Rules for Thieves

by Alexandra Ott

  I blink at him. “You’re kind of a genius.”

  He looks confused. “Um, thank you?”

  “But don’t forget, you were the one who got caught first, not me. This mess isn’t my fault.”

  “Uh, yeah, I didn’t say it—”

  “I wouldn’t want you to get a big head or anything,” I say, “so I just thought I’d remind you.”

  “Okay . . . so, anyway, I’m thinking they’ll probably leave another guard at the desk by the front, so maybe we can . . .”

  I sort of tune out the rest of what he’s saying. I get the idea. I’ll pass the hairpins to Beck, he’ll unlock our doors, we’ll make a break for it when no one’s looking. Just the kind of plan I like: simple. Overly complex strategies aren’t really my thing, obviously, and I don’t have Beck’s compulsive need to outline every single moment of our lives in advance. And the whole impulsive no-plan thing works well for me, mostly. Now being the obvious exception.

  Of course, Beck’s plan means more waiting. Every second I think I hear the guards’ footsteps getting closer, but they never show up. My stomach rumbles, and I try not to think about what I’d give for some of the disgusting Guild food right about now. If the guards would just show up already—

  “Stop looking at the door,” Beck whispers. “Act natural.”

  “How am I supposed to act natural in a jail cell? Should I be sobbing or something? Want me to fake it?”

  “No.” He’s losing patience with my sarcasm now. “Stop looking at the door. Pretend to be asleep, if that helps.”

  If I close my eyes, I might actually fall asleep, and then I might have that nightmare again. I know I will see her when I close my eyes for too long. I spin around so the door is to my back, staring at the wall between Beck’s cell and mine.

  “Thank you,” Beck says.

  I scowl at him.

  • • •

  There. This time I’m not imagining it. Footsteps, coming closer. Beck tenses, and I can practically hear what he’s thinking: Act natural. I lean my head against the bars and close my eyes, just like I did when I was asleep earlier. With every second, the steps get closer and closer until they must be right beside me, yet somehow they keep coming. I fight the urge to open my eyes. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look . . .

  Finally, the footsteps fade. I open my eyes and stand. Beck waits for a second more, then nods to me. I reach for my head, locate a hairpin, and yank. Clumps of knotted hair fall down into my face as I unfasten the rest of the pins.

  “Do you need the tension wrench too, or just the hairpins?” I whisper.

  “I could do it with just the pins, but a real wrench will be faster,” he whispers back.

  I pull the wrench out from the pocket of my skirt. The gap in the wall isn’t large enough to stick my hand in, so I move to the very far corner of the cell door and shove my hand through the last bar. I have to yank my gloves off to make my hand fit, but it hardly matters if anyone sees the mark at the moment. “Can you reach them?”

  Beck’s out of my line of sight now, though we’re basically standing next to each other with a wall between us, but I imagine he’s doing the same as me, squeezing one arm through the bars. “Almost . . . there,” he grunts.

  I bend my wrist, trying to get the pins inches closer, reaching, reaching— “There!”

  “Shh!” His fingers brush my palm as he manages to grab the end of the wrench and a few of the pins. “Got ’em.”

  I slide my hand back inside my cell. “Good thing we’re both so scrawny, or this would never have worked.”

  “Speak for yourself.” I hear the clicking of metal on metal. “I’m not scrawny.”

  I return to the other end of my cell where, if I angle it right, I can see Beck at the other end of his. He’s got both of his hands through the bars, shoved up against the lock, but at that angle he has to hold the tension wrench in the wrong hand.

  He swears. “I’m not left-handed.”

  “Hurry!”

  “I would if I could reach the stupid thing—”

  I turn to the hall where we last saw the guards. Will they come back? Is that their footsteps?

  “Can’t you hurry up?” I whisper.

  “Next time I’m in prison, I’m finding a more patient cellmate.”

  “Shut up.”

  There’s a sharp snap, and Beck curses. “The hairpin broke.”

  “You’ve got a second one?”

  “Yeah, hang on.”

  Agonizing seconds pass as Beck grabs a second hairpin, bends it into shape, and slides his arm back through the bars again. It barely squeezes through.

  “Next time I’m in prison, I’m finding a cellmate with thinner arms,” I say.

  “I thought I was scrawny?”

  “You are. But apparently your arms aren’t.”

  “It’s called muscle. You wouldn’t know anything about it, obviously.”

  “Wow, that was almost a good insult. I think I’m a bad influence on you.”

  Click. It’s so soft I might not have heard it if I wasn’t listening closely. It’s followed by the heavy thud of the bolt sliding free. Beck pulls his arm from the bars again and pushes gently on the door. It opens.

  “Oh my God,” I mutter, “you actually did it.”

  “And that,” Beck says proudly, “is how you pick a lock left-handed without looking.”

  “Mead would’ve done it faster.”

  “You know, I could just leave you in there. Rule number nine: Fall behind, get left behind.” Beck slips out of the cell, moving the door as little as possible. Even so, it squeaks, and we both cringe.

  For a second—only a second—it occurs to me that he could leave without me. Mead would. Any other Guild member would. But Beck?

  No. He helped me once, before he even knew me. He wouldn’t stop now.

  Besides, I went back for him, and clearly that worked out so well for me. He owes me. Right?

  “You wouldn’t leave a damsel in distress,” I say sarcastically as he crosses from his cell to mine.

  “Are you saying you actually need my help?” Beck slips the hairpin into the lock on my door.

  “No, I’m saying if you left me in here I would track you down and beat you so bad even a healer couldn’t help you.”

  A few minutes later, the lock turns. Beck smiles. “Let’s go, Allicat.” He tugs the door open, shoving the wrench and hairpin into an inside pocket of his jacket.

  “It’s about time,” I say.

  We tiptoe toward the door the guards always enter from, in the opposite direction of where we last saw them heading. Beck cracks the door open a slit and peeks through. “It’s just the front room,” he says.

  “I know.” I roll my eyes. “I was paying attention when we were brought in here.”

  “Would you like to go first, then?” Jail has really made him more irritable than usual.

  “No thanks,” I say with false cheer. “When they catch us, I think my odds of escape are better from back here.”

  Beck peers through the crack in the door again. “We’re behind the desk. One guard there with his back to us. Two sets of doors to get outside. The guard has the key to open the first set, probably.”

  “So the plan is . . . ?”

  “Surprise the guard, take his weapon, get the key, run for it.”

  It only takes me a second to consider this. “Is it just me, or are your plans getting worse?”

  “Would you just shut up for a minute, please?”

  I glare at him. “Well, since you said ‘please.’ ”

  Beck’s still not really paying attention to me. “Okay, one of us is going to distract the guard, keep his attention at the front of the room, while the other sneaks behind him to grab his weapon. . . .”

  “Let me guess. You’re the weapon-grabber, and I’m just the distraction, right?”

  “It’s only a knife, I think, no sword, so it shouldn’t be too hard, unless he’s got another somewhere. . . .”<
br />
  “Most likely.”

  “Okay, and remember, once you’ve got him talking, don’t let him look back here or he’ll see me. If he does turn toward me, you’ll have to go for the weapon instead.”

  “Uh, yeah, no problem.”

  “Okay, ready?” He steps back from the door.

  “Wait, what?” I have no idea what I’m doing.

  “On three.” His hand is on the doorknob before I can protest. I swallow hard and wipe my palms on my dress.

  “One.”

  I take a tiny step forward. Distraction, distraction, how can I be a distraction?

  “Two.”

  Beck’s expression is serious, focused, in full thief mode. My pulse quickens.

  “Three.”

  He opens the door.

  I take a deep breath and walk through it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The guard doesn’t look like a guard.

  He’s young.

  His back is to me at first, as he faces the doors at the front of the room, but I’d guess he’s older than me, about sixteen. He turns around at the sound of my entrance and looks even younger, with shining eyes, floppy hair, and the innocent face that the orphanage kids always had, before they learned better. In this second, with his eyes locked on me, he is all the boys I used to pull pranks with and fight with, all the newcomers I used to trick into stealing me things from Sister Romisha’s room. And now, instantly, I am that girl again.

  He frowns, confused and startled all at once, then he opens his mouth and says, “Hey!” like he’s not sure what’s happening but wants to sound authoritative. He stands and moves toward me, and all I can think is get away from the door.

  I rush to the front of the desk so he has to turn away from the back door to look at me. At the same time, I start talking. “I can’t believe this took so long to get straightened out,” I say, inching toward the desk. I fake a Ruhian accent as best I can. “I told them Baron Dearborn would come for me, I did, I told them, but you know how it is, all accusations and no explanations, and d’ya know, they made me wait around like a common criminal. Simply unbelievable. When Baron Dearborn hears about my treatment, let me tell ya, he will have something to say about this.”

  The boy turns again, following my progress around the desk, so that he’s facing the front, with the inner prison door behind him. “What? You can’t be out here—”

  “Didn’t they tell you? Baron Dearborn already arranged for my immediate release and return to the barony. Of course there’s been a big misunderstanding, I told them that, Baron Dearborn knew it was all wrong, I’ve been with the family for years. So of course he came for me soon as he heard, I think, as soon as he could, anyway, and they said they’d release me straight off. I’m sure he’d be horrified to know what kind of conditions I was kept in! I’m no common maid, and no common criminal, neither—”

  The boy’s brow furrows. He’s just another Striker, another kid at the orphanage, the kind I can manipulate. I know everything and he knows nothing. He’s all innocence and eagerness still, easily used and easily broken.

  “They didn’t tell me anything about a release. . . .” He takes a step toward me—

  And goes flying, slamming into the floor, Beck pinning him to the ground, one knee pressed into his back. The boy shoves his arm back, connecting with Beck’s chest, but Beck just yanks the guard’s knife from its sheath and lays it against his cheek.

  “Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t scream.” Beck’s voice is low. Like the first time I ever heard him speak, protecting me by threatening that shopkeeper.

  The boy makes a sort of whimpering sound as Beck presses the knife against his skin, but he doesn’t move.

  “Get the key,” Beck says to me. “Quick, they may have heard that.”

  I kneel down beside the boy and reach into his pocket, pulling out all the metal things my fingers find. I dump the objects onto the ground and sift through them—an old candy wrapper, handcuffs, handcuff key, ID badge, coins—quickly, quickly, looking for any key that’s big enough—

  “Try the other pocket,” Beck says.

  I move to the boy’s other side, and he stares at me, his eyes wide and scared and so ridiculously young. I reach for his pocket, and he just keeps staring at me with those eyes that are terrified and begging but trying to be strong, too, trying not to cry. I know the feeling well enough, and it makes me want to snatch the knife from Beck’s hands, to tell the boy that it’s okay, that we won’t hurt him.

  He’s a guard, not a boy. I have to remind myself. It’s one of the rules on my list: There’s no place for guilt in thieving. And rule number one: Stealing is necessary to survive.

  My fingers wrap around the key. “Got it!”

  “Quick, get the door,” Beck says. I run for it, not daring to look at the boy—no, the guard—again. I hear movement behind me, hear Beck order something in that low voice that’s not his, but I don’t turn around. I stuff the key in the lock, wait for the click that means freedom, and shove the door open.

  I turn around. “Come on!”

  Beck walks the boy back over to the desk. Still keeping the knife up against him, Beck uses his other hand to clip one end of the handcuffs to the desk and the other around the boy’s wrist.

  “Count to one hundred before you yell for help,” Beck says, “or we’ll come back for you.” He runs, reaches me in a few quick strides, and we both pass the outer door and run, run, run. We reach the street outside the prison but we can’t stop. We can never stop. There will always be someone chasing after us.

  • • •

  I’m kind of okay in my maid’s uniform, but Beck’s way too conspicuous in his torn, dirty suit, so the first thing we do is find a clothing store. Beck’s calculations must’ve been close to correct, since it’s obviously dark outside and all the shops are closed for the night. We find a small clothing shop and break a window in the back, then slip inside. Beck looks like he’s done it a thousand times, and I pretend like I have too.

  Once we both have clean clothes on, we head back out to look for food. Beck seems to know his way around the marketplaces. Everything’s closed, of course, but there’s no one to stop us from picking the padlocks on a few stalls. We snatch a little bread here, a little fruit there, and by the time we reach the end of the market the ache in my stomach has dulled, even if it’s still not quite full. Maybe it will never be completely filled again. I can’t remember the last time it was, actually. Has it ever been?

  “So,” Beck says quietly as we reach the end of the street, “I’ve been thinking about the plan.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I think we’re going to want a pretty fast getaway this time. I don’t know about you, but all this running is really wearing me out. And I think it’s the fifty-ninth by now, and the Athertons aren’t leaving until the sixtieth, so we’ve got a day to wait. So we should find Jiavar and ask for her help. You said she was waiting for us, right?”

  “Yeah. She told me she’d be in the Miagnar Gardens.”

  “Okay. So we go there and plan everything out, let her know what’s going on and where we’ll need her to be.”

  I look down at my feet. “Beck?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you really think we can still do this? We only have a day to figure it out, and we have to break into the Athertons’. . . . I mean, the last plan didn’t really go so well.”

  “I think we did all right, though, don’t you? I mean, yeah, going to prison wasn’t part of the plan, but we got out, thanks to you.”

  At least it’s dark so he can’t see the heat flooding my face. “And thanks to your expert left-handed blind lock-picking skills.”

  “And that. Anyway, we’re really not doing too badly at the moment. And we have time. A whole day and a half, really. We’ll just go in, grab the necklace, and have Jiavar fly us back to the Guild. We’ll be back before morning on the first.”

  “Right. It will really be that simple.”

/>   Beck looks at me. At my right hand. “We have to try.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I don’t know if we can do it. But I don’t have any other choice. The pain in my right arm is spreading well past my shoulder. I don’t have much time.

  “And, Alli?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks. For coming back for me, I mean.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Let’s go find our thilastri.”

  • • •

  Miagnar Gardens is some kind of fancy noble’s place, with a big fence bordering the property that we have to climb. It’s too dark to see much, but the grass is thick under my feet, and in the distance fountains gurgle and wind chimes ring. It’s like the gardens at Dearborn’s, but on a much larger scale.

  “There are stables around here somewhere,” Beck explains. “Some of the nobles who live nearby keep their carriages and thilastri here. Easier than building their own stables.”

  We wander around in the dark for a while before we find it—a large wooden building in a far corner, right up against the fence. The path outside is studded with wheel ruts that we stumble over in the darkness. There’s no one around, and the doors aren’t even locked.

  Inside, we find row after row of snug little rooms filled with massive plush cushions that a bunch of thilastri are sleeping on. They may just be the chauffeurs, but these thilastri are treated like royalty, apparently.

  “How do we know which one’s Jiavar?” I whisper. “I can’t tell in the dark.” There are a few lamps suspended from the ceiling, but it’s still pretty shadowy in here.

  “Most of the rooms have names,” Beck says. “Look for one of the guest ones that doesn’t have a nameplate.”

  A few rows over, we find the guest rooms, which are all empty except for one. When we walk in, Jiavar’s eyes snap open. Then she sees Beck and smiles.

  “I thought you were a goner, Reigler.”