by Jeff Ayers
“Hmm,” Ossertine said, as she brought a thin finger to her thin lips, either to buy herself time to finish chewing, or to consider Skate’s reasoning. “I’m not so sure,” she said, smacking her lips once after swallowing. “Why would you go looking for my more valuable books at all when I had so many here in plain view?” She walked over and drew one at random from its place on the shelf. “Any of these, even for the stingiest of purchasers, would be worth at least ten scepts on their own. Why would you not grab and go as quickly as possible?”
Skate didn’t answer immediately, but looked at the fire. “It’s not my first time robbing a place.” The woman said nothing, but waved at her to continue. “Books are heavy. At most, I’d have got out with two, maybe three if they were small. I didn’t plan to make any repeat visits, so I took my time looking for any sort of hidden cache you had. If you had any rare books, you wouldn’t have them out sitting in your living room where any old moron could walk in and take them. So, I looked, and I found it.” She took a cake, convinced that it wouldn’t hurt her after watching Ossertine enjoy one. “Not my first time robbing a place,” she said again around a mouthful. It was shockingly sweet, and she had to force herself not to shove the whole thing down her throat at once.
“You said you knew I was friends with Barrison. How?”
“The night you came over, I was hiding in the kitchen. I heard your conversation, so I knew you’d be out of the house.”
Ossertine took another cake off the tray. “About that: how’d you know where my house was?”
“I’ve seen you before,” Skate invented wildly, desperate to avoid mentioning Rattle. “I’ve been doing my work for a couple years in this neighborhood, so I’ve got a pretty good bead on who lives where.”
Ossertine chewed and considered. “You’ve known where I lived for years, but you only now decided to steal my very valuable books?”
“How was I supposed to know you had any? Like I said, only reason I went after your stuff was because I knew you knew Mr. Belamy. Plus, my buyer’s new.”
“If you’re after books, why didn’t you just steal from Barrison?”
“There’s a saying a friend of mine likes: ‘Don’t burn where you read.’ Mr. Belamy gives me shelter and food. He’s not likely to let me stay around if I’m stealing from him, is he? And with that flying bat thing always hanging around, there’s no chance of me taking anything without getting caught anyway.”
“And how do you think he’ll react to your theft of my personal belongings?”
Skate said nothing, but looked at the burlap bag.
“For that matter, why did you—oh…” Ossertine trailed off and brought a thin palm to her forehead. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? He’s made you bring it back before you could sell it.” Skate did nothing to correct that misconception, as it was exactly the connection she’d wanted the woman to make. “So he knows he’s housing a thief, and he’s making you come back and say you’re sorry?”
“He didn’t say anything about ‘sorry.’ He just wanted it brought back.” She found the misdirection very easy to say because it was technically true; Belamy didn’t want this conversation to happen at all, so he’d never said she needed to say she was sorry.
“Foolish old man,” Ossertine muttered, rubbing her fingers together to remove the persistent crumbs. “He’d likely be cross with me if I sent you off with the Guards, then. Why in the world he’s going through so much trouble for…” She trailed off without completing the thought and merely scoffed.
“For what?” Skate thought she knew what she’d meant to say, but she wanted her to come out with it to be sure.
Ossertine looked at her for what felt like a long time, her eyes narrowed in distaste, her lips curled ever so slightly into the shadow of a sneer. “You saw my painting?” she asked. Skate said nothing. “Of course you did; you had little else to look at. It depicts an historic scene, a piece of history tied directly to my family.” She stood and walked over to the large piece of art. “My thrice great-grandfather defended this city, though it was more a small town then, from a horde of monsters from the north—horrible things, it’s said, led by a terrible dragon.” Skate looked at the painting again; the sinewy monster beneath the man’s feet took on an even more frightening aspect. “He slew the beast and turned the tide of the battle. He saved hundreds of lives with his actions, and was awarded the title of Lord for his bravery.” She turned to face Skate directly, her thin hands crossed in front of her in the polite manner of the aristocracy. “His descendants carry on the line, though of course not all carry his title.” She sniffed. “This is what I do not understand about Barrison’s choice to protect you. You do not have such history. You do not have such worth.”
“Worth?” Skate jumped to her feet, knocking the delicate table a few inches away in her haste. She had taken a second dark cake and was now crushing it in her fist. “You think you’re worth more than me?”
Ossertine turned her face away and closed her eyes, her nose turned upward. “Saying such a thing is beneath me, child.”
“What’s better about you—”
“Nobility!” For the first time she’d ever seen, Ossertine showed not disgust or contempt, but true anger. Her teeth were clenched, and her hands, which had been clasped delicately in front of her, had balled into fists at her sides. She pointed a dagger-like finger at the painting. “Honor! Sacrifice!” She regained some of her composure, and her face became less of a monstrous mask of hate. Her other hand remained balled into a fist. “Sacrifice,” she said again, her voice less agitated, but still entirely disapproving. “Dignity. Dedication. These are what makes my family, and therefore me, better. These are things children struggle to comprehend at the best of times and even among the well-bred, but for a thief? These values are as alien to your kind as the pale moons themselves are to us all. What would you know of honor?” She sniffed at her again.
Skate was burning. She wanted to launch herself at the woman, to tear at her, to stop her words. Doing so would only prove her right, though, so she stood in simmering rage. “We got honor. We got rules, same as you. And we follow them. We got other stuff, too. We take care of one another. That ain’t something you’d understand. Sacrifice? We got that. You can turn your nose up all you want,” she added as the woman did just that, “but it don’t change nothing. You’re not better than the rest of us just because you got money and your grandpa did something good. You’re just lucky, is all.” She unwrapped the elven text from the sack and dropped the book out of it with a resounding thud. “Lucky you never had to starve, or cheat, or steal to survive. Lucky that you got parents that took care of you and told you where you came from.” She stuffed the empty sack into her pack. “Can I go, or is your stupid trap gonna stop me?”
The woman did not speak, but was looking at Skate with an expression the girl could not place. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t used to seeing anything other than smug disdain there, because Ossertine looked…unsure.
The woman shook her head in response to the question and waved at the door. It creaked open. “You may leave.”
Skate was out the door when she heard, “Give my best to Barrison.”
Chapter 17
In which a courier goes walkabout, a library is alphabetized, and a floor is dirtied.
The trap did not go off as Skate crossed the threshold. She left Laribel Ossertine’s home, and, instead of feeling proud for having gotten the job done without implicating Belamy, or satisfied for having told the arrogant woman off, she felt ashamed. She splashed through puddles that would soon turn icy, and her boots did their job of keeping her dry.
She stopped and looked down at the boots, footwear she’d neither bought nor stolen. She was not used to dealing with gifts, but had paid them no mind at the time; they had been in preparation for a job. But the very clothes on her back were gifts, given without expectation of repayment. The old man had never asked for them returned or paid for, and likely never
would. They were not hers, not really; they were Belamy’s, and he’d given them to her without a thought.
The boots were not hers. The dress was not hers. The coat was not hers. She was bedecked in clothes that did not belong to her, that she hadn’t earned, that she hadn’t stolen. It was not something she had given any thought to before. Ossertine made her think of it. “Bitter old cow,” she muttered to herself, kicking a nearby chunk of ice. The sturdy boots absorbed most of the shock, but her eyes welled up with tears anyway.
Skate knew she was right, that there was plenty to be proud of in her life, plenty of accomplishments and friendships and honor. But she knew none of that mattered to someone like Ossertine. It didn’t matter to the people who mattered. The people with money, the people with authority, the people with connections—these people didn’t think anything of people like her and Twitch and Delly. They thought they knew who these urchins were, and were satisfied with their knowing.
The Ink had been the only people who cared about any of the kids in this city. They were the ones who saw the value of the dispossessed kids, who could move about all but unseen and unheard, who went unnoticed by the crowds and Guards, who were out for survival and to prove to anyone who cared to know just what they could do. The Ink took them in, protected them, grew them, respected them. All the Bosses had kids in their crew (except Boss Shade; the Bosses had decided it wasn’t right to include anyone who had seen fewer than sixteen summers in that crew), and all knew the value such sneaks could pull in. The orphans and abused of the city found an open palm within the organization, and all they had to give in return was what they wanted to give anyway: proof that they were worth something.
Skate angrily wiped her useless tears away and began walking without a destination in mind. Other than her parents, the Ink were the only people who had treated her with something other than contempt. Everyone else had been like Ossertine and the Guards. That’s not right, she thought, reminding herself where she had been sleeping in a warm bed and eating warm meals of late. Belamy’s been good. Belamy seems to care whether I live or die. “Only cuz he wants something from me,” she muttered aloud, stepping off the street to let a wagon full of barrels trundle by.
The Ink wants something, too, don’t they? the small and persistent voice countered. You can only stay if you work, right? “Ink ain’t cheap,” right? And if you want to leave, you’d better pay them off if you know what’s good for you. Skate huffed and picked up her pace as she wound through the back alleys. Okay, fine, she shot back, so Belamy and the Ink both are sort of good. So what?
She paused and listened. Without noticing, she’d almost blown right past a street musician working a crowd with a rousing rendition of “The Blue Grapevine” on a ragged violin. The graying woman had the top of her head covered in the gingham cloth favored by the traveling performers who usually brushed through in the spring. Her skin looked tough as leather, especially around her beaky nose. The crowd was laughing and carousing as they began the second verse:
My love has left me here this cold November,
My heart packed full of bitter, sullen snow.
I know not if she will bother to remember
The doting fool whose face she used to know…
They moved into the chorus again, and the playing woman seemed more than happy to keep the tune going as long as the crowd cared to take part. She smiled and revealed a mouth with only three teeth left within. She’d be gathering plenty of coin from this crowd, and had much to be smiling about.
So, stealing from Belamy is wrong. Skate scoffed aloud at the thought, though there was no external target for her derision. The idea that stealing was wrong was discussed at length with those brand new to the Ink. It was an idea that some children had managed to pick up from their parents or other family members before joining. Skate had been one such recruit, but the other thieves were quick to point out the hypocrisy of such talk: the people who said stuff like that were awful quick to do other stuff that wrong just the same, so what’s so bad about stealing in order to eat? If left with no options, they’d do the same. And people in the Ink? They had no other options.
Still, the thought did not leave Skate when she strolled away from the music. Why’s it wrong? she demanded of herself. Why’s stealing from him any different than anybody else? The answer, she knew, lay in the conversation she’d already had with herself: he didn’t treat her like trash. He’d shown concern for her before he’d seen any value in her thieving skills, despite the fact that she had been involved in some minor stabbing of him. Stealing from him felt wrong to her because of who he’d shown himself to be. He had demonstrated nothing but kindness to her, and she was planning not only to steal from him, but to steal from him in such a way that he would end up under the control of strangers who thought him a monster and cared nothing for him beyond his utility.
The guilt came back, and Skate tried to outwalk it, turning this way and that in a blind struggle with herself. Stealing from him felt like a betrayal, no matter what she tried to tell herself. She had his trust, and she was planning to hang him with it when all he’d given her were work, learning, and respect.
She stopped where she stood, causing someone behind her to curse when they bumped into her. The gentleman in the fine hat cut her a dirty look underneath his bushy black eyebrows and said something about “useless” and “public menace, the lot.” Skate paid him no mind, and dealt with the most significant problem she felt she’d ever encountered. Can you do it? She’d asked herself this before and either refused to answer or gave an affirmative, but that affirmative had not been properly considered—it had been a knee-jerk response, and nothing more. It had helped her ignore the question and the crisis it would bring. She faced that crisis now, and she felt it would tear her apart if not dealt with soon.
She did not know what to do. The Ink needed her—Boss Marshall especially, if the rumors were to be believed. He’d kept her safe all these years, with food in her belly and a cot to sleep on. It had not been the stuffed mattress she enjoyed each night, nor the rich fare she ate, but it had been better than a bare floor and no food at all; and the others, those who had to stay on the streets, could never claim better than what she’d gotten from the Boss.
Still, she had been caught in the act of burglary by Belamy, who had had every right and ability to hold her and throw her to the Guard. Instead, he’d offered her freelance work, with a bed and warm meals in the meantime. And reading, that was another thing. Even though she was not by any means literate, the wizard had opened a door that was previously shut: the written word. With enough practice and time, she could teach herself to read with the skills the old man had taught her. It was something that couldn’t be taken from her, no matter what.
The idea of selling her teacher into bondage opened a pit in her stomach, but so did the idea of abandoning her caretaker and employer after she’d made promises to help. Besides, trying to leave the Ink could be…dangerous.
“Honor,” Ossertine had said, and Skate had retorted that she and those like her had plenty of it in their own way—and she believed that. But what honor was there in selling an innocent man into slavery, an innocent man who’d shown mercy and generosity when they had not been earned in any way?
And yet, what honor was there in abandoning an agreement and leaving a friend and mentor to struggle and possibly even die? Big Boss, if he was displeased with Marshall, would not stay so for long without taking action against him, especially if Boss Shade was out spreading rumors of his impending doom. Failing Boss Marshall would mean leaving him at the mercy of the other Bosses, and being against the other Bosses always went poorly. It was why Hajime had reorganized the criminal group as he had: everyone on the same page, and no mercy or hesitation in cutting out those who weren’t. If Boss Marshall were decided to be on a different page, then there was nothing to be done for him. He wasn’t there yet, but failing to get Jack Gherun into the fold might do it. If he had a powerful mage at his disposal
, though? One who couldn’t die? He’d be fine. He’d be golden. He’d be in the books for good.
Skate wiped her eyes. Each choice was wrong, and each one was right. Crying in the street wouldn’t fix that. Deciding now wouldn’t do it, either. She’d only know what her decision was in the moment when the opportunity presented itself. She looked around to figure out where her rambling had taken her, and realized she wasn’t out of the Old Town. The sun had sunken lower; it offered feeble light through the rows of inns and pubs and shops, and soon even that would be gone, leaving Skate and anyone else unlucky enough to still be outside to fend off the cold alone. She turned around and walked back toward Belamy’s house.
Skate walked in to find the lich back behind his desk, empty glass ball and spinning golden device in front of him. The glass showed nothing but his own distorted features; she could tell from across the room that he was not seeing anything he wanted to. She kicked off her boots and hung her coat on the rack. She didn’t interrupt his work, despite her curiosity about his efforts of the day. Presumably, if he was coming back to these attempts, his search had not been nearly as productive as she feared it might have been. He did not look at her as she went upstairs.
Rattle and Petre were both still in the library (as far as she knew, Petre never went anywhere else), but they were not reading together. Petre was back in his perch by the window, and Rattle was running one of its legs across the spines of the books. The rest hung limp and rattled.
Skate stood and watched Rattle. After a while its leg stopped, and the flapping eyeball turned to look at the title. It took the book off with a pair of spindly legs and shifted the books next to it up straight and to the right. It then placed the book back on the shelf, but between different books.