Blue Fire

4. A Thief in the Night

4

A Thief in the Night

Amlinn spun across the stage to the wild, wailing music of the Sun Organ, finger cymbals ringing, bare feet and arms and legs flashing in the light. The ruby in her navel, the coins hanging from her scarlet breast band and headband, and the silver bracelets on her wrists and ankles glittered with every turn. The wide-eyed faces of Citydwellers spun in and through and out of her vision, pale blotches in the light of the sparkglobes hanging above the stage.

And then, as abruptly as a slap, the music ended.

Amlinn stumbled to a halt, panting, her skin wet with sweat that could not evaporate in the steamy air. In the sudden silence, she heard the steady patter of rain on the canvas high above. She smelled sweat and frying meat and her own musky perfume—and something else: the sharp smell of Blue Fire, the same nostril-stinging scent she had welcomed when Samarrind activated the Fence.

She looked left toward Annjia, who poked futilely at the red, yellow, and black keys of the abruptly silenced Sun Organ. Then the sparkglobes flickered. Amlinn looked the other way, toward the sunwagon hidden from the audience behind the painted curtain that created wings for the stage. In the uncertain backstage light, the wagon’s sunscales glistened like wet stone. But somehow, the sunwagon looked wrong. It took her a moment to figure out why: a black-clad figure, a living shadow, knelt atop it, tugging furiously at a sunscale with both hands. As Amlinn watched open-mouthed, the intruder gave a final wrench and pulled the glass square free.

Blue Fire flashed, and the lights went out.

Men and women shouted and screamed. Almost at once, tiny new flecks of blue light pricked the blackness as Freefolk rushed into the tent carrying lightwands. But only Amlinn had been in position to see the cause of the blackout—a thief stealing a sunscale, the greatest secret of the Freefolk, the Gift of the Goddess Arrica.

The first rule of the Freefolk flashed through her mind: “When you see something that needs doing, do it!” If she took the time to find Grandfather, the intruder would escape. Amlinn leaped off the back of the stage into near-pitch darkness, alleviated only by a faint glow trickling through an opening in the back of the show tent—an opening that shouldn’t have been there. With another jolt of outrage, Amlinn realized the thief had slashed through the canvas to gain entrance.

She felt her way toward that opening, half crouched, her hands outstretched to keep from tripping over ropes and barrels and other odds and ends littering the backstage area. Even so, she banged her shin against something that boomed like a drum, carrying above the hubbub of the frightened audience, out of sight beyond the stage. At the same instant, a dark figure blotted out the light in the slashed opening. He—or she—paused as though listening, then darted out into the rain.

Less than a minute later, Amlinn also emerged into the sodden night, shivering as water ran down her bare arms and belly and soaked her thin skirt, which clung to her legs like a second, ice-cold skin. She shoved stringy tendrils of hair back up under her headband as her eyes darted this way and that.

There! Wearing a pack that surely contained the stolen sunscale, the thief—a man, she could see now—hurried toward the blue glow of the Fence. Except, in one spot, there was no blue glow. Somehow, he had slashed an opening in the Fence, too, just as he had in the canvas of the tent!

Terrified the gap would close behind him, Amlinn dashed after him, her bare feet splashing through puddles. The intruder had only to turn around and he would surely see her, but instead, he bolted toward the city. Amlinn ran after him, heart pounding. She stumbled once and fell headlong, barely catching herself in time to avoid getting a mouthful of mud. She staggered up and hurried on.

The intruder slowed as he neared the east gate. Again, Amlinn glanced behind her. She could run back, call out to the guards at the portal, to Grandfather, but by that time, the intruder would have vanished into the city, taking the precious sunscale . . . where?

To the Temple, Amlinn thought with a shock of bitter certainty. To the cursed Priests of Vekrin. Who else?

To prove her theory, though, she would have to witness the sunscale being delivered. And so, instead of running back to the camp for help, she ran the other way, toward the east gate, a single ironbound wooden door, standing open, framed by sparkglobes.

The intruder entered the city unimpeded. The hidden guards didn’t challenge Amlinn, either. With the Freefolk encamped, curfew had been extended, and people could freely come and go. There was no way she would ask the guard for help. Reveal to the Citydwellers that a thief had successfully stolen a sunscale from the Freefolk? Never. Samarrind would skin her alive.

She emerged from the dark tunnel through the wall onto the cobblestoned street beyond. Ahead, the thief passed through the pool of light cast by a sparkglobe atop a tall wooden post. Amlinn ducked into a shadowed doorway, arms wrapped tightly around herself, trying unsuccessfully to suppress her shivering.

The thief paused and looked back.

Amlinn gasped. He couldn’t see her while he was in the light and she was in the dark, could he?

For a long moment, he stood staring back in her direction. Then, abruptly, he turned and strode away. Amlinn took a deep breath through chattering teeth and slipped after him.

Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t get too close. Just watch, see where he goes, then go tell Grandfather.

She hurried on, avoiding the occasional sparkglobes, accompanied by the soft clinking of the coins on her costume, clinking she desperately hoped would not carry through the constant patter of the rain.

Ahead and to the left, blue light flickered. The storm had brought no lightning. Those flashes could only mean she was getting close to the Temple of Vekrin, and that meant her suspicions were correct. Those damned Priests! When Grandfather finds out . . . when Samarrind finds out . . .!

She dodged from doorway to doorway, her feet so cold that she couldn’t feel her toes, though not cold enough to numb the sharp edges of paving stones. Three blocks farther on, the thief slipped through a pool of light from a lone sparkglobe in front of a dilapidated two-story building. He turned left and disappeared behind the dark, shuttered structure.

Afraid she would lose her quarry, Amlinn abandoned all caution and ran, jingling, as fast as she could. She pulled up short just before she reached the corner. Breathing hard, she cautiously peered around it.

A high wooden fence ran alongside the building and well past it to the end of a short, unpaved street. A final sparkglobe at the end of the fence lit a small patch of green on a grassy field. Perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond that, a long row of lights cut across the darkness. Blue glimmered beneath those lights, and above them flickered the lightning-like flashes she had seen from the bridge. Each flash briefly delineated a hulking black behemoth of a building: the Temple of Vekrin.

And the thief was heading straight for it across the grassy field.

Are they mad? Anger blazed so hotly in Amlinn that it momentarily banished the cold nipping her exposed skin. Priests, stealing the Goddess’s Gift? The Freefolk wouldn’t stand for it. They’d withdraw into the wilderness, city luxuries be damned. Trade would collapse. Businesses would fail. Citizens would riot. The kingdom could well fall apart.

Amlinn looked south and west toward King Stobor’s palace but could see only a faint glow through the mist. More than ever, she knew she’d made the right decision to come after the thief at once, by herself, without seeking help. She couldn’t accuse the Priests without being absolutely certain, and if the thief evaded her . . .

She took a deep breath and slipped around the corner of the old building and down the short street, clinging close to the shadows of the fence. Then she made a final dash past the last sparkglobe into the open space surrounding the Temple.

The squish of cold mud beneath her feet gave way to the wet tickle of grass. She wanted to run, but she had no way of knowing what obstacles might lie before her, and so, with agonizing slowness, she walked across the black greensward. Wary of being silhouetted against the lights behind her, she crouched low, slowing her progress even more. All the while, she strained her ears, listening through the patter of rain for the footsteps of the thief, clenching her jaw to try to stop the chattering of her own teeth.

She heard nothing.

Wishing with every step she had the dagger she had trained so hard to use, the dagger she carried everywhere but on stage, she neared the Temple at last, the lights resolving into a row of paired sparkglobes on tall poles. In the wagon-length separating each pole and pair of lights from the next, Blue Fire shimmered, the Priests’ protective Curtain, hissing and steaming in the pouring rain.

She stopped just a few steps from that deadly wall. Shrouded in vapour, the Curtain stretched unbroken down the length of the Temple. Where could the thief have—?

Something struck the small of Amlinn’s back with bruising force. She cried out in shock as it hurled her from her feet. Her face slammed into the muck. She spat mud and grass, turned her head, gulped a mouthful of air to scream, and then choked on it as a gloved hand clamped her mouth, shoving the scream back down her throat. Sharp knees pressed into her back. Heart pounding like a caged bird in her chest, she waited helplessly for the bite of a knife or the sudden twist that would break her neck. Instead, the weight holding her down shifted, though the hand remained over her mouth. Lips and hot breath tickled her right ear. “I don’t kill girls,” a voice whisper-growled.

The thief turned her face back into the grass and mud so that even though the hand slid away from her mouth, she could hardly breathe, much less scream. He tore at the hem of her skirt, and she heard it rip. She tried to kick him with her heels but couldn’t connect. A strip of cloth raked between her face and the ground, almost taking her nose off. It slid between her teeth and pulled tight, biting into the corners of her mouth. Then the thief pulled her arms back so far that her shoulders ached, and lashed her wrists together. As his weight vanished from her back, and she tried to kick again, but he seized her legs and held them down while he tied her ankles together. Then he rolled her onto her back, face-up in the rain, and disappeared in the direction of the Temple.

She sucked air through her nose, drawing so much rain with it that she almost choked. With a monumental effort, she rolled onto her side. By drawing her knees up and arching her back, she eased the pressure on her shoulders.

She now had a clear view of the Curtain and the black silhouette of the thief walking straight toward it.

The Blue Fire will kill him!

The thief raised his right hand. Something flashed, brighter blue than the Curtain. The glimmer vanished between two posts. Their sparkglobes blinked out at the same instant, and the thief walked through the gap into the Temple grounds.

With the Curtain down, Amlinn could see a deep-set door in the stone of the Temple wall. The thief went straight to it and touched it. Another blue flash, and the door swung noiselessly inward. He disappeared into the darkness beyond, and the door closed behind him.

Violent shivering seized Amlinn. All but naked, she would die of cold if she lay there through the night. She strained against her bonds, but it felt as if she were pulling her shoulders from her sockets. Gasping with pain, she folded herself up again and stared at the opening in the Curtain, trying to make sense of what she’d just seen.

That was no Priest. A Priest would walk through the front gate. Is the thief stealing from the Priests, too? Stealing what? And why?

Amlinn shivered helplessly on the cold ground, fuming at her own fecklessness. She knew how to fight! If she’d heard him coming, he would never have been able to render her helpless so easily. Before being allowed on stage for the first time, she’d been taught six ways to disable a man who made unwanted advances. She could outshoot many of the Freefolk men and handle a knife better than most. But the damned rain had foiled her senses, and that black-clad coward had knocked her down and trussed her like a beast without so much as a struggle.

Footsteps pounded the cobblestones beyond the Curtain. The thief, coming back? “I don’t kill girls,” he’d said, but maybe he’d thought better of leaving a witness. She twisted her head around as far as she could. A figure in a blue cloak and steel helmet slipped through the light of a sparkglobe.

A Priest!

Her heart raced with sudden hope.

The Priest stopped at the gap in the Curtain. She strained to shout but could only manage a moan against the gag.

Still, the Priest’s head snapped toward her. His sword flickered from its scabbard.

Then he stepped toward her through the gap in the Curtain.