Magic in Ithkar Read Online Free Page A

it’s bought; a man has to— Are you well, lad?”
    “The sun—I think I’ve forgotten to eat.”
    He wandered off, steadier now. Hunger did that, came and went, along with the wobbles. But he knew a panic gnawing as famine.
    Khussan hanged. He had crept up later to the gibbet; and the sight haunted him, the twisted shape against the sun.
    His nerve was gone. Four days he had not scored, not the least trinket. He had felt the unsteadiness in his moves, known his every flaw. A dead man had taught him. The best that he knew was hanging in the sun, food for birds. Khussan had failed—all his laughter, all his studied good humor, all the skills and tricks had not saved him. Something he had done was wrong and Sphix did not know what it was.
    He did not know. And day by day, as the thought had been growing in him from the day Khussan died, he grew hungrier, and more driven, and (Khussan’s precepts advised him) more a danger to himself.
    Don’t steal hungry, Khussan would say.
    Don’t work sick; or mad; or cocky, either.
    It’s an art, lad.
    But those thoughts were dead. The birds were picking them from Khussan’s brain, through empty eyeholes.
    And day by day the hand that had faltered from fear grew unsteadier still with hunger.
    Fool, Sphix told himself with Khussan’s inner voice. Fool — walking up the aisle, remembering he should not be hurrying. (Where was he hurrying? to what? from what? He did not know.) Ahead were the too good shops, the too fine lords; the priests in black and glittering brocade, where even merchants wore robes fine enough for the jewels that they sold. His clothes were not good enough for this. He turned aside, bumped a shopper, and stammered a plea for pardon, walking on. The man likely checked his purse after. Suspicion. All it took was a finger pointed, a cry raised, and they would take him like Khussan—
    Voices buzzed in his ears. The sun beat down on his head, making a red blaze behind his lids when he blinked. Sell his fine clothes, that he could do—there were the secondhand booths where he had gotten them; but such things always bought dear and sold at a pittance: the dealers knew the desperation of those who traded for their rags. A meal or two if he dealt sharp, a solitary meal; and after that, going in some worse garments, confined to a territory where thieves were more common and more guarded against, and the eyes of the merchants sharp indeed. Oh, Lords, he already had the wobbles, had already backed off from one gullible old man—
    No. No. No.
    Think calm, lad, Khussan would say.
    Go at it calm. Laugh. Laugh gentle. Feel it. Be it. A true thief’s an actor, juggler, artist. A true thief has pity, has a heart: steal what’s little missed, steal from them as little miss it, steal from them as deserve to have it lost. Then the laughter comes, then you can laugh from the eye outward, and love them you steal from. That’s the way.
    He smiled. He dallied with a new counter, ignoring the gold-washed glitter, a professional eye going past all of that to the opals, the cameos in onyx, the ring—tourmaline; the jade, milk and green; the precious tiny coral that was worth everything on the table—never steal that. That would be missed. He smiled at the merchant and blessed the arrival of a clutch of teenaged girls, which diverted attention one precious instant—
    Not long enough. The easy move with the fine opal headed for his sleeve—the worst of all moments. The merchant’s head turned, his nerve broke: he hurried the move, the unforgivable sudden, suspicion-drawing inconsistency; and knew it. He melted backward in the crowd, knowing every move the merchant made without seeing it, the quick dart of the eye over his well-known counter, the opal— Oh, Lords, he was a fool, it was mnemonic, a set of three he had broken—
    “Stop that boy, someone stop that boy!”
    He kept melting away (don’t run, don’t run, the crowd would not know what boy the merchant meant). There