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Chapter 10 - Putting ghosts to rest.

It was a quiet night at The Bull, and Blueyes was bored. He had been working in the kitchen earlier, washing up dishes and mugs, but now that things had quietened down again he was back in the stables. Boring.

Nominally, his job was to look after and feed the horses, both those belonging to the inn and those belonging to patrons, but there had only been two new arrivals tonight and they were both already sound asleep. If the other nights were anything to go by, that would be it.

He sighed, lying back and staring at the ceiling. Maybe he should sleep here tonight. The innkeeper wouldn’t mind, but he also wouldn’t be paid for any extra work, and that rankled his mercenary heart. Still, it would be easier than walking all the way back to the slums.

Wordsound had stopped in earlier, right? That meant he hadn’t found the kitten. Strange, but not his problem. She would turn up.

Of course, he felt for her, he really did. He knew what it was like to lose your parents at a young age, to go hungry because nobody was looking out for you, but he had survived, and she would too. He had watched her weave little baskets and bags out of grass, so she was resourceful, and he knew she often found her own food. Give it a couple of years and he could find her some small jobs.

Speaking of small jobs, Blueyes sat up as the door to the stables creaked open, spitting out the piece of straw he’d been chewing and waving to Truedream, who appeared to be trying to get through the door without actually opening it. Blueyes smiled with what he hoped was a confident smile and waved him in. Not all doors have dodgy hinges, he hoped his face said, this one opens wider than you’d think!

Truedream was a good kid and a good friend. His best friend, next to Wordsound, and Blueyes trusted him implicitly.

Which was why he was going to help him rob a house tonight.

-

They had been planning this for weeks. Maps, accomplices, disguises, they had the works. The house was on the edge of town, and much fancier than anywhere he’d ever even seen before, never-mind robbed.

On a regular night, he would simply take advantage of open doors or windows, often on roofs higher than everything else around them, where nobody except the house owners ever stepped. People got lax when they thought nobody else was around, but you were never alone in the city, and Blueyes could scale walls like a cat.

Petty crime was how he'd sustained the three of them over the last couple of years, well, the four of them, now. He had a couple of fences that he could sell to, and none of them needed much. The odd candlestick or piece of silverware could feed the lot of them for a month. Add that to the pennies he picked up doing odd jobs, and he was doing pretty well, all told.

Blueyes stood up, pulling on his coat and hat, dusting off the straw while Truedream still hovered near the door. With one last glance around the stables, he finished his train of thought.

Kitten was young enough she was still in frocks, but she could do with something warmer now that winter was on its way. They’d scrounged her up a coat, but the rest of her clothing was starting to get ragged from rain and wear. Second-hand clothing was cheap enough, especially for kids, he should look into it once they got their payout. Maybe he could nick her something from the house tonight.

With a nod and no words exchanged, he gave the stables one last glance, and then the two of them set off.

-

Well, this was it. Showtime. They were hiding in the greenery behind what the locals called 'Mill House'. The building was a modern construction, three-winged and jewel-like in the dusk, every window shining with a bright white light. Gaslight, he mused, judging by the brightness, either that or it was on fire.

It was a big house, situated in what had only a couple of decades before been far, far outside of town. Just getting here had taken them two borrowed bicycles and twenty minutes of furious pedalling, and the break was as much to scout out the premises as it was to catch their breath.

Spread over three stories, the walls of the building were ornamented in a way you never saw inside the city. The plaster was a deep red, textured to look like stone, and there were small architectural features everywhere. Small stone animals, carvings of plants, and little pointy bits above all the windows. To an eye used to plain white boxes, occasionally adorned with vines to break up the monotony, it seemed messy and strange.

The roof was a mix of flats and slopes. While during the day it might be a mix of green and autumnal shades, in the dusk it was dark and weird, like the teeth of a saw against the sky. The whole thing was all a show, Truedream mused, as he climbed out the bushes. It was a statement that they could afford to have sloped roofs, wasting useful space and making maintenance more difficult purely for looks.

There were a couple of acres of greenery and gardens surrounding the house on all sides, again, showing off. This close to the city this would be prime farmland, and sure some of it was farmed, but most was merely a hangout area for rich people. A mix of lakes and follies, the latter shiny and new a couple of years ago, but the fancy imported stone already starting to degrade in the rain.

The windows were flat planes of glass which had to have been bought in by boat, they would never have survived the trip by coach, and so on. The list of extravagances never ended.

The whole building sat badly with him, and that was only the outside.

They knew from previous reconnaissance that there were two wings stretching out behind the house, enclosing a large courtyard. To one side were stables, and storage rooms for all the bits and pieces that horses accrue, to the other side servant's quarters, guest bedrooms, and a big warehouse full of fancy carriages.

To the back, (or front?) was the main house, brightly lit, gaudy and at the start of a big ol’ party.

Blueyes squinted at the carriages pulling up into the courtyard, the guests arriving, ready for an evening of food and dance. There were servants lending a hand as people exited their coaches, and stable hands and valets dealing with the horses and carriages. Even from this distance their dresses and suits were bright and flashy in the autumn air, all laces and frills and nets.

A part of him wanted to stay here, to be a part of it even if just on the periphery. Pretending that each figure was him or Truedream. He watched as one person, probably not much older than himself, struggled to exit their coach, the ridiculous hoops of their skirt needing to be turned sideways to fit through the door. Okay, maybe he didn’t want to be that person in particular, but one of the better-dressed ones sure.

Beside him in the greenery, Truedream shuffled his feet, antsy and nervous. They had both washed in the city baths and then changed their clothes before setting out, and the younger boy was itchy and uncomfortable in his starched shirt, long trousers and crisp jacket. The clothes hadn’t been cheap, but Society expected even their servants to be well dressed.

A friend from school had Changed their faces, adjusting their features beyond the point of recognisability. Truedream’s normal short black hair and expressive cat ears were missing, in favour of shoulder-length brown hair held back with a large blue ribbon. Blueyes had gone the other way, forgoing his normal short hair and replacing it with a yellow mane, somewhat reminiscent of an old tomcat. He had seen it in the mirror and seriously considered keeping it, but it would have needed far too much maintenance.

With both the Change and the new outfits, it was enough to make them unrecognisable, and they had spent a few minutes looking at each other and giggling after they’d first changed.

Time to get moving. A shared look and a deep breath, and they were out of the forest, and moving towards the house.

-

Tonight was the last party of the season, a debutantes ball, whatever that was. It was being hosted by one of the local mill owners, a middle-aged woman named Homeflame. Tall and good looking, she had come from a well-off background, only increasing her fortune by investing early in the machinery that made up the mills.

Now on top, she was known to be ruthless to her workers, demanding they work long hours under artificial light and liberally covering up injuries from the new machines. The whole house belonged to her, an ostentatious show of wealth, built off the backs of those who worked underneath her.

Their beef wasn’t with her, though. If you tried to go up against every ruthless business owner then you’d never get anywhere. You’d have to start with the people who picked up horse shit in the streets and end up with the Monarch himself. What a pain that would be.

No, instead their goal was simpler, a single item, hidden in the upper story of the house, in one of the bedrooms. A bounty had been put out for an old map, bought from auction by Homeflame several months before and set to be displayed in a big museum somewhere up east once the next dragon courier came through.

The boys would never see the map itself, just the leather tube it was contained within. It would be handed it off to their contact later tonight, in return for a bounty of £20.

£20. Blueyes shook his head, heading towards the house at an oblique angle, hidden in the shadows of a large hedge maze. That was the equivalent of 4800 pennies, and more money than either of them could really imagine. There were a couple more people on the sidelines they had to split the money with, their Changer and her crew, but they would still end up with almost £15 between the two of them.

They had had long whispered conversations late at night about what they were gonna do with the money. They could go to the fanciest restaurants and order anything they wanted off the menu. Buy themselves the fanciest clothes. They could even buy Kitten a china doll larger than she was, right out of the shop window, that would be funny, watching her haul it around. They knew she had a little doll she kept in her pocket, but she was secretive enough about it that none of them had asked.

Casually, Blueyes and Truedream walked up to the side of the carriage block, glancing through the open doors as they passed by unnoticed, wondering with wide eyes at the finery stored within. Carriages gilded with gold, made out of fine woods, ponies brushed to a shine. Everything gleamed in the gaslight. Even the stables had glass windows!

They passed through the kitchens next, taking the servant's entrance into the house. Clean clothes and a good bath had rendered them almost invisible, but for two starving teenagers, being surrounded by so much food was a challenge in itself, neither of them had ever experienced actually being full, and the temptation to stop was terrible.

Roast meat, vegetables, and fruits in all colours. A variety of different fruits, some they’d heard of but never seen, grown in glass houses down south. Apples and pears, currently in season. Many different kinds of berries, many of which didn’t even have names.

Stolen novel; please report.

A whole corner of the kitchen was even dedicated to ice. Cold deserts, iced cream, sorbets, all the treats of winter, here months before the cold season started. One of their contacts had informed them that it all came from a large building deep underground, where it had been stored since last winter, but that there was nothing interesting down there to steal.

From the kitchens, it was easy to access the servant's stairwell to the upper floors, thankfully mostly empty. The steps were steep and narrow, with barely enough room for two servants to pass.

Emerging out of the narrow staircase and into a soft-carpeted corridor, Blueyes was hit with a sudden disassociation, like he was watching himself from the outside. He wasn’t meant to be here, in a place like this, his hands would leave marks on the drapes, and his feet turn the carpet to mud. His mane and collar itched his neck, and he had a sudden urge to throw himself out of one of the windows.

He struggled to throw it off, looking around and taking in the scenery instead. The carpet was a deep red, plush and deep, muffling their footsteps like a friend. The walls were blanketed with endless pieces of artwork, a confusing mishmash of modern and ancient, as if somebody had robbed an antiques store.

“It’s so soft,” Truedream whispered beside him, and he could only nod in response. They were on the second floor and it was deserted, but the richness of the interior seemed to muffle their voices, as if speaking too loud would break some sort of cotton and linen based spell, exposing their presence to invisible watchers.

After what seemed like miles of walking, passing door after locked door, they came to the one they’d marked out on their maps beforehand. Below them the sounds of the party were ramping up, music and singing and laughter filtered by two floors of finery, until it was indistinct and strange, like the drone of one of Kitten's ghosts.

The door was locked, but that’s why Truedream was here. Most people had a talent for Grow or Change, but he had a much rarer variant, Rot.

With a breath and a glance around, he shut his eyes and placed his hand on the door frame, Blueyes on lookout.

Wood was easy to break down, a natural and very dead material, magic would go through it like a spoon through butter. Metal was more tricky, but the more it had been worked, the more it wanted to break down. All it took to reach the recessed lock was to place his little finger on the edge of the frame, and Blueyes watched as it seemed to sink into the wood with no resistance.

Almost two minutes later Truedream pulled his hand back and turned the handle, the door sliding open on well-oiled hinges, the deadbolt rusted to nothing by his touch.

If they’d truly wanted to secure the room, then they would have used copper, the layer of oxide build-up making it resistant to the magic, but iron and steel were getting cheaper every day, and why would you need to protect a random bedroom from an extremely rare variety of mage. The lock was meant to be a deterrent for servants with sticky fingers and nothing more.

They shut the door behind them with a gentle click. The room before them was as fine as the hallway, which seemed like a surprise, although neither of them was sure why. The walls were papered lime-green, embossed with patterns of flowers and birds. Ahead of them was a large double bed adorned in its entirety in bright yellow, the canopy of which almost touched the ceiling.

“That thing must be bigger than our whole house…” Truedream muttered under his breath, absentmindedly wiping his dusty hands onto a bright yellow couch.

“I bet we could get well more than twenty quid for it,” Blueyes whispered in return, starting his search by heading towards a large wooden cabinet. Upon opening, he was presented with some sort of makeup… Cupboard? Perfumes and powders in every shade. Rapidly he shut it again, before it could stink up the whole room.

Truedream laughed, imitating them attempting to smuggle an entire canopy-bed out under their shirts, sticking his head under the furniture, just in case somebody had dropped the map at some point and it’d rolled out of sight. Wouldn’t that be lucky!

A couple more minutes of careful searching, and then: “Ah ha!” he’d found it. Placed carefully away in a dressing table drawer was what he’d been looking for. Two tubes of brown leather, one acting as a cap. He pulled it open to check the contents, and then carefully closed it up again. Yep, that was it.

The whole object seemed to radiate age. He could see divots in the leather where it had been rained on at some point, but so long ago that it seemed to have almost healed around them, the spots polished smooth. The map inside had been yellow and dry and filled the air with the slight scent of old books.

Blueyes tucked it under one arm, before glancing around the room one last time, taking it all in. Pretending it was his. Beside the unlit fire was a small table, containing a fine tea set, seemingly sized for a child with the cups so thin and delicate that he was almost afraid to even go near. Kitten would have loved that, all kids loved small things.

Near the big window was a writing bureau, folded out and with a half-finished letter laid out on the padded leather desk. He thought for a moment about pocketing the heavy silver fountain pen beside it, but they wanted to go unnoticed as long as possible.

The whole room was themed in green and yellow, and the longer he was exposed to it, the more nauseous the colour scheme made him feel.

As one last hurrah, he pocketed a couple of earrings from the bottom of an unlocked jewellery box on the dressing table. Old-fashioned and tarnished with age, they had obviously not been worn in a long time and were unlikely to be missed. He pressed the pins through his trouser bottoms and rolled the cuffs up around them, just in case. If they were caught, at least they might get away with something.

A quick check of the corridor, a thumbs-up from Truedream, and they were off.

-

They peeked into a few more rooms on the way out, but nothing much caught their interest. Only once, when they passed by a well-appointed but mothballed nursery, did Blueyes have to be held back from nipping in and looting the room. He hoped Kitten was alright.

Seeing the nursery, as abandoned as it was, made him realise that possibly an unheated, unlit, one-room hovel wasn’t the best place to raise a child. It was a startling thought. Maybe with the money from this job they could do better by her.

They were only stopped once on the way out, by an older servant who questioned both their presence there and the object under their arm, but the lie that they had been told to go and fetch it was easily believed. That was the sort of thing the bosses always did. Accosting random servants with such sentences as “Go and get my my reading glasses from the pagoda in the garden, I wish to read.” and “Go and fetch the large marble basin from the conservatory, we wish to play charades”, and so on and so forth.

“Gods forbid you don’t do it,” the servant grumbled, as they waved the boys away, “You better get on with it then.”

And that was that. After a whispered discussion they had split up near the kitchens, Blueyes slipping out through a door at the side of the house and Truedream heading towards the food. They would meet up again tomorrow morning.

That first pass through the kitchens had been too much for both of them to resist. There was more food there than even a hundred guests could eat, and what monster would deny a poor servant boy some vittles.

Slipping away into the trees at the edge of the gardens, map case under his arm, Blueyes headed back towards the city.

-

Half an hour of peddling later, and he was at the rendezvous point, the girl from school already there and ready to change his face and hair back to normal.

The feel of the magic washing through him was always weird, eating up the sweat on his skin and changing his body back to what he was used to. He would miss the hair, but it had started to itch by the end of the night and he couldn’t imagine having to wash that at the tap every day, not to mention it would pick up all the little bits of straw from the stables!

Hmm, they had combs for the horses, maybe that would work… Plus if it was the /same colour/ as the straw...

As he handed back the borrowed clothing and pulled his own back on, he was hit with a sudden pang of loss. This was the first time he’d felt clean in years, and pulling back on his worn, grimy clothes hit him like a punch in the gut.

He thought of Kitten again. None of them had changed or washed her blankets at any point he could remember. They had found her new dresses a couple of times, and the coat, but other than that, she was left to her own devices.

Frowning, he tucked in his shirt, and vowed to do better.

-

With two accomplices watching from a nearby vantage point, Blueyes settled down inside a coffeehouse in the centre of town. He had wrapped the tube up and thrown it into a basket, along with a pile of newspapers.

That such a small and fragile thing was worth so much money boggled the mind. Gems he could understand, but this thing was just leather and paper. Somehow, it had survived for hundreds of years, without being destroyed by damp or rain or poor handling, and now here it was, in a battered sea-grass basket in a run-down coffeehouse, wrapped up in yesterday's news. The world was a strange place.

Even at this time of night, the shop was fairly busy, with small groups of people discussing the issues of the day and sharing newspapers and pamphlets. It was a little past midnight and somebody had turned up a few copies of tomorrow's papers, making his now two days out of date. Blueyes sat for a while, sipping his coffee and feeling very out of place.

He looked up as a man slid down into the seat on the other side of the table, placing his bag on the floor underneath as he did so. He was in his late 30s, with a scar over one eye, which Blueyes couldn’t determine was real or Changed. His hair was short and inky black, his eyes a matching darkness.

The man’s name was Lightfingers, most assuredly not the name he was born with, but one he had chosen at some point. His smile was warm and open, and as Blueyes pushed a mug of coffee towards him, his eyes flicked towards the basket for a moment, before he caught himself, grinning.

The grin widened as he took the drink, taking a sip with an appreciative nod.

“Good day?”

“Not bad, got all my work done.” Blueyes nodded. “How’re you getting on?”

Lightfingers dragged the basket of newspapers towards himself with a foot. Subtle. “Oh not bad, not bad. Heard someone was looking for you, though.”

“Oh?” Blueyes was instantly on high alert. They’d been pretty covert with this whole thing, only five of them in on it, not including Lightfingers. They hadn’t even said anything to Wordsound, despite how much it hurt the both of them to keep quiet. Was it the servant from earlier?

“Mm, some kid. Came into the Fiddle and asked if you were there, around 8pm?” Lightfingers took another sip of his coffee, his eyes half-closing in satisfaction, like a cat.

Blueyes frowned. He knew at least 4 different variants of the Fiddle, and he’d worked at half of them over the past couple of years. There was The Cat and Fiddle, down by the docks. The Fiddlers Arms up on Broadbank, there was the Bull and Fiddle, barely a house, never-mind a… Oh.

“Small kid, girl, about four years old?” He questioned, his heart jumping in his chest. If she was all the way over that side of town then she truly had gotten lost.

Lightfingers shrugged, “Never asked, but the age seems about right. Publican sent ‘em on their way, but,” he reached out, rubbing his fingers and thumb together in the universal gesture of ‘you must pay me for what this next piece of information implies’, “I got one of my girls to keep an eye on her.”

Blueyes nodded, unfocused as he handed over his last couple of pennies. Caught off-guard as the worry he had been suppressing all night rose to the surface all at once.

“We picked ‘em up about an hour ago, they’re asleep in the stables at your Bull, if you wanna claim ‘em.” Lightfingers drained the last of his drink before standing and grabbing the basket of newspapers. “Good luck, kid.”

Blueyes raised his mug in farewell as the older man left the shop, basket over his arm. He hadn’t even checked the tube, just trusted that the map would be there intact. But then again, he also knew where he worked, and had Kitten as a hostage, so…

Staring into his empty mug, Blueyes sighed, the ringing of the bell above the door announcing one of his companions entering the shop. Back to work! She would be safe there for a couple of hours more.

-

The envelope in the bag had contained £20 in notes and coins, with enough small denominations that it was easy to split. Once the Changer and her muscle had been paid, he was left with just under £15 for himself and Truedream. He had spent a few pennies of the windfall on pies from a night vendor, the woman gearing up for when the factories changed to the morning shift in a couple of hours.

Coming into the yard at the back of the Bull, all was quiet and still under the moonlight. The witching hour. He had walked back across unlit greenways, seeing nobody, and hearing noises only distantly from the streets below, crossing the root-bridges between streets rather than descending to ground level. The only people out at this time of night were the homeless or ne'er-do-wells, like himself, and he took joy in the quiet, so rarely experienced n the city.

The figure leaning on the stable wall wasn’t one he recognised, but she gave a familiar nod upon seeing him. He proffered a pie, but she shook her head, rising to her feet and vanishing into the shadows in what seemed to him like a single movement.

He shrugged, and let himself inside. The stable was quiet and warm, lit by moonlight from a single window high above. There was a slight humidity in the air from the breath of the horses and the damp of their bedding, and the only sound was their quiet snoring.

He found Kitten curled up in the stall where they kept the clean straw, her arms wrapped around her head, small and vulnerable.

Blueyes reached out a hand to wake her, and then hesitated, drawing it back. Maybe she was better off sleeping here, the horses lived better than she did, and it was a long way back to the slums.

They would deal with that tomorrow.

With a creak, the side door opened behind him, and he turned to see Truedream and Wordsound, their faces pale in the moonlight. Truedream had Changed back to his normal look and attire, and Wordsound had obviously been crying, his face tear-stained and exhausted.

Over one arm, Truedream carried a large wicker basket, and out the top of it, Blueyes could see what looked like most of a ham. There was a story there all on its own, but not one he needed to hear right now.

He reached out his arms, bringing them both in for a hug.

He would do better, by all of them.

And tonight, they would eat like kings.