Kara hated new cities.  People didn’t all talk trade common, like they were supposed to.  Boys with ugly pink faces shouted what sounded like insults at her.  Kara had to bloody several puggish noses and then retreat as more loud foreign boys arrived, attracted by the howls of the first.  Kara hopped three carts, and was chased off two and threatened with a beating before she reached a part of town that looked promising.  She now knew the Germhacht words for “dark,” “foreign,” and “rat,” and had given as good as she’d gotten by teaching them the Corestemarian words for “fat,” “red,” “pig,” and “your mother.”

At last Kara found a nice dark corner in a nice dark alley that was uninhabited and had three easy exits.  The smells from the nearby sewer seemed to keep the area clear.  She sat on a coal bin and pulled out her spoils, to unwrap like presents. 

            She set the gold face out first to glitter in the coal dust, mirrored its grimace back at it, then grinned.  She unwrapped the next one with deft fingers and found it to be a mosaic of carved gems, very old, on a soft gold plate.  She set that under the face, to make a kind of torso, and unwrapped the next one.  Finding someone to buy these treasures in a strange country might be hard, but somewhere in her future, a very big meal waited.  Kara found several unset carved gems, almost like hard candies, and made them arms and legs, and then a pair of beaten gold earrings with emeralds and little gold goats, which became feet for the treasure man on the coal bin.  The small silver and gem-studded statuette in the next parcel made a friend for him. 

 

            Kara unwrapped the very last parcel, a bit bigger than her palm, and shivered with a sudden cold.  She adjusted her ragged coat closer around her and fished a bronze chain from the paper wrappings.  She pulled on it, and out came a large medallion, gold, encrusted with rough-cut gems.  It glittered in suddenly failing light.  The alleyway was very cold now, and shadows played on the high brick walls all around.  There were whispers somewhere, a dark voice speaking words Kara didn’t know, not in her ears but in her mind.  The amulet brushed her fingers on its next swing, and all the stones went black.  Kara swore and dropped the amulet.  On the opposite side from the gems was another gold face, its jaws wide, as if screaming.  Two black gems were fixed in its eyes.  For one moment they blinked at her, like real eyes. 

            Kara grabbed at the parcel wrappings and used them to snatch up the amulet. She dashed down the alleyway with it, hearing screams in her head now.  At the first corner she found what she was looking for: a sewer grating.  She threw the amulet and its wrappings as hard as she could down into the sewers.  She heard a splash, and then the screams slowly faded.  The air was warm again.  Kara bit back a stream of furious curses and jogged back to find treasure man and his silver friend still sitting on the coal bin, untouched, and perfectly ordinary, at least for treasure.  She wrapped them back up, found a loose brick in the alley wall, shoved the wrapped treasures into the hole, and jammed the brick back in place.  “I hate archeology,” she muttered.  “I hate it.”

            She had to move soon, and she knew it.  Her contact was waiting, as was the job she had to do here.  She wiped her face with a dirty sleeve, hopped down off the coal bin, and kicked it for good measure, to relieve a little tension.

            The place was easy to find, by smell alone.  The scents of tea and perfumed smoke billowed out from a door in a back alley.  Inside, patrons were too woozy to note that a small, dark skinned urchin could have no honest business here.  Kara held her breath and found the back room.  The air was clearer there, and a man in a blue robe stood by a second door.  Kara said the words she’d memorized, and he opened the door for her.  Inside the room, a robed and hooded figure in purple stood behind a broad table covered with papers.  Different, equally perfumed but less affecting smoke rose from sticks on the table.

            “Welcome, visitor from afar,” a woman’s voice said, in overly dramatic trade common.  She paused.  “Johan, are you sure this is--”

            “I’m small.  Accept it and move on.”  Kara glared, and stepped up to look at the papers on the table.  They were floor plans for a large building, with writing on them that Kara couldn’t read.  That was not a surprise, as Kara couldn’t read much of anything.

            “Um,” the woman said, gathering herself, and adjusting her hood to be even more concealing and mysterious.  “You have journeyed far, to complete an important mission, for which you will be well rewarded.”

            “That was the contract,” Kara agreed.  “Get on with it.  I’m hungry.”

            The woman in the purple robe made a disapproving little cough.  “All you need to know is on this paper.”  She held out a sheet of parchment, written in flowery script.

            “I can’t read,” Kara informed her.

            “Oh.  Mmm.  Dear.”  The woman made clucking sounds.

            “Just tell me what and where.” Kara sighed.  “I’ll figure it out.”

            “It’s a library,” the woman began, sounding unsure now.

            Kara sighed.  This was not her day.

            “There are certain papers--”

            Even better, Kara thought sourly.  I get hired to steal paper.

            “--in a room with some antiquities.  You shall retrieve the papers in the gilded cabinet, and whatever objects you find there.  It’s this room,” the woman indicated on the floor plan with a long laquered fingernail.  “In the library of the archeological society.”

            It would be, Kara thought.

            “Know that your work for us will harm no living creature.  This important task is for the good of all spirits, and shall bring you a great reward.”  The woman sounded very earnest and cordial.  Kara disliked her shrill voice immensely.

            “You’ll have them tomorrow night,” Kara said.  “I’ll need ten percent of my great reward up front.”

            “Of course,” the woman said, and set down a small bag of coins with a theatrical flourish.  Kara opened it to find gold colored disks inside.  She bit one.  It was real.  “Lady, do I look like someone who can walk into a money-changers to get real silver for this?”

            The woman made an exasperated noise and produced an ordinary looking handbag from under her chair.  She dug with colored nails in a sequined coin purse and made change in paper bills and silver coins. 

            “Right.”  Kara pocketed the money and waved.  “See you tomorrow night.”

 

© Ruth Lampi 2010