Arenza edged back a step, shaking her head. “No. Mama always said—she wouldn’t want me to be a thief.”
Would she rather you whore yourself out? But a sharp answer like that would only push Arenza further away. Instead Ondrakja said, “I don’t think she’d want you to starve, either. And this city... already it has taken her from you. Why should you not take something back?”
That got her, like a blow under the ribs. But Arenza was just as clever as Ondrakja suspected—if not quite subtle enough to be effective. “No. I cannot.”
It was a test. Waiting to see if Ondrakja would flip from Face to Mask, the moment it looked like she wasn’t getting what she wanted.
Ondrakja sighed. “I understand. You wouldn’t want to disappoint her. Your mother, I think, must have had a better heart than mine.” She rose and brushed off her skirt. “You are still welcome to stay the night, and to eat those dumplings. Tomorrow as well—the Fingers ordinarily have no one here who is not one of them, but I will tell them to make an exception.”
Arenza wasted no time in stuffing her face. Ondrakja had to urge her to slow down before she made herself sick. When the last crumbs were gone, Arenza sat in the high-backed chair and stared into the fire with the glassy gaze of someone almost too tired to sleep.
Not too tired to lose all alertness, though. When Ondrakja made a small, sudden noise, Arenza turned to look at her. “What is it?”
“A thought I had,” Ondrakja said. “But...”
She let the rest of the sentence dangle, like string to lure a kitten. Arenza obliged her by batting at it. “But what?”
Ondrakja spoke slowly, as if thinking it through. “I make no promises. It’s possible, though... did your mother die here in Lacewater?”
A tiny, wary nod confirmed her suspicion.
“A house full of thieves requires places to sell things. I know the fences, and who they sell to. I know the other thieves who work this area—my Fingers aren’t the only knot here. Sometimes people keep things for themselves. There is a chance we could find your mother’s koszenie.”
The sound that escaped Arenza was half-sob, half-gasp. “But—it’s gone. I looked.”
“Knew you every place to look? Had you the money to convince people to answer your questions? My Fingers have options you lack.”
Arenza’s wide eyes reflected the firelight, twin mirrors of hope. If she could learn to make that expression on command, she would have Nadežra eating out of her hand before her next birthday. “You’ll help me? I cannot pay you.”
“Members of a knot help each other,” Ondrakja said. “There are no debts between them.”
By now the warmth of the fire and the food had seeped into Arenza’s bones. In here was the promise of shelter and friendship. Outside was the cold loneliness of the street.
In Arenza’s heart, the decision was over before she blinked. Ondrakja knew it. But something—perhaps that feeling of obligation to her mother; perhaps the awareness that Ondrakja saw her as valuable, and that value could be a source of power—made her press her lips together, frowning down at her knees.
Ondrakja merely waited. Arenza had to choose of her own free will. Not be pushed into it.
“All right. I’ll... I’ll do it.”
Ondrakja touched her hands to her heart. “Thank the Faces. But be aware—you must earn it. My Fingers cannot be expected to swear themselves to a stranger who has not proven herself.”
Uncertainty returned. Ondrakja knelt at the side of the chair, close enough to stroke Arenza’s cheek. Had her mother ever used a nickname for her? “Worry not, pretty Renyi. I will take care of you. And with my help, you will learn to shine.”
Arenza’s hands were as deft as Ondrakja could have hoped, once she had enough food and sleep to stop them from trembling. Her tiny knife snicked three garnet buttons off the coat of a cuff in the Whistling Reed without him ever noticing. And she took to lying like an egret took to the sky, extolling her skills as a lady’s maid to a gentlewoman while another Finger relieved the woman’s pockets of their burden.
None of the others had been this good, this soon. Most of them failed at their first attempt, lacking in either nerve or skill. Some were caught by the Vigil and slung in jail, and some of those never came back. Even the ones who joined continually disappointed Ondrakja. They made good fists for some other knot later on, once they were too old for the Fingers, or they scraped by as petty thieves, or they ran minor scams on the street. Or they died, because they weren’t tough enough to survive without Ondrakja. But with the hope of regaining her mother’s koszenie to motivate her, Arenza held nothing back. And in her wits, in her clever tongue, and in her beautiful face, Ondrakja saw a mirror of herself.
A mirror she had to risk breaking.
The third test was of loyalty. Dmaren got to run it, swiping a pipe inlaid with mother-of-pearl from the Cut Ears, whose patch lay on the northern side of Lacewater. Their knot-leader Sullin loved that pipe, and when Arenza showed up on Cut Ear turf with it in her hand, naturally he wanted to know where she got it.
She never told him. Not when he asked. Not when he ordered. Not through everything followed, until he gave up in disgust and had his boys roll her across the Dlimas Bridge to land in a heap on the other side.
Ondrakja had Fingers watching, of course. They carried Arenza back, and Ondrakja immediately went to work with the finest ointments and balms the Fingers could steal or buy, imbued to speed her healing. At least Sullin had mostly gone for the softer targets; Arenza’s pretty face would escape without a scar.
Her swollen knee did mean she wasn’t able to kneel for the knot oath, upstairs in Ondrakja’s sitting room, with all the Fingers gathered around. But Arenza didn’t hesitate as she laced her fingers through Ondrakja’s and repeated the words of the oath. “Any harm you’ve done to me, or I to you, is washed away. My secrets are yours, and yours are mine. There will be no debts between us.”
Ondrakja tied the knot charm around Arenza’s wrist, and the other Fingers cheered for their newest pinkie, swarming in to thump her on the back. Afterward there was a feast—maybe not by the standards of the Upper Bank, but dumplings and honey-cakes and wine far better than this lot usually saw.
Life among them wouldn’t always be roses, of course. Knot oath or no, the Fingers fought with each other: for food, for loot, for Ondrakja’s favor. Some of them would hate Arenza when they began to see how much Ondrakja preferred her over them. Arenza would hate Ondrakja the first time she disappointed her and reaped the consequences.
But Arenza would also love her. Ondrakja knew exactly which strings to pluck to make that happen.
Upstairs in her sitting room, with the sounds of the celebration muffled by her mold-padded carpet, Ondrakja opened the locked chest where she kept her most valuable treasures. A crystal wine goblet she didn’t trust the Fingers not to break. A copy of the key to the Vigil’s Lacewater lockup. A falsified family register that let her pass herself off as gentry in official circles.
A rich silk shawl, embroidered in green and grey, red and yellow, white and blue and violet—all the colors of the Vraszenian clans. Ondrakja didn’t know how to read the stitches, which lineages were named by each curling branch of the embroidery... but she didn’t have to. It was enough to know that Dmaren had brought the koszenie to the lodging-house seven days before Ondrakja met Arenza, along with a pair of shoes and a set of ragged clothing and the hair cut from a dead woman’s head.
Pure luck that Ondrakja had spotted Arenza on the street before she found the right buyer for the koszenie. Some day in the future, when the girl had truly proven herself worthy of Ondrakja’s teaching, maybe she could have it back.
Until then, the threads of her lost mother would bind her to the Fingers, as tight as any knot.
© Copyright 2021 M.A. Carrick
M A Carrick - [BCS320 S01] Page 2