The Crimson Shard (13 page)

“Nor Livia,” said Sleek.

“By jingo,” Fleet exploded. “We is well shot of her.”

“Not half,” muttered Sunni.

Blaise looked at his empty dishes. “I can’t think straight when I’m still hungry.”

“You has them long hollow legs, like me. We had better keep you fed then. Jenny!” Fleet waved at the landlady for more food. “Nightsneak work has need of fast feet and clever brains.”

“Thanks for helping us,” said Blaise. “But why did you change your minds? You told me you couldn’t.”

“Sunniver learned Throgmorton was about to betray us to the Law,” Fleet answered. “We came to an arrangement. One good turn deserves another.”

Blaise turned to Sunni. “When did you find that out? While you were down smoking the paper on the fire?”

“Yeah. I’ll explain later,” she said, eyeing Fleet. “Right now I want to sort out what we do next. You said you’d see us off in the right direction.”

Fleet scratched dried food off his chin. “So we shall. But you is weaker than newborn kittens at this moment, with nothing in your purses and a price on your heads, no doubt. These streets shall feed on you and drag you under unless you is taught skills forthwith.”

“What skills?” Sunni mopped up soup with a crust of bread.

“Lifting, nimming, snatching.”

“Forking, angling,” added Sleek.

“Aye, all of that. Robbing, to put it simple,” said Fleet, drawing his hand up from under the table. Sunni’s sunglasses were dangling in his fingers. He looked at them curiously and perched them on his nose, looking like an eccentric rock musician in vintage clothes.

“How did you get those?” Sunni snatched them off his face and looked around to find her bag open on the bench next to him.

“Skills,” said Sleek as he handed her bag back.

“There’s other interesting, inexplicable things in your satchel,” observed Fleet, a look of wonder on his long face.

“My bag’s private,” said Sunni, incensed. “Leave it alone.”

“Secrets is safe with nightsneaks.” Fleet put both hands up. “You has very odd things in there, made of odd materials. You comes from somewhere else, do you not? Somewhere strange.”

Blaise swore inwardly. Thieves were the last people he wanted to share their secret with, no matter how trustworthy Fleet claimed they were. But what choice did they have now?

“We’re not from this time,” he said.

“The odd things ain’t old, so you ain’t come from the past. Is you by any chance from a future time?”

“Yes,” Sunni said grudgingly.

Fleet’s eyes practically popped out of his head. “Travelers in time, eh? No wonder Throggie wants to keep hold of you for information. Boys who can tell the future? You could bring down kings and start wars!”

“Aye!” said Sleek, the pipe nearly falling from between his clenched teeth.

“I’d make a terrible fortune-teller,” Blaise said. “We didn’t learn much about English kings at school. I can’t tell one from another, except for King Arthur.”

“How did you come here?” Fleet’s body was tensed against the table, and Sleek puffed on his pipe, his hands trembling with excitement.

Before Blaise could answer, Sunni said, “Throgmorton lured us through the painted door in the workshop.”

For once, Fleet was speechless.

“And we have to go back the same way, but we don’t know how.”

“Starling?” Sleek asked.

“If he knows anything, he won’t admit it. Throgmorton controls him. None of the boys know either.” Sunni hung her head. “Maybe Will wouldn’t be . . . gone, if I hadn’t asked questions.”

“You didn’t know that would happen,” said Blaise.

Fleet finally stopped gaping. “Aye, Blaise is right. Other Academy boys has gone before Will did. And perhaps it was his time anyway, with or without you here.”

“Is that supposed to make us feel better,” Blaise asked, “knowing that Throgmorton sold Will off to be dissected in a science experiment?”

As soon as he saw Sunni’s stricken face, he realized she didn’t know
where
Will had gone. He grasped her shoulder and murmured, “Oh, man, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head and said to the nightsneaks, “Where’s that food?”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the table. When the second helpings arrived, the nightsneaks solemnly gave Sunni and Blaise the lion’s share. Blaise sensed they wanted to ask more questions, but they held back.

Fleet cleared his throat and said, “What will you do?”

“Try to find someone who can help us open the painted door and get past Throgmorton.”

“No easy thing,” said Fleet. “Throggie is crafty, as Sleekie and I know only too well.”

“We have no choice,” said Sunni.

“You has other things to learn, too, or you shall not last long here.”

“Stealing,” said Blaise, licking his soup bowl clean with his tongue, as the nightsneaks had done with theirs.

“How else shall you survive? Everyone needs ready money,” said Fleet, “to climb to the top of the dung heap.”

“I’m not stealing,” said Sunni. “We’ll find another way.”

“When you’ve found it, enlighten us. Unless you intends to dig ditches or haul muck for a pittance, in which case Sleek and I ain’t interested.”

Blaise nudged Sunni with one elbow. “Maybe he’s right.”

“Him up there in heaven will forgive you,” said Fleet. “You is only doing it to preserve yourselves — and return where you belongs.”

“All right, all right,” Sunni said quietly. “Whatever it takes to get home.”

“We starts in the depth of night.” Fleet threw a few coins on the table and rose. “Jenny will give you a place to lock up your belongings, and then later we goes nightsneaking.”

“What is this nightsneaking, anyway?” asked Blaise.

“Hunting,” said Sleek, as suave as a tomcat.

“Nightsneaks prowl in the dark, seeking what there is to have and who to have it from. We never takes from those that have little. Sometimes we stays in lanes where only fools dare go. Other times we finds ways into houses, for there is always a way, when backs is turned. A false delivery, a humble inquiry of the servant — then, squeak, in through the door. We knows the good places inside to wait undisturbed. When the house is silent and full of sleepers, we strike. Then it’s out quick with the night-soil men hauling the household’s dung, or with the laundress come at dawn to take the filthy clothes away.”

“No one’s ever caught you?”

“Never,” said Fleet. “For Sleekie and I was given rather valuable talents when we was born. Eyes sharp as a fox’s, ears keen as a dog’s, and feet clever as a cat’s. We see everything, but nothing sees us. We blend into a mob like phantoms into fog.”

Jeremiah Starling awoke to find Throgmorton standing above him with a lantern.

“Egad, man, you shall bore holes into me, staring in that way!” exclaimed Jeremiah, scrambling up to sitting on his makeshift bed in the workshop. “For a moment I thought you were an apparition!”

The lamplight played across Throgmorton’s flattened nose, sending odd shadows dancing on his face. “Why are the boys not at work? It is ten minutes past midnight already.”

“Another few minutes’ sleep shall not harm them. Not after the night they endured and the loss of William from the workshop.”

A nerve twitched near Throgmorton’s eye. “William is not the only loss.”

“What do you mean?”

“Two more beds are empty. Blaise’s and Sunniver’s.”

Jeremiah fell back against the wall. “How is that possible? This house is locked every night.”

“I suspect Fleet and Sleek took them.”

“What?” said Jeremiah.

“The nightsneaks melt through doors, Starling. No lock is too much for them. You know this.”

“We must confront them when they return!”

“They will not be back,” said Throgmorton. “I am finished with them. I am shutting the business down, and with it goes all connection to Fleet and Sleek.”

“When did you decide this?” Jeremiah’s mouth hung open.

“The evening before last. During our after-dinner smoke, my guests repeated a description of the thieves seen stealing the Caradas musketeer painting and the drawing of a Florentine beauty the night before.” Throgmorton’s lip curled.

“Egad” was all Jeremiah managed to say.

“I passed this rumor on to magistrates this morning,” Throgmorton said.

“You informed upon your own men —?”

“They are not my men.”

Jeremiah quivered with disbelief. “W-what will become of the Academy? And all the paintings Fleet and Sleek have left here?”

“I have it all in hand, Starling,” said Throgmorton. “My mind is now fixed on something more important — apprehending Sunniver and Blaise.”

“I cannot fathom why they are so important to you — why you risked bringing them here,” said Jeremiah.

“It is none of your business, Starling.”

“Not my business? Nothing is ever my business, even though you rely on me to oversee the work that keeps you and your daughter in such fine clothes!” Jeremiah struggled to his feet and faced Throgmorton.

“If it had not been for me, you would not even be under this roof. You would be in debtors’ prison, dying a slow, grinding death.” The lantern sputtered at Throgmorton’s words.

“That would be more honorable than making starving boys forge stolen paintings,” sputtered Jeremiah. “And having to pretend they were sent to the country when they vanish.” His face flushed dark red. “And having you take ownership of the house my father built with his own hands. I regret the day I painted that infernal door, which allowed you and your daughter to enter from whatever underworld spawned you!”

Throgmorton’s sudden blow to Jeremiah’s jaw knocked the artist sideways. He tripped backward onto his rough bed and lay there, chest heaving.

Throgmorton rubbed his hand. “So, I have made you dishonorable? When I saw that you were in trouble, I bought your debts and saved your home. All I need to do is sell the debts to someone who is less softhearted than I. Then you and the boys will be thrown out into the street.”

Jeremiah whispered, “Your hand of friendship conceals a dagger.”

Throgmorton’s eyes closed into slits, like a lizard’s. “I am going out to hunt for Blaise and Sunniver. If you or any of the boys encounter them, or hear any rumors of them, come to me immediately. A manhunt has already begun for the nightsneaks.”

“They will implicate us!” cried Jeremiah, looking with horror at the musketeer painting propped against the wall. “The stolen artworks are in my workshop!”

“Stop fretting,” Throgmorton said. “No one will believe what nightsneaks say. I have paid magistrates and ‘witnesses’ enough to make certain of it. When they are captured, Fleet and Sleek will hang from the gallows at Tyburn.”

“T
he previous owners may be dead and buried for all I knows,” Jenny declared, rooting through a pile of lost-and-found clothes at the Green Dragon. “Or floating in the River Thames. Does that put you off, gents?”

“No.” Sunni examined the black stockings and three-cornered hats the innkeeper had found for her and Blaise to wear as camouflage when out in the night. “They might still be alive.”

“You is an optimist, I see,” said Jenny, perching a hat on Blaise’s head for size.

Blaise looked like he would say yes to anything at that point. His constant yawning and the violet circles under his eyes convinced the nightsneaks to let their two charges flop out early in the “Nook,” as Jenny called the large open room full of snoring travelers and locals sleeping on improvised beds.

“We rise at three,” said Fleet. “No later.”

The hearth rug smelled of rancid dog fur and whatever had been wiped off the soles of guests’ shoes. Sunni put her bag under her head and slept in fits and starts with her back against Blaise’s knees. Fear woke her again and again, every time she heard a noise. But even the vandals and burglars around them needed sleep when they were not marauding and made no move from their beds. Fleet and Sleek were stretched out against a wall, their hats pulled down over their faces, completely still.

Sunni could not settle. She shook Blaise gently until he lifted his head to look around.

“Wha . . . ?” he groaned.

“We need to plan,” she whispered, turning over and pulling herself close so they were face-to-face. “Now, while everybody’s asleep.”

“Okay.”

“Where are we going to go?”

“To find someone who can help us open the door, if that someone even exists.” Blaise touched her wrist. “I didn’t tell you. One of the boys said he saw Throgmorton open it by drawing a shape on it. With a stone covered in red stuff from a vial hidden under his shirt.”

“What?” She breathed out. “He had a sharpened stone in the workshop. It sliced my paper in two like a knife through butter.”

“Was it stained red?”

“Faintly.”

“So we’ve got something to go on,” he said. “Sort of. It sounds like he uses some kind of magic.”

Sunni sighed. “How do we find a magician?”

“Fleet and Sleek. They already know we’ve done the impossible and walked through a painted door. We just say we need a magician’s help to get home.”

“Okay.”

The next thing she knew, Blaise was asleep again. She snuggled close and drifted away herself.

When the bells of a distant church tolled three, Fleet nudged them awake. Fully decked out in their new gear of dark hats, coats, breeches, and stockings, Sunni, Blaise, and the nightsneaks left the Green Dragon’s dim public rooms, passing the orange embers in the fireplace.