Avoiding the shimmering pools of moonlight, the Weather-Mage slipped across the courtyard, invisible save as a deeper sliver of shade within the shadows of the walls. The solitary guard in the upper gatehouse never saw her pass him. The cluster of armed mercenaries that now guarded the lower gate had been told to watch for intruders, not for people going out. Besides, they were deeply engrossed in a game of dice. Eliseth made a mental note of that. Come tomorrow, those buffoons would be regretting such inattention while in Magefolk employ! Shrugging the matter aside, she drifted silent as a Wraith across the bridge, and vanished into the shadows of the city.
11
Killers of the Night
Pickings that night were even more scant than usual. Grince was driven by his own hunger, and the more pressing needs of his small white companion, from his usual safe haunts within the Grand Arcade. Though the streets were cold and dangerous, there was always the chance that a sharp lad like himself could come by something or other to keep body and soul together for another day—especially when that lad was getting better all the time at his newfound trade of thief.
It was hard to leave his home, though—even for a few short hours. Grince’s cozy lair in the labyrinth of the arcade’s deserted storerooms showed ample evidence of his burgeoning skills. He had found a small chamber at the end of a dusty passage, and had concealed the door from prying eyes behind a pile of boxes, planks, broken crates and casks, and any other rubbish he could find. Having wedged the door ajar just enough for a skinny boy to worm his way through, he had constructed his own entrance at the bottom of the tottering stack of camouflage, using two casks with the ends knocked out, laid in line to make a narrow tunnel through the pile of junk. Apart from this access into the arcade, the room also had a high, barred window, now screened and draftproofed with old sacks tacked to the wooden frame, through which the young thief could reach the alley outside.
Within his hideout was a magpie nest of odds and ends that Grince had scavenged, found, or liberated from their previous owners. In a box were his utensils—a dented tankard, a patched and battered cooking pot, and two chipped bowls (now used by the puppy) that had all been gleaned from a rubbish heap behind a tavern; a carefully straightened spoon with a consequently wavy silhouette; an eating knife with a broken haft; and four wooden trenchers, of which Grince was especially proud, that had once been the ends of the casks that formed his entrance tunnel. The porridge pot, the original theft that had started his career, held a supply of water now, painstakingly transported from the pump in the arcade, as did a large, tightly lidded crock that had originally, and all too briefly, been filled with sticky, sweet honey.
The young thief’s bed took up an entire corner. He had laid down an old door to shield his body from the cold that seeped up from the stone floor, and had strewn a thick layer of straw over the wooden panels. On top of these he had piled a rainbow of rags and snippets: every rag he came across and any scrap of cloth he could steal from the unsuspecting tailors and dressmakers of the arcade. Each day, when the night’s business of survival was done, the weary boy and his dog would burrow into the snug warmth of the mounded scraps like rabbits vanishing underground.
Grince had snatched two thick blankets of creamy, un-dyed wool from a washing line in the north of the city, much to the puzzled dismay of the goodwife who had hung them there in the confidence that the walls of her backyard were unscalably high. These were spread over his nest, adding weight and warmth and keeping the tottering structure together, and crowning it all was his prize—a heavily fleeced sheepskin that had vanished one night from a tanner’s shop near Greenmarket square.
Since he had come by the sheepskin and blankets, Grince had taken the swaths of thinner cloth—filched from the great stored bolts used by the arcade’s seamstresses—that had originally served him as bedcovers, and hung them from the walls of his lair, where they brightened up the room with their colors and kept out drafts. He had nowhere to make a fire, nor would it be safe to do so, but a motley collection of lamps, both brightly polished household treasures and dented old relics with cracked and soot-stained chimneys, stood safely on another box in the center of the chamber, along with candles of both beeswax and tallow.
Grince kept a battered bucket in one corner for his own waste, with a piece of wood, weighed down by a stone, on top for a makeshift lid. A straw-and-sawdust-filled box stood nearby for his dog to use. Each night the boy was forced to make two awkward and unpleasant journeys outside to empty these down a nearby drain.
His treasures were strewn about or propped on makeshift shelves of plank and brick. An old sword, its blade broken off a foot below the hilt, that came in useful for prying open windows. Mismatched items of clothing that had come from washing lines all over the city. A pile of odd gauntlets, woolen mittens, scarves, and kerchiefs, that Grince was sure would come in useful for something, sometime. Assorted needles, spools of cotton, hanks of wool and twine, odd-shaped bits of wood, and a collection of rusty nails that came in useful all the time. A precious tinderbox and a bottle of lamp oil that he refilled when he had the chance. A twinkling assortment of combs, clips, rings, and trinkets, whose value he had no means of assessing—nor was there any means of selling them. Grince kept them because their sparkle cheered him, and, besides, they made him feel like a proper, bold, and daring thief. He kept them on a shelf by his bed, along with his chiefest treasure—a long, keen dagger with a jeweled hilt, a lucky find that he had taken (even now his gorge rose to think of it) from a drowned corpse washed up on the riverside mud.
In a sack suspended from a hook in the arching stone ceiling Grince kept his food supplies—when there were any to be had. It was the only way, he had discovered, to keep them safe from the marauding rats that could not be kept out, no matter how hard he tried. Tonight, however, for all his scavenging around the arcade, the sack hung flat and empty, and his puppy, Warrior, was beginning to whimper with hunger.
Grince sighed, and took a last, wistful look around his hideout. He was constantly amazed by his own ingenuity. It was a far better home than the squalid hovel he had shared with Tilda—and it was all his own. There was no one here to curse or cuff or beat him; none of the drunken scum who were his mother’s customers trooping in and out. When he got lonely, there was always Warrior—the best friend a boy could ever want—to keep him company. But though he was building up a kind of wary confidence in his own abilities, the city held a multitude of dangers, and he was always reluctant to leave this place of safety. What if something dreadful happened to Warrior in his absence? What if someone else should find his refuge and turn him out? What if…
“Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid,” Grince growled to himself. After all, it wasn’t as if he had any choice. It was either steal or starve—and he didn’t mind going hungry himself, but for Warrior, it was unthinkable. The dog was growing rapidly, and needed all the food he could get. Grince picked up the squirming white puppy and petted and hugged him before putting him in his special basket, also filched from an unsuspecting merchant in the arcade, which had a lid that tied shut with a piece of twine, and a handle so that it could be hung from the same ceiling hook as the food sack. By the time that Warrior outgrew it, he would also be big enough to defend himself from the huge, marauding rats—but in the meantime his anxious master was taking no chances.
Thrusting his dagger and broken sword into his belt, Grince put on his outdoor “cloak”—a garment of which he was very proud, for he had made it himself, and a great deal of thought had gone into its invention. One of his mother’s regular clients, a one-legged seaman forced onto shore by his disability, had taken to the youngster and had taught him to use a needle—with the wholehearted approval of the lackadaisical Tilda. Though Grince had spurned such nonsense as only fit for girls, old Tarn, the sailor, had quickly—and forcibly—corrected this notion, and the boy was glad of his teaching now, in the chilly nights of the northern spring.