The Occasional Diamond Thief

by J. A. McLachlan

  It’s a rare moonlit night. I can see clearly down the path to the hut. Only there’s nothing to see. I imagine a thousand scenes of Agatha and Tira gripped in the throes of fever or seized by a city guard, while I watch for them to arrive. I’m on the verge of heading for Prophet’s Lane when I see a little body scampering toward me through the darkness.

  Agatha’s voice calls softly, “Tira be careful, don’t fall off the path.”

  I stand up, grinning broadly, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. They’re here! They’re here and they’re both healthy! I hold out my arms: “Tira!”

  At the sight of me, or perhaps catching sight of the fever house, Tira skids to a halt. She takes two steps backward.

  I let my arms drop. Of course she doesn’t remember me, she was unconscious most of the time I carried her. Agatha emerges from the shadowing trees. Catching sight of me, she looks surprised, then annoyed.

  “There’s no need for you to take more risks,” she scolds.

  “Okay,” I say. “You unlock the door.”

  She might have kept trying all night if I let her. She surrenders the lock pick ungraciously when I finally hold out my hand.

  “Languages and thievery. Two things you can’t learn.” I grin.

  “I can learn languages. Thievery you have to be prone to.”

  “Born to,” I correct, yanking the door to the hut open.

  “Not born to, Kia. Your father was an honorable man.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I met him once. He was just what his name implies—merciful and kind.”

  “You met him once?” I end my sentence with a snort.

  “I am a Select. I met him once.”

  I shrug and look around for Tira. Agatha, suddenly reminded, calls softly, “Tira.”

  She’s standing on the path at the edge of the clump of land the fever house is built on, staring at the dark hut with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Tira, come here.” Agatha holds out her arms.

  “No.” Tira takes a step backward. Agatha starts toward her, and Tira backs up further.

  “Stop!” Agatha cries, but she’s too late; Tira slips at the edge of the island and topples backward into the water. We both race toward her. I skid to a stop where the land drops into swamp but Agatha plunges straight into the cold, muddy water crying Tira’s name.

  The swamp isn’t deep near the island. Agatha can still stand, and after a few seconds of anxiously flailing through the water she finds Tira and hauls her to the surface. Tira splutters and coughs a few moments then gives a piercing shriek and begins to cry loudly despite our attempts to hush her. At last Agatha gives up and carries her toward the fever house. When Tira sees it she screams even louder and begins struggling and kicking to free herself. Agatha pauses uncertainly at the door. I just stand there. This is her plan. She wasn’t happy to see me, so let her handle it.

  “No! No! No!” Tira shrieks, sobbing. She clings desperately to Agatha. “No! No!”

  “I can’t leave her.”

  “You have to,” I tell Agatha, but I’m sympathetic. I don’t blame Tira for not wanting to go in there again, or Agatha for not wanting to make her. And Agatha doesn’t know how bad it is yet. “It’s only for the night. They’ll come get her in the morning. We planned this,” I remind her.

  “The plan didn’t include leaving a terrified child locked up alone in the dark.”

  “Yes it did.” We just didn’t know how hard that would be. “She’ll be alright. There’s nothing in there that can hurt her.”

  “She’s soaking wet. I have to get her dry.”

  “You have to leave her here. You’ll get CoVir if you stay in there all night. Tira’s already had it, she’s immune—” I stop myself, and turn away from Agatha, hunching my shoulders.

  “I won’t die, Kia,” Agatha says. “I’m strong and healthy. The CoVir strain is no longer deadly as it once was. I’ve already been exposed and I’m fine.”

  “There are other diseases in the swamp. You didn’t want Naevah coming here. You thought she’d die.”

  “Yes, I thought Naevah might get ill. Did you see her? How run down she was, with two two-year-olds and a household to care for without her husband? And on top of that, Tira so sick Naevah hadn’t slept all night. Tira’s fever broke three days ago and she’s done little else but sleep since then. I’m well-rested, Kia.”

  Tira whimpers, the sound thankfully muffled against Agatha’s shoulder now. She clings with a strangle-hold around Agatha’s neck, her little legs circling Agatha’s waist tightly. It would take both of us to pull her free, and we’d probably have to knock her out or something to keep her inside the fever house while we made our exit and locked the door.

  “There’s a chimney—that means there’ll be a fireplace. I’ll make a fire inside to dry our clothes and warm us,” Agatha murmurs, stroking Tira’s back soothingly.

  “You didn’t go in with Tira when they locked her in. How will you explain that?”

  “I’ll break the window.”

  “That’s probably illegal.”

  “You know the mood of the city as well as I. When they see Tira’s alive, they’ll forgive me. They’re not cruel people, only frightened. Crippled by fear, like children,” she adds thoughtfully. She looks down at Tira, still stroking her back. Tira lies her head against Agatha’s shoulder, quieter now. Her arms still cling around Agatha’s neck.

  “They’ll put you in quarantine.”

  “I’m not sick. They’ll quarantine me in my house. And I’ve already spent seven days with Tira, that’s half my quarantine over already.” She reaches to touch my cheek with her hand. I push it away. “Lock the door behind us,” she says, carrying Tira into the fever house.

  On the long walk home, I hear laughter. I turn all around, peering into the darkness. The night is empty and silent. I continue walking, faster now. The soft, mocking laughter comes again. Even when I start running, it stays with me. There’s something familiar about the sound, but I can’t place it…and then I do.

  I thought I could save Tira. I hadn’t considered that there would be a price.

  I run through the night with my mother’s laughter following me. I thought I could save her. I thought I knew the price. The wind stings my eyes and freezes on my cheeks the moisture it pulls from them. When the city appears ahead, I slow to a walk. You can’t outrun death.

  I never intended to trade Agatha for Tira.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Where is Agatha?

  She should have been here hours ago, carrying out the charade we planned, with apologies and promises and pleas for me to return to Prophet’s Lane which I, after pouting a little, would agree to do. I can’t go back until she comes; it would blow my whole we-had-an-argument-and-I-left story.

  Of course, that was only the plan. A plan is the one series of events you can count on not happening. We should have made a dozen different plans; that way I’d know even more about what isn’t going to happen.

  At breakfast the innkeeper’s wife told me the child who was ill survived CoVir and returned to the city healthy. She smiled at me, which is as jubilant as it gets with her. All morning I’ve heard people on the streets calling joyous greetings to one another as though they, as well as Tira, have recovered.

  But nothing from Agatha. Nothing about Agatha. What’s wrong with the rumor mill here? The innkeeper’s wife is really slipping. I sit in the dining room of the inn, forcing myself to smile back at her, and order a noon dinner I don’t know how I’ll be able to choke down.

  Most likely Agatha’s quarantined at Prophet’s Lane. Still, she could have sent a message to me. Something like, “I’m very sorry about our quarrel and want to make up but I’m in quarantine now. P.S. don’t worry, I’M NOT SICK.”

  Is that too much to ask?

  Or she’s in jail. They don’t convey messages from there.

  The innkeeper’s wife sets a bowl of fish chowder in front of me. It’s steaming and sme
lls delicious. I feel my appetite returning. As I pick up my spoon, a little girl skips into the dining room, calling over her shoulder, “Daddy, Daddy. Hungry!” The innkeeper’s wife beams down at her as though she’s a child vidstar.

  I glance up—and gawk over my spoon at Tira.

  “You’d never believe she was at death’s door a week ago, would you?” the innkeeper’s wife gushes. “And now she’s a guest in my inn, with her father.”

  “I heard he was in the country,” I croak, staring at Tira. What will I say if she remembers me?

  “He was relieved of that duty as soon as his daughter fell ill. The High Priest himself radioed the message. He got back yesterday.”

  Tira skids to a halt, frowning at me. “No! Bad!” she says, backing up into a pair of legs that have just entered the room. She twines her fingers into her father’s robe and pulls it around her, covering her face.

  I look up to see Jumal’s uncle at last, the man who rescued me from the Queen’s wrath.

  …And find myself staring at the priest who had, as a matter of course, cut off a man’s head and a boy’s fingers in the public square.

  He’s saying something, apologizing for something. “…doesn’t usually act this way. I’m afraid she’s never seen anyone of your complexion.” He sounds embarrassed as he attempts to extricate Tira from the folds of his robe.

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I’m frozen in my seat, holding my spoon in a death grip halfway between the bowl and my mouth. I lower it to the table and uncurl my fingers.

  The innkeeper’s wife gives me an odd look before she leaves to get two more platters of food.

  “Is this the girl who was sick?” I manage to say.

  “Yes.” He kneels down. “Tira, do you want to choose our table?” Then, when his offer has no effect, “I’ll lift you up if you let go of my robe.”

  Tira’s arms emerge from the folds of cloth and wrap around his neck. Her back is to me.

  The angry line of that little back hurts. I know she doesn’t remember the night journey back in my arms—no one but Agatha will ever know about that—but it’s too bad she remembers me trying to make her go back into the fever hut.

  He strokes her dark curls and murmurs, “What is it sweetheart?” I watch those hands, seeing them around the handle of an axe. Will he believe Tira if she says she saw me at the fever hut?

  “I probably look like something from out of her fever dreams,” I say, forcing a laugh. It catches in my throat. Can he hear how nervous I am? He visited me in jail. He must remember me, the one who escaped his punishment.

  But he’s also Jumal’s uncle. He got me out of jail and was punished himself for it.

  “Um, thank you for… The Select said you helped her, when…”

  He looks at me over Tira’s head. “I have been repaid tenfold,” he says.

  The innkeeper’s wife returns with two more plates of food. Seeing us talking, she places their dinners at my table. Tira’s father sits down politely across from me. After a few minutes of coaxing, Tira kneels in the chair beside him and picks at the food on her plate, glancing distrustfully at me now and then.

  I force down a spoonful of chowder.

  “My name is Prad Gaelig,” he says. “And I didn’t really do much for you. Our Queen… is a good ruler, but sometimes any ruler acts… in haste. That’s why we have a triumvirate—the King, the Queen and the High Priest—to balance each other, to govern objectively.”

  Right, I think. And two of that balancing act are in bed together.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “What if they all have the same bias?”

  “Then perhaps it’s a well-founded bias and should be considered seriously.”

  I think of Iterria, hot and dry and dying. When I look up, he’s still looking at me, waiting for my answer. His eyes are friendly, Jumal’s eyes.

  “And if it isn’t?” I ask. “If it’s just prejudice or a misunderstanding?”

  “What world doesn’t have this problem?”

  He’s right. Almost all the Central Worlds are democracies, and several of them have been at war, planetside, for decades. Any government can control its people simply by keeping them in a state of heightened fear or outrage. I was shocked to learn in history class how simple and effective the formula is, and how often it results in a president’s re-election. But even so…

  “I was thrown in jail for no reason.” That wouldn’t have happened on democratic Seraffa.

  “And when the Queen couldn’t justify her action you were freed.”

  “It took a while.” I sip at another spoonful of chowder. It’s lost its taste.

  “I’m sorry about that. It shouldn’t have taken so long. Your Select didn’t know how to appeal.”

  Hamza would have known. Is that why he’s missing?

  “I guess you’re right,” I say. Looking up I see the face of an executioner, and beside him, the daughter who was left to die. The child I saved.

  Tira frowns at me, still suspicious.

  “You must have been happy when they brought her to you,” I say.

  “I went to the fever house myself on the sixth morning.”

  The sixth morning? He knows Agatha wasn’t there, then. I stare down at my bowl, aware of him watching me intently. “I thought it was supposed to be the seventh morning.”

  “I went then, as well.”

  He begins to eat, chewing slowly and nodding to Tira to encourage her to do the same. “The guards came too, on the seventh day, of course.”

  I gulp a spoonful of chowder down, choking on a lump of fish.

  He leans across the table. “Why are you here at the inn, Kia?”

  Just tell me what’s happened to her, I think fiercely. Did you cart her off to jail? Are you here for me?

  “Tira wasn’t at the fever house—” Prad Gaelig watches me as he speaks.

  “Daddy, I’m done.”

  “Just a minute, Tira.”

  “Daddy, sweets!”

  “Tira—”

  The door to the dining room opens and the innkeeper’s wife bustles in. Seeing we’ve stopped eating, she clears the table.

  “You will have coffee?” she asks Prad Gaelig.

  “No, no,” he protests.

  “I’ve already made it. This is a special day, Prad Gaelig. And the little one wants a sweet. She should have one, after her ordeal. And you?” She looks at me. I shake my head.

  When the woman leaves with our dishes, Prad Gaelig sits drumming his fingers on the table. Before he can speak the innkeeper’s wife returns with coffee and a sweet for Tira. I’m ready to drum on the table myself by now.

  “On the seventh morning?” I prompt him, when she finally leaves.

  “On the seventh morning, your Select was there with Tira. She said she climbed in the window and nursed Tira through her illness.” He cocks one eyebrow at me as if to say, but you already know all this.

  “Is she alright?” I ignore the priest’s qualifier, ‘she said’.

  “She was this morning. But she refused to leave the fever house. She said she would spend her quarantine there.”

  I stare at him, speechless. It isn’t possible. Someone has forced her to do that. I stand up, slamming my hand onto the table and say, in a voice as quiet as the Adept’s, “Who wants her dead?”

  Tira pulls back, startled by the sound of my hand slapping the table. Her head knocks against the back of her chair and she wails. Her father gathers her onto his lap, trying to soothe her.

  The innkeeper and his wife bustle in, eager to be of assistance.

  “Nothing is wrong,” Prad Gaelig says, “except that my daughter has had an exciting morning and it is past her nap-time.” He stands up, holding Tira.

  I step away from my chair and wait, not quite barring his way.

  “I have an errand for you, if you would,” he says evenly. “I cannot leave Tira while my family is still in quarantine.”

  I nod tersely. The innkeeper’s w
ife frowns at my lack of civility.

  “Come to my room in an hour, then.”

  I stand in the dining room after Prad Gaelig has left. It’s inconceivable that Agatha chose to stay at the fever house. She said herself last night that healthy people aren’t quarantined at the fever hut, they’re quarantined in their home.

  The Innkeeper’s wife comes in to wipe down the table. “Your Select is quite the hero.”

  “Hero?”

  “She spent the week at the fever hut, nursing Prad Gaelig’s daughter back to health. Didn’t he tell you? Or perhaps you already knew?” She aims a speculative look my way.

  “No! I mean, I didn’t know, but he did just tell me. I didn’t know he told you.”

  “Of course he told me. He’s staying here as our guest. Why shouldn’t I be the one to take it to market? And indeed I did! Your Select is an example for us all.”

  “So Tira’s recovery isn’t a miracle after all,” I can’t help saying.

  The Innkeeper’s wife straightens. She turns to me with her hands on her hips. “Of course it’s a miracle! No one survives the fever house. Your Select has been blessed by God for her courage and goodness. You should be honored to be with her.” She narrows her eyes at me.

  “Um, yes, I am. Did Prad Gaelig tell you anything else?”

  “What else is there to say? The deed speaks for itself. As your Select told the guards, God protected her and Tira. A good woman, humbling herself and giving the glory to God.”

  “Right,” I say. “But where is she now?”

  To my surprise, the innkeeper’s wife looks perplexed. “Why, at home, I imagine, where a woman ought to be. Oh,” her face clears, “you want to apologize for your quarrel. So you should, without delay.”

  Apologizing to Agatha is the last thing on my mind. But the innkeeper’s wife is nodding her approval.

  “Yes, I will,” I mutter. “I just thought she might be, you know, quarantined somewhere?”

  “Quarantined? I suppose it’s possible. Men are such fools. A woman protected by God doesn’t need to be quarantined. Still, you can talk to her, just as long as you don’t go inside.”

  She wouldn’t expect me to go to the fever hut, so she must mean Prophet’s Lane. Why would Prad Gaelig tell me Agatha’s in the fever hut, and not tell her? Is it because Agatha’s a hero, and locking up a hero wouldn’t be popular? Or because he wasn’t able to finish his story, and she isn’t there now?