An Illusion of Thieves

by Cate Glass

  I had no confidence that words or threats would contain the banty rooster. And so I forced him to watch every moment of Da’s ordeal. Trembling, his face the green-yellow hue of soured milk, Neri stood at my side in the sweltering sunlight as the axe fell, and as Da remained bound to a post, woozy, moaning, and unsuccored until midday. Flies buzzed around his seared stump.

  I had ever deemed my father complicit in my childhood debasement. A hundred lawyers in the city were in his debt because he found errors in their writs as he copied them, but he had never prevailed on any of them for a favor. Not when his children starved. Not when his ten-year-old daughter was thrown away for a few silver coins. Yet he had chosen mutilation to protect us all. Perhaps his liver was not entirely weak.

  When the noon bell tolled, Da was unbound and shoved toward the road where Mam and the younger ones waited. He stumbled and fell. His cry was that of a wounded animal.

  Neri twitched as if to run.

  I gripped his wrist and held him at my side. “Watch and learn. Remember.”

  Da staggered to his feet. Condottieri in plumed helmets slapped whips and staves on the road behind him, driving him and Mam and their gaggle of eight toward the city gates. Thirteen-year-old Cino dragged a sled holding blankets and two wailing urchins, while a defiant Dolce carried a bulky, clanking bag—the allotted pots, flasks, and spoons. A wrapped shawl bound the infant to my mother’s chest and three more weeping children clung to her skirt.

  A hellish cacophony roared from the crowd. Rotted fruit and clots of dried mud and dung pelted the family from every side. Gritting my teeth, I dragged Neri through the streets behind the dismal processional.

  Two scrawny butcher’s boys carrying armloads of rubble dodged into the street from an alley and were soon launching one missile after another toward Da and the others. When a rock hit Cino in the back and sent him sprawling, dumping sled, supplies, and wailing children onto the filthy roadway, Neri wrenched his arm away and hurled himself at one of the youths. They crashed to the ground. Growling and cursing—sobbing, too, I suspected—Neri wrestled the youth onto his back and smashed the bawling boy’s nose to pulp with one of his own rocks.

  “Stop it!” I tugged at Neri’s arm.

  Two more blows split the boy’s cheek before the second youth and I dragged Neri off him.

  “Get out of here, you stupid twits,” I yelled at the two, who were arming for revenge. “They’ll arrest you for interfering with the judgment. Hey, Captain!”

  I waved at the nearest plumed helmet, though my yell was not near loud enough to be heard over the general noise. The rock-throwers didn’t know that, and scuttered back into the alley.

  “You are on parole, fool,” I snapped through clenched teeth. “Did I not make it clear? You get arrested, we’re dead.”

  “Let me loose,” snarled Neri, on his feet now, his own cheek scratched and bloody. “I’m getting out of here.”

  “No! We see it through. They are our blood, and they suffer because of us.”

  Maybe watching would make him think.

  “Up there.” I shoved him toward a broken brick wall. A short climb and we had a clear view of the city gates and the pitiful procession passing through. Da trudged along slowly beside Mam, hugging his damaged arm to his chest. The pain must be dreadful. From time to time he nudged one of the little ones to face forward. He remembered they were not allowed to look behind. Oh spirits, Da …

  No matter hurt and bitterness, my heart ached for them all. What was Da to do? What future did Dolce and Cino and the others have as children of a marked thief? I could not interfere. Il Padroné’s conditions bound the purse that might save their lives.

  Was Sandro observing from one of the gate towers or some other spot above the crowd? Had he ever considered the kind of punishment he meted out so casually to children?

  I hated him in that moment. What kind of enlightened city treated its citizens this way—even a confessed thief—even in a case where magic might be suspected but not proved?

  Of course he had considered these questions. If ever a man embodied two souls, it was Alessandro di Gallanos. He was il Padroné, who worked quietly and generously to move the city forward, strengthening the rule of law while bringing it peace and prosperity, beauty and enlightenment. He was also the Shadow Lord, who did what he believed necessary no matter how difficult.

  Neri didn’t run. Neither did he look away. His scraped and bloody face hardened to stone as he watched the cloud of dust swallow them. Certain, they were more his family than mine.

  Once the dust settled on the empty road, the rowdy throng melted away. Time to turn our minds to practical matters. The Shadow Lord had forced Neri and me to stay here for a reason he’d not chosen to reveal. After this spectacle, I could not believe it was any lingering care for me. Far more likely he wished to keep the danger we posed close. Easier to arrest us later, when people had forgotten his mistress. He had gambled that keeping Neri under the law’s scrutiny would ensure my own good behavior. Until he revealed his purpose, I had to learn to live on my own. With Neri.

  “Come,” I said, exchanging my grip for a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time for us to start over. Your parole binds us together and to this city, no matter how much we both hate it.”

  Bruised and sullen, Neri wrenched his shoulder out from under my hand. But he followed. His stomach was growling.

  With a coin from Sandro’s purse I bought sausage, olives, and bread, and we sat on an upended trough to share it out. Neri devoured his portion in moments. A single bite of the fatty sausage sat in my gut like a ball of lead, banishing any thought of a second. The afternoon shimmered with damp heat, casting a yellow glow over splintered houses, shabby stalls, and the pigs, geese, and occasional mule sharing the crowded market street with even shabbier humans.

  We might have been sitting in the docks ourselves awaiting a magistrate’s sentencing. Neri sat silent, but he quivered like water just before it erupted into a boil. I fixed my gaze on the greasy meat in my hand. It felt as if every passerby stared at us, gawking at the scribe’s son left behind, wondering if I was the one they’d heard rumors of, wondering if the boy’s tavern blathering about his sister the whore had been true.

  We needed to move forward.

  “Dolce said you’ve been digging at the coliseum site,” I said. “Are they expecting you this afternoon?”

  “Went up there yesterday. They told me not to come back. No thief’s kin allowed to work there.”

  Just as Dolce had warned.

  Sandro’s purse was generous and no fool’s pride would prevent me using it. But it was not bottomless. I was only twenty-four. Neri was almost sixteen and uneducated; I wasn’t even sure he could read. We needed a place to sleep and we needed work.

  “Maybe someone around here has some other work you could—”

  “Wouldna been sharing a pallet with Cino if I’d a choice, would I? No work to be had in the Ring. Tried for a year before the coliseum started hiring. Sweeping, digging, ratting, hauling … fifty others were waiting for anything I could do.” He eyed the sausage in my hand. “I s’pose you’ve got work enough lined up, but Moon House didn’t come calling for me.”

  I ignored the bitter jab and gave him my sausage.

  There was no returning to the Moon House, not after Sandro had declared Mistress Cataline dead. Moon House courtesans could be gifted or sold to new owners, but were allowed to return to the House only when honorably retired, not when they were deemed unsatisfactory, as I had been. Not that I would have gone back anyway. I would submit to a lunatic asylum before selling myself anywhere—in a brothel, on the streets, or from the Moon House. Beyond that resolution, the future stood ahead of me like a city wall, its gates hidden. But we couldn’t stay here in the street.

  “Who put Mam out of the house last night?” I said.

  “Two magistrate’s men came and hauled everything off, save spoons and blankets. Posted a paper on the wall and said to go and not com
e back. What do you care?”

  When I’d returned to the Beggars Ring, Mam and the others had already been sitting in the Ring Road. They’d been told to report to the prison yard before dawn to wait for Da’s punishment and release. I’d given Mam the purse and told them of the Shadow Lord’s conditions. While Dolce used some of their coin to buy food and ale, Neri and Cino got them moved. They’d wanted no help from me.

  I stood. “Come on. I want to read that paper they left.”

  * * *

  Twenty-three silver solets from Sandro’s purse bought the hovel in Lizard’s Alley from the local bondsman, whose name had been on the notice nailed to the house. From the way he was grinning as we left his market stall, I’d paid far too much for one empty, dirt-floored room closed off from the alley by a hanging rug. But he wouldn’t take less, and I didn’t know what it might cost us to rent a room or where might be too dangerous to stay. The neighborhood around Lizard’s Alley was familiar at the least.

  Neri and I spent the rest of the day scrubbing the stone walls and the single shelf and acquiring a few furnishings—pallets, blankets, a lamp and oil for it, a table and two stools, a water cask, two cups, two spoons, a tin pot, and a clay brazier to replace the old cracked one that had been stripped out with everything else. Every time we thought we’d bought enough to get by, we had to return to the market for something else—a shovel of charcoal for the brazier, flint and steel to light it, a few candles, apples and cheese for supper, clean rags for wrapping our cheese and washing ourselves. I refused to live without soap. Neri insisted on mounting ghiris—spiky knots of pomegranate twigs—over our one window and doorway to snag bad luck before it came inside. I deemed it too late for that.

  The Beggars Ring seemed dirtier, shabbier, and more crowded than in the years I’d lived there. Perhaps that was just a child’s perspective, for the scattered market stalls had more variety and better goods than I remembered, and more people seemed able to buy.

  Neri’s sole comment of the afternoon was, “So we’re not to be drinking anything but river water?” Thus, another trip for a flask of wine, a jug of ale, and a few sorry-looking herbs for tea.

  When Sandro had stretched the system of water pipes, wells, and conduits from the upper Rings to the Market and Asylum Rings—one of his first acts after assuming his uncle’s role as il Padroné—even the Beggars Ring had benefited. Water had been diverted from the river through troughs and conduits, and the spill from the conduits flowed into a public cistern. For the first time Beggars Ring citizens didn’t have to haul water all the way from the river. Sadly, that hadn’t made the river water any healthier. Da had forbade us to drink water unless it had been purified by soaking herbs in it.

  Neri showed me the way to the cistern and the diversion conduit, now called The Pipes, and we filled our water cask. I’d never understood why my parents kept such a small water supply for so many of us. I believed they just didn’t care that we were always dirty. But after Neri and I lugged our small cask from The Pipes, not even half the distance it would have been from the river itself, their choice made more sense.

  The evening bells had long fallen silent by the time we ate our apples and cheese. It didn’t take long to demolish most of it. While Neri rewrapped what was left of the cheese, I lit the lamp and pulled out the loose foundation stone Da used to safeguard his coins. Before stowing my silver, I poured it out in my skirt to count. To my horror, the hoard that was to ensure our future was almost a quarter spent.

  Stupid Romy!

  I was accustomed to friendly bargaining for whatever I wanted in the cleaner, more luxurious Merchant Ring markets, sometimes with Sandro at my side, sometimes with Micola, a bodyguard, and an embroidered silk waist pocket that il Padroné never allowed to be empty. But I found it impossible to bargain with the Beggars Ring potter whose thin, bony children hawked his cups and braziers, or the toothless old woman who wove decent blankets when she could scarce see. I was ashamed to be stingy when I had a fat bag of silver—and I had no idea what price was fair for anything. Neri, resentful when I insisted he stay with me instead of wandering off on his own, had sneered and offered no help.

  We’d bought no luxuries to my mind, but demons … I had to do better. I dropped the bag in the hole and shoved the stone in on top of it.

  Exhaustion weighed on my shoulders like a leaden mantle. My mind refused to hold back the sounds and sights of these two horrible days. Da’s bleeding stump. Wiry little Cino’s bent back. Dolce’s hopeless defiance. Sandro’s bitter dismissal, each word an icy blade carving out a hollow where I’d once had a heart: do not presume … no longer your privilege … closed to you … interest ended … dead.

  “Are we done here? Have I played your slavey long enough?”

  Neri’s insolence roused my blood. All of this was his doing.

  “Go to bed.”

  He edged toward the doorway rug that swayed in the stinking night breeze. “Too early. I’ll just be down to the Duck’s Bone.”

  I stepped between my brother and the doorway. “No. You won’t. As I’ve said three times already, you will not go anywhere on your own until you show me you comprehend our predicament. One slip, a fight, an ill-timed word, pilfering a fig from the market—yes, I saw you do that—could get us dead. Be sure our suffering would be far worse than what Da endured today. Tomorrow we have to find work, find something to cover this damnable dirt under our feet, and something besides that filthy rug to keep drunks from wandering inside our house to piss. Now sleep. I’ll sit on you if I have to.”

  Clearly, every muscle in his body wanted to fight me. To run. But he retreated to his pallet and hunched against the wall, his eyes never leaving my clenched fist. Only as I reached to douse the lamp did I realize my pearl-handled dagger had found its way to my hand.

  Spirits, Romy, get hold of yourself!

  Blood pounding, I retreated to my own pallet and laid the knife close by. Impossible to sleep now. Deploying my fury like a shield to hold visions and grief at bay, I sat in the dark fretting over what kind of work I might do that did not involve lustful men, libidinous women, haggling at the market, or incessant stares from strangers. After four-and-twenty years of haphazard education, I ought to have a few useful skills besides the obvious.

  As often happens, the answer came with the morning.

  4

  “Law scribe? You? A fancy tart, taught at that Moon place to do things a man … can’t even imagine … is gonna write words for hire? You know how to do that?”

  Neri’s astonishment was so profound and so jaw-droppingly innocent, I forgave him the insult.

  “With Da gone, there’s surely writing work to be had. I recall the names of many of his clients. And no, I’ve not forgotten how to read and write despite my former profession. In fact, my skills have improved amazingly. My hand was required to be strong, elegant, and clear … writing-wise as well as in other endeavors.”

  As with every skill a courtesan’s master or mistress might require, elegance of phrasing, proper forms of address, and perfection in form whether composing poetry, keeping estate accounts, or recording shopping lists had been taught with a willow switch. My knuckles stung at the recollection.

  “I’ve actually been known to read and write for pleasure, so why not get paid for it? But before I can begin, we need to go back to the market.”

  Three hours hunting told me the Beggars Ring could provide no decent parchment, pens, or ink. Much to the delight of Fedig the pen seller in the Asylum Ring, I brought home a goodly supply of his. I also bought a lightweight blue mantle—expensive, but necessary to cover my soiled servant’s dress if I was to present myself as a sober, reliable citizen. A leather jerkin that someone’s boy had outgrown would serve to mask Neri’s filthy shirt. I was not ready to leave him alone.

  Over the next few days, we carried my letters of application to twenty lawyers and notaries who had been Da’s longtime employers, offering the services of a scribe who had wide familiarity w
ith Cantagna’s law. After Neri’s experience, I did not mention Da’s name.

  On the third day, I won my first client, a wizened notary named Renzo, who was willing to take a chance on a scribe with no references as long as she charged no more than two copper solets a page. As I carried home a stack of deeds and marriage contracts, I was excited to think of replenishing the rapidly shrinking bag of silver so easily.

  Two days later as I climbed the tight, steep staircase to Renzo’s chamber, shoulders aching, ink-stained fingers cramped from hour after tedious hour of writing, eyes burning from squinting at his crabbed, endlessly annotated script, I was not quite so sanguine.

  Notary Renzo resided in a hot cramped room above a bakery. Sadly only the heat of the baking ovens rather than the sweet smells they produced made their way up the stair. He had likely not washed himself or his food-splattered gown since I was born.

  “Ah, l’scrittóre!” he said cheerfully as I set the stack of copies on his writing desk. “Finished already?”

  Not caring to sit on his extra stool that looked as if owls had roosted on it, I stood as Renzo carefully licked his finger, turned each page, and examined it carefully. He set aside two where I had failed to sharpen my pen soon enough to avoid blots.

  “These two need to be redone. But fine work overall. No errors. I’ll be pleased to give you more. Bring these two when you return the new pages.” He shoved another stack of parchment across the desk in my direction and then hopped off his tall stool and crouched down where I couldn’t see him.

  A metal box appeared on the writing desk, followed by the reappearance of his wispy hair and smiling face. Renzo counted out fifty copper coins—exactly half of a silver solet—and his finger most exactly moved four aside to hold until I replaced the blotted pages. Once I’d reduced the remainder by the one copper I had paid for each raw sheet at the pen seller’s, two more for the blotted sheets I would have to replace, as well as the two for the entire bottle of ink I’d used, I almost wept. For two exhausting days with almost no sleep, I had earned exactly seventeen coppers. Enough for a quarter shovel of coal, so I had learned. Or a quarter of a day-old roasted duck. Or one loaf of bread, one sausage, and a wedge of cheese that Neri could devour in an afternoon.