City of the Uncommon Thief Read online

  DUTTON BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021

  Text copyright © 2021 by Lynne Bertrand

  Map art copyright © 2021 by Francesca Baerald

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780525555339

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover art © 2020 by AJ Frena

  Cover design by Kristin Boyle

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  For Hans

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Ex Libris

  Map

  Elements of the Clock and Calendar

  The Guild Towers of Gallia District and Their Exports

  Invocation of the Muse

  Part I

  A Gut Run

  Stolen Goods

  Caput Mortuum

  Sacked

  A Felon

  A Night Visit

  Tatu

  An Odd Assignment

  Coracles

  Beklemek

  Body Count

  Six Lines

  Ice

  A Conjuror

  Ships

  An Odd Remedy

  Exports

  A Girl

  Al-Razi

  An Odd Mistake

  Gea

  Préférerais Tu

  Part II

  Relics

  Falling

  The Twig

  Purgament

  The Shard

  Stillness

  The Remains

  A Rescue

  The Baidaq

  Birth-Night

  The Three of Spades

  The River

  The Khazarite’s Journal

  A Pub Squall

  High Poetry

  Fylgia

  Spoke

  Utlag

  The Sewers

  The Attarh

  The Riverbank Yurt

  Wolf Work

  In the Gutters

  A Thief

  Seen

  A Name

  Five Hundred Pages

  Sallanen

  Gaol

  Iosal

  A Going-Story

  The Muse

  No Reflection

  A Guest

  The Bluebird

  Banhus-Theof

  Collateral

  A Mis-Telling

  Tangled

  Empty-Handed

  Rising

  Part III

  Ready

  Border Crossing

  Corrections

  Darkness

  A Ghost

  Sunrise

  Master Guilder

  Bound

  The Apothecary

  A Contract

  A Stranger

  Knotwork

  Waiting

  Mine

  A Question

  Mercy

  Mirrors

  Gallus

  Burning

  Farewell

  Mearc-Stapa

  Sonhos

  The Prize

  Brother Enemies

  The Small Uurs

  Chicken Drama

  Help

  By a Thread

  A Delivery

  An Odd Letter

  Part IV

  Regrets

  Parting

  The Gauntlet

  Unready

  More Poetry

  Suspicions

  Cold Questions

  A Fool

  Math

  Half Brother

  Lost

  Sacrifice

  Encrypted

  The Messenger

  The Crow

  Unforgotten

  Irfelaf

  Fur

  A Roof Master

  The Vault

  Undone

  Done

  Predator

  An Army

  Rest in Peace

  Vitriol

  The Double

  Fright

  In the Balance

  A High Meeting

  In a Tent

  Dawn

  Gauntless

  One Relic

  Part V

  The Streetcat

  Second Sight

  Scars

  Familiars

  A Binding

  An Assembly

  She

  The Guildmaster

  Paperwork

  Opening Lines

  Epilogue

  Ex Libris Lb

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  EX LIBRIS

  Errol Thebes

  ELEMENTS OF THE CLOCK AND CALENDAR

  THE BELLS OF THE DAY

  NOCTIS: MIDNIGHT

  FESTIVUM: ONE O’CLOCK

  SOMNIUM: TWO

  CRUSTUM: THREE

  PURGAMENTUM: FOUR

  EPISTOLA: FIVE

  PERFECTUM: SIX

  ERRATUM: SEVEN

  GRANUM: EIGHT

  SANGUIS: NINE

  SUDORE: TEN

  LACRIMAE: ELEVEN

  MERIDIANUS: NOON

  LIBRI: ONE

  TEXO: TWO

  PARIO: THREE

  EFFIO: FOUR

  FORCTIS: FIVE

  ANIMO: SIX

  RADIX: SEVEN

  JOCUS: EIGHT

  DULCIBUS: NINE

  TUMULTUS: TEN

  IN SACCI: ELEVEN

  THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

  IDEM 1 • IDEM 2 • IDEM 3 • IDEM 4 • IDEM 5 • IDEM 6 • IDEM 7

  THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR

  WINTER

  BOREAL

  RHAGFYR

  HORNUNG

  SPRING

  FAOL

  HLYDA

  ZEPHYR

  SUMMER

  PIOGGIA

  LANGESONNE

  GAMAN

  AUTUMN

  SHAMAL

  MISTRAL

  GANSO

  THE GUILD TOWERS OF GALLIA DIST
RICT

  AND THEIR EXPORTS

  ALBACETE

  NAVAJAS

  ANTWERP

  LACE

  ARAWAK

  HAMACS

  ASHLEY

  DITTY BAGS

  ASTRA

  ASTROLABES

  ATTARH

  ATTARH

  BAMAKO

  DOHOLS

  BIAN PAO

  FIREWORKS

  BYLG

  BELLOWS

  CATALHOYUK

  MAPS

  CHAKRA

  WHEELS

  COLOPHON

  SPINDLES

  CUBIT

  WEIGHTS & MEASURES

  DANNEBROG

  VEXILLA

  DRAGEOIRS

  PLANETS

  FLANDERS

  DAMASK

  FULCRUM

  BALANCES

  GALLIA

  BARRELS

  GAMIN

  LOCKS

  GENOA

  BOBBINS

  GHENT

  WOOL FELT

  HAYO

  FLAILS

  IBERIA

  VIHUELAS

  KAZBEK

  BURKAS

  KOUTI

  CHESTS

  LASCAUX

  FLY-LINES, ROPE, RIGGING

  MYNWY

  MONMOUTHS

  PARAMOUDRA

  FLINTS

  PAZYRYK

  CARPETS

  PERLEW

  FISHING NETS

  PHRYGIA

  TOQUES

  PIKOR

  GRAIN SACKS

  PIPS

  DICE

  PLINY

  BESTIARIES

  PYTHAGORAS

  FORMULAE

  QUMRAM

  QUILL INK

  RAEPTEEK

  BEADS

  SEGLOM

  SAILCLOTH

  SHOU

  INCENSE

  SINDH

  BUTTONS

  STRAEL

  FLETCHERY

  SUANPAN

  ABACUSES

  TALLOW

  CANDLES

  TANG

  PLAYING CARDS

  TEIFI

  CORACLES

  THEBES

  KNOTTING SPIKES

  TOKMAK

  KNOBS

  TSUCHI-KING

  CRICKET ROOMS

  TYRIA

  DYES

  VOZOK

  SLEDGES

  WILGIA

  WILLOW BASKETS

  YARIM TEPE

  KILNWORK

  Invocation of the Muse

  I DON’T DREAM and never have. I hardly sleep. Lately I bide the nights by choosing names for each ship in a vast fleet. The names come to me from what sky I can see through a square cut in the roof of my tent. Taygete, Ye-Ji, Bellatrix, Al-Uqdah. I was at work on this list, long after noctis on the thirteenth of Rhagfyr, with a quill in hand and my head lamp dimly lit. An east wind harassed the tower roofs and strained the tent flaps and tethers. One of the bog-pot doors must have pulled off its hinge and was banging against the jamb. Odd Thebes lay next to me, lost in sleep.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “What was what?” he mumbled into his pillow.

  “Someone just called for you.”

  “’Tis naught.” He rolled away from me. “Who would be out in this larceny wind? No one.”

  I pulled wools and a tunic from the heap of our clothes and slipped out onto the roof. The bucket fires were cold and the iron tower was slick with ice underfoot. I stood at the edge.

  A minute passed before someone called again the bard’s name: “Odd Thebes.” I shone my lamp into the abyss. Twenty feet out and ten down, on the plank between my guild tower, Lascaux, and our neighbor Gallia, sat a runner so ragged I barely knew him.

  “The bard ignores me and sends a mere muse,” he called, squinting into my light through a billow of steam. I had to wipe my hands of sudden sweat, for I had never seen a plank so deeply bowed as this one, certainly not under the weight of one runner.

  “The outlaw returns,” I called back.

  A gust of wind dispelled the steam, and now I could see that the weight bearing down on the plank was not merely the runner’s but also that of the colossal beast upon which he sat.

  “What is that?” I said.

  The runner studied the animal beneath him, as though he was as surprised as I was to find it there. It was a hoofed creature, easily the weight of seven guilders, umber-furred and broad in the chest, with a pair of branches jutting from the sides of its head and more of that steam huffing from velvet nostrils.

  “That,” he said, “is another. A nother.” He was struggling. “An other.” The mere emphasis on the word caused the plank to tremble. In one hand he held a pair of sticks—tamping rods or lapidary files, I thought, or marlinespikes. With the other hand he removed a flask from his pocket, then uncorked it with his teeth and spit the cork into the abyss. “Tell me something,” he said, taking an unsteady swig. “Given the choice, would you rather be Sisyphus or Theseus?”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” I said.

  “Would you prefer to drown in the hands of a fiend or be devoured alive?”

  “That depends. Are we out of arsenic?”

  “I’m asking a real question. What would you do, if you were me, the irfelaf son of a high-ranking guildmaster, in a city quarantined by fear?”

  “I would think twice before I filled my head with whiskey over a mile-high abyss,” I said. “On the back of a sheep on an ice-rimed plank. And insulted the only help within earshot.”

  “It’s a stag,” he said.

  Something moved at the edge of my lamplight. The runner and I both turned to look. A skin-and-bones foundling crouched at the edge of Gallia.

  The runner flinched and blurted something in his ancient guild tongue and, to my horror, hurled the sticks at the foundling. He may as well have dropped a whole new stag onto the stressed plank. The cedar split with a sickening crack. The stag scrambled for purchase in a spray of splinters and ice but slid backward, with the runner gripping its fur. They fell into the abyss.

  Then? Then. That foundling leapt out onto what remained of the plank and ran toward me. Did it not see the splintered end? The nothing air? It dove straight down, grasping at the darkness.

  From inside my tent the bard called out, “What was that?”

  “Um—”

  There came a shift in the column of air between the towers, and I stepped back from the edge for what came next.

  * * *

  —

  This isn’t my tale, and I won’t be accused of thieving it from the bard. But as I have a script of my own, I’ll tell this bit more. I kept a wad of that umber fur, and a feather, too. I’m sure there are cities in the world beyond our wall where, every day, guilders find such relics caught on a fence or blowing about in the street and can’t even bother to pick them up, common as the beasts are who wear them. But here, in towers devoid of animals of any kind, fur and feathers are the irfelaf, “all that remains.” I keep them in my tellensac. For similar reasons I name a fleet of ships I do not own to sail on oceans I have never seen.

  PART I

  A Gut Run

  BE WARNED. A fragrance rises from this ink. The recipe is equal parts blood, gall, sewage, tears, the spit of a dying bard, and the soot from a sputtering head lamp. This day has not gone well.

  Homer would never find himself here, squatting on a ledge in an earthen shaft, scratching plot on a scab of
parchment with a quill yanked from a chicken’s ass. I’m glad for him. Let him ply his trade on the other side of the wall. Homer, Ovid, Virgil. They’re all there, no doubt barding together around a blazing fire, unfurling high tales of heroes and Olympians. I’m sure they have no trouble keeping a safe distance from their own plots. So glad for them. I fling all my good wishes to them from my pit. However, for any tales that occur on this side of the wall and that involve a shafted bard, there is Odd Thebes. Despite all of my best efforts, I am he.

  The scratches of this plot begin with a game of cards, a felony theft, and a pair of missing pelts on the roof of Thebes. It was the fifth of Ganso.

  Five of us were well into a round of maw in Talwyn’s tent when our roof master, Marek Thebes, called us for body count. I abandoned a perfect hand to grope my way across the flat expanse of our roof in the cloud that had lain thick as a kitchen sponge on us and stinking of fish all week. Our clothes were sopped. I could see nothing but white—not the yurt, or the earth below us, not one of the 999 other guild towers of our city, not even the snot dripping off my nose.

  Marek paced inside the yurt. He felt an evil lack. Felt it in his teeth, he said. We counted ourselves off and found his teeth to be correct. There were merely fifteen of us. The two who were missing were pelts from a group who had come up that morning. Marek dispatched us to find them.

  New runners always go missing. How can anything prepare them for that first full day on a tower roof? And yet there are so few places to hide. On Thebes: seventeen tents, seventeen trunks, a common yurt, a tent kitchen, and the bogs. It’s tempting, in the first days, to go down, to find permanent relief from the vast, too-beautiful sky in the grim tedium of the guild tower below. I felt my way to the grate and woke the hatch-guilder beneath it with a jab.

  “Two runners gone!” I yelled. “Before the tufuga could even mark them. Did they bribe their way home?”

  “That’s a dark question to wake me with,” he growled, scratching his nethers. “Look for yourself! The hatch is locked. And no pimple-faced, homesick runners paid me to slip home through it. It’s a misdemeanor for you runners to come home. You’d know that as well as any.”

  (Actually what he said was “Foulen darky, wakken en gulder. Luket ye. Atchis locked, en naught puss-scabben geld-seck roonies fived my to slip mam-home twanen the bares. ’Tis a foul crimm for en of ye te mam-home roon. En ye nown it verily, Odd Thebes, bester than te rest, as ye’v trine it for your own salf thryce that once’t yar.” But if I laid out every actor’s mother tongue, every guild’s language, this quill will fray before a plot rises.)