Foxheart Read online

  “The best there is. Better than your parents, I’ll bet.” Quicksilver approached the bed. She poked the man’s foot with her spatula.

  Sly Boots shoved her away. “Don’t touch them!”

  “Will I get sick if I do?”

  “No. I’m not sick, am I?”

  “Are you?”

  Sly Boots sighed. “No.”

  “You look sick. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

  “Are you going to leave now? I wish you would. As you can see, we don’t have anything worth stealing.” Sly Boots glanced at her. “How’d you get in without me hearing you? I wouldn’t have found you if I hadn’t come down for water.”

  Quicksilver shrugged. “A thief never reveals her secrets.”

  “That’s what Mother always said.” Sly Boots paused, staring at his mother’s face, and then sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.

  “Are you crying?”

  Sly Boots, sniffling, didn’t answer. Then he looked up at Quicksilver, his expression watery and hopeful. “Just how good a thief are you?”

  Quicksilver narrowed her eyes. “The best there is. And I don’t like repeating myself, so maybe you should pay better attention.”

  “Maybe . . . we can make a deal, then.”

  A deal. Quicksilver perked up. Could Sly Boots have coin stashed somewhere? Coin he could be persuaded to give up in exchange for her leaving quietly? “What kind of deal?”

  “You can stay here, at my house—it’s cold out, you’ll lose your toes to frostbite soon—and in return, you help me steal. We’ve no more money, and I’ve almost run out of medicine, and . . . well, you saw the kitchen.” He paused, twisting his hands together. “You know, since you’re . . . the best thief in all the Star Lands?” Sly Boots cleared his throat. “The legendary . . . Kicksliver?”

  “Quicksilver,” Quicksilver ground out.

  “Right. Quicksilver.”

  “Why would you want some strange thief living in your house? Why would you trust me?”

  Sly Boots’s smile looked strange on his face, as though he weren’t used to doing it. “I don’t really have a choice. It’s either trust you, or . . .” He fell silent, gazing at his sleeping parents.

  “What happened to them? You have to tell me, before I agree to anything.”

  “We were on a job in the hills—”

  “Which hills?” Quicksilver interrupted. “Be specific.”

  “The Viskan Hills.” Sly Boots blinked. “You’re really not from around here, are you? That’s what we call them. The hills.”

  Quicksilver could have smacked herself. “You think I don’t know that? You still need to refer to things by their proper names. It’s the rules of storytelling.”

  “What rules?”

  “My rules.”

  Sly Boots held up his hands. “All right, all right. Anyway, my parents were out on a job in the hills—the Viskan Hills—and they told me not to come because, well, I’m a terrible thief. Always knocking things over and making too much noise, and dropping things, and forgetting where to meet after, and . . . well, you get my meaning. But I followed them anyway, because I wanted to show them I’m better now than I used to be—which I am! I don’t break things nearly as often now as I used to—”

  “I don’t need to hear your tragic life story,” snapped Quicksilver.

  “Fine. Well, they broke into this trader’s carriage, and I followed them in, and they were mad when they saw me, I’ll tell you that, but they couldn’t do anything about it then. So we gathered up the loot, and my parents ran for it, but I tripped trying to climb out of the carriage and dropped everything, and there was this great crash—are you laughing at me?”

  Quicksilver bit her tongue and attempted a sympathetic expression. “Just a frog in my throat, is all. How awful that must have been for you.”

  Sly Boots wiped his nose. “It was. My parents had to come back and help me, and the traders chased us into the forest. We got turned around—it was dark, and they’d already gotten into scrapes with the magistrate twice before, so we couldn’t get caught a third time, so we kept running, and . . . and then we found the witches.”

  “Witches.”

  “Yes, witches! They had—” Sly Boots glanced at Quicksilver’s hair, which was sticking up every which way. “Well. I knew what they were.”

  Quicksilver ignored the gooseflesh prickling her skin and snorted. “You saw wrong. Almost all the witches are gone. The Wolf King—”

  “Almost,” said Sly Boots, his voice sharp. “And these were witches, I know it. My skin tingled around them, like a lightning storm was coming. And they hurt my parents. I don’t know what they did to them, but something bad. I wager they would’ve hurt me too, if I hadn’t fallen so far behind. I don’t think they knew I was there.” Sly Boots wiped his cheeks on his sleeve. “Those witches and their animals—strange animals, all lit up like fire, they were. If I ever meet another witch, I’ll—I’ll—”

  “Oh, yes? You’ll what? You’ll fight them? Honestly. You couldn’t even fight a girl with a spatula.” Quicksilver rolled her eyes, but in fact she was thinking very hard about what Sly Boots had said: strange animals, lit up by fire.

  Like the wolves in Mother Petra’s office?

  “Insult me all you like,” said Sly Boots, “but I know what I saw. It took me hours to drag my parents back home, and I got some funny looks, I’ll tell you that, and now . . . I can’t get them to wake up. They’re better than they used to be. I got their fevers down, and they can still swallow, so I feed them broth, but it’s getting harder to make them eat it, and—I don’t know what to do. We’ve run out of everything, and if I don’t keep giving them their medicine, they’ll get feverish again and start crying out in their sleep, like someone’s hurting them in their dreams.”

  Sly Boots’s father shuddered, as if he had heard his son’s words. His face contorted and then relaxed.

  “You see?” Sly Boots reached for a fresh cloth. “It’s already happening. You’ve got to help me, or else . . . or else I don’t know what we’ll do. Once our money ran out, I started trying to lift things from the market—just basic tonics for fever and the shakes—but I’m caught every time. I’m just hopeless at it.” Sly Boots sat heavily on the bed. “It’s my fault. If I’d just stayed home, like I was supposed to, if I hadn’t tripped and fallen, if we hadn’t run off into those woods . . .”

  Sly Boots grabbed the empty bowl on the bedside table and flung it against the wall, shattering it.

  Quicksilver’s opinion of Sly Boots improved. Throwing and smashing things was much preferable to snotty crying.

  “If they can’t get better,” said Sly Boots mournfully, “if they stay like this forever, it’ll be my fault. They should never have had me. I should never have been born—”

  “Oh, for the love of all the stars, would you please just stop talking?” Quicksilver smacked her spatula against the bed. “If you’re going to whine about everything, I’ll leave you right now, and I won’t feel bad about it for a second.”

  Sly Boots looked up, his cheeks streaked with tears. “Does that mean you’re staying? You’ll help me?”

  “I have some conditions. First, when I steal us food, you must cook me things that taste delicious.”

  Sly Boots nodded eagerly. “I’m an excellent cook.”

  “You’d better be. Second, you must not complain, ever, not even once, while we’re out on a job. And if you’re really as hopeless as you say, and I decide to send you home, you can’t complain then, either—not one whining, sniveling word.”

  “I will only say cheerful, excited things.”

  “As long as they aren’t too cheerful,” said Quicksilver sternly. “You can go too far in the opposite direction, you know.”

  “But how far is too—”

  “And third . . .” Quicksilver took a deep breath. “You must help me find information about the man who attacked my convent. He had a pack of wolves with h
im, and—”

  “Like the Wolf King?” Sly Boots’s eyes grew wide.

  No. It couldn’t be the Wolf King. Because that meant . . . Quicksilver didn’t know what that meant. “Would the Wolf King attack a convent full of little girls? That’s a rather blasphemous thing to say.”

  But it might have been the Wolf King, a voice inside Quicksilver insisted. And what then? What then?

  “Sorry,” said Sly Boots sheepishly.

  “These wolves weren’t like real wolves. They glowed and changed, like—”

  “Like the ones I saw,” Sly Boots whispered. “Do you think it was a witch pretending to be the Wolf King? That’d be really clever. Pretending to be the Wolf King and getting into all these fancy places, maybe even a lord’s castle, and then doing terrible things—”

  “And my fourth condition,” said Quicksilver, “is that you may never again interrupt me, or I’ll make Fox rip out your throat.”

  Sly Boots frowned. “Who’s Fox?”

  Quicksilver gave a sharp whistle. From downstairs came the sound of the front door slamming open and something rapidly crashing up the stairs. Fox bounded into the bedroom and cornered Sly Boots with a growl.

  Sly Boots threw himself back against the wall. “Is this yours?”

  “Yes, and just so you know, I’ve trained him to kill on command.” Quicksilver whistled once more for Fox, and he trotted over to her, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. She held out her hand to Sly Boots. “Do we have a deal?”

  Sly Boots hesitated for only a moment before slapping Quicksilver’s hand. “We have a deal.”

  .5.

  THE RULES OF THIEVING

  “The first rule of thieving,” Quicksilver whispered the next morning, “is to always be aware of your body. That way you don’t trip—say, over your own boots—and ruin a job.” She cleared her throat. “If you know what I mean.”

  “Right. Be aware. Body. Got it.”

  Quicksilver watched witheringly as Sly Boots struggled to adjust the long striped scarf about his neck with one hand while clinging to the church rooftop with the other. “Was it really necessary for you to wear that?” she asked.

  “Was it necessary to climb onto the roof? It’s cold up here!”

  “The second rule of thieving is to survey the area from as high a point as possible, so nothing takes you by surprise.”

  Sly Boots looked down at the ground and then quickly up, breathing fast. “We’re going to fall and smash our heads open.”

  “We won’t if you listen to me instead of panicking. I’ve done this loads of times, trust me. Now come on.”

  Quicksilver climbed farther up the shingled roof, her makeshift witch’s cloak flapping in the wind. Sly Boots had loaned her a pair of his own boots; they were too big for her, brown and clunky, but she still scaled the roof with ease.

  Sly Boots followed her much more slowly, muttering over and over, “Don’t look down. Don’t look down.”

  At the top of the roof, Quicksilver lay flat and hooked her elbows over the peak. From here, she could see the entire town square. She could see what the people of Willow-on-the-River put into their market baskets—bolts of cloth, wrapped parcels of fish, sacks of apples and potatoes, stoppered bottles of all sizes, bunches of garlic cloves, sprigs of rosemary, wool blankets tied with twine, charms made of beads and colored glass, and carved wooden figurines.

  And, Quicksilver observed, some of the figurines were wolves—painted black, gray, red, blue, brown, gold, and white. One wolf for each of the seven Star Lands. Seven wolves for the Wolf King.

  Quicksilver pressed her cheek to the slanted roof, which was warm from the midmorning sun, and gazed north. Past the farmlands and rolling hills of her own kingdom, Lalunet, was the kingdom of Valteya. And past the cold mountains of Valteya was the even colder and more mountainous Far North. And there, somewhere, was the Black Castle, where the Wolf King lived. Many had traveled there, but none had returned. The Scrolls said the Wolf King was beautiful, and splendid, in that way that only kings can be. The sisters had explained that those explorers who braved the Far North in search of the Wolf King’s castle never returned because they had found him, and been overcome with love for him, and agreed to stay and serve him in his great hunt.

  Quicksilver had always believed this, as had every other child at the convent—and every other child in the Star Lands, she reckoned.

  But now, looking north, where the barest shadowy hints of the Valteyan mountains reached toward the clouds, Quicksilver could think only of Mother Petra’s terrified face.

  She thought, as she had many times, about her parents—no doubt traveling at the Wolf King’s side, helping him hunt, offering him counsel. By serving the Wolf King, they were helping many, and by returning to Quicksilver, they would be helping only one small girl.

  But if that horrible man at the convent had been the Wolf King, and he was somehow not what she had been taught—if he did indeed go about attacking orphans and old women—then such a person did not deserve her parents’ help.

  Her cheek pressed hard against the roof, Quicksilver whispered to the wind, “Come back. Leave him, and come back to me.”

  Below, in the square, a familiar bark alerted Quicksilver to Fox. He was circling a market stall from which floated the mouthwatering scent of cooking meat.

  “Are we going to do this or not?” Sly Boots hissed beside her. He clutched the shingles, his feet slipping and sliding to find purchase.

  Quicksilver blinked. “Of course we are. Stop moving around so much. You’re distracting me.”

  “Are you crying?” Sly Boots scooted closer, his eyes wide. “What is it? Are we going to fall? Are we stuck? I knew it. We’re stuck.” He pushed himself up and opened his mouth to scream. “Help!”

  Quicksilver tugged him back down. “The third rule of thieving is you never, ever ask for help from non-thieves. You die before giving yourself away.”

  “That’s ridiculous! I don’t want to die!”

  “Look—I never need help, from anyone, so if you do as I say, you won’t either, and then you won’t have to worry about dying. Simple as that.” Quicksilver took a deep breath and turned away from the north, even though it was hard to do, for thoughts of her parents lingered.

  “Now, in that stall over there,” she said, “is a woman selling some really excellent-smelling chicken—”

  Sly Boots scrambled up to see, his scarf catching on the roof. “What about medicine for my parents? I see Reko’s cart, right over there. They need a tonic for their fever.”

  “Food first. Medicine later.” Quicksilver gritted her teeth. “You said Reko’s on the lookout for you, so we’ll work up to him. Now—”

  Anastazia.

  Quicksilver froze. “Did you hear that?”

  Sly Boots looked around frantically. “Hear what? What is it? Did someone see us? Oh, stars, we’re going to die. The magistrate will arrest us, and then we’ll die.”

  “No, it was—”

  Anastazia.

  It was impossible. Quicksilver was hearing things. There was a voice on the wind, a woman’s voice, and it was saying her name, and that was impossible.

  Anastazia.

  Not her thieving name. Not Pig. Not Witch. Not Girl.

  Anastazia. Her real name, which only her parents knew.

  Quicksilver’s head buzzed with sudden fear and hope.

  She crawled across the roof, ignoring Sly Boots’s cries, and climbed up the church belfry until she reached one of the high arched windows. From there she gazed north again, and this time she saw a figure on the village’s northernmost bridge. The figure wore a dark cloak, and even from this distance, she could see that the figure was gazing up at the belfry, right where Quicksilver stood.

  .6.

  THE STRANGER

  “What is it?” asked Sly Boots, scooting his way across the roof toward the belfry. “Do you see something?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” replied Quicksilver. “I suppo
se it’s just a traveler.”

  But Quicksilver knew, in her deepest heart, that this was no normal traveler. The sight of the stranger gave Quicksilver a chill, even with the sunlight shining down upon her. Something about the stranger seemed familiar—the way she moved, the shape of her hand holding the cloak at her throat.

  Quicksilver climbed down from the belfry and perched on a gargoyle shaped like a howling wolf. The stranger walked smoothly into town, cloak trailing through the mud, and when she reached the square, where the market bustled on, oblivious, the stranger found an unused stool and sat upon it.

  And sat. And sat.

  The stranger sat on this stool for such a long time that Quicksilver began to doubt her own memory. Had this person just arrived, or had she always been sitting there, on the south edge of the market, still and dark?

  “Who is that?” whispered Sly Boots loudly, poking his head over the roof’s peak. “Quicksilver?”

  “Not now, Boots,” said Quicksilver, climbing down the side of the church, using the stone wall’s intricate carvings of wolves as handholds. Though Quicksilver could hear an increasingly unhappy Sly Boots calling after her, she ignored him. There was something much more important to puzzle out, now that she could see better:

  Beside the stranger sat a dog with a small pack tied to his chest, and the dog looked remarkably like Fox.

  He was older than Fox, his chin shaggy with white whiskers, his coat grayed. But she could not ignore the resemblance—there were his alert brown eyes. There was his torn left ear.

  Quicksilver’s Fox hurried over, even the slow-roasting chicken forgotten. He put himself in front of Quicksilver and growled at the stranger and her dog, his teeth bared.

  “It’s all right, Fox,” whispered Quicksilver, although she could not be sure that it was.

  A young boy in a tasseled linen shirt, passing by with a small bag of potatoes slung over his shoulder, glanced at the stranger, then glanced again, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

  “Who are you?” the boy asked. He examined the stranger from head to toe and made a face. “You’re ugly.”