The Gentleman Thief

by Kate Gragg

  Very.

  Very.

  s t r a n g e

  I was underwater. I’d fallen into the well, or the watering can. The sea and the sky had changed places. I was in an ocean where the world used to be.

  I wasn’t breathing, but I wasn’t drowning. Every piece of me felt separate, bound to the water but not to me. I was a collection of sundered things, flotsam adrift in a cold, dark sea.

  Suddenly I knew which way was up. It was where the faces were, the ones so familiar.

  I reached up, up. Could they see me? Could they rescue me? I just wanted to hold his hand. I saw him, my father. Please.

  He reached down, almost touching me, but something scared him, and he recoiled, snatching his hand back up like the water had burned him. Coward. We have always been cowards.

  The other one reached in.

  Not you. I don’t want you.

  He didn’t flinch. He didn’t turn back.

  I will boil your bones.

  He grabbed… not my hand. I had no hands. Some part of me. Lifting it up, faster than I could follow. He tore it away from me.

  I was smaller now and sinking. The fragments of my soul, getting farther away from each other. A school of fish startled and scattered. Forgetting they ever moved as one.

  The bitter taste of the water snapped me out of it, just in time to realize I was choking. I reared back and gasped for breath, just as something slimy and wet fell out of the watering can and slapped me in the face.

  It was a handkerchief.

  “Very funny,” I said to no one in particular. I wiped my face with it, wrung it out, and turned to the hedge.

  “I’m very sorry I yelled at you earlier. The garden has been watered, and I’d like to go now if you don’t mind.”

  The hedge branches whispered among themselves and then parted, letting me out right where I had been before.

  “Thank you,” I said with a bow, feeling foolish. The hedge bowed back, its leaves tickling my face. I almost coughed on it, but I pulled the handkerchief out just in time. Even wet, it did the job. No magical mishaps. I realized that I could have been carrying a handkerchief all this time, and then I felt foolish again.

  It took me a second to find my sword. It was still standing upright, wedged into the forest floor, but moss and vines had grown to almost completely cover it.

  I scraped off the hilt and wrested the thing from the ground, hoping all this natural abundance hadn’t rusted it.

  The sword made a faint “shing!” sound that echoed unnaturally long, and distant voices, or perhaps nearby ones that were very small, called out in a chorus.

  “Hail! He frees the sword! Hail!”

  “It’s my sword,” I said to no one.

  “The sword bearer returns! Hail! Hail!”

  “Thanks. Uh, hail to you as well,” I said. It seemed whatever I did, the island had an opinion about it.

  “Does anyone know which way I should go?” I called out. No answer.

  I held out my sword with my arm extended and closed my eyes. Maybe the spirits of the island would guide me. I turned in a slow circle, trying to attune myself to the cosmic vibrations presumably channeling through the sword.

  When I opened my eyes, I was facing the same direction I had been. Good enough, I guess. I started walking, the woods growing deeper and darker with every step.

  It’s an odd feeling, not knowing where you are. Having to forge on, not knowing where you’re going. Having something you need to do and no idea how to do it. I usually felt that way about everything, but at least in Cheapside there were people to talk to and taverns to drink in. Out here there was nothing but eerie, empty wilderness. I don’t think I’d ever gone so long without seeing another person. Even in jail, you might not like the company but at least you’ve got some.

  I walked for about an hour, I think, following any path that looked wide enough for me to fit through between the dense stands of trees. I honestly didn’t understand how catching a bird was a knightly thing to do anyway. How was this meant to prove my bravery or chivalry or whatever -ry that went with becoming a knight? Still, I kept an ear out for birds, but all I could hear were the little flitting kind that were too high to catch and probably too unimpressive to be worth carting back anyway.

  The minute my mind formed the word “unimpressive,” it’s like the forest heard it and decided to show me how wrong I was. I wended my way around a stand of reasonably ordinary-looking willow trees and found myself walking into a small clearing.

  I’m not much for nature, but I tell you, it was really something. An expanse of lush green moss, almost perfectly circular, shimmered with morning dew. Smooth tree trunks covered in silvery-gray bark soared up above, making a roof of giant green leaves that had to be the size of bedsheets, while flowering vines snaked around and between them, loosing a rain of yellow petals that danced in the breeze. The cavernous depths between the trees revealed infinite tunnels of forest, fading into blue-black shadows.

  The whole place was as dark and as cool as night, except for a blinding beam of sunlight that crashed through the space where the trees didn’t quite meet overhead, landing on a gleaming white boulder that vaulted out of the earth in the center of a clearing.

  And on that boulder was a lump of molten sunlight that writhed maddeningly, endlessly, like a basket of snakes that had been dipped in gold.

  I reached out to touch it, and one of the snakes reared up its head, which had a hooked beak and fearsome orange eyes. And feathers, I realized, right before it pecked me.

  “Ow!”

  “Don’t touch magical beasts without asking first, idiot.”

  The pride of the duchy had one gleaming leather boot propped up on a rock in a sort of conqueror’s pose, the better to show off the battalion’s worth of weaponry he had strapped on. Clifton Crome pointed his sword at me, close enough to my face that I could admire how nicely the ruby cabochons inlaid in the hilt matched the ruddiness of his cheeks.

  I blinked and my mind finally resolved the sight before me into the shape of a bird not unlike a swan, with three long graceful necks and big wings folded around its body like a cloak.

  “That thing is magic?” I said. I could already feel a prick at the back of my throat.

  Clifton nodded, sheathing his sword and bounding up to me, his chainmail clanking.

  “It’s a midas eagle. One of the rarest birds in the world. And it’s mine.”

  Now that my eyes weren’t as dazzled by the bird’s golden feathers, I noticed the sturdy collar around its neck and felt a realization dawn.

  “You’re cheating,” I said.

  “I’m winning.”

  I stood there stupidly. How did I not know there would be a fix? Everything always had a fix. Alphonse would have seen Clifton coming a mile away.

  “You’re cheating in a tournament of honor?”

  “Is it cheating to employ a little foresight?” Clifton said, shaking out a large burlap sack he’d had stowed away somewhere on his enormous person. “This island’s been hunted for centuries. Everything good died out generations ago. It’s not like I didn’t catch the thing. I just didn’t catch it here.”

  “You hunt magical birds?” I said, feeling my way around the idea. My mind was starting to go numb at the edges.

  “I hunt everything,” Clifton said simply.

  The bird flapped its wings, knocking loose a few magical feathers that floated right into my face. It was coming on now, nothing I could do to stop it. I clapped my pockets looking for my new handkerchief, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it.

  “What are you hesitating for, man? Out of the way!”

  “I can’t,” I said, turning away and burying my nose in the crook of my elbow. “I’m –”

  “Pathetic?”

  I sneezed with such force I swear I felt my feet lift off the ground. The whole world was just a jumble of moss and trees and feathers and sky, with occasional visions of Clifton’s ruddy face, and then I fel
l to earth.

  I thought I’d gone blind at first, but it was just that awful island sunlight hammering through my eyelids. My brain whirred for a bit, and then my hearing kicked in.

  “– unbelievable idiot! What the hell have you done?”

  The sack Clifton was holding was filled with potatoes. All his pouches and pockets, also potatoes. His beautiful sword lay on the ground, now a row of potatoes, the one closest to him set with rubies. Even the amulet around his neck was a one of those little yellow potatoes that show up in the early spring. Good with leeks. I was starting to get hungry.

  “Yeah, that happens sometimes,” I sighed. “Did you have charms on those things? Because I’m starting to think that –”

  “What the hell was that?” Clifton screamed.

  “I’m allergic.”

  “Allergic.”

  “As best as I can figure,” I said. “Anytime I’m around magic I sneeze, and the stuff I sneeze on changes into other stuff. This is the second time it’s been potatoes, and I’m trying to figure out what the common denominator is there. Were you wearing a lot of gold?”

  “Have you ever considered,” Clifton said, angrily unbuckling his various potato-holsters, “covering your nose?”

  I was about to retort with something about how some of us actually were raised in barns, thank you, but Clifton was staring at something behind me.

  “The bird is gone.”

  I turned around. Yep, empty rock.

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  “You used your third-rate, unlicensed, highly illegal magic to turn my bird into a potato?” Clifton said, clenching a russet so hard he mashed it.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, surveying the scene. “I’ve never turned an animal into anything.”

  Wait, was Clem an animal?

  “Anyway, I was facing the other wa— ow!”

  That was a sucker throw, but I caught the next potato he lobbed at me and gave it right back to him.

  “Where the hell is it, then?” he said, winding up to cannon a huge baker at me.

  “You’re the hunter, where do birds go when things get noisy?”

  Clifton groaned, then put his hand up to his brow and started scanning the sky. I looked too, but there weren’t any solid-gold-yet-impossibly-airborne things flying through the sky, at least what I could see of it.

  “Wonderful,” Clifton muttered. He patted his vest pockets and pulled out a length of rope. “You’re lucky this isn’t a potato,” he said.

  “Tough break, Cliffy. Looks like you’ll have to compete fair and square now.”

  “Unlike you, magician.” He made it sound like a slur, which it nearly was in some parts.

  I got an idea that made me laugh. I shook the cursed penny out of my sleeve, did a little sleight of hand, and plucked it from Clifton’s ear. The only magic I actually knew.

  “For luck.”

  “I don’t need your luck,” he said, snatching the penny from my hand anyway.

  Clifton started off through the trees, then doubled back and grabbed the ruby-inlaid potato. He clutched it to his chest, made a rude gesture at me, and stalked off into the forest.

  Once he was out of sight, I remembered something. I turned back to the slab of rock the bird had been resting on and found the collar. It was still attached to a sturdy length of chain, and the chain was still staked to the ground. The collar wasn’t broken, either. It had been unlocked.

  I scanned my surroundings, trying to see things the way I imagined Clifton would. The trees were still as tombs, not so much as a squirrel moving amongst them. The carpet of moss ended a few steps beyond the clearing, disappearing under a thick layer of leaves and fallen branches. I heard the breeze, and my own breathing, still ragged. And the snap of a twig.

  Maybe that footman had been right. Doing magic out-of-bounds, consorting with a cheater. The man-eating beast of Teems was here for justice. What could I say in my defense? It was all a big con? Let me sneak off the island safely and I’ll split my potato fortune with you? Eat Clifton first, he cheats on purpose?

  Reflexes I didn’t know I had matched my line of sight to the source of the sound. Something whipped behind a tree and the woods fell silent again. It was almost too fast to see, but only almost. I had time enough to register a flash of skirts and a long braid of gleaming black hair.

  Chapter Nine

  When we were kids, Lydia loved to snatch my hat off my head, or grab the heel of bread I was about to bite into, and take off with a whoop, daring me to chase her. I always caught her within a block or two, no matter how much of a head start she had, or how crowded the streets were, or what she threw at me to slow me down. You get into as much trouble as I always have, you learn to run.

  And that was just as a kid. Now that I’m grown and mostly legs, on flat ground I can outpace a camel. But that’s in normal places, where there aren’t trees. I thought dodging them would be no trouble, not so different from weaving between columns or more staid citizens. But what I didn’t factor in was the roots. Nasty gnarled things leaping up out of the ground, nipping at my toes, tentacles just waiting to snare an ankle.

  I fell hard, and hit my head, harder.

  I woke up with a headache and something sitting on my chest. Something indescribable. A riot of colors, constantly changing, and a shifting mass I couldn’t find a line on. My eyes didn’t know where to land. Small curves piled up and became big ones, then melted away and pooled into a blackness that gobbled up all the light.

  “Oh god, I’m dead,” I moaned. I’d never believed in superstitions, but here was Death, just like the washerwomen who told fortunes used to describe Him. Devouring light, drinking your essence, scratching at your face with little silver claws.

  “You aren’t dead,” Lydia said, scooping up Death and cooing at it.

  With some distance I could see that Death was, in fact, just another weird bird on this stupid weird island. Lydia set it down on the ground beside my shoulder, where it climbed back up onto my chest and started pecking at my collarbone.

  “What’s it doing?” I said nervously.

  “It thinks you’re an easy meal,” Lydia said, laughing.

  I sat up with a start and shoved the bird off me in an ungainly heap. It squawked at me and flapped its wings in irritation before getting distracted by something skittering around underneath the fallen leaves. Out of the corner of my eye I could swear it looked like a tiny green frog wearing a full three-piece suit, but really to tell the truth I’d had enough whimsy already that morning, so I ignored it. I rummaged through my clothing and found my handkerchief, somehow tucked into my sleeve, and tied it around my face protectively. No more magic in my lungs today, thank you.

  Lydia knelt beside my legs and examined my wrenched ankle, which was already starting to swell up.

  “You’re not going to get very far like that,” she said.

  She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a small jar made out of bright blue glass. Removing the silver stopper, she scooped out two fingers’ worth of some sort of cream and dabbed it onto my ankle. It was so cold it made me shudder, but the pain receded immediately.

  “Is that magic?” I said, holding my breath. She looked at me quizzically.

  “Of course not. It’s just silvermint salve.”

  “Oh,” I said, relaxing. I wiggled my foot in small circles, first one way, then the other. I already felt much better.

  “Why ‘of course not’?” I asked.

  “You can’t take magic into a magical forest,” Lydia said, spreading her arms expansively. “The forest doesn’t like it.”

  The bird squawked again, as if seconding her point.

  “Huh. Maybe that’s my problem today.”

  “What do you mean?” Lydia asked, screwing the lid on the jar of salve and tossing it into a small bag that contained a lot of other jars and bottles and what looked like a small bronze dagger.

  I thumped my chest.

  “Alchemical dust in the
lungs. Chronic condition. Symptoms are… erratic.”

  I coughed, which somehow worked the handkerchief loose from my face. So much for that idea.

  “Oh Joe, you didn’t stick with chimney sweeping so long you ended up working the factories, surely?”

  “What else was I supposed to do, Lydia?”

  “But you had dreams, you had plans!”

  “We had plans,” I said.

  Lydia shot me a pitying look that I hated very much.

  “Was it very awful, cleaning those furnaces? Everybody who ended up there looked haunted.”

  “Not so awful as being kidnapped by pirates, I’m sure,” I snapped. She rolled her eyes at me.

  “So I made up a story! I felt bad. I didn’t want you to worry, and I didn’t want you to waste time looking for me. I thought if I said pirates, since they never bring anybody back…” She trailed off, looking deep into my eyes in a way that I’m sure was meant to stir my soul. It did, but I wasn’t going to let her have the satisfaction of knowing it.

  “And you couldn’t have me looking for you, of course,” I said. “It’s fine to play with street rats, but you don’t want one following you home.”

  “My mother would have–”

  “Oh, I’m sure she would,” I snapped.

  “Boarding school was awful, and I was desperately unhappy, and I saw you running across the rooftops one night and–”

  “And you thought hey, why not slum it on the weekends?”

  I sat up so quickly the bird startled, took a few galloping steps and leapt into flight, disappearing over the canopy in a few shakes of its magical wings.

  “That’s unfair,” Lydia said, standing up to help me. I didn’t let her.

  “It’s definitely unfair.”

  “Our time together meant everything to me.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed your hobby,” I said, leaning on a tree trunk as I tested my ankle.