Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) Read Online Free Page B

wrong.
     
       “Ah…” shrugged the wrinkled man again, and the youth had just decided to make his escape when he began again. “You don’t, ah, seem to speak the tongue… quite like a lord, Maister. Why, ah, may that be?”
     
       “I…” stuttered the thief.
     
       “Could it be,” wondered the merchant in a lowered voice, “Ah… Maister is very bold, if he thinks he can get so far, and not be uncovered, ah, or discovered…”
     
       Gribly turned to run.
     
       “Wait!” grunted the wrinkled man, lurching across the table of jewelry to grip the turbaned lad on the arm. His grasp was iron-hard and impossible to break. “Wait,” he repeated, slower this time.
     
       “What do you want with me?” Gribly hissed, dropping his pretended accent completely and hoping that no one nearby noticed what was going on. He would attack this man if he had to, but only if there was no other way out.
     
       “Nothing, nothing at all, Maister,” smiled the jeweler deceptively., “But, ah, you may want something from me .” His voice was intensely serious now.
     
       “Nothing comes to mind,” snapped Gribly.
     
       “Then, Maister, you would not want to know… ah, that you have been discovered already, perhaps?”
     
       “Well…” stalled Gribly, ready to brain the man.
     
       “But not by me.”
     
       “What?”
     
       The wrinkled man pulled Gribly close enough to hear what he whispered next. “Speed. Silence. Stealth. Someone is coming for you, Maister. Leave before it is too late…”
     
       Another thief? It wasn’t impossible, he decided. The youth turned his head, saw a flash of black in the seething crowd of colors, and turned back to the jeweler.
     
       “What’s going on? Who’s found me?” The merchant glanced beyond him and his face paled.
     
       “Too late…” he gasped, and gave Gribly a shove that propelled him backwards into the street, where he collided with another man, fell to the ground, and was swallowed up by the thronging crowd. It was not a moment too soon: as the youth struggled to his feet and slipped away, he could hear the wheedling, high voice of the jeweler protesting loudly behind him, something about “Never having seen the boy in my life.”
     
       All at once, the protesting stopped. As Gribly allowed himself to be swept away by the current of market-goers, he chanced a glance behind him, hopping up and down to get a glimpse over the sea of heads. What he saw was the jeweler, white and trembling, held by the throat by a tall, ghostly man in a sweeping, blood-red jacket. The man was speaking, and even without hearing him, Gribly felt cold and afraid as he never had before. The jeweler’s head shook vigorously in the suffocating grip of his assailant. Finally he raised his finger and pointed… in the opposite direction.
     
       In the next second he was lost to view, but not to thought. He’s helping me! Gribly was shocked. No one had ever risked their life for him before, and certainly not anyone from the higher parts of the city. But what puzzled him even more was that the jeweler, apparently, knew the same thieves’ motto he and the old pickpocket did. Could there be some sort of brotherhood between the two? Had the old thief who’d taught him somehow had connections with thieves in the noble and merchant classes?
     
       It opened up all sorts of ideas for Gribly, and he would consider them later. The balm, and then escape, were his first priorities, no matter what kind of ghoul was after him.
     
       Another tense, several minutes passed before the disguised thief found what he had been looking for. On the very edge of the courtyard where the royal market was held sat a huge, circular canvas tent as tall and broad as a house, striped gold and violet, with an endless array of ropes and thin cables spreading outward around it, each nailed into the sandy ground with wooden stakes. Behind the tent rose