“ ’Twas your nuncle sent ye off?” Skif ventured.
Halcom nodded, and his face shadowed. “My existence was an embarrassment,” he admitted sourly. “My uncle feared that my presence in his household would cast a shadow over some pending betrothal arrangements he was negotiating. My father — his younger brother — has no backbone to speak of, and agreed that I ought to be persuaded to a vocation.”
“What?” Skif asked indignantly. “They figger you'd scare the bride?”
“My uncle suggested that the prospective bride's father might rethink his offer if he thought that deformity ran in my family,” Halcom said bluntly, his mouth twisting in a frown. “Since my parents are dependent on his generosity for a place, I suppose I can't blame them…” He sighed deeply, and his expression lightened. “In the end, really, I'm rather glad it happened. I had very little to do with myself, I'm really not much of a scholar, and — well, needless to say, I'm not cut out for Court life either. I've always loved animals, and neither they, nor my fellow Brothers, care about this wretched leg of mine. And I did manage to shame my uncle into making a generous donation when he dumped me here.”
Skif nodded his head, concealing as best he could that he was racked by an internal struggle. He really, truly wanted to be Halcom's friend. And he really, truly, did not want to make another friend that he knew he would only lose.
I ain't stayin' here forever, he told himself sternly. He wouldn' be so nice if he knew what I was. Hellfires, he'd turn me straight over to th' Watch if he knew what I was!
But he could almost hear the place whispering to him. It wanted him to stay. He could have a friend again. No one here would care what he had been, only what he was now, and what he might become. Oh, he'd never be rich — but he'd never starve either.
He steeled himself against the seductive whispers of peace. Him? Bide in a place like this? Not when he had a debt to repay! Not when there was someone out there that was so ruthless he would do anything to anyone who stood in his way!
Besides, this place would put him to sleep in a season. He'd turn into a sheep inside of a year. And if there was one thing that Skif had no desire to become, it was a sheep.
“Well, I imagine you've heard more than enough to send you to sleep about me,” Halcom said, hauling himself to his feet again. “And I still have my charges to attend to. I won't keep you from your own duties any more, lad — but do remember what I've told you, and that if you want a second letter of commendation to go with the Prior's when you leave, I will be happy to write one for you.”
That last, said as Halcom turned to go, had the sound of a formal dismissal, superior to inferior.
There, you see? he taunted that seductive whisper. I ain't a friend to the likes of a highborn, even if his people did cast 'im off. A mouse might's well ask a hawk t'be his friend. Hawk even say yes — till he got hungry.
* * * * * * * * * *
Another week passed, and the city was struck with a heat wave that was so oppressive people and animals actually began dying.
The Queen closed the Court and sent everyone but her Privy Council out of the city. But there was nowhere for the poor and the working classes to go, and even if there had been, how could ordinary people just pack up and leave? How would they make a living, pay their bills, feed their children? Life in Haven went on as best it could. As many folk as could changed their hours, rising before dawn, working until the heat grew intolerable, enduring as best they could until late afternoon, then taking up their tasks again in the evening. The Prior knew a clever trick or two, though, and the Brethren began going through the poorer neighborhoods, teaching people what the Prior had taught them — for although it was the Lord of the Beasts that the Brethren served, nevertheless, Man was brother to the Beasts.
Water-soaked pads of straw in windows somehow cooled the air that blew through them, so long as there was a breeze. And if there wasn't, the cheapest, more porous terra-cotta jars filled with water and placed about a room also helped to cool the air as the water evaporated from them. Stretching a piece of heavy paper over a frame, then fastening that frame by one side to the ceiling and attaching a cord to a corner created a huge fan that would create a breeze when the winds themselves didn't oblige; there were always children to pull the cord, and they didn't mind doing so when the breeze cooled them as well. And the same cheap terra cotta that was used for those jars could be made into tiles to be soaked with water and laid on the floor — also cooling a room or the overheated person who lay down on them. It helped; all of it helped.
People were encouraged to sleep on flat rooftops or in their gardens or even in parks by night, and in cellars by day.
But there was always someone greedy enough to want to make a profit from the misfortune of others. Suddenly the dank and dark basement rooms that had been the cheapest to rent became the most expensive. Not all landlords raised the rents on their cellars, but many did, and if it hadn't been so stiflingly hot, there might have been altercations over it.
But it was just too hot. No one could seem to get the energy even to protest.
Skif was terribly frustrated; it was nearly impossible to move around the city by night without being seen! And yet, with all of the wealthy and highborn gone, it should have been child's play to continue his vendetta! Why, the huge manors and mansions were so deserted that the Master Thief must have been looting them with impunity, knowing that no one would discover his depredations until the heat wave broke and people returned to Haven.
Hellfires, Skif thought grumblingly, as he returned from an errand to the market, through streets that the noon heat had left deserted. It'd be easier to make a run by day than by —
Then it hit him. Of course! Why not make his raids by day? He was supposed to be resting, like everyone and everything, during the heat of the day. No one would miss him at the Priory, and there would be no one around to see him in the deserted mansions, not with the skeleton staffs spending their time in the cool of the wine cellars, most of them asleep if they had any sense!
That's pro'lly what the Master Thief's doing! he thought with glee. He was delighted to have thought of it, and enjoyed a moment of mental preening over his own cleverness.
Well, he certainly would not be wearing his black “sneak suit” for these jobs. His best bet was to look perfectly ordinary. The fact was, he probably wouldn't even need to get in via the rooftops; the doors and windows would all be unlocked. After all, who would ever expect a thief to walk in the kitchen door in broad daylight?
He brought the bag of flour and the basket of other sundries he'd been sent for to the kitchen and left it on the table.
The Brother who acted as cook had changed the routine because of the heat. A great many things were being served cold; boiled eggs, cheese, vegetables and so forth. Actual cooking was done at night and in ovens and on brick stoves erected in the kitchen courtyard. The biggest meal of the day was now breakfast; the noon meal was no longer a meal, but consisted of whatever anyone was able to eat (given the heat, which killed appetites), picked up as one got hungry, in the kitchen. Big bowls of cleaned, sliced vegetables submerged in water lined the counters, loaves of bread resided under cheesecloth, boiled eggs in a smaller bowl beside them. There was butter and cheese in the cold larder if anyone wanted it, which hardly anyone did.