Honour Thief

Jack

I was pretty sure no one was in the building. Though I was pretty sure of a lot of things and they often turned out wrong.

I slid in through the window, the sill scraping against my stomach. I took a moment to let my eyes adjust to the darkness of the room. The streetlight flickered in through the window, showing all the dust on the old furniture. This was a house, but it looked like no one lived there. This seemed to be for storage.

Then again, we lived in a place that was meant to be for storage.

I listened for noise. None. Pretty sure no one was here. I stepped across the floor, all careful. I heard a creak. I stopped. Listened. Blood pounded heavy in my ears. This was a little more fun.

I couldn’t hear any other creak. It could’ve been some wind blowing through a tree or something.

Hopefully.

Still, I moved across the floor a little quicker, looking for the thing Wolv sent me in for. None of us really knew why the hell we were doing this. And that was the way Wolv’d started running things.

I glanced out the other window in this room. Saw Gaelle and Pietr outside. Gaelle’s pretty face with the streetlight on it. Pietr with the flask, making himself more unpredictable with the way he drank.

They were still there. So no problems so far.

I crept over and picked up the metal piece Wolv’d described. It looked like it could be used in the crappy stills Wolv made overproof alcohol in. I didn’t see how this could be important, but whatever.

Doing these random little illegal errands was part of being in the gang.

And being in the gang was good. At least for me. At that time.

At that point, my time in the gang was actually the best part of my life.

I’m not joking.

I turned, real slow, balancing my weight so I wouldn’t make a creak.

This took a while. But I’d heard noise. Someone could be in there. I needed to take this slow.

“Jack, you still in there?” I heard Ely’s whisper come up from the window I’d slid in through.

“Ely, you idiot,” I hissed.

I heard a thunk down the stairs. Froze. There was more noise, like murmuring, then the creaking of someone coming up the stairs.

“Prakkt!” I blurted as I darted over to the window.

Yeah I’m foul-mouthed. I’ve cleaned up a bit lately, but at that time I was real bad.

I started climbing over. I heard the creaks of the person’s steps on the stairs come faster. Looked down at Ely and motioned for him to get the prakkt away from there.

I jumped down just as I heard the person step onto the level floor. I landed on my ankle weird, and kinda limped as me and Ely ran close to Pietr and Gaelle across the street to tell them to get the prakkt away from there too.

I detoured over to a dock and chucked that piece of metal I didn’t know why I stole into the ocean. That’s what Wolv’d said to do. Then I darted back and ran like hell along with the others.

Two jims had come out of the house I’d filched that weird metal thing from, and they were coming after us. But they weren’t that fast.

I ran up next to Gaelle and took ahold of her and brought her into a little alley. Rounded the corner, went down another little backstreet and hid us behind a huge dustbin. Part of me didn’t always like when she came along on these things.

I almost heard her rolling her eyes. I know, she knows what she’s doing. She can handle things herself.

I just like to double-check.

We sat there keeping the breaths in our chests. Panting real quiet.

I moved my head back so I could see through a slit in the dustbin crate. It didn’t take long for my eyes to see clearly in the dark. I did a lot of these little night errands for Wolv.

I saw one of the jims from the house come along the street I’d run me and Gaelle down. He stopped right at the little alley we were hiding in. I saw his figure in the streetlight. Just a black shadow standing still, chest rising and falling with the breathing from the run.

His head turned down our way.

I grabbed Gaelle’s arm. I dunno, it was like some kinda reflex, my hand just grabbed onto her arm. She rolled her eyes again. Well okay, I didn’t see it. I just know that she did. It’s what she woulda done.

The shadow of the thug who’d come out after us stayed looking down our way for a while. His head turned back. His chest got bigger slowly, like he was filling with anger. Then he turned and went back.

He hadn’t seen us.

I’d hidden Gaelle. And I just blended right in with the trash.

We waited a few moments before getting up and heading out. Ely and Pietr found us just around a corner.

“What was that?” Pietr asked.

I shrugged. “Dunno. D’you think we should tell Wolv about it?”

Ely made a face. “Let him stay in the dark. He’s keeping us in the dark.”

“I think it would be stupid to not tell him,” Gaelle said, “He’s the only one who knows what’s going on. What if the fact that that man saw you changes everything? We don’t know that it doesn’t.”

Gaelle always had to be all sensible like this.

It was probably kind of good that she came along on these things.

We were a fair ways away from the place I’d burgled, in a little narrow backstreet that the flickering light from the gas streetlamp barely reached. Out of the deserted dock area and into the neighbourhood everyone called “the Ports”.

Pietr pulled out his flask and had a swig of whatever was in it. He passed it around to everyone else. Cheap, bitter rakja. The stuff I was used to.

A man that was all well-dressed with some nice coat and hat and walking in the regular street full of light gave us a not-so-pleased look as he went past.

That happened a lot outside the South End. So I usually liked to stay in the South End. It just felt like where I belonged.

All the decents seemed to agree.

“Drink more Jackie boy,” Pietr said, handing me the flask again. It had just made another round.

Pietr’d noticed I hate being called Jackie, so he made sure to throw that nickname in every now and then.

“We’re finishing it, and you did all the work.”

I took it and had the rest.

Pietr started clapping, and Gaelle and Ely joined in. Ely joined in. I smiled and looked at the ground, all awkward, as I handed the flask back to Pietr.

After downing the rakja we headed back to the South End, where the warehouse was. Pietr led the way, walking in front of everyone all confident. Pietr’d started rich. He hid that as much as he could—which wasn’t much. No matter how hard he tried he slipped up and it turned obvious. Even right then, just walking back to the South End, you could tell. He was taller than most, and had this confidence none of the rest of us at the warehouse did. I was sure it was the confidence that came from growing up with money, and teachers, and the idea that you mattered and could do something important one day. Now there he was. Skinny. Outcast. Living in the warehouse. A little too keen on drinking, but even with decents he handled himself in a way that showed he felt like he was on even footing with them.

Ely went behind Pietr, refusing to walk next to “the freak”, his narrow pinched face with the hardened expression. I remember him showing up at the warehouse all babyfaced and innocent. He trained himself into that hardened look. Pretty sure I liked him better when he knew he wasn’t tough.

We thumped over the little bridge. Well, I sorta hobbled ’cause my ankle was still messed up. The streets turned from badly cobbled to dirt. Streetlamps got fewer and further between. Houses went from brick to wood to shacks made outta scrap, and tenement blocks rich people in charge’d decided to put there. The tension in my shoulders let up the further along we went.

Gaelle strode along next to me. Quiet. Calm. Subtle. Sensible. I remembered when she showed up at the warehouse too. Also quiet, sensible. She’d been weirdly scared and real brave at the same time. Unsure about what she was getting herself into, though clearly with plenty of guts ’cause she struck out on her own to find other people like her.

I’d been at the warehouse the longest. Well, Wolv and Minna had been there longer, Telek too. I think I showed up there when I was about … ten? I think something around there. Right after my behckdwor. Now I was seventeen, maybe eighteen. I’m not too sure. Kid’s birthdays aren’t really something people keep track of where I come from.

Soon we were at the warehouse. Like some kind of palace in the middle of everything else. Bigger, sturdier, more stable. Brick and metal mixed in with the wood.

Pietr got to the door first and pushed it open. Ely and Gaelle went in after. I went in last.

The inside of the warehouse was warm and bright and kinda stuffy. I saw Pietr head up the metal grate stairs to the room he shared with me and Ely. Gaelle opened this giant cupboard thing we’d built and started looking for food. Ely headed over to the other giant room on the main floor of the warehouse.

I heard Ely say something to someone and then heard Wolv’s voice shout: “Hey Jack!” He didn’t sound too happy.

I went over to the giant room with the stills. I had things I wanted to say to Wolv too. Ely’d had a pretty good point about him keeping us in the dark.

I got into the side of the warehouse with all the stills. Wolv was standing in between Ely and a boiler that didn’t have a fire going under it: it wasn’t working right. That was pretty normal.

“Ely says you got seen,”

I looked at Ely, the pok. “Yeah, ’cause this one wouldn’t shut up,” I moved my arm out at Ely.

Ely tossed his head, all angry and offended, and headed back into the main room everyone hung out in.

“Who saw you jims?” Wolv asked. His eyes were bloodshot, with grey circles under them. People’d been talking about how he hadn’t been sleeping too deep lately. Something bad was going on.

“Some big jim with broad shoulders,” I told him.

“And?”

Seriously? “I don’t know, it was dark, and we were kinda a little bit focused on running away. And we kinda had no clue who else could be there.”

“What got up your ass?” Wolv started messing around with a wrench and different bolts that maybe would fit on one of the bits joining the still to the barrel.

“What!?”

“It’s like you got some roach squirming around up your ass or something. What’s your problem?”

“Suddenly we’re in the dark. All the prookin’ time.”

“Oh so you’re mad ’cause I didn’t take the time to tell you every last prakkting detail this time.”

“No! You used to tell us what these little missions were for. And things like where we were going-“

“-I told you that, you got there-”

“-Who owned the place, why the prakkt we were there. Now you got me stealing bits of still and chucking them into the ocean for shits and giggles, and you’re pissed off when I can’t come up with the name of who might’a saw me.”

Wolv went back to fighting with some bolt near the top of one of the boilers. “You don’t always need to know everything about what’s going on,” he said, “I know what’s happening. It’s all working together.”

“We’ll see how long that lasts if you keep not telling us anything.”

Wolv stopped. Turned to me. Dropped the wrench. It clattered on the stone slabs that made up the floor. He got this serious look in his eyes. Stared me down, all threatening. “What d’you mean by that?”

He got what I meant. Wolv thought he was way scarier than he was. I guess normal people were probably scared of him, but I was way less scared of Wolv than I was of normal people. “How long can you expect us to cooperate when you won’t give us a prakkting clue?”

“Remember those three weeks sleeping in that alley?”

The top of my back and my face got hot. I crossed my arms and looked at him, but didn’t say anything.

I remembered. But wished I didn’t.

He cocked an eyebrow, “You wanna go back there?”

The heat was pounding in my chest now. I didn’t say anything.

“Then do what I tell you.”

The heat kept pounding into my chest and started whirring in my head. I turned around and flipped the thumb at him as I walked back through the door to other main room.

“I wouldn’t make a habit of that,” Wolv called.

Gaelle was still in that main room, eating. I went up the stairs to the room me, Pietr and Ely slept in, and Gaelle’s eyes followed me, all calm and questioning.

Wolv was not a bad boss. I’d had worse when I was a kid and all legal and scrambling around trying to find work in factories. Wolv was pretty insane sometimes, but he didn’t get violent, and I never really felt that scared of him. I worked maybe five hours a day, more or less depending on the day, and a lot of it didn’t feel like work.

Warehouse life was way better than factory life. Except the probably-going-to-hell part.

The next morning I wrapped the still-sorta-sprained ankle all tight in a bandage, headed out for the usual filching routine. I got up and left the warehouse later in the morning, when the others were just getting up. Strode out the kinda busy dirt streets in the South End towards the more busy stone-paved streets in the Ports.

When I got close to the Patriot Park Market there was a decent kid a little younger than me selling papers. He was shouting about some crazy thing that was happening way down in the south - people breaking into a risto’s place. It sounded like a big deal - the decents were all swarming him and he had a way bigger stack of papers than usual. I wanted to know what was going on, but wasn’t gonna ask one of the decents. So I dug in my pockets for change, and went and bought one of the papers, rolled it up and kept it in my right hand to take back to Pietr to read.

Yeah, I know, what was I doing buying a paper? I wasn’t gonna go steal papers from this kid and get him fired. Sure I was a thieving bastard, but I could still have principles.

The Patriot Park Market was really old, and under some giant stone roof thing that Pietr said was from hundreds of years ago. But since so many ristos and other richies decided to shop there, it had the new granite stone paving instead of the really old round stones they used when they built the roof thing.

Pietr was neat to have around, I could ask him about almost anything and he usually had some kinda answer. He seemed to think it was weird that I cared though, and he especially didn’t like if I asked him in front of other people. Apparently knowing stuff was embarrassing. I dunno. Maybe it was the trying-real-hard-to-not-look-like-he-started-rich thing.

Weird.

Anyway, this was a kinda upscale market, but there were still enough other derelicts like me that I didn’t look outta place. So I liked going here. But I couldn’t overdo it or people would know what I was up to.

I got in between all the pillars that held up the giant roof thing and started picking pockets. I passed a couple girls in puffy dresses, slipped my left hand into one of their pockets and pulled out a few cool, round coins. Forced myself to enjoy the buzz it gave me. Also tried forcing down the heavy guilty feeling that always showed up right after.

The next mark was a jim about my age, looking at some magical equipment sold by a refined, serious-looking woman. The man and the woman both had thin silver bands of metal wrapped around their heads. Crowns that showed they were ristos and made their magic stronger. I pulled some money out of the jim’s pocket when I passed him.

I picked out targets based on who was gonna miss the money the least. So the crowns were good because they belonged to money-laden ristos. Ristos could also zap me with one of their “jolts” if they caught me, so they were more fun to steal from too. And okay, sometimes if people were rude to other people or did something asshole-ish I snatched some coins as a sort of revenge.

Yeah, I know, it’s not like pickpocketing is exactly polite, but this is what I’m getting at with the thieveing-bastard-with-principles thing.

I kept filching. From an older lady looking at jewelry, and then a middle aged man with one of those thin silver headbands who’d just bought some magic thing. When the buzz from that started dying, I got this feeling like I was being watched. And it was creepy as all hell. I looked around. Saw this girl, really young—younger than me, probably had just reached her dworacz, or maybe was just about to. It was like my eyes got pulled over in her direction. Like some unseen force made them look at her. She had these narrow trousers and a jacket that did up at the side and looked like it was made outta green leather - what the prakkt? And it was definitely me she was looking at. She raised her eyebrows when I looked back.

Dammit. Did she catch me in the act? I forced my eyes away, turned down another little lane and kept filching.

She appeared again, walking next to a group of young ladies with powdered noses.

This time I moved a little further away and didn’t pick any pockets, and bought some fruit. Looked like I managed to ditch her.

I moved on and picked another pocket. And the girl was there again, several paces away. I saw her through the moving crowds. She looked at me like she knew some secret I didn’t and was mocking me ’cause of it. I decided she definitely saw me stealing, it just seemed like she had no plan to do anything about it.

I wanted to try something. It was risky and I shouldn’t, but it was too fun to resist.

I moved up next to a man talking to a vendor, my heart already beating a little faster just with the thought of what I was gonna do. I glanced around to see if anyone other than this weird girl was watching. Then looked straight into her eyes.

She stood still, looking right back. The crowds of people kept flowing past her, no one giving her a second glance.

Without taking my eyes off hers, I slipped my fingers into the man’s pocket, pulled out two paper bills. Held them up and cocked one of my eyebrows, daring her to do something about it.

Blood pounded in my ears as I put the money in my pocket. Everything got sharper. Peoples’ voices were clearer. Air smelled saltier. I saw more of the texture of the girl’s leather jacket.

This was a full Thief Rush, not the little bitty Thief Rushes —the buzzes, I had earlier. Thief Rushes were amazing.

Then I started heading straight home. Maybe that girl hadn’t done anything yet, but there was no guarantee she wouldn’t go running to the pests after that stunt.

But right after I stepped out from under the huge roof thing covering the market the same damn freaky girl with the weird jacket popped up right in front of me again!

“What the hell!?” I blurted.

“Shhhh!” the girl grabbed my arm and pulled me down a little alley between a couple buildings. She put me with my back against a wall.

“Don’t look so worried,” she said, “I’m not going to tell the police or anything.” She talked with a rhythm I hadn’t heard anyone talk with before. I wondered if she was from here.

Her saying that did make me feel a bit better, but not much.

“How much money did you take today?”

Did I hear that right? “Wh - huh?” I said.

The girl took her arms down and stepped back a bit. She had weird clunky looking boots on. Not dressed anything like girls in Kontrek usually dressed, or like girls who just moved in from the country usually dressed. And she was taller than me, but even close up looked a few years younger. Right around fourteen, when she’d be having her dworacz, becoming an adult. “I just noticed how many people you filched from and how I seemed to be the only person who noticed you doing it.”

I slowly brought my shoulders up to my ears. “I’m good?” I said. There wasn’t really any other explanation for it, even if I didn’t like that the one thing I was really good at was stealing other peoples’ shit.

She waited a bit.

I waited a bit.

“Do -” I started saying right as she started saying “I -”

We stopped.

“Go ahead,” I told her.

“I know someone who needs a good thief. He won’t admit it yet but he does, and you seem like you’re definitely good. So would you be willing to steal something for him if I... Well... If he paid you a lot of money, I mean, a lot. Trust me, I could make sure it’s a really good deal for you. ... Or not, I just was thinking, you might want to do it, and you’d definitely be good for it.”

I wasn’t saying anything ’cause I was kinda reeling in shock. She was talking like a thief was the same as a welder or something. Like I was perfectly respectable. Then she was rambling on like she was worried she offended me. I couldn’t remember anyone ever seeming worried they offended me. “…I…. I don’t think -” I started.

“Well come on, I’ll let you go talk to him and then decide,” she said as she grabbed my arm and started pulling me back through the market.

I stumbled along after her, mainly to make sure she didn’t end up yanking my arm off, trying to not crash into people and stumble over goods as I did. “…Who … Are you?” I asked.

“Oh,” she looked back at me, eyes all bright, “I’m Jo’sook,” Her voice went up at the end of her name, like Jo-SOOK. “Guess maybe I should’ve said that earlier.”

Of course. She was “Jo’sook”. That explained everything. Sav. “What’re you doing?”

“I just told you - I’m looking for a good thief.” She pulled me through the Patriot Park plaza, with the huge fountain that had life-size statues of people.

“Why?” I asked again.

“Because my friend needs one. Hello! Keep up.”

I jogged a bit to try and catch up next to her. She took her grip off my arm and laughed.

Oh, not that kind of keep up. Oops. I looked down a little and felt the back of my neck get hot.

We walked a little without saying anything, then Jo’sook asked, “Hey, what’s the headlines say?” as she knocked at the rolled up paper in my hand.

Prakkt, I didn’t know what they said. But I didn’t wanna tell her that. I didn’t say anything and tried not to look at her.

“Not into the news?” she asked, “Why d’you have that?”

I kept my eyes on the ground to my left. Hoped she’d stop asking about it. This girl was decent, but I felt fine around her. She was being all friendly with me, and it feels kinda weird to admit this, but a decent talking to me just… felt good. She wasn’t even telling me to get lost or anything, just talking to me like I was a real person. It didn’t matter that she was a weird as hell decent, a decent was talking to me.

I didn’t exactly wanna tell her I couldn’t read.

“Wh-what kind of a name is Jo’sook?” I asked after a few awkward paces.

“It’s Piroian,” she said happily.

“So you’re from Piro?”

“Yeah.”

“You look Benkravi.”

“I am Benkravi.”

“But you just said you’re from Piro!”

“I am from Piro,” she said right as we stopped in front of the giant-ass fancy metal gates that kept Risto Land - the nobles’ district - separate from the rest of the city.

“What the prakkt?” I swore under my breath.

“I’m a Benkravi from Piro! It’s not that hard,” the girl said.

I gave up trying to make sense out of this girl as soon as she said she wasn’t going to the police. “No, why are we at the ri- nobles’ place?”

She looked at me, all calm, and shrugged. “This friend of mine’s a noble,” she said like it was nothing.

Yeah, sure. Like someone who schmoozed with nobles was gonna go be all friendly with a street thief. Sure. I looked at her, skeptical.

“No, he is,” she insisted, “Come on.” She slid her hand over part of where the two gates met and they started to swing open, slow and silent.

The inside of my body went cold. Those were not normal gates. Only goddamn magic-wielding ritsos could open those gates that way. I stepped back. “A - are you a risto?”

Her mouth opened, but she paused before saying anything.

Prakkting hell, I just got duped by a risto!

But she wasn’t dressed anything like any risto and she didn’t have a crown! What the prakkt? This was some kinda undercover risto!? Since when did they go undercover?

“Not really,” she said.

So obviously anytime a decent was acting nice they were just trying to pull one over on me. Prakkt.

I tensed up more. “Not really” wasn’t close enough to “no” for me to decide talking to her was safe. “But you can do magic,” I said.

“Yeah,”

Oh God. Another step further back. It took me a moment to be able to talk again, “So did you just do some spell and go out and play spot the thief or something?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” she said, half-laughing.

The next thing I managed to get out of my mouth was a strained “Heh…heh”. I turned and went away, almost running.

“What?” the girl called, “What’s the problem?”

Like hell what was the prakkting problem. I broke into a full run, half-expecting some weird sparks to hit my heels and send me to the ground, like what happened last time a risto was talking to me. Then this “not noble” behck bait kit would magically bind me up without touching me and drag me back so the real ristos could do God Knew What. What would they want with me anyway? What the hell did I do to get some risto trying to hunt me down? Prakkt.

I ran back to the South End. The safe spot. I’d never seen anyone who was anywhere near a risto in the South End, save for the odd factory owner showing up once or twice a year. Maybe if I just stayed there, where I belonged, maybe nothing more would happen with this girl. Maybe. Hopefully.

I finally got back to the warehouse, all outta breath but kinda buzzed from the run. Minna and Telek were messing around with the broken stills. They didn’t ask why I looked like I just ran halfway across the city, and I was pretty okay with that. I was even happy to see Ely when I got upstairs and flopped back on my mattress.