Dragon Thief (5 page)

To Grace's obvious irritation, Red's rhetorical question changed the character of the crowd facing me. A trio of the girls suddenly pushed forward, talking at once.

The young one with the curls asked, “Did you
really
steal the crown of Grimheld while the king still wore—”

The dark girl with the crossbow spoke over her. “—walked away with the golden idols of the Grey Dwarves of Blackstone Crag—”

The boyish one added to the din. “—actually you who emptied the treasury of—”

“—is it true that—”

“—both thieves' guilds in Delmark?”

I felt suddenly overwhelmed.

Grace didn't join the barrage of questions, and two of the other girls hung back with her, the tall redhead and a small mousy girl with almond eyes. As the three girls peppered me with questions I saw Grace's expression of irritation shift halfway toward amusement, as if she got some sort of satisfaction from my discomfort.

I would have called the expression predatory on anyone other than a fourteen-year-old girl. Our eyes locked for a moment, and I could see she knew. She could read my face and saw that I had jumped in over my head just by implying I was “the Snake.”

Whose skin was I wearing?

Whoever this Snake was, at least half the girls in this little band looked up to him. In the face of the youngest, I saw something like hero worship. Fearless Leader let the others obsess without doing a thing to correct them or rein them in.

Oh, you're a smart little girl, aren't you?

Grace could have stepped in, questioned who I was directly, but if she did, at least some of her girls would resent having their assumptions challenged. Better to let the prisoner stumble on his own feet of clay.

Yeah, there was a reason she was in charge.

She watched as the Snake fans questioned me nonstop. At least I had some time to think about what to do because I couldn't get a word in as the girls talked over each other and answered their own questions. She let it go on for a long time, enjoying my discomfort,
then
she cleared her throat.

Everyone stopped babbling.

Grace smiled all too sweetly at me, and asked a question that was way too perceptive.

“How does such an
effective
outlaw land naked by our campfire?”

I didn't even need to answer that. It went right at the heart of my implied claim, and I could see doubt cloud the two older girls' faces.

It irritated me because I hadn't even been
trying
to con anyone.

I wasn't about to be outmaneuvered by some brat. It was misplaced pride on my part, but I did a stupid thing.

I lied.

I rationalized it by telling myself that as long as at least some of Grace's girls thought I was actually Snake, it meant that I would have them on my side. So I decided to leap from lies of omission to full-blown fabrication.

It was not a craft I was unskilled in. Even before I opened my mouth to answer, I saw Grace's smile falter as she saw my own.

“Remember when I said that the blood was not my own?”

I had their attention.

“You know the town nearby here, about an hour's ride?”

“Westmark?” the youngest one offered.

“That's right,” I said, having no idea if it was or not. “You know why I was there?”

Everyone shook their head as my mind raced to find an answer for that rhetorical question. “I had just finished up an accounting in Delmark, leaving both guilds there with a smaller treasury than they started with. I came here with my haul to pay a visit to a woman—”

“Your true love?” asked the young one.

Well, thank you, little girl.
“There's no such thing in an outlaw's life,” I said, shaping my lies to fit my new target audience. “Yes, she said she loved me, and I might have loved her . . . but she had family in the White Rock Thieves' Guild, and while she'd helped me take the guilds for their gold and jewels, when I returned to give her share to her, she became greedy.”

A tale of tragic love and betrayal and I had the girls hooked. Half of them anyway. Even the small quiet one who hung back with Grace and the redhead started listening raptly. Grace herself wore an expression of growing disbelief. I couldn't tell if she was reacting to my story, or to the fact that her group was buying my story.

I kept going, bringing all my skills to bear. I played up Snake's reputation to the bleeding edge of what I considered plausible, making him a tragic hero who had suffered a lover's betrayal that cut worse than any assassin's dagger. Weasel's goons became a squad of armed mercenaries. The ambush by the Sanhom Assassins became an epic battle of evils where I escaped clad only in my skin, carving my way out of the battle with a stolen dagger.

I admit I overdid it. But the first two rules of spinning a falsehood were: Tell them what they want to believe and tell them what they already expect to hear. Most of the girls hung on my every word.

Grace was no longer smiling, and the gaze she gave me could rival post-dragon Lucille in the smoldering department. However well my narrative had gone, she
was
the nominal leader of this little band—and given that I now saw that about half these girls had accessories made from human remains I realized that alienating her would be another in a long series of bad decisions on my part.

I couldn't back up on the path I'd started down, but I could take an abrupt left turn. I had just got to the point where I'd been running naked through the woods clad only in assassin's blood, and I decided to change the subject.

“Now you know how I ended up here.” I asked Grace, “Why don't you tell me how you came to be here?”

“It's not nearly as impressive as all that,” Grace said. The smile returned, cold and hard. “But we're outlaws as well. Not that we've had a choice.” She pointed the dagger at Red. “Mary here was sold to the White Rock Thieves' Guild when she was twelve. When she was fourteen, she was finally big enough to club her guard hard enough that he didn't get up again.” Grace pointed the dagger at the quiet young girl that stood with her and Mary. “That's Rabbit. What we call her anyway. She can't talk because her tongue was cut out.”

“Oh crap,” I whispered, wincing a little.

“That's the punishment White Rock gives to anyone who rats on their members—even when it's telling someone what they're doing to their kids. Krys there—” Grace pointed at the boyish one with the brown hair cut close to the scalp. “She's been homeless since she was six and the Delmark watch took her dad to the dungeons. Laya there, with the crossbow, she ran away from an arranged marriage. And Thea—” Grace pointed to the girl with the strawberry curls. “Her parents had too many kids who weren't boys. They gave her half a loaf of bread and left her in the woods here two summers ago.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“Why are
you
here?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Least interesting of all. I'm just an outlaw from a long line of outlaws. Dad had no boys, so he taught me his trade. Unfortunately, the guilds in Delmark tend to think a girl's only good for one thing. Just ask Mary.”

“So where's your dad?”

“The guild also doesn't take kindly to people teaching the trade to folks it doesn't approve of. The duke of White Rock himself took a hot poker—”

“I get the picture.” One way or another, all these girls had lost their families. They became outlaws, but were outcasts even among outlaws.

A hard bloodless frown crossed Grace's face. She walked up to me, pushing past the three girls in front of me. She spoke in a harsh, shaking whisper. “Don't dare give us your pity.”

“I wasn't—”

“I see your face. You're nowhere near as hard to read as you think you are.”

“I just realized why you might have a grudge against White Rock.”

She chuckled and stepped back. “Not a grudge, a debt.”

I looked from her to the others, and the jewelry made from teeth and bone, and at the weapons and clothing they wore. “They sent men after you, didn't they? They wouldn't like anyone thieving without tribute.”

“There's only one tribute they want from the likes of us,” Grace said.

No wonder they looked up to Snake. My own embellishments aside, Snake hurt the guilds in Delmark. These girls would obviously take some pleasure in that. In some sense that put us on the same side.

But the way they dressed made me nervous.

“When Mary thought I might be part of the White Rock Thieves' Guild, you stopped her. You said something about rules. What rules?”

“It's simple,” Grace said. “If someone doesn't try to take from us what we're unwilling to give, they get to live.”

“And if they do?”

She looked at me with very cold blue eyes. “We need food and clothing.”

Oh crap.

“They've sent a lot of men, but never figured out that rule.”

I could have ignored the implications of what she was saying, but she made a point of stroking her necklace of finger bones to help drive home the point. It also explained why none of Snake's other admirers had followed me into this part of the woods. A pack of cannibal teenage girls might get a bit of a reputation that would even put off the assassins' guild.

I know it put me off.

Just because things weren't tense enough, the redhead Mary decided to add, “They've stopped coming, unfortunately.”

After giving due consideration to my terrifying admirers, and their terrifying leader, I decided that it wasn't all that cold out in the woods. I could see dawn starting to break. With a set of clothes, I probably wouldn't die out there.

“I should be going,” I said.

My graceful exit was abruptly interrupted by a sharp point sticking me in my ribs above the kidney. I turned to see Grace holding the assassin's dagger up to my side. “You're not leaving.”

“What?”

“You owe us for those clothes.”

“Why don't you just keep the dagger?”

“Now,” Grace said, “you are such a successful, talented, infamous outlaw. Surely you think your life is worth more than just a dagger. You can afford to be more gracious.”

Even though they were probably responsible for saving my life—without the campfire and the clothing, winter would have made short work of me—I couldn't help hearing a threat. “What about your rules?”

She shook her head. “Snake, because you aren't a rapist we let you live. Never said anything about letting you
go
.”

“You saw me. The dagger's the only thing I have.”

She withdrew the dagger and glared at me. “Do you take us for fools here? We've all heard the stories about ‘the Snake.' For years you've stolen from kings, churches, wizards, even the guilds of Delmark. So after so many years, you have
nothing
stashed away? Or are you just not who you say you are?”

I could feel the audience wavering, and I didn't want to see what would happen if I lost their support. I couldn't back down now. Even though Fearless Leader Grace was operating at a level way beyond her age, I wasn't about to concede to a fourteen-year-old.

“Of course I have stuff stashed away, as in ‘not here.'”

“Where then?”

“Westmark?” Red—Mary—prompted hopefully.

“Don't be an idiot,” snapped the girl with the blond boy's hair, Krys. “They nabbed him there. Think White Rock'd leave anything for us?”

“Quiet you,” Grace said. “Let the master talk. You leave money in Westmark?”

“I was a victim of a rather thorough betrayal.” Grace did not like that for an answer. I saw her knuckles whiten as she gripped the dagger. “But—”

“But what?” she snapped.

“I do have a cache in the Kingdom of Lendowyn,” I said.

She stared at me like I had just told her that I was the Elf King and my gold was on the Moon. She threw the dagger down in frustration. “I don't believe this crap!
Lendowyn?
” She turned and stormed off, for the first time looking her age.

Redhead Mary called after her, “Grace!” and followed.

I took a step, and Laya, of crossbows and arranged marriages, stepped in front of me, her loaded bolt pointed at my midsection. She shook her head and I stayed put.

Mary stopped Grace at the edge of the clearing. The two talked to each other in hushed tones. I strained to overhear, but couldn't make out anything even as the discussion between them became more and more animated. Whatever they discussed, I could tell Grace didn't like it. Mary pointed at me several times, as if someone might be confused about what they were arguing about.

The argument ended with their backs still toward us. After a long pause, Grace turned and walked back to the campfire. She tried to hide her expression, but her body language told me she wasn't the one who had won the argument. She stopped and picked up the dagger and slid the blade into her belt.

“You,” she said, pointing at me. “You're taking us to Lendowyn.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but Mary came up behind her, looking directly at me and shaking her head. I decided to quit while I was ahead.

Grace walked up to me and said, “But first, once dawn breaks, you're going to take us all to the scene of this massacre you described.”

 • • • 

The ridiculousness of the situation did not escape me. Being held hostage by a group of teenage girls was the kind of thing that would prompt a guy to do something stupid just to assert his masculinity. It was easy for me to imagine how the men from the guild—men who'd categorically reject the idea of Grace being one of their number—would consistently tempt fate by trying to prove who the man was.

While I could understand how those men may have felt, it gave me no desire to emulate them. Having dealt with literal emasculation for months, the metaphorical kind didn't bother me nearly as much.

Grace was what really bothered me. The group's Fearless Leader filled her role well, but the way she'd snapped and stormed off in frustration showed she was still a teenage girl—not even the oldest one in the group.
That
was scary. Especially now that I was neck deep in a story that was barely half true. Inevitably they were going to find out I wasn't the legendary “Snake” no matter whose face I wore, and I doubt even the Dark Lord Nâtlac himself could predict her reaction—other than it likely would involve screaming and some form of pain.

What the hell was I thinking?

The answer was, as usual when I found myself in a situation like this, I hadn't been. I did what I always do. I improvised with whatever the situation handed me. My life being what it was, when the universe sees me flailing and tosses me a rope, more often than not there's a noose on the other end.

Fortunately for me, there was enough left at the site of the ambush to back up my story of epic escape. The dead and wounded had been dragged away, but there were more than enough bloodstains in the snow. Several trees had splintered wounds caused by stray quarrels. Some still had the shaft embedded in them.

The wreckage of Weasel's hay wagon dominated the scene. Someone had tried to right it after the fight, but it had been damaged beyond repair. The side had caved in, leaving a good part of its wood members in pieces sticking up out of the half-frozen ground. The rear axle had snapped, releasing the right wheel to roll down the hillside. Scraps of leather, all that remained of the harness for the team that had pulled the wagon, had been scattered across the road.

Grace looked at the remains of the wagon as if it physically pained her. She turned to the others and said, “Spread out and search the area, see if anyone dropped anything useful.” She pointed at crossbow-wielding Laya and said, “Keep an eye on him.”

The rest scattered as Fearless Leader climbed up into the wagon and started tossing aside random bits of broken wood, canvas, and hay. I could hear her muttering, “Nothing? They left nothing?”

“So,” I said to Laya, “arranged marriage?”

“Father couldn't pay his taxes,” Laya said. “Gave me to the tax collector.”

“That's rough.”

She frowned, causing the scar on her face to crease and become more prominent. “Others had it worse.”

I heard Grace cursing from above us, inside the wagon.

“She doesn't sound happy.”

“It's how she is. She worries. Worry makes her angry.”

In the wagon, I heard Grace say something like, “Bastards could have left some damn food!”

“How long have you been out here?” I asked.

Laya shrugged and nodded toward the wagon. “She was the first, then Mary. They've been out here two years, three maybe. I found them last fall.”

If I really was as oblivious as I acted sometimes, I might have asked why she stayed. But I knew why she stayed, why all of them stayed even though it was clear that they were going hungry in the depths of winter. I understood the choice they'd made. In their case, the choice was much starker because of their age and their sex, but it was still the same choice I had faced long ago when I'd chosen life as an outlaw.

Die free, or live as a slave.

For some people, a full belly can never compensate for being someone's property.

“She's a good leader?”

“She knows what to do.”

It was quiet, but I thought I heard a sob of frustration from the wagon. If Laya heard, she didn't give any sign of it. A few moments later, Grace climbed out of the remains of the wagon. I saw the instant before she realized I saw her, and her expression was wrenching.

By the time she jumped down to the ground and faced us, the pain was gone, replaced by the half-bored sardonic look she'd been giving me ever since I'd given up my dagger. Only I now had a sense of how brittle that hardness was.

“So,” I said, “I guess you're going to want me to find you transportation to Lendowyn?”

Her expression didn't soften, but the way she narrowed her eyes slightly and cocked her head told me that she understood I was making an offer, and wasn't quite sure what it meant.

“Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”

 • • • 

We returned to the campsite, and they packed everything up in a matter of minutes. We spent the rest of the day following the mute girl, Rabbit, who tracked the assassins from the ambush. I had my own reservations about that, but it did take us in the right direction, south. It was a pretty good assumption that those guys had some form of transportation since they were pretty far afield themselves.

Apparently no one had any doubt that the great master thief Snake could easily liberate whatever he wanted from a bunch of professional assassins.

For what it was worth, I agreed.

I just wished he was here.

We caught up with them before nightfall. There were seven or eight tents, at least a dozen horses, a carriage, and a pair of large covered wagons, all more than up to the task of transporting Grace's small band.

The campsite seemed larger and more opulent than I'd credit for a bunch of mercenary killers. I had a brief hope that we had come across a bunch of merchants who had coincidentally camped out in our path. I was able to believe that until I saw one of the sentries in the same elaborate patterned armor I'd seen on the Sanhom Assassins who had ambushed Weasel and company, down to the mask covering the lower half of his face.

We watched from the woods as the sun dropped and Grace whispered, “We can take care of the guard, you take a wagon.”

I shook my head.

“The master thief having second thoughts?”

“No,” I said. “I'll take care of the sentry.”

“Just you?”

“Just me.”

It wasn't bravado on my part. I just saw the size of that campsite, and I knew Grace was not the best at calculating the odds. The numbers favored the home team at least two to one without taking into account that on one side we had a bunch of young girls, and on the other we had trained professional assassins.

Also, if things went wrong I'd feel better if the bad guys had no idea that the girls were here. I at least had the advantage that these guys didn't want to kill me. Even if I ended up where I'd started, tied up in a burlap sack, at
some
point this spell would wear off and I'd be back in Lendowyn Castle.

At least I hoped it would.

If that happened, I'd feel better if I didn't leave a pile of dead teenage girls in my wake.

I watched the campsite for a few hours as the night deepened and the cook fires burned low. At some point Grace whispered, “You staring them into submission?”

“There are two types of thief, young lady.”

“Huh?”

“The first type is gone before you realize your purse is missing.” I placed my hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “The second clubs you with a rock and swipes the boots off your corpse. There's probably twenty trained killers sleeping down there. Tell me which thief has the better chance of making it out alive?”

She sighed. “The first.”

“Good choice,” I said, holding up the dagger I'd lifted from her belt with my other hand. “Because that's the kind of thief you've got.”

 • • • 

I wasn't kidding. That
was
the type of thief I was. It didn't matter if the camp was twenty people or two, the last thing I ever wanted was a physical confrontation. That kind of thing most likely ended in blood and humiliation even before I'd been princessified. Every fight I'd ever won had been through dumb luck.

Or cheating.

The sentry fell victim to the latter.

I studied his movements, and once the camp seemed mostly asleep, and the lone guard was deep in the middle of his watch, I waited in the shadows by a tree in the path of the circuit he walked around the camp. Just as he passed, I pulled a rope taut at ankle level. As he tumbled forward I took a large rock and helped his head into the forest floor.

While he was stunned, I tore his mask off and shoved it into his mouth. I used the rope to tie his ankles and wrists together behind his back, and to hold the makeshift gag in his mouth. By the time I was done, he was groaning and struggling ineffectively. After disarming him, I dragged him off into some brush so he was hidden from the camp.

Now I just had to swipe a wagon.