The Jewel Thief

by Vanessa Cardui

  There was more hissing and clacking, and then, "Yes," they said.

  "No," said Rain. "Not just that. It's a fine piece of meat, and I have my responsibilities, but it's not worth two black sapphires, as well you know. If need be, I'll find another buyer. Her, and two lances, and ten thousand grams."

  One of the Carephalans groaned. "The lances . . . the lances alone would be worth a sapphire."

  "No, they wouldn't," said Rain.

  "The stones, and you pay us two thousand grams," said another one. "For the meat and the lances."

  Rain shook his head. "Let's say that I walk away. You have a meal, honor is satisfied. And there's another clan out there—the Blue-Gold, or the Vermillion, let's say—who have two of the finest stones taken from a blackrock in living memory. And they have them forever. It'd eat at you, knowing how little you could've paid."

  "And it will eat at the Green-Green, knowing that the Gold and the Black-Red have a stone, and they have transient goods, blown away and gone," said the Carephalan. "If there was a third stone . . ."

  "And if this stupid piece of meat had brought the bloodstones back during the time of honesty, we'd all be rich and happy," said Rain. "I can tell you this; so long as I live, while it may still walk, it shall not walk free."

  "Not free?" said one of them. More clacking and hissing.

  "The meat," said Rain. "The lances. And good ones; fully charged, fully functional. And fifteen hundred grams of trade silver. Or I walk, and the stones walk with me."

  "A thousand," said one of them.

  Rain stood, nodded at Seren. "Enjoy your meal," he said, and headed up the stairs.

  "Fifteen hundred," said the Carephalan who’d held the knife. "And if you survive what follows, and take more stones to sell, you shall deal first with the Green-Green."

  Rain stopped with his foot on the step. "If the offer is low, I'll still walk.”

  "But you shall not then sell to the Black-Red, the Gold, or the Vermillion," it said.

  Rain turned and dropped the stones on the table. "Done. Bring the lances and the silver to my flitter," he said. He pulled the release on the winch, and Seren tumbled down to the grate. "And free its legs; I’m in a bit of a hurry."

  And that was it. Seren wanted to show Rain how much she appreciated what he'd done, and it seemed like the best way to do that was to hurry along behind him. His legs were longer than hers, and she was dizzy, and whatever the reason, he wasn't kidding about being in a hurry. He was all but running, and when she stumbled, the pressure on her chain didn't let up even a little; if she fell, he'd drag her through the streets.

  When they got to the flitter, Seren headed to the cargo net, but Rain pulled her up short by the chain around her neck.

  "Up," he said, grabbing her by neck and ass and tossing her up into the cabin. He followed up the stairs, looped her chain around her waist and around the back of the copilot's chair, fastened it out of her sight.

  He didn't say anything as he took the flitter up. And he went up hard; when she'd ridden in the cargo net, he'd seemed like a better pilot than she was. That lift-off was rougher than anything she'd done since she was a student, but it was also faster than anything she'd done ever.

  "Watch the shadows," he said, when they finally levelled off.

  "What?" asked Seren.

  "The shadows," Rain repeated. "They'll close as shadows. Look for something that looks a bit like a man, maybe with horns, maybe with tusks."

  Seren looked at the back of the flitter. It looked like a flitter. Only things out of place were two long chamois-wrapped packages, and a trim little chest that looked like money. Fifteen hundred grams and two lances. She didn't have much interest in the lances, but fifteen hundred grams of trade silver was a tidy sum. "There are shadows," she said. "What am I looking for?"

  "I've said," said Rain, sounding impatient.

  Seren looked. There were shadows. "Anything can look like a man. The way your chair looks with the lights from the instruments, maybe? And then your head could be horns? But it's just a shad—"

  Rain moved like she'd shocked him. There was a flare next to his seat; he pulled the trigger and threw it behind him. There was nothing like enough room for a flare in a flitter cabin. Seren closed her eyes, but that didn't help much; the flare burned hard against the back of her eyes. But there was also, strangely, the smell of burning meat.

  The flare died out, but it was a long time after that before Seren could see anything other than spots and glare and faint images of the back of the cabin, that had burned through her eyelids. Which meant that Rain was going to be seeing the same thing she was, which raised the question of who was steering the flitter, and how.

  When she could finally see, there was something on the floor of the cabin; it was more or less human-shaped, with horns and fangs, and it seemed to be made of shadow and darkness. And the flitter was still in the air, but barely. It was grazing the tops of the trees, and Rain spent a few seconds cursing and fighting with the controls before they were clear.

  "You take a black sapphire from a blackrock," said Rain, "the job isn't entirely finished."

  "But now it is?" Seren asked.

  He shook his head. "There's one for every stone, And the rest of them aren't going to make the same mistake. They learn."

  "They?"

  Rain turned, gave her a fraction of a smile. "Wasn't sure they'd sell at two, to be honest. And then a really nice one turned up. I picked up five stones, which was a damn fool thing to do, but it's done. There are four more of them out there, and they're coming through the shadows. If they can, they'll kill me and take back their stones. Except for the ones whose stones have gone to the Carephalans; they'll just kill me."

  Seren had a lot of questions, but didn't ask any of them. He'd gone out and taken five black sapphires. She could get them too, if . . . if things changed. She still wore the collar and the chain, but the stones he’d given to the Carephalans had woken up something that she hadn't expected. Those were excellent stones, and there were three more of them somewhere in the flitter.

  Only if she took them, the shadows would kill her. And Rain wouldn't let her take them. She put it out of her mind and watched the shadows. The back of Rain's seat and his head above it looked . . . no. There wasn't that similarity of shape, though at the time, it had looked just like she would've expected it to look. There wasn't anything else like that, but she kept looking, tried to avoid looking at the corpse on the cabin floor.

  Then Rain put the flitter down outside his cabin, and there were too many shadows from the trees to pick anything out.

  He untied her, but didn't leave the flitter. Instead, he unwrapped one of the lances.

  "Carephalans . . . well, the shadow ghosts have known them longer than they've known people, and they've known the shadow ghosts just as long. This'll do. After I leave—after, not while I'm leaving—you get up and wait on the roof of the flitter. When you see a shadow headed for me, you hold it like this—" He paused, and lifted the thing up onto her shoulder. It was bronze, glass, and wood, and heavier than it looked. "You track the point at the shadow, and hold it. Got it?"

  She nodded.

  "Good girl," he said, unhooked her chain, and left the flitter.

  She watched him dash from the flitter, his lance tucked under one arm, the rifle under the other. And the shadows behind him lengthed.

  There was a light over his porch. She’d never seen it on, but Rain fiddled with it, and it came to bright and total light. It was a heavy-duty floodlight; seemed as though Rain had been planning for something like this for a while.

  The light was bright, but there were still shadows. There was a tree near the porch, there was the back of the cabin, there was the chair that Rain had pulled over, there was his rifle next to his chair.

  Seren climbed to the top of the flitter, just as she'd been told, with the lance. When she looked back, the angle of the chair and the gun made the shadow behind the post of the porch look like it
had horns. She raised the lance, aimed it. At first, she thought she hadn't done it right, but then there was a sudden smell of fire from the lance, and the shadow changed, leaving a horned corpse behind.

  Rain gave just the faintest look in her direction, tipped her a wink. The thing was, there was a fully-fuelled flitter under her, with fifteen hundred grams of silver. But that wink . . . she sat and waited, until she noticed that the shadows around the floodlight were a bit like a fanged human figure. Again she aimed, and waited, and then it fell in a heap, next to Rain.

  The problem was . . . the problem was that if she didn't watch the shadows, and let whatever happened happen, they'd already killed three of the shadows. Depending on whether those had been the ones whose stones were already gone, there'd be one to three black sapphires left after it happened. And the fueled-up flitter, and the fifteen hundred in trade silver.

  It might have been because she was distracted, but it was more likely because they'd figured it out. The next one didn't come for Rain. There was a sudden pressure on her leg; not like a hand. Hotter and sharper and stronger. She twisted, tried to bring the lance to bear, and it flowed up on her, all along her skin, suffocating, hot and angry. She fell from atop the flitter, her lance knocked from her grasp, as the shadow swarmed over her.

  Rain was standing, lance up, burning it off her. He didn't see the thing that struck him from behind, knocked him down.

  If she'd thought about it, she might have let it . . . there wasn't any thought or plan, or anything like that. She found the lance, kept it trained on the shadow as it turned into a thousand knives, all aimed at Rain's back.

  It burned, and died.

  Seren stood, shaky, and the collar fell from her neck, shattered into pieces; the touch of the shadow had been impossibly strong, and not in the least bit natural. She went to Rain, who was unconscious, but still breathing, bleeding from wounds all across his back.

  Seren had any number of options, and it was time to choose.

  #

  It was three days before Rain woke. He was up before then, enough that she could get him to the outhouse, but there was some sort of poison in the thing that had come for the black sapphire; his eyes had been empty, and he’d been shaking the whole time, freezing and burning at once. But on the third day he woke, and his eyes were clear.

  “I see you’ve decided to live,” she said, and he laughed, just a cough and a rise of his chest.

  “Collar,” he said.

  “It was broken,” she said, and she touched the chain around her neck. “I know it’s not welded in place, but it felt right.”

  Another cough-laugh. “You did fine,” he said, and he held out his hand off the side of the bed. Seren knelt, kissed his hand, put her face against it.

  “Could’ve left,” he said.

  “Didn’t work out last time.”

  “Could’ve taken. . . gems, clothing. Anything.”

  “That didn’t work out last time, either,” said Seren. She’d found the black sapphires. When she’d seen the others, she’d been upside down and far away and pretty sure she’d been about to die, but she knew what she’d seen. These were better. There was one that was close to twice the size of those, and it was clear, perfectly dark. She’d also found her clothing, and her tools; he’d folded them up and put them in a cabinet. Which was where she’d left them.

  “You didn’t have to bargain for me,” she said. “You didn’t have to go for those gems.”

  “True,” said Rain, and his eyes closed for long enough that she thought he’d gone back to sleep.

  “Start packing the flitter,” he said. “We’re headed to Norsteer as soon as I can pilot.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Came out here for the sapphires,” he said. “Time never seemed right. Got enough now. Buy a house in a city, live where there aren’t any garrellers.”

  “But I’d have to wear clothing!” she said. “And be—I’d have to be a person again, Rain.”

  “You’ll wear what you’re told,” he said. “And you are what you are, whether or not you’re dressed up.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” she said.

  Rain shook his head. “Not really supposed to be arguing with anything,” he said.

  Seren shrugged. “Said I do what you said,” she said. “Not that I wouldn’t argue.”

  Cough-laugh. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why stay?”

  Seren hesitated. Because he’d been right and she’d been wrong? Because he was a better jewel thief than she was? Because she hadn’t been happy for a long time, and then she’d been happy when he called her a good girl?

  “Because you said so, and I said I’d do what you said?” said Seren. “Did you want me to do something else?”

  Rain shook his head. “You’re getting awfully mouthy,” he said. “Suck my cock. Better use for that.”

  Seren pulled back the blanket, knelt over him. It did seem like a better idea. “Please,” she said, taking him in her hand. “Please can I come?”

  Rain grinned. “No. Maybe when we get settled in Norsteer or Almareth.”

  His eyes closed as she started licking. She’d wanted—she’d wanted all sorts of things. This was better.