The Gentleman Thief

by Kate Gragg

  “You have to give the coin back.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said. “Just walk up to a princess and say excuse me madam, I acquired this while robbing you and I find that it doesn’t suit my needs, do you have a return policy?”

  “Of course you can’t walk up to her,” Fritz said, “but a version of you could.”

  I turned to Fritz.

  “I’m no actor like you.”

  “You’re tall and handsome, Joe,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “That’s almost the same thing. We get you fixed up, iron out that accent, teach you a few posh social cues and then put you in a setting where she’d have no reason to doubt you.”

  “Let’s assume all that’s possible. How do I give her a coin that, last she knew, was in the hands of a thieving chimneysweep?”

  “Obviously you don’t, Joe,” Fritz said. “You get close to her and then you reverse-pick it.”

  “What?”

  “Reverse pick-pocketing,” Nev said, nodding. “Same as regular, only instead of taking something out, you’re putting something in.”

  “You guys are saying that like that’s a thing.”

  “You can pick a pocket, can’t you, Joe?” said Fritz.

  “Of course I can!”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  My sanity was spared by a woman who came crashing through the doorway wearing a massive white gown bedecked with hundreds of red bows in the same shade as Nev’s suit.

  “Your majesty! There’s been a terrible calamity at the front!” She skidded to a halt in front of me and smiled. “Hey there, Joe! Whatcha doing out of Cheapside?”

  “Heya Mary,” I said. “You’re in on this too?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s got a whole gang of us. Most of the boys from the Ladderleg Gang come up on Thursdays and do “military training” in the courtyard. It’s a real good show for the richos, yeah? The ladies love it. They open their purses almost as fast as their-”

  “Joe is going to try his hand at confidence work himself,” Fritz interrupted. Mary looked me up and down.

  “He’ll probably want clothes for that.”

  “A lot more than clothing. How am I even going to find her?” I said. “She’s getting married in a week, and her house is locked up tighter than a goblin’s purse.”

  “Ah, but who is she marrying?” Fritz said pointedly.

  “Some guy who wears armor indoors? Cliff something?”

  Fritz grabbed me by the shoulders. “Not if you get to her first.”

  He flapped his cape.

  “Mary! Bring me my gray silk suit, the silver breastplate, and I think the sapphire-hilt sword.”

  “Get it yourself,” Mary said, plopping on the sofa in a cloud of tulle and reaching for the crystal nut bowl on the table.

  She popped a pistachio in her mouth and cocked her thumb at Fritz.

  “He’s not a real prince, you know.”

  “And you’re not a real help,” said Fritz.

  Chapter Four

  The last time I’d set foot in The Colonnade I’d been running. It was dark, and I was barefoot, because I was only twelve years old and I wouldn’t own my first pair of shoes for years. My lungs were still good, and I could go fast. My god, how fast. Lydia was the only one who could keep up with me. Both of us too tall to be inconspicuous, useless for our masters’ purposes. I’d gotten stuck in a judge’s chimney the week before, my shoulders just a hair too wide. The judge’s wife had lit a fire to encourage me to wriggle my way out, but I was too stuck for that to do any good, so I just hung there choking until Bindle Bill took pity on me and smashed the brick in. Very expensive, lots of yelling all around.

  Meanwhile Lydia’d been late to her post spying on the guard station, meaning she missed her chance to warn Cockeyed Carol to hide the dice game, and when she ran along the rooftops trying to beat the patrolman to it she’d forgotten to crouch behind the battlements like you had to do once you got tall, and she’d been spotted. We were both, as Lydia said, in dire need of alternative sources of income. She was always saying things the long way like that, and stealing old books off the kindling carts. I had my suspicions about why she was late.

  “You were at school, weren’t you?” I said, panting, as we ducked behind one of the massive columns that gave The Colonnade its name. The sunset made them shine like pillars of pure gold.

  “What?” Lydia said, craning her neck to scope out our next sprint. There was no cover in the plaza, and if anyone spotted us, they’d definitely know we didn’t belong.

  Lydia tapped my arm and beckoned to me to a heavily laden drayman’s cart trotting across the square. We leapt quietly onto the back, landing on fragrant bags of refuse from the grand houses of The Colonnade.

  “Sometimes I don’t see you for weeks,” I insisted. “Nobody does. And then you come back like nothing happened.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Joe,” she said. “I skip town when things get too hot. I’ve told you this.”

  She craned her neck over the edge of the cart, scanning the road ahead. I fumbled in the darkness until my hand found hers. It was rough, like mine, calloused against the scraping bricks and roof tiles we clung onto all day. I found it strangely reassuring, this thing we had in common.

  I laid back against what may have at one time been a pumpkin and watched the moon glide through the dark blue vapor of a gathering nighttime storm. You could see more stars out here than in Cheapside. They glimmered until the clouds swallowed them, winking out one by one.

  Good. Misdeeds were always easier in the dark. Amateurs hope for moonlight, but full darkness is what you want. Those of us who can’t afford candles see much better at night than those who can.

  The cart slowed, and I felt Lydia tense up and then relax, slowing her breath the way I’d taught her to before a job, the way my dad had taught me.

  I pressed my face close to hers.

  “Teach me to read,” I said.

  “Teach yourself,” she said, rolling out of the cart and landing on her feet like a cat.

  I tumbled after her and followed her through the dense reeds that encircled our target like a moat. There was a fine house here, Lydia said, and the owners had gone abroad and left a fortune in silver and gold inside.

  “Do your bit,” Lydia said, nodding at the high wall that marked the border of the estate. It was overgrown with vines, so easy climbing for me. I made quick work of it and hopped down on the other side, landing softly in a carpet of moss that had encroached upon the flagstone courtyard. I felt around for the latch to the gate, but it was rusted shut and let out an alarming croak when I tried to turn it that made us both flinch.

  “Too risky!” Lydia said. “Go in without me. The butler’s pantry is the one with the little square window. Just pop in and grab what you can.”

  I crept towards the house, my heart pounding in awe at what I was about to undertake. I’d never stolen anything on my own before, but even a gold plate or two would be enough for us to bribe a wool trader or a grain merchant to smuggle us out of town. We’d make our way east to the big trading docks, then steal a boat (“Easy,” Lydia had said. “They don’t even put locks on them.”) and sail the seas and be pirates and never take orders again.

  The house was faced in gray stone with veins of black, making it look like it was covered in spiderwebs. I couldn’t see any lights on anywhere, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a housekeeper or watchman sleeping somewhere inside. I remembered Bill’s advice about breaking and entering: “Better to be loud and short than quiet and long” and smashed a windowpane with a single sharp knock, then held my breath. No barking watchdogs, no stirring inside. I reached through and pulled up the sash.

  Lydia screamed.

  I whipped around and bolted back. Through the gates I could see two men in long coats and tall boots restrain Lydia, one with his arm wrapped around her neck and the other wrestling to contain her legs as she kicked ferociously. I leapt over the wall without registering the way
the rough stone scraped my hands bloody and clattered to the ground.

  “Joe, no!” she cried, eyes wild. “Get out of here.”

  “Be quiet!” one of the men barked. He threw Lydia into the back of an open-topped carriage and grabbed the reins. The other man hopped on the running board and grabbed Lydia by the hair, making it impossible for her to escape.

  I ran as fast as I could, swinging my legs forward in giant strides my scrawny frame could scarcely keep up with, my bare feet sliding on the wet cobblestones. I took deep roaring breaths with every step, willing myself to go faster. Lydia was right ahead of me. I couldn’t see her in the dark, but I heard her struggling and kicking the sides of the carriage.

  I had to think of something to do. There was no use crying for help. No police action in that neighborhood. Too disruptive. No one would care about an urchin girl anyway. Good riddance to bad rubbish, they’d say.

  The cart was going too fast. I knew there was no way I could keep up this way. I spied a sturdy-looking downspout and climbed my way up to the roof of a row of townhouses. From up there I could track the carriage, its shadow cutting through the moonlight reflected on the wet streets.

  I ran along the rooftops, cutting diagonally when they turned corners, making up for lost time.

  They skidded to a halt on the rough-hewn wooden boards of the pier, the big one that all the noblemen used for their massive yachts. There was nothing like that here now. It was late autumn, and the sea was already getting rough. Thick, sludgy waves, half-frozen, battered against the pilings and left rings of gray salt when they receded.

  I slid down a lamppost and hid behind a stack of barrels. The two men wrestled Lydia out of the cart, and I was pleased to see she was making it difficult for them.

  “Shut her up,” said one, tossing his partner a length of cloth as he dodged a respectable right hook from his captive.

  “We ain’t supposed to leave marks on her,” his companion said.

  “We ain’t supposed to drop her in the drink either,” the other man replied, “but that’s just what’ll happen if she don’t stop thrashing around like that.”

  I crept closer to the edge of the dock, just in time to see the men wind Lydia up like a mummy and toss her over the side.

  “Lydia!” I screamed. I couldn’t help myself. I ran to the water’s edge and saw, to my relief, that she’d landed in a rowboat.

  “Who’s this little brat?” the bigger man said. “One of your little pigeon friends?”

  “Stork,” Lydia spat out, straining against her bindings.

  “Well it don’t matter now, do it?” said the man who’d tied her up. He and his mate jumped into the rowboat and pushed off.

  I jumped after them but missed by inches, sinking into the ink-black water. I couldn’t swim. I was helpless in the current, gasping for breath whenever the ocean saw fit to let me bob towards the surface, but I kept thrashing, pulling armfuls of water underneath me like I was climbing a wall.

  “Please, he can’t swim, please toss him something,” Lydia begged.

  The men traded a look and finally threw a small empty keg in my direction. I got my arms around it and let its buoyancy hold me up above the waterline, getting enough air to start kicking my way over to Lydia.

  “Joe, please,” she cried out. “Go back.”

  “I’ve almost got you,” I gasped.

  “Go back to the shore, Joe. Please.”

  A huge wave caught me and lifted me up high enough to see where the rowboat was headed. A ship was anchored just at the edge of the bay, with three black sails billowing in the icy wind.

  “They’re pirates, Lydia!” I screamed.

  “I’ll be all right,” she called out. “I promise.”

  “You can’t be… a pirate… without me…” I gasped, but the waves swallowed my words. There was nothing I could do but float there in the cold water, watching her sail away.

  A month later I was working scrubbing furnaces in the alchemy district, already getting a cough, and one of the boys I knew who worked the shores, holding up lanterns for smugglers making night drops, brought me a message in a bottle marked with the great, swooping L Lydia used to sign things with. When I could finally read well enough to make sense of it, years later, it only said that she was living happily among the pirates, and that she hoped I wouldn’t go looking for her. That someday she’d make herself their queen, and they’d come looking for me. That I should take care of myself until then, and if I found my own way out of the city and was gone by the time she came back, she would understand.

  *

  “I think you’re awfully brave, you know,” the rich lady said, batting her jeweled eyelashes at me. She was a vic– er, patron of Fritz’s, the more-money-than-sense sort.

  “My very favorite sort,” Fritz had said.

  She saw me saying goodbye to Fritz at his side door, the secret entrance only his true compatriots knew about, and couldn’t resist waving through her carriage window and letting me know that she was in the know.

  “Who is that woman with the hairdo that looks like an owl?” I’d said to Fritz.

  “Ah!” Fritz had grinned. “That is your ticket onboard the royal yacht. If there was ever a guest list Lady Fontainbleu was on, no one would admit it.”

  Lady Fontainbleu wore a lot of furs, even though it was summertime, and she loved whispering in my ear, even though it was a private carriage. She had a lot of advice for me to help me get ahead in my position as, according to Fritz, “a diplomat in the foreign service,” and honestly some of it seemed useful if I ever found myself in such an unsuitable profession.

  “The farther north you go, the drunker you’ll need to get them before any business can get done,” she counseled. “But if you’re overseas you’d better stay sober as a judge. My first husband learned that one the hard way.”

  Her laugh turned into a dry smoker’s cough. I gave her a few supportive pats on the back, but I’m not sure I hit anything but fur.

  I hadn’t been back to the seashore since Lydia’s disappearance. It turns out in the summertime the water is bright blue and so clear that you can see all the way to the bottom, so far down that the little fish browsing in the coral get hauled up by fishermen and turn out to be as tall as me. As the docks swept past, I tried to pretend the sights were a boring everyday occurrence and not ogle like a fascinated child.

  Lady Fontainbleu knew exactly which boat I was headed for, which was good because I didn’t. Fritz figured it would be obvious and told me not to worry about it.

  “Any ship sailing with nobles aboard is going to be dripping with flags and crests and things. You can’t miss it.”

  Her carriage whisked us right up to the pristine, sun-bleached boardwalk of the marina, where all the rich of The Colonnade docked their playthings. Every last yacht buzzed with activity as sailors in crisp white uniforms unfurled some sails and rolled up others, polished brass fitments of unknowable purposes, and hauled up picnic hampers with the seriousness of monks carrying funerary goods into a king’s tomb.

  The boat we pulled up to of had the most of everything. Sails, brass bits, sailors. Not so many guests though. The carriage passed the gangplank and pulled up to a smaller one under archway that said “Aspirants,” with a winding series of velvet ropes marking out a waiting area. The queue was empty, and the footmen flanking it looked bored.

  “Not much of a turnout this year,” Lady Fontainbleu tutted. “No surprise, I suppose, what with all the unpleasantness. You know all about that, of course.”

  “Of course,” I lied. I had no idea what the boat was for, other than transporting the princess and her suitors and, for however much time was necessary, me. Fritz had said they played some sort of game to pick the groom, which sounded ghastly, but it wouldn’t be hard to avoid all that. I looked the part and arriving in a fine carriage would only help sell the idea that I was an amorous young swain out to grab the brass ring. I pop onboard, wait until there’s an opportunity to get clo
se to the princess—

  “There’s probably a receiving line or something,” Fritz had said.

  —and then “reverse-pickpocket” the coin back to her, thereby ridding myself of the curse and living happily ever after… as an unemployed chimneysweep who was probably already scheduled in for an appointment with the hangman for unleashing magic in a populated area. You could get away with most things in Cheapside, but not that.

  “I think you’re awfully brave,” Lady Fontainbleu said, disembarking from the carriage in a flood of furs. We strolled past a lot of guards and some men with quills and scrolls who seemed to wilt under her indomitable gaze. I wondered what it was like to be so rich you couldn’t be argued with.

  “That’s awfully kind of you to say,” I said, smiling vaguely. There was a mighty fine party happening on that boat, and my nose was twitching like it always did when I was in grasping distance of a free meal.

  “Oh no, I mean it,” she cooed. “Of course you’ll probably perish, but if you don’t, just think of what this will do for your cause.”

  “Ah yes,” I said. “Er, my Lady…”

  “Annabelle.”

  “My fair lady Annabelle. I thank you so much for the ride, and I’ll let the Prince know what a great service you’ve done for the cause. But as you can see…” I gestured at the milling crowd on the deck above us, all carrying cups of wine and plates of tantalizing-looking food, “I have business to attend to.”

  “Oh of course, of course,” she said, tapping her nose conspiratorially. “Best blend in, mustn’t you. The future of nations depends on it. Well!”

  She plucked a strand of lint off my jacket and slapped away some wrinkles in the cloth in a way that was unexpectedly maternal.

  “Remember, most boys do live through it,” she said, turning on one sculpted ivory heel and sashaying off, the immense breadth of her fur cape cutting a swath through the crowd.

  I suppose I ought to have asked her what she meant, but a waiter pressed a cold glass of sparkling wine into my hands and another one distracted me with a tray of canapes and immediately I was having much too good of a time to worry about any little thing like life and death.