Proper Thieves
Page 33
Tolem turned and looked away for a moment. He nodded. “Okay. I’ll buy that.”
The older man swung his legs around to sit sideways on his chair. “Tell me something, girl. Do you know why I steal?”
Zella shook her head, her face a grim mask of frustrated rage. “Tolem...I don’t care why...”
“I steal so I can live my life the way I choose. I steal so no one can tell me what to do or how to do it. I steal because I want to be free. From The Tower, from obligation, from higher powers in all their forms.”
Tolem pointed a finger right between Zella’s eyes. “And you steal for exactly the same reasons. To love who you want. To fuck who you want. To be...who you want. In The Tower, that means thumbing your nose at your teachers or at the headmaster. Out here, it means something very different. It means being something different. Something colder. More ruthless. It means doing things that you don’t always—”
Zella walked quickly over to where Tolem was sitting and leaned her face in close to his. Tolem tried and mostly succeeded to keep from flinching. “There’s got to be a better way,” she said through gritted teeth.
Tolem held up his hands. “Zella…what I told Phaedra about you...it was the truth. You are good. Far, far better than I was at your age. But that’s only going to take you so far in life. There are three things you can’t escape in this world, no matter how good you are, or how clever you are. Gravity. Old age. And the greed of desperate men. You can argue with these things all you want, but at the end of the day, there are some things you just can’t cheat forever.”
Tolem’s shoulders slumped. He looked down at the carefully manicured grass beneath Zella’s feet. “I know I can’t make the world a better place,” he said. “But I can at least make my life a better place. That’s the best any of us can do. Anyone...anyone...who tells you otherwise is either an idiot, or they’re selling something.”
Zella stood up straight again. “And is it?” Her voice had an edge so sharp it sounded like it could pierce flesh. “Your life. Is it a better place? Sitting here in your fancy robe, looking out over the fountains, living with the knowledge of what you’ve done? Murdering your one remaining family member and leaving his corpse out in the middle of the woods...has that made your life the wonderland you’ve always dreamed it could be?”
Tolem set his jaw. To this point, he’d been content to let Zella get her shots in. But that last one had slipped under his defenses. And in a moment, his fear gave way to anger.
He stood up, towering over the young woman standing before him. “Zella,” he said in a low whisper, “if you came here to get revenge for Devan…if you came here thinking, ‘I’m way better than the old man; I’ll leave him a lobotomized mess who needs a nurse to help him shit for the rest of his life’...you need to know that you won’t be walking out of here alive.”
Tolem pointed at the rooftops surrounding the gardens. A half dozen guardsmen held positions there, crossbows at the ready. “Gravity. Old age. And the greed of desperate men,” he said. “It doesn’t get much simpler than that.”
Zella glared at Tolem. She drew in a deep breath through her nose and let it out her mouth. “You know,” she said at last, eyeing the crossbow men along the roofline, “Nalan tried to talk me out of this. ‘It won’t bring Devan back,’ he said. And he’s right. Allister tried to talk me out of it too. ‘You’ll never know how awful it is to kill somebody until you do it,’ he said. And I’m sure he’s right, too. Breigh was fine with it, of course.” She smiled in spite of herself. “She wanted to go shopping to help pick out just the right truncheon for the occasion.”
Tolem squinted at her and wondered where this was going.
“In the end, I convinced all of them that this was the right thing to do. Because, I said, the world will be a better place if it doesn’t have you in it.” Zella looked Tolem square in the eyes. “But the funny thing was, even then as I was saying it, I felt exactly like you said. I felt like I was selling them something.”
Zella folded her arms. “Killing you might make the world a better place, Tolem…but it certainly won’t improve my life any.”
Tolem watched Zella’s face. In it, he could see pity, understanding, sadness, and, most of all, resignation. He could see it in her eyes—she’d learned something important there that afternoon.
And that felt almost as awful to Tolem as stabbing his nephew through the chest.
Zella shook her head and sighed. “Have a nice life, Tolem,” she said. She turned to leave.
Tolem picked up the coin off the table. “Hey. Take this with you.”
“I don’t want it,” Zella said, still walking toward the exit.
Tolem looked down at the coin in his hand. “Come on. That last stunt you kids pulled must have just about bankrupted you. This will at least get you home.”
Zella stopped and looked back at Tolem for the last time. “Thanks, we’ll manage. Besides, the wisdom you’ve given me here today is worth so much more.” Her mask of casual indifference was back in place. “You keep that...” She put her fingers up and made a set of quotation marks in the air. “‘...for your troubles.’ Asshole.”
And she left.
Tolem dropped down in his chair and tried to calm down. He was bathed in sweat, and his heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. Eventually, he opened his hand and looked down at the coin. It glinted in the morning sun. He looked over at the last spot Zella stood before she left.
On a mad whim, he got up, walked to the exit, and peeked around the corner where Zella had disappeared from sight. The paved trail stretched on for a half mile or more. Zella was nowhere to be seen.
---
On another mad whim, Tolem tied his white robe shut, pocketed the gold coin, and walked to the resort’s front office.
“I just moved in this morning,” Tolem told the concierge at the main desk. “You’re holding some possessions of mine in the vault. I’d like to inspect them, if it’s not too much trouble.”
The concierge led him down a narrow stairwell and through a heavy iron gate. He unlocked a tall steel cage and pulled the door open. Tolem stepped inside. There, twenty tall barrels stood on end in four rows of five a piece. Tolem opened the closest one; it, like all the others, were filled to the brim with golden coins. He selected one from the top and held it up to the flickering torchlight. It, too, glinted.
He scratched at it with a fingernail. Nothing.
Tolem itched his beard as he considered the coin. He thanked the concierge for his trouble and made his way back to his suite. There, he sat down at the desk and set the coin in front of him. He opened a drawer and produced a small metal file. Holding the coin in one hand and the file in the other, Tolem began to grind one against the other. A small pile of gold dust began to collect on the desktop. He blew across the edge he’d filed down. And there, peeking out from the center of the coin, was a small, black spot.
Iron. The coin was iron.
Tolem sat back in his chair and considered the coin. In time, he smiled, sadly. “At least the kids had better taste in paint,” he said to the empty room.
Zella
Nearly three weeks prior…
Devan gave his coin one last, long look, then finally handed it over to Zella.
“Hey, it’ll be okay.” Allister squeezed him on the shoulder. “When I was two, Mother made me give up my baby blanket. So she weaned me onto something else to make the transition easier.”
Devan smiled. “Let me guess.”
Allister grinned back and shook a bottle of cinnamon whisky by the neck.
“I guess being a criminal runs in your family,” Zella laughed, snatching the bottle from Allister, “although I wouldn’t have pegged your mom for poisoning a minor.”
Allister wiggled his fingers and the cork pulled itself out. “Maybe if it was your mom picking the hootch,” Allister said. “My mother has taste.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Devan said. He sniffed the bottle when
Zella was done. He made a face. “Krist...and what would Mother say about this vintage?”
Allister sniffed it next; the smell made him cough. “She certainly wouldn’t give it to a two-year-old.”
Nalan joined the others at the table. “Should you be drinking right now?”
“Well I’m certainly not about to do something this stupid without a snoot full,” Allister said, tossing back a drink. From over the edge of the bottle, Devan caught his gaze. He held up his thumb and index finger in the universal sign for ‘little bit.’ “Well...maybe half a snoot,” Allister said. Devan smiled and nodded.
“Why?” Breigh turned a chair around backwards and straddled it. “Whisky is the fuel of madness, and warfare is madness’ truest face.”
“That would kind of be beautiful,” Allister said, putting his head down on the table, “if you weren’t talking about getting slopped and beating people up.”
“Well, it’s good for warfare, but not so good for precision thievery,” Devan said, handing the bottle to Breigh. “You help yourself, though.”
Breigh grinned and began chugging.
Devan grinned too. He looked around the table at each of them in turn.
“Listen, guys…before we get started...” Devan said at last. His eyes fell on Allister. “...I know I haven’t been the easiest person to be around these last few…”
Sheepishly, Allister looked away.
“...and well…” Devan looked over to Breigh and Zella. “I just wanted to say that…you four mean...you mean a lot to me…”
The others began shifting in their seats. They all found other things in the room to focus on.
“...and I owe each of you…a, uh...”
Allister piped up. “Hey, D, you think...maybe we could just kinda…” He cleared his throat. “...skip this part?”
Devan looked confused. “Skip...this…?”
“Aye,” Breigh said, wiping the last of the whisky off her chin with her sleeve. “We’ve a robbery to plan.”
Devan looked down at the table. “Yeah, okay. I just...I need you guys to know…”
Zella put her hand on Devan’s arm. “We know,” she said.
His mouth still hanging open, Devan turned back to Allister. Allister just nodded, a small smile on his lips.
“Now let’s get to it.”
Devan nodded. He looked around the table, smirking at the lot of them.
“Okay. So here’s the plan.”
---
Five days later, the skies above Kauleth were awash in color, as fireworks streaked and soared and burst.
Devan raised a glass to Zella from across their table on the roof of the Regency Hotel. She raised hers back. She didn’t normally go in for this kind of affair—elegant evening gowns, servants to cater to your every whim—but every once in a while, it felt sort of...magical. And with Devan sitting across the table in his red and gold pretend-prince suit he’d worn at The Palace, and with the fireworks lighting up the night all around them, well…
“This is nice,” she said, smiling.
On the other side of town, Breigh (disguised as Nalan), and Nalan (disguised as Allister in a brown wig) were walking into The Palace, escorted by one of Torg’s replacement guards. It was a late adjustment to the plan; they hadn’t learned about Torg’s recruitment drive for muscular, young, brown-haired individuals until after they returned to Kauleth. But once Devan had caught wind of it, it became the perfect way to get Nalan and Breigh back on board the great ship.
But it meant some existential discomfort for Nalan.
Devan was having trouble not laughing.
Breigh laughed loud and long into the link.
Devan and Zella exchanged startled glances across the table.
The link closed again. Devan looked over at Zella and laughed. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”
“It was nice.” She laughed too. “Briefly, anyway.”
Devan reached across the table and took her hand in both of his. He turned her hand over, palm up, and leaned in to kiss her on the wrist, staring into her eyes all the while. She reached across and mussed his bangs with her fingers. She laughed again at the look on his face as he hurried to smooth them out again.
“So,” he said, his tone turning serious again. “How are you holding up?”
“A little headache. I can deal with it.” She smiled. “But keep the champagne coming.”
“You’ve got a lot of inflections going at the same time. It wasn’t too long ago that managing just one of those was a trick for you.”
“Oh, Devan.” She put on a mock-haughty tone. “That was weeks ago.”
“So I worry,” Devan said. He took a sip from his champagne flute. “But between that, and the link, and protecting us from Tolem, and…”
Zella put up a hand. “I’ve got this. I would tell you if I didn’t. It’s fine.”
Devan held up his hands. “Last thing I’m going to say, then: please don’t hurt yourself. You don’t have anything to prove.”
Zella just stared at him for a moment.
“Since when?” she asked.
Devan smirked at that. “You got me there.” He finished off his drink and smiled across the table at her. “Remember when this used to be fun?” Zella nodded. “Let’s do that again.”
---
“In, in, in!” Allister called out, pulling the tarp off their newly modified airship, complete with roof-mounted funnel. “Tolem, Phaedra, and their mage just lit out of here like their asses were on fire.”
“Language!” Devan reminded him, scooping up Lynna with his free arm. “Anything to report, First Mate Lynna?”
Lynna straightened her new eye patch. “Captain Allister is crabby. And he talks a lot.”
Zella was trailing behind the two of them. Cane or no cane, Devan had taken the six flights of stairs down to the airship bay three steps at a time, and she found herself dizzy and winded from the pursuit. She pulled the door to the ship closed behind her while Devan tied Lynna into the copilot’s seat. Allister sat down next to her, spread his hands flat, and coaxed the ship out into the open sky.
Zella was leaning against the far wall of the ship. She looked over at him distantly. “Hm?”
Devan took her head in his hands. “Z?”
Lynna leaned back from her seat. “What’s wrong with Zella?”
“What? Oh...yeah. I’m fine” She looked distracted, like she was having a hard time focusing her eyes on Devan, despite the fact that he took up her entire field of vision. “Just a little...a little tired.”
“Try and relax if you can,” he said. He kissed her on the forehead.
“D?” Allister asked from the pilot’s chair. He motioned for Devan to come over. Devan did, leaning in close.
Zella couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could guess. “What’s wrong with Zella?” Zella called over to them.
Devan looked back at her.
“Is Zella going to be okay? Can Zella finish the job? Is that pretty much it?”
“Actually, no. I was just telling Allister that you stopping Tolem in mid-lunge was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And now you need a second to get your bearings, and you’ll be fine by the time we get to base.”
“That better be true,” Zella said, before slumping down the wall into a seated position and falling into a light slumber.
---
Zella woke to a hard slap in the face and Devan calling her name.
So she slapped him back as hard as she could. “Devan!” she shouted back.
Devan held his cheek and glared at her. “Slapping you wasn’t the first thing we tried to wake you up, you know. Now come on.” He pulled her to her feet and walked her out of the ship.
They’d landed on the roof of a small tenement positioned directly under The Palace, a spot they’d chosen days earlier to serve as their base for the job. “Tolem and Phaedra are taking the long way,” Devan said, holding both her hands as they walked, “so we were able to get in front of them, but they could be here any minute.”
Before Devan could finish his thought, the air split with the sound of high explosives.
Zella looked up. The Palace hung over them, huge the way she thought of planets being huge, and it shuddered. The sound of an explosion cut through the quiet night, followed by a second, then a third.
She looked over at Devan, and the act of refocusing her eyes staggered her.
“Z!” Devan lunged, catching her just before she toppled over.
“Devan? What’s happening?” Allister and Lynna were on the other side of the roof pulling the tarp off the second airship. This one was smaller, and it looked much different from the one they’d arrived in. It was a flatbed ship, one of the ones used to attach Aurium plates to the sides of The Palace. But it had been outfitted with Aurium plates of its own and painted – crudely – to look like one of The Palace’s security skiffs.