Proper Thieves

by Smith, Luke CJ

  Bellit of the Mire was the first fiction writer Devan had really taken to. Of all the books in The Collegium, only a thin sliver were fiction, and only a thin sliver of those were what Devan would’ve considered interesting. But then he discovered Cliven the Clip. A collection of Bellit’s short stories, the book had snuck into The Tower at the bottom of his uncle Tolem’s rucksack, hidden beneath a pile of far more august volumes—books that didn’t have half-naked women on the cover. Books that didn’t smell like tobacco smoke. Books whose characters didn’t curse or drink or get into fights or…

  ...and this was the crucial distinction…

  ...steal things for a living. Cliven the Clip was a flamboyant young thief who quietly, patiently, observed the inner workings of castles and courts, then used those mechanisms of daily life against the nobles who lived there. The moment Devan cracked the cover, he was in love.

  When he first read Crossbow’s Gambit, the first Cliven story in the collection, he was an angry young man who was convinced he was smarter than everyone he laid eyes on. Bellit told stories about a happy young man who actually was smarter than everyone he laid eyes on and who used that gift to make everyone else look stupid by divesting them of their most treasured possessions.

  In the third Cliven story, Bellit wrote, in the dog-ugly prose that was his trademark:

  “Thornwall Keep, the greatest of the great eastern bulwarks, was nothing else

  than merely just a puzzle box, yearning to be solved. All one needed to do was

  control where its denizens focused their eyes, and the box would unfold itself

  and offer up its hoard of treasures.”

  The first time he read that passage, thirteen-year-old Devan scratched through “Thornwall Keep” with a pen and wrote “The Tower” in the space above the line. And his course had been clear ever since.

  Devan eyed the clock across the way. There was still more than an hour before the curtain rose. He closed his eyes and went over the plan one more time in his mind—a slow pass—walking it out in his mind, imagining each step, each footfall, and re-examining each potential complication along the way as he did. He imagined every tapestry in every hall, every book on every shelf, every candle in every sconce from the start of the thing to the end. He planned out three different variations of the conversation he would have with Instructor Winselle tomorrow morning.

  When he was done, he opened his eyes and looked back up at the clock across the way. Barely fifteen minutes had passed. He glared at the laggard clock. Get on with it already! he wanted to cry.

  As if on cue, the main doors opened up at the top of the risers and in strode Instructor Winselle—his “mark,” as Cliven would have referred to her. Winselle had a satisfied look on her face, as though she was really looking forward to something. But then her eyes adjusted to the bright lights of the hall and they swung down into the half-bowl-shaped auditorium where they fell on Devan—Devan who had arrived before her. Her expression deflated instantly. She wanted to be the first in the room so I’d see her when I walked in, he thought.

  He smirked up at her. She scowled down at him.

  For his latest project—or job, as Bellit would have called it—Devan had gone to work on Instructor Winselle from the first day of the new term. Clipped answers, rude comments, disrespectful tones—these weren’t usually Devan’s stock in trade, if only for purely practical reasons. After all, Devan’s “hobby” went much more smoothly when his instructors thought of him as the quiet, studious student he’d always been.

  But teenagers were fickle things, and prone to massive shifts in personality over perplexingly short time frames. At least that’s what it said in one of the books on educational theory Devan had seen Instructor Winselle reading the term prior. So he set out to catch Instructor’s Winselle’s attention; for what he had planned this time, he needed her eyes focused squarely on him. And besides, it felt nice to actually say what he was really thinking for once.

  Clearly fuming, Winselle made her way down the steps toward her seat in the faculty section on the east side of the room, directly across from where Devan sat on the west side. The great mage squeezed into her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and glared at him with eyes that could turn him to stone. Or lay waste to whole armies. Or change the course of mighty rivers. But she did none of those things; all she did was watch him as she sat there in her chair.

  Devan couldn’t help but shake his head a little. The Collegium housed the world’s most powerful mages, mentalists, machinists, martialists, and more—and sitting there was all they did. Waiting for a day in some imagined future when their knowledge could be of use again. And when they died, someone would shove their old bones off their chairs to make room for the next generation of mages, mentalists, and so on, who would sit there until they died.

  It was inexcusable—to have the power to do so much and to do nothing with it. To sit and whither when they could stand and run without any effort at all. Devan couldn’t change the course of mighty rivers, but he could divest stupid people of their treasures. And if he was going to be stuck in this puzzle box for the rest of his life, that was going to have to be good enough.

  He stared back at Instructor Winselle. Their eyes locked from across the room. And they stayed that way as the rest of the students and faculty began to trickle in around them.

  That’s it, he thought. Keep your eyes focused right here.

  Zella

  Zella of the Peak pulled her thickest cloak tight around her. With her hood up, only a few wisps of her long, straight, auburn hair were visible, and none of the fading red freckles that dotted her cheekbones and nose. She did her best to look like she was about to puke.

  She fit right in; looking around the recital hall, more than half the students seemed somewhat green in pallor. Most of them were bundled up like she was and shivering. Something noxious had gotten into the stew the cooks served up for supper in the students’ dining room, which meant more than a few empty seats in the hall, despite the show being a command performance.

  Shuffling to fit the part, Zella made her way down to the eighth row and edged her way around Devan to get to her seat. As she went to sit down, she leaned over and licked him up the edge of one ear. He shuddered as she took her seat beside him.

  “Hey,” she whispered with a smile. “Don’t get distracted, now.”

  Devan just cleared his throat and shifted slightly in his seat. Zella smiled; the hood of her cloak had concealed the move from Instructor Winselle’s relentless gaze. She put a hand on his thigh. “I told you you’d regret telling me how excited you get on a job,” she whispered from deep within her hood.

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” Devan mumbled, barely moving his lips. He’d read a book on mummers’ dummies earlier that week for just this reason.

  “I know how much you love a challenge.” Zella moved her hand a little farther up his leg and squeezed. “I’d just hate for you to walk away thinking your part of the job was too comfortable.”

  He squirmed. “There is nothing comfortable about just sitting here waiting.”

  “Aww,” Zella said. “How hard it must be for you.”

  Devan snorted. “Puns? Really?”

  “Just think of this as an extra incentive to stay seated.”

  Devan reached down and removed Zella’s hand. “Aren’t you supposed to be on the verge of throwing up?”

  “Who says I’m not?” She pulled her cloak lower down on her face. “I feel like I want to scream, laugh, and puke all at the same time.”

  Zella peeked her pale green eyes out from under her hood. The sight of Instructor Winselle—packed into her tiny seat, boring holes in Devan from across the way—made Zella smile. That smile almost made her bust up with laughter. And clenching up to bite back the laughter almost made her throw up for real. “Holy shit,” she whispered to herself. “Holy shit.”

  She only had herself to blame for this, really. After they’d stolen Headmaster Parnick
’s commission folio, she’d goaded him into picking something even more dangerous. So he chose the black hatchet, and sure enough, they made it in and out of the chain room without a scratch. The next day in the dining room, he was bragging about how he could get them into Instructor Mytaff’s chambers in the south tower when his expression went sour: “No one’s a skilled enough mentalist to get past the tower’s phalanx,” he had said glumly, needling her from the other side of the table.

  It was all he needed to say. Zella had been one of the finest mentalists in the entire Collegium since she was fourteen, and she had the records to prove it. For the last five years, she should have been doing pure research with the sisterhood on the Upper Spans, not going through the motions with instructors who couldn’t read minds without moving their lips. But the school had rules, not to mention jealous, conniving teachers who were only too eager hold back someone who had true gifts in the Flow.

  Eight weeks later, Zella sauntered past a dozen tower guardsmen—all of them mindblinded to her passing—carrying the ledger scroll and wearing only a silk scarf and a sneer.

  It was their thing. It was how they played. One pushing the other into some mad stunt, then the other pushing harder into something even dafter. Zella lived for the nights they pulled these jobs. The problem was, after they lifted the ledger scroll, there was only one way to set the bar any higher, and they both knew it: the burning idol of T’irilon Triumphant in Instructor Winselle’s chambers.

  The lantern dimmers came out to do their jobs, and as the lights went soft and yellow, the musicians filed out and began to take their seats. Most of the audience applauded.

  Instructor Winselle didn’t. Devan didn’t either. They were too busy watching one another.

  It was time. The back of Zella’s head was tingling. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears. “Okay,” Zella whispered, with more than a hint of squeal in her voice. “This is it! Holy shit! This is it!”

  “Hey,” Devan said, grabbing her hand. “Wait.”

  “What?” Zella’s eyes widened. “What is it?”

  “One last thing.”

  “What?”

  “Remember, when you get there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And you’re concentrating. And getting ready to use your amazing mental powers.”

  The blood was starting to pound behind Zella’s eyes. If she didn’t go soon she was going to lose her mind. “Yeah? Yeah?”

  “Whatever you do...”

  Zella was literally shaking with anticipation.

  “...don’t think about Instructor Tevill’s ball sac.”

  Zella snatched her hand back from him. “Oh. Oh, that’s…” She growled at him. “See if I ever give you an erection again.”

  Devan reached out and snagged her hand one more time, giving it a squeeze. Gently, he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.

  Zella squeezed his hand back. “Asshole,” she whispered through a smile. Then she pulled her hood a little lower and hunched forward, as if to go to sleep.

  Normally, trying to nap during a command performance would get you a rap on the back of the head from one of the alpha class patrol, but Zella was far from alone. Nearly half the initiates in the auditorium looked like they were trying desperately to keep from going into a fetal crouch due to the problem with the stew in the dining room, which Devan certainly had nothing to do with.

  Gently, Zella pulled at the thin metal cage that lined her cloak, testing that it was going to hold up. It was designed to help the wrap keep its shape whether she was inside it or not. Satisfied, she reached between her legs to the floor under her seat and slid open the small wooden door that led down into the service corridors. Bribing that underclassman to trade seats with her for the night hadn’t been easy or cheap, but hopefully, it would be worth it.

  Through the fabric of her cloak, she patted twice at Devan’s leg, and, with a little push, she slid off her seat and out of her wrap. On the way down, she scraped the hell out of both shins, raked her chest, and nearly caught her chin on the edge of the door. Once she was clear, she fell a few feet, stopping sharp and hard as she caught the edge of the panel door with both hands. Straining to pull herself up a little, she reached up and back with one hand. She snagged the strap to her satchel from the floor under her chair, then dropped, bringing the bag with her. The sound of her footfall was masked by the last lingering claps from the crowd.

  Just in time. She smiled brightly.

  "Z? Is that you?" It was Nalan, his voice full and deep. He was holding a lantern.

  "Wow. Lucky guess, Nalan.” It was Allister, his voice thin and shrill, even at a whisper. “With all the other tall, leggy girls skulking about the crawlspaces tonight, what are the odds that…"

  Zella wheeled around, held up a finger, silencing the two. She closed her eyes for just a moment, then, touching her ring finger to her thumb, she spoke directly into their minds. she thought at them.

  A scrawny young man with fire red hair, Allister of Targe's Rock thumbed his ring finger. he snickered, but he mostly meant it. As a mentalist, Zella's mind had a clean, well-ordered feel to it. Allister once admitted that sharing a telepathic link with her made his own mind feel like an unmade bed, all breadcrumbs and semen stains.

  Zella said, casting her eyes upward, fully aware Devan could hear her,

 

  From behind them, they heard Nalan grunting. They turned; Nalan of the Fen, a broad, ruddy-faced lad with his father’s hairstyle, was already hard at work. With a pry bar, he was endeavoring to loosen the access panel that led from the tunnel to the south service room. Zella checked the contents of her satchel. Leaning against a support beam, Allister pointed at the bag.

  Zella pushed the satchel’s contents around into a different order.

  Allister pulled at the drawstring opening and recoiled in disgust.

  Zella looked over to see how Nalan was doing. The panel was off, and Nalan was standing there, staring at them. He nodded at them sharply, gesturing frantically with his hands.

  Zella held up a hand and quickly tapped her thumb to her ring finger, reminding him.

  Nalan crushed his eyes shut in embarrassment. He opened the channel. he said sheepishly, then broke the connection again. Zella smiled at him. Simple and straight. That was Nalan.

  Into the panel they went.

  Breigh

  The hall outside the comfort room was crammed to capacity with students desperate to find something to puke on that wouldn't earn them any demerits. The line stretched out the door and down the hall beyond.

  “Hold thy chunder, skell!” boomed Breigh of Fold and Fael, shaking her short wooden baton at a sickly looking third classman. She didn’t care for the malicious intent in his eyes as he considered an ancient floor vase. “If you have a hole in need of plugging, I can gladly oblige you.”

  Breigh shook her head at the boy as he shuffled meekly back into line, belching pitifully into the crook of his elbow. “Bookminders,” she muttered under her breath, pulling a strand of her dazzling white-blonde hair back over her ear. She thought about what she would have done at his age if someone had told her where to puke—some poor hallway guard would have spent the next few years learning to walk with his knees bent backwards.

  But children were raised very differently in the lower levels of The Tower where the War School was housed. That’s why the more scholarly schools produced alpha classers that looked like taller versions of the wispy little runt she’d just shooed back into line, while War School alphas looked like her. She smoothed down the front of her red hall sergeant’s tabard, feeli
ng it pull tight over her brawny shoulders and across her mighty chest. She squared her stance, the one that looked like she was always prepared to wrestle a bear to the ground.

  Tonight, her assignment was to oversee the traffic flow to the comfort room during the performance. Most nights, it was easily the most boring assignment on the duty roster; in the flowery vernacular shared by her fellow students of the War School, it was often referred to as “a living death for a warrior born.” Such a post would have seemed far beneath the captain of the Collegium’s most successful combat sparring team, but if anyone thought it was odd that Breigh grabbed the assignment for herself, no one had courage enough to speak up about it.

  Over the sounds of groaning mouths and roiling stomachs, Breigh heard a familiar voice and turned. "Are we there yet?" Breigh could hear Allister getting louder as he approached up the hall behind her. He made a noise from his innards that sounded like hurp. "Can I die now?"

  When he appeared around the corner, it was only because Zella and Nalan were dragging him by his armpits. "Ho there, scrub," Breigh barked at the trio. "There's no dying on this floor."

  "Sergeant," Zella puffed. "Our friend. We think he's really sick."

  "Grandma?" Allister said, looking up at Breigh in mock-delirious terror. "Why aren't you dead?"

  "He’ll have to wait his turn," Breigh said, pointing to the back of the line with her baton. "And it’ll be no small wait. Half of campus is turning in their porridge in there."

  "You don't understand, ma'am," Zella said, selling the urgency. "He's stopped throwing up."

  Breigh took a step back. "By the gods..." she said quietly, then fell still.

  Allister broke the silence. "Grandma," he said blearily, reaching out for Breigh's ample bosom. "I don't remember you having such great boobs..."

  Simultaneously, Nalan and Zella let go of Allister. His face bounced off the cobblestone floor. "Gah!" he cried.