I rolled my eyes and turned to glare at him. “That's exactly why now is the best time. Look at them all, acting like it's Frogs’ Feast or something. Trust me, Flick, they aren't focusing on two unassuming kids who have wandered too far from The Pond.”
My charge, Flick, screwed up his dirty nose as he inspected me. “You're not exactly a kid, Rybet. If those guards caught you, you'd be tried as an adult now that you're eighteen.”
I gave him a bitter smile and chuckled. “So would you, kid. The royals don't give a shit about us dwellers. We've seen loads of Pond kids hung for bullshit crimes, and well younger than eighteen, too.” He blanched white under his freckles and I cuffed him around the head. “So don't get caught okay? Master Bloodeye and I have invested far too much time and money into you to see you hang now.”
If anything, this only made him look more like he was going to vomit, and I sighed heavily.
“Look,” I offered. “Do you want me to go first and show you how easy it is?”
He nodded frantically, his dirty blond hair flopping in his eyes and making him need to push it away again so he could see me. “What will you take from him?”
Turning my attention back to the guards following the steward, I considered what they were carrying that might make a target both easy enough to take without being caught, and hard enough that Flick could prove he was ready to go out alone.
Our boss, Master Bloodeye, was no amateur. He took in orphans of The Pond, gave them a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food in their bellies. In exchange, we stole for him and contributed to making him the unofficial ruler of The Pond.
Once upon a time, the area we lived in was the richest part of Lakehaven, with marble streets and sprawling mansions for the Teichian nobles. That was before our deities tried to kill us all with the Age of Darkness. Before the droughts that took away our water and storms that plunged us into two years of darkness and rain.
Before the plague.
Now, that area of the city was a relic, a painful reminder to us all not to piss off our gods.
Streets that were once walked by women dripping in gold and jewels, escorted by their wealthy husbands and fathers, now lay under a foot of murky water. Technically, that area of town was supposed to be off-limits. The buildings were too damaged to be safe, and the water seemed impossible to drain.
Technicalities never mattered much when you had nothing and no one.
It took no time at all for those abandoned mansions to become the new homes for those of us without one of our own … and so The Pond came to be. Our very own water-logged slum bordering the palace grounds.
“That,” I announced, spotting my target. We'd been trailing along the street some distance back from the royal emissaries, but kept them within sight. As they approached each house, one of the guards would withdraw a tightly rolled invitation from his jacket and hand it to the steward, who would then present it to the household.
It was a huge to-do. The girls would come rushing out to receive their invitations and gush and cry as though they had no idea they'd be getting one. All within view of the street, of course. What good would it do to be chosen by the palace and not rub their neighbors’ faces in it? It took ages, too; in the time we had observed them, only three invitations had been successfully delivered. No wonder Tubby looked half-asleep.
“The invitations?” Flick squeaked in surprise.
“Yup,” I nodded. “See how they all keep them in their left inside breast pocket? Tubby over there at the back hasn't taken any out, but you can see he has some from the way his coat sticks out a little on that side. He's also only bothered to fasten two buttons, so it should be a cinch to slip a little hand like yours in there and snag one.”
Flick chewed at his lip in nervous anticipation. He was usually pretty confident, so his anxiousness was out of character.
“Hey, I'm going first remember? I'll show you exactly how to do it. Follow me and repeat what I do; you can't go wrong. Okay?” I bopped him on the head and tucked a stray piece of my own straw-blonde hair behind my ear.
“Okay,” he nodded. “Let's do this.”
“Remember, watch me closely. I will meet you at the Pig and Ferret when you're done, yes?” I eyed him sternly to make sure he understood. It was protocol to split up once you'd made a snatch and run, that way if you got caught you weren't dragging your partner down with you.
Not that I did this sort of work much any more. Pickpocketing was for the children, like Flick. He was barely eleven, but well old enough to earn his keep and pay back his debt to Master Bloodeye.
He gave me a nod of encouragement, and I melted into the crowd. It took me less than two minutes to reach my mark, divest him of one scroll, and then slip back into the excited spectators. Then again, I was one of the best. At age eighteen, I'd already gained quite the reputation for myself in Teich. I was the notorious Rybet, protégé and suspected favorite of Master Bloodeye.
It was no mistake my name sounded like the noise a frog made. Technically, it wasn't my name, it was a nickname given to me at age five when Master Bloodeye saw how easily I could slip in and out of buildings and crowds unnoticed … slippery, like a frog. I had no idea what my real name was, since he found me as a four year old right after the Age of Darkness.
The guardsman barely even blinked when my hand slipped inside his coat, lifting the rolled up piece of parchment out and slipping it up my own sleeve. That was the benefit to having so many people around, for sure.
When I’d made it further down the street, I glanced over my shoulder to ensure Flick was doing as instructed, repeating exactly what I'd just done.
Our meeting point, the Pig and Ferret, was only a few hundred yards away, but I needed to keep an eye on him to make sure he wasn't cocking it all up. My gaze tracked him as he made his way through the crowd and approached the same tubby guardsman who was yawning heavily.
Flick's back blocked his hand from sight, but I knew he'd be making the transfer from the guard’s pocket to his own sleeve, and then … I released a nervous breath I’d been holding as Flick moved away. The guard was none the wiser.
Good boy!
Letting the tension drop from my shoulders, I turned my back on him to hurry my ass along to the Pig and Ferret, so he wouldn't know I stayed to watch. I wanted the kid to think I trusted him to do it all on his own.
Just as I laid my hand on the heavy wooden door of the inn, a commotion broke out in the street behind me. Dread pooled in my belly and I turned to see what was causing such a fuss.
“Aana's tits,” I cursed ignoring the gasp of shock from a passerby as I rushed back into the crowd. As if I was the only one to curse using the names of our deities.
I still needed to get closer to see what was going on, but when I did my heart lurched.
Flick, his wrist held firm by that same overweight palace guard, the stolen invitation being brandished in his panic-stricken face. Shit! How?
It didn't matter how, though. I needed to get him free of those guards or he stood no chance. The palace didn't care if he was only a kid. He was a Pond-dweller, and they saw it as their civic duty to cull our numbers any way they could.
“Flick!” I yelled, pushing forward faster only to be grabbed from behind with an arm like steel, and dragged into a dark alleyway between two ostentatious mansions.
Fight or flight instinct was a powerful thing, and I had both. Thrashing hard, I threw elbows and heels into my captor to try and release his hold on me, but he didn't for a moment waiver. His arms held me firm against a strong body and a large hand clamped down over my mouth before I could scream.
“Stop it!” he hissed in my ear. “Stop fighting, boy! Does your life mean so little to you that you'd throw it away to save a Pond orphan?”
Of course not, you idiot!