My boots were gone. I pried the stone loose, nervous about my saddlebag, but it was tucked away where I’d left it.
I ran back to the belltower. The sun was low in the sky, and the boys, Max and Andrei, were leaning against a pillar, talking. I hid in a corner, behind a huckster and his chestnuts. The sun crept down the tower and the dark-haired boy kept the others waiting.
Andrei said, “Where the bloody hell is Trid?” right as Trid walked up the steps behind him. Andrei turned around. “Waxing the carrot?”
“Where’s your bonnet of lilies gone?”
“My head aches. I’m not in a happy mood.”
“Can you believe that, Max? He’s not in a happy mood.”
The three of them walked down a wide street beneath a canopy of elms.
“This is really incredibly stupid, Reyna,” Floy said. I laughed at her and kept a safe distance behind them.
The boys passed through an arch set in a high, stone wall carved with rowan trees. Beyond this was a big building of halls, wings, and round towers that stretched down a steep hill towards the sea.
“The rowan-gate,” I said, and I stopped. “It’s the palace, Floy.” I turned away, two fingers propping my mouth open.
I couldn’t very well walk past the gatehouse, so I climbed a thick, gnarled wisteria and dropped over the wall. I crept alongside buildings, sprinted across lawns, ducked below windows, and chased the boys into a shady garden. I slithered through the whips of a forsythia to listen.
“Not that one,” whispered Max to Trid, waving away the ground window in front of them. “That’s old Lady Grete. She’ll skin you alive if she catches you digging through her panties.”
“Don’t ask him how he knows,” said Andrei.
“It’s the second story,” said Max. “You climb up that tree.” He pointed to a maple growing close to the wall.
“Really?” said Trid. “How’ll we manage that with a jar full of roaches?”
“By pretending we’re monkeys,” said Andrei. “Max does it all the time––he can go first.”
“Let’s get on.” Trid started walking away. “Take a half-hour to get back here.”
The other two boys walked after him, arguing and shoving at each other.
A half-hour, I thought to myself.
I found a stable just behind a thrust of the building. The saddlery was locked, so I pulled my needle and chisel from the saddlebag and set them to work. After a few seconds the door swung open.
I unhooked a thick rope from the rafters, and looked for pitch or glue. I found a pot of hide-paste behind the hoof salve, but Floy, who decided to put her anxiety to use, found a tin of glue made from the karaya shrubs of Virnraya. It wouldn’t hurt to mix the two together, I thought, taking that as well. Two sandbags came along, and a lighted lantern, and nervous about my time constraints, I lugged it all beneath the maple tree.
I figured a twitch-up snare wasn’t going to work for a boy, so I tried something else.
I tied a noose in the rope, tossed it through a fork high in a sturdy limb, and tied the sandbags to the other end of the rope. Then I huffed, growled and pulled on the noose until the sandbags were resting in the fork of the tree.
The bags together weighed about ten stone, and the job would’ve been impossible but for the tree’s help. She obviously felt, in her rotten heart, that my cause was a worthy one, because her roots snaked through the ground and fed me with a burst of strength when I asked.
I climbed up the tree and wound the rope once around a big branch. Then I dropped down and hid the noose beneath the loam, and dirtied the rope so that it blended in the dark with the trunk.
The lantern had been sitting over the glue mixture, and I pinched some between my fingers. Pleased with its quick-setting properties I painted Lady Grete’s windowsill thick with the stuff. I attached the lantern to a string, climbed up to the fork with the sandbags, dangled the lantern over the glue to keep it from setting, and waited for the boys to return.
They came soon after, very silently for three humans. Andrei was holding a whiskey jar. I yanked the lantern up and snuffed it out.
Trid stopped. “Did you see a light leap from the window?”
“Light only leaps from the fire,” said Andrei. “Go on, Max, she could walk in any minute.”
Max jumped into the middle of the buried snare and scurried up the trunk. He disappeared into the dark of the upper window.
“Brilliant,” said Trid. He climbed up next, and I thanked my stars for it. He grabbed the jar from Andrei and gave it into Max’s arms. He passed so close beneath me I caught the clean smell of his sweat. “There’s a rope up here.” I caught my breath. “Is there supposed to be a rope?”
“Keep going,” said Andrei. “She’s got an absurd number of nightgowns.”
“How d’you know?”
“Move,” he said, and Trid crawled through the window.
Now Andrei stood beneath the first limb, and I kicked the sandbags from the fork.
They hit the ground with a dry thump. The rope tore up, and a shriek caught in Andrei’s throat. The noose grabbed him around the knees, flipped him over, and he jumped upside down in the air, right next to the first-story windowsill. He gripped it.
“Ugh.” He tried to pull away, but the glue thickened between his fingers.
More than a little pleased with myself, I swung from the tree into the forsythia. “Quick wit, ain’t ye?” I said.
He twisted to face me. “You––”
I pressed my finger to his mouth. “Can’t have your friends hearing. Or Lady Grete.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Apologize.”
“Why?”
“Do it.”
“No.”
“You could say thank you,” I said, “if sorry’s a bit much.”
“Why do you smell so bad?” He eyed my saddlebag. “Do you shit in that and carry it around?”
I ground the bag into his face. “Apologize.”
“I wouldn’t lower myself so, you rancid little fart.”
“You couldn’t lower your stupid, fat arse iffen y’tried, human.”
I shouldered my saddlebag and turned to the window, and he said, “You stop this at once, or I’ll flay your hide to bits and cut off your sneaking feet and break your knees and––”
“Lady Grete,” I yelled. “Lady Grete, there’s a thief breakin in through your window, ma’am! A big’n. And damn ugly. He may mean ye harm, ma’am.”
I heard a commotion inside the building. Eager to be elsewhere when they cut him down, I ran away.
***
The first half of summer passed quickly. I danced for meals, and when I grew tired of that, stole, until I grew frightened of the guard and went back to dancing, though both activities resulted in running from someone, whether a vexed soldier or jealous piper.
Nefer, Wille, and Padlimaird had opened shop in the smiths’ quarter of the quay. It wasn’t easy for Nefer to let go of bad habits. He split and sandwiched coins, fashioned fake seals, and stole the emblems of the more famous artisans, warming all the more to dishonesty when he found his left arm wasn’t going to help with the casting of his buckles, goblets and tureens. Despite, or because of, Calragen’s administrations, the break hadn’t joined smoothly.
I steered clear of the workshop at first, but became lonely, and crept closer and closer until I was running into the boys on purpose.
They walked around with new purpose in their eyes and shiny burns spattered up their forearms. Their arms and shoulders became big and hard, and I burned with envy––I could’ve been hammering at the forge every day but wouldn’t have grown bigger for it.
I mulled over ways to surmount this. For a while I tried to be cunning, slitting purses and selling scarves and hairpins to the folk I had stolen them from, until Floy told me I was being even less cunning than usual.
I always went back to dancing. It was easy money: Fiddle music was always pouring from some public house, and I would spread out my horse blanket for coins, and caper around it only as exuberantly as I felt my stomach growling, and people crowded round––until the tavern owner ran outside to beat me away with a broom or poker.
***
The maples were sprouting seedpods, and I was dancing a galliard, when Wille gave me a peculiar assignment. It was early evening. The square opened from the back of a pub called Tuley’s, known for its cream whiskey; and tucked into a corner beneath a beech tree was a jumble of wooden tables filled with people. The fiddlers looked well fed, their clothes clean and intact; they were obviously playing the square for gratification, and I set up a couple of feet to the side and was left alone.
The onlookers smoked and laughed, flicking coins at me. My feet bounced up and reached backwards, touch-kick-tap, touch-kick-tap, snap-kick-and-spin-kick-tap…
“Let’s have her dance on a table,” shouted someone. I stopped my legs, wrapped the coins up in the blanket, and heard Wille’s voice calling through the talk:
“Oy, Aloren. I found some players who really missed ye.”
I threw the saddlebag over my shoulder and crawled beneath the tables until I reached his. He sat pipeless next to Sal (from the tavern), and looked longingly at the other side of the table where ex-brigands Begley, Tom, and Peach were smoking.
“Here’s our girl.” Begley gave me a clap on the back. “Surprised her feet hain’t fallen off.”
“Kind of you to leave like that.” But I smiled and sat down next to Wille, because I had got along with harmless, morbid Begley tolerably enough. “Where’d all them fiddles go? Need firewood?”
“Down, girlie,” he said. “Me singer’s snug at home––I prefers me whistle. Tom has his own, though, and we’re goin to play a snatch when these feller’s are done. We hain’t had no drummer since Miggon went to sea, and Peach can’t harbor a beat any more than she can a baby, but she’s a right good fiddler.”
“Miggon took up sailin?” said Wille. “Well, blow me diddle all––” Sal grabbed his ear and joggled his head.
“Blow you inter next week, keep up with that kind of talk.”
“Me mam’s come up out of the grave. Anyways, Al”––Wille lowered his voice and pulled me aside––“I got a favor to ask. Been lookin fer ye all over the bloody map, and I’m glad I found you because, you see, this fellow and I got into a little quarrel about rabble-nabbing.”
I became uneasy. Rabble nabbing was a nasty game that had been forcibly introduced to me by the brigands. “You told him you knew a girl could beat him at a rabble-nab?”
“Weren’t like that. He got to talking about how unbeatable he were at it, boasting, really, and I felt he needed a knock at his ego, so I goes and mentions you.”
“Why?” I said angrily.
“And I placed a bet on you.”
“You––what?” I knocked my elbow on the table.
“A bet,” he said miserably. “When I tried takin me word back, he said he’d just as soon take me life when you lost and I didn’t pay up.”
“How much?”
“I don’t want to say. Give ye the jitters.”
“Wille!”
“Hush––I know. He wants to do it tonight,” he said, and I rubbed my elbow. “He’s the skinny one in the corner beneath the tree. See his legs? Looks a bit like a salamander. Please, Lally, please do it for yer old friend Wille. I don’t like the prospect of death any more’n I like the prospect of givin the dirty rascal fifty celms.”
“Wille!”
“I know,” he wailed. “Ain’t I wretched? But you can help an old friend, right? You can help the less-fortunate?”
“You ain’t the only less-fortunate person in these parts.”
I crawled away and dropped my saddlebag beneath an empty table.
Begley and his troop climbed atop their table to play a lively rendition of a song called The Firebird’s Hearts, and Wille, already cured of anxiety, got up to dance with Sal, while Begley sang in his bright, grainy voice.
“My fearless lass, when off abroad,
Was bringing me back an egg of gold,
When upon the slip of a horse ill-shod,
She dropped and cracked its shining mould.
From the pieces flew a flaming bird
With silver eyes and a frowning beak.
Quoth he to her: ‘I’ll grant one wish
In exchange for the heart of the lad you seek.”
I made for the man sitting alone beneath the beech tree. He was young and thin with a grey face ravaged by the pox, and a grey wool tunic pulled together with a grey leather belt. He polished a small iron dagger with a grey handkerchief, and I stood watching him a while before he looked up.
“What do you want, ducky?” He spat to the side.
“What’s the rules, grease-nose?” I watched his dagger. He stood up, wiping his nose with the kerchief.
“And take care,’ he said. ‘If you choose no wish,
But your lad instead, your heart I’ll steal
In place of his, for I hunger with
A hatchling’s greed for a good first meal.”
“Gorn.” He blew his nose. “She’s as big around as me thumb.”
“What earthly good are you doing as a thief with a thumb that size?”
“Alright, ducky.” He bit his cheek. “We’ll give it until the excitement dies down to a couple flying benches.” He stuck his dagger into his belt. “Not challenging enough? Should we tie our hands and use our teeth?”
I sneered at him, and turned to a big man behind me.
He was inebriated and jabbing his elbows through the air, for he was trying to rid himself of his vest and had got his thumb stuck in a buttonhole.
“She laughed to herself, ‘I’ll wish my lad
Straight inter me arms, heart and the rest.’
No sooner than when she’d wished aloud
Did I appear clenched cheek to breast.”
I rammed palms into the big man’s back, pushing him into a crowded table. Then I stuck my foot under the next table over and kicked someone hard enough in the calves that he jumped from his seat and wheeled round. But I had crawled beneath the table.
The first man picked himself up, tore his vest free, and clobbered the ears of the man whose shins I had kicked. They locked in a hug, grunting like bears.
“But he took both hearts, the firebird did,
For now both chests were close enough
To sweep aside with his iron claws
And rip the rubies from the rough.
The wish for which my lass had faith
Was the wish that every lover spake,
And the clever firebird used the wish
To procure two folk and two hearts to take.”
The grey thief and I snuck about the drunks, and soon we’d banged up a magnificent brawl complete with exploding pottery, stools breaking over heads, and Wille, dancing wildly with Sal and nicking drinks from abandoned mugs.
“But cunning as the firebird was,
My lass and I had flown the test,
For heartless folk are lawless, too,
And rules don’t hold with an empty chest.
Cutting feet free of earth-bound laws,
We trapped him in his Enna Tree.
We made him cry, the bloody bird;
He’d about two thousand more hearts than we.”
Fists and boots smashed around me. I held my knife ready in my hand to cut purses from strings, and I slipped wallets from pockets before the pockets jumped away. In and out went my arms and feet––a bit like dancing a very fast jig. Poor Floy, whom I’d been ignoring, sped past my head shrieking all manner of useless advice.
“And when he shook with livid tears,
His perfect breast was too, too slow
To keep the trembling hill of hearts
From slipping t’ward the rocks below.
He’d too much pain and hurt to catch
One thousand eight hundred dimming lights,
And dripping in shade from his starry roost,
They broke to a cold five years of nights.
As the crimson firebird turned to blue
We took our broken hearts from him.
We held them close and kept them warm
Until their light had ceased to dim.”
Folk were slowing now, lying about, and nursing their bruises.
I crept up to my competitor. He was busy with two fellows wrestling on the ground. As he stole a wallet off one of them, I lifted a good amount of his earnings from his pockets and slipped them into my own to ensure my victory for Wille’s sorry sake. Then I stood to the side until the rest of the brawlers had worn themselves out, knocked themselves silly, or grown bored.
“The hearts burst into glorious day
And shone through links of starless chain,
And loath was I to let my lass
Ride an ill-shod horse abroad again.”
I led the man over to Begley’s table, to lessen, in the presence of five witnesses, his desire to slit my throat when we counted our coins. We spread them on the table. Begley whistled and the man left with nothing but a sour look.
Wille gave me his winnings. “You’re a lucky fool,” I said, putting coins into my pockets, after giving most of them to Begley’s troop, who hadn’t got many of their own because of the brawl.
“For certain.” Sal gave Wille a nudge. “But if he was convinced all the way to fifty silvers you’d beat the man out, he must’ve been fair confident about your worth, miss.”
“Probably cause he don’t got none to compare it to.”
Wille leaned back, looking obscenely satisfied. “Thank you, little sister.”
“Brothers don’t act like that.” But I flicked him a coin and thought longingly of Tem. And Mordan and Leode. And even Arin.
***
I sat still until the blood had stopped thumping in my head, then I went to dump the coins into the saddlebag. I crawled near the table, and the blood come back hot and heavy. Someone was crouched beneath it. The saddlebag was gone and the bottom of my stomach dropped out.
The human boy, the one I’d snared two months before, smiled and said, “You oughtn’t attract so much attention to yourself.”
“Where is it? Where’d you put it, you fire-breathing worm––” I dove beneath the table.
“Trid!” He pummeled me away. “Trid, get her off me––she’ll tear off my face.”
Trid appeared from wherever he’d been hiding, grabbed my legs and pulled me off.
I jerked my limbs every which way, but I was no match for two big boys. They carried me across the street by an arm and a leg, and pushed me into a corner behind some crates.
Floy tore out of nowhere. She agitated their eyes and hair; they tossed her aside, and worried they would hurt her, I yelled at her to stop. Their shoulders reached far above me, and I slumped against the wall, thinking of my father’s signet ring. The boys were highborn; they would find it, know what it was. I would be handed over to the Queen-–
“What have y’done with the fool bag?” I shouted.
Their eyes shone gold in the dark, like cats’. “It’s found a new home. Bit cleaner than its last.” Andrei blotted blood from his nose with a sleeve.
“You needn’t worry,” Trid said, a hint of wonder in his voice. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“I’ve hidden it,” Andrei said.
“You had no right,” I said.
“Yes I did. You’ve got the brains of a sausage and I’m bigger than you.”
“You wart-bitten son of a castrated mule.”
Trid laughed. “This one’s got a mouth.”
“What d’ye want?” I said.
“A slave,” Andrei said. Trid frowned at him.
“We want you to pick a lock for us.” He pushed dark hair from his eyes. “We found your supplies hidden in the bushes. Can’t imagine a stable hand giving you a key.”
“Aloren, they call you?” said Andrei. “Pretty. More like a banging bit of slime mold.” I spat in his eye. He raised his hand to strike me, but Trid caught his wrist.
“Was Lady Grete disgusted when she found ye?” I said. “Or’d she make room in her bed?”
“Do you ever want to touch your horrible bag again?”
I turned to Trid. “What lock?”
“It’s a matter of locks,” Andrei said, “and years. I shall delight in making you miserable for as long as possible.”
“Andrei––” Trid stepped between us. “You’re not going to strut around being as cruel as you like––”
“You’d argue over the sparrowshit? Come on, Trid, when we’ve exhausted the tool, we’ll drop it.”
Trid seemed troubled by this, but he decided to clean his hands of it.
“It’s your feud.”
***
They designed for me to meet them at the corner of Perry and Crewald Streets at sunset the next day, as Andrei thought the belltower too public a place to be seen with me hanging about them.
I paced back and forth after they left, and tripped over a broken crock from the brawl. My foot bled. I picked up the crock and smashed it against the wall. “Floy!” I pulled the strings on my chemise. “What do I do, Floy? He has me father’s ring, the cocksucking pickled cod.”
“You’ll do as he says” said Floy angrily. “You won’t draw attention to it.”
I sank to the curb, head cradled in my hands. “No, I can’t. I can’t.”
“There are more important things at stake,” she said, “than your freedom, or pride, or whatever it is you’re moaning about.”