Take A Thief v(-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  Londer had more-than-dubious friends, too, even by the standards of Exile's Gate. And after the raid on the Hollybush — well, he'd lost what few friends he had around there. Not only because of Maisie, but because he had laid all the blame on his own son, and left him to rot and eventually die in gaol. Kalchan had never recovered enough even to do the idiot's work of stone picking, and Londer had done nothing to help him recover. Business was business, but blood was blood, and people didn't much care for a man who disclaimed responsibility for things that people knew he was responsible for because his unconscious son couldn't refute them. A good thing for Londer that his son never did wake to full sense and died within three moons. The case against Londer died with him, and Skif could only wonder who Londer was friendly with now, given how many people that callousness had offended. Or had that just freed his uncle to edge a little nearer to those dark deeds he secretly admired?

  Given all of that, Londer probably didn't engage in child snatching for his own puerile entertainment. But that didn't mean he didn't help it along, just because he got a thrill out of doing so. He probably had been frightened enough by his brush with the law not to do anything so dangerous for his own profit either. But it was increasingly likely, in Skif's estimation, that he knew something about it. The Hollybush hadn't, by any means, been Londer's only property. He owned warehouses in places where there wasn't anyone around to notice odd things going on at night.

  So, a very good place to start would be with his uncle. Skif knew the ins and outs of Londer's house, for more than once, he'd contemplated getting some of what he considered that he was owed out of his uncle. He'd eventually given up on the idea, for the fact was that anything Londer had of value was generally too big to be carried off easily. But because of that, Skif knew the house, and he knew the twisty ways of Londer's mind almost as well as he knew the house.

  The best way to get information out of him would be to frighten it out. Londer was good at keeping his mouth shut, but not when he was startled, and not when he was genuinely frightened.

  So Skif set himself to figuring out exactly how he could best terrify his uncle into telling Skif everything he might know or guess about the child stealing and the slavery ring.

  In his bed, in the dead of night, Skif decided. Skif was short, even for a boy his age — but a shadowy figure dressed in black, waking you up with a knife to your throat, was likely to seem a whole lot bigger than he actually was. And a hoarse whisper didn't betray that he was too young for his voice to have broken yet.

  Alberich had brought the all-black night-walking suit when he'd collected Skif's clothing. Skif knew a way into Londer's house that not even Londer knew about. Good old Londer! Every window had a lock, every door had two, but he forgot completely about the trapdoor onto the roof. All Skif had to do was get into the yard and shinny up the drainpipe from the gutters. Once on the roof, he was as good as inside.

  Right enough, if Londer knew anything, Skif would have it out of him. But he needed a suitably convincing story for his black-clad terrorist to ask the questions he needed the answers to. I’ll say I'm lookin' for m'sister, he decided. That's a good story, an' Londer'll probably believe it.

  Now, getting from here to there.

  He'd be able to get out of his room easily enough; no one checked beds to see that people were in them around here. The trouble was, how was he to get out of — and more importantly, back inside — the Palace walls?

  :Me, of course,: Cymry replied in his head. He jumped; then smiled sheepishly. :Nobody is going to stop a Companion and her Chosen.:

  :You don't mind?: he asked, hesitantly. After all, this wasn't precisely going to be a sanctioned excursion.

  : Mind?: he felt her scorn. :You Just try and do it without me! You wouldn't have a chance.:

  Well, she was probably right.

  :But what do I do with you while I'm sneakin' around?: he asked.

  She chuckled. :I’ll take care of that. Trust me, lean always insinuate myself into someone's nearby stable. But I'm not having you so far away that I can't come to your rescue if I have to.:

  He was both touched and a trifle irritated. Did she think he couldn't take care of himself? He'd been taking care of himself for the past year and more! She hadn't been around then!

  Now she sounded contrite. :Of course you can take care of yourself, I never doubted that. But your uncle might have guards — :

  He laughed, silently. :Londer? Old cheap Londer? Not a chance. What he has got is dogs — but he's too cheap to get trained ones, so he just gets nasty ones and keeps 'em hungry to keep 'em mean. Which means — ?:

  Cymry knew; bless her, she got it at once. :They'll eat anything you throw in front of them.:

  He grinned. :And I know where to get plenty of poppy syrup. Put 'em right to sleep inside a candlemark, then I slip inside and give old uncle a surprise.:

  :Then what will you do?: she asked soberly. :When you leave? You aren't — :

  :I'm gonna make him drink poppy hisself,: Skif reassured her. :No way I'm taking a chance on hitting him hard enough to make sure he stays knocked out. Besides, with that thick head of his — I'd probably break what I hit him with before I knocked him out.:

  He felt her sigh gustily. :Good. Then this will all work. And what then?:

  :Then — : he closed his eyes, but couldn't yet see a direction for himself. :It's early days to make any plans. I'll figure on what to do after I hear what old Londer has to say.:

  And that would have to do, for now.

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  SKIF looked down on the silent, darkened oblong that was his uncle's yard from the roof of his uncle's house. The roof-tree was not the most comfortable place he'd ever had to perch, but better to rest here than inside the house. Down there somewhere in the shadows were five lumps of sleeping canine that had been completely unable to resist juicy patties of chopped meat mixed with bread crumbs soaked in poppy syrup. Poor miserable animals, Uncle Londer would probably be even harsher with them after their failure to stop him.

  This was the halfway point, and Skif paused for a breather while he could take one. He'd gotten out of the Collegium through his window, out of the Complex openly on Cymry's back, as if he was going out into the city for any perfectly ordinary reason.

  Well, perhaps not ordinary, since Trainees as young as he was generally didn't go out to the city after dark. But he'd made sure to look serious, as if someone had sent for him, rather than overly cheerful, as if he expected to find himself in, say, the “Virgin and Stars” tavern that night. No one questioned him, and Heraldic Trainees (unlike the common-born Blues or the Bardic Trainees) were not required to give a reason for leaving the Complex at whatever hour, probably because it was generally assumed that their Companions would not agree to anything that wasn't proper.

  Once in Haven, Cymry found an unguarded stable near Uncle Londer's house — unguarded because it was completely empty and beginning to fall to pieces, symptom of a sudden change in someone's fortune. There he had changed into his black clothing, feeling distinctly odd as he did so. It seemed that the last time he'd worn this was a lifetime ago, not just a couple of moons. But where he was going, that uniform was a distinct handicap.

  He hadn't swathed his face and head, or blackened exposed flesh with charcoal just then. He'd still had to get the chopped meat, the bread and the poppy syrup, and not all in the same market square, just so no one would put him and the ingredients together if they were questioned later. That was why he'd left the Collegium early. Markets stayed open late in the poorer parts of town, for the benefit of those whose own working hours were long. Skif had no trouble in acquiring what he needed, and he made his final preparations in that stable by the light of the moon overhead.

  Then, and only then, did he finish dressing, and with the treated meat stuffed into cleaned sausage bladders which he tied off, and then put into a bag, he had slipped out alone into th
e darkness.

  The key to making sure that all five dogs got their doses was to send the bladders over the wall at long intervals. The first and strongest dog wolfed down his portion, then staggered about for a bit and fell asleep. When Skif heard the staggering, he sent over the second bladder; by that time the strongest dog was in no condition to contest the food, and the second strongest got it. It took a while, but Skif was patient, and when he couldn't hear anything other than dog snores, he went over the wall and up the gutter to the roof.

  Now he sat on the rooftree with his back against one of the chimneys, using its bulk to conceal his silhouette, and took deep, slow breaths to calm himself. His gut was a tight knot — a good reason for not eating much tonight. And he was thirsty, but thirsty was better than being in the middle of a job and having to — well. This would be the first time he had ever entered a house with the intention of confronting someone. Normally that was the last thing he wanted to do, and it had him strung tighter than an ill-tuned harp.

  So he ran over what he needed to do in his mind until he thought he'd rehearsed it enough, and Mindcalled Cymry.

  :I'm going in,: he told her.

  :You know what to do if you get in trouble,: she replied, for they had already worked that out. Skif would get outside, anywhere outside, and she would come for him. She swore she could even get into the yard if it was needful. How she was to get over that fence, he had no notion, but that was her problem. Bazie had taught him that once you put your confidence in a partner, you just trusted that he knew what he was doing and went on with your part of the plan. Because once the plan was in motion, there was nothing you could do about what he was responsible for, anyway, so there was no point in taking up some of the attention you should be paying to your part of the job by worrying about him.

  He slipped over the rooftree to the next chimney; the hatch into the crawl space was just on the other side of it. It wasn't locked — it hadn't been locked for the past five years that Skif knew of. Even if it had been, it was one of those that had its hinges on the outside, and all he would have had to do would have been to knock the hinge pins out and he could have lifted it up from the hinge side. He left it open, just in case he had to make a quick exit and couldn't use the route out he'd planned.

  The space he slipped down into was more of a crawl space than an attic, too small to be practical to store anything. He crawled on his hands and knees, feeling his way along until he came to the hatch that led down into the hallway separating all of the dozen garret rooms where Londer's servants slept, six on one side of the corridor, and six on the other.

  Well, where the servants Londer had would have slept, if he'd had more than the three he kept. Like everything else Londer had, his servants were cheap because no one else would have them, and he worked them — screaming and cursing at them all the while — until they dropped. His man-of-all-work was a drunkard, so was his cook, and the overworked housemaid was another half-wit like Maisie. None of them was going to wake up short of Skif falling on them, which obviously he didn't intend to do.

  Not that he was going to take any chances about it.

  He found the hatch, which had a cover meant to be pushed up and aside from the hallway below. He lifted it up and put it out of the way, then stuck his head down into the hall and took a quick look around.

  As he'd expected, it was deserted, not so dark as the crawl space thanks to a tiny window on either end of the hall, and silent but for three sets of snoring.

  He actually had to stop and listen in fascination for a moment, for he'd never heard anything like it.

  There was a deep, basso rumbling which was probably the handyman, whose pattern was a long, drawn out sound interrupted by three short snorks. Layered atop this was a second set, vaguely alto in pitch, of short, loud snorts in a rising tone that sounded like an entire sty full of pigs. And atop that was a soprano solo with snoring on the intake of breath and whistling on the exhalation. One was the housemaid and the other the cook, but which was which? The housemaid was younger, but fatter than the cook, so either could have had the soprano.

  All three were so loud that he could not imagine how they managed not to wake themselves up. It took everything he had to keep from laughing out loud, and he wished devoutly that he dared describe this to one of the Bardic Trainees. They'd have hysterics.

  At least now he knew for certain that the last thing he needed to worry about was making a noise up here.

  He grabbed the edge of the hatch and somersaulted over, slowly and deliberately, lowering himself down by the strength of his arms alone until his arms were extended full-length. His feet still dangled above the floor, so he waited for the moment when the chorus of snores overlapped, and let go, hoping the noise would cover the sound of his fall.

  He landed with flexed knees, caught his balance bent over with his knuckles just touching the floor, and froze, waiting to see if there would be a reaction.

  Not a sound to indicate that anyone had heard him.

  Heh. Not gonna be hard figuring which rooms are empty! That had been a serious concern; he needed to find an empty room with a window, get into it, get the window unlocked and opened for his escape, because now that he was inside, he knew that there was no way he was going to get out the way he came in. If there had been a ladder to let down from the crawl space, that would have been ideal, but there wasn't.

  By great good fortune, the room nearest the drainpipe he wanted to use was one of the empty ones — no thief could survive long who wasn't able to tell where he was inside a house in relation to the outside without ever being inside. Out of the breast of his tunic came one of his trusty bladders of oil, and he oiled the hinges to the dripping point by feel before he even tried to open the door.

  There was a faint creak, but it was entirely smothered in snores; the door opened onto a completely barren room, not a stick of furniture in it. Moonlight shone in through the dirty window, finally giving him something to see by. After the absolute dark of the crawl space and the relative dark of the hallway, it seemed as bright as day.

  Moving carefully with a care for creaking floorboards, he eased his way over to the window, and out came the oil again. When catches, locks, and hinges were all thoroughly saturated, he got the window open wide, checked to make sure he could reach the drainpipe from its sill, and left it that way. He did, however, close the door to the room most of the way, just in case one of the three snorers woke up and felt impelled to take a stroll. They were too dimwitted to think of an intruder, but they might take it into their heads to close the window, which would slow his retreat.

  The servants' stair lay at the end of the hallway, and it was just the narrow sort of arrangement that Skif would have expected from the age of the house. In this part of the city, land was at a premium, so as little space as possible within a home was “wasted” on servants' amenities. But fortunately, whoever had built this stair had done so with an eye to silence in his servants, and had built it so sturdily that it probably wouldn't creak if a horse went down it.

  Not even Londer's neglect could undo work that solid, not in the few years that Londer had owned the house anyway.

  Down the stairs went Skif, and now he had to go on the memories of a very small child augmented by as much study of the house from outside as he had been able to manage. Londer's bedroom, as he recalled, and as study of the house seemed to indicate, was on the next floor down, overlooking the street. A curious choice, given that street noise was going to be something of a disturbance and would certainly be obtrusive early in the morning. But Londer wanted to see who was at his door before they were announced, and the other choice of master bedroom was over the kitchen and under the servants' rooms. Altogether a poor choice for someone who probably knew all about the snorers' chorus and didn't want it resonating down into his bedroom. Nor would he want the aromas of the cook's latest accident permeating his bedroom and lingering in the hangings.

  He stifled another laugh as he felt his way do
wn the stair, tread by tread.

  He could only wonder what Londer had thought when he discovered the amazing snoring powers of all three of his servants.

  This stair should come out beside the room just over the kitchen that Londer used for his guests. Important guests, of course, not people like his sister and her young son. They'd lived in one of the garret rooms, though Skif couldn't remember which one, since they hadn't lived there for long.

  When he reached the landing, once again he stopped and listened. Aside from the now faint chorus from Snore Hall above, there was nothing.

  He took a precautionary sniff of the air, for a room that was occupied had a much different scent than one that had been shut up for a while. If Uncle had a guest that Skif didn't know about, the guest became an unforeseen complication, a possible source of interference.

  But the scent that came to his nose was of a room that had lain unused for a very long time; a touch of mildew, a great deal of dust. And when he emerged from the stair he found himself, as he had reckoned, in the dressing room to that unused guest suite.