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A conversation with a thief.
Savara 4th, 1125 Dom.
That next morning I went to the butcher again, past the cows and all the traveling horsemen with their coats so long that they draped around the ribs of the beasts and the women in front of whore houses with their raised blouses and ripped fishnets. As if there wasn’t going to be an attack, as if there was no danger at all and the assignment of the Flock was nothing more than a prank. Walking faster now. Past the steam from food vendors cooking in large almost wok-like instruments, like oversized CD discs and the mixture of green pods of peas and triangle cut carrots glistened and oily. And definitely past the courthouse, where Vicentius talked to the purple silk wearing folks.
I came to the butcher, a new empty bag on my back with my eyes hell bent on those sausage links and that cheese (and maybe another bottle of wine, I tried it last night and out of everything in this shithole, that was probably the only good thing here). So's I went to the guy who nearly gleaned in the eyes when he saw me.
"I'll take some more food." I said. "About half of my last order."
"That'll be thirty silver." He said.
"You charged me forty for double what I’m taking, this ought to be twenty." I said.
"You were a first time customer."
"And now I’m a second time customer. What’s the problem?"
His eyes rolled, he put his hands face up and raised them a bit like he was receiving mass. “Thirty silver. That’s the price. It won’t change.”
Why’d I give that little shit my food?
I rubbed my forehead and counted the coins, letting them roll and drop on the tabletop. I pressed down on the last coin, one that swerved left and right.
“That’s thirty.” He smiled.
“Yeah.” I sighed.
He took one step and pivoted and from the door frame I heard the bell chime and the wood move. The small steps moved forward, mouse-like.
"You're thieving him." Barley said.
I turned to look at her, my face all tensed in between a moment of surprise and clarity and irritation. Surprise that the girl followed me, irritation that she'd just stepped up on me, and clarity that maybe she was right.
"You’ll drag the fleas with you, child." The old man threw what looked like chips of wood at her, what was really balled and rolled up butcher paper. It struck her across the head. She raised her arm forward and blocked them.
"I’m telling you, that isn’t even worth ten silver." She said. "You're getting cheated, you idiot."
So’s I looked back at the man with his hand in mid-jerk.
“You’re gonna listen to her?” He said. He grabbed a butcher’s knife, wide and rectangular, stabbed into the frame somewhere to his rear and brought it up into the air pointed straight at the girl. “And you. You leave right now or I’ll call the guards.”
She took a few steps back. The butcher stood, walked past me and towards her.
"Mudd…" He said, creeping towards her with the knife. I grabbed his hand as he came near, my thin fingers couldn’t even wrap around his wrist. But they didn’t need to, my other hand was halfway to drawing my sword.
“Is she telling the truth?” I asked.
The butcher lowered his blade, with caterpillar eye-brows so thick his eyes were almost lost in the furry mess.
"Not even ten silver, she says." I stepped up on him with the too-heavy sword on my too-thin waist. I flexed my face in what I hoped to be a disgruntled, bitter look. Now he was the one taking steps back.
"You ripped me off yesterday, then?" I told him and circled him and he started back behind the counter. "You cheated a member of the flock of crows? The people sent to protect you?”
"I-I, I need to make a living too."
"And what a life you’ve lived." I said. “Threatening little girl, cheating your protectors.”
I wasn’t really protecting anyone, but he didn’t know that.
"I see.” He didn’t look nervous, just annoyed. “I know how this may look.”
"I don't think you do." I undid the hilt a bit, let the sheen of the sword flash and strike his face so that in his quivering eyes I saw the deep silver-reflection of the sword. "Maybe I should talk with the authorities, let them know that in the time of crisis you tried to steal from the flock. From Vicentius."
I sheathed it again, with a snap. "Or that perhaps we ought to abandon this part of town, let it be rummaged through. Would you prefer that?"
"No, no, no. No, sire. Unnecessary." The butcher knife plopped on the table. He rubbed his hands together. "Take it. Take it, I'll give you double. Just take it and take your trouble with you. Forget all this."
I nodded my head and looked back to the girl, who was smiling for a moment until she caught me looking. She noticed. Turned her head to the right and I chuckled.
"Alright, kid." I bent over with my finger in front of her face. She slapped it away, I brought it back. "Why’d you help?"Silence.
“Why are you here today?”
Silence.
“You wanna talk?”
Her mouth twitched.
“Where’s my reward?” She said, bold-faced.
My tongue rolled in my mouth, I tried hard to suppress the smile but couldn’t. She reminded me, of well, me. I reached over to my back, my hand inside the bag as I ran my fingers through the odd-shaped meats. I took out a link, ripped one portion off and handed it to her.
“The food I left wasn’t good enough yesterday?” I asked.
“I shared it with everyone.” She said. “Not just the kids, everyone-everyone.”
“All those bums? I gave you what must have been twenty pounds of food and you gave it to all those bums?”
“We help our own.” She said. “Shouldn’t you understand that? Ain’t that what you guys do?”
“The flock?”
“Yeah. The flock. Aren’t you all brothers or wahtever.”
“No. I grit my teeth.
She looked up to me and I couldn’t tell whether her eyes went sullen or if they were always in that disposition.
"You're not from around here, are you?" She asked.
"I rolled in with the flock only a couple weeks ago, so no."
"No, no. You’re not used to everything here, even your accent is strange.” She said. “You don’t carry yourself like anyone I’ve know."
“Carry myself? How do I carry myself?” I asked.
“Like an idiot.” She bit deep into the cured meat. Chewing. “You’re not nearly as cautious as you should be.”
“I’m a tough guy.” I put my finger to my chest.
"No. No. Just very, very dumb." She said.
“Me? Dumb? I went to Harvard you know.”
She took a wide mouthed chomp on the only side of her mouth she still had teeth and the sounds of mastication mixed with the sounds of laughter. She kept laughing, eating away, and I felt my veins enlarge. I snatched the food from her finger tips.
"Now who's the idiot?"
She looked at me, black specks caught in her teeth.
“You are.” She said. Barley raised a little bag of coins up in front of me, on top of her head. When the hell did she taken that?
So’s I traded with her, meat for money and she went at it again, eating and laughing while we walked through the streets. Streets now filled with guards at every corner, pointed blockades set up around certain blocks. Roads now covered, lined with the armor wearing, chrome-domes. People moved, some stayed with boarded homes and looked through the gaps at us. Peasants and nobles all gave me shifty eyes like they hadn’t before and the guards held tight grips around their weapons when we passed by them. Though they weren’t looking at me, not at all. They looked at her. Spat in her direction. Glared.
"Why'd you help me?"
"Because I don't like owing people." She said.
"You didn’t owe me a thing." I said. “I didn’t give you anything I needed.”
“Why’d you have to come back to buy some more food then?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I said.
“Are you really part of the flock?” She asked. “They’re monster hunters and you don’t look a bi-”
“No.” I bent and looked down at her. “I’m not. I’m leaving as soon as I can.”
She stopped nibbling for a moment and stood with a kind of empty stare about her as her eyes drifted from person to person. The air felt strange and me even stranger, not like I’d been relieved but that I’d been cast into something much worse.
“Why are you leaving? Why’d you even join up with them then?”
“Those questions have very long answers. The short of it is, I didn’t have a choice. Not then, a month ago. But now I do, and my choice is to stay and suffer or leave before the week ends.”
“What’s happening by the end of the week?”
“Something bad, kid.” I said. “And I recommend you get your friends and scramble.”
“There’s no where for us.” She said. “We tried getting into the main city, spent a day sleeping on the streets and it didn’t take long for the guards to have us move. We went place to place, getting shuffled by people who didn’t even stand the look of us. Ended back where we started.”
“I’m sure they’d offer you a place before the attack.”
“Do you know where I come from?” She said, long since done eating. Wiping her mouth. “I come from Mudd road. Do you understand?”
“I figure. Were you born there or something?”
“Yes. Yes I was.” She said. “So I’ve known it all my life, how little people really want you around and how often you go back. You’re telling me theres a home for all the people that live there? All the dozens of us?”
“Then leave town. I don’t see the issue.”
“And go where? Another city that won’t take us in? We don’t got much but we have a home. I’d rather diehere than in the woods or in some foreign city.”
“That ain’t something to joke about. You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” I looked down at her. She went quiet. “I’ve seen death. It ain't honorable, kid.”
She leaned in.
"So have I." She said.
“So no ones come here to protect you?” I asked.
“You saw it for yourself outside. How many guards did you see around this part of town?” Conrad asked.
“Two. I guess.” I said. “But this location doesn’t seem high priority for the uh, monster attack. Right?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Conrad said. “A few would be enough to ruin us. The buildings are already half-way demolished. Those two guards ain’t doing nothing when that attack hits and you know it. S’far as I’m concerned, the Maelisaurs are free demolition. Maybe they’ll let ‘em run around, make sure we’re gone for good so we can stop being a shame to the city.”
Maelisaurs. That's what the monsters were named, though they weren't monsters in the traditional sense as much as they were unnative populations coming to fester on new ground. But they were funny sounding for however destructive they were supposed to be, like something out of a cartoon. The kind of name you give to pastel colored, black-line drawn funny picture dinosaurs.
I scratched my head and looked around the room (which was the backroom of the bar).
"I know I’m repeating myself and I hate repeating myself." I said. "But why don't you just all move? "
Back at it, I was in what was it again? Mudd town, Mudd land, Mudd road? the fringe of th city of Carthius, with the children looking at me with wide eyes, hiding behind each other as I stepped in the room, Conrad sitting on a little round table that somehow kept its stability beneath his weight.
"We can. We probably will." She said. "Then what? This place gets destroyed, we get back on the streets and most of us die or move and die."
"I mean, how bad can these - what were they called again?" I asked.
“Maelisaurs.” She talked slow with long inflections. “Mae-li-saurs. You’re one of the crows, aren't you? You should know this.””
"I’m a temp." I said.
“What’s a temp?” One of the children said.
She breathed out, her cheeks collapsing into thin hollows. The long noise, or rather her tongue pressed against her teeth made her spit all across the floor.
"All I know about these Maelisaurs is that they eat everything. That's what they are, right? Big bulls. Big bulls who don't care." I said. And remembered. And imagined. The Maelisaur. Which - as I reflect - should have been a perfectly sound reason why I should have left by now. And why sitting with these children in their little collapsed backroom-bar room was about as stupid as an idea as anything could be. A glass cup rolled down the side of a table, right above what looked like half a mounted flag, and half a dangling ripped piece of cloth. I grabbed it, blew out all the dust from inside and went to one of the barrels by the side of the room. I popped the cork on one of them and looked at the faucet shake and squeeze. Black sludge came out, where debris and insects had fallen in that looked fossilized in the liquid.
“Jesus Christ.” I threw it to the side. It shattered.
Conrad crossed his legs, one end of the table buckled more than the other.
"The money was going to be used for some mercenaries." He said. "There's still a couple of them that come in and out of the city, we thought we could scrounge two or three to at least help. Maybe pay off some of your own men to aid us. A guard...anything really. Anyone willing to swing a sword."
"If it's as bad as you say it is, I think you’d need a specialist."
“I mean, you could help us with that then, right?”
“Hah.” I said. “I don’t think there’s a single person in that camp that likes the look of me. Besides, why the hell do I need to help anyway?”
“I don’t know. Why’d you help us yesterday?” Barley asked.
They all looked at me with those god awful faces of people desperate and needy. The gross look of the weak. Faces that made me twitch and take a few steps back, that put the guilt in me. Open the door in my stomach, drop the hot coal in me and watch the fire roar.
It was just uncomfortableness right in there, a turning feeling that me cringe as I paced back and forth.
"You can't find help? Maybe another home to call your own?" I bit my nails.
"I already said no." Barley said. One of the children coughed, the young boy with what I just realized was a bandage wrapped around his head like a bandanna. The flowerchaser grabbed the head of the sickly one, he was spilling mucus and coughing wet heaves in my direction. She wiped his face with a damp cloth.
"Fuck man." I said. "I'm supposed to leave today, you know that?"
"I would too." Conrad said. "This is all the children have left."
“What about you, why don’t you ditch?”
“I’ve lived here twenty five years and I will-”
“Alright. I get it.” I said. “I get it. I get it. I get it.”
I put my hands against my face and I started to laugh beneath them, a chuckling noise like a gobble almost.
“I mean. How many of them could there be, right?” I laughed.
The one of the ends of the room the wall had been broken in some and the brick lay in a pile. One of the children, neither deaf nor mute but stupid in its innocence had climbed the little hill. He chased after a mosquito, trying to clap it with a wide slap and ran around jumping and chasing. The other child, the one with what I assumed were lung-problems chased after him, breaking his grip with the girl. So the boy chased the mosquito, and the other chased the boy. And the girl ran too, with her cloth in her hands trying to wipe him still.
Barley looked at them, as did I.
"I don't know if I can help." I said. Then I took a deep breath because I needed all the help I could get to just get the words out. "But if I could find someone, anyone. I'll see if I can get them to you tomorrow. From what I could tell, we still have a few days left. Maybe Four. Five, hopefully."
"You'll find someone?" The girl jumped. "Someone to protect us."
"Yeah. Because it sure as hell won't be me." I said.
And the girl ran up, clumsy with her arms in the air and wrapped herself around my waist. You wouldn’t blame me for holding onto my bag of money, right?
"That’s enough, alright. Alright." I pushed her away, lightly. But she wouldn't budge.
“I knew you’d help. I just knew it.”
“Uh-huh.” I rolled my eyes. “Who said I was doing this for free?”
She looked up, a little flat with her expression. I turned to Conrad.
"You work with leather right? Ever make anything besides shoes. Clothes, maybe?"
"Yes."
"I can. Yes." He said.
"Then here's the deal. You've got at least four days to make me something…better looking.” I pried the girl away from my body and looked down to my wear. “I’m tired of these rags. I’m like a walking potato sack. For however long I’ll be here, I want to at least look half-way decent.”
"That's...That's a quick order." He said.
"Do you want my help or not?"
"Alright." Conrad said. "You'll find us help then?"
"I'll try." I left it at that. With the girl smiling and Conrad smiling - though a bit nervous, getting his fingers all wiry and unhinged. He nodded his head, put on his glasses and walked back to his shop with such urgency that I could hear the doors slam even as I stepped out of the building and out of Mudd road.
