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C
HAPTER

11

A
fter three days in the back alleys of the Twilight, I was grimy enough and hungry enough, and thinking street thoughts. I'd also noticed something. The people in the Twilight were nervous. There was a lot of lurking in doorways, watchful eyes, over-the-shoulder glancing. Something was going on—or it was about to happen—and the Twilight people were wary. Me, I kept an eye out for the kidnappers, but figured they were looking for the ducal magister, not for some grubby gutterboy.

I missed Nevery and Benet and the warm kitchen at Heartsease, and I missed having shelves of books to read and biscuits to eat. But I liked going where I wanted without being worried about, too. Anyway, I couldn't go back until I found the locus stone thieves. They were around somewhere, sure as sure.

When I'd been a gutterboy, I hadn't ever talked to the other gutterboys and guttergirls who lived on the streets of the Twilight. Half of them had been working for Crowe, the Underlord, and he'd had a word out on me, and they would've turned me in to him for a copper lock and a sausage in a biscuit.

But nobody knew better than gutterboys and guttergirls what was going on in the city. We saw everything and heard everything, and nobody noticed us coming and going. I just had to find some gutterkids who would tell me what they'd seen and heard about the locus stone thefts.

And I had to do it soon. The day before, as I'd crept through an alley, one of the black-and-white birds from the tree in front of Heartsease had spiraled down to land on a broken cobblestone at my feet. Tied to its leg was a quill, and in the quill was a note from Nevery, just a short one.

 

Every gutterkid knew that a good way to make a copper lock or two was to go mudlarking down by the river. In the mudflats you could find things washed up, like old clothes or shoes with some wear left in them, or a drowned man with a string of copper locks in his pocket.

Pip was still annoyed with me for turning it into a green-furred, red-eyed cat. It followed me, staying hidden, but I knew it was nearby. I really needed to settle the magics properly, but without Pip I couldn't do it. The magics would be all right for another few days, anyway.

With Pip following, I headed past the docks and warehouses, out to the edge of the city where the magics felt thin. The river curved here, and in the curve were the mudflats, a flat brown stretch dotted with clumps of river grass. Flocks of gulls circled overhead, and the air stank of mud and dead fish and open drains. A chilly wind blew off the river and the gray clouds overhead spat out an icy drizzle.

Hunching my shoulders against the wind, I followed a rutted path around the curve of the river at the edge of the mud to a windowless shack built of rotting boards with tar paper nailed up on its roof to keep the rain out. A smudge of smoke drifted from a stovepipe that stuck out of the roof. Somebody was inside, then. As I came up the path to the shack, its door creaked open and a girl stepped out.

She wore a ragged woolen dress too long for her and a holey striped shawl, and her bare feet were crusted with mud. Her long brown hair was tied back in a tail.

“What d'you want?” she asked, scowling.

I nodded at the shack. “Can I come in?”

She shook her head and pointed at the path I'd come up. “Take yourself off.” Then she whirled, stepped inside, and slammed the door behind her.

Drats. I didn't have time for this. But I couldn't force my way in. Sure as sure more kids were inside, and they'd fight me if I tried it. I sat down on the path to wait.

The rain kept up. Pip stayed crouched behind its clump of grass. I shivered as a drop of cold rain wormed down my neck and inside my shirt. The kids in the shack knew I was there. They'd have to open the door sometime. I kept waiting, looking out across the mudflats and at the Night Bridge.

That was the thing about being a gutterboy. It wasn't all freedom. A lot of the time it was a hard life, and a lonely one, and it was also boring. When I'd been a gutterboy, I hadn't thought about much except food and finding a warm place to sleep, and staying out of Crowe's hands. I hadn't even known how to read.

After a long time, just as the sky was growing dark and the werelights of the Sunrise were flickering on across the river, the door creaked open again.

The girl stepped out, and this time a bigger boy came with her. He looked like a minion-in-training, with a low forehead and just one eyebrow, and narrow, suspicious eyes. He wore rags, but over the top of them he wore a man's frock coat, too big for him, but warm. He was the boss, then.

I got stiffly to my feet.

Boy-minion's narrow eyes narrowed even more, peering at me through the dim light. “Got anything to eat?”

I nodded. I'd come prepared.

He muttered something to the girl. She said something back. They both turned and went into the shack, leaving the door open behind them.

Right, I was in.

 

Three other kids were inside the shack, besides minion-boy and the girl, a couple of them wrapped in ragged blankets, all of them sitting on the floor around a pile of stuff washed up from the river. The air inside was warm with drafts of cold slithering through it, and it smelled like dirty socks and dried river mud. Old rope was strung across the room, right below the roof, where rags and holey clothes had been hung up to dry. The orange glow of firelight came from a battered tin stove that crouched against one wall, and shadows lurked in the corners. The mudlark-kids watched me come in, their eyes bright in their dirty faces.

I sat on the dirt floor by the door, farthest away from the warmth of the stove.

The girl put the wood she'd brought in on the fire, and she and the boy sat down next to the stove and pretended to ignore me. The other kids peeked quick glances at me, then went back to what they were doing, which was sorting through the piles of trash they'd mudlarked. They'd sell the cloth to a rag-and-bone man, and other bits to junk sellers or swagshop owners. Had any of them ever been to school? Probably not. None of them knew how to write or read or think about much but mudlarking.

I pulled my knees up and rested my head on my folded arms. They'd get around to me eventually.

After a while, minion-boy got to his feet and came to glare down at me with his hands on his hips. “You got food?” he asked.

I nodded and dug into my pockets. I handed over what I'd brought, half a stale loaf of bread, a rind of cheese, and a couple of raw potatoes I'd nicked off a cart in Sark Square. Minion-boy took it all and went back to his place by the stove. The other kids gathered around him as he shared out the food while the girl stuck the potatoes into the coals of the fire to cook them. After all the kids had taken their food, minion-boy came back and handed me a chunk of bread. I ate it slowly. Then he came back with a steaming potato. He squatted next to me and split it, handing me half.

I held the half potato cupped in my hands, warming my fingers. “Thanks,” I said.

He nodded. “I'm Den.” He pointed at the girl. “She's Jo. How come we never saw you before?”

“The old Underlord had a word out on me,” I said.

“Crowe, you mean?” Den said.

I nodded, trying not to shiver at the sound of his name.

He took a bite of his potato. “Rough lot, Crowe. We didn't like him. But there's a new Underlord now, a better one. Embre-wing. He after you, too?”

He probably was. I shrugged.

“Looks like somebody beat the fluff out of you not too long ago,” Den said. “You in trouble?”

I definitely was. I nodded.

The girl, Jo, came over and sat down beside big Den. “Not very chatty, are you?”

“Not usually,” I said. I took a bite of the potato. It wasn't all the way cooked in the middle and the skin was charred black. Still, it was better than Dawn Palace food.

“Well, we can't help you,” Jo said, frowning. “Whatever trouble you're in.”

I swallowed down the last of the potato. My stomach grumbled, wanting more. “I just need some information,” I said.

“Yeah, I'll just bet you do,” Den said, standing. He and Jo went back to their spot against the other wall. After a while, the other mudlark-kids quit picking through the trash, and rolled up together in their blankets, and Jo and Den wrapped up in their own ragged blankets, and the fire died down, leaving the small room dark with shadows.

I lay down on the dirt floor and went to sleep.

 

In the morning I woke up when somebody stepped over me and opened the door, spilling gray light into the room. Den. I got up and followed him outside.

The sky was covered with clouds that hung low and gray, but it wasn't raining. Den stood in the path with his hands on his hips. “What's your name?” he asked.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Conn,” I said.

“You a gutterboy?” Jo said from behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder. She stepped out of the shack's doorway and went to stand next to Den. They both looked me up and down.

“He's got a gutterboy name,” Den said slowly. “And he looks like a gutterboy.”

Jo shook her head. “But I don't think he is one.”

“I
am
a—” I started.

And then I stopped. Because I wasn't anything like a gutterboy anymore. I'd run away to get some things done that I couldn't do if I was wearing fancy ducal magister clothes up in the Dawn Palace, and from the people who were trying to shut me into the ducal magister box.

But I missed those people, too, and I missed my books and the warm sweater that Benet had knitted for me, and I missed Rowan, though I knew she had to be furious with me, and I missed Nevery even though he'd sent me away from Heartsease.

“I . . . used to be a gutterboy,” I added slowly. “But I'm something else now”—I didn't know what, exactly—“and I need some information from you.”

Den and Jo glanced at each other. Jo shrugged, then Den nodded. “Right, Conn,” Den said. “What d'you want to know?”

I let out a breath. Good. “D'you know anything about jewel thieves?” I asked.

C
HAPTER

12

D
en told me about a smokehole tavern on Strangle Street in the Twilight, a place where, he said, more than once he'd heard people whispering at a table in a corner about thievery and fancy jewels.

“But you don't want to get mixed up with that lot,” Den told me.

I wasn't going to get mixed up with the locus stone thieves, I was just going to spy on them, and follow them to their headquarters, and see if I could figure out why they were stealing locus stones from the city's magisters. It was a strange thing for thieves to do, really, stealing locus stones. The thieves couldn't sell them, and if they weren't wizards they couldn't use them. It didn't make sense.

When it was late enough, I wound my way through the back alleys of the Twilight, followed by Pip-cat, to Strangle Street. There, I edged past a group of people gathered around a run-down shop with a broken front window, as if it'd had a brick thrown through it. Next to the shop was a burned-out husk of a house; the air smelled like smoke, as if the fire had happened recently. Trouble in the Twilight, but that was for Embre to deal with.

The smokehole was a tavern where people went to drink redstreak and black gin, and to make dark deals. I went down two steps and slunk inside the dim-dark room. Covering the floor was sawdust, scuffed up with damp patches. The walls were cracked plaster, and the ceiling was low. Along one wall was a counter, and behind that stood the tavern's keeper, a red-faced woman with burly arms. Around the room were rough wooden tables and benches, mostly empty.

I sat down at a table with my back against the wall and a clear path to the door. After a while the potboy, a kid wearing a stained apron and carrying a tray, came up to me.

“You got money to pay for that seat?” he asked, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

I nodded. I'd saved back a couple of coppers from selling my boots to the swagshop.

“A'right,” the potboy said. “What d'you want?”

“Bread and cheese?” I asked.

“One copper lock,” he said, and waited.

I gave him the coin; he went to fetch the food.

When he came back with a slice of bread and a piece of cheese, I nodded at the bench across from me. He glanced at the tavern keeper, then shrugged and sat down.

“Want some?” I asked, offering the plate.

He grabbed up the cheese and stuffed it into his mouth.

I took the plate back and ate a bite of the bread. “I'm looking for jewel thieves.”

“Think you're going to find 'em here?” he asked, his mouth full.

I nodded.

The potboy glanced over his shoulder again. Then he swallowed down the cheese and leaned closer, whispering. “The chimney swifts. They drink at that table, late.” He pointed at a table in the corner. “But you don't want to go in with them.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You just don't.” He stood up. “And you can't hang about in here until they come in.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. I left.

 

Chimney swifts! I should've thought of them before. They used their bristly brushes to sweep chimneys clean of soot, both in the Sunrise and the Twilight.
And
on the wizards' islands in the river. A chimney swift would make a very good thief. He or she could get into any house, even if the doors were locked, and steal something, then climb right back up the chimney again and be away clean.

But a chimney swift shouldn't be able to steal a wizard's locus magicalicus, because the stone would kill him if he touched it. That part about it was strange.

While I waited in an alley, I thought more about what I was. Not a gutterboy. Not the ducal magister. Something else. I was a wizard, and I was somebody all the other wizards in Wellmet except Nevery didn't like very much, and I knew the magics better than anyone. And I was Rowan's best friend and Embre's cousin, and they were the duchess and the Underlord, powerful people in Wellmet. What did all those things add up to, all together?

I thought about it, but I didn't come up with any answer.

So instead I thought about something more practical, how to spy on the chimney swifts. A long time ago, when Nevery had wanted to spy on the magisters, he'd done the embero spell on me and turned me into a cat because a cat makes a very good spy. I had a cat, Pip, but after the spying I couldn't turn Pip into a boy who could tell me what he'd seen and heard.

Hmmm. Maybe Pip
could
be my spy. Maybe I could do a spell so I could see through Pip's eyes and hear through its ears.

“
Tallennar
,” I whispered. Pip-cat peered from around the side of the broken-down box it'd been hiding behind. After glaring at me for a moment, it padded over and crouched on the ground next to me.

“All right, Pip?” I said, and gave it a little scratch on the place between its ears. Its slowsilver fur wasn't soft; it felt prickly and made my fingers tingle.

Pip-cat rubbed its face against my hand—friends again—then climbed up my front and onto my shoulder. Its cat tail prickled where it rested against the back of my neck.

After thinking about it for a while, remembering words in the spell language, I reached up and rested my hand on Pip's back.

“Magics,” I said in the magical-spell dragon language. “Please make this work without . . . without . . .”

As I spoke, the magics shifted, and I felt it the moment they turned their attention onto tiny me—like looking into the night sky and having the stars look back. Immense, powerful, a little frightening. The air around me stilled and my ears popped. “Magics,” I went on, my voice sounding thin in the echoing silence. “Please make this spell work without hurting Pip.” I took a breath. “Or me,” I added quickly, and then I launched into my made-up eyes-and-ears spell.

The spell tingled in the air, hanging like a sparkling cloud in front of me, then the magics shifted and I heard a roaring thunder inside my head as the spell focused itself into a glowing blue spark bright enough to burn. The spark exploded in front of Pip's eyes and then in front of mine, and crashed into Pip's ears and then into mine, clattering around inside my skull as if it was scouring out my brain.

Catching my breath, I blinked the brights out of my eyes and shook my head. Everything looked ordinary—gray sky, muddy ground, brick alley wall at my back, Pip-cat crouched on my shoulder. Then, to finish, I added Pip's true name to the spell, “
Tallennar
.”

The world spun and flashed and I closed my eyes quick—and everything changed. With my newly sensitive Pip-ears I heard the
rush-rush-rush
of the river, and the rustle of a pigeon's wings on the roof far overhead, and the wind blowing across the top of a chimney, and a man talking to himself two streets over. Carefully I cracked open my eyes, squinting against the brightness. Pip looked down and through its keen eyes I saw the dirty cobblestones, every bump and crack outlined in glowing sparks. Pip turned its head and looked at me, and I saw myself, a gutterboy-wizard with a dirt-smudged face and wide blue eyes, and a cloud of crackling fire around him. So that's what I looked like to a dragon.

“
Connwaer
,” I whispered. I watched the gutterboy's lips move. A flash in front of my eyes and a roaring in my ears, and I saw and heard as my ordinary self again, the ordinary Pip sitting next to me.

I peered around. Nobody had noticed; I was still alone in the dim-dark alley.

Well. The spell had effected with more power than I'd ever felt before. It wouldn't be temporary, either; I'd have the use of Pip's eyes and ears anytime I needed them, just by saying Pip's true name. It was a good spell. A very, very good spell.

 

I slept for a while in the alley, curled up behind a pile of trash. After midnight, I woke up and went back to the smokehole tavern. Seeing me come in, the potboy nodded, then pointed with his chin toward a dark corner. At a table sat three men and a woman, all wearing black clothes, all smudged with soot. From the doorway I looked them over carefully. None of them were the men who'd beaten the fluff out of me but they were chimney swifts, sure as sure. My plan was to sit at a table near them and use Pip to listen to their conversation, and then to follow them to wherever they lived.

One of the swifts was thin and small enough that he looked like he might squeeze himself into a narrow chimney and then get stuck, but the other two men and the woman were bigger and burlier, more like minions. None of them did go up chimneys themselves, I realized. Whenever you saw a swift in the streets, walking to a job, he always had a soot-smudged kid following him, a boy or girl dressed in black, carrying one of the bristly brushes or a bag.
They
were the ones who went up the chimneys. The kids were the ones doing the stealing, then, working on the swifts' orders.

I could go up a chimney, couldn't I? And I was a very good thief.

I knew what Nevery would say.
Don't be stupid, boy.
He'd want me to be
safe
and
careful
. But careful wouldn't get done what I needed to do. Sure as sure, this was a better way than sneaking and spying to find out what I needed from the chimney swifts.

Pip slunk under a nearby bench and I walked up to the swifts' table. The four of them sat with their heads down, leaning forward, talking in low whispers. Seeing me, they broke off.

“What d'you want?” asked a long-faced man with red-rimmed eyes. He took a drink of ale and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving a clean patch in his sooty face.

“Never mind what he wants,” said the woman, who wore a black woolen dress with a black shawl over her broad shoulders. “Take yerself off, boy.” She pointed at the smokehole door.

The four turned back to their conversation, but I stood there waiting.

They gave me narrow-eyed, sidelong glances, then the woman whispered something to the burly man across from her. He nodded, put his hands on the table, and pushed himself to his feet, then climbed over his bench and reached for me. Before he could grab me and throw me out the door, I ducked under his reaching hands and said, in a loud whisper, “
Locus stones
.”

The four of them stared at me, looking around to see if anybody else in the tavern had heard.

The burly man held me by the scruff of my neck, standing behind me like a wall. The woman grabbed me by the front of my ragged vest and jerked me closer to the table. “What d'you know about locus stones, gutterboy?” she hissed.

I couldn't shrug because burly-man had a tight grip on me from behind. “I know you steal 'em,” I whispered. “And I could steal 'em, too.”

The woman's eyes narrowed. “How'd you manage that?” she asked.

“I have quick hands,” I said.

The fourth man at the table, the skinniest one, leaned forward. “What d'you want, gutterboy?”

“What d'you think?” I asked.

From behind, burly-man gave me a rough shake. “Answer,” he growled.

Right. “I'm a thief,” I said. “I want to be a chimney swift.”

“Huh,” the woman said, and let me go. Burly-man kept his grip on my scruff. “You want to work for us, you mean?”

I nodded.

She looked past me at burly-man. “What d'you think, Drury?” she asked.

He let go of my scruff and grabbed my arm. “We take him to Sootle, is what.”

The others got up from the table and, dragging me with them, went out the door of the smokehole tavern and into the dark streets of the Twilight.

On the way out, I saw the potboy staring, and then shaking his head.

But I wasn't worried. This was a very good plan.