Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) (30 page)

“If you knew what was good for you,” Heden said. “You’d be outside the city.”

The polder shook his head sharply. “I hate the country,” he said and ambled over to the chair the castellan had just vacated. “Everyone’s dirty and poor. No fun.”

He tossed something on Heden’s bed. Something heavy. Heden looked down.

Solaris
.

“Might want to hang on to that,” Aimsley said. “Seems useful.”

Heden put his hand on
Solaris
. “Thanks,” he said. He gave the polder a look. “Guess you didn’t come here to kill me,” he said.

The polder shrugged. Like what happened at the inn was just an argument. “Tried that, didn’t work. Figured I try something else.”

“What?” Heden asked.

“Help you out, maybe,” the polder said, nodding to
Solaris
.

Heden released his grip on the sword. “This doesn’t make us even,” he said.

The polder sniffed, scratched his nose. “Whatever I’ve done to you,” he said, “you’re not in any position to do anything about it.”

This was true.
Whatever I’ve done to you
. Heden wondered what this meant.

“Shame about the eye,” he said, nodding to the huge bandage on Heden’s left eye. “Figure you got away lucky.”

“They say I get to keep the eye,” Heden said. “Agent of the church, even a former agent, has its benefits.”

Aimsley nodded.

“You got out of jail,” Heden ventured, watching the thief. Waiting to see what would happen. How, if at all, the incident at the inn, his time in the jail, had affected him.

“Sure,” Aimsley said. “Well, you knew I would. Wasn’t hard. They brought me food, drink. Nice of them. Mostly I just sobered up. That was fun,” he said sarcastically.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“You clean now?” Heden asked.

The polder shrugged. “Haven’t had a drink in a while. Couple of days. Longer than…well, longer than I can remember. Sort of…I dunno, sad, upset. I missed the party on High Bridge.”

“Not sure I need your kind of help,” Heden said.

“Well,” the polder said. “I didn’t say I’d have been on your side, but…,” he smiled a little. “Helping you would have meant I didn’t have to fish that thing out of the river,” he indicated
Solaris
resting on Heden’s bed.

Heden understood. “You come just to bring me this?” he asked.

The blonde polder scratched the back of his neck.

“Count’s got the girl,” Aimsley said. “Sorta feel…feel a little...,” he bobbed his head back and forth, weighing a thought.

“Responsible? Guilty?”

The little man frowned at him, as though the comment were in bad taste. “Feel like I need a drink.”

Heden didn’t say anything. Looked at the sword.

“How’s that going?” he asked, as though it wasn’t important.

“It’s going fucking bad is how it’s going,” the thief said, but without rancor. “I can’t go in a tavern. Can’t even have an ale. Can’t…” he was wrestling with the idea. One hand shook as he talked. He didn’t bother trying to hide it. “I feel like my skin is three sizes too small, only way I get to sleep is in a pool of sweat, exhausted. Which is like no sleep. Any time I see someone with a drink, which seems like it’s all the fucking time now, I have to get out. I just can’t….”

Heden kept his mouth shut.

“As long as I’m not in a tavern,” the thief continued, “I’m ok. I can deal with it. It’s tough, but…I just…I need to make sure I’m not in a place where I can make bad decisions.” He took a moment to survey the hospice.

“Ale?” Heden asked. “Take the edge off.”

The polder shook his head. Heden noticed he had one of his custom-made dirks in his hand. He didn’t see the polder produce it, it was just there one moment.

“Only one thing takes the edge off,” Aimsley said, and gave Heden a dark look from under his blonde eyebrows. It wasn’t a threat, but the way he held the dirk, Heden knew what he meant. When Heden was working, he didn’t have his fits either.

That’s why the polder was here. He needed the work, needed the purpose. Needed something to replace the drink, and couldn’t wait for Heden to recover. He needed Heden. Needed someone who wasn’t a criminal to give him something to do. It was a burden Heden hadn’t considered but every time he blinked he saw Taethan dying in the darkness behind his eyelids. He’d assume any burden now.

“What did you do to me?” the polder asked. “Back at the inn?”

“A curse.”

“I thought only priests of the Black Brothers could curse,” Aimsley muttered, looking at the floor, unhappy to discover ignorance.

“Nope. Anyone can do it. As long as your god…ah, approves of your intent and judgment. Which is rare. Helps if you know your god,” Heden added, omitting
or your saint
, “pretty well. It only works on people who deserve it.”

“Well,” the polder said, looking at his feet. “I’ve done enough bad things.”

Heden watched him. “You killed the man who raised me,” he said flatly.

Aimsley looked up at him, his face slack, without expression. “I did?” he said. “When was this?”

Heden sat up more, tried to get a better look at the thief before him.

“Five days ago,” he said. “He was hiding Vanora. You killed him and took the girl.”

“Huh,” the polder said, looking around the church. “I thought I remembered being here before.”

Heden tried to master his emotions, watched the thief staring at him, clouded brow under blonde curls.

“There’s something I need to say to you,” the thief said.

He looked down again, taking a deep breath. Heden waited.

The thief looked back at the priest.

“Okay,” he said. It was a piece of slang only campaigners used. Part of a unique pattern of speech. It was, Heden realized, like the cant of the Green Order. Didn’t matter where you were from. Once you’d been a ratcatcher, it became your nation. Your language. Separated you from everyone else. You all started talking alike, more in common with each other than your own countrymen, your own family.

“I don’t…,” the thief began. He was having trouble forming the words. Or maybe the ideas themselves. “I don’t remember what happened at the inn,” he confessed. He looked to Heden, his blue eyes filled with fear, confusion, and a desire for someone, anyone, to tell him it was alright.

“I know I was there. I know we went at it. But I don’t…I can’t remember anything specific. I get flashes. I know you helped me. I can sorta guess you could have killed me, but didn’t. I know it was you who locked me up. Told the jailor to leave me in there until it was out of my system. I know you took a risk for me….”

Heden remembered the little man covered in cuts and drink, begging for help and wondered: if this man in front of him couldn’t remember that, who was it who asked for help? What part of him?

The thief took another deep breath. His body shook, struggling with the words.

“It’s not just the drink,” Aimsley said. “I mean, I know it’s the drink, but it’s not only when I’m tight. It used to be. I’d have these times when I knew I was up and moving about and talking and being myself, but I couldn’t remember it afterwards. And no one seemed to notice.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t figure that out.” He looked at Heden.

Heden waited. The polder was not done.

“Then it happened on a job. I don’t even remember which one. I was talking to Brick and I realized we were talking about a job I’d just done and I couldn’t remember it. That scared the shit out of me.” He looked at the stained glass. It seemed, to Heden, as though it was getting easier. His tone was steadier.

“Then I realized it had probably happened before, forgetting a whole job, and I couldn’t even remember there was anything to forget. I was basically tight all the time by then. Then it would happen for days. Two, three days at a time.

“It felt like I was better on the drink, but that don’t make sense. I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t seem to affect my ability. My skill.”

“Probably it did,” Heden said.

Aimsley remembered Dugal saying he hadn’t been top man in years, and sighed.

“Yeah.  Probably. Gets to a point where you can mostly get by on reputation.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. Watching him, Heden no longer experienced the strange sense of talking to a man in a child’s body. He just saw the person, Aimsley Pinwhistle. Polder. Thief. They didn’t really look like children anyway. It was just his youthful face.

They sat there together for a while, Heden in the bed, Aimsley in the chair, no one saying anything.

“I lost a whole year,” the thief said, his voice flat.

He waited until he was sure the polder was done. “That wasn’t easy to say.”

The thief poked a finger in his ear and wiggled it about. “Talking helps,” he said. “Got no one to talk to besides you.”

Heden knew this was also not easy to say.

“Let me tell you something,” Heden said, and pushed himself up to be more sitting and less lying down.

The thief waited expectantly. Heden told him about his episodes. About the paralyzing, unreasoning fear that gripped him, triggered by any hint of his old life. About how it started. About the inn, hating to go out, white knuckling through even the most mundane tasks if they meant leaving the inn.

Aimsley listened like it was a revelation. Like a saint had come to speak to him.

“Shit,” the thief said, when Heden was done.

“Yeah,” Heden said.

“You think maybe…,” Aimsley looked at the door, heard an abbess tending to someone outside. “You think maybe everyone’s fucked up like this and no one ever talks about it?”

Heden shook his head. “No.”

Aimsley smiled. “Nah, me neither. Well, good for us. We’re special.”

“Helps to talk about it.”

The thief nodded. “Yeah.”

Neither of them spoke for a few moments.

“I killed your friend and you could have killed me, but you just locked me up,” the polder said, unbelieving.

“Yes,” Heden said.

“Why’d you do that?”

Heden shrugged. “I saw it in you,” he said. “Saw what the drink was doing. Didn’t think what happened to the abbot was you. Not really.”

The polder looked like he was going to throw up. “What if it was?” he asked, worried.

“A man is better than the worst thing he’s ever done,” Heden said.

Aimsley barked a fateful laugh. “You sure about that?” he said.

“Yes,” Heden said.

“That mean you forgive me?” the polder asked, looking at the stained glass. Furtive glances at Heden, never keeping his eyes on him long.

“That what you want?” Heden said, and realized it was the abbot speaking through him. The abbot gave Heden what he needed to forgive the man who killed him.

“Maybe I don’t deserve it.”

“Deserve is a tricky word,” Heden said.

“I mean…maybe I gotta…earn it,” the polder said.

Heden nodded. He liked this line of reasoning. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

This, the polder was ready for. “I stole the girl from you,” he said. “Delivered her to the count. Made everything worse.”

“No one knows where the count is,” Heden said. “What can you do?”

“Thief, ain’t I?” the polder said, letting a smile play across his lips, waiting to see the priest’s reaction.

Heden smiled. The polder let his smile grow. Friends?

“Let’s steal her back,” Aimsley Pinwhistle said, grinning madly.

Heden pulled his boots on. He’d been desperate to leave the day before, desperate to try and help the Polder, but he was too weak and the abbess tending him wouldn’t allow it.

“Don’t think it’s right for you to be gettin’ up like this,” the woman said. Talking to her, Heden had learned they were the same age, but she seemed older to him. She probably thought the same of him.

“I know,” Heden said.

“You need more rest,” she said, folding the sheets from his bed.

“That’s true,” Heden said.

“Here, stand still,” she said. He obeyed and she gingerly picked at the gum holding his eye bandage on. Then she ripped it off in one smooth tug.

“Ow,” Heden said. His left eye watered from the light, he had to keep it closed for the moment. Squint.

The abbess appraised him.

“Maybe I ort to send someone with you,” she said. “Look after you.”

“You could do that,” Heden said mildly. He was going to agree with everything, but leave of his own accord. She couldn’t keep him here. Somewhere, the count still had Vanora.

“Why don’t I fetch…,” the abbess began, and stopped when a young boy entered the room.

He was dressed in red and gold, the king’s colors. He was clean, well-dressed. The abbess stared at him. Heden did too, but with resignation rather than surprise.

“I’m here for him,” the page boy nodded.

The abbess raised her eyebrows and looked at Heden.

“I’ve got a message for you, sir,” the boy said, promoting Heden to knight.

Heden deflated in his bed. There was only one person who would send a page dressed like this to deliver a message.

“How do you know who I…,” Heden tried deflecting.

“For the Arrogate,” the boy clarified, interrupting him.

“Oh,” Heden said. “Yeah that’s me.”

“His majesty politely requests your presence at court.”

Heden nodded.

“Politely,” he said.

“That’s the message, sir,” the boy said.

Heden sat there, feeling incredibly old.

“Is there a knight standing outside right now?” he asked.

“No sir. His majesty said,” the boy cleared his throat, “’The knight would just piss him off,’ he said sir. ‘And he’d not come just to spite me for sending one,’ he said.”

“He said that,” Heden’s voice was flat.

“Yes sir.”

“’Politely,’” Heden repeated.

“He stressed that, sir.”

Heden looked at the abbess watching the whole thing with wonder. A messenger from the king!

“Means ‘now, dammit,’” Heden explained to her.

“Well you best be off!” she bustled, helping Heden up.

“You don’t think I should stay?” he asked weakly. “Man in my condition?”

“Go, go, go!” the abbess said, shooing him out.

“Ugh,” Heden said. “Alright young master,” he put a hand on the page’s shoulder, as though he were an old man.

“Let’s try and make it to the castle without either of us being assassinated,” he said.

The boy looked up at him and smiled bravely. “You’re in the company of the king when you’re with me!” he said proudly.

Still weak, Heden tried to stand up straight, took his hand off the boy’s shoulder. Started walking to the door.

“Uh-huh,” he said.