by Jeff Ayers
There was more silence. The old man’s hand stayed unmoving on the latch. Skate had the sense that he wasn’t really looking at her, but had simply fixed his eyes on her while thinking. His neatly trimmed white moustache twitched. When he spoke, his thin beard bobbed up and down. “Rattle! Blanket!” he shouted at the stairs. Refocusing on Skate, he asked, “Would you like to stay here, then? At least until morning?” His hand dropped to his side. “I find that I can’t turn you out into the cold.”
Skate opened her mouth, then closed it again. As far as she could tell, he could turn her out into the cold and would have every right to do so—or burn her to a crisp, or turn her over to the Guard. She’d been caught red-handed stealing his stuff. You also stabbed the old man; don’t forget that. “I wouldn’t mind, I guess,” she said, not wanting to offend him.
“Good. I can’t offer much in the way of comfort. Rattle is bringing the only blanket I have down. Here he is now.” The blanket came first, but Rattle took all of her attention. For a moment, Skate wished she still had the blade. A yelp escaped her.
Rattle was a swollen bat. That was the only thing her mind could categorize it as. In truth, the leathery wings were where the similarity ended. The wings joined at the top of a lidless eyeball the size of an adult’s fist. It looked wet. Beneath the eye were six spindly legs, jittering spider’s legs; each one was at least two feet long. The pupil of the eye darted around at random while Rattle descended. It brought the blanket to the old man, who took it with some measure of disgust. The blanket was filthy and full of holes.
Without anything to hold, the spindly legs clicked together as the eye bobbed to and fro in the creature’s stationary flight. “Thank you, Rattle. Go back to reading.”
The spider-bat turned around and, after sparing a glance at Skate, floated up the stairs.
“That was Rattle,” the wizard added unnecessarily as he began to fix the holes in the blanket with passes of his hand.
“What is it?”
“He’s a—hmm. I never gave him a name beyond ‘Rattle.’ I made him. He’s a construct, a guardian. Mostly, he just likes to read. He’s a lot like me, that way.” The dirt and holes faded with each pass of the hand until it resembled something she might have stolen from a vendor in the market. “Here.” He held out the blanket for her to take, though she was too far away.
Skate didn’t move. “Why didn’t you already have the fire going?” Much had been strange since the old man had come down, but this bothered her the most. That fireplace had not been used in a good long while, and warmth was absolutely necessary this time of year. “Magic? I mean, if you’ve got magic to keep warm, why have a fireplace with wood ready?”
The corners of the wizard’s mouth twitched up into a small smile before he said, “You ask many questions for an uninvited guest.” He dropped the blanket and turned toward the stairs. “Stay here for the night. Sleep by the fire. I want to talk to you before you go in the morning.” As his feet disappeared from view, the jewelry box lifted itself off the table and floated gently up after him.
Skate turned toward the fire. She was warm. The blanket was comfortable enough, and there was a rug. She meant to go to the door, but found herself first sitting, then reclining in front of the crackling flames. Despite her confusion and unanswered questions, she soon drifted off to sleep.
Skate shot straight up. There was clicking. The horror that was Rattle was floating by.
Skate rubbed the sleep out of her eyes while Rattle moved through a door in the back of the room, carrying something. The fire still burned, and a few more logs had been added to increase the flame. She noticed with passing interest that there were no fewer logs in the holder.
Dawn was breaking through the windows. Skate’s stomach growled as she sat there smacking her mouth to try to get the stench of sleep out. It had been many hours since she’d eaten.
The door to the next room was ajar, and it sounded like the bat thing was hammering metal on metal in an attempt to rouse her from rest. “I’m up!” she shouted toward the open door. Rattle glanced at her as it passed as if to confirm her claim. It then continued on its way, doing whatever noisy task it had started.
Skate was about to yell again when she heard footsteps. The old man had made no noise last night coming down; he should have. He was old. She was good at hearing. Had he cast a spell of some sort—a muffling or silencing enchantment—before coming down the previous night? “I’m gonna go,” she said, disentangling herself from the blanket.
“You don’t want breakfast?” the old man asked.
Rattle suddenly ceased its clamor and came out of the kitchen, a pot of water dangling at the end of three legs and an empty pan in two others. It looked slowly back and forth between her and the old wizard.
“No, I don’t,” Skate said.
With a final loud clang, Rattle dropped both the water pot and the pan. Some of the water splashed out onto the stone floor. By the time the pan had settled, Rattle was almost out of view up the stairs, its legs twitching as the bat wings flapped harder than before.
“He likes to cook,” the old man said reproachfully. “Even if you’re not hungry, you could have let him do the cooking.” The old man had not changed his clothes since the previous night; living alone must have left him unconcerned with the normal social niceties of the wealthy.
“Definitely not. I don’t know where those legs have been. Besides, it can still cook for you.”
“He doesn’t cook for me.” The old man grimaced, struggling with something.
Gas, she thought, and stifled a laugh. He opened his mouth several times as if to speak, but instead closed it each time. He looks like a fish out of water. She failed to stifle the laughter this time.
“Listen,” he said at last, ignoring her snorts, “I have an idea. You’ve got no home, right?”
“Right, thanks so much for the reminder.”
“But you’re pretty good at…finding things.”
She smiled. “Yes, I’m very good at finding things.” She leaned into the euphemism, trying to make the old man uncomfortable. It didn’t work.
“Well, then, here’s a business proposition: If you can find me a new book a week, I’ll let you stay here. I’ve got a room upstairs that Rattle could clear out, one that has a vent connected to this room, so the warmth gets in there. Meals, too—and I promise, despite your protestations: Rattle’s clean enough for you.” His face had become impassive, a mask.
Skate thought for a moment. She didn’t particularly want to live with this strange man, but having an in here could make for a fantastic haul when she decided to cut and run. She guessed Boss Marshall would be happy to hear that, despite her having nothing to show for the previous night. “I ‘find’ you a book and get to stay out of the cold for a week?”
He nodded. “But it’ll need to be one that I don’t have. Finding a book I already own is useless to me. And of course, if you get caught, I’ll deny everything.”
Skate pretended to mull the offer over but had already made her choice; she’d have to be an idiot to refuse the mark’s offer to come and go as she pleased. After much feigned deliberation, she spat into her hand and stuck it out. “Deal.”
The old man did not spit in his own hand, but he took hers without hesitation. “Wonderful! And welcome, officially, to the residence of Barrison Belamy, Skate. Let me show you to your room.”
Chapter 2
In which a reunion occurs, a threat is made, and a game of darts is interrupted.
The heavy wooden door of Belamy’s house shut behind her. Skate stood in the midday sun amidst piles of snow. The familiar figure of Twitch down the road caught her eye. The shock of wiry blond hair poking out of his wrappings and rags gave him away despite his best attempts at skulking and spying on the house. At the sight of her, he tilted his head two times to the right. By the third jerk, it was clear that this was not one of his accustomed spasms, but a signal.
The mounds of snow made the streets
more crowded than usual as Skate navigated through a narrow alley to the next main road. A rat scurried into a discarded basket as she passed. She and Twitch were familiar with most of the main avenues of Caribol, and they had many established meeting places around the bustling city. The one that Twitch had indicated was a walled-off alcove behind a latrine, so the rat’s nest was not going to be the most unpleasant thing she would be near today.
Skate squeezed her nose as she approached, one of her rags serving as a makeshift mask and filter.
“W-what happened?” Twitch asked, powering through another involuntary jerk. He had covered his own face. “I thought you was killed.”
Not caring for the concerned tone, Skate said, “I handled it. Let’s find a beggar; I need to get to the Boss.” She turned away from the stink and smiled behind her rag at Twitch’s smack of indignation as he hurried to catch up.
“Okay, but where’s the haul?” he asked, looking her over for signs of pocketed wealth.
“No haul.”
“Boss won’t l-like that,” he groaned, scratching at the back of his head to defer more spasms. “I thought you s-said you handled it!” he added, lowering his voice as he scanned the streets for a beggar.
“There’s no haul yet. But I got an in, Twitchy. I got me a home for a while, too—after I steal a book, anyway.” Skate explained the deal she had made with the wizard.
“Not a bad j-job, I guess,” Twitch said when she had finished, “but you can’t go taking deals like that without the Boss’s permission. He don’t like it w-when we start working for people without Ink approval. F-found one.” He pointed ahead to a grungy old beggar on the ground shaking a tin cup.
The gray man was rending the air with ragged calls. “Alms! Money for the hungry! Alms!”
Skate broke away from her companion and leaned against the wall a few feet away. Twitch slid down next to the beggar and slipped six copper coins bearing the image of Old King Rajian into the cup in a particular order: two, then three, then one. “Well-a-day, g-granddad.”
“Well-a-day to yeh,” the crusty beggar responded in hushed tones. “What’ll I do with your gift?”
“Spend it how you w-want, ’cause I know you’ll n-never drink.” Things changed week to week in the Ink, but this coded conversation stayed the same.
“What do you snots need to know, then?” the panhandler asked. He kept his deep-set eyes scanning the streets for any who might take pity on a broken old drifter.
“Where’s the Marshall c-crew meeting this week?” Twitch pretended to be very interested in something under one of his stubby toenails, which were sticking out of his rotten shoes.
“The dock house. Be there for the next two weeks at least.”
“That’s all, then. Th-thank you, uncle.”
“Here, boy. You dropped these,” the beggar replied, holding out five copper coins.
“You’re kind.”
“See that you’re kinder.”
The official business completed, the beggar returned to his shouting. Cries of “Alms! Money for the hungry!” followed the pair of children as they turned the next corner.
“I know he don’t like it, Twitch,” Skate said, once they were out of earshot, “but he’ll know it was worth it after I talk to him. You can’t believe the stuff the old guy has just lying around. That dagger alone woulda fetched a fistful of scepts, don’t you doubt it.” Skate was referring to the hexagonal golden coins of the kingdom, each sporting an image of King Rajian’s fabled scepter. “And I got a feeling that might’ve been the least valuable thing I got my hands on before he caught me.”
Twitch still looked uneasy as they sidled by a wide wagon that had been left in front of a pub. The pub owner was bickering with the wagon owner. “I don’t like that he d-didn’t go down when you knifed him—and I’m k-kinda surprised you did that at all,” he said, cutting his eyes her way. “I didn’t think you’d be willing to do that sort of s-stuff to escape. That’s more B-Boss Shade’s crew, or Kite.” The first name was spoken with hushed fear, but he almost spat the latter.
Skate screwed her face up in matching disgust. “I weren’t sure myself until the time came, to be honest,” she said, looking at the ground. Let him think it was on purpose. That’ll get me a reputation as someone not to be messed with, anyway.
“Never mind th-that, though,” Twitch said, excitement replacing his concern. “How did the old guy not go down? You sure you really stabbed him?”
Skate rolled her eyes and adopted a high-pitched, simpering voice. “Oh my goodness, I don’t know, I’m just a wittle girl who doesn’t know how knives work! Of course I’m sure,” she finished, dropping back into her normal tone of voice and glaring at him. She shoved him in the arm, and he pushed back. There was a crowd in front of them with someone talking on a stage. “And I don’t know. Magic, I guess. He knows it. Maybe it was some sort of knife that doesn’t really stab when you use it.”
Twitch shook his head. “What’d be the point of—”
“I don’t know; wizards are crazy. Why do they do anything?”
It was an auction of some sort. The hawker was peddling furniture and dishes on the street in front of an ill-kept old wooden two-story house.
“Someone must’ve died. Hey, look, there’s Delly,” Skate said, knocking Twitch on the shoulder and gesturing toward a girl in similar rags to their own, moving through the crowd, darting fast hands into pockets and purses whose strings were suddenly too loose. Skate laughed, and they pushed on.
Delly wasn’t in the same crew as Twitch and Skate. She worked for Boss Kernisk, who ran pickpocketing and street-begging. There was a lot of overlap between Marshall’s crew and Kernisk’s; burglars who needed to let the heat fall off of them would move into petty theft to lie low while still contributing, and whenever the cutpurses got more ambitious, they joined up with the house thieves. It was a good system, just like everything the Ink was involved in: no waste, good use of people, profits always up.
The sudden fishy, salty smell of the sea made Skate wrinkle her nose, but Twitch didn’t seem to care. He was chattering in halted tones about wizards, but Skate was only half-listening. Cart-pushers started appearing in the foot traffic, peddling cockles and clams and shrimp and crab and mussels and sea bass and mackerel and squid and tuna and eels and every other bounty of the sea, singing their rhymes and jingles. There were sailors about, leathery men and women with powerful arms and stout legs, already carousing and scuffling. Somewhere, a musician was playing a familiar tune, but Skate could not remember the words. The reedy tune fused with the raucous scene, making it all seem somehow connected instead of the mindless, chaotic scramble it was.
The pair stopped behind a redstone building. It was some gambling den or other, but the cellar was why they were here. Skate opened the heavy wooden door to the cellar and hopped down. Twitch followed and let the door slam shut behind them.
The resulting darkness was absolute. They both stayed quiet, since walking blind required concentration.
Twitch arrived first. There was the click of a latch and a low grinding noise as stone rubbed against stone. A crack of light appeared in the stone and became wider as the boy pushed the wall back, revealing a lit passage leading down and left. The door closed behind them.
Skate began talking now that they could see again. “You honestly wouldn’t believe the number of books, Twitch. He’s got at least double what we cased downstairs. And he keeps lots of shiny, expensive things all over the place. I dunno what they are, but they’d sell.”
“Hope the B-Boss is as excited as you are about the whole idea. You know how he is about b-business. He l-likes sure things.”
The passage took an abrupt turn into a shut iron door. Skate knocked out the right rhythm. The eyehole slid open, a pair of eyes examined them briefly, and then the eyehole slid shut. With a heavy thunk, the door slowly groaned open. Only two or three handspans wide to begin with, the opening began to slowly swing shut as the pair passed thr
ough.
“Morning, Bart,” Twitch said to the doorman, who grunted and nodded vaguely. He reeked of alcohol, as usual. The Boss let Bleary-Eyes Bart get away with his habits, because the doorman could remember and recognize the people even when apparently blackout drunk.
The tables and stools of the underground common room were scattered around. Various other burglars milled about them, drinking, conversing, throwing dice, or playing cards to pass the time. Two dozen or so of these sneaks filled the room, and the chatter and laughter were only occasionally broken up by a cough or the intermittent thuds of darts landing on the board at one end of the room. Someone else was thumping his table regularly, the thud running through the floor and giving the room the feeling of a cadence underneath the general relaxation.
Pipe smoke hung in the room like a sour fog, trapped and heavy. Skate found the smell a little nauseating, but Twitch took a deep breath through his nose and sighed. He loved the stuff but only rarely had a chance to indulge. He claimed that it helped with his tics, but Skate knew it only made them worse when he was done smoking. “Let’s go see the Boss,” she said, nudging Twitch and pointing toward the Boss’s private area, an office and bedroom separated from this main area by a sturdy wooden door.
“He ain’t in,” a reedy, nasal voice said, a little more loudly than necessary. Twitch and Skate were passing the thumper’s table, and she fought to keep her face blank despite her revulsion. Kite was a tall and thin young man of about sixteen. He was holding a knife, which he had been throwing into the table in front of him, over and over again, leaving groove marks in its surface. He threw it again while he was watching them, and it sank about an inch into the wood. “He’s at the monthly.”