Thief's Cunning

by Sarah Ahiers

  My senses strained as if I was in a dark room, searching for someone.

  Nev sighed beside me and I caught his eye. “Metta will know, of course,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “She and Isha will have noticed we are missing. That my wagon is gone, too.”

  “But they wouldn’t tell anyone,” I said.

  “Who would they tell?” He shrugged.

  It must have been hard, just the three of them together, Metta trying anything and everything to regain their lost status. She reminded me of Lea, in that sense. Lea, who would kill anyone to protect us. And Nev had so easily put Metta aside for me.

  I clutched the singura. “How many samars are there?”

  “Twenty-four. Counting you now.”

  “Who did this singura belong to?” I asked. “If my uncle hadn’t taken it, who would have it now?”

  Nev paused, glancing at me quickly before looking off to the sky.

  “Nev,” I said. “Who would it belong to? Please don’t tell me Perrin.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “No. Not Perrin. No matter what she thinks, she will never be a samar. The Three will never pass it down to her. She wants it too much.”

  “Then who?”

  “Metta.”

  I twisted on the seat until I was facing him fully. “What?”

  “If things had not gone wrong, if the singura had never been lost to us, it would have passed down to Metta. Maybe. It is not a for sure thing. But it did go wrong, and the blame lies with our family.”

  Metta. Metta was the true owner of my singura. The singura Les had stolen from his mother as a child. Which meant . . . “You’re his family. My uncle. You’re the family that abandoned him when he was a child.”

  Nev scowled. “We were not born yet, Allegra. It was before our time.”

  “How are you related to him?”

  “His mother was our grandmother’s cousin. When his mother died, the singura would have probably passed to our grandmother.” Another one of his traveler shrugs.

  “Is that why you tried to kill him? Because he was related to you?”

  Nev sighed. “I did not want to try to kill him at all. But yes, that was Perrin’s reason. But even if he was not a traveler, she still would have made me send Kuch. He was not a traveler and he stole a singura. Punishment for that is often death. Metta would have never agreed to it. But she does not travel and Perrin was in charge.”

  Perrin, then. Perrin was at fault for what had happened to Les. What I’d had to do to Les.

  “Why is Metta keeping me alive, then? The singura could be hers. She would regain your status, right?”

  “Our family lost the singura. Now that it has returned, Metta does not think she will be rewarded as a result. She thinks the gods are angered. Her first baby died before it was born. Sometimes it happens to women, but Metta believes the Three were punishing her for our family losing the singura. She will not take the chance.

  “Also, she does not find death to be an answer. And she likes a challenge.”

  Metta hadn’t been kind to me, but neither had she been unkind. I squeezed the singura around my neck. “How does it work?”

  “What?”

  “The singura. How does it pass between women? How does one become a samar?” I needed to know as much as I could about the singura if we were going to find a way for me to be rid of it.

  “A samar chooses who they want to pass it to. Almost always it is a daughter. Or sister. Maybe the daughter of their sister or brother. Almost never is it someone outside the family unless their line has ended or there are no women. No women in a family is a sign of Meska’s ill favor.”

  “So they pick their successor, and then they pass it on and just . . . die?”

  Nev shook his head, tugging the reins so the horse would head more south. “They choose someone, but they continue to be samars for all their days. Then, when they die, the singura is passed on to their chosen. Mostly it works.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Sometimes the chosen will put on the singura, but the Three do not approve of the choice. And so someone else will be chosen instead. If the family has done something to anger the Three, maybe none of their women will be able to be samars, and the singura will pass to another family.”

  “This is what Metta is afraid of,” I said. “If I was to die, and the singura passes to her, she is worried she will be rejected by the Three.”

  “Yes,” Nev said. “She tries to do much to appease the gods. She is having the baby, to be a mother, to appease Meska, the strongest of the Three. She sends me traveling to appease Culda and any money I earn appeases Boamos.”

  “But if I choose someone to be the samar after me, and I just give them the singura early, I would still die?”

  “Yes.”

  That didn’t solve anything. There had to be a way to get rid of the singura without dying. It was the magic of the gods, anyway, and gods could change their minds and do what they wanted. Lea was a living example of that.

  “Look!” Nev pointed to a line of wagons rolling into New Mornia. “The menagerie has returned!”

  He snapped the reins and the horse picked up her pace, the wagon creaking behind us and Flee grumbling about the increased speed.

  “There will be much work,” he explained to me. “But after the work is done, there will be a festival.”

  A festival.

  My emotions warred inside me. On the one hand, a traveler festival sounded exciting. Something new, something I’d never seen and I bet few outsiders had.

  But the part of me that knew I was still trapped in my cage recognized it as a delay to figuring out how to get back to Lovero.

  It didn’t matter how decorated the cage was if the door was still locked with me inside.

  twenty-eight

  WE SNUCK INTO MORNIA WITH THE MENAGERIE. NO one noticed one more small wagon with the chain of large ones, filled with travelers and animals. There were still some areas, especially around the corners of curtains, where piles of dust and sand had collected from the bol, but mostly it seemed like nothing had changed.

  We returned the wagon, the horse, and Flee and then we headed back the way we’d come.

  Travelers rushed to the menagerie, laughing and shouting, and we followed in their wake. Nev shot me a rare smile, and my stomach tightened.

  I let his pull on me linger. He would help me. It was nice, not being alone in this.

  Ahead stood wagons and carts, each pulled by horses, mules, or oxen. A crowd had gathered, and travelers stood on the carts and waved and called to the friends and family they’d left behind while they’d traveled.

  We weaved our way through the growing throng until finally we stopped before two carts. One was stacked with the small, wired cages I’d seen the snakes in. The other was a covered wagon, with small slits carved into the wood at the top for airflow.

  Suddenly the cart roared and many of the travelers laughed and cheered. The tiger I’d seen in the menagerie. He’d come home, for whatever it was worth.

  There were two women and one man standing by the mule that had pulled the tiger from Lovero to Mornia. “Nev!” the man called when he saw us. They clasped forearms and spoke in rapid Mornian, too quick for me to make out a single word.

  Someone stepped beside me and I turned to find Metta and Isha. Isha pushed a flat cart before her, a single wheel in the front. But Metta was unburdened, aside from her expanding belly.

  Metta blinked at me slowly, studying me through slitted eyes. Isha refused to make eye contact with me.

  “You are back,” Metta said to me quietly. When they had discovered us gone, I couldn’t imagine the sort of scramble she’d found herself in. All her plans and plots to regain her status revolved around Nev, and now me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  But Metta seemed the resourceful type. The kind of person who, when faced with crumbling plans, would use the pieces to simply build stronger ones.

  Metta sniffe
d, then looked at the cart with the wired cages, before turning back to me.

  “You can help us,” Metta said as Isha wheeled the cart over to the smaller wagon with the snake cages. “You will have to speak to Bedna soon,” she added.

  “Who’s Bedna?” I asked.

  “She is leader of the samars.” And that was the only explanation she gave as she stood before the cart with the cages.

  A woman greeted them and wasted no time handing down a snake cage, handle on the top to keep her fingers away from the gaps in the wire and the venom of the snake.

  Metta took the cage and placed it on the cart, then took another and stacked it on top.

  I reached out for the next cage, but the woman yanked it away from me. “Ghoshka,” she said to me.

  I didn’t know much Mornian, but I knew enough to understand the insult as it was meant. I was not a traveler. I was an outsider in their midst, gifted with the magic of their gods. I understood the woman’s animosity.

  “Delka!” Metta shouted, and the woman looked at her. Metta said something in Mornian and the woman looked at me anew, her eyes settling on the singura around my neck. Then she reluctantly passed the cage down to me.

  “Keep your hands on the handle always,” Metta said. “They sometimes try to bite, even through the cage. Meska will not protect you if you are bitten. Even if you are a samar.”

  I remembered the horned viper that had struck at me that first night in Lovero, when I’d fled from Ravenna and the ugly truths the Da Vias had told me. When I’d found shelter and sanctuary behind the cages of the menagerie, in the arms of a traveler boy with a wide smile.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Nev speaking to some other men, all of them standing around the wagon of the tiger.

  “Will they return him to his regular cage?” I asked Metta of the tiger. “It’s a pit, right?”

  Metta nodded. “Yes. First they must wait for things to calm. Tigers are mean if things are not calm.”

  We continued to take the snakes from the wagon, stacking them on the smaller pushcart until it was full of cages. Then Isha picked up the handles and led Metta and me away from the menagerie caravan.

  We headed east and south, toward the pens and cages that held the traveler animals when they were not traveling.

  I kept my eyes open while we passed cages of deer, rodents with long legs, monkey-like animals with striped tails. There were large pastures reserved for goats, though the goats did what they wanted and jumped in and out of their pens. There were also pastures for stunning horses, and they cantered around together, welcoming back the ones who had gone traveling with the menagerie.

  Isha and Metta spoke quietly together, their Mornian drifting over me. Metta chuckled at something Isha said, and Isha placed a hand on Metta’s belly.

  I looked away, giving them their privacy. Nev was right. I didn’t see Isha ever leaving Metta. They clearly fit.

  I thought about Nev and the way he had chuckled, late in the night. My skin tingled at the memory.

  Isha pushed the cart to the right and then stopped. We stood by a small alcove, built out of wooden boards that stretched over six feet into the air, creating a sort of half circle. A canvas stretched across the tops of the boards, keeping the interior of the alcove shaded and warm.

  Metta grabbed two cages and walked inside. I followed.

  Shelves had been built inside the half circle, and some already had cages stacked on them. I leaned close and found more snakes, different from the ones that had been in the menagerie.

  Metta stacked the two cages on a shelf and gestured for me to do the same. We continued until we had emptied the cart of all the snakes.

  “This is where they live?” I couldn’t help the surprise, touched with scorn, that coated my voice.

  “Snakes,” Metta said, “like the dark and the warmth. And they do not need space. They like small cages as long as they have food. They are not like you or me. They are snakes.”

  I eyed the small cages and the snakes inside, and they did seem comfortable, even if the wires were just tiny bars, really.

  I rubbed my arms and stepped back. “What do they eat?”

  “Mice. Rats.”

  I grimaced. “Where do you even get the rats? Do you have ratters to catch them? Terriers?”

  Metta shook her head. “No. There is a rat family. They breed them. Their status is very low, though.”

  “Because they’re rat people?” I asked. “Even though so many of you rely on them for your own animals?”

  A traveler shrug in response.

  “What’s the highest-status animal?” I asked. “The tigers?”

  “Goats,” she said.

  I laughed. “Truly?”

  She nodded. “Everyone needs and uses goats. Not just the animals, but us, too. Milk and hide and meat and food for the meat-eating animals. Isha comes from goat people.”

  Isha peeked her head inside at the sound of her name and Metta said something to her in Mornian. Isha nodded and smiled. “Goats,” she said. “They are very smart and very kind.”

  It was the first time she had spoken to me, though she still refused to make eye contact.

  “Do you miss them?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “They are everywhere. If I miss a goat, I go find one.”

  “Come.” Metta gestured me out of the snake nook. “We must collect the rest of the snakes.”

  Isha picked up the end of the cart again and we began our trek to the menagerie caravan. Metta rubbed her back and then cupped her arms beneath her stomach, trying to support the weight better.

  Beatricia used to do that, when her back pained her. She’d probably had the baby by now. A girl, I hoped.

  Tears stung my eyes.

  I didn’t want to go home, back to Yvain. I didn’t want to return to that place where I didn’t belong, to the family that had lied to me my entire life.

  But that didn’t mean I didn’t miss them. Didn’t wonder about them. Had Emile married Elena Caffarelli so she could become a Saldana? Had they found the letter addressed to Marcello in my room in Lilyan?

  Had Les recovered?

  I swallowed and wiped the tears from my face. Metta looked at me from the corner of her eye. “Sand,” I said as way of explanation.

  To my left, someone darted behind a pen, vanishing, but not before I’d gotten a glimpse of blond hair, of pale skin.

  I stopped and blinked rapidly, clearing my eyes.

  Traveler skin ran from olive to deep brown, their hair from sandy brown to black. None of them were blond like me.

  Like Lea.

  I took off, chasing after the person.

  Behind me Metta shouted. I pushed myself forward, my boots pounding on the dirt as I dodged and weaved around pens and paddocks.

  Birds screeched, feathers floating in the air as they flapped their wings. I swung left, past a cage of small rodents that scattered into burrows.

  Another right and I slid to a stop.

  I’d reached a dead end.

  My breaths heaved in my chest. I’d been chasing a ghost.

  Maybe it had been my imagination, the person with the blond hair. Perhaps my tears had created an apparition.

  I’d been thinking about my family. Maybe I’d just missed them so much I had fabricated it all. Besides, if it had truly been Lea, she wouldn’t have run from me, from the travelers. She would have strolled into their midst, afraid of no one.

  “Allegra.”

  I spun, and there, hidden in the shadows of empty cages, stood my mother.

  Claudia Da Via.

  I stared at her, breaths heaving in my chest, blinking to make sure I wasn’t imagining her.

  But she didn’t disappear, didn’t vanish as my breath calmed, my heart slowed.

  She wore her leathers, bone mask pushed to the top of her head, blond hair plaited down her back.

  She took a step toward me. “Allegra,” she repeated, her voice little more than a whisper.

&nbs
p; “What—” I started, then swallowed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to bring you home.”

  And for a moment my heart soared. Here, here was my way out! It was not Lea who had come to rescue me, but Claudia, my true mother.

  But then I remembered the illness that had struck me on the dead plains, making me sicker and sicker the farther I got from Mornia.

  I could not leave with Claudia.

  I shook my head. “I can’t go home with you.”

  She frowned. “Yes, you can. Forget about Lea, the others. Just come with me right now and we can return to Lovero, to Ravenna. You can become a Da Via, be a part of the Family you were always meant to be a part of. It was what your father and I wanted for you.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to picture my father. He was dead, though. And no one could really know what he would want.

  “It’s not that.” I studied her features, trying to find every little bit that was like me and every little bit that wasn’t. “I cannot leave. There’s some sort of magic, a curse from their gods, maybe, keeping me here. If I try to leave, I’ll die.”

  Claudia scoffed. “That can’t be true.”

  “It is,” I said. “I escaped once already. I had to return to save my life.”

  Allegra blinked rapidly, digesting this piece of information. “Why are their gods involved in any of this?” she finally asked. “Why do they care about what happens between a mother and her daughter?”

  Meska was a god of motherhood, so I suspected she probably would care about something like this if either of us were devout to Her and not Safraella.

  “It’s complicated,” I finally said, echoing Nev. The wind blew between the slats of the alcove we were standing in, and I thought of Metta and Isha with the snakes. Were they looking for me right now? Afraid I had run off again?

  “How did you even come to be here?” I’d tried to escape and had barely made any distance. And yet, somehow, she’d made it to Mornia on her own. She didn’t even have a singura.

  Someone shouted from the caravan and I realized the answer. “You snuck onto the menagerie caravan.”

  She inclined her head. “I was going to search for you in Yvain, of course. But I never got that far. You turned up missing, and Lea went on the warpath.”