"Well, pleased as princesses on a shopping trip about decapitating a bug, isn't he?" said Selda. "Why you go to such lengths about it when most people just swat the damn things is beyond me."
"It keeps me relaxed while I'm waiting," he answered.
She knew that. She knew everything about Jake. Selda and Jake had been together for thirty years. They'd even had a child together once, though the boy had run off when he was twelve. They had called the boy Jaxon. They'd heard he'd become a sailor, but didn't know if it was so. Neither had mentioned his name to the other since the day he had left. Both knew to do so would be to open the debate as to who had been responsible for the boy's leaving, and both knew that would be the end of them. So they remained silent on that one matter.
But on any other subject, they had argued so often and so repeatedly that each could hold the argument even if the other was off somewhere. But tonight was different.
Jake looked over at Selda and said, "Wot? You ain't going to say something about relaxing?"
She put down her knitting. With a scolding tone she said, "And wot good would it do? None at all. It's a sad situation we're in, in'it? And there's nothin' for it but for you to go off and get yourself killed, you old twit."
He stood from the other chair, as he always thought of it, her chair and the other chair, and made his way around the table to where Selda sat, clutching her needles in hands so tight her knuckles showed white. "Who you callin' an 'old twit,' you old shrew?"
She jabbed at him with the needles and shouted, "You, and you are an old twit, you old twit." Eyes rimming with tears she said, "You're going to get yourself killed, then where'll I be?"
He easily avoided the jabbing needles and bent over her. She turned her head aside and tried to brush him away with both hands, but he would have none of it, circling her in his arms as he had tens of thousands of times in the past. "It'll be good, you'll see," he said.
Tears ran down her cheeks and she said, "I'm frightened, old man." Suddenly she leaned into him and clung to him as if fearful of letting him go. "Must you?"
"I must. I told you, old woman, three jobs and we'd be out of this pest hole."
Showing the resiliency he had known for most of his adult life, she pulled away and shouted, "Aye, and whose bit of thunderous wisdom was it brought us to this pest hole, this 'Sanctuary,' out here at the edge of nowhere, in the first place?"
"Now, don't you go starting up with me on that, old woman," he admonished.
"We should get out of the Empire, he says," she mimicked his voice. "We should head out to Sanctuary. I hear it's lively out there, with all manner of people wot never been this far east before. Easy pickin's for the likes of us, he says. No Imperial thief-catchers chasing us for bounty. No merchant's guild hiring assassins to stalk us in the night, he promises. No revengeful nobles sending soldiers out by the dozens to cut us down in the city square like bowmen slaugh-terin' lambs in a pen.
"No, he says to me, it'll be fun, lots of interestin' folks, and some easy days." She held up her hands to describe the hovel in which they lived, one table, two chairs, a lamp, a tiny brazier over which they cooked their meager food, and a sleeping roll on the floor they had shared for the last seven years. It was located at the darkest end of an alley abutting a wall on the other side of which lay the city's busiest slaughter house. "Does this look like easy days?"
He started to speak and she held up a silencing hand. "No! If it's not drunk Ilsigi soldiers trying to kill us because someone's grandfather died fighting the empire, it's Rankan mercenaries who just happen to think we look like easy prey. And for the last two years we've had those wonderful Irrune bodyguards of Chief Arizak all over the place looking ready to kill if you happen to be looking in the general direction of their master's house.
"An' let's not forget the Cult of Dyareela wot's running around killin' people 'cause they think it's holy. Lovely bunch they are. Then there's that lot over at the Vulgar Unicorn."
He let his head sag, knowing that he wasn't going to get any peace until she had finished her rant.
"You've got sorcerers who'll turn you into a toad for a giggle. People who are I-don't-know-what carvin' each other up for all manner of odd thingies, runes, books, gems, and the like, except I think a couple of them are already dead and you can't carve them up unless they want you to, but they do get by with having pieces fall off now and again! Freebooters and rogues, murderers and scoundrels, and some of 'em aren't even human, I wager! And the way they talk-can't hardly understand a word. They're all foreigners!
"And you've got more thieves in the Maze than who've been hung on the Imperial Gallows in Ranke since the first Emperor was a pup! You can't bend over to pick up one of their greasy little coins without bumpin' your head with a thief, and your arse with another behind you. You pick a man's pocket and discover he's the fellow who'd picked yours five minutes before!"
He'd heard the rant nearly every day since the end of the first year after they'd arrived in Sanctuary and was always astonished at how little it varied, though the part about Chief Arizak's bodyguards had only been added about a year and a half ago. He resisted the temptation to join in as she finished-
"And for this misery, what do I get? Do I get riches and good food, my ease as servants stand idly by waiting for my merest whisper to do my bidding? No, I get this!" And as always, she stood up, with her arms outstretched on the word "this!"
Squelching a sigh of relief the last of the rant was now over, he stepped before Selda and put his arms around her. "Hush, old woman. I know you're frightened. But I told you, three more jobs and we're done with Sanctuary. I boosted the Jade Cat from the royal caravan just as it left, to square my debt to Bezul the changer, and to get these!" He showed her a leather packet, the contents of which were known to her. "Then I lifted six full purses in one night on the first day of the tourney to give to the caravan master for passage back into the Empire and to give to Pel Garwood, to concoct a mix for my chest, so I can do tonight's job without a coughing attack."
"We've already paid our passage. Why another job?" she asked him for the uncounted time.
Patient as always he answered her as he always had, "Because we have passage only to Ranke, and I want enough after getting there that we can live quietly in something better than this." His hand described the hovel.
"But Lord Shacobo, the magnate?"
"He's the obvious choice."
"Then why has no one has ever boosted his place?"
"Hetwick the Nimble did!"
"An' they hung him for it! Or do you think that was a success, just having gotten in for a bit and wanderin' about?"
"Woman, I've told you all this before. The night before Hetwick danced the gallows, his woman came to see him in his cell and he told her something, something she told me for a price, and it's the reason I'll succeed where Hetwick didn't."
"Oh, and you're a man of vision and genius and Hetwick was just another fool, is that it?"
"Woman, remember who was the greatest thief in the Empire!"
"You old fool, most nights you weren't even the greatest thief in the room!" She held up her hand before his nose and wiggled her fingers. "These beauties boosted a fine number of fat purses in their day, you can't deny it, can you?"
He hugged her fiercely and said, "You did that, old girl, you did that."
"You're not going to tell me what it was Hetwick's woman told you, are you?"
"No. You'll just worry over it." He kissed her cheek. "You remember wot I told you?"
"Yes," she said with frown. "I 'member wot you tol' me. I wait here until the final tournament starts. Then I take what I got"-she waved to a small bundle of personal goods-"and gets to that little inn out by the old ford across the White Foal. Wait there until you come by, just afore dawn."