The Gentleman Thief

by Kate Gragg

  He spat.

  “Sheep herder,” I lobbed back.

  “Maybe once upon a time,” Clifton allowed, “but I came up the proper way. I didn’t lie or steal to get where I am today.”

  “There are worse things than lying and stealing though, aren’t there, Clifton?” I said.

  “Oh, Joe,” Clifton laughed cynically, “this is no time to start lobbing accusations. It looks desperate.”

  He turned to the crowd, a priest in his bully pulpit, arms wide, lobbing the final thunderbolt to steer his flock away from damnation.

  “I have no idea what his vile aim is, although I would advise all ladies in attendance to count their jewels carefully. I cannot speak to the extent of the damage he has done, stealing our hospitality as freely as he would steal the silverware, but I can put an end to it with one righteous action: expelling this impostor, Joe Thorne,” Clifton said, pointing a finger right at me.

  The crowd gasp was much bigger this time. Have to give him that. Clifton let out a rallying cry and the whole crowd descended upon me, even the servants who were supposed to be on strike. Even Hank managed to wrest himself free from Althea’s breast and flapped toward me waving her stickpin.

  As the crowd engulfed me, I played the only card I had. I grabbed the pearl, touched it to my lips, and turned into Clifton.

  “After him!” I shouted, pointing a random direction into the crowd, and then I did what Joe Clifton Thorne does best.

  I ran away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Being a seagull’s alright. Nice views, handsome beak, impressive wingspan. I’d worn my Clifton disguise as far as the house gates, and then I’d been a guardsman, a cart driver, a fisherman, and a little boy skipping rocks. I couldn’t quite remember why I’d decided turning into a gull was a good idea.

  Ah yes, the wings. I could fly home with the pearl in my beak. The pearl I do… something with. It was nighttime and the moon was on the water, lighting a path straight to the edge of the sea. Was that where I wanted to fly? I couldn’t remember.

  I turned the other way, watching a little stream flow into the ocean. The water in the stream smelled different than the sea. Something in it, the same thing that came on the breeze blowing from the forest. No place for seabirds, that forest. I knew that much.

  Something hit me! How incredibly rude. It was a hard thing wrapped in a soft thing, white as gull feathers. I watched with interest as it started unfolding itself. A little white man made of sailcloth. He spat out something shiny and walked over to me, moving around a lot. It was like he was shouting – men often shout, though they’re usually bigger than this – but I couldn’t hear him.

  I cocked my head to and fro. Speak up, little sailcloth man. He made wings out of the corners of himself, flapped them, and then balled up one cotton fist and punched himself slowly in the face with it. Well, where his face would be, had he had one. Then he sprang up in sort of starfish shape and started walking around like a man again. I fluffed up my feathers, a seagull’s shrug.

  He pointed at the pearl in my beak. Oh no, little man. I’m keeping this safe. I need this, and as soon as I remember the reason, I’ll be glad I held onto it. You won’t steal from me, little sailcloth man.

  He walked on my feet and unfolded himself taller, then raised his little arms to make himself taller still. Ridiculous thing.

  He saluted me and hesitated, then jumped into the stream. I watched him dissolve, and then under the beating waves I saw something like a face. A young man, very grave and sad, looking up at me from the water. Reaching up. Pointing at the pearl.

  Oh right!

  I bit down hard on the pearl and thought of the face before me, the only man’s face I could imagine. Only when I was back in the mind of a human did I realize the sacrifice Hank had made. I plunged my hand into the tumbling waters of the stream, searching for him, but I knew he was gone.

  It wasn’t until Barry showed up that I realized I still had the pearl in my mouth.

  “What happened? Who are you supposed to look like?” Barry said.

  “I don’t know. Do you remember what I actually look like?”

  “Uh, like this.” Barry grabbed the pearl from me and popped into my form, jogging my memory enough for me to do the same.

  “Change into something besides me,” I said. “That’s creepy.”

  “Sorry,” Barry shrugged. He popped again into the gray youth I’d seen in the water.

  “That’s creepy too.”

  “I know, I just wanted to get a better look at him,” Barry said, leaning over the water. “I think I saw him once before.”

  And then he told me this story.

  Long ago, hard to know when, but back when Barry was still a frog, he liked to hop around the island exploring. There was always new interesting gossip to catch up on from the other beasts of the island, some enchanted like him, some merely magical, and some not magical at all.

  A rumor spread that some men were stomping all over the forest, hacking at bushes with their sword and generally making a big noisy mess.

  “That’s what men do,” Barry the frog said.

  But no, this was not the season for men. It was the quiet part of the year, when the air gets a chill and the grasping vines burrow, and nothing seen walking on two legs that cannot fly. But there were men, and they’d gone into the ground.

  Barry knew where they’d gone, into a cave with sweet cool water where he liked to retreat on hot days. He hopped in and watched from behind one of those rocks that sticks up from the ground in caves, or so he tells me.

  “Teeth? Caves have teeth?” I said. Barry ignored me.

  He hid behind a cave tooth and saw two men enter. One of them picked up a helmet on the ground and got really upset, saying things like “my god” and “where’s the rest of him” and making a lot of noise that echoed off the cave walls and gave Barry a headache. I hadn’t known frogs had ears, but apparently, they do and they’re very sensitive.

  So, the bigger louder one was upset, and the older quieter one was just staring into this rock pool at the back of the cave the whole time. Barry got curious and hopped his way over there, and what he saw in the water was the same thing I saw just now – a young man, gray and gaunt, looking up from under the water.

  “He gave me the same strange sense then, that I’d seen him before.”

  “Had you?” I said.

  “How could I know? He looked dead; I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody dead. He was wearing armor too, did your guy have armor?”

  “No, he was naked. Lot of that going around,” I said.

  “So the man in the water looked up at the old man, and the old man looked down at him and cried out in terror, because the man in the water was reaching up to him, like he wanted to pull him down under, yeah?” said Barry, getting into the ghost story of it all.

  “And what did the old man do?” I said.

  “He and the young man argued about who would reach into the water, and the young man agreed to do it, but he didn’t look happy about it.”

  “Did he get pulled in?” I said, leaning in. I was getting into the ghost story too.

  “He did!” Barry said excitedly, “but only for a bit and he fought against it. He leaned way back and pulled and pulled on his arm until something gave way, and when he fell back, he had a length of chainmail in his hands.”

  “Chainmail?” I said.

  “Yeah and the weird thing was, and I didn’t think about it when I was a frog because I didn’t remember such things, but the chainmail wasn’t rusty. It didn’t look like it had been underwater at all. And when I peeked back into the water, that same ghost knight was down there, only this time?”

  Barry lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “No chainmail.”

  That story made me want to flap my wings and ruffle my feathers, until I remembered I didn’t have them anymore.

  “They pulled something real out of the water? That was a real guy? Just standing there u
nderwater?” It was exactly like my vision on the first day of the games.

  “Yeah, and so they kept trying to pull more stuff out, yeah? Saying ‘we need all of it, we need every piece.’ But it didn’t work. The ghost just disappeared. Only I guess now he’s back?”

  “Yeah and he’s you, so that’s going to give somebody a fright,” I said.

  “Yeah, maybe I should turn back. I’m running out of ideas though. I wish I could remember what I’m supposed to look like,” Barry said.

  “Actually,” I said, having one of my rare good ideas, “don’t switch back just yet. Whoever that was, if they’re on the island again this year, seeing you should provoke a reaction we could learn something useful from.”

  “I don’t know if I like that,” Barry said. “They seemed like they wanted him out of that water awful badly, and I don’t think it was for anything good.”

  “It’s probably never good when a ghost comes back to life,” I agreed.

  Still, it was a useful idea. Somebody would definitely react when they saw that face again, and then we’d know something useful. Plus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had seen that face before, and I wanted more time to look at it to see if something popped into my memory.

  “Okay, we need to find Lydia. Change into somebody who won’t attract attention until we make a plan, as long as you won’t forget what the ghost knight looked like,” I said.

  “Trust me,” said Barry, “I never forget a face.”

  I always forget faces. Today I hadn’t even remembered my own. But right as Barry popped into another form, the face he’d been wearing suddenly loomed in my memory. I’d seen it, or an idealized version of it, just the other day. The portrait of Glorian, the first knight. The painting Titus Saunders posed for.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dawn never really broke that day. The day started wet and gray, with rain making the forest canopy heavy, all its luster dulled. When Barry and I got back to the house, I lurked behind a woodpile in the kitchen yard while he used the pearl to transform into a servant and make his way inside. We didn’t have much time, but I still had to stop him to ask one thing.

  “You’re wearing a uniform,” I said.

  “Yeah, looks nice, doesn’t it? I like the heraldic crest.”

  “The first time I met you, you were naked.”

  Barry sniffed.

  “The first time you met me, I was wearing a bespoke three-piece suit that took no small amount of time to make.”

  I waited outside, thinking about how, much to my surprise, I missed Hank. I hoped that wherever he was, he had all the beer he could absorb.

  Barry returned quickly with a groggy Lydia, wearing a nightgown and riding boots.

  “Nice outfit,” I said.

  “I was up half the night answering questions about you,” Lydia said. “Do you know the Duke wants to put you on trial for treason?”

  “Do you know there are evil forces at work trying to bring a ghost knight back to life and do… something?”

  Lydia blinked.

  “So, what’s the plan?” she said.

  The plan was to act like I hadn’t gotten kicked out of the competition yesterday. Maybe the forest didn’t know about that yet. If the cave Barry had been in was the cave where all the competitors end up, then we had to get there.

  “It’s where the prizes are issued,” Lydia said. “I’m not supposed to know about that – no one is – but it’s the same challenge every year. You wander around the island until it deems you worthy enough to find the cave, then you go in, and when you come out, you’re wearing your knight’s armor.”

  “Great, so all we have to do is find it before everybody else does,” I said. “We’ll grab the ghost knight’s armor before anybody else does and split up the pieces and hide them.”

  I looked around the forest. Every direction seemed to be full of hiding places for ghosts. The rain made the dazzling colors turn gray and somber, and all the flitting buzzing life that had crowded the air was now gone, off somewhere taking shelter from the rain. The entire place felt like a tomb.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide magical objects?” Lydia said. “They shine like beacons to people who know where to look for them.”

  “What are you talking about? This place is filled with magic.”

  “Natural magic,” Lydia said. “Not man-made. Artificial magic sticks out like a wrong note in a symphony. You may not notice, but anybody with a trained ear can call it out a mile away. If we find these things, we’re going to have to burn them in a sacrificial fire or dip them in gold or something. You can’t just bury them.”

  That tugged at something in my mind, but there was no time to pull on that thread right then. We had to move before the rest of the competitors headed out.

  “We’ll figure that out when we find the cave,” I said.

  “And we should hurry,” Lydia said, “with you kicked out they let Karsten re-join in your place.”

  “That guy who got himself crystallized from the inside out?” I said.

  “He’s stupid but he’s cunning,” Lydia said. “He was a very serious contender last year, and he knows what he’s doing in these woods.”

  We picked up the pace, but it’s very hard to hurry when you have nowhere you’re hurrying to.

  “It’s that damn curse,” I said, wincing as I stubbed my toe on a root yet again.

  “Have you ever thought,” Lydia panted, jumping over a tangle of roots of her own, “that maybe you’re not cursed?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I’m cursed. Look at like, everything that’s happened to me since I got that coin.”

  “What coin?” Barry said.

  “It’s this –” I said, then realized the coin wasn’t in my pocket. It must have sunk with the handkerchief. I felt another pang.

  “Just a coin the princess gave me,” I sighed.

  “Althea would have no reason to curse you, even if she had the ability to, which she doesn’t,” Lydia insisted.

  “She hid that coin in a chest of gold!”

  “That doesn’t... huh. Completely buried in gold?”

  “Yes, which you just said is how you hide magical items, which is what that coin is, because your friend the princess is a witch.”

  “She seems pretty nice to me,” Barry said.

  “I was stealing from her at the time,” I said. “And again, let me direct you to what my life has been like ever since I was saddled with the damn thing. I’m outdoors. I’m soaking wet. Someone’s trying to kill every competitor in a game that someone made me play against every instinct I ever had–”

  “Only to save you from getting caught stealing again,” Lydia said. “Have you ever considered that you’re not cursed, that maybe bad things happen to you because you make bad decisions?” she said.

  “I never said this part was the curse. This is just all a consequence of me agreeing to let you drag me into this.”

  “You’re only here because you took dangerous chimney sweeping jobs, which you had to do because you refuse to try anything new until it’s too late,” Lydia said.

  “You have no idea what it means to truly have to do something, Lydia,” I said coldly. “If I didn’t work, I didn’t eat. I don’t have a nice safe home to go back to if the going gets tough. It’s sink or swim.”

  “And you can’t swim!” Lydia shouted. “You never try anything. You’re exactly the same person you were ten years ago, twenty!”

  “Because I have to be,” I said.

  “Well I have to marry whoever survives this competition, so let’s see what Hughie and Dickie are bellowing about over there.”

  Lydia moved to go around the trees, but I stopped her. There was an odd clanking noise mixed among the arguing, and I didn’t like it. I knelt down and peeked under the trees, where I saw two legs of armor staggering through the woods. Only they weren’t attached to the same man. Hughie and Dickie were each wearing one of a pair of armored boots and kicking
each other with them.

  “I got to the cave first,” Dickie shouted, stomping on his brother’s non-armored foot.

  “But I reached into the water first, you ass!” said Hughie, leveling a steel-toed kick into his brother’s shin.

  “They got the boots? That’s odd,” Lydia said to herself.

  “Why’s that odd?” I whispered.

  “The boots symbolize steadfastness, which does not really strike me as their strong suit,” Lydia whispered back.

  “We have to get those from them somehow.”

  “You can’t show your face. You’re a wanted man. They’ll probably kill you and try to turn in your hide for cash.”

  “Let me handle this,” Barry said. He took the pearl and poofed himself into a perfect copy of Lydia’s father, dressed in all his official robes. Lydia blinked.

  “How do I sound?” Barry said, trying out Argus’s booming civic-booster voice.

  “Uncanny,” Lydia said.

  “Try being a little more pretentious,” I suggested.

  Lydia swatted me on the arm, but I just shrugged.

  Barry cleared his throat.

  “Lydia, you’re a fine young woman, but it’s high time you married someone richer than me so your mother and I can get invited to better parties.”

  “Actually, that’s dead on,” Lydia said.

  Argus bowed and then stepped through the trees, throwing his arms wide.

  “Congratulations, boys!”

  Dickie and Hughie froze mid-fight and stared at him.

  “I see that you’ve completed the quest. And you both have prizes! How wonderful!”

  “He’s got mine,” they said in unison.

  Argus-Barry laughed.

  “Gentlemen! No need to squabble! You’re knights now! And since you’re tied, you both get to marry the princess.”

  “Really?” Hughie beamed.

  “Oh yes, I just need you to step right over here so we can commence the official armor inspection. Yes, right this way,” he said, leading the brothers behind a massive standing stone. We heard some rustling leaves and one of the brothers yelped.