The burning candles and the parchment and the smoking herbs in the brass dish he did not even notice. For his gaze was fixed almost instantly upon the carpeted floor of the pavilion.
There a slim white figure writhed with supple and boneless grace. It was small and slim, and whiter than fresh cream or even the petals of the white rose, and its eyes were amethystine. It was very beautiful.
With a cry of revulsion and alarm, the young guard sprang into the tent and crushed the narrow, wedge-shaped skull of the young white serpent under his heel.
In the gloom of its dark prison, the goblin smiled a slow, slow smile.
Sphix meant a small sly animal; a thief and nuisance in fowlyards and brooderies. And Sphix meant Sphix himself, who was lean and long-eyed as his namesake, as hungry and as full of hubris when hunger drove him.
But not straight to the target. To go any straight line, his master Khussan had taught him, was predictable; and to be predictable was to be dead (no matter that Khussan was lately dead himself, swinging from the gibbet far down on dockside, far from nobles’ tents and merrymakers and the festive business of the commons).
Thus for mistakes. And ambitions.
Sphix moved the way Khussan had taught him, all ease and smiles—handsomer than Khussan, coming up on manhood but not yet arrived. He had the long eyes of the east; the dark curling hair of the west; the swarthy complexion of the north—in fact, Sphix imagined all sorts of lineage for himself. His mother had no memory, she said, where
she
had come from, only of wandering the aisles of tables amid the color and the noise ’til old Melly took her in and taught her serving; and she had a thousand lovers (some lords) of every land in all the world.
Mostly he remembered drunken louts and his mother dying the hard way, of one of Melly’s cures; but those were the bad days—his father was a lord: his mother told him so. Her last lover was Khussan, who beat her when he was drunk and made her laugh when he was not.
But his true father
was
a lord: his true father was all of Ithkar Fair. Like the fair he was seasonal—starving most of the year and living in gray misery; going sleek and fine and gay-coated at fairtime—
Wear good clothes, Khussan insisted. When a thing’s snatched, they look for poverty.
And smile at the ladies (Khussan would) and look thoughtful at the tables (Khussan would ponder a thing oh so carefully, and something would fall off a table right into his pocket when he moved).
Bones, by now, he was.
Never go direct to the target. Move not arrowlike, but like the evolutions of the snake.
Even if one’s belly ached with hunger.
The temple hove up ahead, above the gay-striped canopies of the aisles. Here and there were real buildings. Here the crowds were lords and ladies, Ithkar folk in stiff, brocaded robes; foreigners in silk; veiled folk and the gossamer-dressed Khoi. There was a gradation of wealth within the aisles. It began with trinkets and gold-washed brass, proceeded to semiprecious stones, and worked its way to the rarest and most fabulous of goldsmithing and gem-carving, in shops that had all their displays safe inside, bars upon the windows and guards with quick eyes and no sense of humor at all. Such shops catered to the gentry. The sale of even one such fabled gem was a days-negotiated event, as much for the prestige of the purchaser as for the profit of the treasure merchant; and the object might be worn in the glittering society of the pavilions, the rites of temple, to the awe even of lords.
Sphix knew these things. He was no beggar to keep his eyes on the mud; no common cutpurse to think only of the movements of his prey, and snatch and grab and swill down the meager take in some ale tent down by dockside, penniless by sunrise. Sphix was a
thief,
which, Khussan would say, was part magician, part entertainer, part lord.
He did not, for instance, look about with nervousness. His moves were all-gracious, his stopping at a counter got a merchant’s hopeful glance, and gave him time to cast that backward look only another thief might know for the backtrail-watching it was.
His clothes were not stolen; they were bought. And they were fine enough to walk the aisles in and smile at the ladies and gentlemen in. He knew to a nicety how far up those aisles they would take him. He kept a few small pebbles in his purse to make a convincing weight—nice, bright ones to be sure. (Why, sir, he would say were he ever apprehended and his purse turned out—mere luck-pieces! I tossed my last in a harper’s cap, I do forget where—should a man walk the fair with gold in his purse? There might be pickpockets and cutpurses, so I’ve heard. . . .)
He weighed a bracelet, smiled at the old merchant, and put it back. He felt a jostle from the crowd and turned in indignation—no, not deft enough a move: he could not palm the brooch. He caught himself on the counter and gave it up: no second try at the same booth. The merchant had not followed the crowd motion, only him. The man was too alert. He smiled, chaffered a bit with the old man, got his face to relax—“My mother had such a brooch, all set in rubies it was, with the blessed Evin’s face—”
“Garnets,” the old man said, running a gnarled finger around the rim. “Fine garnets. Mark the setting, set firm, here, rub it across your sleeve—see, not a snag. That’s my craftsmanship. Hold it to the light.”
“Oh, it’s very fine. Very fine. I like this.” He felt dizzy, the brooch held thus against the sun, the light shining in his eyes with the white, white brilliancy of late summer. He felt his knees go weak, the penalties of hunger. He blinked, lowered his arm, handed the brooch back.
“Young gentleman?”
“I haven’t the funds just now—truly—” He locked left and right, scanning the crowd while his knees wobbled and his stomach felt as empty as his purse. He did not clutch the counter. “I’ll remember this booth; I’ll be back for it—could you save it for me?”
“No, no, young gentleman, first come, it’s bought; a man has to— Are you well, lad?”
“The sun—I think I’ve forgotten to eat.”
He wandered off, steadier now. Hunger did that, came and went, along with the wobbles. But he knew a panic gnawing as famine.
Khussan hanged. He had crept up later to the gibbet; and the sight haunted him, the twisted shape against the sun.
His nerve was gone. Four days he had not scored, not the least trinket. He had felt the unsteadiness in his moves, known his every flaw. A dead man had taught him. The best that he knew was hanging in the sun, food for birds. Khussan had failed—all his laughter, all his studied good humor, all the skills and tricks had not saved him. Something he had done was wrong and Sphix did not know what it was.
He did not know. And day by day, as the thought had been growing in him from the day Khussan died, he grew hungrier, and more driven, and (Khussan’s precepts advised him) more a danger to himself.
Don’t steal hungry, Khussan would say.
Don’t work sick; or mad; or cocky, either.
It’s an
art,
lad.
But those thoughts were dead. The birds were picking them from Khussan’s brain, through empty eyeholes.
And day by day the hand that had faltered from fear grew unsteadier still with hunger.
Fool,
Sphix told himself with Khussan’s inner voice.
Fool
— walking up the aisle, remembering he should not be hurrying. (Where was he hurrying? to what? from what? He did not know.) Ahead were the too good shops, the too fine lords; the priests in black and glittering brocade, where even merchants wore robes fine enough for the jewels that they sold. His clothes were not good enough for this. He turned aside, bumped a shopper, and stammered a plea for pardon, walking on. The man likely checked his purse after. Suspicion. All it took was a finger pointed, a cry raised, and they would take him like Khussan—
Voices buzzed in his ears. The sun beat down on his head, making a red blaze behind his lids when he blinked. Sell his fine clothes, that he could do—there were the secondhand booths where he had gotten them; but such things always bought dear and sold at a pittance: the dealers knew the desperation of those who traded for their rags. A meal or two if he dealt sharp, a solitary meal; and after that, going in some worse garments, confined to a territory where thieves were more common and more guarded against, and the eyes of the merchants sharp indeed. Oh, Lords, he already had the wobbles, had already backed off from one gullible old man—
No. No. No.
Think calm, lad, Khussan would say.
Go at it calm. Laugh. Laugh gentle. Feel it. Be it. A true thief’s an actor, juggler, artist. A true thief has pity, has a heart: steal what’s little missed, steal from them as little miss it, steal from them as deserve to have it lost. Then the laughter comes, then you can laugh from the eye outward, and love them you steal from. That’s the way.
He smiled. He dallied with a new counter, ignoring the gold-washed glitter, a professional eye going past all of that to the opals, the cameos in onyx, the ring—tourmaline; the jade, milk and green; the precious tiny coral that was worth everything on the table—never steal that.
That
would be missed. He smiled at the merchant and blessed the arrival of a clutch of teenaged girls, which diverted attention one precious instant—
Not long enough. The easy move with the fine opal headed for his sleeve—the worst of all moments. The merchant’s head turned, his nerve broke: he hurried the move, the unforgivable sudden, suspicion-drawing inconsistency; and knew it. He melted backward in the crowd, knowing every move the merchant made without seeing it, the quick dart of the eye over his well-known counter, the opal— Oh, Lords, he was a fool, it was mnemonic, a set of three he had broken—
“Stop that boy, someone stop that boy!”
He kept melting away (don’t run, don’t run, the crowd would not know what boy the merchant meant). There was a general stirring as the crowd examined itself for fault, and he was mostly through it, easing away.
“That one!
Stop him!”
He broke and ran as he had run when he was fruit-nipping in the autumn-market, when his legs were short and the tavern-keepers who kept the few permanent inns had not tried hard to catch him—no finesse in those days, none now, but a heart-thumping race, jostling fairgoers, oh, Lords, himself well dressed and moving wrong, drawing every eye, the fine clothes that had protected him now become the thief-catching mark, individual, describable—
His head swam. Startled ladies dodged him, he them, a knot of priests called out at him—he dived aside, through a curtained tangle of guy-ropes and pegs, and, weaving through the maze behind the tents, hid himself, hugged himself, faint and tucked up as he had hidden beneath the tavern stairs—
“Sphix,” his mother would call. “Oh, Sphix, come out of there, I know where you be, imp—”
He bowed his head and squeezed tears from his eyes; looked up in a flood of sun against the flap. Shadows came and went like the puppet-plays, all strange with dazzle. He thought that he would faint, but fainting was not so easily achieved. Panic passed. No one came. Just the shadows. The hue and cry died down. He was trapped there, in a young gentleman’s clothes, in a place no sensible young gentleman would get himself, in a place no thief ought to, and himself gut-aching with hunger and exhaustion, while the shadows dimmed and the day waned, and the ground beneath him went cold.
The voices grew fewer: there were the shouts of merchants to apprentices, closing down.
(Oh, Lords, don’t let them move the flap aside.)
The voices grew louder, though fewer: the walled shops shut their iron gates and barred their shutters for the night; the lords and ladies of the pavilions sought entertainments among their own rank; the merchants of the tents rolled up their displays and betook them to safekeepings the temple provided (for a fee), to roister or commiserate the night away down among the taverns. Ithkar Fair changed its dress and became carnival, ceased glitter and became torchlit gaud. The gimcrack dealers ruled the night; the sellers of gold-washed trinkets, of glass gems and tinsel crowns, of luck-pieces and charms of spectacular bad taste.
But some jewelers merely changed displays, or put apprentices on duty, or rented for the night.
Into such a transformation Sphix crept, from beneath the overlap of two canvas displays; and if he staggered, it was not unlike the young bravos (some of them nobility pretending otherwise) and ruffians (some pretending nobility they had not) who careened through the aisles in this quarter beneath the temple’s very walls, their wits and their manners left in the ale tents. They shouted and laughed, jostling him this way and that.
He walked—he knew only direction now. He lost whole tracts of the course, passing through the aisles, knocking into drunken celebrants; and thinking, thinking how quickest to turn the stone to some few coins, to fill his stomach; roust old Tomek out and trade these clothes before the dawn—
The tents and booths began to be those of clothiers, like the gimcrack arts of near-the-walls, the cheaper goods left on display, the gaudy, the tawdry, the well used. He looked about him, dazed, trying to know where he might be. A set of carousers bore down on him.
One caught his arm, swung him with them—he tried to fling out again, feigning merriment. The arc swept on, imperiled tent-pegs and ropes, bore him stumbling beyond the torches of the aisle.
Then he struck and darted to escape in panic; but one seized him by the sleeve—it tore. He ran, stumbled on a guy-rope, and sprawled among the stakes.
They hauled him up again. “It’s Khussan’s lad,” one said. He knew that voice without the torchlight that filtered through the tents and showed the black-bearded man, the broken nose, the gapped teeth. “Eh, pretty boy? What’s it have? What’s it take today? It gives it to us, eh?”
He said nothing. They found the stone; he knew they would. He knew they would hit him then, Coss and his little band. Not while Khussan was alive; but the master thief was dead, and the carrion birds moved in. He shut his eyes, squinted one open again.