naval officer with a plumed turban.
'All citizens stand fast,' the captain bawled as if into a gale off the Singing Rocks. 'We come to arrest that thief and his cronies.'
Every head in the marketplace turned, a meadow of bright headscarves and the polled heads of slaves, to see Reiver stick slimy thumbs in his ears and waggle his fingers at the navy. Laughter and cheers burst from the crowd, then applause as the young thief back flipped off the cart and hit the ground running.
Slithering through the crowd, with Amber and Hakiim hot at his heels, Reiver hopped up a side street. Abruptly he whirled into another alley. Amber pattered around the corner and blinked. High walls and miles of laundry strung overhead made the space dark after the blazing street. Still, she could see well enough to know that they had run into a dead end.
'Look at our gutter rat,' Hakiim said, shoving her to keep going.
Reiver was halfway up a wall. As Amber reached his bare feet, she saw that the bricks in the rear wall of the alley were irregular, once badly patched. With toes strong and supple as fingers, Reiver scaled jutting edges and grabbed an iron balcony. Like a blond spider, he swung over the railing and smirked down at his friends. Amber, used to hard work, scrambled up the corner, though she had to kick to find the nearly invisible cracks with her soft boots.
Left below, Hakiim wailed, 'I can't climb that!'
As Amber grabbed the iron fretwork, a ragged rainbow unfurled past her. Gaining the balcony, Reiver handed her a length of multicolored cloth. It was the thief’s kaffiyeh, untwined.
'Grab hold, Amber,' he said, then called to the alley, 'Hak, latch on!'
'It'll tear,' the young woman objected.
'No, it's got cod line woven into the fabric,' Reiver told her. 'Old thief s trick!'
Amber seized a hank of headscarf. Despite the flimsy look, four stout fishing lines ran its length. Cloth might tear in spots, but the headscarf would easily bear a man's weight. Reiver was certainly full of surprises.
In the alley below, Hakiim wrapped folds of tattered cloth around his wrists, then grunted as Amber and Reiver yanked him off his feet. The dark youth's feet windmilled as he dangled, then kicked harder as a dozen burly sailors thundered into the alley.
'Hey!' he shouted. 'Haul faster!'
Reiver almost dropped his burden for laughing, so Amber had to snag Hakiim's wrist and drag him belly-down over the railing. Never graceful, the late arrival tumbled onto his shoulder.
Below, sailors and marines milled in their war party. The puffing captain mopped his face with a linen handkerchief, his plume bobbing, and shouted, 'Come down here-puffl-in the name of the Caleph!'
'In the name of Reiver, Son of No One, I send my regrets!' crowed the thief.
Amber blinked as a knife winked in Reiver's hand. Whisking the keen blade left and right, he severed taut lines strung from the walls. With a shudder like a flock of birds taking flight, scads of damp laundry flopped and fluttered onto the Caleph's Navy. Reiver's raucous laugh made them curse as they were nearly smothered.
Bundling his kaffiyeh in his hands, Reiver disappeared under an arched doorway. Amber and Hakiim trotted into dimness, then bumped smack into the thief. Rewrapping his headscarf, he warned, 'Stroll. Running attracts attention.' Despite the urge to get far away, Amber and Hakiim obeyed and caught their breath, then began to walk slowly alongside their friend.
Memnon's marketplace sprawled outward and upward into the second and even third stories of some buildings, mingling with apartments, shops, and cafes. Iron walkways and cool tunnels connected buildings, and spiral stairways and ramps wended up and down. Shoppers bustled and argued as the friends walked by. Reiver tossed a notched argendey to a blind beggar, who blessed him, saying,' 'One is never poor who gives to charity.' '
Wending on to keep ahead of the pursuing sailors, or El Amlakkar, the drudache's police force, the three pretended to shop. Bazaar goods proved that Calimshan truly was the land of sand and silks, jewels and genies, slaves and slain rivals. The companions strolled past watermelons, parrots on perches, flowers and herbs dried and fresh, fragrant leather wallets and purses and saddles, burning samples of incense, billowing fabric, fluttering kites of paper and silk, stacked amphoras of wines, wicker cages of squawking chickens, fish strung by the gills on poles, and pastries soaked in honey and twisted into gazelle's horns and serpents and trumpets. With practiced ease, Reiver palmed an orange from a fruit stall and offered slices to his friends.
'I think we're safe.' Amber's modest bosom still fluttered as she continued, 'Whew! Do you do this every day, Reive?'
'Oh, no. I'm just celebrating,' Reiver answered. 'Today is my birthday.'
'I thought you didn't know when you were born,' Hakiim said, straightening his sash.
Reiver turned and grinned, teeth white in his tanned face. 'Then any day could be my birthday, couldn't it?'
Hakiim chuckled, then asked Amber, 'You wear fish scales in your hair?'
'Wh-what?' she stuttered. 'Yuck! Ugh! Reiver, I need a fountain.'
'This way.'
A citizen of the streets, the thief sauntered with the ease of a pasha.
For the most part, the three were dressed identically. Hot weather and dry winds dictated an informal uniform throughout the Empire of the Shining Sea. Men and women alike wore blousy shirts, baggy trousers, and fancy vests with pockets. Wrapped around every citizen's head ran a kaffiyeh, and around his middle a bright sash. The only differences were in quality and ornamentation.
Hakiim, from a well-to-do family, wore a shirt of lime green silk, and his sandals were sturdy camel hide. His vest was not the usual embroidered felt but a hand-woven mosaic, a walking advertisement for his family's rug factory.
Amber's clothes were pilfered from her brother's closets and were made for hard and messy work-work she was currently shirking. A rough-woven shirt of bleached fustian, a plain sheep-leather vest, trousers patched at both knees, and half-boots of goat hide. Only her sleeves looked incongruous, for instead of being cuffed they hung halfway over her hands. Yet her family's pride was reflected in her sash and kaffiyeh. Both were flaming crimson with a bold yellow stripe down the center, pirate colors and royal colors, granted by the caleph's permission to Amber's ancestors.
Reiver wore tatters of every color and cut, most stolen from laundry lines.
Tripping down stairs, the friends came to a courtyard and public fountain overshadowed by tall date palms. Amber and Hakiim sloshed off the fishy slime. Reiver, meanwhile, unrolled his blanket bundle, then rolled his ratty kaffiyeh and thin vest inside. Bare-headed, he suggested a slave, since citizens always went covered.
'Why are those sailors after you, Reive?' asked Amber.
'Yeah,' added Hakiim. 'What happened to going to sea? Didn't the drudache's druzir make you a cabin hand or cook in the caleph's navy?'
'Yes, but I didn't care for it,' Reiver said as he tied knots in the cod line around his bundle, 'and the proper name for the Caleph's navy is Nallojal.'
'You had^ a choice of apprenticing or not?' Amber asked.
'Not quite,' Reiver smirked. 'I'm on leave.'
Hakiim grinned. 'After only three days at sea?'
'That equals ten years in prison, to my mind.' Reiver rolled his eyes and said, 'Do you know how high ocean waves peak once you pass Primus's Point? Did you know that even seasoned sailors lose their lunches the first three days on the Trackless Sea? Riding whitecaps like wild sea horses while sailors puke and groan in the scuppers is not my idea of a career. If you hang over the side, you'll be snatched by a scrag or a sahuagin. Or the whole ship might be dragged under by a kraken! I'll stay ashore, where I'll at least die dry.'
Amber shook her head. All three of them, she thought, were so different yet so alike. Hakiim's family were Djens, descendants of the original servants to the genies who ruled Calimshan. His skin was dark as oiled mahogany, his teeth flashing white, and below his kaffiyeh peeked tight brown curls. Amber was ruddy-brown as a copper weather vane, her hair black, thick, and wavy. By contrast, Reiver's hair was lank blond, his skin fair where the sun hadn't bronzed it, and his eyes blue, which was considered lucky at the tip of the Sword Coast.
Reiver needed all the luck he could get. Born of northern foreigners or mercenaries, or perhaps even Shaarani part-elves, and abandoned at birth, he had no real name except 'Reiver,' an old-fashioned word for 'thief.' The
