City of the Uncommon Thief

by Lynne Bertrand

  The tufuga opened his eyes. The reptile was writhing, its jaws clamped on the stag’s ear and what was left of the antler, yanking while the stag struggled to pull away.

  “You must do something!” the tufuga screamed. “Do something or that thing will tear the stag apart!”

  Sitembile took an arrow from a quill over her shoulder and set it in a bow. Her snake essed between her feet. “The best I can do now is make it quick for the stag.”

  “No!” said the tufuga. “That will be the end of Errol Thebes as well. Kill the predator!”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Yes, I am! Why not?!”

  “Because it’s a risk. It will bring the attention of Null’s men. It will bring their bolts.”

  “We can’t just sit here! Do it!” said the tufuga.

  Sitembile was talking to herself now: “If this is the absurd heroism of the roofs, well, all right, then.” She pulled back on the bowstring, exhaled, and let fly the arrow. The arrow sang through the dead air of the pit, through the crowd, past the stag and past the monstrous reptile, through the clutch of men who were standing at the wall, and into the navigable center of Null’s chest. Null looked up in surprise and his eyes settled on Sitembile. For a moment the two of them considered each other. His entire existence depended upon fear. She was unafraid. He put his hands to the shaft of the arrow, fell over the railing, and into the pit.

  “You missed!” yelled the tufuga. “You hit that man Null! When the reptile is right there with the stag in its jaws! I thought you were an archer! How could you miss the reptile?”

  “I haven’t missed a mark since I was four. You said to hit the predator.”

  The reptile in the pit had caught sight of Null, who was dragging himself toward a wall of the arena. In a blur of red, Null’s name became more fitting that it ever had been.

  “Shoot the reptile now!” the tufuga squealed. He reached for Sitembile to drag her forward and aim again. She was not there, and so he turned and saw. Sitembile lay on the stone ledge, her hands to the nock of the bolt in her chest. The asp was curled up her hands, its weight slack, its eyes warmer than they had been in life.

  An Army

  WHEN I ASKED HIM LATER, the tufuga was unable to explain where the bolt had come from. He hadn’t even seen it. In his grief, he thought the whole thing could un-happen if he only did not move. He stood watching the stag, lying now in the dirt, and watched the reptile turn to face the tired deer and then trot toward the animal to finish it off.

  A hopelessness pervaded the arena.

  And then? Then. There came a rumble from the shafts and tunnels of the mines. Stone and gravel rained from the ceiling of the arena. The tufuga later remembered thinking the city was falling into the earth, crushing them all. From the wings of gaol came a stampede. An insane wild herd of steeds, hares, satyrs, rossignols, wildcats, crickets, foxes, peafowl, bears, bulls, mountain goats, wildcats, werebears, bonnacons, minotaurs, oxen, unicorns, eels. Eels. All pouring out of the tunnels and into the stands, one on the heels of the next, as if a river of fur and scales and feathers had burst the walls.

  The stag was pulling himself up, trying to run. The reptile, riled by the fury of the sound, threw open his mouth. Pliny’s army, that mob of field-guide beasts, had charged over the iron wall and were coming into the arena itself. They were led by a strange stag who moved with awkward gracelessness, as if its front was trotting and its back was galloping. Its white tail hung off to the side. It came to stand next to Eikthyrnir, and the rest of the animals surrounded the wounded stag.

  * * *

  —

  If I am to be accurate, none of the animals were exactly beasts. In a reversal of the strange truths of this tale, here were the skins of animals inhabited by humans. Skins formed into costumes and masks from Pliny House, from Beklemek, for the high parties of Winter Ship.

  The reptile took one look at the huge, bizarre herd, roared into its lair, and the tufuga leapt from his ledge and rolled shut the gate.

  Rest in Peace

  RIP STRUCK THE FLINT OF HIS LAMP. He had never come so far into the earth, to where his brother had gone to hide. He found tracks in the gravel. Bits of wood stacked in the shape of tiny towers. He pushed his lamp through the pinch, ducked, and pressed himself in. There, among the discarded remains of abacuses, barrel staves, torn fishing nets, locks with keys broken in them, and vihuela strings, he found what remained of Fenn.

  He cleared a place to sit, reached into his pocket, and uncorked a flask.

  There was a time when he and Fenn had raced the halls of Thebes House, wild in the eyes and not yet sharp in the teeth, when they won all the races and knew all the hiding places, when they taught each other to make knots on pairs of spikes. Before they realized who they were and what Fenn had to do to stay alive.

  Then there was that day. The regnat and one guard. No witnesses. The choice of three lines. Rip pointed, and the guard strapped both brothers to the end of it. Just before they neared the earth, they realized it was the wrong line. Fenn wrapped himself around Rip. Held him in his arms. Fenn was the elder, after all.

  Rip raised his flask. “Stay high.”

  Vitriol

  IT WAS AS THOUGH some fiend had gotten into Errol’s lungs and was scraping the walls of his chest with shards of glass. When he opened his eyes in the evening, he was in the middle of a convulsion.

  He saw Marek and said only, “Mercy.” When the convulsion released him, he said, “Tell it.”

  “The regnat and the abbot are gone,” Marek said. “That creature Utlag is gone. The fleet commander ran from the city to meet up with the fleet. He was empty-handed. That monk Nyree has brought the iron spikes to safety.”

  “Where is Rip?”

  Marek hesitated. “He went to see Fenn.”

  Errol convulsed and his body arced; every muscle in it pulled taut. The long bones in his thighs and arms bowed so hard Marek thought he would snap.

  “It was a wyrm, was it not? The regnat’s beast?”

  “Aye, a dragon,” said Nyree, who had just come in. “It was bigger than the vault. We found scales, claws, teeth, whatever was not consumed by the fire. Everything is scorched and the walls of the vault were ruptured. You survived because, we think, the regnat was between you and the beast.”

  “I will die, too, from the venom. We’ve all read of wyrms.”

  “You’re improving by the uur,” she lied.

  “Take me to the river.”

  She shook her head. “There are riots, now that the people have heard a rumor the regnat and the abbot are gone.”

  But the two of them carried Errol to the river and pitched a tent for him on the bank. The rains were coming down hard by then, with winter thunder. Errol felt the steadiness of the earth under him.

  The Double

  NYREE WAS NOT REQUIRED TO CLEAN. She was the director of the staff of the scriptorium, and now the staff was treating her as the new abbot. But she had to think about that bucket she had set behind the ovens. She had to do something about it.

  She resolved to take the bucket outside and light a fire, set the whole thing ablaze. She would gather a few of the monks to do it with her. No one should pass from the earth, even such a creature as Utlag, without being mourned. She went to the bucket and braced herself to do this work. But the bucket lay on its side, empty.

  Fright

  NYREE RAN TO THE FLAP of Errol’s tent on the riverbank and stopped, breathing hard. She overheard two voices from within.

  “—but the abbot is dead,” one of them said. That was Errol. “Are you not gone, too?”

  “I am not exactly what you think,” said the other. “It’s a relief Lugius is gone, actually, for he despised me. I will only have to look five minutes to find another banhus. I just find someone who’s miserable, as the abbot was. I dig out his spirit and replace it with
me. I will need those iron spikes—”

  “If you are not a fylgia, what are you, Utlag?” said Errol. “Some sort of parasite?”

  “A freak. I am one of one.”

  “I am in the presence of a double walker,” said Errol.

  “Doppelganger, jawohl!” said Utlag. “That’s one name they’ve given me, outside the wall. More ancient? Ka. Move to the north? Vardoger. Sooner or later, everyone tries to name the thing. A man and his double.”

  “What do you call yourself?” said Errol.

  The other paused. “I am a lack.”

  “I see,” said Errol. “Well, you managed to wound my mother, Margaret Thebes. There’s more than one way to inhabit someone’s banhus.”

  “That was different. I thought it was possible—”

  “You thought it was possible someone could love you?”

  “Be careful, runner. What you think you know is not even half of what’s needed. I was rare.”

  “Which explains your search for the rossignol or the bonnacon, in a city of bone houses,” said Errol.

  “We all long for something.”

  “I don’t.”

  “What a fool. You above all. You want to be the one hero. You, who sacrifices the men closest to you.”

  “Sacrifices?” said Errol, leaning back into his bedding. “What have I sacrificed? I don’t feed the weak to the strong.”

  “Not even your brothers?”

  “My brothers are better off today than they were yesterday.”

  “Ah. So no one has told you.” Outside the tent Nyree cringed. “They were my sons. Their lives depended upon my life, and I came undone, as you arrogantly chose. It’s not so easy to rebuild them. Suffice to say, you are a worthy adversary, but as a friend, you are truly dangerous.”

  Errol felt a convulsion slipping into his muscles. “Tell me again. Did you ever even once get what you were trying for, using the iron spikes?”

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “Not a griffin? Bonnacon? Caladrius, winged horse, yale, manticore, rossignol. Not a wyrm?”

  “Nothing. I fed the refuse to the rest of the—”

  “The beast that attacked us in the vault was a wyrm!”

  “We couldn’t even get a ram with one horn in the middle of its head—” Utlag stopped. “What did you say?”

  “It was a dragon. The regnat’s beast.”

  Utlag faltered. “I knew it. No. Yes. False! You weren’t there!”

  “Oh, I was definitely there. It came after the abbot like a fiend from hel’s own furnace.”

  “It was a gharial. People with no experience often—or maybe it was a crested newt. For sure. Was it the size of my hand?”

  “It was as big as the vault. Scales. Venom. Speed. Smelled like a bonfire. Screamed like a hundred men burning in its innards. Spat flames. The regnat was trapped in his own blaze.”

  “How did you escape the vault?”

  “Irfelaf,” said Errol. “I shielded myself beneath the last regnat of this city.”

  Utlag’s neck pulsed. “I must see go and see what’s left of it,” he said, rising again to his feet. “There must be more of them. I can begin again. Tear open some banhus and start over.”

  Errol gasped now, overcome by the seizure. “You will find no banhus in this city to inhabit. We are strong now.”

  “That is a pretty sentiment. But I can always find some miserable, jealous wretch.” Utlag turned again to go and stopped, for he saw me coming toward him.

  I felt danger but Utlag shifted his gaze, for directly behind me came Marek and Dagmar with Dagmar’s fleet of wolves, then the apothecarist and the tufuga, and finally Jamila. The foundling was wearing Errol’s coat over a black tunic and leggings, her night-black hair let out of its braid. She reached up to put her hand on the muzzle of the stag, who limped next to her.

  Eikthyrnir’s antlers were gone, and his fur was caked with blood where his left ear was gone as well. His head pulled up hard with every step but he moved with purpose.

  Utlag’s eyes shifted to a huge black creature behind the stag, a beast so large it looked like a turret of an iron tower. Its hoofs were feathered with hock fur; it carried its beautiful head at the girl’s neck, watching her face, its broad wings drawn back against its sides. Behind the winged horse came a slew of kelps from the street.

  “Outnumbered,” Utlag whispered, and was gone.

  In the Balance

  DRAGON VENOM WAS NEW TO US ALL. Errol’s pulse was weak, his breathing erratic. I talked to him all night, told him every story I knew, from when we were kelps. Every bit of news from the guilds. It was the reverse of a going-tale: any tale to keep him here. We called in Dagmar and the apothecarist to apply whatever seeds, pulp, pith, scale, bark, or spit they could extract from the winter earth.

  At midday Jamila came into the tent and took off his blankets, wrung out a camphor rag and heated it in the iron pot on a cookstove Marek had set up in the corner. She washed his face, his shoulders, his chest.

  She stopped to look at his arm. There was his guild mark—the crow, with its wings. And the brand above it, marking him an outlaw. And there was his third-year mark, his resting house, the one he had gotten when he visited the tufuga on his way off Samoa. It was the shatranj faras, the chess piece, the horse that he had given Kitchen Girl. Errol opened his eyes.

  “Stay high,” Jamila whispered.

  “Is this heofon?” he said. “Am I gone?”

  “I had heard you were improving.”

  “You were misinformed. Where did you come from?”

  She turned her head to the door, where the stag had pushed his head into the tent.

  “What happened to him?” Errol whispered.

  “The antlers will grow back,” said Jamila.

  “No. They won’t. We’re dying.” His back arched in a spasm. “Jamila, don’t stay on the streets, when I’m gone. Go high.”

  “You may not leave.”

  Here he grimaced in pain. “I’m not at my best.” He cringed and roared, and put his hands on his skull. “You should go.”

  A High Meeting

  THERE WAS NO HANDRAIL. I had seen the narrow, tiny spiral stairs that led from the street to the pinnacle of the scriptorium roof. But I had seen them from my own tower and now I was climbing them, wishing for a handrail. I was tailed by the feathered harbinger of the dawn, clucking his disapproval as he flapped to keep up.

  “Are you here?” I yelled at the top. My clothes were soaked with sweat. “Where are you?!”

  “Gea.” The voice sounded like a voice muffled by a rain. Yes.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” I said.

  “I was there.”

  “I’ve come to demand answers. Why don’t you just step in and save Errol Thebes? We both know he deserves it.”

  The mearc-stapa was silent for a while. A roosting stick appeared and Ovid hopped onto it.

  “You want him fixed, like he’s a frayed line.”

  “Yes. I do. I can even get down on my knees if you want. If that’s protocol.”

  “Cliché.”

  “What, then?”

  “A small exchange.”

  “Excellent. Where do I put the money? Is there some sort of cup or an account or what?”

  “A different exchange. But I am obliged to warn you that Errol Thebes will only be getting into more trouble with the ships after that. Which means that if you want the job done right, I’ll also need to slip upriver where the ships are anchored and draw up a wind to send them home.”

  “Yes. Good point. Do that.”

  “While I’m at it, I might as well fix the whole situation on the streets. Disease. Death. Felonies. Otherwise Errol will be getting involved with that again. And let’s make it so everyone gets along. While I’m at it, I’
ll bring Fenn back from the dead. And a handful of others. Sitembile. Feo. Durga. There’s a start—”

  “I suppose.”

  “Might as well bring back the abbot, too, and the regnat. Let’s make it so they get along with everyone. I mean, as long as I’m doing this.”

  “That’s too much. Just save Errol. What do I owe you?”

  “We can make it an even exchange; let’s say you fix Margaret Thebes.”

  I hesitated. “What do you mean, fix her? She isn’t broken.”

  “Talk to her. Persuade her to fall in love with better men from now on, instead of Utlag, who cast the city into despair. Get her to be—how would you say it?—frugal. Uninvolved. Celibate. Unambitious.”

  “That’s not fixing her, it’s ruining her. Margaret Thebes is the guildmaster. She’s tangled. Complex. A mess, really, but Thebes wouldn’t be Thebes without her.”

  “All right, then. Let’s try this offer: Instead of actually fixing her, just tell this story as if you did fix her. As if she’d never got involved with Utlag in the first place. In exchange I’ll save Errol Thebes and everything else.”

  “This is a waste of time. You know that story would be untrue and untellable. Without Margaret, it would not have happened.”

  The mearc-stapa sighed. “All right. So, let’s say, then, that you fix Jamila instead. She’s naught but a foundling, right? So you have unlimited power over her.”

  “Have you met Jamila?”

  “Tell her to be indifferent from now on. Malleable. Teach her to cook. Yes, that’s it. Because if you could just get her to stay in the morgue and cook, and stop jumping from roof to roof like that, we could all sweat a little less.”

  “I would hate Jamila if she stayed in the morgues.”