Thick as Thieves

by Megan Whalen Turner

  “Kamet of Nahuseresh!” bellowed a voice behind me.

  I should have gone to the Attolians to get my throat cut. At least it would have been faster.

  I took one step, but it was too late to run. I faced around, expecting to see the palace guard and instead found a single burly older man in a handsome robe, imposing and obviously wealthy. He was also obviously a former soldier. He still had the bearing and the scars—he was missing his right eye—but he was certainly not the palace guard, nor one of the city’s Enforcers of the Imperial Peace.

  “You are Kamet of Nahuseresh?” the man asked, looking me up and down.

  I admitted it, bowing as I did so. I had no idea who he was.

  He hesitated, almost as if he were the one making up a story. “I am a—a wine merchant,” he said. He didn’t look like a wine merchant. “And—and your master says I should arrange some deliveries with you.”

  Mystified, I looked around. There was no wineshop near.

  “My warehouse is at the dock,” the man said, as if daring me to contradict him. The sweeping black terror that had flooded my heart a moment before was receding, leaving me weak in the knees, with darkness crowding at the edge of my vision. The merchant almost glowed in contrast, and the noise of the street faded to nothing. “Come along with me and inspect the casks,” he said. Dazed but obedient, I followed.

  He hired a chair. I do remember thinking that no one would expect to find a fugitive slave traveling beside a chair, head down and well behaved—that the merchant would take me through the city walls to the riverfront, and then I must devise a way past the secondary walls upriver and downriver of the city limits. But then my thoughts scattered and did not return. They churned against one another like waves in a storm and the darkness at the edge of my vision didn’t fade. Meanwhile, the merchant gave conflicting directions to the chair men, and we wandered through the back alleys of the warehouse district by the river until, just as we reached an open boulevard, he called a halt. With his hands on the elaborately carved armrests of the chair, he twisted to look down at me and said, “Never mind. I’ve forgotten another appointment. I will contact you later.” And he left me standing in the street, at a loss.

  I kept moving only because it was dangerous to draw attention by standing still. I continued down the boulevard and found myself at the Rethru docks, of all places. If only I could believe the Attolians might be there to help me when the sun went down. It was busy, with the smaller riverboats tied two and three deep to the stone quays along the water. There were ferrymen in even smaller boats plying their trade, carrying people and packages across the water to the unfortified part of the city on the far side. Not a few slaves had escaped the city by waiting until dark and slipping into the water, but I couldn’t swim. When my master and I had fled Attolia, he had come up with the plan to swim out to a boat offshore. I’d begged him to leave me behind, but he’d insisted on pulling me through the water, determined to leave nothing that belonged to him behind for the Attolian queen. I’d swallowed half the sea that night, and after the crew lifted us on board the larger ship waiting for us, I’d vomited it out on the deck until I was too weak to stand. Even thinking of going in the water made my stomach heave.

  The ferries wouldn’t take me in daylight, not without permission from my master. They might take me at night, when they had less chance of being seen breaking the law, but by nightfall I would be notorious. Ten times the money I had in my pocket wouldn’t get me across the river. And the sun was lower in the sky than I expected. Somehow the first part of the afternoon was already gone. I couldn’t afford to stand there in the open like I’d been turned to stone. If I didn’t find somewhere out of sight, I wouldn’t make it until dark. I would try to slip into one of the warehouses to hide among the bales and barrels. When it was dark, I could . . . sneak into one of the ships? Steal one of the rowing boats? Drown myself? I’d have to think of something while I waited.

  Turning away from the water, I found myself nose to chest with the Attolian.

  Again, well trained, I stepped back with a bow and an immediate apology.

  The Attolian leaned in over me. “I told you after sunset,” he said quietly. “After dark.” Then, after a hesitation—“I did say after dark?”

  After noon, after dark, the phrases are almost identical, and it was an easy mistake for a foreigner to have made. He hadn’t heard of my master’s death, that was clear. I seized my opportunity and stared at him helplessly, begging him with my eyes to save me. Should I have said, “Yes, you did say after dark, but my master has been poisoned, and it will be more convenient for me to run away right now?” I still thought he meant to murder me, not free me, but I didn’t care. If this man meant to take me out of the city before disposing of me, I had a much better chance of escaping one Attolian soldier than of escaping the combined forces of the palace guard and the city’s enforcers. If he could be fooled into helping me for even a little while, Gessiret’s money might see me to a chance at least of escaping the emperor’s torture chambers.

  I cleared my throat. “You said, ‘after noon,’” I whispered, the first of my many lies.

  “Oh,” he said, and then, may gods bless him forever, he rose to the occasion. He slid his hand into his purse and tossed me a coin, like any man offering a charity to a slave. I bowed over it as he moved by me.

  “Follow me,” he said quietly. “Pay the fee for the cheapest entrance.” He smiled as if he were accepting my apology for bumping him, then passed on. I waited until he was a little ways ahead, and then, heart in mouth, I went after him, drawing on all my years of practice to give an appearance of calm that I didn’t feel.

  We went to the theater.

  If it hadn’t been a matter of life and death—mine—I would have been amused. Alone, the Attolian wouldn’t have drawn attention in the cosmopolitan mix of the city, and were I not being hunted, I could have disappeared into a number of places where slaves are welcome so long as they have at least a little coin in their pockets. An Attolian soldier and a high-status slave could go nowhere together without arousing interest—except the theater. In the open ground just below the stage, free men and slaves frequently mixed. I bought my ticket and followed the Attolian in, finding a space to stand with a few other slaves not far from him.

  It was a cheap production. The amphitheater near the docks didn’t cater to a discerning crowd. It hosted comedies and variety shows for those whose taste matched their finances. It had the usual stone benches of a more prestigious theater, but the semicircular space below the stage was unusually large. The least expensive tickets would let anyone stand there, and slaves and the poorest of the free people in the city packed themselves in. It made it almost impossible to hear the actors if you were seated on the benches up the back of the amphitheater, but the performances were always formulaic and the people in the seats weren’t interested in the play. They were there to conduct business.

  A series of comedy skits, with the wily slave Senabid outwitting his foolish master, were acted out for the jeering audience, and then the long performance followed—the story of Immakuk and Ennikar stealing Anet’s Chariot. I paid little attention to the actors—I was too busy scanning the crowd around me for any sign that I had been recognized. I watched the Attolian, seemingly enthralled by the play, wishing I had his apparent equanimity. By the time the two main actors were lifted off the stage in a giant chariot with wings painted on the side in cheap yellow paint, I could have puked my fear into a bucket if someone had offered me one. My master had been dead for hours. The city gates would already be closed. All the places a runaway slave might hide were being turned over while I stood there, listening to the epilogue.

  The performance over, I followed the Attolian on shaking legs as he made his way out of the amphitheater. The sun had some time before dipped below the horizon, and only the last of its light was glimmering in the clouds overhead, making them smudges of gray against the darker sky. As he walked, the Attolian pulled
the hood of his cloak up over his head, and it was much harder to pick him out of the crowd. I worried that I would lose him in the deep twilight, but he went straight back to the docks and waited there for me to catch up.

  “Ornon, our ambassador, has arranged for passage on a riverboat called the Anet’s Dream. Our bags have been sent ahead,” he told me. “You must get us aboard without revealing that I am Attolian. You are a slave with your master, and you do the talking.”

  I nodded. With the cloak over his breastplate and his hood up, he could pass for a Mede merchant, so long as he didn’t speak.

  “Can you do this?” the Attolian asked. He seemed entirely sincere. I am a good judge of men, and if he meant to slit my throat and drop me in a sewer, he was a far better actor than any of those I had just seen on the stage.

  “Of course, master,” I said. I might have been like a headless chicken crisscrossing the city that day, but on my own behalf, let me point out that I was not, in fact, dead. I had escaped the palace, and retrieved the money from Gessiret. I had survived that long, and I knew I could get onto the riverboat. I just didn’t know—couldn’t know—if the ambassador who had arranged for our flight had already sent a message to the Anet’s Dream that would put an end to it. The whole palace would know of my master’s death, but the gates that would have shut me in might have trapped any messenger as well. If there had been any alternative, I would have taken it, but I could see none, and there was no time for hesitation.

  I walked up the docks looking for a ship named the Anet’s Dream. If only it would leave the city before the Attolian learned that my master was dead, I might be free. I could evade the Attolian far more easily than the palace guard.

  I found the ship quickly. There was no sign of anything amiss on the deck—the crew seemed to be preparing to leave the wharf. It was an unremarkable riverboat with a shallow draft and an outrigger. Designed to travel up and down the river under sail, it had only a small galley for rowers. The crew probably did the rowing when necessary. Most of its profit would be in its cargo, but there were a few cabins for passengers on the deck at the bow and stern.

  I took a breath and walked confidently up the plank. I spoke to a deckhand, explained that my master and I had arrived and would require dinner. When he directed us to one of the cabins at the bow, I led the way, the Attolian silent behind me. Unfortunately, the captain came to join us before we were halfway to the cabin. I smiled and bowed. The Attolian bowed. The captain bowed. The awkward moment lengthened. It had been entirely appropriate for me to speak to the crew member on my master’s behalf. The captain of the ship, even a shabby riverboat like the Anet’s Dream, was a different matter.

  Bowing again, I said, “My master has taken a vow of silence while the star of Mes Reia is in retrograde.” I’d never heard of anyone taking a vow of silence for such a reason, but the retrograde of Mes Reia is supposed to be a time of confusion when communication can be broken and misunderstandings are more likely, and I hoped the excuse would carry water. The Attolian bowed again, a little more deeply, as if apologetically. The captain returned the gesture, deferring to his piety.

  “Journey in your god’s favor,” he said, and waved a hand to a ship’s boy who was hanging about nearby. “Xem, light the way to the cabin. Our deck is too crowded to have gentlefolk wandering in the dark.”

  So Xem lit a torch from the one at the top of the gangplank and carried it ahead of us. The deck was piled with cargo, though I couldn’t make out what kind. The bright flame ruined my ability to see our unlit surroundings, and I probably would have been safer walking the cluttered deck in the dark, but there you have the disadvantages of courtesy. We followed Xem to the cabin and ducked through its curtain to find it lit by a much smaller and more useful oil lamp.

  I stood blinking while my eyes adjusted. When they did, I realized that the Attolian was looking me over, and I dropped my gaze to the decking under my feet—I didn’t need to be so bold as to return the favor. I’d had ample time to watch him in the amphitheater as he had looked up at Immakuk and Ennikar pounding back and forth across the stage.

  In our first meeting at the palace and again at the docks, I’d been close enough to see his face, and there were none of the signs there that made slaves anxious. If there was not much intelligence in his features, there was no sign of cruelty, either. He was large, as I already knew, and a soldier. He had the scars on his hands and forearms and the unmistakable muscles that developed from swinging a sword day in and day out. I had no doubt he was good at what he did—he rather reminded one of an ox, very strong, not terribly quick—but I thought killing was his work, not his pleasure.

  He was well dressed, but not wealthy, his clothes no doubt provided by his king. He had a gold ring in his ear, dangling a polished cylinder of stone—the stone was solid black, semiprecious at best. That and a ring on his right hand were his only jewelry. The ring was finely worked, with the emblem of his god, probably Miras, the Attolian god of light and arrows, the one most Attolian soldiers prayed to, but it wasn’t heavy, so not very valuable. He moved easily, so he was no veteran crippled in his country’s service, but he was too young to have done his twenty years—my own age, or perhaps younger. He was almost certainly not educated. He spoke Mede, but with a heavy accent, so he hadn’t been trained as a child. His king trusted him at a long distance, but stealing someone else’s slave was not what I would call a prestigious task. I guessed that he was probably not a favorite in the court, nor a very highly ranked officer, although I couldn’t be certain—the king himself was a thief, so what did I know about what he valued? Still, it did not seem to me that the king of Attolia was investing one of his best men in this petty revenge of his.

  He told me his name, as if he expected me to use it. He slowly circled, looking closely at the heavy gold chain around my neck, fixed with my master’s seal. I knew he saw the flogging scars on my back, where they were visible above my collar, but he said nothing.

  I looked around at the tiny cabin, trying to think of a polite way to ask when we might leave the dock. There was no polite way to ask if he meant to wring my neck and throw me in the river during the night.

  “We leave within the hour,” he said. I thought the ambassador must have paid a fortune to send a riverboat downstream at night. The ships that went down the Ianna usually left in the morning. I had traveled often enough with my master to know.

  “We aren’t going downriver,” said the Attolian, to my surprise. “We will go north instead, to Menle, and then follow the emperor’s road to Zabrisa, on the coast. An Attolian ship will carry us across the Middle Sea from there.”

  It would take longer to leave the empire than if we went down the Ianna and boarded a ship across the Southern Ocean, but perhaps we would throw off any pursuit. There would be a bounty posted for me, but by the time bounty hunters realized we weren’t on our way south, we would be halfway to Menle. Or anyway, the Anet’s Dream would be halfway to Menle. If the Attolian truly meant to carry out this journey, he probably meant to do it alone, but I began to hope he might let me go without killing me. I couldn’t think why the ambassador would have planned such a complicated and expensive trip for the Attolian only to have me knifed while still at the dock. And if I was to be carried alive out of the city, why bother to kill me then? In an alley in the city, I would have died without fuss. On the riverboat, it would be messier.

  “Here, Kamet, take a seat,” said the Attolian, gesturing to the stools facing each other across the narrow table. I was glad to perch on one, bitterly amused that it had taken him so long to realize that I wouldn’t sit until he told me I could. What I failed to understand was that in his mind I was a free man, had been since the moment he met me, and as my host he wouldn’t sit until I did.

  We remained there, without another word, until Xem, the ship’s boy, came back and knocked at the doorframe. He stayed only long enough to set his tray of nuts and cheese on the table between us. The Attolian scrupulously divided it i
n half and, when Xem left, motioned to me to eat at the same time that he did, aping the manners of a free man to a free man. He still didn’t speak, though, having no more to say to me than I to him. We continued on in silence.

  I looked around the tiny cabin, unable to believe that I had come to this when I had woken that morning on my cot in my office so certain of my place in the world. I could hear the faint slap of water against the boat. The commonplace sounds of the dock. I was listening for the sound of running feet, my death coming by way of a fleet-footed messenger or the tramping feet of the palace guard or the Ianna-Ir’s enforcers of the peace. I knew from long experience how tiring fear is, and was not surprised to be suddenly exhausted. Let the Attolian kill me if he would, I didn’t care. I just wanted to lie down.

  The Attolian nodded then, as if I’d said something and he was merely agreeing. He stood and divested himself of his shirt and sandals. He unrolled the bedding set out for us and gave me one of the blankets, then rolled himself up in the other and lay down on the single bunk. I was glad we hadn’t had to go through any pantomime of his offering the bunk to a lowly slave and my declining. I pulled the blanket over my shoulders and, without taking off my sandals, lay down on the floor. I’d thought the Attolian was a talker, but I’d been mistaken.

  The floor was hard, the blanket unpleasant in both smell and texture. There was a lump under my hip, the key to my master’s cashbox, which I would never use again. I lay there awake as the boat was warped away from the quay and we began to make our way upriver. I hadn’t gotten around to sorting out Rakra and the steward who had hired him. Gessiret would never get the money for the two robes he was making for my master. No one would need the rugs and furnishings I’d ordered from the palace’s tradesmen. I missed my far more comfortable bed, but I knew what circumstances my master’s other slaves faced that night. I thought of them as we slowly left the city of Ianna-Ir behind. If there was any unease on my conscience about the Attolian’s potential punishment for being deceived by a slave, I wasn’t much worried about it. All the slaves of my master would soon be dead, and they might not die easily. Whatever happened to the Attolian would be mild in comparison.