The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung Page A

walls.
    When I reckoned an hour or so had passed, I woke my coachman up from where he snoozed in the shade of an old oak, and we headed back to the city. I didn’t so much as glance at the villa as we passed the second time. You take what care you can.
    Once back in the city, I rented a horse from Alain the carriage maker. I wasn’t about to walk back to the villa.
    Alain wasn’t really in the practice of renting mounts, which was one of the reasons I preferred to rent from him. Another was that I’d done him a good turn once, and he felt some obligation over it. I could almost trust him. He would do right by me and wouldn’t get curious as to what I might be doing.
    He had a very large work yard out in the Spindles, on the city end of the Jacos Road, and half a dozen carpenters in his employ. He was an honest, stubborn, self-made man who was doing very well thanks to his skill and his wife Myra’s business acumen.
    I walked through the gate into his yard, and was immediately confronted with a gigantic wheeled... thing. Like a carriage big enough for a giant to lie down in.
    “Amra! What do you think of it?” Alain called from across the yard.
    “I think I pity the horse,” I replied. “What the hells is it?”
    “They’re calling it an omnibus. Fits forty passengers.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    He punched me in the arm. “I’m talking about making money, woman. This here omnibus will troll the length of Orange Road all day every day. People will jump on, pay their two coppers, ride as far as they want. Transport for the working man!”
    “As long as the working man works along Orange Road.” Which, admittedly, thousands did. It was a very long, wide road. “Does Myra approve?”
    He smiled. “She approves of the fee for building it, which I’ll be collecting now that it’s nearly finished. She’s more cautious about the investment side of things. But you’re not here to talk about omnibuses. Or is it omnibi?”
    “You’re asking the wrong person. And I do need something. A horse for the night.”
    Alain picked out a grey gelding for me. From the looks of him, the horse had an appointment with the knackers in the not-too-distant future. My trust began to diminish.
    “He looks ready to collapse,” I told Alain.
    Alain scratched his ample stomach. “He’s a gentle one, is Kram. And you sit a horse like you’ve a stick shoved up an uncomfortable place, Amra.”
    I glared at him, but he was right. I can keep a saddle. Just. Growing up very poor in a city built on the side of a mountain, I didn't get much opportunity to learn. Bellarius wasn't known for its horesmanship.
    Alain promised to have the horse saddled and ready an hour after sunset, and I flipped him a silver mark. Then I went home to start laying out my gear.
    A funny thing happened along the way. There was a boy—well, I say boy, but he was in his late teens. He was staring at me.
    He stood in the shade of the column that supports the aqueduct above Tar Street, just on the edge of the Spindles, and he had the biggest, kindest eyes I’d ever seen. He also has a shaved head, and was dressed in the simple rust-colored wrap of an ascetic. He was staring at me, and smiling a little. I scowled and his smile grew.
    He didn’t try to approach me. I couldn’t puzzle it out, so I stopped trying. Lucernis is full of all sorts. I went on my way, but could feel his gaze on me until I turned the corner.
     

 
     
    Chapter Nine
     
     
    I hid Kram in a copse of pin oak and hackberry about a mile from the villa, tying the lead to a low branch. I don’t know why I bothered. Kram was one horse utterly uninterested in wandering. He had the look of a convict who’d given up all hope of escape, and was just waiting for death.
    I didn’t expect to actually enter Heirus’s villa that night; all I planned to do was take a good long look at the layout of the grounds, and see what sort of security measures he had in place. And I