Take a Thief (40 page)

He hadn't swathed his face and head, or blackened exposed flesh with charcoal just then. He'd still had to get the chopped meat, the bread and the poppy syrup, and not all in the same market square, just so no one would put him and the ingredients together if they were questioned later.

That was why he'd left the Collegium early. Markets stayed open late in 277

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the poorer parts of town, for the benefit of those whose own working hours were long. Skif had no trouble in acquiring what he needed, and he made his final preparations in that stable by the light of the moon overhead.

Then, and only then, did he finish dressing, and with the treated meat stuffed into cleaned sausage bladders which he tied off, and then put into a bag, he had slipped out alone into the darkness.

The key to making sure that all five dogs got their doses was to send the bladders over the wall at long intervals. The first and strongest dog wolfed down his portion, then staggered about for a bit and fell asleep. When Skif heard the staggering, he sent over the second bladder; by that time the strongest dog was in no condition to contest the food, and the second strongest got it. It took a while, but Skif was patient, and when he couldn't hear anything other than dog snores, he went over the wall and up the gutter to the roof.

Now he sat on the rooftree with his back against one of the chimneys, using its bulk to conceal his silhouette, and took deep, slow breaths to calm himself. His gut was a tight knot— a good reason for not eating much tonight. And he was thirsty, but thirsty was better than being in the middle of a job and having to— well. This would be the first time he had ever entered a house with the intention of confronting someone. Normally that was the
last
thing he wanted to do, and it had him strung tighter than an ill-tuned harp.

So he ran over what he needed to do in his mind until he thought he'd rehearsed it enough, and Mindcalled Cymry.

:I'm going in,:
he told her.

:You know what to do if you get in trouble,:
she replied, for they had already worked that out. Skif would get outside, anywhere outside, and she would come for him. She swore she could even get into the yard if it was needful. How she was to get over that fence, he had no notion, but that was
her
problem. Bazie had taught him that once you put your confidence in a partner, you just
trusted
that he knew what he was doing 278

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and went on with your part of the plan. Because once the plan was in motion, there was nothing you could do about what
he
was responsible for, anyway, so there was no point in taking up some of the attention you should be paying to your part of the job by worrying about him.

He slipped over the rooftree to the next chimney; the hatch into the crawl space was just on the other side of it. It wasn't locked— it hadn't been locked for the past five years that Skif knew of. Even if it had been, it was one of those that had its hinges on the outside, and all he would have had to do would have been to knock the hinge pins out and he could have lifted it up from the hinge side. He left it open, just in case he had to make a quick exit and couldn't use the route out he'd planned.

The space he slipped down into was more of a crawl space than an attic, too small to be practical to store anything. He crawled on his hands and knees, feeling his way along until he came to the hatch that led down into the hallway separating all of the dozen garret rooms where Londer's servants slept, six on one side of the corridor, and six on the other.

Well, where the servants Londer had would have slept, if he'd had more than the three he kept. Like everything else Londer had, his servants were cheap because no one else would have them, and he worked them—screaming and cursing at them all the while— until they dropped. His man-of-all-work was a drunkard, so was his cook, and the overworked housemaid was another half-wit like Maisie. None of them was going to wake up short of Skif falling on them, which obviously he didn't intend to do.

Not that he was going to take any chances about it.

He found the hatch, which had a cover meant to be pushed up and aside from the hallway below. He lifted it up and put it out of the way, then stuck his head down into the hall and took a quick look around.

As he'd expected, it was deserted, not so dark as the crawl space thanks to a tiny window on either end of the hall, and silent but for three sets of snoring.

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He actually had to stop and listen in fascination for a moment, for he'd never heard anything like it.

There was a deep, basso rumbling which was probably the handyman, whose pattern was a long, drawn out sound interrupted by three short
snorks.
Layered atop this was a second set, vaguely alto in pitch, of short, loud snorts in a rising tone that sounded like an entire sty full of pigs. And atop that was a soprano solo with snoring on the intake of breath and whistling on the exhalation. One was the housemaid and the other the cook, but which was which? The housemaid was younger, but fatter than the cook, so either could have had the soprano.

All three were so loud that he could not imagine how they managed not to wake
themselves
up. It took everything he had to keep from laughing out loud, and he wished devoutly that he dared describe this to one of the Bardic Trainees. They'd have hysterics.

At least now he knew for certain that the last thing he needed to worry about was making a noise up here.

He grabbed the edge of the hatch and somersaulted over, slowly and deliberately, lowering himself down by the strength of his arms alone until his arms were extended full-length. His feet still dangled above the floor, so he waited for the moment when the chorus of snores overlapped, and let go, hoping the noise would cover the sound of his fall.

He landed with flexed knees, caught his balance bent over with his knuckles just touching the floor, and froze, waiting to see if there would be a reaction.

Not a sound to indicate that anyone had heard him.

Heh. Not gonna be hard figuring which rooms are empty!
That had been a serious concern; he
needed
to find an empty room with a window, get into it, get the window unlocked and opened for his escape, because now that he was inside, he knew that there was no way he was going to get out the way he came in. If there had been a ladder to let down from the crawl space, that would have been ideal, but there wasn't.

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By great good fortune, the room nearest the drainpipe he wanted to use was one of the empty ones— no thief could survive long who wasn't able to tell where he was inside a house in relation to the outside without ever being inside. Out of the breast of his tunic came one of his trusty bladders of oil, and he oiled the hinges to the dripping point by feel before he even tried to open the door.

There was a faint creak, but it was entirely smothered in snores; the door opened onto a completely barren room, not a stick of furniture in it.

Moonlight shone in through the dirty window, finally giving him something to see by. After the absolute dark of the crawl space and the relative dark of the hallway, it seemed as bright as day.

Moving carefully with a care for creaking floorboards, he eased his way over to the window, and out came the oil again. When catches, locks, and hinges were all thoroughly saturated, he got the window open wide, checked to make sure he could reach the drainpipe from its sill, and left it that way. He did, however, close the door to the room most of the way, just in case one of the three snorers woke up and felt impelled to take a stroll. They were too dimwitted to think of an intruder, but they might take it into their heads to close the window, which would slow his retreat.

The servants' stair lay at the end of the hallway, and it was just the narrow sort of arrangement that Skif would have expected from the age of the house. In this part of the city, land was at a premium, so as little space as possible within a home was "wasted" on servants' amenities. But fortunately, whoever had built this stair had done so with an eye to
silence
in his servants, and had built it so sturdily that it probably wouldn't creak if a horse went down it.

Not even Londer's neglect could undo work that solid, not in the few years that Londer had owned the house anyway.

Down the stairs went Skif, and now he had to go on the memories of a very small child augmented by as much study of the house from outside as he had been able to manage. Londer's bedroom, as he recalled, and as study of the house seemed to indicate, was on the next floor down, overlooking the street. A curious choice, given that street noise was going to be something of a disturbance and would
certainly
be obtrusive early in 281

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the morning. But Londer wanted to see who was at his door before they were announced, and the other choice of master bedroom was over the kitchen and
under
the servants' rooms. Altogether a poor choice for someone who probably knew all about the snorers' chorus and didn't want it resonating down into his bedroom. Nor would he want the aromas of the cook's latest accident permeating his bedroom and lingering in the hangings.

He stifled another laugh as he felt his way down the stair, tread by tread.

He could only wonder what Londer had thought when he discovered the amazing snoring powers of all three of his servants.

This stair should come out beside the room just over the kitchen that Londer used for his guests. Important guests, of course, not people like his sister and her young son. They'd lived in one of the garret rooms, though Skif couldn't remember which one, since they hadn't lived there for long.

When he reached the landing, once again he stopped and listened. Aside from the now faint chorus from Snore Hall above, there was nothing.

He took a precautionary sniff of the air, for a room that was occupied had a much different scent than one that had been shut up for a while. If Uncle had a guest that Skif didn't know about, the guest became an unforeseen complication, a possible source of interference.

But the scent that came to his nose was of a room that had lain unused for a very long time; a touch of mildew, a great deal of dust. And when he emerged from the stair he found himself, as he had reckoned, in the dressing room to that unused guest suite.

The dressing room led directly to the corridor, and probably the reason that the stair came out into it at all was the very sensible one of convenience for the original master and builder of the house, who probably
would
have chosen this suite for himself. Water for baths would come straight up the stair from the kitchen in cans, to be poured into the bath in the dressing room. If the master was hungry and rang for service, his snack would be brought up in moments, freshly prepared.

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This corridor was short; it ran between the old master suite to two other sets of rooms. It extended the width of the house and had a window on either end, with the staircase leading downward for the family's use on Skif's right. Three doors let out on it, besides the one that Skif stood in.

The one on Skif's side led to a second bedroom separate from the master suite, probably intended for a superior personal maid or manservant. The two opposite were probably for guests or children in the original plan. One was now Londer's, and heaven only knew what he did with the other.

Skif put his ear to the door nearest him on that side.

It was definitely occupied, although the slumberer was no match for the trio upstairs. Just to be sure, Skif eased down the corridor and checked the other.

Silent and, as turning the door handle proved, locked as well.

He returned to Londer's room, took a steadying breath, and took out—

—another bladder of oil. Because he did not want Londer to wake up until Skif's knife was at his throat.

Only when the hinges were saturated did Skif ease the door open, wincing at the odor that rolled out.

Well, the old man hasn't changed his bathing habits any.

After the cleanliness of Bazie's room, the Priory, and the Collegium, Skif's nose wrinkled at the effluvia of unwashed clothing, unwashed sheets, unwashed body, rancid sweat, and bad breath. It wasn't bad enough to gag a goat, but it was close.

If this wasn't so important, I'd leave now.
It made his skin crawl to think of getting so close to
that
foul stench, but he didn't have much choice.

Londer had his windows open to the night air, so at least he could see.

And at least he wasn't going to smother in the stink.

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He took a deep breath, this time of cleaner air, and slipped inside.

Londer didn't wake until the edge of the knife— the
dull
edge, did he but know it— was against his throat. Skif had tried to time his entry for when the moon was casting the most light on the streetward side of the house. In fact, moonlight streamed in through the windows, and Skif could tell from the sheer terror on Londer's face that he was having no trouble seeing what there
was
to see of Skif.

"Don't move," Skif hissed. "And don't shout."

"I won't," Londer whimpered. "What d'you want from me?"

Londer shivered with fear; Skif had never seen anyone actually
doing
that, and to see Londer's fat jowls shaking like a jelly induced a profound disgust in him.

"You can start," hissed Skif, "by telling me what you did with my sister."

Londer looked as if he was going to have a fit right there and then, and Skif thought he might have hit gold-- but it turned out that Londer had just gotten rough with one of his paid women, and he thought that Skif was
her
brother. Not but that Skif was averse to seeing him terrified over it, but that wasn't the street he wanted to hound his uncle down.

So he quickly established that the apocryphal sister was one of the children snatched off the streets, and the interview continued on that basis.