Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) (4 page)

  
I’m in over my head,
the young thief realized. Careful to remain in the enormous shadow of the royal fortress, he tilted his head back in an attempt to see the top. He could not.

  
“Young Maister?” a wheedling, wobbly voice called out to him. He looked down again; not ten feet from him was a portable wooden skeleton of a shop, with canvas stretched across the beams to stop the sun when necessary. The caller was a hunched little man whose skin was shriveled and red from a life spent in the desert. His wares were precious pearls and gems of every shape and color- mostly fake, if Gribly knew anything about merchants of this kind. He wore the puffy, complicated dress of a noble, bunched at the elbows and knees with tight, white boots and gloves to match. They looked over-worn and old, though well-pressed.

  
Gribly inclined his head slightly, as he thought a nobleman would, and stepped over to the jeweler’s booth. The wrinkly man rubbed his calloused palms together and then ran his fingers through thin, greasy brown hair flecked with white.

  
“Ah, Maister,” he began, “You looked, how I should say… a bit, ah, lost?”

  
“Not at all,” sniffed Gribly in his best nobleman’s accent. “I am merely looking… searching for a particular… a particular item which I hath not yet borro- not yet found.” The lad could have kicked himself for almost giving away his plans, but he thought his accent was well-pretended enough.

  
“Ah…” replied the wrinkled man, rubbing his chin now. He winked at Gribly in a way the boy didn’t like, almost as if he knew what was going on. “And this item, ah, might be it found here, among my humble collection?”

  
“I don’t believe it is so,” answered Gribly, and now he
knew
he sounded wrong.

  
“Ah…” shrugged the wrinkled man again, and the youth had just decided to make his escape when he began again. “You don’t, ah, seem to speak the tongue… quite like a lord, Maister. Why, ah, may that be?”

  
“I…” stuttered the thief.

  
“Could it be,” wondered the merchant in a lowered voice, “Ah… Maister is very bold, if he thinks he can get so far, and not be uncovered, ah, or discovered…”

  
Gribly turned to run.

  
“Wait!” grunted the wrinkled man, lurching across the table of jewelry to grip the turbaned lad on the arm. His grasp was iron-hard and impossible to break. “Wait,” he repeated, slower this time.

  
“What do you want with me?” Gribly hissed, dropping his pretended accent completely and hoping that no one nearby noticed what was going on. He would attack this man if he had to, but only if there was no other way out.

  
“Nothing, nothing at all, Maister,” smiled the jeweler deceptively., “But, ah,
you
may want something from
me
.” His voice was intensely serious now.

  
“Nothing comes to mind,” snapped Gribly.

  
“Then, Maister, you would not want to know… ah, that you have been discovered already, perhaps?”

  
“Well…” stalled Gribly, ready to brain the man.

  
“But not by me.”

  
“What?”

  
The wrinkled man pulled Gribly close enough to hear what he whispered next.
“Speed. Silence. Stealth. Someone is coming for you, Maister. Leave before it is too late…”

  
Another thief? It wasn’t impossible, he decided. The youth turned his head, saw a flash of black in the seething crowd of colors, and turned back to the jeweler.

  
“What’s going on? Who’s found me?” The merchant glanced beyond him and his face paled.

  
“Too late…” he gasped, and gave Gribly a shove that propelled him backwards into the street, where he collided with another man, fell to the ground, and was swallowed up by the thronging crowd. It was not a moment too soon: as the youth struggled to his feet and slipped away, he could hear the wheedling, high voice of the jeweler protesting loudly behind him, something about “Never having seen the boy in my life.”

  
All at once, the protesting stopped. As Gribly allowed himself to be swept away by the current of market-goers, he chanced a glance behind him, hopping up and down to get a glimpse over the sea of heads. What he saw was the jeweler, white and trembling, held by the throat by a tall, ghostly man in a sweeping, blood-red jacket. The man was speaking, and even without hearing him, Gribly felt cold and afraid as he never had before. The jeweler’s head shook vigorously in the suffocating grip of his assailant. Finally he raised his finger and pointed… in the opposite direction.

  
In the next second he was lost to view, but not to thought.
He’s helping me!
Gribly was shocked. No one had ever risked their life for him before, and certainly not anyone from the higher parts of the city. But what puzzled him even more was that the jeweler, apparently, knew the same thieves’ motto he and the old pickpocket did. Could there be some sort of brotherhood between the two? Had the old thief who’d taught him somehow had connections with thieves in the noble and merchant classes?

  
It opened up all sorts of ideas for Gribly, and he would consider them later. The balm, and then escape, were his first priorities, no matter what kind of ghoul was after him.

  
Another tense, several minutes passed before the disguised thief found what he had been looking for. On the very edge of the courtyard where the royal market was held sat a huge, circular canvas tent as tall and broad as a house, striped gold and violet, with an endless array of ropes and thin cables spreading outward around it, each nailed into the sandy ground with wooden stakes. Behind the tent rose the third set of walls in Ymeer: Blast Palace, where Dunelord Ymorio kept court and ruled the city from his great golden throne.

  
The common people detested Ymorio, but his legion of guards and his friendship with the oppressive and powerful noblemen of the city kept him in power. He was a cruel but capable ruler, easily managing his land without much contact with the outer world, other than his contacts through trade. Gribly would have loved to see what wonders were contained in the Dunelord’s own palace, but even with his climbing gift he knew it was an impossible task.

  
As soon as he peeked inside the enormous tent-flap, he knew he had come to the right place. The herbs, potions, and delicacies sold inside needed more than mediocre cooling from the arid desert air, and so a veritable army of servants almost as snobbish as their masters had been enlisted to provide a constant stream of coldstones, ice, and ice-water from cellars carved a half-mile deep below Blast Palace’s foundation.

  
The tent’s interior held about twenty of the land’s most prosperous merchants, with their retinue and wares. Each one dealt only in the most volatile and rare objects any man, nobleman, or king could desire: exotic fruits and candied nuts, concoctions for skin and hair, beauty-potions and heartstringers, and, of course, the healing balm Old Murie needed so badly for her joints and wrinkles. All this, Gribly saw in an instant- then a bronze-clad guard saw him peeking in and addressed him gruffly.

  
“Hoi, lad! What’re you doing with your master’s cloak and turban? I’ll have you skinned!”

  
Foiled, the boy let go of the door-flap and darted away around the back of the tent, in the small space between the canvas and the wall of Blast Palace. Speedily and silently he pulled the turban off his head and allowed his wild yellow bangs to fall into his eyes again. Dropping the head-piece in the dirt, he quickly shrugged off the rest of his disguise, then straightened his simple serf’s tunic and britches, patting the pouch that still hung at his side. Deception had got him far enough; now it was time for some good, old-fashioned thievery.

Chapter Three:
The Sorcerer’s Scream

  
The next minute was a blur of action. Gribly could do more with sand and stone than just climb them, and soon he had dug out a sizable hole in the ground under the tent’s side- ground that was too solid for a pick or shovel. His palms seemed to mold it at will, and after a few more scoops he could easily slip under the edge of the heavy canvas without being noticed. He had judged his digging spot correctly; there was no one near the place where he crawled in, and he was in luck, for he had crawled out behind the very display of healing concoctions he needed.

  
As soon as he saw the creamy, off-white balm in its transparent, multifaceted crystal sphere, the thief knew that being caught stealing it would bear the penalty of death. He had seen Old Murie use the last of her own sphere some time ago. She had said of it was that it was worth more than a king’s jeweled crown in some places- Ymeer being one of those.

  
“Then I’ll steal the king’s crown itself for you!” Gribly had roguishly declared, and the old gypsy had laughed.

  
The young thief was not laughing now. He was hiding behind a large, hollow stone cube upon which sat a giant candelabrum with sixteen glowing candles; behind him was the entry hole, and past a jumble of boxes and crates off to his right sat one of the most marvelous things he had ever seen: a stone fountain shaped like a man-high marble pillar with four marble chutes spreading out from its peak at the four points of the compass.

  
The chutes ended atop smaller square pillars, and were filled with ice. Amid the ice sat many different spheres, vials, and crystalline containers, each of which held some sort of balm or potion. Cold water bubbled up from inside the central pillar, ran down the chutes, cooling the balms, and disappeared into the square end-pillars. That was not what surprised Gribly. What did were the pipes, cranks, and gears that ran from pillar to pillar, from the center to the outside, and even up around the chutes to connect with one or two of the vials.

  
It was a machine, something a lad from the slums could never have imagined. The oddness of the whole thing caught him momentarily off guard, then he inched forward among the crates until he was mere feet away from the crystal sphere he needed. He had forgotten how quiet it was: few patrons were rich enough to afford the precious wares the tent had to offer. From behind a particularly large box he spied out over the deceptively peaceful scene: a few richly-clad lords and ladies with grotesquely painted faces browsing from one merchant to another. Many of the booths were empty of customers, and this, coupled with the watchfulness of the guards posted at intervals throughout the tent, made Gribly extremely cautious.

  
He inched forward another half-foot, and then his chance came. A trumpet blew loudly outside the tent, the door-flap was thrown back, and a crier could be heard announcing to all within:

  
“Make way for our sovereign ruler, Ymorio Highfast, Dunelord of Ymeer!”

  
The Dunelord- here?
Suddenly Gribly was afraid that his plans might not run so smoothly after all. He peeked up over the crate where he hid.

  
A procession was entering the tent: two rows of four black-skinned guards in silver plate-mail, with wild, knotted locks of ebony hair and tattoos covering rippling, muscled arms. At their backs were slung wide, long scimitars made of beaten steel, and they carried heavy, painted wooden shields. Behind them walked the crier with his trumpet and strange pointed ears and high, nasally voice, and among them walked Ymorio himself.