by B N Miles
Only one way to find out
"Well," Sam looked away from Mattie to Lebert, "I suppose that makes the decision much easier."
Lebert flashed him a pearly white grin. "Indeed."
"Sam," Mattie shuffled closer to him and dropped her voice so Lebert wouldn't hear her. "What if it's a trick?"
"Then we'll just have to call ourselves murderers instead of thieves." He whispered back, keeping his eyes on Lebert for any sudden signs of movement.
"I don't like this." She crossed her arms.
"I dislike prison more." He grinned and nudged her. In his head, though, he was agreeing. If Lebert turned out to be anything but legitimate, Sam would kill him. He may never have killed anybody before, but he had no doubt that he could if it meant protecting the only family he had.
Mattie chewed her lip and looked between the two of them. Lebert was watching her, his grin never dimming.
"Okay," she finally said.
"Excellent." Lebert clapped his hands and a shadow from the opposing end of the room shifted. A man emerged from the darkness, a loaded crossbow hanging from his hand.
Sam's breath hitched and Mattie grabbed his arm.
"It's good that you accepted. I do so hate killing off the young."
2
They waited in the street with their packs slung over their shoulders. The sun was just breaking over the Pel Ridges to the east, bringing a bright yellow sheen to everything around them that, for an hour or two, would make the mud streets and plank shanties of Hookman's Square gleam like it had a hope of being prettier one day.
The morning crowds were already sloughing up and down the road. Quarry workers walked toward the cliff crater outside of town, the fishermen trod to the docks, the whores dragged their feet to the playhouses, and the orphans darted toward the midsection in hope of finding a fat purse of specs to nab. Shoes and bare feet churned up mud, making the avenue a cacophony of splashing and sucking, splat-shloop-splat-shloop.
Sam stood on a brittle piece of wood in front of his door to avoid getting sucked into the thick mud. Mattie shuffled on her own piece of wood while Reg, Tegan, and Daro hung around the open threshold and waited with them. They weren't happy about this whole thing, and Sam couldn't blame them. Without him and Mattie around, the crew would be a lockpick and a strategist short. Couldn't be helped, though. It was either leave or go to prison.
But he was still worried about them. If he wasn't around to map their exit strategies and make sure they had food to eat, who would? Reg was careless enough to get caught if he didn't have somebody there to make sure he didn't do anything stupid, Tegan couldn't talk his way out of anything, much less an arrest. And Daro, well, he was good at talking the other two into spending their money on wine and girls rather than rent and dinner.
If he got back and found out that they'd died, he'd find them in the afterlife and throttle them. His crew was all he had, all that mattered, and they'd grown up together from street urchins to gutter rats. He would never recover if he lost them.
After waiting for nearly twenty minutes, Lebert finally passed their house. Sam might have missed him completely if the man hadn't glanced right at them. Instead of stopping to collect Sam and Mattie, he kept walking.
Right. No need to alert the others. Spies didn’t exactly like civvies knowing what they looked like.
Sam glanced at the guys they were leaving behind and gave them a wordless, lopsided smile. They'd said their goodbyes, no need to draw it out.
He looked at Mattie and thrust his chin in Lebert's direction.
Her grip on her pack tightened but she grinned at the guys. "Seeya, losers."
The guys muttered goodbye to her and before anybody could get too emotional, Mattie grabbed Sam by the wrist and yanked him along the street to catch up with their enigmatic recruiter.
Sam troughed quickly through the morning muck, keeping his eyes down and his shoulders hunched. It was the only way he could catch the pickpockets with any accuracy; they were usually so small and quick that even if he was looking right down at them, they'd nab his specs if he didn’t react quickly enough. If he worked as a spy for the empire, he'd never have to worry about mudrats and their deft fingers ever again. As soon as the thought surfaced, he stuffed it back down. Lebert may not be pulling their legs about recruiting them, but Sam could still wake up any minute and discover that the whole thing was a dream.
He'd believe it when he left the stinking capital city of Roslav and not a minute before. Until then, he would assume that this was all an illusion that might disappear at any moment—good things like this didn't happen to people like him and Mattie.
They caught up to Lebert at the top of a hill that sloped toward the docks. The smell of brackish water, piss, and fish was fresh in the wind. Lebert pulled up short and glanced at them over his shoulder. Now that Sam could see him properly in the light, the recruiter wasn't nearly as intimidating as he'd first seemed. He was average in build and looks, and he might have easily been lost in a crowd if Sam didn't already know to look for him.
Then again, maybe that was a required trait. It would be difficult to be a spy if one stuck out like a sore thumb.
Sam looked at Mattie for a long moment and when she noticed, she frowned and stuck her tongue out at him. If it was a requirement to be plain, then Mattie wouldn't qualify. She had big blue eyes and all her teeth. She could probably pass as a noble if she had a good wash, not that Sam would ever tell her that. She'd get a big head and tease him about how fair he thought she was until the end of time.
Not that she wasn't fair. He just didn't want her to know that he thought as much—he hadn't wanted her to know since they were eight.
They crested the hill and kept walking, always following Lebert at no more than ten paces. It didn't take long for them to make it down the avenue and to the docks proper, where shirtless men with cracked and darkened skin hefted and pulled at crates and ropes.
"Oh wow." Mattie stopped short and Sam unconsciously did the same, whipping his gaze to see what she was staring at.
His eyes widened.
There, tied to the very last port dock, was a sleek teak vessel that was so freshly scrubbed that it looked brand new. It dwarfed all the other boats around it, rising three cabins tall from the water and at least three times as long. The sails were tucked in, but a small flag flapped and snapped from the crow's nest. It was a black flag with a curling V. That had to be it.
They must have been standing there a long time because Lebert appeared from nowhere to hustle them along.
"Honestly, it's like you've never seen a ship before," he muttered, steering them forward with a hand on each of their shoulders.
This was really happening, then. Lebert shoved them toward the loading plank.
Sam didn't pay attention to the walk from the dock to the ship, he was too busy trying to come to grips with the fact that yes, this was really happening, and no, it wasn't a trick or a dream. One minute he was far away and the next, his hand was gliding over the ship's fine wooden railing. Mattie slowly ascended as well, clutching her pack tight to her chest and looking from side to side as if somebody might jump out and arrest them.
Sam's threadbare shoes flopped against the deck. He was vaguely aware that he was tracking mud onto the spotless wood, but he didn't worry about it much. There were a couple of deckhands, but they were adjusting some cranks and knots and didn't look up. Their uniforms were dark and spotless, almost military but not quite. They looked more like groomsmen than sailors. One approached Sam and Mattie, and Sam stepped aside so he could pass, but then the man stopped right in front of him, bowed shallowly, and held out his hand.
Sam stared at the man but he just stared at the floor. Sam looked at Mattie, who shrugged in return.
"Uh . . . can I help you?" Sam tried. The man didn't look up. Hesitantly, Sam placed his palm in the man's hand. Maybe it was customary.
There was a sigh from somewhere behind them and Lebert stepped forward, grabbe
d Sam's pack, and thrust it at the man.
"They're mute," he said, seizing Mattie's pack as well.
Ah.
Sam snatched his hand back from the man and held it to his chest with a sheepish grin. "Sorry."
The man received the packs, bowed again, then strode away with silent, measured steps. Eerie.
"Your cabins will be through that door," Lebert pointed at the entrance to the lower deck, on the right side of the ship, "on the second level. The dinner cabin, lounge, and recreation cabins are all on the first level."
When they didn't immediately move, Lebert gave them both a gentle push forward. "That was a polite way of saying 'get out of the way and go make nice with the other recruits.'"
Sam stumbled mindlessly toward where Lebert wanted them to go. The world around him dulled and muffled like he was swimming underwater, and even though the cabin door was looming closer, even though he was touching the knob and turning it and walking through the open portal, none of it felt real.
Things like this didn't happen to people like Sam. He hadn't done anything to earn it, hadn't gone out of his way to get it, had never thought that he could come anywhere close to an opportunity like this in this lifetime. The Academy was where nobles sent their children, where prodigies nurtured from birth went. It was where the fingers of fame and fortune stretched wide.
This place wasn't for Sam. Whoever created him, be it the Wisps, the Four Watchers, the Spirits, or the Stone Men, had not made him for things like this. Sam was meant to be a faceless pebble, forgotten by the world as soon as the river washed over him. He was a creature of mud and salt, he was a ladder for a ribcage and a pity for a face, he was something that lived past infancy only to breed and die when the next vicennial blight came.
"Sam?"
"Hm?"
He blinked and everything came into sharp focus, like he'd been transported from a dream to the land of the waking. They were in a softly lit hallway, the walls paneled with thick teak wood and the floors covered with fine wine-colored carpet. The candles on the wall gave off a soft, spicy scent like air from a noble's open window on the winter solstice.
Mattie was pointing at a door. A tack held a thin piece of paper with their names on it.
Sam looked at Mattie and she opened it, a little smile quipping her doll-like mouth. "I can't believe they're letting us bunk together. You'd think it would be segregated like how the nobles do everything."
"Yeah." That was weird. The Academy was probably segregated by gender, and any person with a shred of respectability to their names would never dream of bunking with the opposite sex if they weren't married. Sam and Mattie weren't respectable by any means, but the nobles might assume they were. Very, very irregular. Too irregular. Maybe an overlooked detail. Maybe a set-up.
"Sky's mercy, Sam," Mattie sauntered into the room, "when are you going to get it into your thick skull that we aren't being set up?"
Was he talking out loud? Spirits, he needed to eat. Maybe he was having a nutrient deficiency again. The Goodsister from the worship house that made free visits to the slums every month had treated Sam for such a thing before. He'd been laid out with shivers and stomach cramps and visions of things that weren't there. She had to close her eyes and push her senses into his blood to see what was ailing him. Too much brown food, not enough green and red, she said. His body was failing, and sickness was invited in because he didn't eat the things he needed to function at peak condition. She said that, of course, after confirming that he was dying and before curing him.
"After they don't kill us, I suppose." Sam closed the door behind them.
Mattie huffed a quiet laugh and stepped toward one of the two beds. She ran her hand along the cream-colored quilt. They both went quiet as they took it all in. The quilt looked like it was made of cotton, not burlap, and there wasn't a single hole or stain anywhere to be seen. There was a pillow at the head of the bed, plump and white as snow and almost wide enough to fit three heads on it. A small table was next to it with a small round window above it, and an identical bed sat on the other side of the table. There was a plush chair in the corner and a rug between the beds. It was small, but it was warm, and it was more luxurious than any room they had ever slept in.
Sam sat on the far bed and didn’t speak a word, refusing to break the quiet of the cabin. There was a lot left unsaid about all of this, but right now he couldn't conjure the words and frankly, he didn't care to. This was a perfect moment in time, a thing he could remember always as a moment where his world had changed and become bigger, brighter, and so full of magic and beauty that it was set to choke him.
Suddenly, a shrill shriek shot through the wood of the door. Sam startled, sitting drawn and tense long after the shout died.
"Oh my." A second voice came closer to the door, smooth and smokey like a hushed promise. "I hope those weren't expensive."
The voice that shouted moments before shouted again, followed by a solid kick to the wall. "What kind of filth do they let in this spirits-damned boat?!"
"Well, if footprints are to be believed, the kind that is staying in that room."
Sam clenched the quilt beneath his hands and swallowed. He didn't know for certain that they were talking about him and Mattie, but they'd said footprints. They'd tracked mud on the boat.
After a long stretch of silence, their cabin door was struck with a sharp pair of knuckles three times. "You owe me a new pair of shoes. Next time you decide to walk from the Tasmin Bog to the capital, be sure to wipe your feet and have a shower on the way in."
The girl banged on the door a final time before the tromp of her heavy footsteps moved away from the cabin. Sam heard her voice once more before they left the corridor proper, far away but still audible, and it was enough to make him cringe away from the door.
"Honestly, you'd think they let in one of those disgusting poppy-addicts from the blushing district, or worse, one of those diseased beggars on Hookman's Square."
Their flat was on the south end of Hookman's Square.
After the incident with the mud, Sam and Mattie kept well away from the others. They didn't go to the rec room or the lounge. Lebert didn't drop by. Nobody talked to them. Instead, when some of the others passed by their cabin, they'd talk very loudly about how the hallway smelled, or that they hoped they didn't catch anything from being so near the 'blighted.'
The others called them 'blighted' because now they knew that he and Mattie came from the quell sector. All it took was one little appearance at dinner and that was it, everybody somehow knew. If Sam was being honest with himself, it was probably because he and Mattie were skin and bone. They didn't even try to eat in the dining area with twenty sets of eyes on them. Instead, they took their food and promptly walked back to their cabin.
Now that everybody knew what they were, Sam and Mattie would have to be careful. Nobles liked to hurt gutter rats like them, and they got away with it every time. Sam didn't know the rules of the Academy, so he didn't know if they'd look the other way if he and Mattie were harassed . . . or worse.
Sam had never been able to get the money or connections needed to live anywhere but the quell sector, and he had seen his fair share of cruelty from the nobles. All they had to do was lodge a complaint on a quell-dweller, and that person was either hauled off or flogged in the streets. The little kids didn't have to worry about it as much but the adults certainly did. That's why people didn't venture near the mid-section, much less past it, not even for a stroll. If a merchant or a noble knew your face, then you were bound to be dragged off for something, someday.
Once, when Sam was staying with the Widow Baker and a few other orphans, he had lived next door to a very pretty girl. Pretty girls didn't live where he lived, they either fled long before anybody noticed them, got the soul sucked out of them by working the whorehouses, or they ended up dead, but this one was sixteen and alive and always smiling.
Fiera. He'd never forget her. She had a long, thick braid of cornflower yellow ha
ir and big brown eyes. She always smiled at him and the other snot-nosed urchins, always sang when she hung the wash, always behaved as if nothing in the world could go wrong.
The authorities came for her right after the summer blessing festival. Some of the adults whispered that she'd gone there while her mother was working. Nobody knew if she would come back. But she did come back.
Fiera had stumbled through the mud streets before dawn wearing nothing but a thin frock. All of her pretty, straight teeth had been taken from her mouth. Her head had been shaved. The bright shimmer of her tanned skin had been taken and replaced by grey-blue flesh that wrinkled whenever she moved.
Harvested, they whispered. Some noble spellcaster had taken the youth from her skin, probably to feed it into their own, then they took her teeth, her hair, and her kidney while they were at it, probably sold on the forbidden market. All because somebody had seen her face, seen her mud shoes, and knew that all it took was an accusation of thievery to get her in a room with no questions asked. The authorities would turn a blind eye and ignore any counteraccusations. If Fiera's mother had caused them any trouble, they would have just dragged her off as well.
Fiera didn't make it past the flu season, and neither did her mother.
When people knew you were from the quell sector, you were as good as dead.
Sam was laying on his bed, reading a strategy book from the recreation room. They had all sorts of valuable tomes lying about, and he wasn't going to let the opportunity to learn something new pass him by, even if they were about to undock.
A set of approaching footsteps echoed down the hall toward his cabin. He stopped reading, his stomach rolling as it usually did whenever he heard somebody coming toward the room.
He could see the girl with the 'ruined' shoes in his mind's eye, four mute sailors trailing after her. She'd order the door open, accuse Sam and Mattie of throwing her shoes overboard, then arrange an accident so that the two of them ended up in the bottom of the sea. And nobody would do anything because nobody would miss two little nothings, nobody wanted flea-bitten thieves to spread disease throughout the ship, and nobody wanted to raise the ire of a wealthy girl who could ruin lives with a snap of her fingers.