The Gentleman Thief

by Kate Gragg

  As if reading my mind, the giant bird threw back its head and let out an earth-shaking cry, the same two notes the little bird had been singing but played on a contrabbasso. The crystal spires all shattered one after the other, pop-pop-pop, and out stepped several groggy-looking youths wearing expensive-looking armor.

  “Cor,” said one.

  “Blimey,” said another.

  A third just bent over and coughed up multicolored pebbles.

  “Oh, Karsten, you didn’t drink the water?” Lydia said witheringly.

  “Of course not,” Karsten said, then he blinked. “...Lydia?”

  “Wot’s a woman doin’ out in these woods?” said another one.

  “Rescuing you,” I said, “so show a little gratitude.”

  “Never mind that,” Lydia said, running between them. “What happened here? How did you get trapped? How many of you are here? You’re all alive. Joe, they’re all alive!”

  “Obviously we’re alive,” Karsten sniffed, “it was only a slight delay. Hold us back any longer and I’ll be sure to let your father know you’ve been sneaking off into the woods helping this... stable boy... cheat.”

  “This stable boy just broke you out of the prison you’ve been in for the last year,” Lydia said.

  “A year?” Karsten laughed, “don’t be ridiculous, if we sat in those rocks for more than a day we’d have been–”

  “Eaten?” Lydia said.

  That brought them all around to us, and to their present circumstances, specifically the giant, carnivorous-looking bird in their midst. There was some screaming and then they all stampeded off into the bush, although I noticed some of them shoved a few gems into their pockets first.

  “That’s gratitude for you,” I said, chucking the giant bird on where I figured its shoulder would be. It clucked at me resignedly.

  “Joe, it’s already almost dark,” Lydia warned.

  “Oh right, the competition! We have to get back before dinner!”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  I turned to the learhen and bowed deeply. “Freeing a bird of your magnificence is reward unto itself, but I do wonder: Could we possibly trouble you for a ride?”

  Chapter Ten

  I have ridden on two donkeys, about a half-dozen camels, and once when very drunk I woke up slung over the back of a horse, but all that experience didn’t prepare me for what it would be like to half-run, half-fly through a dark forest on the back of a giant and irritable bird.

  The jolting was enough to rattle your teeth, and it didn’t help that the bird only remembered to duck under low-hanging branches for us about half the time. Lydia and I soon got into a rhythm, calling out obstacles ahead and ducking in opposite directions so as not to unbalance the bird. Very little to hang onto with all those silky feathers, and it was hard to figure out where to put your legs. I had mine jutting out in front of the bird’s wings, taking a beating every time it took flight, while Lydia had hers pinned firmly to the thing’s bristly rump.

  Lydia’s hands were full with the baby bird, which insisted on staying with its mother but quickly tired of flying. We’d tried to leave it behind, but it just cried like its heart was breaking and seemed to draw the attention of whatever lay behind those slow-blinking lights staring at us from the darker corners of the woods.

  I’d never been any place so ominous as a forest at sunset. Other than those predatory eyes and the few glimpses of waning sunshine I caught when the bird had enough space to spread its wings and leap up to the rafters of the trees, there was nothing but velvet blackness unfurling out in every direction. At dusk the forest was even louder than the daytime, a whole new crew of nocturnal birds waking up and calling out to each other, accompanied by the deafening drone of what Lydia explained to me were millions of flying insects, all nesting in the trees and advertising for a mate.

  “They’ll all be dead by the first leaf of autumn,” Lydia reflected. “With their grubs hibernating underground until spring.”

  “They sleep half their lives away?”

  “Not too different from how everyone else spends winter here,” Lydia laughed, “but the summers are really something.”

  “I don’t know how you can stand it.”

  “Normally I can’t either, but for the first time it feels like the island is waking up. Everything feels... alive. Magical.”

  “Plenty of magic, all right,” I said, suppressing a sneeze.

  “I never saw any before,” Lydia said, running her fingers down the little bird’s feathery neck. “Of course the island is magic, and I’ve spent a lot more time in the forest than I was supposed to, but the island doesn’t show itself to folks like me. These birds, those crystals... and the men, alive!”

  “Last seen alive, at least,” I said. “I don’t like the survival odds of anyone running around a magical forest at night in a panic.”

  Lydia seemed like she didn’t even hear me.

  “Alive,” she breathed. “I have to tell Althea as soon as we get home.”

  As if on cue, the bird broke through the brush and galloped out into a field right behind Lydia’s family’s grand house. Golden candlelight poured out of every window, painting the monumental sandstone bricks of the house’s walls with honey until they seemed to glow from within. Strains of music and laughter lilted down on the breeze. Just as the bird came to a stop, rooting its talons in the soft grass of the lawn, someone inside finished a story what must have been a crashing punchline, setting booms of applause tumbling out into the night, echoing across the field until they were subsumed by the implacable silence of the trees like an ocean wave melting into the shore. I had never been anywhere that radiated such comfort, such certainty that all was well and always would be. Even the bird seemed to feel it.

  “You grew up here,” I said, that fact sinking in deeper than it ever had before. Here.

  “It’s not as nice as it seems,” she said.

  “Neither is Cheapside.”

  The bird brought us to the edge of a paved court behind the kitchens, but balked at going any further.

  “Should I… tie it up or something?” I said. The bird squawked and flapped its wings at me.

  “I don’t think it would like that,” Lydia said, shimmying down the bird’s tail. The smaller bird hopped after her, landing on her shoulder and pecking at her hair.

  I wedged myself down from the bird’s shoulders and gave it a grateful pat on the neck.

  “I really appreciate how you remembered to dodge a few of those branches at the end,” I said. The bird nodded modestly.

  “You’d better hurry inside. I don’t know how close we are to the bell,” Lydia said.

  Deep within the house, the clock chimed, once for each hour.

  “Damn, it’s already seven,” I said.

  “Six,” Lydia corrected, staring at me like she wasn’t quite sure if I was serious. “I have to go inside, I was supposed to be dressed and receiving guests an hour ago, and we shouldn’t be seen together.”

  “Because of your reputation?”

  “Because I’m not supposed to go into the woods,” she said. “No one is, except for the contestants.”

  “Then who was the woman with the garden?”

  “You saw her?” Lydia looked alarmed.

  Before I could ask what the hell that meant, someone called Lydia’s name from an upstairs window and she handed me the baby bird and ran off, leaving me with two birds and no bird leashes.

  I walked up to the front door, where two footmen took the learcock from me and placed it into a gilded cage.

  “A very fine catch, sir. We’ll see that it’s delivered to the ballroom before the judging starts.”

  “You’ll probably need a bigger cage for the other one,” I said, cocking my thumb over my shoulder. They saw the giant learhen and goggled, and one of them sent the other one off to the stable to fetch some rope.

  “Don’t hurt her!” I said, “and be polit
e.”

  The great ballroom was aglow with thousands of candles set in mirrored star-shaped lanterns hanging from every rafter and antler in the hall. Below that, men in brocade suits and women draped in yards of silk milled around drinking wine punch from miniature crystal goblets and gossiping animatedly.

  I sat down with the other contestants, happy to see that dinner was already laid out on huge platters, along with pitchers of beer spaced at convenient intervals along the endless wooden table. I didn’t know if I could eat a horse, but I could certainly drink one under the table right then.

  “So, Joe was it?” Hughie boomed at me, already well into his cups from the look of it. “How’d you fare?”

  “Oh, I did all right, I think,” I said. “Glad to have caught something. I heard the island’s been over-hunted in recent years.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Dickie, equally loud, equally drunk. “We caught ours straight away, gave us plenty of time to enjoy the hospitality here.”

  “And plenty of time to admire the pprriizzshes,” Hughie slurred, leering at the row of young women up on the dais and sputtering beer all over me.

  I reached into my breast pocket to grab my handkerchief, but it wasn’t there. Of the many gentlemanly arts I was learning I lacked, I hadn’t expected “keeping track of one’s handkerchief” to be the hardest one to master.

  The dais was a low wooden platform, about a foot and a half off the ground, that spanned the back of the hall and held all the people who really mattered here. The rich old men who made up the judging tribunal, their wives and hangers-on, and the eligible bachelorettes who were, in manners and for reasons a commoner like me couldn’t possibly understand, available to be married off to any man who finishes the trials and earns his knighthood.

  Lydia was up there, wearing a silvery-blue dress and a silver circlet atop her masses of black hair, looking like she’d just stepped out of an all-day milk bath, rather than gallivanting around a muddy forest with a badly misplaced chimney sweep. Hughie wasn’t leering at her, though, which was good since I probably would have socked him one and that would have probably been a breach of banquet etiquette. He, like his brother and most every man in the room, was fixated on Althea.

  If the princess noticed, she didn’t show it. She was seated next to her father but deep in whispered conversation with Lydia on her other side. She looked sad, I realized. Anxious. A strange expression to see on a face framed by so many jewels.

  There was an ornately carved wooden leaderboard up on the wall behind her, showing Clifton well ahead in the odds. If it was 50 to 1 in favor of me marrying that ruddy short-tempered dolt, I suppose I’d look anxious too.

  At the party last night, the crush of gamblers and spectators had made it feel like the competition itself was a large and jolly thing, but sitting at a table set for five that was clearly built to seat ten times that many, it was easy to see why Lydia’s father, the master of ceremonies, had such a deep furrow between his brows. There was a pall over the whole contest, whether the drunks noticed or not.

  I searched the crowd of luminaries until I found the oldest judge, Saunders. The one who had lost his son last year. He sat ramrod-straight in his chair, his eyes roving over the revelers as if searching for something he knew he’d never find. His eyes fell to the contestant’s table, and I could tell he was looking at the empty chairs, not at me.

  I hoped those idiots we freed from the crystal ravine were all right out there in the woods.

  “Evening, gentlemen,” said Wart, the teenage boy with the constantly hovering retinue of relatives. He bowed to the brothers and took the seat opposite mine, looking around furtively before pouring himself a glass of beer.

  “Absolutely not,” I said, grabbing the beer and pulling it over to my side. “It’ll stunt your growth.”

  “Will not!” Walt scowled.

  I leaned in and adopted a conspiratorial stage whisper.

  “Maybe not, but you don’t want to end up like these fellows, do you?”

  I cocked my head toward Hughie and Dickie, who were singing off-key along with the band and getting a lot of disgusted looks from the women.

  Wart shook his head. “Definitely not. Those two competed back the year when my brother won, and he said they were a mess.”

  I turned to Hughie in surprise. “You’ve competed before?”

  “Oh sure, plenty of times. Y’can come back as many times as y’ want, s’long as somebody stands for you.”

  “My brother and I have been proud competitors in the games every year since we were not much older than him,” Dickie said, leaning over his brother and breathing hot drunken ale breath into my face.

  “Wait, you competed last year? I thought everybody –”

  “We were eliminated before whatever happened, happened,” said Hughie, untroubled by the memory.

  Dickie nodded. “Overslept. Happens to the best of ‘em!”

  “It really doesn’t,” Wart muttered.

  “Did you see anything strange last year?”

  I half wanted to tell them about the men Lydia and I had rescued earlier today, but since I didn’t presently know where they were, it seemed unwise. And the brothers didn’t seem like the discreet types anyway.

  “Saw a dwarf who could ride a horse!” said Dickie. “Oh wait, that’s this year!”

  He pointed at Wart and both brothers laughed.

  “Boy, these really are the dregs this year,” I said to myself.

  “I know. That’s why I thought I’d take a chance this year,” Wart said. I hadn’t meant for him to hear me, but he didn’t seem troubled by it. “I’ll be the seventh knight in my generation of the family. All my brothers and cousins have had something distinguishing their knighthoods— fastest to find the Cave of Valor, dragon-fighting, first left-handed knight— and I thought if I could be the youngest knight, that would count for something. But I’m only aiming to pass the test, not come in first. That’s going to be Clifton, no offense.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  “He’s going to have a hard time winning if he doesn’t get here before that clock strikes,” Dickie said.

  “I never have a hard time winning,” said Clifton from behind me. He dropped into the chair at the head of the table and dropped his burlap sack on the floor next to him. Whatever was inside it chirped in pain.

  “You look like you’ve had quite the day,” I said. He was muddy and covered in scratches, and there were twigs stuck in his chainmail.

  Clifton had a retort ready, but before he could fire it off, the clock above our heads chimed, signaling the start of the evening’s ceremonies. Lord Saunders stepped to the front of the stage and cleared his throat.

  “I hope that everyone has enjoyed this fine dinner,” Saunders said, “But now that the hour is struck, it is time to see what our heroes have brought back from the wilds of the forest.”

  The crowd broke out into applause, and two trumpeters bleated a short fanfare on either side of the carpeted steps that led up to the stage. Lord Saunders sat back down and watched as footmen wheeled covered cages out in front of him.

  One of them lifted the cover off the first cage, revealing two blue, cranelike birds. They were bristling with arrows and inescapably dead. The crowd gasped. Well that answers the logistical question I’d had about that.

  Argus, Lydia’s father, stepped forward and turned to Hughie and Dickie.

  “You two caught the same thing?”

  Hughie staggered to his feet and tugged on his brother’s arm until Dickie got the hint to join him. They pointed to their wilting catches with a wobbly flourish.

  “Presenting, if it please the court, two songfishers, fresh caught this morning,” said Hughie.

  “Oh, that’s a very rare bird,” the Duke said, clapping his chubby hands.

  Lydia’s father leaned forward and peered over his glasses.

  “But they’re dead.”

  “So?” Dickie said, swaying slightly. “Uh,
I mean so what, sir?”

  “So, we can’t hear them sing,” Argus said. “How do we know they’re songfishers if we can’t hear them sing?”

  “Of course they’re songfishers,” Lord Saunders said, barely hiding the irritation in his voice. “Hughie and Dickie are honorable young men, they would never lie.”

  A titter rippled through the women sitting on the dais, most of whom had received a pledge of undying love from one or the other of the brothers.

  “This was meant to be a hunt for magical birds,” Argus insisted. “Those could be pelicans they dipped in ink for all we can tell.”

  “Hmm, that’s true,” the Duke mused, twisting his beard into a fine point. “Many birds do look alike.”

  Dickie raised his hand, but Hughie swatted it away and stood up, bowing deeply to each of the three judges before speaking.

  “As I’m sure you all know, the songfisher’s song is dangerously hypnotic,” he said. “We dispatched them for your safety, as well as the safety of everyone here.”

  “Also, they die pretty easy,” Dickie said, tweaking one of the arrows jutting out of his pin cushioned bird.

  “Many birds do,” the Duke nodded.

  Dickie tweaking the arrow made it vibrate like a spring, shaking loose some sort of magical dander that went straight into my lungs. I scrambled for my handkerchief, finding it in a pocket I was sure I’d checked earlier, and coughed so much that the entire room stared at me.

  “Don’t mind me,” I sniffed. “Carry on.” I kept coughing, but I tried to make it quieter.

  Lydia’s father sighed.

  “Very well, we’ll take their word for it,” Argus said, waving them off. “Dickie Munton, one dead songfisher. Hughie Munton, also one dead songfisher. That shouldn’t be hard to beat.”

  The brothers sat down and returned to their cups gratefully, seemingly unbothered by their dismal performance. They were in it for the free drinks, and I respected that.

  “Wart, would you care to show us what you caught?” Argus said. The boy climbed up and removed the cover of his cage, revealing a brownish, smallish bird nobody seemed to recognize. I certainly didn’t.