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The little thief steals gold, but the great one steals kingdoms; and only one goes to the gallows.
Once upon a time, on the coldest night of midwinter, in the darkest heart of the forest, Death and Fortune came to a crossroads.
They stood tall and unfathomable in the glass-smooth snow, Death in her shroud of pyre smoke and shadows, and Fortune in her gown of gold and bones. More than that cannot be said, for no two souls see Death and Fortune the same way; yet we all know when we meet them.
And the truth of the matter is this: If they saw me without the pearls and the face of the prinzessin, if they had any idea who I really was, they wouldn’t give a damn if I was staying for supper or scraping it out of the swine trough.
Once upon a time, there was a girl as cunning as the fox in winter, as hungry as the wolf at first frost, and cold as the icy wind that kept them at each other’s throats. Her name was not Gisele, nor was it Marthe, nor even Pfennigeist. My name was—is—Vanja. And this is the story of how I got caught.
Little thieves steal gold, and great ones steal kingdoms, but only one goes to the gallows. I’m not sure I agree.
You see, there are two things they don’t tell you about having gods for godmothers: First, nothing is freely given, even a mother’s love. And second, it is very, very costly to run out on a debt to a god.
All in all, he gives the impression of a collection of billiard cues that unionized to solve crimes.
In the world I knew, there were three reasons a person would be wanted: for profit, pleasure, or power. If you could satisfy only one, they used you. Two, they saw you. Three, they served you.
“True greed,” Eiswald thunders, “will do anything to take what it wants.”
“I’m not angry,” Death says in the seat across from me, “just disappointed.”
(If you have been wondering why I am the way I am, perhaps you are learning now. But I will give Fortune and Death their due: They treat the poor and the powerful with equal disregard.)
I had no words at all to say I’d thought I was their daughter, not a debt to be collected.
If he had asked Vanja the maid, I could have told him these families practically foster grudges in their servants, and in their subjects, and in anyone they consider beneath them, which is most of Bóern. I could have told him it’s their own damn fault for treating us like we’re invisible, except when they treat us like toys.
I wonder if I would have been the same person sleeping in a crowded, smelly hut as I was sleeping with the rats in the pantry.
“You’re what happens when an encyclopedia wishes on a star to be a real boy, if that encyclopedia was also an absolute prick.”
“What I’m saying is, you’re going to be whipped again, Rohtpfenni. If not whipped, then robbed, blinded, whatever they feel like doing, whether you steal from them or not. That’s the way of the world. All you can do is make it worth it. Next time they knock you down, make sure it’s not for one lousy ring, but a pocket full of gold.”
At midnight, Death and Fortune came to me. They told me I had turned thirteen, and so it was time for me to choose one of them over the other. They told me one would claim me as a servant. They said nothing of claiming me as a daughter.
No matter how many cards I lay between myself and the rest of the world, no matter how many lies I tell, how many lives I steal, it will never be enough. I will never escape the ghost in the mirror. I will never escape her, because I am haunted by myself.
I see myself for what I am: a scared girl, alone in a cruel world, abandoned by family and friend, who would rather turn herself to bloodstained stone than let anyone get close enough to leave another scar. A girl who would rather die than serve anyone ever again. Even myself. And it is killing me.
And the ugliest truth tonight is that I wish I could understand that. I’m not a good person.
I stiffen, rocking back on my heels. Something jumps at the back of my throat. I know they both have reason to doubt me, but there’s an old, choking kind of panic when I’m telling the truth for once and no one believes me.
High Gods and Low, it feels good to say this to her face. It feels even better that no one at the table is coming to her rescue. I want her to feel that lonely, awful terror. I want her to feel it in her bones.
Just because you can survive without someone doesn’t mean they’re unwanted.
Then Adalbrecht says shortly, “She formally acknowledged the kobold before I did.” Too close to me, Emeric breathes, “Oh, awkward.”
For the last year, I’ve only taken the pearls off when I want to go unnoticed. Unwanted. I know what I am without them. Until tonight, though, I have never felt so unlovely.
I am not going to smile at him. I refuse on principle. (The principle is: I’ve already met my emotional-availability quota for the day.)
I knew from the scars on my back that Gisele would look the other way while Adalbrecht ate me alive. She would throw me to the wolves if it meant she would survive another day. But she never suspected I, her loyal, obedient maid, would do the same.
No. I am not coming out of this night grudgingly liking the smug bastard. I refuse on yet another principle (which is: There’s only room in this town for one smug bastard. That smug bastard is me).
I don’t know what it is that moves me. Maybe it’s reflex, years of putting her first. Maybe it’s the cold lightning calculation of instinct: I have a knife and she does not. Maybe it’s the girl in the mirror, my ghost still haunting myself, the one who still clutches the dying taper of a hope that we can change, we can make it through the thorns, we can stop hurting each other.
“I’m not dropping you into the Yssar this time, so yes. Besides, Poldi’s busy.” The kobold pointedly snaps a femur in two from the fireplace. “Not too busy.”
He starts down the path, then pauses and turns back to me. “Are you going to be all right? On your own?” One of these days, he’s going to stop catching me in the throat with these questions, but it isn’t tonight.
I stare at him, at the burn of witch-ash in his eyes, at his crystal clear conviction that no matter what I say, I am guilty, I am a murderer, I am a liar. I am one of the little thieves, and he will send me to the gallows himself.
“Yes, she is mean, but she is my friend, and she is trying. And you are all hurting her.”
I don’t know why that’s what does it, why that’s what breaks me. Maybe it’s that I’m hurt and scared and losing the adrenaline that kept those wolves at bay. Maybe it’s that I was trying to do something right for once. Maybe it’s that I was trying to do something for him.
Every rush of terror boils up, every old wound splits open again, every strain of a strange kind of mourning, all of it surges to the surface. I am spilling over, I am drowning in the taste of blood and ash and juniper oil, I am bawling in a way I haven’t in years. I hate that they’re all here to see it, but I don’t even have room for shame.
“I am here to claim my place in your house, as your daughter. I’m not asking for anything that isn’t mine by right.” Fortune’s frown deepens. I keep pushing. “Of course, if you don’t want me here, you can renounce me. Give up your claim to me, and I will lose my claim to you and yours.”
It’s a rare sight, seeing Death’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as Fortune looks more indignantly betrayed than a cat in a bath.
“You already knew the first part,” I almost spit. “You got to fall asleep to my story for years. But you didn’t say anything when I needed you. Why would I tell you a single blessed thing after that?”
I’m sick, and I hurt everywhere, and I’m so tired. And I can finally stop pretending I’m not.
I flop onto the chest at the foot of the bed as she stands, walks over, and pats my head. “How are you feeling here?” My throat catches. I stop fussing with the laces a moment and say again, “Awful.”
“I like the Gisele very much. But she hurt you again today. And the Emeric is confusing. I am sad for him, and I am very angry at what he did to you.”
An agonizing beat passes as we gape at each other. Then he bursts out of the door and onto the veranda. I fling the coat directly into his face and hurl myself back at the trellis. Through the wool I still hear a muffled “Wait!” “Nope,” I say, clinging to the trellis, “too cold, good night.”
“It won’t hold both of us. I’m fine.” He doesn’t have to say a word; the pig shit is implied.
Neither of us wants to be alone with who we were. Neither of us has to be.
“I think there are lives that make it easy to be good. Or what most people call good. When you have wealth, status, family, it’s easy to be a saint, it costs you nothing. I can’t say if you’re a good person or not. But the more I know of you, the more I understand that the world keeps making you choose between survival and martyrdom. No one should fault you for wanting to live.”
There had to be a reason for it. That made it something I could control. Something I could hope to stop. It’s the worst kind of relief for someone to say it was never in my control.
But I’m learning the bitter difference between independence and self-exile. We both have poison to bleed out. And neither of us wants to be alone tonight.
You know the saying, little thieves and great ones?” I nod. “I’ve always hated it. It’s everything wrong with the empire, that we punish people who are usually just trying to survive, when people like the margrave get away with whatever they want.
This is when I realize: This is why he keeps tripping me up, finding truths that catch me in the throat. Our lives are very different, but we both speak the brittle language of loneliness.
