Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (29 page)

“Shut up!” Red raged at the Dragons and clambered to his feet. With no other idea what to do, he followed Jim and Lacey through the drain himself, into the court of the King of Thieves.

The clans packed the court from wall to wall, just as they had the first time Jim had come. Once again the packs of wild children hung from the abandoned church’s gargoyles or sat dangle-legged in the old warehouse’s broken-out windows, the clothes on their dirty bodies as mismatched and threadbare as before, and their faces and hands as sooty and filthy as Jim and Lacey’s, kept warm by stolen scarves and mittens.

The King of Thieves, on the other hand, was dressed as sharp as a tack in his fitted jacket and his satin hat, a greasy smile stretched across his pale white face, and his spindly fingers tapping together delightedly as the court echoed with the sound of shuffling feet and clinking gold, bringing to a close another session of share and share alike. Wyzcark, however, sulked unhappily in the shadows, his patience for the long-awaited delivery of the Amulet of Portunes long lost.

“Excellent! Excellent, my friends!” the king called out over the cacophony. “Rarely have I seen such a marvelous collection of charms, trinkets, coins, and jewels. Well done, well done, indeed.” He patted the heads and shoulders of the last few thieves as they dropped off their contributions. “Soon, oh so soon, we will have enough. Enough to make our dreams come true. We won’t be cold. We won’t go hungry.
We won’t be chased and harangued and bothered and bustled. We’ll find a place that’s summer all year long, filled with fields of trees from which we’ll pick our food and beneath which we’ll sleep our days away!”

The children unleashed a mighty hurrah, clapping and cheering with all their might. Jim clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists as he watched the smiling liar soak up the clans’ adoration.

Jim remembered the first time he came to the King’s court, how afraid he’d been. The King of Thieves had challenged Jim for the ownership of the box, and at that time, Jim had wanted no part in any of it. But just then, a bit of that wild boy that had waged imaginary wars on the beach outside the Manor by the sea came back to life inside Jim Morgan. One corner of his mouth curved into a rogue’s grin and Jim readied himself to finally answer the King of Thieves with a challenge of his own.

“Now, if there is no other business for the evening,” the king said as always. But this time, it was Jim’s voice that interrupted.

“Actually, I think you and I still have some business, King!” Jim shouted, with Lacey, the Dragons, and Red, still holding his nose, standing behind him. The court of the King of Thieves grew quiet as a church, and the fake smile on the king’s face twisted into a real one, but not one that was very nice at all.

“Well, well, well,” the king said, his tapping, spidery fingers coming to rest against each other, crossing like clenched teeth in a crocodile’s mouth. “If it isn’t my good friend Jim Morgan. Where are the Ratts, I wonder?” he said with a sneer.

“They’re currently indisposed,” Jim said quickly. “Down by the docks. They’re guests of some pirates from the Inn of the Wet Rock. Heard of it?”

The king’s sneer twitched just a little. One half of his mouth fell into a frown while his eyebrow arched into a sharp point.

The king stepped slowly toward Jim and Lacey. “I see your time with us has done little to temper your haughty spirit, Jim Morgan,” he said, his silky smooth voice growing rough and cruel. The king’s black
eyes twinkled unkindly in the moonlight. “What were you doing down by the docks?”

“Well, we weren’t wasting our time looking for treasure you’re just going to toss aside, were we?” Jim stared right back into the king’s face. “We were looking for the Amulet of Portunes!”

The king’s mouth dropped wide open, and Jim saw his squat little friend, Wyzcark, start in surprise from his shadowy hiding place beside the wall. “How do you know about that?’ the king demanded, his calm control shattered with a sudden snarl. “How do you know?” he growled again, yanking Jim up close by his coat until they were face to face.

“We broke into his office!” Lacey shouted to the clans of thieves, now leaning in with piqued interest over this little spat. “He has this book; Jim read it. It talks about a magical amulet that can unlock anything! That’s what the king uses us for. He wants us to find this amulet so he can steal huge treasures for just himself and his friend!” Lacey pointed accusingly into the shadows, where Wyzcark tried to lean back even farther against the wall as the children’s eyes found his usual hiding spot. “He doesn’t even care about us. He’s not going to help you. He’s not going to leave us with one farthing once he has the amulet!”

The clans murmured amongst themselves, looking back and forth between the king and his defiant challengers. Some of them, especially most of the Dragons, laughed Jim and Lacey off, but more than a few of the others began eyeing the King suspiciously.

“Silence!” the king roared, and with a flick of his eyes, Red’s Dragons rushed out and grabbed Lacey around the arms, putting a hand over her mouth. “Lies! These are all vicious lies! Who is it that always keeps you out of school? Out of the orphanages? Out of Butterstreet’s claws? Don’t I always leave you with your own share of what you take? Do I ever even ask what you do with it?”

“It’s not a lie!” Jim shouted, turning his head to the court as best he could with a fistful of his coat in the king’s grip. “I did see the book. Just like Lacey said. The amulet is real! The pirates have it, and as soon
as the king gets his filthy hands on it, he’s going to take all the gold and ditch us like an old hat!”

The restless buzz rose in volume over the clans. Children are marvelously natural lie detectors, but the King of Thieves was such an adept liar, such an artful con, and had been doing it so well for so long, that his hold on the clans was strong. However, Jim was the boy with the magically locked box, and never before had the King turned the Dragons on another clan member to quiet her before. Some of the suspicion in the children’s eyes began to turn into outright mistrust.

Jim turned back to face the furious king, whispering fiercely to him. “I’ve seen it with my own two eyes, King. And if you ever want to see it with yours, you’d better be willing to make a deal.”

The king took a good long look into Jim’s eyes, and then a slow pan around the court. The clans were starting to grumble, beginning to see the holes in the King’s lies, their eyes brightening one by one like clever little lamps as they got the picture. The circle of thieves around the King and Jim began to tighten as the clans pressed in angrily on every side. Even the Dragons held Lacey a little less firmly, searching the king’s face for any evidence of trickery. Finally, the King dropped his eyes back down to Jim Morgan’s defiant stare, and could do nothing to stop a small grin from forming on his own long face.

“This is both a surprise and not, Jim Morgan,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t sure when you first came to us, but now, I have indeed seen you are a born criminal. You were made for this. You really are one of us.” The sticky smile spread all the way across the king’s pale cheeks. “Now what are your terms?” He added the last part darkly.

“The clans get the gold - what’s here and what’s at the pawnshop. All you keep is enough to bribe the pirates to let the Ratts go. Me and Lacey go free. And I get the box back.”

“You ask a great deal, Jim Morgan,” The King said through gritted teeth, the smile slipping off his face.

“The Amulet of Portunes is worth a great deal, isn’t it?” Jim growled right back.

“So it is. So it is.”

The King of Thieves stood still for a long time, and Jim watched the conniving wheels of his mind turn and turn behind his eyes. The clans had drawn even closer by then, some even shouting and pointing accusing fingers toward the King and his Dragons. But just before a riot could break out, that slippery smile stretched wide across the king’s cheeks once again, and he dropped Jim down, patting him on the head and standing straight and tall before the crowd of restless crooks.

“Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen,” the king all but sang in his honey-dripped voice. “This is really all just a slight…miscommunication between Jim and myself.” He laughed a little, then rushed on quickly with a nervous gulp when the clans failed to laugh back. “To prove to you how much I care, and that I would never take what wasn’t rightfully mine: I believe I will take a turn to share and share alike!”

The king scooped up a huge handful of gold from the pile and tossed it into the crowd of thieves, who erupted with whoops and screams, their anger overtaken by greed as they snatched the falling coins and jewelry out of the air and off the ground. “Take it all! Take everything!” The King announced, and the throng of street pickpockets poured forward to take back their shares of the treasure, laughing and cheering. Even the Dragons, save for Red and his lunks, abandoned the King then, shoving other, smaller children aside to grab fistfuls of gold and silver off the ground.

“Don’t stop there!” the King encouraged them, as though they needed it. “Run as fast as you can to the pawnshop on Barque Street. Break down the door! Smash the windows! Take all you find, it’s yours!”

The grubby children shrieked with delight, and in less than two minutes, the shining pile of trinkets and coins was wiped clean, and the courtyard stood empty of everyone save the king, Wyzcark, Red and his yes men, and, of course, Jim and Lacey.

Seeing no point in keeping her quiet any longer, Red’s lunks released Lacey, and she immediately stomped her feet, spouting her fury at the king. “You should be ashamed of yourself! You’ve lied to all
of us all along. How cruel! To make a bunch of kids think you’ll help them escape these crummy streets, when all you really cared about was finding that stupid amulet!”

The king took the brunt of Lacey’s fury with a shrug. “Well, I did give them a refund just now, didn’t I?”

“I suppose so,” said Jim. “But is it worth all that for one treasure?”

“For one treasure?” The king’s slick smile twisted up and snapped into a snarl. “All treasure!” His eyes grew wide and his face pulled taut as a stretched rope. “You may not believe this Jim Morgan, but I began this life much as you did. Oh yes, we are not so different you and I. I know you are a nobleman’s son. It takes one to know one, as they say. And all of us born into such lives are born thieves – born believing we deserve everything we ever desire.

“But for all the wealth my family possessed, for all that was promised to me from my first breath, it would never be enough, not once I learned of the Amulet of Portunes. I discovered it in a book in my father’s library when I was a boy not much older than you. It became my obsession, and once I learned what it was and what I could do with it, I knew I would stop at nothing to make it mine. After my father died, I spent all his fortune unearthing clues – gathering the tools and allies I would need to take all that I deserved.

“When I have the amulet I’ll be one step closer to having all that a man could ever desire. I quested for this prize my whole life, and I would break a thousand more little children’s hearts just like yours to have it!” By the end of his declaration, the King of Thieves’ face was as pale as the snow, his eyes bloodshot and red as fire, his hands clenched so tight that Jim thought his bony knuckles might pop right through his skin.

Jim stared at the king, not quite sure whether or not the man was going to lose complete control and go mad. But, slowly, as though remembering himself and where he was, the king calmed himself, straightening his coat and hat, taking one last deep breath and fixing his slippery smile back in place. “So, Master Jim Morgan, if you please, where is the amulet?”

“Where it belongs, I guess,” Jim said smartly, though not too much so, for he had just seen the monster that lurked beneath the king’s smooth exterior. “The captain of the pirates told his man to put it in the Vault of Treasures.”

Now it was Wyzcark’s turn to pale, and suddenly he looked as if he was about to lose his dinner. “The Vault of Treasures!” he cried. “Ve’re lost…finished!” He threw up his hands and started pacing about in circles, shaking his head.

“So, it does exist,” the king said, much more calm than his friend Wyzcark, the gleam in his eye returning. “How very interesting.”

“Interesting?” Wyzcark was beside himself with hysteria. “Interesting, says he! It may as vell be at the bottom of the ocean. All this time, all this planning, all this investment, vasted! Oh, ve are finished, king, finished!”

“Oh, shut up!” the king snapped, fixing his gaze on Jim’s defiant face. “We’re not done yet.”

“What’s the Vault of Treasures?” Red piped up.

“The Vault of Treasures,” said the king, matter-of-factly, “is a hiding place in London for pirate booty, constructed by the first pirates to ever set foot on these lands, the Vikings. They built into it traps and obstacles of the most lethal variety. Some say they even cursed it with pirate magic.” The king smiled even as Wyzcark came close to tears. “And as time has passed, each generation of pirates has added their own twisted measures of security to its formidable defenses.”