Take a Thief (35 page)

"Please. I can pull m'self up a gutter on t'roof without usin' legs," he retorted. "I oughta be able t' get on your back!"

She stood rock still for him, and after a moment of awkwardness, he managed to clamber onto her bare back. Stepping out into the twilight at a brisk pace, she took him across the river on a little stone bridge, and they spent a candlemark or two exploring Companion's Field.

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Finally the long day caught up with him, and Skif found himself yawning and nodding, catching himself before he actually dozed off and fell off Cymry's back. Cymry brought him right back to the place where they'd met, and from there, he stumbled up to his room.

Someone had come along and lit the lanterns set up along the walls, so at least he wasn't stumbling because he couldn't see. When he got to the door of his room, he discovered that someone had also slipped a card into a holder there that had his name on it.

A sound in the corridor made him turn; his eyes met the brilliant blue ones of an older boy— hair soaking wet and wrapped in a light sleeping robe, on his way out of the bathing room. The other boy smiled tentatively.

"Hullo!" he greeted Skif. "I'm Kris; you must be the new one, Skif. It's me and Jeri here over Midsummer."

"Uh— hullo," He eyed Kris carefully; definitely highborn, with that accent and those manners. But not one with his nose in the air. "Jeri a girl or a boy?"

"Girl. She'll be your year-mate; got Chosen six moons ago. Oh, I made sure I left enough hot water for a good bath."

"Thanks." That decided him. Maybe he'd already had one bath today, but he was still stiff and sore, and another wouldn't hurt.

Kris was still looking at him quizzically. "I hope you don't mind my asking— but how did you get that black eye? It's a glory! If you haven't seen it, it's gone all green and purple around the edges, and black as black at your nose."

"Smacked it inta Cymry's neck," Skif admitted ruefully. "Ain't never jumped on a horse afore."

Kris winced in sympathy. "Ouch. Better go soak. Good night!"

"Night," Skif replied, and got a robe of his own to take the boy's advice.

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When he got back to his room and started putting his new belongings away to clear his bed so he could sleep, he found one last surprise.

On the desk were all of his things. Every possible object he owned
except
the most ragged of his clothing from both his room next to Jass', and the Priory. Including his purse, with every groat still in it.

Startled, he tried to
think
at his Companion.
:Cymry!:
he "called" her, hoping she'd answer.

:What do you need?:
she asked sleepily, and he explained what he'd found.

:Who did that? And how come?:
he finished. It worried him….

:Oh. That would be Alberich's doing, I expect,:
she replied.
:Usually they
go send someone to tell families that the Chosen's arrived safely, and to
get their belongings, if they didn't bring anything with them. Don't you
want your things?:

Well, of course he wanted his things.
:I just—:
The fact was, he worried. Who went there. What they'd said. And how they'd known where he came from….

:Kantor says it was all Alberich's doing, at least getting your things from
your room.:
Well, that was one worry off his mind. Alberich would have gone as the sell-sword, and intimidated his way in. Good enough.
:He sent
off the usual Guardsman to the Priory. They'll have told the Priory you
were Chosen, and the Guardsman would have brought someone hired to
take your place, so the Priory won't go shorthanded. Kantor says Alberich
didn't tell your old landlord anything. Is that all right?:
Since it was exactly what he would have wanted had he been asked, he could only agree.
:Aye. That's fine, I reckon.:
In fact, he couldn't think of anything else he could possibly want.

:Get some sleep,:
she told him.
:It'll be a long day tomorrow.:
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A longer one than
today?
With a sigh, he climbed into bed, feeling very strange to be in such a bed, and even stranger not hearing the usual noises of the city beyond his walls.

But not so strange that he was awake for much longer than it took to find a comfortable position and think about closing the curtains he'd left open to let in every bit of breeze. About the time he decided it didn't matter, he was asleep.

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16

A scant week later, Skif was just about ready to face all the returning Trainees. He knew what the Heralds of Valdemar were about now— at least, he knew where they'd come from and what they did. And he was starting to get his mind wrapped around why they did it. If he didn't understand it, well, there were a great many things in the world that he didn't understand, and that didn't keep him from going on with his life.

Something had happened to him over the course of that week, and he didn't understand any of it. The things he had always thought were the only truths in the world weren't, not here anyway. He was going to have to watch these Heralds carefully. They might be hiding something behind all this acceptance and welcome.

But since a lot of what was going on with him had to do with feelings, he came to the unsatisfactory and vague conclusion that maybe it wasn't going to be possible to
understand
it. He was caught up like a leaf in the wind, and the leaf didn't have a lot of choice in where the wind took it. If it hadn't been that Cymry was a big part of that wind—

Well, she was, and despite everything he'd learned until this moment, he found himself thinking and feeling things that would have been completely unlike the boy he'd been a fortnight ago.
Soft,
was what he would have called what he was becoming now, but what he was now knew that there was nothing
soft
about where he was tending. If anything, it was hard… as in
difficult.

And
difficult
were the things he was learning, and the things he was going to learn, though truth to tell, it was no more work than he was used to setting himself. Physical exertion? The weapons' work he was doing, the riding, none of it was as hard as roof walking. Book learning? Ha! It was mostly reading and remembering, not like having to figure out a new lock.

Even the figuring— the
mathematics
, they called it— wasn't that bad.

Since he could already do his sums, this new stuff was a matter of logic, a lot like figuring out a lock. The real difference was that he was obeying someone else's schedule and someone else's orders.

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Yet he'd run to Bazie's schedule and Bazie's orders, and thought no worse of it, nor of himself.

For every objection his old self came up with, the new one— or Cymry—had a counter. And if there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, it was that he would not, could not do without Cymry. She didn't so much fill an empty place in him as fill up every crack and crevice that life had ever put in his heart, and make it all whole again. To have Cymry meant he would have to become a Herald. So be it. It was worth it a thousand times over.

And once again, just as when he'd been with Bazie, he was
happy.

He hadn't known what happiness was until Bazie took him in. Moments of pleasure, yes, and times of less misery than others, but never happiness.

He'd learned that with Bazie, and since the fire, he hadn't had so much as a moment of real, unshadowed happiness.

Now it was back. Not all the time, and there were still times when he thought about the fire and raged or wept or both. He wasn't going to turn his back on these people, not until he figured out what their angle was. But for the most part it was back, like a gift, something he'd never thought to have back again.

After that, he knew he couldn't leave. Out there, without Cymry, he'd go back to being alone against the world. In here, with her, there was one absolutely true thing he was certain of. Cymry loved and needed him, and he loved and needed her. The rest— well, he'd figure it all out as it came.

But he woke every day with two persistent and immediate problems to solve. When his fingers itched to lift a kerchief or a purse, he wondered what would happen if he gave in to the urge— and when Kris and Jeri accepted him without question as one of themselves, he worried what would happen when they (and the rest of the Trainees) learned he'd been a thief. Cymry might be the center of his world, but he'd had friends before in Bazie and the boys, and he liked having them. He didn't want to lose the ones he was getting now.

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Take a Thief

He woke one morning exactly six days after he had arrived, a day when he knew the rest of the Trainees would begin coming back in, signaling the beginning of his real classes tomorrow, although it would probably take two or three more days for all of them to make it back. It helped, of course, that they all had Companions, and however long their journeys were, they would travel in a fraction of the time it took an ordinary horse to cross the same distance. He had met most of his teachers, and even begun lessons designed to allow him to fit into the classes with some of them. He had no idea how many of them— besides Alberich and Teren—knew his background either.

And eventually, it
would
come out. Secrets never stayed secret for long.

Eventually someone would say something.

He had worried over that like a terrier with a rat; in fact, he'd gone to bed that night thinking about it. And when he woke, it was with an answer at last.

Whether it would be the
right
answer was another question entirely. But he knew who to consult on it.

The Collegium cook, a moon-faced, eternally cheerful man called Mero, had turned up three days ago. The Collegium bells signaling the proper order of the day had resumed when Mero returned. So now, when Skif awoke at the first bell of the day and went down to the kitchen at the bell that signaled breakfast, he would join Kris and the girl Jeri and some of the teachers around a table in the kitchen for a real cooked meal. With so few to cook for, Mero declined help in cooking, but afterward they all pitched in to clean up. Some of Skif's daydreams about food were coming to pass— Mero even made homely oat porridge taste special.

After breakfast came Skif's first appointment of the day. It wasn't exactly a class… especially not this morning.

And this morning, he could hardly eat his breakfast for impatience to get out to the salle, where some of the weapons training was done. He cleared the table by himself so that he could leave quickly.

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Take a Thief

He ran to the salle, a building that stood apart from the rest of the Collegia, and for good reason, since it needed to be a safe distance from anywhere people might walk, accidentally or on purpose. The Trainees from all three Collegia learned archery, and even some of the Blues, the students who weren't Trainees at all. And some of those archery students were, to be frank, not very good.

Skif, although he had never shot a bow in his life, had proved to be a natural at it, somewhat to his own surprise. Seeing that, Alberich had tried him with something a bit more lethal and less obvious than an arrow. He'd tried him in knife throwing.

Skif had been terrifyingly accurate. Where his eye went, so did whatever was put in his hand. He had
no
idea where the skill had come from— but at least his ability to
fight
with a knife, or with the blunted practice swords, was no better than anyone else's.

Alberich had promised something in the way of a surprise for him this morning, and Skif was impatient to see what he meant, as well as impatient to speak with him.

When Skif arrived at the salle, Alberich was throwing a variety of weapons at a target set up on the other side of the room. Alberich was a hair more accurate than Skif, but Alberich's skill came from training, not a natural talent. Nevertheless, Skif watched with admiration as Alberich placed his weapons— knives, sharpened stakes, and small axes— in a neat pattern on the straw-padded target. He didn't interrupt the Weaponsmaster, and Alberich didn't stop until all the implements he'd lined up on a bench behind him were in the target.

The salle, a long, low building with smooth, worn wooden floors, was lit from above by clerestory windows. This was because the walls were taken up with storage cabinets and a few full-length mirrors. For the rest, there wasn't much, just a few benches, some training equipment, and the door to Alberich's office. For all Skif knew, Alberich might even have quarters here, since he hardly ever saw the Weaponsmaster anywhere else.

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Take a Thief

"So, you come in good time," Alberich said, as the last of his sharpened stakes slammed into the target. He turned toward Skif, picking up something from the bench where his weapons had been. "Come here, then.

Let us see how these suit you."

"These" proved to be little daggers in sheaths that Alberich strapped to Skif's arms, with the daggers lying along the inside of his arms. Once on, they were hidden by Skif's sleeves, and he flexed his arms experimentally.

They weren't at all uncomfortable, and he suspected that with a little practice wearing them, he wouldn't even notice they were there.

"Of my students, only two are, I think, fit to use these," Alberich said.

"Jeri is one. It is you that is the other. Look you—" He showed Skif the catch that kept each dagger firmly in its sheath— and the near-invisible shake of the wrist that dropped it down into the hand, ready to throw, when the catch was undone.

Skif was thrilled with the new acquisition— what boy wouldn't be? —but unlike most, if not all, of the other Trainees, he had seen men knifed and bleeding and dead. Men— and a woman or two. Even before he left his uncle's tavern, he'd seen death at its most violent. And he knew, bone-deep and blood-deep, that
death
was what these knives were for. Not target practice, not showing off for one's friends. Death, hidden in a sleeve, small and silent, waiting to be used.