Take A Thief v(-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then again, if this was where Companions stayed, there wouldn't be any need for doors on the stalls, would there?

  It had a pounded-dirt floor covered ankle-deep in clean straw, and there was a second door on the opposite side, also open. These gave the only light. Cymry walked inside, quite at home.

  The building was oddly deserted except —

  Except —

  For three people who were very clearly waiting for him just inside the door. One was an odd, birdlike man, slight and trim, hardly taller than Skif, with a cap of dark gray hair and an intelligent, though worried, expression. The second was taller, with a fairly friendly face which at the moment also bore a distinctly worried expression. Both of them wore the white uniform only a Herald was allowed to wear.

  His “welcoming committee,” evidently.

  He couldn't see the third one very well, since he was standing carefully back in the shadows. The third person wasn't wearing the white uniform though; his clothing was dark enough to blend in with the shadows.

  Could be sommut from the Guard, he thought gloomily. Gonna haul me off t' gaol soon's the other two get done with me.

  :He's not, and you're not going to gaol,: said Cymry. But that was all she said. He couldn't find it in himself to feel less than uneasy about the shadowy lurker.

  She stopped a few paces away from the two men, and Skif gingerly dismounted, turning to face them with his hands clasped behind his back. A moment later, he dropped his eyes. Whatever was coming, he didn't want to meet their faces and see their disgust.

  “So,” said the smaller one, “you seem to be the young person that Companion Cymry has Chosen.”

  “Yessir,” Skif replied, gazing at his ill-shod toes.

  “And we're given to understand that you — ah — your profession — you — ” The man fumbled for words, and Skif decided to get the agony over with all at once.

  “ 'M a thief, sir,” he said, half defiantly. “Tha's what I do.” He thought about adding any number of qualifying statements — that it had been a better choice than working for his uncle, that no one had offered him any other sort of employment and he had to eat; even that if Bazie hadn't been around to take him in and train him, he'd probably be dead now and not Chosen. But he kept all of those things to himself. For some reason, the clever retorts he had didn't seem all that clever at the moment.

  The shorter man sighed. “I suppose you're expecting me to give you an ineffective and stuffy lecture about how you are supposed to be a new person and you can't go on doing that sort of thing anymore now that you're a Trainee.”

  Skif stopped looking at his toes and instead glanced up, startled, at the speaker. “Uh — you're not?”

  “You are not stupid,” the man said, and smiled faintly, though his tone sounded weary. “If you've already played over that particular lecture in your mind, then I will skip it and get to the point. I am Dean Elcarth. I am in charge of Herald's Collegium. The moment you entered the gate here, so far as we are concerned, whatever you were or did before you arrived here became irrelevant. You were Chosen. The Companions don't make mistakes. There must be the makings of a Herald in you. Therefore you are welcome. But when you get in trouble, and you will, because sooner or later at least half of our Trainees get in trouble, please remember that what you do reflects on the rest of us as well, and Heralds are not universally beloved among a certain faction of the highborn. The others will give you the details as they see fit, but the sum of what I have to say is that you are supposed to be part of a solution, not part of a problem, and I hope we can show you why in such a way that you actually feel that in your deepest heart.”

  During this rather remarkable speech, Skif had felt his jaw sagging slowly. It was not what he had expected to hear. His shock must have been written clearly on his face, because the Dean smiled a little again. “This is Herald Teren,” he continued, gesturing to the other man, who although friendlier, was looking distinctly worried. “He is, technically, in charge of you, since he is in charge of all of the newly Chosen. You'll be getting your first lessons from him, and he will show you to your new quarters and help get you set up. Under normal circumstances, he would have picked out a mentor for you among the older students — but these are not normal circumstances. So although one of the older students will be assigned as a mentor, in actuality you will have a very different, though altogether unofficial mentor.”

  “That,” said a grating voice that put chills up Skif's back, “myself would be.”

  He knew that voice, and that accent — though when he'd heard it before, it hadn't been nearly so thick.

  And when the third figure stepped out of the shadows, arms folded over his chest, scar-seamed face smiling sardonically, he stepped back a pace without thinking about it. Skif had never seen the hair before — stark black with thick streaks of white running through it — because it had been hidden under a hood or a hat. But there was no mistaking that saturnine face or those cold, agate-gray eyes. This was the sell-sword who'd spoken with (and spied on?) Jass, who had threatened Skif in the cemetery.

  “You!” he blurted.

  “This is Herald Alberich, the Collegium Weaponsmaster,” said the Dean, “And I will leave you with him and Teren.”

  “But you can't b-b-be a Herald — ,” Skif stammered. “Where's yer, yer white — ,”

  “Herald Alberich has special dispensation from Her Majesty herself not to wear the uniform of Heraldic Whites,” Herald Teren interrupted, as Alberich's expression changed only in that he raised his right eyebrow slightly.

  And now, suddenly, an explanation for Skif's own rather extraordinary behavior in the cemetery hit him, and he stared at the Herald in the dark gray leather tunic and tight trews with something like accusation. “You Truth Spelled me!”

  Now that he knew Alberich was a Herald, there was no doubt in his mind why he had found himself telling the man what he knew that night in the cemetery. Everyone knew about Heralds and their Truth Spell, though Skif was the first person in his own circle of acquaintances who'd actually undergone it, much less seen it.

  The two Heralds exchanged a glance. “Elcarth's right,” said Teren. “He's very quick.”

  “Survive long he would not, were he not,” Alberich replied, and fastened his hawklike eyes on Skif, who shrank back, just as he had that night. “I did. Because there was need. Think on this — had you by any other been caught, it would not have been Truth Spell, but a knife.”

  Skif shivered convulsively, despite the baking heat. The man was right. He gulped.

  Alberich took another couple of steps forward, so that Skif was forced to look up at him. “Now, since there is still need, without Truth Spell, what you were about in following that scum, you will tell me. And fully, you will tell it.”

  There was something very important going on here; he didn't have nearly enough information to know what, or why, but it was a lot more than just the fact that Jass had been killed, though that surely had a part in it. But Skif raised his chin, stiffened his spine, and glared back. “T'you. Not t’im. I know you. I don' know 'im.”

  The Heralds exchanged another glance. “Fair enough,” Teren said easily. “I'll be outside when you're ready for me to take him over.”

  Herald Teren turned and strode out the door on the other side of the stable. Skif didn't take his eyes off Alberich, whose gaze, if anything, became more penetrating.

  “Heard you have, of the man Jass, and his ending.” It was a statement, not a question, but Skif nodded anyway. “And? You followed him for moons. Why?”

  “ 'E burned down th' place where m'mates lived.” Skif made it a flat statement in return, and kept his face absolutely dead of expression. “They died. I heard 'im say 'xactly that with m'own ears, an' 'e didn't care, all 'e cared about was 'e didn' want t' get caught. Fact, 'e said 'e got rid of some witnesses afore 'e set th' fire. Might even've been them.”

  Alberich nodded. “He was not nearly so free with me.”

  Ski
f tightened his jaw. “Honest — I was in the cem'tery by accident, but I was where I could 'ear real good. An' I 'eard 'im an' th' bastid what hired 'im talkin' 'bout a new job, an' talkin' 'bout the old one. I already figgered I was gonna take 'im down somehow — but only after I foun' out 'oo 'twas what give 'im th' order.”

  A swift intake of breath was all the reaction that Alberich showed — and a very slight nod. “Which was why you followed him.” A pause. “He was more than that — more than just a petty arson maker, more even than a murderer. As his master was — is. Which was why I followed him.”

  Skif only shook his head. Alberich's concerns meant nothing to him —

  — except —

  “You know 'oo 'e is!” he shot out, feeling himself flush with anger. “The boss! You know!” He held himself as still as a statue, although he would cheerfully have leaped on the man at that moment, and tried to beat the knowledge out of him.

  But Alberich shook his head, and it was with a regret and a disappointment that went so deeply into the tragic that it froze Skif where he stood. “I do not,” he admitted. “Hope, I had, you did.”

  At that moment, instead of simply glaring at him, Alberich actually looked at him, caught his eyes, and stared deeply into them, and Skif felt a sensation like he had never before experienced. It was as if he literally stood on the edge of an abyss, staring down into it, and it wasn't that if he made a wrong move he'd fall, it was the sudden understanding that this was what Alberich had meant when he'd said that these were waters too deep for Skif to swim in. There were deep matters swirling all around him that Skif was only a very tiny part of, and yet — he had the chance to be a pivotal part of it.

  If he dared. If he cared enough to see past his own loss and sorrows, and see greater tragedy and need and be willing to lay himself on the line to fix it.

  :Chosen — please. This is real. This is what I meant when I said that we needed you.:

  He gazed into that abyss, and thought back at Cymry as hard as he could — :Is that the only reason you Chose me?:

  Because if it was —

  — if it was, and all of the love and belonging that had filled his heart and soul when he first looked into her eyes was a lie, a ruse to catch someone with his particular “set of skills” —

  :Are you out of your mind?: she snapped indignantly, shaken right out of her solemnity by the question. :Can't you feel why I Chose you?:

  That answer, unrehearsed, unfeigned, reassured him as no speech could have. And something in him shifted, straining against a barrier he hadn't realized was there until that moment.

  But he still had questions that needed answering. “An’ if ye find this 'master,’ no matter how highborn 'e is,” he asked slowly, “ye'll do what?”

  “Bring him to justice,” Alberich replied instantly, and held up a hand, to forgo any interruptions. “For murder. Of your friends, if no other can be proved, although — ”

  “There are others?” Skif asked — not in amazement, no, for if the bastard, whoever he was, had been coldhearted enough to burn down a building full of people, he surely had other deaths on his conscience.

  Now, for the first time, Alberich's face darkened with an anger Skif was very glad was not aimed at him. “Three of which I know, and perhaps more. And there is that which is worse than murder, which only kills the body. Slaving, for workers, but worse, to make pleasure slaves. Behind it, he is. In small — in the selling of children, here, even from the streets of Haven. And in large, very large, wherein whole families are reaved from their homes and sold OutKingdom.”

  Skif heard himself gasp. There had always been rumors of that in the streets, and Bazie had hinted at it — but even his uncle hadn't stooped that low.

  Worse than murder? Well — yes. He closed his eyes a moment, and thought about those rumors a moment. If the rumors were more than that, and the children — orphans or the unwanted — who vanished from Haven's streets ended up in the place where Bazie had intimated they went —

  — and if there really were entire villages full of people who were snatched up and sold OutKingdom —

  “Worse,” he heard himself agreeing.

  “And one answer there is, for such evil.” Alberich's stone-like expression gave away nothing, but Skif wasn't looking for anything there. He already had his answer; forget anything else, he and this iron-spined man had a common cause.

  And somewhere inside him, the barrier strained and broke.

  “I'm in,” was all he said. “I'm with ye.” Alberich's eyes flickered briefly, then he nodded.

  “More, we will speak, and at length. Now — ,”

  There were a great many things Alberich could have said. If you want revenge, you'd better keep your nose clean, for instance, or if you get yourself thrown out of here for messing up, neither one of us will get what he wants. Or you'll have to work hard at being respectable, because it's going to take someone who looks respectable to trap this bastard.

  He said none of those things. He let another of those penetrating looks analyze Skif and say something else. Something — that had warning in it, but against danger and not mere misbehavior. Something that had acceptance in it as well, and an acknowledgment that Skif had the right to be in this fight. And Skif nodded, quite as if he had heard every bit of it in words.

  Alberich smiled. It was the sort of smile that said, I see we understand one another. That was all, but that was all that was needed.

  A moment later, the sound of boots on the straw-covered floor marked Herald Teren's return. “Later speech, we will have,” Alberich promised, as Teren reached them. “For now — other things.”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  The other things were not what Skif had expected. Not that he'd really had any inkling of what to expect, but not even his vaguest intuitions measured up to his introduction to the Collegium and his first candlemarks as a Trainee.

  “If you're all right, then, follow me,” Herald Teren said, and started off, quite as if he assumed Skif would follow and not bolt. Which Skif did, of course; it seemed that he was “in for it” after all, but not in the way he'd thought. His emotions were mixed, to say the least.

  On top of it all was excitement and some apprehension still. Just beneath that was a bewildered sort of wonder and the certainty that at any moment they would realize they'd made a mistake — or that fearsome Alberich would call the Guards. He'd lived with what he was for so long…

  Beneath that, though — was something still of the new image of the world and his place in it that he'd gotten during that encounter with Alberich. That — granted, the world stank, and a lot of people in it were rotten, and horrible things happened — but that he, little old Skif, petty thief, had a chance that wasn't given to many people, to help make things better. Not right; the job of making everything right was too big for one person, for a group of people like the Heralds, even — but better.

  And under all of that, slowly and implacably filling in places he hadn't known were empty, was a feeling he couldn't even put a name to. It was big, that feeling, and it had been the thing that had broken through his barriers back there, when Cymry reaffirmed her bond with him. It was compounded of a lot of things; release, relief, those were certainly in there. But with the release came a sense that he was now irrevocably bound to something — something good. And accepted by that “something.” A feeling that he belonged, at last, to something he'd been searching for without ever realizing that he'd been looking. And there was an emotion connected with Cymry in there that, if he had to put a name to it, he might have said (with some embarrassment) was love. It was scary, having something that big sweep him up in itself. And if he had to think about it, he knew he'd be absolutely paralyzed —

  So he didn't think about it. He just let it do whatever it was going to do, turning a blind eye to it. But he couldn't help but feel a little more cheerful, a little more at ease here, with every heartbeat that passed.

  And there was plenty to keep him distracte
d from anything going on inside him, anyway.

  Teren led him away from the stable and toward a building that absolutely dwarfed every other structure he had ever seen. And if he was impressed, he hated to think how all those farmboys and fisherfolk Cymry had talked about must have felt when they first saw it.

  The building was huge, three-and-a-half stories of gray stone with a four-story double tower at the joining of two of the walls just ahead of them. “This is Herald's Collegium and the Palace,” Teren said, waving his hand in an arc that took in everything. “You can't actually see the New Palace part of the structure from here; it's blocked by this wing next to us, which is where all the Kingdom's Heralds have rooms.”

  “But most uv 'em don't live here, at least, not most of th' time,” Skif stated, on a little firmer ground. “Right?”