“Oh, yes, I hope they help.”
Skate guessed they must have been discussing Belamy’s bizarre locks on his windows.
“Who else has been stolen from?” Ossertine asked.
“Some of the shops around have been dealing with thieves for a while, but it’s mostly been out in their streetside goods. The neighbors were not forthcoming about what had been stolen, so I decided to take precautions regardless. I’m glad I did, since your thief seemed interested in taking books specifically.”
“Book, not books,” Ossertine corrected. “The thief took only one of my books. A rare one. They seemed to know where to go in my home, as well. Perhaps having an extra pair of eyes around your home may help you further to avoid such unpleasantness.” There was another creak as Rattle opened the kitchen door once more to bring tea to Belamy’s guest; Skate only then realized the whistling had stopped. “After all, the burglar only struck after I had left my home.”
“I’m confident in my locks,” Belamy responded, “and in the fact that I almost never leave my home. I thank you for the warning and the concern, though. Have you warned Jack and Bakurin yet?”
Skate noticed with dread the sound of Rattle moving up the stairs toward her, its wings flapping and its legs clicking lazily together, like thin wooden wind chimes in a breeze. She was hidden only by virtue of the landing of the stairs blocking view of her from the main room and had nowhere to hide from someone actually coming up.
When Rattle popped into view, Skate put a finger to her lips in a pantomime of shushing. Rattle looked right at her and continued on as if it had not seen her. It floated past, into the upstairs library, and shut the door behind it.
Skate released the breath that she had held since she’d heard Rattle’s approach. She had missed part of the conversation because of all her fretting over being caught. Belamy was saying something.
“…neighbors or not, they should probably be made aware of the issue. If the thief finds both of our homes too well-protected, they’re likely to move on to more easy pickings, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose you’re right. However, I’m not interested in walking all that way in a snowstorm. Getting here to you was inconvenient enough, and we’re practically neighbors ourselves. Besides, I’d hardly call the mansion that Jack lives in ‘easy pickings.’”
“I guess the weather should give us some pause.” There was silence after that for a while. When they did begin speaking again, it was on some esoteric topic in their reading from the previous meeting, and Skate decided she had worn out any particular interest that this conversation might carry. She went to her room, opening and shutting her door with absolute silence—the result of years of practice at hiding her passage through occupied houses.
Skate had not been in her room for more than five minutes before there was a soft knock at the door. She opened it to find Rattle flapping in place, holding a small cloth bag in three of its legs. It tossed the bag to Skate, who almost dropped it in surprise. Then it floated over to Skate’s desk. It opened the drawer, pulled out the slate within, and tossed it onto the desk lazily. The slate bounced lightly before coming to rest on the wooden surface. Rattle then floated back out of the room without looking at Skate. It left the door open when it left.
Skate opened the cloth bag to find several small squares of white stone. When she touched one of them, it left a powdery residue on her fingers.
Chalk.
Rattle came back in carrying a small book in its legs. It floated to the desk and scooted the slate to the edge of the desk. It then set the book down gently and opened it up. After flipping a few pages delicately, it stopped on a page with care. It floated across the desk and turned around, putting the desk between Skate and itself, looking at her directly as it fluttered in place. It pointed first to the page, then to Skate, then to the empty black slate near the edge of the desk. It repeated this motion three more times, then pointed to the desk.
Skate smiled. Rattle was clearly communicating to her, and she thought she might understand what it was saying. “You want me to copy the page onto the slate?”
Rattle neither confirmed nor denied her suspicion, but gestured her closer to the desk. More specifically, it seemed to be gesturing her to the open page.
When Skate got to the desk, it gently traced one of its legs down the open page, then did so again, and then a third time. It repeated this process as well.
Skate realized that it was tracing specific symbols on the page; there were three columns of different symbols on the open page, with writing above and beneath this set of symbols. Rattle was not pointing to anything but the columns of symbols. “You want me to copy the symbols here?” she asked, tracing the symbols exactly as Rattle had done with its thin leg.
Rattle bounced a little more energetically in the air, and pointed from the bag in Skate’s hand to the empty slate. “And you want me to do it using the chalk in the bag. All right, eyeball, I get it.”
Rattle bounced in the air enthusiastically again, and then moved toward the door.
“Wait!” Skate said, putting a hand out to stop it. It obliged and looked back at her curiously. “Why?”
Rattle just looked blankly at her, and she realized that it would be very difficult for the eyeball-spider to answer a question of that type. To her surprise, however, it made a move to answer. It brought a leg to the page, this time tracing the writing above the column of symbols, then pointing to Skate’s head. It was a surprisingly gentle motion, and Rattle looked at her after the pantomime to see if she understood.
Skate nodded. This was her first reading lesson.
Chapter 9
In which a schedule is studied, aspirations are discussed, and a confession is made.
Skate drew her new clothes more tightly around her as she watched the illuminated windows of Jack Gherun’s dining room. Unlike Belamy or Ossertine, he owned only a portion of the building he lived in: a selection of three connected rooms on the top floor of a building with other tenants around and below him. The building, according to passersby she had been able to corner and badger, belonged to Baron Richefort himself, though some seemed to remember rumors that the Baron had sold it to a nephew or cousin at some point to pay for some trinket or other that one of his mistresses desired.
Some people cared a great deal about such rumors; the Ink was particularly interested in direct confirmation of any salacious stories of the rich and powerful, which it could then store up for the day when the organization needed to force compliance or demand other information or just to make some quick money for another project. This sort of thing was boring in the extreme to Skate, of course, and it was all hearsay besides. She never met a single person who could directly corroborate the whispers, so she safely ignored them in order to better focus on the task at hand.
This was her third time analyzing Gherun’s patterns this week. The first two had been as uneventful as this innocent clandestine observation, which was the point. She was studying her mark’s behaviors, his tendencies, and his schedule, and there should not be anything exciting about that idea. The thief’s work done right goes unnoticed for as long as possible. The nugget of wisdom from Boss Marshall made her smile.
Also making her smile were her comfortable new clothes. When she had informed Belamy of her need to follow and track her mark for days before trying to gain entry to the home, Belamy had remarked that her clothing would tip off any interested parties to her presence, because the poor were at best barely tolerated there under typical circumstances. Staying in roughly one place while spying on a resident of the neighborhood was not “at best” or “typical circumstances.” So, recognizing her need to blend in, Belamy had sent Skate out to pick the best clothes for the job.