A Bad Night to Be Greedy

Rook had been picking pockets in Tamber for six years and he had never once been caught, which was a thing he was proud of. It was raining that night. It was always raining in Tamber, which was a harbor city, and harbor cities were wet, that was just how it was. Rook didn't mind the rain because the rain meant people kept their heads down and walked fast, and people who walked fast didn't notice fingers in their coats. He was sixteen, or maybe seventeen. He wasn't really sure. He had been an orphan for as long as he could remember and orphans didn't always get told their birthdays. Tonight he needed coin. Not wanted, needed. His usual sleeping spot, the dry archway behind the fish market, had been taken over by a bigger boy with a knife, and Rook was small and fast but he was not stupid, and fighting a bigger boy with a knife was stupid. So he needed coin for a bed at the cheap inn, the one that smelled like onions, and he needed it tonight or he was sleeping in the rain. That was why he did the stupid thing. He wanted everyone to know that. He wasn't usually greedy. He was just cold. The man came up from the docks around midnight. He was old and he wore a long blue coat with stars stitched on it, real silver thread, and Rook's whole body went tight the way it did when it saw money. Only a wizard wore a coat like that. Everyone in Tamber knew the wizards, they lived up on the hill and they didn't come down much, and when they did you left them alone, because wizards could turn you into things. But this wizard was swaying. He was drunk, or tired, or both. He kept stopping to lean on walls. And drunk and tired was Rook's whole entire living. Rook followed him for three streets, keeping back, soft on his feet. The wizard turned into a doorway, an inn, a nicer one than the onion inn, and Rook waited and counted to two hundred and then went up the back. There was a window. Wizards always thought nobody could get into their rooms but Rook could get into anywhere with a window, that was the thing about Rook. The wizard was asleep on the bed with his boots still on. Snoring. And on the little table by the bed there was a marble. At least Rook thought it was a marble. It was round and it was glass and it fit in your palm, but it was glowing. Not bright. Soft, like the moon does, a sort of cool white light, and it sort of pulsed, slow, like it was breathing. Rook had stolen a lot of things and he had never stolen anything that breathed. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he knew, he just knew, it was worth more than every coin he had ever lifted put together. He should have left it. He knew that even then. Glowing breathing marbles in wizards' rooms were not for boys who needed a bed. But he was cold, and he was sixteen or maybe seventeen, and he reached out and took it. That was when the wizard stopped snoring. The room went quiet in a way that quiet rooms don't, a thick way, and Rook's heart slammed, and the wizard's eyes were open and they were looking right at him and they were not drunk eyes at all, they were sharp and awake and getting angry very fast. "Boy," the wizard said. "Put. That. Down." And Rook panicked. That's the only word for it. He had a glowing marble in one hand and a window behind him and a wizard sitting up in bed, and his brain just sort of switched off, and his body did the thing his body always did when something needed to disappear fast and there was no pocket deep enough. He put it in his mouth and he swallowed it. There was a moment where nobody moved. The wizard stared at him. Rook stared at the wizard. The marble was a hard cold lump going down his throat and then it wasn't cold anymore, it was warm, it was getting warmer, and a light, a white light, started shining out through Rook's own skin, out through his chest, lighting up the room. "Oh," said the wizard, in a completely different voice, a quiet horrified voice. "Oh, you stupid, stupid child. Do you have any idea what you just swallowed?" Rook did not. But the light coming out of his chest was getting brighter, and somewhere far away, out over the dark sea, something very large made a sound, and Rook had a horrible feeling he was about to find out.