Rules for Thieves

by Alexandra Ott

  Beck smiles back. “But you waited.”

  “I didn’t have anything else to do at the moment,” Jiavar huffs. “So. What now?”

  “The Athertons are leaving their estate tomorrow night,” Beck whispers, “so we’re going to sneak in and grab the necklace.”

  Her eyes widen. “You’re going to break into Shoringham.” She says it like she doesn’t quite believe it.

  “We were hoping you’d provide the getaway transportation,” Beck says.

  Jiavar looks at him for a long moment. “You’ve thought this through.”

  “Of course. And it’s the only way.”

  She hesitates for a second. “You could walk away now.”

  “No.” Beck’s voice is firm.

  The thilastri turns to me for the first time. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this.”

  “Why not?” I say, genuinely confused now.

  “I’ll do it by myself if she won’t,” Beck says, but his voice wavers.

  “Then you’ll get yourself killed.” Jiavar glares at me, as if I have any idea what’s going on.

  “What else do you want me to do?” Beck’s voice rises in agitation. “I can’t just quit.”

  “What’s going on?” I say. “Beck?”

  He doesn’t meet my eyes. “The guards at Shoringham have a reputation for being ruthless. They have magic, and they’ll aim to kill.”

  “They killed a Guild member two years ago,” Jiavar says harshly, “just for being on the property without permission. Atherton tells them to kill any trespassers on sight.”

  I swallow hard. “You seem to have forgotten to mention that, Beck.”

  “You can’t do this,” Jiavar says. “Be reasonable.”

  Beck’s jaw tightens. “I have to do this. And I’ll do it with or without help from either of you.”

  “It’s suicidal!” Jiavar says, her voice rising too.

  “Okay, okay, let’s calm down,” I say quickly, my voice hardly above a whisper. “Let’s not wake everyone else up, all right?”

  Jiavar glares at both of us. “Fool,” she says, and for a second I’m not sure which of us she means. “You’re going to get her killed, do you understand? Not to mention yourself.”

  “Nobody’s getting killed.” I try to keep my voice calm and soft. Beck glowers at her, defiant and stubborn. “If Beck’s going to do this, then let’s do it. The Athertons won’t be home, and we’ll disguise ourselves so the guards won’t notice us. We’ll only need a couple of minutes to get in, grab the necklace, and get out. But we’ll need your help, Jiavar.”

  Beck looks at me gratefully, but Jiavar grimaces. “You’re both fools,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I really appreciate your optimism.”

  Beck makes a sputtering sound that might be a smothered laugh.

  “Fine,” Jiavar says coldly. “Fine. Tell me where I need to be when, and I will be there to pick you up. But that’s all I’m doing. I won’t help you get yourselves killed.”

  “We’re not asking you to,” I say. “Now. If Beck and I were in Lady Atherton’s chambers stealing the necklace, could you wait for us nearby? Outside the window, maybe?”

  “What would I tell the guards? If I just land there, they’ll kill me before I have a chance to get away.”

  “The Athertons own thilastri,” Beck says. “We can repaint the crest on the carriage to make it look like one of theirs, and then they’ll let you in, no questions asked. You can wait in the stables until it’s time.”

  I raise an eyebrow at Beck. “Do you know how to paint? Because I don’t.”

  “We have a whole day to get ready,” he reminds me. “We’ll just hire a painter.”

  “With what money? The protectors took everything we had on us.”

  “I left some money in the carriage under the seat,” he says, “and I stole thirty jamars from the cash register in that clothing shop just now.”

  I try not to look impressed. Why didn’t I think of that?

  Jiavar sighs. “So what time do you want me to be outside Atherton’s window?”

  Beck considers this for a second. “Around twelve thirty.”

  “How will she know what time it is?” I ask. “How will we know what time it is? You still don’t have a watch.”

  “We’ll get two,” Beck says, “and sync them up. Then Jia can keep one, and I’ll wear the other.”

  “Oh, so now we have the funds to hire a painter and buy expensive watches.”

  Beck rolls his eyes. “We’ll steal the watches, Alli.”

  Jiavar interrupts before I can say anything. “And how will I know which window is the right one? I’ve never been to Shoringham.”

  “I have a map in the carriage,” Beck says. “I’ll show you.”

  “Wait, what?” This time I raise both eyebrows at him. “Now you magically have a map of the Atherton estate in the carriage?”

  Beck shrugs. “When I got the blueprints of Dearborn’s, I asked for any material on Atherton’s too. I always figured this would be our backup plan. I didn’t really have time to look over it, so I put it in my bag with the money and left it in the carriage, just in case.”

  Jiavar and I both stare at him. “Beck Reigler,” I say, “you are a criminal mastermind.” I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.

  Beck either doesn’t notice how impressed we are, or pretends not to. “Right, so I’m thinking we should all study the floor plans tonight. Then when it gets light out, we can get everything we need: a painter, the watches, and another servant disguise for Alli. Then we’ll meet you back here, Jia, and get you hooked up to the carriage so you can head out ahead of us. The Athertons should leave sometime between ten and eleven to get to the festival in time, but I think we should wait until midnight, just in case. If we know where we’re going, it shouldn’t take long to find the necklace, get to Jia, and get out. Simple.”

  A long pause. “Right,” I say. “Simple.”

  “All right,” Jiavar says finally. “But right now, I think all of us need to get some sleep. Both of you look like you’re about to drop. Anyway, you can’t do much until the morning, so you may as well rest.”

  She’s right, of course, but I still don’t want to go to sleep. Who knows who will die in my dreams tonight.

  “Yeah, you should probably sleep, Allicat,” Beck says.

  “Me? What about you?”

  “I already slept in the jail, and anyway I’ve got to study the—”

  “Both of you will get some sleep,” Jiavar says, “or I will lock you in the carriage until the first and you’ll miss your deadline. I should do that anyway, to keep you from going through with this idiotic plan.”

  “I thought the plan was pretty clever, actually.” Beck pretends to be wounded.

  “Sleep,” Jiavar orders. She shifts back on her cushion to make room. And the cushion is so soft, so plush, that against my better judgment my eyes close, and I fall into sleep before I can open them again.

  The boy from the prison is in my dreams. He wears a guard’s uniform, but it’s white instead of gray. And I have to run, I have to run—something tells me I will die if I don’t—but he’s everywhere I turn, blocking my path. Thousands of him surround me. And once more there’s a knife in my hand. I can’t think, all I know is I have to run, I have to, and I bring the knife down. Right before it strikes his heart, his eyes meet mine. Pleading, innocent, confused. And even as he dies, the confusion never leaves his face. He cannot comprehend what I have done to him.

  His blood is a red stain on his uniform and a black stain on my hand.

  Chapter Twenty

  When I wake up, my arm is on fire.

  Frantically I open my eyes, squinting in the darkened stable. I try to bring my hand up close to my face to take a look at it, but I can barely lift it without doubling over in pain.

  It is burning me, searing me. My whole arm, and reaching into in my shoulder, creeping around my collarbone and down my back. The ache
of it is even touching my spine. I am on fire.

  Dying.

  I take a shuddering breath and sit up, pressing my back into the wall of the stable, and cradle my arm against my chest, willing it to feel normal again. It burns.

  It burns it burns it burns. I can’t think. I can’t move.

  I imagine the curse seeping through my blood, burning me as it goes. Rushing through my chest, pouring into my heart, wrapping tendrils of death around it. My heart thrashes wildly in response, but the curse chars it, blackens it, burns it into ash.

  I can’t breathe. My lungs are burning, my heart is burning, everything is dying dying dying—

  “Alli?”

  Beck is awake, staring at me as I shudder and gasp for breath. His hair is all tangled from sleep and sticking straight up. I focus on this detail, on how silly and mundane it is, to bring myself back to reality. To life.

  I am still alive. The curse hasn’t stopped my heart. Not yet.

  I take a deep breath. “The curse. It hurts. Like it’s on fire.”

  Beck sits up. “Are you sure?”

  I muster the strength to roll my eyes at him. “Of course I’m sure, idiot.”

  He sighs, staring at my hand. “Did something happen? Do you know what caused it?”

  “Nothing happened. I’m just getting worse.”

  “Here,” Beck says, “hold out your hand.”

  He wraps his fingers around mine, and I barely feel it. He closes his eyes, concentrating. A bright blue light pulses around his hands, and a steady chill spreads down into my fingertips and all the way up my arm into my shoulder. Then Beck opens his eyes and drops my hand. The coolness fades, and when it’s gone, some of the pain is gone too.

  “Did that help?” he asks.

  “Yeah, it’s a little better,” I say, clenching my hand experimentally. It’s still hurting, but it’s more of a dull ache.

  “It didn’t affect the curse itself,” Beck warns me. “I’m not strong enough for that. I just tried to numb the pain and make it feel better.”

  “It does,” I say. “Thanks. But . . . Are you sure your estimate was right? About how much time I have?”

  “I think so. It’s not in your chest yet, right?”

  “Not really. My collarbone and shoulder, mostly.”

  He nods. “I think you’re okay, especially since it’s on your right side—farther from your heart. As long as we do this today . . .”

  “But we don’t have any time to waste.”

  “Right.”

  “Well,” I say, “let’s get busy, then.”

  When Jiavar wakes up, we follow Beck’s plan. First, we find a painter who takes one look at the coins in Beck’s bag and doesn’t ask any questions. While he works on the carriage, Beck and I go into the marketplace, where I distract a number of people so Beck can snatch things—watches, an outfit for me (a dress, gloves, and shoes), some food, and everything else Beck thinks we’ll need. We spend most of the afternoon in the Miagnar Gardens, snacking on some stolen apples and studying the floor plans of Shoringham. Finally, when the painter’s finished, Beck pays him, making sure to include an extra-large tip and a reminder to keep his mouth shut.

  By late evening, Beck and I are dressed in our servant disguises, and any evidence that might incriminate us has been hidden away inside the carriage, which now bears the Atherton family crest. Jiavar, who spent most of the day either napping or reminding us how much she disapproves of this whole idea, is strapped into place at the front of the carriage. After telling her the meeting place for the thousandth time, Beck nervously adjusts her watch, which is attached to the side of the carriage where she can see it, since she doesn’t have a wrist to wear it on, and sends her off.

  “Be careful,” she says. Then she runs down the path and leaps into the air, pulling the carriage after her, becoming a distant pinprick of shadow until the sky swallows her up.

  “So, we’re going to pay someone for a ride now, right?” I ask.

  Beck nods, reaches into his pocket—and freezes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I put the money in the carriage.” His face is frozen. “All of it.”

  I curse. “What’re we going to do now, steal a whole carriage?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Even when he’s afraid, he still manages to scoff at me. “We’re just going to steal the money.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, I’m ridiculous? And where, exactly, are we going to get this money from? Are we going to rob the whole bank?”

  “We don’t need that much money. I’ll just pick some pockets. A little loose change should do.”

  “Right,” I say. “But if we needed more money—if, say, we needed a lot of money—you wouldn’t rule out robbing the bank, would you?” I already know the answer to this, actually. But I wonder if he’s aware of how ridiculous he is.

  “If we needed that much money, I wouldn’t have forgotten it on the carriage.” Without looking at me, he starts walking away, toward the entrance to the gardens.

  “That’s not the point.” I run after him. “You didn’t answer the question, Beck.”

  He’s already at the garden entrance, peering out into the street. “Everybody’s closed up shop for the holiday. Not many people around.”

  “So, at what point do we resort to bank robbery?”

  “No time for that,” he mutters distractedly. “I’ll bet some of these shops have full cash drawers, though.”

  “Great,” I say. “Fantastic. I always look forward to breaking and entering.”

  “If you don’t have anything helpful to add . . .” Glancing around, he veers down the street, cuts into an alley, and circles around to the back of the shop.

  I follow him. “If you finish that sentence by telling me to shut up, I will punch you in the face.”

  “I’m not finishing that sentence. I think the implication was pretty obvious.” Beck pulls the tension wrench and hairpins from his pocket and picks the lock on the back door of the little shop.

  “I happen to think everything I say is helpful. I think it’s very helpful to have someone remind you, through witty and intelligent sarcasm, that some of your ideas—like robbing a bank, for example—are really, really bad ideas.”

  “Robbing a bank was your idea. You brought it up.”

  Click. Beck shoves the door open, and we enter the darkened shop.

  After a minute of fumbling around in the dark, I find some matches in a drawer and light a candle. I’m about to hold the light up for Beck so he can pick the lock on the cash drawer when he holds the hairpin out to me. “You do the honors.”

  Beck has bent the hairpin into the right shape, but it’s still harder to use than a proper pick. I take a lot longer than Beck would have, and Mead probably would’ve had the thing opened in two seconds, but I finally turn the lock and slide the drawer out. Beck holds the candle over the drawer as I count the coins quickly.

  “Thirty-three jamars,” I report. “Is that enough?”

  “Probably,” Beck says, but he doesn’t sound sure. “I don’t know what the fare is to go to that side of Ruhia.”

  “That would’ve been helpful to know.” I pocket half of the coins and hand him the other half.

  Beck slips the coins into his pocket. “Yeah, why didn’t you think of that?”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Before either of us can move, the door flies open, and someone holding a lantern enters the shop. “Stop! Don’t move.”

  We run.

  Behind me, the protector swears, her footsteps thudding, but I don’t turn around. I duck under a rack, turn a corner, try to find my way through the maze to the door—

  Crash. The protector fumbles through the shop, knocking shelves over as she goes, sending everything toppling to the ground. A shelf falls right beside me. I lunge forward—

  I barely make it out of the way as the shelf collapses. Its merchandise spills to the floor, and something lands on top of my foot and pins me in
place. The protector sees and rushes toward me, ten feet away—but there’s a mountain of stuff between us standing in her way, I might be able to make it before—

  A hand grabs my arm and yanks me up. My foot slides out from under the dead weight and I find the ground again.

  Beck’s voice is in my ear. “C’mon!”

  I don’t let go of his hand as we run out the door, the protector right behind us but struggling, not as nimble as we are. We sprint down the street, take a sharp turn, then another, trying to lose her. One alleyway bleeds into the next, and there’s just the pounding of my heartbeat and footsteps, thudding out a rhythm in time with our gasping breaths.

  We can’t go on anymore. We stop, lean against a wall, drop hands. Breathe.

  “You okay?” I gasp.

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Did you hurt your foot?”

  I’d forgotten all about it, so I guess it’s okay. A little sore, now that I think about it. But compared to the pain of the curse and the bruises on my left side and head, it’s nothing. “No.”

  “All right, let’s go.” Beck steps forward, peering first in one direction, then the other.

  “You do know where we are, right?”

  “Um.” Beck walks to one end of the alley and looks out at the street. “I’ll figure it out once we get to a main street.”

  “You mean you’ve spent all this time studying maps of Shoringham and Dearborn, but you never memorized every side street and alleyway in Ruhia? What good are you?”

  “Sorry, I was too busy memorizing a map of Azeland. Knowledge which saved you from a protector, as I recall.”

  “Whatever. Like I needed your help.” But he did seem to have an uncanny knowledge of Azeland, come to think of it. “Wait, you didn’t really memorize a map of Azeland, did you?”

  “Come on, Allicat,” he says, disappearing around the corner.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  • • •

  Beck’s knowledge of Ruhia’s streets isn’t too bad, all things considered, but I continue to berate him about it as we wander through some more tiny alleys. Finally, we find a more populated area, and Beck figures out where we are. In no time, we’ve located a carriage service and are on our way to Shoringham.