Sword and Sorceress XXVII (21 page)

“Obnoxious old woman,” the thief said. “I
can’t believe you haven’t even had the decency to ask my name yet.”

“That’s because you give a different
name to anyone who
does
ask.” Zair pointed. “The rake is at the
goatshed. Pay special attention to the nanny pen; old Liddy-goat’s been sick,
and it’s a mess over there.”

“I really hate you!” the thief shouted
after her.

#

“Do you think she’ll take any of this to
heart?” Deke One-Leg asked Zair through a cloud of stinking smoke. The drudgery
of rendering the linget for their oil had begun, and the two of them were
tending a rendering fire on the long apron of sand that spread below the
village hill. The moon was full tonight, its silver light competing with the
fire’s glow on the trampled sand. Between stirring the kettle and poking the
fire, they passed back and forth a clay cup of blueberry wine.

“Don’t expect her to.” Zair looked up
the hill. Their unwanted guest was wrapped in her coat with her back against
the bottom rail of the goat pen. She’d stolen a flintstriker from somewhere,
and Zair could see little flickers as she tried to set the cord around her
wrist on fire. “A painted rock is still no jewel. But I don’t care to see her
lose a hand. And it
is
useful to have extra help around the village
during the busy season.”

Deke stirred the kettle of linget,
testing the greasy film on top. “We should make her do this part.”

“Don’t want to give her that much rope.”

“Prob’ly smart.” He shook the jug. It
sloshed in a mostly-empty way. “Yesterday she told me she’s the long-lost
daughter of Sudala royalty, and if I let her go, she’d see us all richly
rewarded.” He mimicked the thief’s townie accent.

“Where in the world is Sudala?”

“No idea. After that, she told me there’s
a dragon after her, and that it’ll destroy the village if she’s not gone by the
new moon.”

“No such things as dragons.”

“I know,” Deke said.

There was a distant “Ouch!” from the
goat pen, and a curse.

“Just about enough for another cup in
here,” Deke said thoughtfully, and looked up the hill.

Zair snorted. “You’re the one who picked
the berries. If you want to waste all that effort, who am I to say?”

She fed the fire and then stumped up the
hill with Deke behind her.

“Come to mock?” the thief said tartly,
sucking her burnt wrist. “You both stink of fish, by the way. Burnt fish.”

Deke topped off the cup and set it in
the mud. An interested goat lipped at it through the rails; the thief snatched
the cup before the goat could get its tongue past the rim. After squinting at
the wine and sniffing it suspiciously, she said, “And here I thought
fish-boiling parties were the height of the local night life.”

Deke laughed. “You should see the young
folk dance around the bonfire at the festival after the linget run. It’s enough
to make an old man’s heart beat fast.”

“You guys have a fish festival? Somehow,”
the thief said, “I’m not surprised.”

“What better reason?” Zair asked. “Gods
just sit on their heels and collect offerings. Fish, on the other hand, are
useful.”

The thief blinked at her, then sampled
the wine. “What should I know. I’m just a thief.”

“And not a very good one,” Zair said.

“Hey!”

“If you were a good thief, you wouldn’t
be wearing a patched coat and stealing tableware from fishing villages.”

“I like my coat,” the thief snapped,
drawing it closer about her pointed knees. “It’s stylish.” After a pause, she
added, “I’m very good at card games and sleight-of-hand. It’s what I do. But
there’s not much call for that sort of thing in little coast towns like Trenza.”

“So you came to a much smaller town
instead?”

The thief tipped back the rest of the
wine, her long throat working, and wiped her mouth. “No, if you must know, I
got lost. I thought I was on the road to Bonolevi, which at least is big enough
to have a night life that doesn’t involve fish. Instead I found myself here,
and figured I’d make the most of it.”

“Your sense of direction must be
terrible,” Zair said, “if you thought you were going to Bonolevi and ended up
here.”

“I’m sure it’s quite obvious to you, but
to a stranger, one little muddy coast road looks much the same as another.” The
thief rolled the cup between her long fingers. “Does your town have a name?”

Zair looked at Deke; he looked back at
her. They both thought about it. “Folks in Big Crossing sometimes call it
Little Crossing, I guess,” he said.

“But it isn’t really,” Zair explained to
the thief. “And what do they know; Big Crossing’s all the way to the other side
of the Scarp. Can’t even get there in the wet season.”

“I’m sorry I asked,” the thief groaned. “Er,
you don’t have any more of this wine, do you?”

She must be desperate. Two good things
could be said of Deke’s wine: it was very strong, and (mostly) nonpoisonous. “Got
another jug aging out back,” Deke said. “Prob’ly ready tomorrow night, maybe
the night after.”

The thief gave him an incredulous look. “Your
wine’s vintage is measured in
days
?”

“There’s a fine timing to it.”

She stared at him a moment longer, then
shuddered and drained the sludgy dregs in her cup. “You can call me Shadow,”
she said in a rush.

“Oh, really?” Zair said. “We can, can
we? Does anyone else?”

“It’s what I always wanted people to
call me. My thief name, if you will.”

Zair cleared her throat. “That’d be a ‘no’,
then.”

“But it’s what you can call me in this
village, if you like,” the thief said, and she smiled with wine-stained lips. “I
swear I’ll answer to it if you do.”

#

After that, the thief was less sullen
and even talked to people on occasion, although some of the parents began to
complain when they caught her teaching the children simple tricks with her deck
of cards.

“First you complain that I keep myself
apart, and now it’s a problem when I try to make friends.”

“The problem,” Zair said, “is some of
the good folk in this village think you’re corrupting their children.”

“In my experience, most children are
born corrupted. It’s only the adults who think otherwise.” She took out the
cards and spread them with a practiced snap of her wrist. “Would
you
like to learn a trick?”

Zair had a strong suspicion that the
thief had switched from sulking and simple lies to working a longer con, but
there was little to be done short of hauling her into Trenza. In any case, Zair’s
fingers, despite the twists of age, were strong and nimble from working with
ropes. She quickly picked up the tricks that Shadow called the Conjurer’s Crimp
and Axti’s Overhand Swap.

“Guess it’s not just the children in
danger of being corrupted,” Zair said thoughtfully, trying a sideways shuffle
and sending a card spinning into the bushes.

“Watch it, old woman, that’s my only
deck and it’s not like I can buy more from the goats.” But Shadow smiled. It
softened the edges of her long, bony face.

#

The moon passed full. The summer tides
ran high, the second wave of linget came in, and storms hovered on the edge of
the sky, purpling the horizon. Nets frayed quickly, and tempers likewise. Zair
was too busy to learn card tricks, and she kept the thief too busy to teach any.

Still, on a sultry afternoon when the
promise of coming rain lay heavy across the marsh, Zair discovered Shadow
waiting for her when she went to milk the goats. The thief was leaning against
a fencepost and pensively studying the green stone that she wore around her
neck. Zair had never gotten a good look at it, but it didn’t seem to belong to
anyone in the village, so she didn’t bother herself about it.

Shadow dropped it down her collar as
Zair approached, looking guilty.

“If you’ve time to woolgather, you’ve
time to make yourself useful.” Zair shoved a milking bucket into her hands.

The thief sighed, but she grabbed
Liddy-goat’s rope halter and dragged her to the milking stake. Zair looped the
goat’s tie-rope briskly around the stake, and Shadow watched with interested
eyes.

“What sort of payment would you want to
teach me that?”

“Milking?” Zair asked, crouching by the
goat’s hindquarters with a hand on her flank. “Start learning now, if you want.”

“No, no—I’d like to learn to tie knots
like you do.”

“You don’t know how to tie knots?” Zair
nodded towards the woven belt around the thief’s waist. “What holds up your
pants, then?”

“
Magic
knots, old woman.”

“You’ve got some things to learn about
asking for favors,” Zair said. “It’s not magic, anyway.”

“Knot magic? Cute.”

“
Not
magic. It’s just tying
knots. We tie better knots than most people, but like I said, a fisherman has
to know how.”

“Whatever. It looks like a useful skill,
and I may never get another opportunity to learn.”

Zair looked over her shoulder, studying
Shadow’s suspiciously guileless expression. “I’ve a feeling it’s not the tying
you’re interested in, so much as the untying.”

“Fine,” the thief said loftily. “Don’t
teach me, then. I’ll find someone else to do it.”

“Good luck finding someone who likes you
enough.”

“Really? I think a lot of people here
like me.” Shadow’s smile darted across her homely face, quicksilver-fast but
warm. “I think you like me more than you’ll admit.”

Zair snorted and handed her the bucket
of fresh, frothing goat’s milk. “Take this down to Mairna the cheesemaker.”

The thief took the bucket, but made no
move to leave. Instead she stood looking down at the winding channels of the
marsh and the ruffled ocean beyond. “How can you build so close to the water?
Don’t you get storms here?”

“You’ll see one soon,” Zair said,
unlooping Liddy-goat’s tether. “There’s heavy weather moving in tonight. We’ll
bring the nets in early.”

“But—all that water.” The thief waved
her free arm, clutching the bucket in the other hand. “And your buildings are—no
offense—somewhat substandard. What if the whole place is swept away?”

“It’s not usually a problem. When really
heavy weather moves in, we take the children to the caves.” Zair pointed to the
distant Scarp, a dark line along the northern edge of the estuary. “This is
just a regular squall. We’ll get through it fine.”

#

As predicted, by dusk the moon was long
gone behind a black wall of thunderheads. Rain lashed the side of Zair’s house,
and the rendering fires had been extinguished, the nets pulled in. The thief
had taken refuge in the goatshed.

“Are you really going to leave her out
there?” Zair’s niece Linnie asked when she stopped by to drop off some damaged
nets for Zair to work her talents upon.

“She has the goats to keep her warm. She’s
prob’ly better off than the rest of us.”

But as the wind and rain picked up,
banging the shutters and battering her small, snug house, she did feel a tug of
guilt. Finally she wrapped her oiled leather slicker around her and stepped out
into the slanting rain. At the goat fence, she stopped to retie the thief’s
knot, granting tether enough to reach the first row of houses.

The goats were huddled in the
three-sided shed. Zair banged her walking stick on the side. “Alive in there?”

“Come to see if I’ve drowned?” the thief’s
sulky voice issued from somewhere behind the damp mass of goats. “Thanks for
the concern.”

“Well, if you’d rather stay...”

“Wait, is that an invitation? To
somewhere warm and dry?” The thief tumbled out of the shed in a lanky tangle of
arms and legs. The rain soaked her instantly, but at least it washed off some
of the mud. She followed Zair to her usual limit and then paused.

“Come on, I’ve given you more rope.”
Enough
to hang yourself if you steal anything from me,
she thought. The thief
scowled as if suspecting a trick, and took a few cautious steps forward, then
lengthened her stride when nothing happened.

Inside, Zair gave her a blanket, and
hung the thief’s sodden coat, shirt and trousers by the fire. It was the first
time she’d seen the thief undressed. Shadow had a curling tattoo all up one
arm, black and red ink on the supple brown skin. She also wore a few hidden
items of jewelry: a silver chain on her upper arm, a jeweled anklet, and the
green pendant. None of it looked too familiar, though Zair would lay odds it
was stolen from
somewhere
.

“You’re being awfully nice to me,”
Shadow said, stretching out her skinny legs and wiggling bare, dirty toes in
front of the fire. “Did tormenting the thief get boring?”

“No one’s been tormenting you. You’ve
only yourself to blame for your problems, and you know it.”