The Republic of Thieves

“LAMORA!”

The summons came at last, and from the Thiefmaker himself. Locke padded warily across the dirt floor to where the master of the Hill sat whispering instructions to a taller child whose back was turned to Locke.

Waiting before the Thiefmaker were two other boys. One was Tam. The other was No-Teeth, a hapless twit whose beatings at the hands of older children had eventually given him his nickname. A sense of foreboding scuttled into Locke’s gut.

“Here we are, then,” said the Thiefmaker. “Three bold and likely lads. You’ll be working together on a special detail, under special authority. Meet your minder.”

The taller child turned.

She was dirty, as they all were, and though it was hard to tell by the pale silver light of the vault’s alchemical lanterns, she looked a little tired. She wore scuffed brown breeches, a long baggy tunic that at some distant remove had been white, and a leather flat cap over a tight kerchief, so that not a strand of her hair was visible.

Yet she was undeniably a she. For the first time in Locke’s life some unpracticed animal sense crept dimly to life to alert him to this fact. The Hill was full of girls, but never before had Locke dwelt on the thought of a girl. He sucked in a breath and realized that he could feel a nervous tingling at the tips of his fingers.

She had the advantage of at least a year and a good half-foot on him, and even tired she had that unfeigned natural poise which, in certain girls, makes young boys feel like something on the order of an insect beneath a heel. Locke had neither the eloquence nor the experience to grapple with the situation in anything resembling those terms. All he knew was that near her, of all the girls he’d seen in Shades’ Hill, he felt touched by something mysterious and much vaster than himself.

He felt like jumping up and down. He felt like throwing up.

Suddenly he resented the presence of Tam and No-Teeth, resented the implication of the word “minder,” and yearned to be doing something, anything, to impress this girl. His cheeks burned at the thought of how the bump on his forehead must look, and at being teamed up with two useless, sobbing clods.

“This is Beth,” said the Thiefmaker. “She’s got your keeping today, lads. Take what she says as though it came from me. Steady hands, level heads. No slacking and no gods-damned capers. Last thing we need is you getting ambitious.” It was impossible to miss the icy glance the Thiefmaker spared for Locke as he uttered this last part.

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Beth with nothing resembling actual gratitude. She pushed Tam and No- Teeth toward one of the vault exits. “You two, wait at the entrance. I need to have a private word with your friend here.”

Locke was startled. A word with him? Had she guessed that he knew his way around clutching and teasing, that he was nothing like the other two? Beth glanced around, then put her hands on his shoulders and knelt. Some nervous animal in Locke’s guts turned somersaults as her gaze came level with his. The old compunction about refusing eye contact was not merely set aside, but vaporized from his mind.

Two things happened then.

First, he fell in love—though it would be years before he realized what the feeling was called and how thoroughly it was going to complicate his life.

Second, she spoke directly to him for the first time, and he would remember her words with a clarity that would jar his heart long after the other incidents of that time had faded to a haze of half- truths in his memory:

“You’re the Lamora boy, right?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Well, look here, you little shit. I’ve heard all about you, so just shut your mouth and keep those reckless hands in your pockets. I swear to all the gods, if you give me one hint of trouble, I will heave you off a bridge and it will look like a bloody accident.”

6

IT WAS an unwelcome thing, to suddenly feel half an inch tall.

Locke dazedly followed Beth, Tam, and No-Teeth out of the darkness of the Shades’ Hill vaults and into the late-morning sunshine. His eyes stung, and the daylight was only part of it. What had he done (and who had told her about it?) to earn the scorn of the one person he now wanted to impress more than any other in the world?

Pondering, his thoughts wandered uneasily to his surroundings. Out here in the ever-changing open there was so much to see, so much to hear. His survival instincts gradually took hold. The back of his mind was all for Beth, but he forced his eyes to the present situation.

Camorr today was bright and busy, making the most of its reprieve from the hard gray rains of spring. Windows were thrown open. The more prosperous crowds had molted, shedding their oilcloaks and cowls in favor of summery dress. The poor stayed wrapped in the same reek-soaked dross they wore in all seasons. Like the Shades’ Hill crowd, they had to keep their clothes on their backs or risk losing them to rag-pickers.

As the four orphans crossed the canal bridge from Shades’ Hill to the Narrows (it was a source of mingled pride and incredulity to Locke that the Thiefmaker was so convinced that one little scheme of his could have burnt this whole neighborhood down), Locke saw at least three boats of corpse-fishers using hooks to pluck bloated bodies from under wharves and dock pilings. Those would sometimes go ignored for days in cool, foul weather.

Beth led the three boys through the Narrows, dodging up stone stairs and across rickety wooden foot- bridges, avoiding the most cramped and twisted alleys where drunks, stray dogs, and less obvious dangers were sure to lurk. Tam and Locke stayed right behind her, but No-Teeth was constantly veering off or slowing down. By the time they left the Narrows and crossed to the overgrown garden passages of the Mara Camorrazza, the city’s ancient strolling park, Beth was dragging No-Teeth by his collar.

“Damn your pimple of a brain,” she said. “Keep to my heels and quit making trouble!”

“Not making trouble,” muttered No-Teeth.

“You want to cock this up and go hungry tonight? You want to give some brute like Veslin an excuse to pry out any teeth he hasn’t got to yet?”

“Nooooooo.” No-Teeth stretched the word out with a bored yawn, looked around as though noticing the world for the first time, then jerked free of Beth’s grip. “I want to wear your hat,” he said, pointing at her leather cap.

Locke swallowed nervously. He’d seen No-Teeth pitch these sudden, unreasonable fits before. There was something not quite right in the boy’s head. He frequently suffered for calling attention to himself inside the Hill, where distinctiveness without strength meant pain.

“You can’t,” said Beth. “Mind yourself.”

“I want to. I want to!” No-Teeth actually stomped the ground and balled his fists. “I promise I’ll behave. Give me your hat!”

“You’ll behave because I say so!”

No-Teeth’s response was to lunge and snatch the leather cap off Beth’s head. He yanked it so hard that her kerchief came as well, and an untidy spray of reddish-brown curls tumbled to her shoulders. Locke’s jaw fell.

There was something so indefinably lovely, so right, about seeing that hair free in the sunlight that he momentarily forgot that his enchantment was expressly one-way, and that this was anything but convenient for their task. As Locke stared he noticed that only the lower portion of her hair was actually brown. Above the ears it was rusty red. She’d had it colored once, and it had grown out since.

Beth was even faster than No-Teeth once her shock wore off, and before he could do anything with her cap it was back in her hands. She slapped him viciously across the face with it.

“Ow!”