Since that night, Jay saw Lethe at least once a week. It was never anything spectacular though. Their nightly excursions were now into the Edge. Jay had only been there once or twice in her life, knowing by experience there was nothing she could gain by venturing into streets and alleys that were most often flooded up to her thighs. Just about anything worth even a bit of copper had been stripped from the place ages ago. And there were people living there too among the marshland ducks, rats and gnats. Those poor sods had even less than Jay, if it was even possible, most often with nothing but stinking rags over their bodies- lunatics, lepers, hermits that claimed to hear the Lord and Lady in their heads. There also were madmen who by design or accident had doused themselves with concentrated magic and now stared vacantly as rats nibbled their fingers. Once Jay had thought it true that those who were tough enough and withstood magical exposure could become mages themselves and control that wild force like the Abrecari did. But now she saw with her own eyes the damage that could be done with magic and that was only the ones who actually survived.
And Kou. There were Kou living in the Edge, the only place where they weren’t chased away. They would sometimes approach them, their green skin covered with mud and leaves, moving carefully with their shoulders rounded towards the ground. Lethe would stomp at them and they’d scamper like a dog that was used to being beaten. Even then they would sometimes follow within the shadows and Jay could see glimpses of their yellow eyes in the dark.
‘Never give those anything’ he’d say. ‘They’d follow you and take whatever you might have lying about.’
Pitiful. Jay felt that she ought to pity them, but even as she did, she knew that Lethe was right.
Even though the Edge was a place where no one had anything that was worth locking up, there were still places that had been locked up tight from the days before the war. There were doors and gates, houses and shops, steel chests too heavy to move and strongboxes built into the crumbling walls. And all of those bore locks that could be opened and shut. Locks that were now Jay’s practice targets. Here in this half-flooded district, she was learning to distinguish a Mortice lock from a deadbolt or rimlock and struggling with the multi-point locks that had their rods rusted over and were almost impossible to move. Slowly, her fingers became nimble enough to not break every lockpick she ever used. Her grunting with effort and the empty jiggling of metal slowly started to turn into sighs of relief and the satisfying clicks of the locking mechanisms disengaging.
Alongside lock-picking practice, Lethe pushed her hard with climbing and roof-running. The dilapidated buildings of the Edge offered plenty of opportunities. Walls weathered with disrepair and the constant beating of the elements offered plenty of grips and footholds. The roofs that had holes that gaped at Jay like toothless mouths were a constant hazard and the crumbling stones were just the thing to sharpen her balance. Most nights, Jay could feel her arms and fingers stiffen to the point where they felt like branches and wooden pegs stuffed under her skin. But as daunting as it was to run over the rotten wood and cracked bricks, a fall that should split her skull open would end in just a few bruises and soaked clothes since the ever-present water on the street level would cushion her fall. And there were nights when Jay was grateful to the Abrecari for flooding this part of the city, despite her wet clothes and hair, despite Lethe laughing at her mercilessly.
Weeks passed. The autumn was now dragging itself to its end, bringing rains and drizzles. The city gurgled with overflowing drains and gutters. Close to the river, the sewers emptied their mouths, the rush of water making a sound that rumbled the pavement above it. It was a time when Jay was at her busiest, preparing her home against the deluges of the dying season, making sure that her home wouldn’t be washed away. She hauled brick and stone, fortifying her little shack- a wet and back-breaking job. But at least she had time to collect fuel. Lethe’s money was ensuring that she got to eat.
With a filled stomach, things start to look different. The world was still the same. The same people walked the streets. The same buildings with soot- and magic-blackened faces looked down from their heights. The same din and hubbub of the city filled her ears and rattled the bones. The stink of latrines in the back courtyard and the aroma of grilled meat from the shop on the corner was the same.
It wasn’t the same though. The walkabout boiled egg-and-milk seller was somebody Jay was getting her breakfast from, not a person she hoped would trip and drop a box that she could snatch. The warmth of a meal at The Magic Lamp was now a common occurrence rather than the sign of a very good day. At night, when she wasn’t chasing the startled pigeons from their high perches or locking and unlocking countless doors and containers, she would climb as high as her hands and feet allowed. On the perches of the roofs she could listen to the mournful siren songs of the ships upon the river and the endless droning of the pumps that kept the Drowns relatively dry, even in the season of rains. Each of those sounds stirred up feelings now unmuted and unmarred by a rumbling stomach. And the smell of grilled meat and frying onions was now just a pleasant sensation, not one that twisted her guts with desire to the point of nausea. That being said, she still stayed clear of the outhouses on the day of the week that the factory workers got paid and puked out their hard-earned wages all over the wooden seats.
All her life, the sea of faces in Arklington had ebbed and flowed around her. The people that she passed in the streets, the workers, traders and artisans wouldn’t speak to her unless she showed the coins in her palm. Those of the middle-class that looked on her from the relative distance of their means and the high-born folk that wouldn’t distinguish her from a pile of horse droppings, all of them mixed in together. Finally, there were the street kids (often the rivals and rarely the allies), the street walkers, rubbish scavengers and sewer-walking grubbers. All of those busy with wrestling a living out of the street or below it, too busy for Jay to get acquainted with more than exchanging looks. Now from the sea of the faces one stood out, like a seaweed-overtaken rock against the waves- the green face of the unusual Kou man.
And then, he disappeared. Lethe was gone.
More time passed. Two weeks went by since Jay saw Lethe last. She waited at first. Then, as the good money dwindled, a fear came into her heart. A fear of the return of those nights when her stomach had ached too much for her to sleep. Fear of days where she had worn her feet swollen-sore but could find nothing to steal in the streets. She fought that fear with all she had.
‘He had taught me enough’ she thought one night. ‘I can open a lock at least. Besides, I survived before without that stupid Kou. I can manage just fine by myself.’
As the night fell, Jay emerged into the chilling drizzle, convinced that she could break into a place; if not money, then at least there should be something to eat. But what? And where?
As she left the Drowns, she turned towards Brandybreak Street. It was a small boulevard where a few shops were huddled around a bakery. The bakery was ran by Dawson, a man built like a guarding automaton, with arms as thick as the loaves he churned out. The two fat bread ovens in the back were never cold, and even now Jay could feel the heat that radiated from the back wall behind the bakery. She could hear the buzzing of the fires within and could smell the baking bread in there, too. Jay knew it was full of supple buns and thick, long rolls goldening in the fire as the night progressed.
Jay grumbled and stuffed her palms under her arms. The bakery was out of the question. Even if she could pick the lock on the door, the shop would be empty of any produce, waiting for fresh delivery at the earliest hour of the night. And the back would be busy, with Dawson himself pushing the newly formed bread into the fiery pits of the ovens, armed with a flat wooden shovel. No. Any other place, but not the bakery.
The grocer then. This shop was small and the back entrance in the alley was so narrow that the door was never able to open fully. Jay scurried along the wall, feeling with her hand along the bricks, until she met the wooden frame. She groped in the darkness until she found the latch and smiled to herself. This little padlock would be no match for her, not now that she could finally open most of them with her eyes closed, just as Lethe said that first night when they were breaking into that alchemy shop.
Jay scowled at that memory. ‘So much for having a teacher’ she thought bitterly.
She grabbed the lock and slid two bent wires inside. Carefully, she applied the pressure on the one while probing for tumblers with the other. She could almost hear the tumbles moving; she could almost feel the lock giving. Almost…
Flash!
Jay cried out and fell against the alley wall. Bright blue light erupted in her face, blinding her in an instant. Her back hurt from the force with which the sudden and completely silent discharge had thrown her. The hand she held the lock with was cramped up and she was unable to move even her pinkie finger. But she knew exactly what had happened. She had come face-to-face with a magical charm placed on the padlock. A charm designed specifically to discourage people like herself, ones who had no key and wanted the lock opened.
‘I hate magic’ she mumbled through clenched teeth. The only consolation was that Lethe wasn’t here. Jay could almost hear him chuckling at her blunder.
As her vision started to return, Jay squatted under the wall, soaking up the drizzle and massaging her hand until finally she was able to relax the fingers. But as she did so, she remembered one thing she had seen before her eyes were assaulted by the flash. There was something above the door- a grated vent.
Jay stood up carefully and approached the door again. Slowly, she touched the grate above the door, in case that was magically secured too. She shut her eyes, not wanting another flash to rob her of her vision.
Nothing happened.
She pushed at it a bit harder and could feel it moving under her fingers. Apparently, no one had thought about securing that one. Encouraged, Jay proceeded in climbing up to it. Some studs in the wall provided enough support and after a few minutes, she was inside, having slipped through the vent- feet first.
The interior was murky, filled with uneven light from an oil nightlamp. It was a small shop, simple but seemingly in good repair. The floor was cleanly swept. Even though the damp from the drizzle was seeping through the floorboards, the smells in this place spoke of food. Jay breathed in the earthy scent of potatoes, the crisp smell of onions and musty trace of un-milled grain. Looking around she recognized the squat, beige shapes of sacks on the floor- flour, beans, oats, and carrots. The walls were lined with brown clay jars topped with cloth covers and jugs of every shape and size. Some mysterious foodstuffs were hiding under cheesecloth and in glass bells.
Jay ignored the register, knowing that it would be empty. Instead, she found a canvas bag and started shovelling food in, lifting it from time to time to see if she would still be able to carry it all the way home.
But as she squeezed back into the vent, it became clear to her that the bag wouldn’t go in. With a heavy heart, she started throwing things out. When she was finished the only things in the bag was square pack of hardtack, a small wheel of cheese and an earthenware bottle that, Jay hoped, didn’t contain oil.
Holding the bag in her hand and feeling quite accomplished, Jay skulked out of the alley. She turned twice and found herself a recess in the wall, the warm one that belonged to the bakery. Here, in this relatively dry and quite warm place, she tore into the cheese and hardtack. Then, she washed it all down with the content of the bottle, which turned out to be a very passable cider.
‘I don’t need him’ she thought triumphantly. ‘I don’t need him at all.’
Yet somehow, somewhere in the back of her mind she felt a grain of regret that she couldn’t show Lethe how well she did on her first time robbing a shop all by herself.
