Rules for Thieves Page 18

“We might as well get some sleep,” Beck says finally, breaking a long silence. His voice is tired. He didn’t get much sleep back at the Guild. It’s amazing he’s lasted this long.

  “Probably,” I agree. “You can take the couch.”

  “No, you. You’re more injured than me.”

  This isn’t totally true. Beck swears he used some of his healing magic on himself before I got here, but I’m not sure I believe this story, since he winces every now and then when he turns his head fast. But I want the couch anyway, so I don’t argue.

  As soon as my head hits the sofa cushion, I start drifting. Everything sort of swirls around, getting all tangled until it’s hard to think straight and I don’t remember, exactly, what I was thinking about . . .

  “Alli?” Beck whispers.

  “Yeah?”

  He rolls over, looking up at where I’m lying. “Do you think . . . do you think people become like their parents?”

  “I dunno. Why?”

  “I was just thinking,” he says quietly, “about Ariannorah, and how she’s so much like her parents already—all rich and arrogant, I mean—but only because she didn’t know any better. I was wondering what she’d be like if . . . I dunno. I was just thinking.”

  I hesitate. “About your mom?”

  For a second I think he’s not going to answer, but he does. “I mean—I wouldn’t mind being like my mom. She was the smartest person I’ve ever met, and a way better healer than I’ll ever be. And she was funny, too—she could make anybody laugh.”

  “Really?” I say. “Even all the scary thieves in the Guild?”

  He almost smiles. “Even them.” He looks down at his hands. “Ariannorah talked to me about her mother today, when we were in the garden, and it made me think of mine. And . . . I dunno, it was like we really weren’t all that different deep down. And it made me wonder what we’d be like if we swapped places—if she were in the Guild and I were rich. Would she still be snobby? Or would I be? Would we be just like our parents?”

  “You think too much,” I say. But he still seems to be waiting for some kind of answer, so I give him one. “I really wouldn’t know. Whether I’m like my parents, I mean.”

  He nods. “You were three when you went to the orphanage, right?”

  I can’t believe he remembers that. I said something about how long I’d been at Sisters of Harona, but I never told him about that day.

  “Do you . . . do you remember anything?” he asks. “From before?”

  “Not much,” I say, which is true. The memories I have are flashes, incomplete thoughts, and sometimes I wonder if I made them up. A small bedroom with a dirty window draped in lacy white curtains. A kitchen that smelled like cinnamon, with dishes piled in the sink and cupboards that were all empty. The stickiness of summer, the windows thrown wide to let in a breeze.

  And my brother. I can’t see much of him at all, just this vague thought of white chocolate and a single image: a boy with shaggy black hair whose face I can’t see, who throws me up into the air—I shriek, but it’s from excitement, not fear—and when I start to fall he catches me, spinning me around.

  There’s nothing else of him, but I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m ever going to see him again. He’s just another thing my mother took from me.

  There’s not much else of her, either. Only one full memory, a scene that plays itself over and over in my head, no matter how hard I try not to think about it. The last day. Even as my eyes slip closed, the picture’s still sharp and fresh in my head like always, playing out against my eyelids.

  I was asleep, mostly, while she carried me. I woke to feel water on my face. Rain? My mother set me down but held my hand as we walked toward a stone wall, through a gate, and up a garden path. An old gray house sat at the end, covered in trails of ivy. We waited on the porch for a long time until the door opened. The woman at the door was dressed all in white, the Sisters’ color. I hid behind my mother’s skirts.

  I don’t remember what the Sister said, if she said anything. But I can’t get my mother’s last words out of my head.

  “I can’t.”

  Out of everything, that’s the part that makes me hate her. She didn’t say anything I needed to hear. Not “I’m sorry,” not “I love you,” not even “good-bye.” It’s the only thing I know for sure she ever said to me.

  To Beck, I say, “I don’t remember my mother.”

  He must be looking at me, but I don’t open my eyes. I know there will be pity in his face and I don’t want it. “But it doesn’t matter. She can’t have been worth remembering, right?” My voices catches at the end, and I hate how whiny I sound.

  Beck doesn’t say anything for a second. “What do you mean?”

  I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “I mean, I’m glad I don’t remember her. She obviously wasn’t much of a mother.”

  I keep my eyes clamped shut, wishing he’d stop looking at me. I want to stop talking about this.

  “You don’t know that,” he says quietly. “Maybe she was just trying to—”

  “Trying to give me a better life, yeah, whatever. That’s the orphanage’s line. The thing they say to everyone who gets dropped off to try and make us feel better. Doesn’t make it true.” I never really understood their point anyway. Saying “you’ll be better off without me” is also saying “I’ll be better off without you.”

  And even if it’s true, it doesn’t change the fact that she picked my brother over me. That she wanted him more than me. I’ve tried to guess why a hundred times. Did she not want me at all, or did she want me the least?

  “What I was going to say,” Beck says quietly, “is maybe she couldn’t be what you needed her to be. So she tried to give you someone who could.”

  He’s talking about his own mother, not mine, but I don’t point this out to him.

  “Anyway,” I say, in a casual voice that doesn’t belong to me, “that was a long time ago, so . . .” I roll over, facing into the sofa, so I don’t have to see Beck watching like he’s seeing me for the first time.

  He doesn’t say anything else.

  Sleep comes quickly after that, but it doesn’t last long. Every time I close my eyes, I see my mother’s face. Or what I think it might look like, anyway. It’s all kind of fuzzy.

  “It’s me,” I say, trying to get her attention. “I’m your daughter.”

  She doesn’t recognize me. She just stares.

  “I never stopped being your daughter,” I say, but she’s gone. I think I hear her footsteps echoing around me. I wake in a cold sweat.

  It felt, for a second, like she was really here, in this room. If we saw each other now, for real, what would we say? I don’t even know her. Would she try to explain? I guess it doesn’t matter. No excuse would fix it. We couldn’t ever be what we should be.

  I guess that’s the thing about dwelling on the past. You can’t go back. You can just keep running forward and try to escape it.

  I close my eyes again and she’s there, a ghost against my eyelids. As I drift back to sleep, I wonder if she’s thinking of me, wherever she is. I hope so. I hope the ghost that haunts her dreams is me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wake to a thud. I open my eyes just in time to see two armed protectors barrel through the open door toward us. Beck’s still lying on the floor, and before we have time to move, they’re on us.

  I lunge away from the one who reaches for me, but he’s fast and I’m stumbling. He grabs my gloved right hand and pulls, yanking me until I fall off the sofa, and my knees hit the floor hard. My right arm burns as I try to escape his grip. He wrenches my arm behind my back, and I can’t help but let out a squeak of pain.

  As one protector grabs my other arm and reaches for the handcuffs on his belt, the second shoves Beck to the ground. Beck’s stronger than me and manages to rip away for just a second, but the protector grabs him again, shoving him to his knees. I hold back a scream.

  My hands are chained together behind my
back with metal cuffs that rub against my gloves and click as they’re clamped into place. The protector grabs the chain and pulls, throwing me backward. I try to scramble to my feet but fall again, landing hard on my side, unable to get up with my hands tied. Everything flashes red and black and white as the room spins around me.

  The protector grabs my arm and jerks me up. I kick at him, but he keeps me at arm’s length as he walks out of the room, dragging me after him.

  Outside the door, Lord Atherton is watching everything, his mouth set in a hard line. I glare at him, anger flooding through me, flashing redder than the protectors’ uniforms. I wait until the protector has passed by Atherton, dragging me closer to him. I look straight into Atherton’s eyes and smile. I’m rewarded by his confused look.

  I spit in his face.

  Atherton roars, the protectors whirl around, Beck looks back at me and I can’t tell what he’s thinking, then the protector yanks me away from Atherton and slaps me across the face. Fire burns my cheek and I try to blink away the red spots that cover everything.

  Beck lunges for the protector who slapped me. I can’t see them, but suddenly they both hit the floor. I run, but everything blurs and spins and flashes red. Atherton yells again. I stagger, disoriented. Where’s the door? I need to get out, I need to—

  A strong hand grabs me from behind, locking around my arm. I turn and see that Beck lost the fight—the other protector hauls him to his feet, and blood runs down his face.

  “If either of you tries anything else,” Beck’s protector growls, “we’ll get out our swords. Now move.” He shoves Beck in front of him and starts walking, keeping a tight grip on the chain of Beck’s handcuffs. My protector follows after, dragging me along. As we move away down the hall, I look back at Atherton, who still stands there, looking stunned. It would have been worth it, just to see that look, except for the blood that Beck spits from his mouth, leaving a crimson stain against the bright white floor.

  • • •

  Prison is exactly what I remember—cold, bare, and gray. I’ve never been in a Ruhian prison before, but it’s practically identical to the Azeland one where the protectors took me after one of my attempts at running away. Only this time there’s no Sister Morgila to come pick me up.

  Beck and I are shoved into adjacent holding cells, the barred doors are slammed shut and locked, and the guards’ footsteps retreat down the hall, leaving us alone in the cold silence.

  The wall between our cells is so old it’s practically crumbling, and there’s a sizeable gap in the mortar through which, if we position ourselves correctly, we can still see each other. “Are you all right?” Beck asks, peering in at me. He looks at my cheek.

  “Never better,” I say. “And you?” The blood’s dried around his mouth and nose, making it look gruesome, but he’s not bleeding anymore, and nothing looks broken.

  “Could be worse,” he says cheerfully. He turns and peers down the hall, in one direction, then the other. He lowers his voice. “You don’t still have your lock pick on you, do you? They searched me, but I thought maybe . . .”

  I feel the spot on my dress where the lump of the pick used to be. “I still have the tension wrench!” I say triumphantly. “But . . .” I shift more of the fabric. “No pick. Must’ve taken it off me after they knocked me out.”

  Beck curses under his breath. “We’ll just have to wait them out, I guess. They’ll have to let us out of here sometime.”

  “And when they do?” I ask skeptically.

  “We fight them off and make a run for it.”

  “Really? That’s your brilliant Guild strategy? Right, that worked so well last time.”

  “Have any better ideas?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  And now we wait some more.

  Great. I’m so good at waiting.

  • • •

  It feels like several years later when Beck and I doze off, resting against the bars, angling our heads so we can see each other’s faces. We haven’t said anything to each other in hours, but there hasn’t been much to say.

  I slip in and out of sleep, jumping awake at every little noise outside my cell. Beck’s restless too, constantly shifting positions. When I manage to fall asleep, my dreams are mostly black and white. First, I’m in the orphanage, except the walls and floors are a starker, cleaner white than they’ve ever been, and the Sisters, dressed all in white as usual, are kneeling on the floor, scrubbing it clean. I step forward, peering over their shoulders. What mess could they be scrubbing?

  It’s the same hallway I once vandalized to frame Striker, but there’s no red graffiti this time. A black stain, darker in the dream than it could ever be in real life, spreads like water all over the floor. And the more the Sisters scrub, the more it grows, until everything—the room, the Sisters, me—is black with it.

  In the second dream, I am in Dearborn’s house, and a protector is chasing me. I run, ducking down halls, but all the hallways look the same, with prison-gray walls and white marble floors. I reach a doorway and run inside. The door slams shut behind me, and I’m pitched into total blackness. I turn around and try to open the door, but it’s locked and they’ve taken my lock picks. I shove myself against it but it won’t open, won’t open, won’t open. And now Beck’s on the other side of the door, his voice pleading. “I need you, Allicat. We have to get in the Guild.”

  “Wait,” I scream, “wait.” I bang my fists against the door. A strong hand grabs me from behind. I scream, whirling around, seeing nothing but the red of a protector’s uniform. I kick and claw and scratch at it, trying to get away—

  There’s a knife in my hand, a shadowy outline in the darkness, and I stab blindly.

  The room is flooded with light. The weapon clatters to the ground, its silver-white blade bloody. Standing in front of me, wearing a protector’s uniform, is my mother. She is holding the bloody wound with one hand—the wound I gave her—and she is dying. She looks at me, expressionless, and says, in a cold voice, “I knew it all along.”

  Someone screams, but I don’t know who, and I jerk awake, shaking.

  Beck cracks one eye open. “ ’Kay, Allicat?” he mumbles through sleep.

  “Just cold.” I fold my arms against my chest to stop the shaking. I don’t go back to sleep. I lean my head against the bars of my cell door and watch Beck, who looks so much younger when he sleeps, his head lolling against his own cell door. I track the rise and fall of his chest and try to match my breaths to his, thinking about nothing but breathing to chase away whatever’s haunting me. We stay like that, breathing, until I’m not sure if it’s been an eternity that’s passed, or no time at all.

  • • •

  I’m still awake when Beck opens his eyes again. He blinks for a second, confused, before his gaze focuses on me. “Still here, Allicat?”

  “Where else would I be, stupid?”

  He just smiles.

  “You’re awfully happy for someone in prison,” I mutter.

  He shrugs. “Well, I could be cranky and depressed like you, but that won’t help us much, now will it?”

  “I am not cranky and depressed.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot, you’re just naturally unpleasant.”

  I scowl. “You’re lucky you’re behind bars, Beck Reigler, or I’d—”

  Beck laughs, interrupting my threat. I wait for him to say what’s so funny, but he just keeps looking in my direction and laughing at me.

  Anger flares beneath my skin. “What’s so funny?”

  “Sorry,” he says, “it’s just—your hair—”

  I lift a hand to the top of my head. My hair’s still done up all fancy, but a big chunk of it is falling, and when I laid my head against the cell bars some of it puffed out, I guess. But I still don’t see what’s so funny.

  “It’s sticking straight up on one side,” Beck says, still infuriating me with his grin. “And the other side’s falling out of its pins—” He’s laughing so hard he can’t finish the sen
tence.

  I glare at him. “Don’t make me come over there and hurt you.”

  Hastily, I reach for my hair again. Maybe if I take out the pins, it won’t look so—

  The hairpins.

  “Saint Samyra help me, I’m a fool,” I say.

  Beck stares at me blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  I turn around, scanning the hall, then look back at Beck and lower my voice. “Pins. They took our lock picks, but can’t we pick the lock with my hairpins?”

  I’m not sure I can do it; I’ve never practiced with something so flimsy. But Beck’s eyes are wide with excitement.

  “I can,” he whispers. “And you probably could too, eventually, but it will take you longer. You’ll have to practice with Mead later. Anyway—what time is it?”

  “I don’t know, Beck, why don’t I check the watch that you neglected to wear with your fancy nobleman suit? We’ve been over this.”

  He ignores me. “The best time to leave is at night. How long do you think we’ve been in here?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Think,” he says impatiently. “It was light outside when they brought us here, right? Maybe right after noon, d’you think?”

  “Really?” I say, but now that I think about it, he’s right. “No wonder I’m so hungry, it’s been like a day since I’ve eaten anything—”

  “Focus,” he interrupts. “How long was I asleep for? Best guess?”

  “I don’t know. At least a few hours, probably, but it’s not like I have anything to go by—”

  “So that makes it, what, ten hours or so since we got here?”

  “How’d you figure that?”

  “While you were complaining about waiting and being hungry, I was paying attention to the guard shifts. There was one. So that took a few hours, at least. And then you and I were both asleep for a while, and at one point when I woke up the guards were different, so there must’ve been another shift, and then—”

  “Okay, okay, I get the point. I’ll take your word for it. So, if it’s been ten hours since noon, at your best guess, that would make it—”

  “Ten. So we can afford to wait a little longer. I say we wait until the next shift. Every time the new guys come in, they walk around some and pass right by here, but then they don’t come back. So, we wait until the new guys finish walking by us, then we leave. And that way, even if the calculations are a few hours off, it will be dark either way. Don’t you think?”