The Defenders' Apprentice

Chapter 2-2

“Yeah.” Squid backed off so he could get to his feet, and they squared off across the open space. The green-knees backed away under the arch, watching as the two older scrapplings circled each other. Eppie and Squid knew every inch of the space, every dip and bump in the ground, where the bridge arched too low to walk beneath and where the wet stones would be slick on the edge of the canal bank. Eppie let Squid land the first punch – almost. Then she tried to grab his wrist, something like what that guardsman, Thorat, had done to her at the temple. She wrestled with it and he straightened up, then bam! He was on the ground and she punched him lightly on the ear for good measure.

“Ow,” Squid complained as he reached up to wrap an arm around her to help himself up. “You take that round.”

“Only fair,” Eppie said. “You’re the one who got the apprenticeship. Here, have some ale.”

§

The next morning was Midsummer Eve. Eppie left Squid and the green-knees still sleeping and set off to find the place that Thorat had led her to. She found the right alley – she was sure of it – but as much as she looked, she couldn’t find the right gate. Every one she tried opened onto a small garden or to laundry hanging in an alley. She paced up and down. The streets were garlanded with flowers. All the princes in the whole land of Theranis had gathered at the governor’s palace for their annual council, while every peasant, merchant, and guildsman had come to celebrate the ambassadress’s crossing by dancing around the bonfires until dawn. It was the best pickpocketing of the year, but there she was, pacing up and down an empty side street, wondering where in all the realms that gate had gone.

After a while, she gave up and went scavenging. By the time the gates reopened after midday, she’d found a heavy blanket with a hole burned in its middle and a broken-lipped clay jar. She carried them back to the bridge, where she found Squid collecting his things into a rough bundle.

“What did you get?” he asked.

“Just this.” She set down the jar and blanket.

“It’s not much.”

“So, what’d you get, then?” Eppie asked.

“This and that,” Squid evaded. “I don’t really need much, since I’m getting on that boat.” He settled his bag of loot under his head and closed his eyes.

Eppie tried to sleep too, in preparation for the night’s vigil – no one slept on Midsummer night – but she just couldn’t. She kept thinking about Squid’s stash of loot resting under his head, just near her, purses and coin and credit notes. Would he really get onto a ship? She probably would, if she were Squid, if she were dragon-blind and a boy. At least she was in Anamat, though. Better than being back in Lemirun, herding her older sister’s goats with no future to call her own. Her sister was probably married by now, maybe with a baby or two. She wondered if they even kept the Midsummer vigil there any more.

Eppie got up. She would just have to stay awake through the night somehow. Meanwhile, there were purses to be snatched, at least for one more day, before she fell into whatever new life was waiting to trap her. She set off toward the front of the temple, tempting fate. What if the priestesses saw her? She could run faster than they could, couldn’t she?

In the wide avenue before the temple gates, a group of men waited to be admitted for their audiences with the priestesses. Others sat in the nearby taverns, playing dice to try to raise their pile of beads high enough for the gate priestess’s approval. A crowd of half-drunk men should be easy pickings. Still, most of the trade beads and foreign coins in those pockets were meant to be offerings for the dragons, and it didn’t seem right to take them, even if the priestesses kept more than their share.

Sounds of the ceremonies inside drifted out over the walls, a gong being struck, drumbeats, singing. Eppie wandered away, up toward the palace. The palace hill temple was far less devout. Eppie had certainly never seen Anara on those towers, or even any dragonlets on the nearby walls. When she arrived, a chorus of priestesses was dancing just inside the temple’s main gate, chanting and playing on small drums.

“Bring your beads, bring your silks, bring the fire of your heart, lay it out, pave the way, join in the rite, send her to the deeper realms, let the dragons welcome her for all you have given.” “Her” obviously meant the ambassadress, and she was at the harbor temple, not here, as even a petitioner would know.

Eppie scanned the crowd for fools. There were plenty to choose from. At the far corner of the square Eppie spotted an especially tall man wearing an embroidered cape. He cast a sharp eye at the scene around him and frowned.

“Come,” he snapped at his page, who was a sickly-looking boy about her own height. Eppie sidled over in their general direction and crouched behind a donkey cart. She paid no attention to the two half-wit bodyguards who marched behind the prince and his page.

The page boy skittered along beside the prince, glancing around, nervous under his master’s shadow. He wouldn’t last a minute on the streets of Anamat. He’d get beaten up and wind up washing dishes at some tavern for the rest of his life. He was carrying something very carefully. Not carefully enough.

As the prince’s group approached her hiding place, the priestesses’ music changed, and the page boy turned his head to gawk. Eppie’s hand slid out and relieved him of his burden. By the time he looked back, she was halfway across the square, leaning casually against a baker’s oven, hidden in plain sight. Na’s blood, but that was easy!

“Kinner!” snarled the prince. “I have told you…”

Kinner—that must have been the page’s name—had stopped in his tracks, looking bewildered. He shrank away from the prince.

“Where is my purse?” the prince screamed at him.

Even the priestesses seemed to miss a beat. Every head in the crowd turned to look at the prince and his too-small retinue. It was a good time to leave, before the watch was on her tail. Eppie slunk off into the shadows. At the last moment, she glanced back at the page. He was crying. She hesitated. That prince would probably have one of the half-wit guards flog him. It wasn’t his fault that he was dazed by Anamat – everyone was.

The watch would be on this bit of thievery before she could say “Na’s blood,” so Eppie snapped back into motion and ran down an alley, over a garden wall, up a shed and onto a rooftop. She crawled over the tiles and dropped onto a narrow path along the bank of the west canal. She found a hole in the rocks and hid. The moments dripped by. She listened. No sounds of pursuit. She knew her trade well, even if that guardsman said that picking pockets wasn’t really a trade. He knew as well as she did that it took some skill. She leaned back against the rocks and steadied her still-too-noisy breath.

Soon, she was as quiet as the rocks, but it would be safer to wait a little longer, and waiting would give her a chance to see what she’d snatched. Whatever was in the purse felt solid, a faceted ball ridged on one side. Even through the thick fabric of the purse, it felt warm, alive. Eppie puzzled with the complicated knot for a while. It kept her still while she waited for the watch to blow past. She could just about hear Squid’s voice in her head, saying, “What’s wrong with a knife?” but the cords were thick, and the undamaged purse itself might fetch a few middling beads.

She had just about finished unraveling the knot when the watch came along. She could hear them from a good ways off. There were two of them on this loop. They thundered along the canal path on their boots, muttering the usual lines:

“Quiet!”

“What’s that over there?”

“Just a dog.”

“Cursed scrapplings.”

“We should send them all back to the provinces. Jail’s too full already.”

It was as if they’d forgotten that half the city watch had been scrapplings once too, all boys, of course. Even if she could have, that was one trade Eppie would never take up: the watch were her enemy. Soon they were gone, on up the canal.

She leaned a little bit out of the darkness to get some light on the last twist of the knot so she could pull the purse strings open. Inside, she found a few credit notes and bills, one from the weaver’s guild, another from the swordsmiths. She couldn’t read the marks, but she recognized the seals. A smaller purse inside held beads, about as many a prosperous journeyman might carry, not much for a prince. She transferred those to her own pocket. Finally, there was the heavy thing, wrapped in its own bag of purple-dyed glove leather. She’d never seen leather dyed purple before.

It was time to move on, to get back to the bridge for a last evening meal with Squid, but it would be the work of moments to open the bag. She untied the knot, pulled the strings, and looked in.

The stone within glowed faintly, even in the daylight. It was set in a casing of silvery metal and was heavier than she would have thought something so small could be. On the side of the casing opposite the stone was the seal, the deeply ridged pattern she’d felt through the two bags. A prince’s seal. Now, what was she going to do with that?

Eppie put the seal back into its bag and the bag back into its purse. She retied the strings as they’d been, bundled her find into her small sack, and set off down the canal to find Squid. After all, what good was getting a handful of the prizest loot in Anamat if Squid sailed off before she could brag?

A crowd swarmed along the waterfront, people staking out their places for the morning’s spectacle, for a glimpse of Anara as she flew back down to the dragons’ realm. Eppie joined the throngs, flowing along the sand. Squid never claimed a space there. Instead, he wove in and out, making fools of everyone. This year, he would be off at sea with the foreigners who fled before Anara made her yearly appearance, fearing the dragon’s curse if they breached Anamat’s seasonal ban on trade. It was Theranian tradition to stay in place during the waning year, to care for the harvest, to safeguard the ambassadress in her journey under the earth. Even the scrapplings honored it. Only minstrels and messengers traveled during the half-year when the ambassadress was with the dragons.

An Enomaean boat was tied up at the second dock, heavy in the water, its sailors checking the ropes, readying the ship to sail away. She saw no sign of Squid there, so she moved on. A Cerean boat lay at the next dock, and sure enough, Squid was perched on its bowsprit. She ran up the dock alongside.

“You’re really leaving?” she asked, shouting over from the dock.

“Hey, there! Sure am!” Squid said triumphantly.

“I got something to show you.”

“Hang on.” Squid looked to make sure that no one important was watching him, then tiptoed back along the rail to where he could jump onto the dock.

“What’ve you got?” he asked, sitting down and dangling his legs over the lapping water.

“Prince’s seal,” Eppie whispered. She loosened the purse strings so that he could see but not touch it. It glowed, even in the sunlight.

“Wow.” Squid looked at it appreciatively for a long moment. “Was it hard to catch?”

“Nah,” Eppie said. “Watch was pretty fast on my tail, though. Lost ’em quick enough.”

“Sure,” Squid said. “What are you going to do with it? You can’t hardly sell it, can you? I mean, everyone’ll know what it is and they’ll have you in the lock-house faster than you can take the money.”

“But…” He was right. “I can keep it,” she suggested.

“I got a better idea,” Squid said. “You give it to me, I’ll take it to Cerea, and I can sell it there and bring you back half the coin. You can swap the Cerean coin for Anamat trade beads, and we’ll both be rich, and not in the lock-house.”

It made a certain amount of sense, but she knew he’d take more than his share, and she didn’t like the thought of selling the seal over to Cerea, somehow. Eppie slipped it back into her pocket. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Got no time for that. We sail at midnight—foreigners don’t want the dragon to catch them.” He rolled his eyes, as if he didn’t believe in curses—or blessings, for that matter.

“You coming back?” Eppie asked.

“I dunno, we’ll see,” Squid said. “Maybe see you next trading season?” He had that look in his eyes again, but it was gone before she was sure of it. He jerked his thumb toward the shore, toward their canal as he sprang away from her. “Here comes the watch! I have to get back on board!”

With that, he jumped back onto the ship. Eppie checked to make sure that he hadn’t slipped off with anything of hers, then she sprinted the length of the dock, dodged through the crowds on the sands, and disappeared again into the back alleys. She found herself on the west canal once more and sidled along its banks until she reached the first bridge, where she strode back onto the main street as if she’d never stolen a thing in her life, and whistled on her way back toward the east canal bridge.

At the next square, she hesitated and changed course. She was going to look for that hidden courtyard again.

§