Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel (18 page)

While he gathered the blank papers I needed, and others to disguise their presence, I composed a note to Michael. One that would be less compromising than his, if it fell into the wrong hands.

People talk about a man’s handwriting, or a woman’s, but in fact you can’t always tell gender from people’s penmanship. And I can forge most people’s writing, anyway.

Once the ink had dried, I crumpled my note and then tore off the top half, so it looked like part of a letter blown out of the trash. The remainder said:

…thought Roberta’s playing was quite good. Unlike most girls that age. Why some women think that men will be attracted by bad music, I shall never understand. The Key to the Door of a man’s heart isn’t talent—and without that Magica Key no girl stands a chance. I’m sure you understand. People living in the Countryside have more understanding of the true Keys of the heart. But even if Roberta plays decently, someone has to get that girl out of those gaudy necklaces she favors. So inappropriate for her age—she might as well be wearing the chandelier! Someone should drop her a hint—but that’s so hard to accomplish without offending. Any idea how it might be done? It’s going to be necessary, if she ever wants to marry and get out of that house. I shall be at…

The page ended before I had to make up another name.

I left the ship shortly after that, carrying an armful of ledgers, notes and bills to “study” later. Kitchell joined me as soon as I left the ship, scowling over how long I’d been out of his sight. This didn’t worry me—or it wouldn’t, if he hadn’t expressed his disapproval by walking only a few strides behind me.

I spotted Alessa soon after we left the docks. She had enough craft not to approach me, but skipped down the other side of the street without even glancing in my direction. She would then turn and follow us, waiting for me to drop my reply…which was going to be curst hard with a guard glaring at my back.

As Jack used to say, if the situation doesn’t work for the scam, then change the situation.

I gave it two more blocks, then stared looking for something I could trip over, which wasn’t hard to find—in this rough neighborhood there were plenty of loose cobbles. I rammed my toe into one and then, naturally, flung out my hands to break my fall.

Papers flew everywhere.

Unfortunately, the neighborhood wasn’t quite rough enough. Three passersby stopped to help me gather them, and Kitchell, who’d started forward, stopped.

“These are Master Roseman’s papers!” I said. “Very important. Don’t touch them!”

The mere mention of Roseman’s name had them backing away. I turned to Kitchell. “What are you waiting for? Help me pick them up or they’ll blow away!”

There wasn’t much wind, which was lucky—the papers had scattered over half the street. I’d proclaimed Roseman’s name loudly enough that no one stepped on them, and Kitchell hustled to gather them up. By the time we departed he was walking beside me, carrying an armload of ledgers and notes…and just one piece of paper had been left behind, tucked into a shadowy niche between a rain barrel and a step.

I’d have worried about someone else finding it, but I’d developed considerable respect for Alessa’s craftsmanship.

Back at the townhouse, I’d have plenty of time to forge evidence against Captain Rigsby, and also to copy any evidence of Roseman’s crimes. As long as I didn’t have the ledgers the guards paid little attention to me, and the Rose himself was gone.

As for Jack, he’d never enjoyed “paperwork.” Indeed, the fact that I had some clerkly skills was one of the reasons he’d picked me up in the first place.

When I was finished, I’d take the real evidence back to Rigsby, to hide until I had enough to send to the High Liege’s men. As for the fake evidence, against Rigsby and his friends, I had no fear it would be disbelieved. The difference between a ship’s captain and a bandit is that the one’s called a pirate instead.

Though Rigsby would probably have been an honest man, if not for his boss. The Rose had told me to win the captain’s trust. By offering to rescue him from The Rose, I’d done it in just one day.

If Jack wasn’t the one I was scamming, he’d be proud of me.

<

I had hoped we might linger in town for a time, which might have given me a chance to get Fisk’s reply. But fear of the Rose overcame bruises. We left the man with the concussion and his comrade with the broken arm at the healer’s, and rode back to Rose manor that very afternoon to report our failure.

Tossman, perhaps thinking that the Rose would blame him for his failure to control me, said nothing of the slight disturbance I’d created in the alley. So, although he glared at me a great deal on principle, Roseman was forced to accept a simple victory for the orphans.

Seeing how furious that made him, I resolved to tell them all about it if I ever got the chance.

Except for seeing him at meals—which had a sad effect on my appetite—Roseman’s presence in the house made little impact on my days. Lianna was sleeping well with my potion of magica chamomile, so I’d no need to find other herbs, but I still continued my walks about the countryside. In part, this was because I liked walking in the countryside, even with a guard trailing at my heels. But mostly ’twas to allow the orphans a chance reach me.

I exchanged a few words with anyone I met on those walks, so my guard thought nothing of it when I strolled up to a boy who sat by the stream, fishing. And in truth, I was almost upon him before I recognized Jig under the ragged straw hat.

“Did you mange to contact Fisk?” I tried to look like I was making casual conversation, and I must have succeeded, for my guard came no closer. “I can’t talk too long. Roseman’s here now, though I think he’s leaving in a few days.”

“We know. We always try t’ know where he’s at.” Jig pulled his hook from the stream, saw that his bait had vanished, as it does when fish are clever, and made a sound of disgust.

“I think they’s magica fish in this creek. Been here two days now, and all I catch is little ones.

“Are you using worms?” I asked, drawn in despite myself.

“Cheese. It works as well and it’s easier come by.” He pulled a cloth-wrapped nugget from his pocket and rebaited the hook as he spoke. “If you was t’ climb up that rock pile down the stream there, and admire the view for a while, you might find a bit of paper under a stone at the base of that little oak. And if you wanted to reply to it, you could just leave a bit of paper in the same place, and someone would pick it up when there’s no one around at all.”

“What a clever way to pass messages.” I put my hands in my pockets, so the guard could see I had picked up nothing from my new friend.

“Yah, but if you want t’ use it, then it’s time to make good on your promise. None of your notes is going nowhere, unless they’s a plan for us t’ get at the Rose along with it.”

I should have known this was coming, but the firmness in his voice still took me aback. “Something that could strike at Roseman, without getting us all killed, is going to be tricky. I’d need time.”

“You’ve had time.” Jig pulled his line from the water, and shook his head over the empty hook. “You want your notes delivered? This is the price.”

It seemed that my time had run out.

“Very well. I’ll think of something. But it
will
take time—several days at least. How are you staying here, without shelter? Without arousing suspicion?”

The hat tipped up, and he sent me an amused glance. “I got friends in this neighborhood, Master Michael. They’re too scart of the Rose to take me in, but they’ll let me stay in the barn and help out with the animals now and again. Most of us got folk like that, kin or friends, who’d take us in if they dared.” He rebaited his hook once more. “They felt really bad about what happened to my father.”

His father had been a town guardsman, who’d refused to carry out the sentence one of the Rose’s judicars had passed on an innocent man. The flogging was still carried out, by another of the town guard. And two weeks afterward, Jig’s father had “fallen” into the bay and drowned. A story that quite failed to account for the bruises that covered his body when ’twas pulled from the water.

“I’ll find a way,” I promised. “Somehow, I’ll find a way.”

I wasn’t talking about a simple strike against the Rose, either.

* * *

To avoid casting suspicion on my conversation with the young fisherman, I waited till the next day, when no one was nearby, to scramble up the small, rocky hill. The view from the top was worth the climb, and it made perfect sense for me to sit under the tree and admire that view. Away from the great river’s floodplain, low hills rolled into the distance. I thought I could see the sea on the far horizon, though I couldn’t be sure.

I resolved to make that climb a regular part of my walks, and waited again till I was alone in my room before I finally read the note—though by then I was half-mad with suspense.

It took some moments to translate Fisk’s circumlocution. I was clearly the recipient (female) of the letter, but what was this key—a magica key?—that he considered so necessary? People wealthy enough to own two homes often kept spare keys to some strong box or vault in a different establishment—it made things harder for an untrustworthy servant or a thief, though ’twas also more annoying to reclaim it if the master key was lost. This key Fisk sought clearly unlocked something important, but what? And why was he being so cursed cryptic? Any note found in my possession would be suspect, and without a better description of this key how was I to find it? But he was right that any plan for escape, or for foiling the Rose, must hinge on one or both of us being able to get out of our collars without getting the other killed. If I couldn’t do that, there was no point in worrying about keys or anything else.

I’d already put it off too long. ’Twas time to try magic.

* * *

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” I told Lianna, who had appointed herself my assistant. We were working in the herbery, a room rich with sunlight and the welcoming scents of bruised greenery and damp earth. Almost no one came here besides me—though if anyone should happen by I had a drawer open, ready to sweep my work off the bench before it could be seen. If I got no better results than I had so far, ’twould scarcely matter.

I had asked Lianna for some bit of jewelry to experiment on, and explaining what I wanted it
for
had resulted in a tale that lasted several hours. She was the first person besides Fisk to learn that I had some ability to work magic, and she didn’t seem nearly as horrified as I’d expected. That might have been because she’d been wearing a magica gem around her neck for several years now. Or mayhap she simply thought me deluded or mad—as a self-proclaimed knight errant, this is something to which I’m well accustomed.

My utter lack of success was no doubt adding weight to the deluded and crazy side of the scale, even now.

I tossed the faceted glass oval onto the workbench where we sat, and it clinked against its twin. Once she’d learned what I wanted the stones for, instead of a small tasteful stone, she’d fetched me two crystal pendants from some chandelier swathed in sheets in the attic. Lianna, it seemed, possessed a finding Gift—once she had a clear idea of what I wanted, if ’twas nearby she could locate it. ’Twas a rare Gift, much valued by those who sought precious metal or even underground water, and she’d kept it secret from Roseman. But ’twas valuable for other things as well, and I congratulated myself and her on my choice of allies. I’d asked her about finding the key, without much hope that she could do it from so vague a description, but she said she’d try as soon as Roseman departed. The gems she’d brought me were an excellent match for the stones in our collars, and would have made near perfect replicas…if only I’d been able to make them glow.

“Your sleeping potion works wonderfully,” Lianna consoled me. “I’ve completely stopped taking laudanum.”

She looked the better for it, too. Her eyes were bright, and her nerves didn’t seem so fragile…though that might have been because the time for her husband’s visit was approaching.

“Any competent herb talker can harvest magica,” I said. “And any competent healer would have had you taking it long ago. This…”

I stared in disgust at the harmless bits of crystal. “’Tis as if my magic only comes in times of danger or stress, like fighting a fire or falling off a cliff.”

Or mayhap ’twas my fear of ending up as mad as Roseman’s jeweler that kept me from using it unless my life was in peril. Though I’d once summoned it to calm her, as well—which made as little sense as all else that came with this strange, unwanted Gift.

“Then what about the man who made these,” Lianna touched the collar about her neck. “He may have been mad, but he was directing his magic with conscious thought. Even if he couldn’t make mine work like Gervase’s did.”

“What do you mean?” The stone at her throat glowed as surely as the sun. “Don’t they both go out if one of you dies, or sheds the collar?”

Or killed Atherton Roseman. ’Twas a thought that lingered in my mind more than I liked. I understood, too well, why the orphans had demanded their price.