” Ramagar replied. “A prize such as this will be missed by its true owner. The soldiers will be seeking it. And the man found with it in his possession risks losing his head. No, my pickpocket friend, the price you ask is far too high. Slit your own throat if you like, but do not ask me to slit mine.”
Vlashi began to sweat. He had not thought of the consequences Ramagar had described. And it was most certainly true; carrying the prize around made him a marked man. Every soldier, every mercenary, every brigand, and every thief would desire it. Men who would stop at nothing to get it. Vlashi realized that he would be better off without it. Let the next owner live with such fear. He would sell it now and be done. Yet, his Jandari instinct was still not about to let him part with it without receiving at least a measure of its true value.
“Eighty, no less. Cash, paid tonight. Have we a bargain?”
The thief shook his head. “Sixty and no more…”
“Do you jest? Even Oro would offer more. A dirty swine like that would make me a better offer. Ah, Ramagar, you do me an injustice. My feelings are hurt. We are friends. Seventy-five …”
Ramagar laughed and called to the landlord. “Bring us some playing cards,” he demanded. The landlord snapped his fingers and the servant girl came running with a fresh deck which she spread in front of them and placed on the table before she withdrew.
Ramagar took the cards in his hand and began to shuffle. His black eyes gazed into Vlashi’s. “I make you a proposition, my friend. One that can leave neither of us with hurt feelings.” He spread the cards evenly across the table, face down. “A single game of jackals and hounds. If you win, I pay seventy-five …”
Vlashi grinned like a cat. Jackals and hounds was his game. No man, not even Ramagar, could beat him at it.
The thief stopped him as he tried to draw a card. “But if I win,” Ramagar continued, “you sell the prize for forty.”
“Forty!”
Vlashi’s outraged scream caught the attention of others.
“Hush, my impatient friend.”
The pickpocket stuttered, trying to get the words out as fast as he could. “But moments ago you offered me sixty!”
“Now it is you that hurt me, Vlashi. We are both men of the world, are we not? Men of the Jandari. Willing to risk our lives every day in the gamble of life. Play me this single game. Seventy-five is yours tonight if you win. Seventy-five! And even if you lose, you still walk away a man of wealth. Forty pieces of silver … Enough to keep your belly full for months. Women to share your bed, a new cloak, the finest wine available …”
Vlashi smacked his lips and swallowed. He glanced at the green-haired whore, her full breasts taunting and tantalizing him. The roundness of her hips, her sensuous mouth perhaps upon his own later this night.
“Make your offer fifty, Ramagar, and the bargain will be sealed.”
Ramagar nodded. Fifty it would be.
A new bottle of wine was called for and brought; each man poured a glass filled to the brim. Vlashi downed his nervously while Ramagar sipped. Then they each, in turn, drew three face-down cards, held them close, and eyed them carefully.
“You first,” said the pickpocket.
The thief was in no hurry. He studied his cards and after a long moment’s time, while Vlashi sweated, placed the first card face up on the table. It was a serpent. A red-eyed cobra.
Vlashi chortled and put down his own. A bear.
“My bear takes your serpent,” he wheezed triumphantly. And he scooped up both cards and placed them beside him. It was his turn to throw first.
The card was a strong one. A hound.
Ramagar kept his stare to Vlashi’s face and put his own second card beside it. The pickpocket winced. It was a fox. Both cards were of the same value and no one could claim them. The entire game would now rest on the final throw, the winner claiming all four, and taking the match.
Tiny beads of sweat broke out across Vlashi’s forehead. He put down his third card, palm still covering it. Ramagar did the same. At last Vlashi ventured forth and showed his strength.
“A jackal!” he cooed. “Only one card in the deck is stronger. The game is mine!”
Vlashi’s face glowed when he saw the thief frown. He was certain he had won. Ramagar had only one chance in a hundred to beat him. And the thought of seventy-five pieces of silver in his pockets made Vlashi shake with laughter.
“The game is not done yet, pickpocket,” growled Ramagar. And when Ramagar’s hand was removed, Vlashi’s jaw hung open wider than a street urchin’s.
The card was a dragon—a wild card, and all-powerful. Even the mighty jackal fell to its presence.
Vlashi slammed his fist onto the table, causing the bottles and glasses to quiver. Ramagar laughed loudly and held out his hand for the prize.
Vlashi pouted but there was nothing he could do. Ramagar had won fairly; at least Vlashi knew that he could never prove that he hadn’t.
“Not so fast,” said the pickpocket, offended at the waiting hand. “The agreed price was fifty. Where’s my money?”
Ramagar quickly begun to empty his pockets, pieces of silver jingling on the table. Vlashi began to count. There were seven piec
es of silver, one of gold, a handful of coppers that Ramagar had been saving.
“Where’s the rest?”
The thief took out the emerald ring. “This is worth twenty,” he said, handing it over. Vlashi took it and examined. He nodded. Ramagar showed him the gold pendant. “This is worth ten more.” The pickpocket grabbed it. “What else?”
Ramagar slid the wine bottles to his side of the table. “You paid for these as well. That should make us more than even.”
Vlashi drew a long breath and sighed, sure that somehow he was getting the poorer end of the bargain. But to refuse now, and try and keep the prize, could easily so arouse the thief that he might end up minus the scimitar and the money as well. Not to mention a few broken ribs.
“Don’t act so dejected, my friend,” said Ramagar, smiling broadly. “You have both the wine and her,” he glanced at the waiting whore, “to console you. And I’m sure you’ll find them equally pleasing.”
Vlashi reached inside the tunic again, and for the last time fondled his prize. Ramagar snatched it and quickly stood up from the table. “Take care, Vlashi,” he called, flinging his cloak. And turning on his heels he strode from the tavern.
“Ah, well,” mumbled the pickpocket. He downed another gulp of wine and looked up at the whore. When she smiled he beckoned her with his finger, soon to forget this day and the strange turn of events it had brought.
The hour was late. The busy Street of Thieves and all the others in the Jandari had become quiet in the hours before dawn. Ramagar felt the night chill, the cruel winter wind blowing harsher as it always did before the sun came up.
He had not a penny to his name; not a halfpenny to buy a few slices of bread. Everything he possessed had been given to Vlashi, but he was certain that come the morrow he would be a wealthy man for it. There was still time left for him to seek another benefactor, as he fondly called his victims. Somewhere he might yet find some poor soul too drunk to stand with a purse containing a few pieces of copper. But Ramagar’s thoughts strayed from such notions; he could think only of the prize he clutched in his pocket, and of bringing it to Mariana to see.
Far from the Street of Thieves, past the Avenue of Pigs he walked. The byways narrowed, taking on an eerie silence. Occasionally Ramagar glanced this way or that at a sudden noise, only to realize that it was the banging of shutters that caused his unease. The bitter wind was his only companion.
The life of a thief is a lonely one. For Ramagar, it was at this time of night that he was forced to face this obvious truth. As a boy, alone and awake in the night, prowling the alleys like a cat, he would fight back tears in a losing battle, only to stop when there were no more tears to cry. Ramagar had no home. Not then, not now. No mother, no father. Only the streets. Only the dark shadows in which he prowled incessantly, stealing a piece of bread, a slice of fruit. By day he would climb to the roofs of the hovels and there, bathing in the warm, gentle sun that blessed these lands nearly every day of the year, he would curl himself up against the wall and sleep. And when he woke, the sun would be all but gone. The shadows would begin to descend before his eyes and he would greet them like old friends. And under their cloak he would descend to the streets, seeking another piece of bread, another piece of fruit, anything that might sustain him till the day when the cycle would begin anew.
When he was eleven he met one-eyed Jackal. The old man was renowned throughout the Jandari and young Ramagar had stood in awe. Who in the entire city had not at one time or another heard fearful tales of the best thief the Jandari had ever known? Once, it was said, a cohort of soldiers had combed the alleys and catacombs for an entire month to find the wily rogue. But the Jackal was too smart for mere men; with fire in his eye and laughter on his lips he eluded them. Eluded them one and all—and made a laughingstock of the entire Regent’s Garrison.
But that had been when the Jackal was young. Before his capture and torture. His right eye gouged from its socket, his face bloodied and broken, the Jackal somehow managed to escape. But he was never the same. The loss of his eye had taken much of his skill, and, Ramagar knew, much of his spirit. But not his wits. No, never that.
For reasons the young Ramagar never learned, one-eyed Jackal had taken a liking to him. Perhaps he saw the lad as the son he never had, or perhaps he saw in him some of the qualities that he himself had possessed as a youth. For whatever reason, the Jackal had taken Ramagar under his wing. And he vowed a vow; that he would take this urchin, this stealer of bread and fruit, and make him not merely a thief, but a thief of thieves. Through Ramagar, the Jackal would live again.
Day after day the Jackal would walk with him through the bazaars, teach him how to spot men of substance, show him how to recognize true nobility from that of con men and hucksters. He showed the lad just where a merchant’s purse might be found, where a dowager might carry her gold. He refined his speech, taught the letters of the alphabet so that the lad might read the wall posters and notices and learn better the doings of the city. Picking pockets was easy for the boy. It was a natural talent. But any fool can learn that lowly trade. Indeed thieves, true thieves that is, held only contempt for such men. A real thief has finesse; a nobility of his own, if you will. An understanding of who will make the better mark. And a thief of thieves, well, he must know all these things better than any other.
So it was, after a reasonable time of training, that the Jackal, one-eyed and hobbled, took the lad every night into the alleys and made him learn to walk them with eyes shut. Then it was the streets themselves, and not just of the Jandari, but in finer quarters where those such as Ramagar had never been before. He would gape at the fine, stately homes, stare in disbelief that anything so luxurious could exist. Real grass in front of the houses—and walls of brick that did not crumble. The Jackal would laugh at the boy’s gasps. “These are your marks,” he would say. “Learn everything you can. A man from this house carries no coppers nor silver. Only gold, Ramagar, only gold.”
And the lad would listen and nod. One-eyed Jackal gave him the finest education anyone could receive. Those lessons were never forgotten, even now, years after the Jackal had died a miserable death in an alley and Ramagar became alone again.
Yet Ramagar knew that his friend would be proud; his legacy would never die, not as long as the thief of thieves still lived. Not as long as Ramagar held breath in his body.
Saddened by these fond memories, Ramagar made his way to the tiny arched street at the very edge of the district. Mariana’s street.
Now, as everyone knows, a thief can never have a real home, nor a wife to share his bed and give him children. Yet a man must have somewhere he can turn. Someplace where he knows he is welcome and will be received, where he can rest in the knowledge that he is as safe as a thief can possibly hope to be. Equally important, he needs someone to love and to love him in return. And Ramagar loved the dancing girl. Perhaps his shyness would not let him say so in words. But his kisses would not lie. Women he had known for all his life; from prostitutes to servant girls, once even a priestess from the temple. Never, though, had there been the attraction that he felt the first time he had seen her. So struck was he by her loveliness that he was unable to work the entire night. Instead, he spent his money and his time finding out just who she was. And when he learned her name he whispered it upon his lips a thousand times over. Mariana, Mariana. The sweetest sound he had ever known.
As he came close to the two-story house he glanced up at the corner window. It was dark and he frowned. Either Mariana had not come home yet or, angered at his being so late, she had put out the lamp and gone to sleep.
Probably the latter, he thought with a sigh. Lately she had been trying harder than ever to domesticate him, to make him a husband in deed if not in name. Oh, he might bark and carry on at her nagging, but in truth he was pleased. It showed how important to her he was. For the first time since the Jackal’s death he was wanted again. It was a feeling he hoped never to lose.
Still, if Mariana was as ang
ry as he feared there would be bell to pay. It could take days to placate her. But then he thought of the scimitar, the fabulous prize in his pocket. He smiled. He could picture the glow in her eyes when she saw it.
A chilly gust of wind blew leaves at his feet as he came to the door. His sharp senses picked up the faintest of sounds from behind.
Ramagar whirled; his fist lashed out at the darting silhouette. There was a groan and a gasp when the fist connected, and the attacking figure rolled in pain to the cobblestones. The thief was about to deliver a swift kick to the face when he was stopped by a pair of haunting eyes; sad, pitiful eyes. He peered more closely at the shadowy face. It was a boy’s. Not even a boy’s, it was a child’s.
“Please, please, sir! Don’t strike!”
Hands on hips, Ramagar said, “Get out of here! Fast! Be glad I let you off so easily. And the next time you seek a mark be certain he’s someone you can handle!”
The boy staggered to his feet, and Ramagar got his first good look at his face. It was drawn and haggard, the eyes puffed, the lips blue from the cold. The boy wore no covering on his feet. No boots, no sandals, not even rags.
“Thank you for letting me go,” the boy rasped sincerely. “Forgive me… I had no idea it was you…”
The thief cast a wary glance. “You know who I am?”
“Oh, yes! You’re Ramagar. The finest thief in all of the Jandari. The master of thieves…”
Ramagar stifled a chuckle and looked at the boy sternly. “When was the last time you ate?”
The lad shrugged. “Yesterday, I think.”
The thief’s heart ached for the lad, although he would not let himself show it. And he took pity on him, perhaps in the same way one-eyed Jackal had done, so long ago. But Ramagar had no money, no spare coppers to put into the boy’s palm.
“See that window?” he asked, pointing above.
THE THIEF OF KALIMAR (Graham Diamond's Arabian Nights Adventures) Page 2
