Skate squeezed her nose as she approached, one of her rags serving as a makeshift mask and filter.
“W-what happened?” Twitch asked, powering through another involuntary jerk. He had covered his own face. “I thought you was killed.”
Not caring for the concerned tone, Skate said, “I handled it. Let’s find a beggar; I need to get to the Boss.” She turned away from the stink and smiled behind her rag at Twitch’s smack of indignation as he hurried to catch up.
“Okay, but where’s the haul?” he asked, looking her over for signs of pocketed wealth.
“No haul.”
“Boss won’t l-like that,” he groaned, scratching at the back of his head to defer more spasms. “I thought you s-said you handled it!” he added, lowering his voice as he scanned the streets for a beggar.
“There’s no haul yet. But I got an in, Twitchy. I got me a home for a while, too—after I steal a book, anyway.” Skate explained the deal she had made with the wizard.
“Not a bad j-job, I guess,” Twitch said when she had finished, “but you can’t go taking deals like that without the Boss’s permission. He don’t like it w-when we start working for people without Ink approval. F-found one.” He pointed ahead to a grungy old beggar on the ground shaking a tin cup.
The gray man was rending the air with ragged calls. “Alms! Money for the hungry! Alms!”
Skate broke away from her companion and leaned against the wall a few feet away. Twitch slid down next to the beggar and slipped six copper coins bearing the image of Old King Rajian into the cup in a particular order: two, then three, then one. “Well-a-day, g-granddad.”
“Well-a-day to yeh,” the crusty beggar responded in hushed tones. “What’ll I do with your gift?”
“Spend it how you w-want, ’cause I know you’ll n-never drink.” Things changed week to week in the Ink, but this coded conversation stayed the same.
“What do you snots need to know, then?” the panhandler asked. He kept his deep-set eyes scanning the streets for any who might take pity on a broken old drifter.
“Where’s the Marshall c-crew meeting this week?” Twitch pretended to be very interested in something under one of his stubby toenails, which were sticking out of his rotten shoes.
“The dock house. Be there for the next two weeks at least.”
“That’s all, then. Th-thank you, uncle.”
“Here, boy. You dropped these,” the beggar replied, holding out five copper coins.
“You’re kind.”
“See that you’re kinder.”
The official business completed, the beggar returned to his shouting. Cries of “Alms! Money for the hungry!” followed the pair of children as they turned the next corner.
“I know he don’t like it, Twitch,” Skate said, once they were out of earshot, “but he’ll know it was worth it after I talk to him. You can’t believe the stuff the old guy has just lying around. That dagger alone woulda fetched a fistful of scepts, don’t you doubt it.” Skate was referring to the hexagonal golden coins of the kingdom, each sporting an image of King Rajian’s fabled scepter. “And I got a feeling that might’ve been the least valuable thing I got my hands on before he caught me.”
Twitch still looked uneasy as they sidled by a wide wagon that had been left in front of a pub. The pub owner was bickering with the wagon owner. “I don’t like that he d-didn’t go down when you knifed him—and I’m k-kinda surprised you did that at all,” he said, cutting his eyes her way. “I didn’t think you’d be willing to do that sort of s-stuff to escape. That’s more B-Boss Shade’s crew, or Kite.” The first name was spoken with hushed fear, but he almost spat the latter.
Skate screwed her face up in matching disgust. “I weren’t sure myself until the time came, to be honest,” she said, looking at the ground. Let him think it was on purpose. That’ll get me a reputation as someone not to be messed with, anyway.
“Never mind th-that, though,” Twitch said, excitement replacing his concern. “How did the old guy not go down? You sure you really stabbed him?”
Skate rolled her eyes and adopted a high-pitched, simpering voice. “Oh my goodness, I don’t know, I’m just a wittle girl who doesn’t know how knives work! Of course I’m sure,” she finished, dropping back into her normal tone of voice and glaring at him. She shoved him in the arm, and he pushed back. There was a crowd in front of them with someone talking on a stage. “And I don’t know. Magic, I guess. He knows it. Maybe it was some sort of knife that doesn’t really stab when you use it.”
Twitch shook his head. “What’d be the point of—”
“I don’t know; wizards are crazy. Why do they do anything?”
It was an auction of some sort. The hawker was peddling furniture and dishes on the street in front of an ill-kept old wooden two-story house.
“Someone must’ve died. Hey, look, there’s Delly,” Skate said, knocking Twitch on the shoulder and gesturing toward a girl in similar rags to their own, moving through the crowd, darting fast hands into pockets and purses whose strings were suddenly too loose. Skate laughed, and they pushed on.
Delly wasn’t in the same crew as Twitch and Skate. She worked for Boss Kernisk, who ran pickpocketing and street-begging. There was a lot of overlap between Marshall’s crew and Kernisk’s; burglars who needed to let the heat fall off of them would move into petty theft to lie low while still contributing, and whenever the cutpurses got more ambitious, they joined up with the house thieves. It was a good system, just like everything the Ink was involved in: no waste, good use of people, profits always up.
The sudden fishy, salty smell of the sea made Skate wrinkle her nose, but Twitch didn’t seem to care. He was chattering in halted tones about wizards, but Skate was only half-listening. Cart-pushers started appearing in the foot traffic, peddling cockles and clams and shrimp and crab and mussels and sea bass and mackerel and squid and tuna and eels and every other bounty of the sea, singing their rhymes and jingles. There were sailors about, leathery men and women with powerful arms and stout legs, already carousing and scuffling. Somewhere, a musician was playing a familiar tune, but Skate could not remember the words. The reedy tune fused with the raucous scene, making it all seem somehow connected instead of the mindless, chaotic scramble it was.
The pair stopped behind a redstone building. It was some gambling den or other, but the cellar was why they were here. Skate opened the heavy wooden door to the cellar and hopped down. Twitch followed and let the door slam shut behind them.
The resulting darkness was absolute. They both stayed quiet, since walking blind required concentration.
Twitch arrived first. There was the click of a latch and a low grinding noise as stone rubbed against stone. A crack of light appeared in the stone and became wider as the boy pushed the wall back, revealing a lit passage leading down and left. The door closed behind them.
Skate began talking now that they could see again. “You honestly wouldn’t believe the number of books, Twitch. He’s got at least double what we cased downstairs. And he keeps lots of shiny, expensive things all over the place. I dunno what they are, but they’d sell.”