The Thief Queen's Daughter (13 page)

“All the tents and kiosks and stores in this place seem to have escape hatches and back exits,” Ven said as Clemency took the token, tears filling her eyes. “Let Finlay smell that thing, Clem. Maybe he can tell us where she went.”

Clem nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She held the token down to the cream-colored dog.

“Here, Finlay,” she said. “Seek?”

The dog sniffed the ribbon, then followed his nose back to the front of the tent again. He stopped, looked up, gave another short bark, then sat down, as he had done before.

“This must be where her scent trail ends,” said Ven miserably. “Probably whoever stole her put her in a cage, or carried her, wherever they went, which is why Finlay can’t find her scent.”

“What do we do now?” asked Nick, looking around. “I’m all out of money, and all I’ve got is a bunch of dusty pretzels. It’s starting to get on toward closing time.”

“Maybe you all should go home,” Ven said. “I’m not leaving without her, though. I brought her into this madness, and I can’t abandon her here.”

“Well, I’m not leaving either,” said Clemency. “I’m her house steward, and I’m responsible for her.”

“Don’t even ask,” warned Char as Ven glanced at him.

“I want to stay and help look for her,” added Nick.

“Maybe for a little while longer, Nick,” said Ven. “But I think if we don’t find her soon, you should get out of here, meet up with Ida, and go to the constable. Let him know she’s missing.”

“I can do that, but he can’t do anything about it,” said Nick. “Didn’t you say the king said the constable has no right to come into this place, and no power here?”

“Yeah, unless he’s going shopping, that’s right.” Ven sighed. “All right, well, at least someone should meet up with Ida and get back to the inn to let Mrs. Snodgrass know what’s going on. Especially if four of her residents aren’t coming home for a week.”

“Or longer,” Char added gloomily.

This is just so wrong,
Ven thought.
This is just wrong. What do I do? I wish my father were here.

As his mind went to his father, he remembered the words in the last letter his father had sent him.

I hope that the jack-rule survived your ordeal,
Pepin Polypheme had written.
If you see things as they appear through its lens, you are taking measure of the world correctly.

I haven’t tried the jack-rule,
Ven thought.
I guess it can’t hurt to look around with it.

He unbuttoned his pocket and pulled out the thin folding ruler, then extended the telescoping lens.

Ven peered around through the crowd, through the booths at the shoppers and merchants and goods, but saw no sign of Saeli. Then he turned to the carousel in the distance, and sighted in on the riders aloft in the air on the wooden beasts, laughing or screaming or looking dazed. He scoped all around, but there was nothing visible. Finally he looked back at Finlay, who still sat across the street in front of the tent where the strange animals had been sold. He caught sight of the toasted-marshmallow ears up close, then a gigantic nose, then down to his soft yellow feet tucked in front of him.

In front of which a tiny smattering of dainty blue wildflowers grew in between the cobblestones.

Ven looked harder.

“Clem,” he said to the curate-in-training, “come here a minute.”

Clemency walked over to him, and he held the glass of the jack-rule steady for her.

“What kind of flowers are those, do you know?” he asked.

Clem peered through the lens. “Forget-Me-Nots,” she said. “One of the Spice Folk is Forget-Me-Not. Her brother is Sweet William, but we call him Bill.”

Ven’s heart started to pound. “Forget-Me-Not,” he murmured, “Forget-Me-Not!”

“Saeli!” he and Clem shouted at the same time.

“What?” Char demanded. “What’s going on?”

Ven ran across the street to where Finlay sat.

“Good boy,” he said, tousling the marshmallow ears. “Good boy!” He pulled the flowers from the ground and held them under Finlay’s nose.
“Seek!”

The cream-colored dog sniffed the blossoms, then took off, nose to the ground, away from the bright booths of the Market square, heading north.

Toward the Inner Market.

“Oh man,” said Char as they ran to catch up, Munx loping casually behind. “I was hopin’ he was gonna go the other way.”

“How realistic is that?” Clem said. The dog came to a halt at the edge of the street.

“Look,” said Nick. “More flowers.” A tiny patch grew near a hitching post.

Ven took out the jack-rule, looking up the road deeper into the gray streets. A haze was hanging in the air, making it hard to see. But sure enough, all along the street were tiny clumps of fragile blue flowers that grew nowhere else in the city.

Ven glanced to his left.

“If we’re going to follow the flowers, we should get the dogs back to Mr. Coates,” he said. “His shop is a few blocks over, at the First Row.” The other children nodded in agreement.

They hurried back to where the pretty shops lined the edge of the market.

The door to Arms of Coates was standing open.

The woman who had shown them the silk saw them as they approached. Her face went slack; she turned and hurried back into her store, slamming the door shut behind her. The window shade went quickly down.

“What’s going on here?” Nick asked nervously.

Ven ran up to the porch and climbed the stairs. He stopped in the open doorway.

“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no.”

T
HE FOUR FRIENDS STOOD, UNABLE TO MOVE, STARING AT THE
chaos in what had been a neat and orderly store shortly before.

“Where’s Mr. Coates?” Clemency asked softly.

Finlay seemed to be searching for that answer as well. He darted over the threshold, squeezed between them, and began sniffing the wooden floor intently. He passed each of the blood trails after only a quick sniff, then followed his nose to the back door.

Then he gave a short bark and sat down.

Carefully, the four made their way through the mess and joined him.

The back door looked out on an alleyway behind the First Row, into the deeper parts of the Outer Market.

Like the image Ven had seen earlier in the morning when he had looked through his jack-rule, the world beyond the square of tents and kiosks was a gray one, with peeling paint and broken bricks. The neatly cobbled streets of the festival area gave way to a dirt pathway with only a few patches of bricks here and there. The farther in it seemed, the more shabby everything looked. And, as always, a slight mist hung in the air, even in the golden afternoon light, as if the place had something to hide, even from itself.

There was no sign of Mr. Coates.

“What do we do
now,
Ven?” Char asked. “Any bright ideas?”

“Saeli’s out there somewhere, either in this part of the Outer Market or, the way my luck’s been going, deep in the Inner Market,” Ven replied in dismay. “For all I know, the Queen of Thieves herself has her.”

“Queen of Thieves?” said Clemency. “What are you talking about?”

Ven sighed deeply. “Madame Sharra let me choose three dragon scales in my reading—that’s how she sees the future. The second one, the one that was supposed to tell me what was coming, was the Queen of Thieves. As a fortune, it’s supposed to warn that you are about to lose something important—that would be Saeli, no doubt. But she also said that the Thief Queen is a real person who lives deep in the Inner Market, and who rules the entire Gated City. She’s supposed to be terribly evil, and terribly dangerous. She warned me to stay as far away from her as I could. So it just goes to figure that she’s the one who took Saeli.”

“If she did, what are we supposed to do about it?” Nick asked nervously. “Mr. Coates is a bloody
weaponsmaker,
and who knows what even happened to him? We only have a few hours at most to find her and get the heck out of this city. I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“You’re right,” Ven said, staring at the misty streets behind the shop. “It isn’t. So this is what I suggest—you three leave, get to the constable and ask his help. Even if he can’t get inside here, he might have some ideas. Then go home and tell Mrs. Snodgrass what happened.”

“I told you already, I’m not leaving,” said Clemency firmly. “She’s my responsibility. So Char and Nick can go, but I’m staying with you.”

“Ya know, you really should know better’n that by now, Ven,” said Char. “But it’s important someone get the word to the inn—and get Ida home. She’s prolly fleeced the whole city of Kingston by now, and they’ll be lookin’ to hang her in the morning.”

“Nick, will you do that?” Ven asked, turning away from the dismal alleyway.

Nick sighed. “Sure, if that’s what you want. I’ll do my best to see if I can get someone back here before the Market closes. I’ll try the constable first, and if he won’t help, I’ll get to the inn as fast as I can. And then I’ll come back to town for Ida. She’s not supposed to meet us for a while, so I can’t take the time to look for her in Kingston.”

“Thanks,” Ven said. “Be careful on your way back across the floor, then head straight through the center of the town square until you get to the main gate. Don’t stop for
anything.
”

“Right. Stay together, you guys,” Nick said. He clapped Ven on the shoulder, then inched his way back through the bloodstains and the fallen axes until he got to the door. Then he waved one more time and disappeared into the color and noise of the Thieves’ Market.

The three remaining friends went down the back steps into the dreary part of the Outer Market past the First Row and onto the main street that ran north. Each of the side streets of this main road had signs—
CUTPURSE ST., BURGLARS ROW, COIN RD.,
and the like. Even the alleyways were marked—
FEVER LN., DARK A’WAY, PINCHER A’WAY.

As they walked, they passed many people, a few of whom had tokens around their necks. They were visiting shops and houses that were much seedier than anything in the bright market, their eyes darting around as if they wished not to be noticed. Children were more abundant here, running between the decaying buildings, playing hoop toss or tag, but none of them wore ribbons around their neck with the ticket out of the Gated City.

“Where do you even begin to look for a stolen person?” Clemency said aloud. “It would take us months, maybe even years, to look in every one of these places. She could be
anywhere,
Ven.”

A tattered old woman passing by stopped in the street next to them.

“Sorry, dearies, did I hear ye say you’d had somethin’ stolen?”

The children stopped. “Yes,” Ven said, unsure of the wisdom of doing so.

“Well, then, ya might try lookin’ in the Stolen Alleyway.”

The three children followed her finger with their eyes. She was pointing past a large, open well in the middle of the road to a dark side alleyway off the main street, where a thin vapor of mist appeared stuck between the buildings. At the opening of the alleyway there was a sign.
STEAL A’WAY
it read.

The old woman wiped her nose with the back of her tattered sleeve. “If yer looking fer somethin’ that was stolen, ya best check there first, laddie,” she said, her black teeth glistening in her mouth beside the holes where there were no teeth at all. “That’s the place where stolen things are sold.”

“Isn’t everything in a Thieves’ Market stolen?” Clemency asked.

The ragged woman drew herself up as tall as she could and snorted in contempt.

“That’s a lie,” she said angrily. “Not everyone in the Gated City’s a thief. Some of us’s just the kin o’ thieves from long ago. Many honest folk works here in the Market.” She seemed to reconsider her statement. “Well, maybe not
many,
but there’s some here and there. Now, git.” She shooed them away with her fingerless-gloved hands.

“I—I’m not sure about this,” Char said nervously. “That place looks even creepier than the rest of this creepy city.”

“Come on,” said Ven impatiently, starting for the alley. “We don’t have time to waste—if Saeli’s in there, we have to get to her before she’s sold. Let’s go.”

Clemency nodded and followed Ven, with Char catching up a moment later.

The booths of this alleyway were not so brightly colored as the ones in the main streets. Instead of the carefully painted banners and the carved boothplates there were simple signs above each stall made from ragged gray cloth, each bearing the name of the goods offered, printed on them in ink.

Char and Clemency stopped in the middle of the street as Ven approached the first booth. He squinted to read the sign.

KISSES

Ven’s eyes moved down from the sign to the person sitting beneath it.

A white-haired woman, or what appeared to be a woman, grinned back at him toothlessly, the wart on her chin sprouting hairs as long as the ones on her head.

Ven backed away in alarm.

Clem grabbed his arm and led him deeper into the alleyway.

“Might want to avoid that one,” she said.

“Er—yes.” Ven coughed.

“This is the oddest place I’ve ever been, and I’ve been in some doozies,” Char muttered as they made their way past the huddled shoppers, looking at the strange booths and the signs above them.

“What can this possibly mean?” Clemency asked as she read more of the signs on the booths.

THOUGHTS

MOMENTS

GLANCES

“They’re all things that can be stolen, just like actual stuff,” said Ven, passing a gray rag banner reading
DREAMS
. “Stolen thoughts, stolen moments, stolen glances, stolen dreams—I’ve heard of all those things, but I never thought they could be resold.”

“Well, if you ever had a kiss stolen, you can go back an’ get it from her,” Char said, pointing over his shoulder at the booth where the warty old woman had been. “But she can
have
the one Lucy Dockenbiggle took off ’a me when I was nine, thanks anyway. I can’t believe anyone would buy that one—it was pretty awful.”

“Who is Lucy Dockenbiggle?” Clemency asked.

“Keep moving,” said Ven under his breath. “I don’t think we want to linger long here.”

They continued down the Stolen Alley, past signs for
YOUTH, KNOWLEDGE, IDENTITY,
and
TIME
.
Some of the booths were empty, while others had a single person sitting within them, waiting for customers. Ven slowed down for a moment in front of one reading
SHIRTS
.
Within the drapes of that stall they could see shirts of all sizes and colors hanging, flapping gently in the foggy breeze.

“This one doesn’t make sense to me,” he said, coming to a halt. “Shirts? What is this doing in the Stolen Alleyway? Shouldn’t it just be in the Outer Market with all the rest of the goods?”

“No,” Char said, tugging at his arm. “Haven’t ya never heard of someone losin’ his shirt? It means he got taken for
everything
he had
.
I don’t think we want to be near this booth especially.”

“Yes, my guess is that the residents of this place could steal the shirts from our backs and we might not even notice,” added Clemency. “Keep moving.”

“I only see three more booths anyway, and no sign of Saeli,” said Ven anxiously. “It was probably a mistake to come here.”

They hurried down to the end of the alleyway, passing booths for stolen
IDEAS
and
FUTURES
, until they came to the last stall on the street. The ratty gray sign read

CHILDHOOD

“Saeli!” Ven shouted, looking up and down the street. His word seemed to be almost instantly swallowed; it did not echo as it should have.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Clem, glancing around. “She must be somewhere else. I think we should look for a flower seller—that’s the kind of person who might make use of a Gwadd.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Char urged. “I wanna go back to the normal part of the market, where everyone is just a thief looking to take your money. This place is givin’ me hives.”

Ven nodded, and turned to head back out the way they came. Just as he did, he and the other children heard a soft female voice behind them call out.

“Char!”

The three turned around in shock.

There was no one in the street looking their way, just the same shoppers with their heads down, their eyes averted, milling through the alleyway toward the booths they sought.

“Saeli?” Char called.

“Over here,” replied the voice. It was coming from within the last booth, the one labeled
CHILDHOOD
.

“Saeli!” Ven shouted again, as the three ran toward the booth.

Just as they came to within a few feet of it, the drape in front was pulled back. Inside the booth was a young woman with dark eyes and hair, and a bright, warm smile. Her eyes never glanced at Clemency or Ven, but rather went directly to Char. Her smile widened.

“Char,” she said. Her voice was soft and warm in Ven’s ears.

Char’s face was as white as snow.