Anthology: Thieves World: Turning Points

Now she'd been something, he thought with a smile, as he scampered down a twisting street leading through the Maze. Not a thin girl, but not thick either. Just right. Brown hair, again not too fair or dark. Clear blue eyes and an odd bit of a nose, just slightly too big for her face, but again not by too much. He liked it. He had liked her first time he put eyes on her. She must have liked him, as well, for they were in his bed that first night, and she'd been in it every night since for thirty years.

Not that he didn't look at other women. He was a bit past fifty years, but he wasn't dead. He still appreciated a slender leg, rounded rump, or a wicked smile. But no matter how tempting another woman looked, he'd still not found one to match his old Selda.

But as fascinating as the woman called the Tiger was, his reason for attending the semi-final bouts was to see where Lord Shacobo would be. As hoped for, while the otherwise penurious trader might stint in most things, he liked the reflected glory of being located near the great and near-great. His box was the first to the left of the true nobility and must have cost him enough to have made him wince when he paid over the fee to the stadium managers. Jake was certain Shacobo would be back in that box today.

For an absent moment, Jake wondered at how much the Rankans were paying for that thing they had built in the old market and Caravan Square. It was no Imperial arena, but it took a lot of men and lumber to build the damn thing. Seemed a shame to start tearing it down tomorrow.

He focused his attention on a particularly problematic corner, the one where five streets, or slightly larger alleys really, almost came together in a muddle, which had a couple of complete blind spots. He'd used it in the past to shake a follower, but it also was a good place to hide in waiting. He automatically moved to the left side of the street, moved diagonally across the first portion of the three-way intersection, then cut to his left again to enter the farthest turn, giving him the best advantage of seeing someone before being seen.

No one was there.

As he anticipated, everyone who could was at the tourney this day. When first hatching his plan to rob Shacobo's, he had planned on being there already, lurking in some nearby shadow as the fat merchant, his wife, dimwit son, obnoxious daughter, and far-too-pretty serving girl all marched off to their precious little viewing box.

But a passing remark by Heliz, the linguist of Lirt, made one night at the Vulgar Unicorn had eaten at the corner of his memory for a week. He had found an old text a while back while boosting a trader's stall at the Market, and had almost tossed it. But by chance he had not, and when he presented it to Heliz, in his office above Lumm the staver's, he thought the man would melt with pleasure. The odd document was something Heliz called a Beysib script, whatever that was, but he certainly seemed thrilled to have it.

In exchange for it, he had explained his passing remark to Jake, who had instantly put his mind to how he could turn this to his advantage. Soon after the tourney ended, there would be an eclipse.

Jake had managed to get a good ten minutes of solid information out of Heliz, which wasn't all that bad considering it had come embedded in about two hours of sarcasm, insult, and condescension. Jake wished Heliz had something worth stealing, because he loved victimizing people who assumed they were smarter than he, simply because he was a thief, or less well born, or older, or for any reason.

Jake the Rat was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

Jake had seen a couple of lunar eclipses and once, when he had been a very young boy, a solar one, but Heliz said none had been seen in Sanctuary since the oldest living man's grandfather had walked the streets, and had mentioned that "most of the locals will probably run around like demented chickens, in anticipation of the gods' wrath." Heliz talked like that.

He was from the heart of the Empire, too, as far as Jake could tell. Not Ranke from his accent, but somewhere close by. Jake had him pegged for a Crimson Scholar, except word was, they'd all died in some sort of violent explosion. He was, Jake was certain, capable of magic, simply because being around those people made Jake's butt itch, and Heliz made Jake's butt itch.

Jake had heard Heliz's sister had been in town looking for him yesterday. He turned the corner and walked quickly past Lumm the staver's place. Noticing the still smoking fifty feet of destruction before the building, Jake judged that family reunion hadn't gone as well as it could have.

Jake pushed aside the thought. Time to turn his full attention to the job. He reviewed what he knew of the locks at Shacobo's and patted the picks he had purchased from Bezul, then remembered what Hetwick's widow had told him for a price: Beware of the dog. Patting the bag of meat gleaned from the slaughterhouse next door, Jake grinned. "No problem," he muttered.

"Nice puppy," Jake said for the fiftieth time to the slavering monster below. The thing sort of looked like a hound, big and loose jointed, covered in dark brown and black fur, but it had a square muzzle and ears that perked up.

The creature-Jake refused to think of this monster as merely a dog-had an incredible array of teeth, all currently set to remove large hunks of Jake from Jake's bones.

The caper had gone exactly as Jake had anticipated. He had gone through the locks like a blade through parchment. He was standing in Shacobo's lock room within ten minutes of entering the building and had selected several items to remove; he concentrated on the small and portable, while less experienced thieves might have been lured by the pile of gold coins. He had taken a few of those, for certain, but the jewels and a couple of curios with precious stones would set him and Selda up for life. Not just a modest hut somewhere, but a lovely little home on the river south of Ranke, with a servant, perhaps even two.

He had taken one step out of the strong room when he had confronted the monster. The dog stood flatfooted and looked Jake in the eyes. It growled and Jake understood why Hetwick had preferred being captured. The creature had been trained to keep the invader in the strong room until guards could be summoned.

Feeling brilliant, Jake had produced the meat and tossed it through the door. As he had anticipated, the dog's training was overcome by hunger, and Jake had a chance to cut through the door to make his getaway.

What he hadn't counted on was the dog being the size of a small pony and eating everything Jake had brought along in two bites. Jake had earned about a thirty second headstart.

So now Jake hung from a pole used to run out laundry from a second-floor window. The rear wall of the estate was temptingly close, a mere twenty feet away, and his only means of transverse a slender cord used to hang the wash. Jake kept his knees tucked up as the dog would occasionally leap and take a bite at Jake's exposed toes, which could feel hot breath.

Not having the wit to call up the appropriate god for this circumstance, Jake started praying to all of them. He vowed as soon as he got to Ranke he would make the rounds and put a votive offering on every alms plate in every temple of every god, no matter how minor, if he could just get to that wall.

Reassuring himself with the observation that wet laundry was quite heavy and the thin cord was probably a great deal stouter than it looked, he began his move, first one hand then the next.

The dog started barking and Jake was suddenly afraid the noise might alert someone. Then the sky darkened and other dogs in the area also started to howl. Jake knew better than to glance at the sun, but the fading light told him the eclipse was now in progress. That should keep this situation under control a few minutes longer, Jake judged, as he moved slowing across the courtyard.