An Illusion of Thieves Page 5

  “Thank you, Notary Renzo. I’ll have these back as soon as I can.”

  “Two days, if you please. No later. Fortune’s benefice, l’scrittóre virginé.”

  “And Virtue’s grace.”

  A despairing humor accompanied me down the stair. It had been long years since anyone had called me virginal. But indeed I was a virgin scribe. If we were to survive, I needed to learn my business. Unfortunately my brother could be no help. As I suspected, he had successfully evaded Da’s teaching, and remained illiterate as well as ignorant.

  I’d left Neri downstairs to wait, but he was nowhere in sight when I emerged from the stair. I scanned the bustling lane, started up toward the Market Ring wall a few steps, then back downhill the way we’d come. A chill shuddered my bones as if an overhanging roof had sluiced frigid water down my back. Fortune’s dam, Neri, where have you got off to?

  I pushed through the crowd at the noodle vendor’s stall across the lane. A mother with four children picked out supper. Three draymen were grabbing a cup while their mules brayed in annoyance and their carts blocked the lane. A beggar and a grimy urchin of undeterminable sex eyed each other as they waited for someone to drop a cup or a spoonful.

  Another frigid shudder. I spun around. Deep in the alley between the bakery and a barber’s stall, a dark shape moved. I arrowed across the lane and into the alley.

  Neri slouched against the wall, licking his fingers. He dropped his hand quickly when he noticed me.

  “What have you done?”

  He shrugged. “Waited for you out of the street. Thought you were going to be quick.”

  “You’ve been eating.” Which wasn’t a crime, except that he’d not a coin of any kind, so he had whined for two days.

  He pointed his chin at the shop. “Baker’s a kind woman. Gave me a biscuit.”

  I might have believed it, save for the way his guilty gaze flicked between me and the bakery’s doorless alley wall. From inside the shop I could hear a child wailing. “I never did, gammy! Wouldn’t never!”

  “Did you lightfinger your biscuit or, demon spirits, did you walk to it?” Walk through that wall into the kitchen while no one was watching. Use his damnable magic. “Shall I go inside and ask what the child did to get a scolding?”

  “Had naught to eat all day. And there’s none of those creatures around here.” Sniffers, he meant.

  “And you’re certain enough to wager your life and your soul’s corruption on that? For a biscuit?” I pointed at the pavement. “Wait right here, if you want to eat again this month.”

  “You just— I’ll never—”

  “Wait. Here.”

  The baker’s shop was clean and tidy, and my stomach near caved in at the smell of butter, honey, and cinnamon. A small, flour-dusted girl sobbed quietly in the corner.

  I held out two coppers to the flustered woman. “Whatever I can get for this,” I said, my skin surely as hot as her ovens.

  “Four biscuits or a half a butter loaf.”

  Spirits … so expensive. I was learning fast.

  “The biscuits,” I said, donning Mistress Cataline’s self-assurance and her most gracious smile, “but keep two. For the sad little one. Missing my own mite, left with her nan.”

  “But you don’t need—”

  “’Tis my delight.”

  As I hurried out of the door with the two biscuits in my pocket, she dipped a knee, as if I actually inhabited my old self. Made no sense at all when the baker was dressed better than I.

  * * *

  From that day, I forbade Neri to be out of my sight. When he accompanied me to Notary Renzo’s, he had to wait at the door where I could see him. He stood behind me as I delivered more applications to potential clients or revisited houses where I’d left one before.

  When he chafed at my restriction, I reminded him how the Shadow Lord had offered to beat some sense into him if he failed to understand the terms of his parole.

  “You’d never take me to him,” he jibed. “He threw you out of his house in the middle of the night.”

  And certain that was true. But I needed to frighten the fool enough to make him behave. If he wasn’t afraid of sniffers, why would he fear his sister?

  “You’re right, I can’t take you in for a beating myself, but it’s dead easy to have someone else do it,” I said, making a story on the fly. “All I have to do is raise a finger to a Gardia warden or a constable. Do you think that after nine years, every one of them doesn’t know my face? Do you think the Shadow Lord didn’t mean what he said? If I tell them you called il Padroné a prick, they’ll see to what’s needed. You even think about magic or running away or doing anything that could get us arrested, I’ll do it.”

  He wasn’t sure he believed me, but every once in a while I would let him see me walk up to a warden or a constable out of his hearing. I’d been well trained to charm a laugh out of a stranger, but Neri didn’t have to know that.

  After a while I didn’t even need to remind him. I simply wriggled a finger at a nearby warden and Neri blanched.

  While I worked, Neri fidgeted or slept. Threats forced him to stay, but I’d no idea how to make him to do anything useful.

  Meanwhile the silver that would ensure our future continued to dwindle like dew in sunlight. Neri, thin as a winter-stripped willow, was forever hungry, and Renzo’s coppers could scarce pay for the expense to earn them.

  I added a second client. A lawyer advocate in the Market Ring lamented his inability to find anyone who could match his former scribe’s precise work. When I swallowed hard and named myself as Da’s writing student, he hired me right away. Garibaldi paid better than Renzo, but required better parchment, so I earned scarce more than I did for Renzo.

  Neri grumbled that I should take one of the coppers I’d earned and display it on our window sill wrapped in laurel leaves. That way Lady Virtue would see how industrious I was and grant us her favor. “Same way folk hang up likenesses of themselves and their brats or hang up the tail after they trap a rabbit. I told Mam they ought to get someone to do a drawing of them and all the thirteen of us, as birthing seemed the thing they was best at. Maybe if she’d done it, none of this would have happened.”

  “I think I have a more useful plan,” I said. “I’ll visit one prospective client every day.”

  Maybe Lady Virtue would appreciate the effort and whisper a good reference to one of my prospects. Without another client our silver would vanish before winter.

  * * *

  Lawyer Cinnetti, an advisor to an Asylum Ring builder, had set up a table and comfortable chairs in the small forecourt of his house, so he could sit with clients in full view of passersby. His broad-brimmed hat and padded doublet swelled an already imposing presence, and you couldn’t see the soiled inner layers of his stiff neck ruff until you were a bit closer. Garibaldi had referred me, saying he knew little about Cinnetti, save that he “seemed a decent fellow” and supposedly paid well for scribes who wrote with a fine hand.

  “Four coppers a page, increased to five if the script is as perfectly formed as that on your application, damizella.” Cinnetti’s grand moustaches seemed to expand with his wide smile. “Would that suit you?”

  I proudly maintained my businesslike sobriety instead of spinning for joy at the offer. Visions of a proper bodice and kirtle, a spare chemise, planking to cover our dirt floor, or perhaps a roasted goose every once in a while raced through my head. And silver to refill the bag. The silver was the key.

  “Acceptable, good sir.”

  “Excellent. Step ta my hall, right through here, and I’ll show ya my needs.” His open hand invited me through the open doorway.

  I signaled to Neri, who was leaning against the painted column that marked the lawyer’s yard. Sour and bored, his annoyance was palpable. I’d told him to come as far as the door if I went inside.

  “I’ve very particular requirements as to form,” said Cinnetti, as I moved past him, across the threshold sleugh that was caked with mu
ck, instead of the oil-and-water barrier to demons.

  My feet slowed. The dim hall stank of boiled fish and mold. The frescos that had once adorned its walls had darkened and peeled. A glimpse through an open door to the right revealed a long table burdened with jumbled stacks of parchment, leatherbound ledgers and journals, along with mugs and at least three wine flasks.

  “In there?” I said, not quite so elated as in the courtyard.

  “No need to go farther.” The big man grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, and slammed my back to the wall, his big body pinning me tight. One huge hand threatened to rip my hair from my scalp, while the other lifted my skirt and fumbled with his codpiece. “I can show you what work I need done right here.”

  “Boy! Fetch … constable!” I screamed as the lawyer’s fleshy lips mauled my face. He reeked of sour wine.

  The mere clatter of Neri’s boots distracted Cinnetti enough for me to draw my knife and threaten to remove what he thought to use on me. The Moon House had taught us to defend our valuable selves, as well as our owners.

  As I backed toward Neri and the door, Cinnetti laughed and flattened his own back to the wall in mock helplessness. “Told you I’d show you my needs, pretty Romy. And certain you fulfill all my requirements of form. Just want to see more of it, and feel your hand as well as see it. Come back when you’re tired of scribing. I pay better for…”

  I shoved Neri out the door ahead of me as the man chattered filth that followed us across his courtyard. He finished his unseemly litany by breaking into verse:

  “Romy, Romy, Scribe Romy,

  Come back and give me a lick!

  I’ll ruffle your feathers, and give you a kiss,

  And you’ll feel the plunge of my—

  “Oh, here you are, sweetling! Come back to me already?”

  Cinnetti had slid to the floor. Bellowing a laugh, he raised a bota in offer.

  I kicked him in the balls. While he caught his breath, I knelt and laid a thumb on his forehead. With a completeness I’d never attempted, I considered his every mention of my name and sight of my face. Then I invited the magical vipers inside me to spew their venom through my blood and replace that story with something new: I interviewed a scribe named Faustio today, a stunted, ugly fellow. My foul tongue insulted him terribly, and he’s promised to return one night very soon and cut off my prized possession. His brother is a constable and he swears that no one will ever believe my complaint. They’re coming after me …

  Snatching up my application that lay on the filthy floor, I raced out the door and collided with a frowning Neri.

  “C-come. Hurry,” I said, my teeth chattering.

  Once we were far enough away we could no long hear Cinnetti’s pained cursing, I propped myself on a post and inhaled deep breaths to keep from vomiting. My limbs would not stop shaking.

  “Did you put a knife in him? Or cut his face? That would show him.” Neri was near jumping out of his skin.

  “No.” I swallowed over and over, trying to abate the sickness. Even after so long, the crude fumbling and cocky assurance of one who presumed to control me left me feeling dirty and angry. And frightened—he could have had a rope or a knife to assert his will. And stupid—did I think the world had changed so much since I was fifteen?

  “Demons, Romy, did you kill him?”

  “Worse.” For certain it was the magic that had me trembling and sick, more than the attack. To use it here in the middle of the city … because I was angry and scared … when a sniffer could have been in the street …

  Neri’s heated belligerence went as cold as winter in the northlands. “You didn’t really want me to fetch a constable, did you?”

  “Of course not. What happens when a reputable lawyer complains to a magistrate that he was bloodied by a Beggars Ring scribe who wears a maidservant’s castoffs? What if he discovered I really had been a whore? I knew you’d come to look first. Distract him. You saved—”

  “You used your magic.” Fortunately he’d lowered his voice.

  “I had no choice. I couldn’t let him remember my name or what we looked like.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, as the truth of my future settled in. I didn’t want to look on the teeming stew of the Asylum Ring. No one was going to come to my rescue, and replenishing the bag of silver was never going to buy back what was lost.

  “You flirt with wardens and constables, but they don’t know you. All this time you’ve played me for stupid. Made me think it was only me was the evil one ’cause my magic feels like I’m supposed to use it, like it could make life better. You made me think there was something wrong with me that needed beating out. But first time you need it, you jump right in.”

  “But you were careless. Rash. You wouldn’t listen. I don’t want you dead.” But he had already walked away.

  * * *

  I sat in our hovel that afternoon, alone, cursing my stupidity. I’d worked magic after forbidding him the same. I couldn’t regret that. I was protecting us, not stealing a biscuit. But then, it had been many years since I’d gone hungry. Certain he was right about the lies.

  Night fell. Three pages for Garibaldi and Renzo lay blotted and ruined before I gave up work and chewed my fingers.

  It was past midnight when Neri finally came home. Staggering drunk. I dared not ask how he, who had no money, could buy wine. I was terrified he’d tell me it was the same way he’d got the sweet biscuit from the baker’s. The same way I’d made sure Lawyer Cinnetti could not find me and try again to get what he wanted.

  I didn’t yell at Neri, just helped him to bed. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I was wrong to do it. You’re not evil, not stupid, and I shouldn’t have said it. But we’ve things we have to get straight.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Certain we’ll get things straight.”

  Deep in the darkest hours of that night, a scraping noise woke me. A moment’s listening, a moment’s peering into the dark to pick out the crouched figure in the corner. Neri was wriggling the foundation stone that hid Sandro’s purse.

  “You sneaking, thieving weasel!” I batted him under the chin with a club I kept by my pallet and shoved him to the floor. “I should throw you in the river and be done with you.”

  I lit a candle from embers in the brazier, so I could make sure he’d not already taken the silver.

  “Wanted to buy you summat,” he said through blood and spit and a slur of wine. “That’s all. A present. Some good wine. Cheer you up.”

  Even had I been idiot enough to believe his claims, the rope-tied bundle on his bare pallet belied them.

  “So you planned to steal what’s left of our future and run away? That would cheer me up considerably.”

  “Wasn’t going to take it all. You’re just so angry all the time. I just want to live like a normal man.”

  “Did it never occur to you that il Padroné granted you a parole—not your freedom? He forbade you leave the city with Da and Mam. Your name was on the latest parole list posted in the markets—so everyone in the Beggars Ring understands you have to remain here. He knows about us, Neri. No, I can’t twitch my finger and summon him to punish you. And yes, I did what I’ve forbidden you to do; it was dangerous and I hate it, but I saw no other way to keep that brute lawyer from coming after us. But the Shadow Lord’s spies watched you for years. That was no lie. They could still be watching.”

  Though I questioned even that. Sandro had said his interest in me was ended, his protection withdrawn. He’d said the same to a man named Maso, one of his oldest friends, who had embezzled funds from one of his banks. Within days the man was found floating in the Venia with six distinct knife holes in him. Without Sandro’s protection, the man’s other dissatisfied business partners had taken him down.

  The memory echoed in the emptiness inside me, raising old doubts …

  I brushed them off and spoke certainties to my ignorant brother. “Il Padroné does not make idle threats. He made me responsible for you. If you should just happen to va
nish—with or without this purse—you will be in violation of his judgment. You will be hunted down, and I will share in your punishment. I refuse to die like that.”

  Before Neri could start again with his excuses, I ordered him to bed. I didn’t sleep. Somewhere in the dark hours, I took the scrap of rope from his bundle and tied his right wrist and left ankle together, the best I could do with the short length. He could likely get the knot undone, but it would take him a while. I knew what I had to do.

  5

  At dawn, while Neri yet wallowed in his drunken stupor, I slipped the bag of silver into my pocket and hurried to the ironmonger down the Ring Road and bought a longer, thicker piece of rope, one braided with wire to strengthen it. I also bought an iron staple and borrowed a hammer on the promise to write out the next contract the ironmonger wished committed to paper.

  Gossip … tales … claimed wire-threaded rope could bind a sorcerer, causing burns if the sorcerer tried to use magic. The few times I had seen accused sorcerers marched through the streets, they were always bound with wire rope. But I had no idea if those prisoners were ever proved to be sorcerers or if the wire rope truly kept them from escaping or even how a sorcerer might be able to escape from any rope. Snap it with a wish? Set it afire with a word? But it was true that sniffers were kept on chain leashes and the Executioner of the Demon Tainted bound convicted sorcerers in chains before they dropped them into the sea. So maybe there was something to the antagonism between iron and sorcery. Whatever the truth of such stories, Neri likely believed them.

  He was halfway through our last loaf of bread when I got back.

  “Left me trussed like a randy bull,” he said through a mouthful. “What was that about?”