Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)

by Margaret Owen

To the gremlin girls, I would like to tell you something inspiring, but the truth is, when life closes a door for us, it doesn’t always open a window. The good news is: That’s what bricks are for.

The little thief steals gold, but the great one steals kingdoms; and only one goes to the gallows.

“She’s the thirteenth,” the woman insisted, shoving the lantern higher as if to drive her point home like a stubborn cow. Weak firelight caught on Fortune’s coin wreath, on the wispy hem of Death’s hood. “Like me. That makes her the thirteenth daughter of a thirteenth daughter. Her luck’s rotten to the core.”

He’s been instigating skirmishes like your garden-variety invade-a-kingdom-because-Papi-didn’t-love-me-best nobleman, all while I wait in his castle.

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.

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.

This is the part where I must admit that I have no idea what to do with someone’s … personal rohtwurst.

There’s something bitter about parting with someone who had a hand in who you are now; it’s even bitterer when that hand left scars.

“Grr! Argh! Bring me children to eat!”

Well, if I can’t be nice to them, at least I can be interesting. “You want to see a knife?” “YEAH!”

Only someone raised as a princess could believe that following the rules would protect her.

A maidservant learns quickly that when a full-grown man desires a girl half his age, it is not out of love, but hunger.

“You’re what happens when an encyclopedia wishes on a star to be a real boy, if that encyclopedia was also an absolute prick.”

I decide it may just be easiest to walk myself over to the slaughterhouse and have them deal with me. Maybe they’ll make a nice bag out of my hide.

“I wanted to say hello again,” Ragne continues, smiling very toothily, “and to tell you it’s my job to look after the Vanja, even though she is mean. If you hurt her, I will turn myself into a bear and kill you. That’s all. Goodbye!”

“You helped me,” I whisper. “Why?” “Because that’s what people do,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Humans just make it complicated.

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.

Ragne turns to the rest of the table and screws up her face into a garish leer. “I am the Vanja. I take things and I am mean for no reason.”

“You know an awful lot of big-boy no-no words for a man of the gods.”

“Yes, she is mean, but she is my friend, and she is trying. And you are all hurting her.”

Who else would believe the absolute worst of me and still run into a burning house to save my life?

Buying good luck? In this economy?)

(Was I significantly distracted for most of it? Yes. Am I mulling over the viability of you have to take the other stocking off now, for symmetry as a compelling argument? Also yes.)

There’s a shimmering, intoxicating kind of thrill to it, this game between us. I am his puzzle and he is my lock, and it’s an arms race to solve the other first. But somewhere in all the knots and twists and trapdoors, he turned to an arsonist, leaving his embers in my veins, smoke on my tongue, a fire burning softly in my heart.

He’s nicked an artery, and I am bleeding words.

I can’t be wrong. My fear can’t be wrong. Nothing stolen is ever mine. But there’s another truth on the other side of that coin: What is mine can always be stolen. I will not be anyone’s servant, not even my own; I will always be a thief. I am never going to let myself be happy. I’m always, always going to steal it from myself.

I close my eyes. I tell myself I can panic for as long as the bell tolls. I can feel that fear, I can let myself fall until the silence tells me I’ve hit the bottom. So I do. For eleven more droning rings, I let myself be terrified. Angry. Selfish. I let it course through me like a poison, breathe in everything ugly and little and quivering. I am dying. I am not enough. I am a broken girl in a world that wants me in smaller pieces still.

In a flurry of golden skirts, fucking Irmgard von Hirsching sweeps them up.

“The Court of the Low Gods is convened,” Justice declares, rapping her staff against the ground. “Truth. How do we speak of you for this trial?” Truth spins a moment, then says, “I am ‘they’ for now.”

I hadn’t really thought that out beyond “half man, half mahr, all bastard” because I felt like that summed it up pretty well.

Of course the dead talking horse is rhyming.

“She tricked you,” he says with unabashed delight, “into deposing a tyrant. That’s very funny.”