Skate the Thief

by Jeff Ayers

  Skate walked him over to where she had found him and settled him into his wire frame.

  “There we are,” he said, his eyes falling backward into the fog. “And remember: let me talk to Belamy about our talk, eh? That’s the ticket.” His voice fell away as Skate moved her hand away from the glass.

  Skate stepped back, wondering who this strange person was and why he was in the glass ball in the old man’s library. She felt that he had been about to confirm Haman’s and the Boss’s suspicions that Belamy was not alive in the technical sense, but had shied away from the revelation out of…fear? It had certainly seemed like he was afraid of the consequences of their conversation. She decided, for now, that it was best to stand by her promise not to reveal the conversation to Belamy when she saw him.

  Skate left the library, no book or trinket in hand, glad not to have been caught stealing anything. She had not, after all, known she was being watched when she had entered.

  Skate heard the heavy front door open and close, and heard Belamy’s surprised exclamation at seeing his friend sitting in front of his cheerily crackling fire. She hid out of sight at the top of the stairs to listen to their conversation, which had only just begun.

  Belamy spoke first. “…pleasant surprise!”

  “Yes, I thought I’d check up on you with this dismal weather, especially since I know how loath you are to light your hearth, even in the bitter cold. But I see that I needn’t have worried.”

  “Oh, no, I’m fine, just fine. Rattle, go fetch Laribel something warm to drink—tea, yes?”

  “Lovely. Thank you, Rattle, dear.”

  Skate heard the clink of her dish as Rattle carried it into the kitchen, where, presumably, it would shortly have a kettle roaring to make some twenty-year-old tea. There was another scrape as Belamy scooted a chair, probably near where Ossertine was resting. When she spoke, a heavy note of disapproval weighed down her words. “I met your other guest, earlier.”

  “Oh yes, young Skate.”

  Ossertine gave a noncommittal grunt. “She’s a rude child.”

  “Well, she’s not used to dealing with another’s houseguests, I’m sure. Whatever rudeness she showed to you, simply charge it to me; she’s my guest and my responsibility. I hope it was nothing that cannot be mended.”

  “No, on the whole, I suppose it was minor. Think not of it.” There was a creak as the kitchen door opened and closed, then opened and closed again. “I take it by her…attire, that this is some urchin you’ve taken in off the streets?”

  “She’s without a home, yes.”

  “Oh, Barrison, you mustn’t begin taking in strays. Soon you’ll have every manner of hanger-on and beggar at your door, believing they’ve a right to a warm bed and a hot meal.”

  “She’s not a stray, Laribel. She’s working for me. Helping me get things I need around town, that sort of thing. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a young man, ready to go out and take on the world. She’s been quite helpful these past few days.”

  “But you were just out there!” Ossertine protested, and Skate heard the beginnings of a whistling kettle from the kitchen. “You have your new employee made dinner by Rattle while you go out into the snow for writing supplies.”

  “She worked very hard yesterday,” he replied sheepishly, “and she’s still very young. She seemed to need her rest.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I’m fine, Laribel.”

  The resulting silence told Skate that Ossertine was skeptical of that claim but did not wish to press the issue. “I also came to warn you: my home was burgled recently. There’s a book thief out and about, and he may try to target you next.”

  “Yes, I knew there had been break-ins in the area. That’s why I began to take precautions.”

  “Oh, yes, I hope they help.”

  Skate guessed they must have been discussing Belamy’s bizarre locks on his windows.

  “Who else has been stolen from?” Ossertine asked.

  “Some of the shops around have been dealing with thieves for a while, but it’s mostly been out in their streetside goods. The neighbors were not forthcoming about what had been stolen, so I decided to take precautions regardless. I’m glad I did, since your thief seemed interested in taking books specifically.”

  “Book, not books,” Ossertine corrected. “The thief took only one of my books. A rare one. They seemed to know where to go in my home, as well. Perhaps having an extra pair of eyes around your home may help you further to avoid such unpleasantness.” There was another creak as Rattle opened the kitchen door once more to bring tea to Belamy’s guest; Skate only then realized the whistling had stopped. “After all, the burglar only struck after I had left my home.”

  “I’m confident in my locks,” Belamy responded, “and in the fact that I almost never leave my home. I thank you for the warning and the concern, though. Have you warned Jack and Bakurin yet?”

  Skate noticed with dread the sound of Rattle moving up the stairs toward her, its wings flapping and its legs clicking lazily together, like thin wooden wind chimes in a breeze. She was hidden only by virtue of the landing of the stairs blocking view of her from the main room and had nowhere to hide from someone actually coming up.

  When Rattle popped into view, Skate put a finger to her lips in a pantomime of shushing. Rattle looked right at her and continued on as if it had not seen her. It floated past, into the upstairs library, and shut the door behind it.

  Skate released the breath that she had held since she’d heard Rattle’s approach. She had missed part of the conversation because of all her fretting over being caught. Belamy was saying something.

  “…neighbors or not, they should probably be made aware of the issue. If the thief finds both of our homes too well-protected, they’re likely to move on to more easy pickings, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose you’re right. However, I’m not interested in walking all that way in a snowstorm. Getting here to you was inconvenient enough, and we’re practically neighbors ourselves. Besides, I’d hardly call the mansion that Jack lives in ‘easy pickings.’”

  “I guess the weather should give us some pause.” There was silence after that for a while. When they did begin speaking again, it was on some esoteric topic in their reading from the previous meeting, and Skate decided she had worn out any particular interest that this conversation might carry. She went to her room, opening and shutting her door with absolute silence—the result of years of practice at hiding her passage through occupied houses.

  Skate had not been in her room for more than five minutes before there was a soft knock at the door. She opened it to find Rattle flapping in place, holding a small cloth bag in three of its legs. It tossed the bag to Skate, who almost dropped it in surprise. Then it floated over to Skate’s desk. It opened the drawer, pulled out the slate within, and tossed it onto the desk lazily. The slate bounced lightly before coming to rest on the wooden surface. Rattle then floated back out of the room without looking at Skate. It left the door open when it left.

  Skate opened the cloth bag to find several small squares of white stone. When she touched one of them, it left a powdery residue on her fingers.

  Chalk.

  Rattle came back in carrying a small book in its legs. It floated to the desk and scooted the slate to the edge of the desk. It then set the book down gently and opened it up. After flipping a few pages delicately, it stopped on a page with care. It floated across the desk and turned around, putting the desk between Skate and itself, looking at her directly as it fluttered in place. It pointed first to the page, then to Skate, then to the empty black slate near the edge of the desk. It repeated this motion three more times, then pointed to the desk.

  Skate smiled. Rattle was clearly communicating to her, and she thought she might understand what it was saying. “You want me to copy the page onto the slate?”

  Rattle neither confirmed nor denied her suspicion, but gestured her closer to the desk.
More specifically, it seemed to be gesturing her to the open page.

  When Skate got to the desk, it gently traced one of its legs down the open page, then did so again, and then a third time. It repeated this process as well.

  Skate realized that it was tracing specific symbols on the page; there were three columns of different symbols on the open page, with writing above and beneath this set of symbols. Rattle was not pointing to anything but the columns of symbols. “You want me to copy the symbols here?” she asked, tracing the symbols exactly as Rattle had done with its thin leg.

  Rattle bounced a little more energetically in the air, and pointed from the bag in Skate’s hand to the empty slate. “And you want me to do it using the chalk in the bag. All right, eyeball, I get it.”

  Rattle bounced in the air enthusiastically again, and then moved toward the door.

  “Wait!” Skate said, putting a hand out to stop it. It obliged and looked back at her curiously. “Why?”

  Rattle just looked blankly at her, and she realized that it would be very difficult for the eyeball-spider to answer a question of that type. To her surprise, however, it made a move to answer. It brought a leg to the page, this time tracing the writing above the column of symbols, then pointing to Skate’s head. It was a surprisingly gentle motion, and Rattle looked at her after the pantomime to see if she understood.

  Skate nodded. This was her first reading lesson.

  Chapter 9

  In which a schedule is studied, aspirations are discussed, and a confession is made.

  Skate drew her new clothes more tightly around her as she watched the illuminated windows of Jack Gherun’s dining room. Unlike Belamy or Ossertine, he owned only a portion of the building he lived in: a selection of three connected rooms on the top floor of a building with other tenants around and below him. The building, according to passersby she had been able to corner and badger, belonged to Baron Richefort himself, though some seemed to remember rumors that the Baron had sold it to a nephew or cousin at some point to pay for some trinket or other that one of his mistresses desired.

  Some people cared a great deal about such rumors; the Ink was particularly interested in direct confirmation of any salacious stories of the rich and powerful, which it could then store up for the day when the organization needed to force compliance or demand other information or just to make some quick money for another project. This sort of thing was boring in the extreme to Skate, of course, and it was all hearsay besides. She never met a single person who could directly corroborate the whispers, so she safely ignored them in order to better focus on the task at hand.

  This was her third time analyzing Gherun’s patterns this week. The first two had been as uneventful as this innocent clandestine observation, which was the point. She was studying her mark’s behaviors, his tendencies, and his schedule, and there should not be anything exciting about that idea. The thief’s work done right goes unnoticed for as long as possible. The nugget of wisdom from Boss Marshall made her smile.

  Also making her smile were her comfortable new clothes. When she had informed Belamy of her need to follow and track her mark for days before trying to gain entry to the home, Belamy had remarked that her clothing would tip off any interested parties to her presence, because the poor were at best barely tolerated there under typical circumstances. Staying in roughly one place while spying on a resident of the neighborhood was not “at best” or “typical circumstances.” So, recognizing her need to blend in, Belamy had sent Skate out to pick the best clothes for the job.

  Given the neighborhood in which Gherun lived, Skate had decided upon a dress that allowed movement, work, and play, a dress that could be worn with the powerful pride that the rich exuded wherever they went—clothing that both invited questions and at the same time put them off. If anyone asked, she planned to claim to be the daughter of a newly wealthy man trading wares out of the untamed region of Edge, a daughter who was easily entertained and tonight had chosen the large building as the focus of her disingenuous “attentions.” Of course, there was no guarantee that such an excuse would keep her out of any direct trouble, but it might cause enough of a distraction that she could give any over-curious Guard the slip, ready to head back to Belamy’s house until she was safely forgotten.

  The thick coat and new dress were not her only sartorial boons; she was comfortable standing in the snow in new boots, and felt that she could have stayed right where she was for hours without needing to go elsewhere.

  Skate had, over the past few days, learned much of Gherun’s lifestyle. He lived alone, without so much as a pet or plant to keep him company, and he had no other company call on him in the time that Skate had spent watching and learning.

  He was also fastidious in keeping his living space clean; after he took his meals, he immediately placed the dirty dishes into the hallway, which the servants who maintained the entire building quickly took away to the building’s lower floors. When he read, which he did at almost exactly the same time every night, he placed a bookmark (he favored thin strips of cloth that hung outside the pages, trailing behind the book whenever he moved it like ribbons did in the rich girls’ hair) after about an hour of reading, and replaced the book exactly where he had taken it from to begin with.

  Skate noted with annoyance that he always checked to make sure the row of books he’d disturbed was unmoved at the end of his efforts. What annoyed her was not so much that such attention to detail meant she would leave some noticeable evidence of her crime; that would best be avoided, of course, but some amount of detail was bound to slip her mind. No, she’d decided that she simply did not like Gherun for his obsession with organization, with order, with minute control of his living space. She couldn’t place why she found his fussiness so irritating, but her lack of clarity did nothing to mitigate the effect.

  A useful aspect of his disdain for all things disorganized was that he kept a very rigid—and therefore very predictable—daily schedule.

  Every aspect of the man’s life followed a pattern: for the three days Skate had observed him, she’d noticed nothing different at all about his habits or schedule. He didn’t have any visitors (aside from the help staff) during her observations. When she asked Belamy about Gherun, the old man informed her that he was a private man, and a wealthy one. It was why he could afford such luxurious living in an expensive part of the city without having to work to keep it. Belamy said he had inherited his wealth. “He prefers the company of books to that of people,” Belamy said, “though he can function quite well in a crowd. Given the option, I think he’d choose a book over conversation nine times out of ten.”

  As she stood in the snow, her new boots wrapping snugly around her feet, Skate decided her only hope was to break in while the man was asleep and sneak back out before she was noticed. That would have to wait until the next night; she had an idea how to get in, but it would take some planning. She did not have Rattle with her, anyway. It needed to be with her, but she hoped that would not be the case for much longer; her lessons were going well.

  As she turned on the spot and began the dark, muffled walk back to Belamy’s home, she reflected on her progress. That first lesson had been the simple mockery of letters. When Belamy had finally come up after saying farewell to Ossertine, he had explained that all words were made of these letters, and that beginning to read would require knowing these twenty-six symbols by heart. So her lesson was to practice writing each of these letters and naming them when shown.

  Rattle was there to help for most of it, with Belamy monitoring silently from the corner of the room, a book ever open on his crossed legs. After a long while of these exercises (she thought it must have been hours), he rose from his seat and told her she could rest for the day. Rattle had prepared food for her while she’d grilled Belamy about her target.

  Skate turned a corner at the sight of a trio of Guards; she was not doing anything wrong by being out this late at night, but a young lady alone on the streets—even a well-dre
ssed one—was sure to cause suspicion, and she would rather avoid any probing questions.

  Around the corner, Skate found another almost-deserted street, the plentiful lamps of the castle district casting a happy but subdued light as snow began to lazily fall to the earth in wispy, wind-stirred pellets. There was a pair of finely dressed people on the other side of the street, a man and a woman huddled close together. Instead of being engaged in conversation or whispering loving trifles in each other’s ears, though, they were purposefully walking faster than normal and avoiding eye contact with the other person on the block: a poorly dressed girl, who was weaving and bobbing as she walked, apparently in the throes of delirium. Skate noticed the urchin but didn’t think anything of it; she was used to seeing kids her age who had spent money on or been given alcohol. Of course, Ink members were not to indulge on the job, and the Bosses usually did not let any kids in their teams drink before they were at least fifteen. Skate had never found anything about alcohol appealing, and had never indulged.

  This girl had had a lot of it, by the look of her. As she stumbled closer, Skate could smell the booze; it was as if the other girl had bathed in it rather than drunk it.

  When they were about five feet apart, each girl’s eyes opened wide in recognition. It was Delly, and judging by her sudden alertness and stillness, she was not actually drunk. She eyed Skate’s attire curiously, and motioned toward a small space between nearby buildings.

  Skate looked around and saw that the nervous young couple must have beaten their retreat very hastily, as they were nowhere to be found. She followed Delly into the cramped area, no longer worried about her disguise being blown.

  “What’s with the costume?” Delly said without preamble once they were out of view. “You moving up to a lieutenant already or something?” Alert or not, the girl reeked of alcohol, and the stench was almost overpowering up close.