Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)

by Margaret Owen

shroud of pyre smoke and shadows,

Shroud: double meaning for this - a cloth for burial or a thing that envelops or obscures. Pyre smoke: smoke from burning corpse. Shadows: used to reference oppressiveness or sadness and gloom.

Fortune in her gown of gold and bones.

Gown: usually referring to a formal dress. Gold: riches. Bones: parts of humans thats left behind over time.

Whatever she touches falls to ruin.”

Forgive me, I never know with you humans.”

“Four,” Death said in her soft, dark voice, for Death always knew.

“my name is Vanja.”

"God is gracious"

thirteen years

17 years old

Gisele

Means Plegde/Hostage

But I have more motive to survey the manor’s scenery than just making sure the Prinzessin arrives fashionably late.

Is she looking for opportunities to steal?

Penny Phantom.

Why them, when they’ve been nothing but eager to please? 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.

The hair like sunshine, the eyes like moonlight, they are both key to the image of the girl the march of Bóern knows as Gisele von Falbirg.

My face lengthens, thins, mottles with a dusting of freckles; my eyes darken to black; the few loose tendrils of hair burnish rusty orange. The uniform dress hangs a little looser, though I’ve put on weight from a year’s worth of finally eating my fill, and it hangs a little longer, for eating well still cannot replace the inches I lost to years of meager fare in Castle Falbirg.

Gisele’s perfect servant.

the second card turns over: Marthe the Maid.

This is how you win the game, you know. Show them what they want to see, let them think they can win, let them follow the cards. Keep their eyes where you want them.

I turn my final card. It is a shifting shadow, a blur in the night, a faceless specter. It could be a ghost. It could be anything.

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.

Fortune’s fingerprints have been all over this party. I’ve seen smudges of good-luck gold when I debated snatching a ring, clouds of coal-dust misfortune warning me not to empty my glohwein into an urn right before a knight turned to look my way.

Because here’s the thing about stealing from people like the Count and Countess von Eisendorf: Odds are they deserve it.

(Me. That’s usually me.)

Definitely not Robin Hood

Little thieves steal gold, and great ones steal kingdoms, but only one goes to the gallows.

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.

I was there the first time the enchanted pearls were strung around the real Gisele’s throat; I saw what they made her into. I saw the way her smile seemed to light up the room and break your heart all at once, in just the way you liked best.

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.

And it must be far, if I am to escape my godmothers. Far enough for them to lose their claim to me.

In other lands, she is a messenger, a black dog, a warrior queen;

Fortune is a horn of plenty, an eightfold-goddess, a serpent-headed titan.

They wear different forms, abide by d...

So maybe, outside the Blessed Empire, they will no longer...

This Low God has a bear skull for a head, twin red-tinged lights glowing in each eye socket. Two antlers branch from the crest of the skull, their tips blooming into blood-red leaves. A strange shadowy sphere floats between them. Long hair falls around the skull, parted perfectly down the middle, fading from jet-black roots to snow-white ends and laced with bands of scarlet hemp.

“Rubies and pearls you shall become, little Vanja, and you will know the price of being wanted. For true greed will do anything to take what—”

“You have until the full moon to make up for what you have stolen,” Eiswald growls. “The longer you take, the more your greed will overtake you, until it is all you are.”

Fortune can be slippery, but you can count on Death to deal plain. Disapproval is collecting on her like dew on a grave.

Death waits a moment, then says exactly what I know she’ll say. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You know I can help.”

“I came because she’s going to die.”

I didn’t know how to say I wanted to be more than a servant.

The Blessed Emperor Bertholde, your ancestor, declared any copper in a coin made it a red penny, worth one-fiftieth of a white penny. The mints sorted themselves out in short order after that.” I remember the startled, awful look on Gisele’s face then. It matched the feeling in my chest. It was the first time we understood why she was called the white penny, and I the red.

Long ago, the noble houses of Almandy were given a choice: the crown or the sword. Houses that chose the crown, who kept their eligibility for the Blessed Throne, had to give up most of their armies. Houses that chose the sword ceded their claims to the Blessed Throne, but in exchange, they were given control of both the empire’s armies and its borders.

Government

The ills of the poor will not be cured with money, my little dove, but with deeds.” The gold of his signet ring is unsettlingly cold against my cheek.

The hypocrisy is obvious

I’ve stolen nearly a thousand gilden; perhaps I didn’t notice a change because I only earned and gave away one.

But the Pfennigeist is nothing, no one; it’s one of the perks of being little but shadow and whisper. Nothing can leave a mark.

“But you left twelve of them, crown-side up, in the homes of twelve noble families, after you robbed them blind. That’s personal, Miss Schmidt. You wanted them to feel helpless. You wanted them to know it was you.”

Red penny for calling card—wants attention Why, that little—I do not want attention.

The dusting of rubies has vanished. Something—something I did today—worked.

She had been stealing to get revenge on the people who are in high society, but instead this time she saved Emeric who is trying to take them down correctly. The hint was it was what she has been wanting. My prediction is that to beat the curse, she has to go after the rich and bring them down permanently. She has to work with Emeric.

“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.

There is no Prinzessin. No Marthe. No Pfennigeist. 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.

“What will I owe you?” I slur. I can hear his confusion in the silence. Finally he says, “Nothing,” the same way Ragne said people help each other, like it ought to be plain as the nose on my face. And the ugliest truth tonight is that I wish I could understand that. I’m not a good person.