Jimmy the Hand (22 page)

‘It all
started over in the East Market,’ Benton was saying. ‘But
we have to go through your territory to get to the gaol. Be
reasonable, Jake.’

‘I saw the
whole thing!’ Jake roared, by no means inclined to be
reasonable. ‘I don’t care where you started, you carried
out the business end of it in my territory!’

He pulled back
his fist as if to strike and Travers caught his wrist. Then Jake’s
companion chose to interfere, giving Travers a hard shove.

‘Ah,
demons take it,’ Benton cursed. ‘You have the right of
it, then, if it’s your territory.’

He turned half
away, and then shoved his club into Jake’s middle just below
the floating rib, a hard swift jab. ‘But who says it’s
your territory, dog’s-pizzle!’ Benton grabbed the other
man by the hair and yanked his head back. Cutting off the man’s
airway with the club he growled, ‘Remember who’s running
things here, boyo. You and your little crew are free to boost and cut
purses, but only because I keep the constables off your neck. I
haven’t had a thief to turn in for almost three weeks now, so
if I have to, I’ll turn some farm boy into a thief. But I’ll
hear no more about “your territory” and “my
territory”.’ He let the man go and watched as he
staggered back. ‘When it comes to things dodgy, all of Land’s
End is
my
territory.’

Lorrie
crab-walked away for a few paces, then turned over and scrambled to
her feet. Before she’d taken two steps the four of them had
grabbed hold of her and were cuffing her about the head and
shoulders, shouting at her and each other and pulling her arms.

She sank to her
knees with a keening sob. Someone had drawn a knife...

Something about
having his rapier on his hip, even if it was carefully hidden by his
cloak, gave Jimmy a sense of being taller—even full-grown. He
could feel it in his walk, a new swagger—let him cross my path
who dares! He shifted his slender shoulders and grinned.

He’d never
dream of wearing the sword on the street in Krondor; the watch would
have it off him and himself in a cell before he could begin to argue
about it. As for the Mockers, well, unless you were a basher they
didn’t encourage the open wearing of weapons. It tended to lead
to trouble.

Which it
could in Land’s End as well, I suppose.

But here he was
dressed quite respectably, which he knew counted for a great deal
and, even more importantly, had a very respectable address. Of course
he hoped he wouldn’t have to fall back on that. Flora would
kill him—assuming she hadn’t already revealed all to Aunt
Cleora and wasn’t sitting on the front steps weeping. In which
case they were both likely to be arrested. But when he had last seen
them, they had been sitting together while Aunt Cleora regaled Flora
with family stories, holding the girl’s hands as if they were
gold. With no children of her own, it seemed Cleora had found a
suitable object for all her maternal instincts. Sometime this
evening, Jimmy assumed, they’d finally get around to visiting
Grandfather.

Resisting the
urge to throw back his cloak off his shoulder, showing the blade,
Jimmy continued on.
No point in borrowing trouble,
he thought.
Must continue to look as respectable as possible,
he reminded
himself.
And there are advantages to it. I can case any target I
please, and the shopkeepers bow double and ask me to take their
inventory, instead of calling for the watch or throwing horse-apples!

So he strutted
as he walked, enjoying the mild air as dusk fell and the way his
cloak swung about his calves. He rather liked this town. It was so
compact compared to Krondor, and so quiet.

‘
Leave
me alone!”

Jimmy’s
head snapped toward the sound. Down a dim alley he saw four men
fighting over a struggling shape.
See,
he thought smugly,
there’s where an organization like the Mockers comes in
handy.
In Krondor such an unseemly situation would never occur.
Any freelance thief would know better than to contest a prize with a
Mocker and two groups of Mockers would simply take the loot and let
the Day- or Nightmaster sort it out. This was uncivilized. And it was
not even dark yet!

For just an
instant a last, golden ray of sunshine struck the face of the victim,
turned toward the end of the alley where Jimmy was standing. His
heart seemed to stop and his breath caught in his throat. Then she
turned her head and the light was gone, leaving the alley darker than
before and Jimmy in a state of paralysis.

It can’t
be!
he thought.

It was
impossible, yet . . . In that last flash of daylight he’d have
sworn that he saw the face of the Princess Anita. But she was safely
on her way to the far coast. What would she be doing, alone, here in
Land’s End?

The girl made a
cry of pain, galvanizing the young thief into action.

He’d
passed a box of ashes by the steps of a house just a step away; he
grabbed a handful and rubbed it on his face, then pulled the hood of
his cloak over his head as far as it would go and ran back to the
alley. Jimmy yanked out his sword and with a blood-curdling yell
rushed at the heaving, shoving group at the end of the alley.

‘At ‘em
boys!’ Jimmy bellowed. ‘No quarter!’

Up to now it had
been hard words and harder clubs, and one man waving a dirk without
using it, but the introduction of an edged weapon and the possibility
of more attackers threw the four thief-takers into confusion for a
crucial moment. Jimmy slashed out at waist level and the men let go
of the girl and jumped back.

Whereupon Jimmy
grabbed her tunic and pulled. She was older than he was, he judged
quickly, but no taller. And a game lass, he thought; on her feet in a
second to follow him out of the alley. He let go of her and slid his
rapier back into its sheath, leading her toward that box of ash.

It hadn’t
taken the four men long to recover from his unplanned attack, or to
realize that there were no ‘boys’ intent on giving ‘no
quarter’, and they were soon hot on Jimmy’s heels. He
suspected that they might happily let the girl go free in order to
pummel him into the cobbles. It was sad, but he often had that effect
on people.

When they
reached the house with the ashes Jimmy picked up the box, spun round
and flung the contents into the air right in his pursuers’
faces. They fell back, cursing and coughing. With dexterity bordering
on the supernatural, he again drew his blade and delivered a few
well-placed nicks and cuts to the four men, who tried to fend off the
much longer blade with clubs and a single dirk. Jimmy had only a few
weeks’ practice with the blade, but his teacher had been Prince
Arutha, and more, Jimmy was faster than most experienced swordsmen.
The men tried to fan out and approach from two sides. For their
efforts they received some nasty cuts on the arms and hands from
Jimmy’s much longer blade. Jimmy laid about, his blade hissing
as it cut air, and each time it made contact, an attacker yelped in
pain and fell back. Then the leader of the group, the man with the
black moustache, tried to leap in, and Jimmy cut him deep across the
shoulder. One of the men turned and fled, and in a moment, the rout
was on, the attackers beating a hasty retreat; the price of the girl
and the boy wasn’t worth bleeding to death.

Jimmy grabbed
the girl’s hand and led her through the narrow space between
two houses. It was barely wide enough for him and in a few steps his
cloak was strangling him where it had caught on the rough surface
somewhere behind him. He managed to get a hand up to release the
clasp and with the girl’s help dislodged it.

‘They
won’t be able to follow us through here,’ he said.

‘What’s
to stop them from going back down the alley and coming around?’
the girl asked. She had a low, husky voice, and she asked very
sensible questions.

Jimmy liked
that, but she didn’t sound like the Princess, meaning he’d
probably interfered with something that was none of his business.
Ah,
well. Win some, lose some,
he thought philosophically. Perhaps
there was something here he could turn to his advantage. And if it
was a madness, it was a noble madness.

When they came
out behind the house, Jimmy looked around and traced a path to the
rooftops. The roofs were different here in Land’s End, slightly
steeper and mostly tiled, but not impassable; the walls had more
stone and less brick and half-timbering, but his fingers were strong
and his toes nimble.

‘Can you
climb?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’
she said shortly.

‘Then
follow every move I make,’ he ordered.

He unbuckled his
belt and refastened it over one shoulder so that the hilt of his
sword lay between his shoulder-blades.

Up the
drainpipe,
he thought: it was bored-out wood and quite strong
enough, fastened to the stone with bolts. Onto the transom of a
window, thence over the eaves and onto the roof. From there, it
seemed to Jimmy, the city was theirs. The girl put a hand up and he
took it, giving her a lift that helped her scramble up. Then he led
her to the deepest shadow he could find, hoping they’d be
invisible from the street below.

And not a moment
too soon, as around the corner of the alley came four very angry men,
now bearing swords or clubs. They looked up and down the street, then
took a moment to argue, until the short one pointed one way and then
the other, whereupon two men went up the street and two men went
down. The man with the moustache shouted, ‘Find them. They’re
worth three silvers each!’ He headed up the street, while the
other men took off in different directions.

‘Three
silvers!’ the girl exclaimed. ‘Those bastards!’

Definitely not
the Princess, then.

‘What was
that?’ asked Jimmy.

‘That man
said he was a thief catcher. They were going to turn me in for a
bounty.’

Jimmy was silent
for a moment, then said, ‘It’s an old grift. Two or three
“citizens” testify you’re a thief, and if you don’t
have no one from around here to vouch for you, you’re off for
the work gang or worse.’ He paused. ‘Did you happen to
catch the name of that fellow with the moustache?’

‘Yes,’
Lorrie replied. ‘He said his name was Gerem Benton.’

‘Ah,’
said Jimmy slowly.

‘You know
him?’

‘I know
him,’ said Jimmy with a nod. ‘Gerem the Snake. Used to
run a confidence game up in Krondor. Thought he was dead.’ He
stood up. ‘I’m Jimmy. If you like I’ll escort you
home.’

‘I don’t
live here,’ the girl said gruffly, then was quiet for a moment.
‘Thank you. I don’t know what would have happened if you
hadn’t interfered.’

‘It
depends,’ Jimmy said. ‘But nothing good, you can rely on
that. So what’s your name?’

‘Uh,
Jimmy,’ she said.

The young thief
laughed so hard he slipped a couple of yards down the roof. He
elbowed his way back up and grinned at her.

‘No, no,
that’s
my
name,’ he said. ‘You weren’t
paying attention.’ He leaned a little closer and whispered, ‘I
know you’re a girl.’

She looked
startled, and her lips parted as though to deny it.

‘I know
you are,’ he insisted.

‘How? They
certainly didn’t!’

‘Well, I’m
more . . . alert, I suppose. Or maybe it’s that you look
amazingly like someone I know, and she’s most definitely a
girl.’ He gave her shoulder a gentle poke. ‘So, what’s
your name?’

‘Lorrie,’
she said, sounding discouraged. ‘Lorrie Merford.’

‘Nice to
meet you, Lorrie,’ Jimmy said at his most suave, managing to
copy Prince Arutha’s courtly bow in miniature, while lying on
slippery red tiles.

She smiled at
him. ‘Nice to meet you, too, Jimmy,’ she said.

The sun was now
setting, and night was almost upon them. It would be getting harder
to see in the gathering darkness, but the young thief crossed his
ankles as though they had all the time in the world. Better to let
their pursuers get farther away before they themselves moved on.

‘So if you
don’t live in the city, where do you live?’ he asked
casually.

‘Somewhere
you’ve probably never heard of,’ she said. ‘The
nearest village is a tiny place named Relling.’

Nope, never
heard of it,
he thought.
Sounds like an
early-to-bed-early-to-rise land of honest toil and earthy, peasant
virtue. Hope I never have to go there.

‘Were you
going to go back there tonight?’ he asked.

‘Uh, no.’
Lorrie shook her head. ‘I’ve got something to do here.’

I’ll
bet you do,
he thought. He’d also bet it was something her
family wouldn’t approve of. Why else would she be in disguise?
‘So where are you staying?’ he asked. ‘As I said,
I’ll walk you home.’

With a short
laugh she said, ‘I’m not staying anywhere. I just got to
Land’s End today and almost the first thing I did was meet
Benton and agree to run an errand for him.’ Her voice was rich
with self-contempt.

‘Don’t
be too hard on yourself,’ Jimmy advised. ‘He’s
pretty slick. I’m a stranger here myself, so I don’t know
which inns might be good for you. Do you have any money?’

There was a long
pause at that. ‘A little,’ she admitted cautiously.

Almost none,
Jimmy thought.
Poor kid.

‘Well,’
he said, rising, ‘let’s go exploring. Maybe we can find
you somewhere really cheap to stay.’ He helped her to her feet
and led her back to a place where they could climb down.

Jarvis Coe sat
in the darkest corner of The Cockerel and sipped his beer with his
cloak wrapped about him. There was a tired-looking roast of pork
turning on a spit over the fire; but he’d contented himself
with a hunk of dark bread and some cheese and a few good apples,
since they were less likely to lay him out with stomach cramps. One
advantage of being out of Krondor was that market-food was fresher
and less expensive.