Shield of Stars Page 10

  “My time’s free,” the woman told him. “And if the Toad and Thimble kicks you out, try the Empty Net. It might work out for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Weasel sincerely.

  The woman smiled. “If it does work out, remember me.”

  “The Toad and Thimble will kick us out,” said Arisa as they moved on down the street.

  “Then we’ll sleep in a church,” said Weasel. They’d already passed several churches of the One God. It felt odd to see them outside the city, though Father Adan had told him the One God’s faith was gaining acceptance in the larger towns. But the farmers driving their carts down the road seemed comfortable here as well. Perhaps because they weren’t forced to sell anything here and could charge whatever a customer would pay. Justice Holis had told him that the towns were growing, and this was a real town, not a glorified village. There might not be quite as many people as you’d see on a similar street in the city, but they walked briskly, not stopping to smile or wish anyone good day. Weasel felt right at home, except for the smell of fish.

  “Besides,” Arisa went on, “what makes you think that woman knows any criminals? All the things in her shop were household goods. Not the kind of thing a bandit would bring in.”

  “The owner of a shop like that would starve, selling nothing but household things,” Weasel told her. “Folks won’t pay much for used clothes and pillows—well, you saw that woman walk out. A pawnbroker’s got to handle at least some valuable stuff.”

  “There wasn’t anything valuable in that shop,” Arisa protested. “And that woman wasn’t starving—far from it.”

  “So what does that tell you?” Weasel asked patiently.

  Arisa stopped, staring at him. “That she keeps the valuable stuff out of sight. Behind the counter, or maybe in a back room.”

  “And why would she keep her good stuff hidden, where customers can’t see it?”

  “Because the local guard might have seen a description of it, on a list of stolen goods?”

  “Exactly,” said Weasel. “Any pawnbroker with his fancies out is either an honest man or a good enough jeweler to have changed them so they aren’t recognizable.”

  He found another pawnbroker a few blocks over, who also had no fancies on display. This one was careless enough to smile slyly when he told Weasel he had no work and then extracted the name of their inn.

  “Why are you doing this?” Arisa demanded. “You surely don’t think some criminal is going to offer a couple of total strangers a job.”

  “Depends,” said Weasel.

  “On what?”

  “On whether they’ve a job in mind that needs a few more hands. We don’t exactly look like city guardsmen, you know.”

  “It’s the town guard here.”

  “Do we look like town guardsmen?”

  “No,” Arisa admitted. “But I still don’t believe they’d just offer us a job.”

  “Well, they’ll ask for some sort of reference first,” Weasel told her.

  He came to a stop, staring into the window of another pawnshop; it held several bits of jewelry, a handful of silver watches, and two of gold. Not too hard to modify, if a man had the skill.

  “What happens when they ask for a reference?”

  “I give them one,” said Weasel absently. “Let’s try this place.”

  A man sat behind the counter, neatly mending a scrap of lace. That delicate touch might well belong to a jeweler.

  “Can I help you, m’boy?”

  “I hope so, Master,” said Weasel. “I’m looking for work.”

  The man’s polite smile faded. “I’ve all the help I can use,” he said.

  “Ah, but I’m not looking for steady work. Just something—”

  “Get out.” The pawnbroker rose from behind the counter as he spoke. His touch might be dainty, but his shoulders were broad. Arisa was already scampering for the door, but Weasel held his ground.

  “I’m just looking for a bit of coin, to see me down—Hey!”

  The pawnbroker grabbed Weasel’s collar with one hand and the waistband of his britches with the other. Weasel’s toes scrabbled on the scuffed floor as the man hauled him to the door, then tossed him into the street. The cobbles bruised his knees.

  “Ow!”

  Arisa knelt beside him. “Are you all right?”

  “More or less.” Weasel rose to his feet and limped a few steps. His knees ached and his palms stung, but nothing was broken or bleeding. “That’s what happens when you come across an honest man.”

  The last of the sunlight was fading when Weasel peered into an alley and saw the sign for the Empty Net. With any other building, Weasel would have said it “stood” at the end of the alley, but the Empty Net crouched instead, a dark sprawl in the shadow of the taller buildings around it. Light was already glowing in its windows, but instead of offering welcome, it reminded Weasel of a cat with half-closed eyes. It certainly looked like criminals would drink there.

  “Not a very nice place, is it?” Arisa’s voice was calm.

  “Why don’t you wait here,” Weasel suggested.

  “Why should I? I’m your bodyguard, remember?”

  “I thought you were my guide.”

  “Whatever.”

  She followed him down the darkening street to the door, and though he hated to admit it, he was grateful for her company.

  A blast of pipe smoke, voices, and laughter greeted Weasel when he opened the door. But when he and Arisa stepped inside, half the conversations stopped abruptly and then resumed in a murmur.

  Most of the customers seemed to be watching Weasel, as he wove through the tables toward the bar. The floor under his shoes was sticky with spilled drink, and Weasel resolved never to eat there. In his lean days, he’d eaten in worse places.

  “What’re you here for, boy?” The tapster had several days’ beard stubble on his chin, and what looked like a full year’s worth of stains on his apron.

  “I’m looking for work,” said Weasel boldly. He’d said the rest of it so many times today that he hardly needed to think about the words, so he concentrated on looking calm and tough as he continued. He hoped Arisa was doing the same. He shouldn’t have brought her here.

  “We’re staying at the Toad and Thimble,” he finished, “if you hear about anything.”

  “I don’t run errands,” said the tapster indifferently. “You want work, come back.”

  Weasel’s heart leaped, but he kept his voice even. “Does that mean there’s a job for me?”

  “No.” The tapster’s grin revealed several broken teeth. “It means I don’t run your errands.”

  A burst of laughter greeted the words, and Weasel’s cheeks burned. He nodded and turned to walk out—not too slowly, lest they take it as a challenge, and not so fast they’d think he was running. With predators, it was fatal to run. Arisa followed like a shadow.

  They were halfway to the door when it happened.

  “Here, sweeting,” said a drunken voice. “What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ in boy’s kit? You should have a skirt, an’ a bodice that shows a bit … up here.”

  Weasel turned just in time to see the drunk’s hand run over her breasts.

  Grab his hand, yank it back. Then say, “That’s my sister” in a cold, deadly voice. The gesture, the words flashed through Weasel’s mind. But before he could move, Arisa struck, grabbing not the drunk’s hand, but his fingers. She bent her wrist so swiftly that Weasel didn’t realize what she was doing till he heard the crack of bone.

  The drunk screamed, high and shrill. Cradling his hand, he stared at three fingers, bent at unnatural angles. They were already beginning to swell.

  “You broke ’em!” he wailed incredulously.

  And she’d done it so fast! No warning, no girlish squeal. Snatch, snap!

  Weasel realized that his mouth was hanging open, and he closed it.

  Arisa looked around the room. She didn’t have to gather the crowd’s eyes—everyone was staring. She pu
t her hands on her hips, shoving back the skirts of her coat to reveal the knife.

  “The next man who lays a hand on me loses that hand,” she said, in a colder, more deadly voice than Weasel could ever have managed.

  It should have sounded absurd, but every man in the place, Weasel included, swallowed in unison. She meant it. Worse, she could do it.

  Arisa strode out of the room, head high, and Weasel hurried after her.

  Her arrogant swagger didn’t change when they reached the alley, but Weasel noticed that she took several deep breaths. Somehow, it made her human.

  “I can’t believe you did that!” She’d seemed so sane, so normal, traveling with him these last few days, that he’d forgotten about Gabbo and the knife. “Who are you?” She was no ordinary girl, that was certain.

  “Arisa Benison. I told you that. Several times.”

  She was beginning to sound like herself again, which almost made it worse. Weasel’s voice was still squeaking. He took a couple of breaths and deliberately tried to lower it.

  “That’s not what I meant.” It came out sounding calmer, which made him feel calmer too.

  “I know. I’m sorry about messing up your pitch back there,” she added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they’re not likely to offer us work now, are they?”

  “Are you joking?” How could she be so terrifyingly competent with violence, and so naive? “That story will be all over town by morning, and they’ll be lining up to hire us! It’s the best advertising we could get.”

  Weasel was wrong—it took the next morning, and part of the afternoon, for the tale of Arisa’s confrontation in the Empty Net to spread through the town. Several of the pawnbrokers she and Weasel spoke to that day commented on it, and they heard a garbled version from the kitchen girl at the Toad and Thimble while they washed that night’s dishes. According to the kitchen girl, Arisa had been a great lady disguised as a road bandit, or possibly a road bandit disguised as a great lady, and she’d gone into the tavern alone.

  But in spite of the rumors, and all Weasel’s efforts, another day passed before the old man approached them.

  Weasel and Arisa had started spending the early evening at the Empty Net, lingering as long as they could over mugs of hot tea. Tea only, since Weasel’s resolve not to eat there strengthened each time he saw the place, and neither of them wanted alcohol slowing their responses—not in this tavern.

  So Weasel was instantly aware of the old man when he rose from his chair by the hearth and tottered his way over to Weasel and Arisa’s table.

  “Buy an old man a beer, m’boy?”

  Weasel considered this. The man was far too old to engage in criminal activity himself, stooped and wrinkled, his head completely bald. But Weasel noticed that the wrists sticking out of his ragged sleeves still looked strong, and his pale eyes were keen. He wasn’t as feeble as he appeared, or sounded—but he looked so feeble that if Weasel told a panel of justices that this man had tried to recruit him for a criminal job, he’d be laughed out of court. In short, he was the perfect man to make an approach.

  “We’ve barely enough to buy tea for the two of us,” Weasel told him. “But the One God teaches that if you look after your fellow man, then he’ll look after you. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  The old man’s eyes vanished into a mass of wrinkles when he smiled. “I’m not much of a churchgoer, but that sounds right t’ me. Least, it might be true. Now and then.”

  “I’ll get it.” Arisa started to rise.

  “No.” Weasel reached out and squeezed her shoulder in warning. “Let me go. You stay here and talk to our new friend.”

  He managed to stumble as he passed the chair where the old man was seating himself, bumping against him for just a moment—but for Weasel, that was enough.

  When he returned to the table, carrying the foaming mug, Arisa was laughing and the old man was speaking in a high, piping voice. “‘Oh, la, sir,’ I says to him, ‘You’ll make me blush!’ The poor fellow all but burst, trying t’ explain to his officer that he hadn’t been gropin’ my skirts. Skirts is a fine place to smuggle anything smaller than a crate, if a man can pull it off. And you’d have no problem with that. You should try skirts sometime.”

  “I know,” said Arisa. “My mother’s said the same. But the truth is, I do better fighting in britches than telling lies in a skirt.”

  “Besides,” said Weasel, setting the mug on the table and taking his own chair, “she’d never be able to say, ‘Oh, la, sir’ without giggling, or scowling, or something that would give the game away.”

  Arisa giggled.

  “I could do it, though,” Weasel added. He lifted his voice to a feminine falsetto. “La, sir. You make me blush!” He batted his eyelashes flirtatiously, and the old man laughed.

  “I’ve got lots of talents,” said Weasel. “And I won’t ask much for using them, since part of my price is a bit … unusual.”

  “Hmm,” said the old man. “Something special you want, is it?”

  “Yes,” said Weasel. It would have been safer, and easier, to get a job with the gang and then gradually blend into the criminal population of the town. To learn about the Falcon in a series of casual conversations that no one would think twice about. But Justice Holis’ trial would begin in a week, and it might not last more than a few days. He was running out of time.

  “What would it be you’re looking for?” the old man asked.

  “First the job,” said Weasel. “No point talking about payment if I can’t earn it.”

  “Ah. You understand there’s a small matter of references to be covered first.”

  The man was smiling, like any cheery old gaffer, but his shrewd eyes watched Weasel closely.

  “Will these do?” Weasel reached into his own pockets and pulled out the old man’s purse, his pipe, his folding knife, and a crumpled handkerchief that was a bit disgusting, but Weasel had filched it anyway.

  The man’s smile vanished when he recognized the purse. His hand twitched toward his coat pocket, but he stopped the motion with a swift self-control that told Weasel a lot about what his youth had been like. With the smile gone, he was formidable enough to make Weasel nervous—but Weasel too had grown up in a hard school, and he didn’t let it show.

  “Took ’em off me when you went to get the beer? How’d you know I’d be asking for references?”

  Weasel shrugged. “If you’d offered me the job without asking for some proof I wasn’t a guard informer, I wouldn’t have taken it.”

  The soft-looking smile came back. “Nice to do business with a clever boy. A skilled one too. I must be getting old, not t’ have felt the lift.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m that good.”

  In truth, Weasel had gotten rusty in three years of clerking for the justice. He’d been practicing picking pockets, and then putting the items back, ever since he realized he’d have to seek out criminals to assist him. Arisa’s purse had been in and out of her pocket a dozen times in the last few days. Weasel hoped she wouldn’t figure that out, but the suspicious glare she leveled at him now wasn’t a good sign.

  “So what’s the job?” Weasel repeated.

  The old man gathered up his belongings and replaced them in his pockets. He didn’t count his money, Weasel noticed. He hoped the gaffer would be amused, rather than annoyed, when he discovered that he’d paid for his own beer.

  “They left the decision t’ me,” he said finally. “And I think you’re worth a try. There’s a warehouse down by the docks,” he went on, as Weasel tried to keep the sudden surge of triumph out of his expression. “Kind of a magical place, this warehouse, for it seems that things like silk and spices just appear there, and no one’s ever seen ’em being unloaded at the docks. Of course they all have proper duty stamps, so there’s nothing the guards can do.”

  “And the ink on those stamps is almost dry,” Arisa murmured.

  “Oh, it’s dry by the time the goods goes in,” t
he old man told them. “But the guards are a bit skeptical about this ‘appearing’ business, so they tend to hang about in the neighborhood. ’Specially at night.”

  “I guess they don’t believe in magic,” said Weasel.

  “I can’t say what they might be thinkin’,” said the man. “But the sad fact is, once the sun goes down there’s a small army of guards on that warehouse.”

  “You’ve got a shipment,” Weasel guessed. “And you only get paid on delivery.”

  The old man didn’t so much as look at him. “But by day, m’boy, there’s not so many guards. Just half a dozen, t’ keep an eye on things. Of course, the streets are full of people then, so’s it might be hard for folks to get something in without being seen. Unless that something was disguised as something else. Then you could make your move in broad daylight, except for the guards. But those lads would go poking and prying; might even open the crates right up. Unless, of course, someone distracted them while the goods was carried in.”

  Weasel’s heart began to pound. “You want me to lure off the guards? How long would you need to be clear?”

  “Fifteen minutes should do it,” said the man. “Twenty, t’ be on the safe side.”

  Weasel winced. “Not possible. Bait and run’s dangerous for the bait, even for a short time. In twenty minutes they’ll either have given up or they’ll have caught me. And I can’t afford to get caught. I can buy you five minutes clear, maybe a bit over, but I can’t guarantee more than five.”

  “Fifteen,” said the old man. “You’ve got a partner, after all. That should help you stretch the game a goodly bit.”

  Weasel looked at Arisa. Her face was bright with interest and excitement. She was clearly smart enough to understand what they were talking about, but she wasn’t experienced enough to know how hazardous bait and run really was. And the longer the chase, the higher the odds that the bait would be swallowed.

  On the other hand, this was the only offer he’d gotten in three days. Justice Holis was running out of time.