The Phoenix Thief

Chapter 5

Joakim woke to the smell of baking bread and the sound of children chattering.

"Leave him alone, Duggan! Ma says not to play with strangers," a girl screeched.

"I want to see if he's dead," a boy replied, his words accompanied by jabs to Joakim's arm.

"I'll tell Da on you! We're not supposed to play with dead things."

Joakim groaned.

The girl shrieked, followed by the patter of tiny footsteps vanishing. The prodding didn't stop. He opened his eyes to see a black-haired boy staring down at him.

"You're alive," the boy said, in a tone of profound disappointment.

"I don't know," Joakim replied. "You could try poking me some more to make sure."

The child frowned but didn't drop his stick. "Why're you in our backyard?"

"I was..." Joakim paused. Searching his memory he found only a troubling blackness.

"Here, what you doing there? Get away from him, Duggan, I don't want you touching him!" The man would have looked more threatening if he hadn't been covered in flour. Still, there was enough force behind his waving rolling pin to give Joakim the overwhelming urge to leave.

"Sorry." Joakim clambered to his feet and shook his head to clear it. "I was drunk; must have wandered in here..."

Here was a triangular dirt yard, enclosed on two sides by the stone walls of houses, and the third by a chest-high wooden fence – not the kind of thing a drunk man would hurdle, unless someone was after him. Is someone after me?

Sailors... a seeker... something about sharks... meaningless, unconnected flashes floated through his mind. Maybe he had gotten drunk. He never had before, the memory of his mother's staggering enough to limit his drinks. She'd lost hours, even days down the neck of a bottle. Had he?

Joakim was shown out fast, without blows, but without bread either. The baker's loaves sat golden on their shelves, but Joakim's head and hands were too slow to filch them as the man shunted him out the door.

"If you come back, it'll be my boot in you," the baker said.

Boots were, in all cases, better avoided. Shaking his head, Joakim tried to hang on to a thought.

Grey stone walls, red roofs and the faint scent of the swamp told him he was in the twin cities, but beyond that, nothing seemed familiar. Just wide enough for a cart, the street was neither Faranth's broad avenues nor Jacoy's often flooded narrows. It must be the outer city then—away from the sea, away from the river—home to minor artisans and tradesmen, men too poor and canny to be of interest. Picking a direction at random, Joakim joined the bustling crowd.

Why would I come to this part of town? I was on the Arrais, a day from port. How did I get here? More to the point, what happened to my money?

A quick check found no purse around his chest or on his wrist. His pockets, belonging to clothes he'd never seen before, yielded nothing either.

What the hell happened last night? Was the Arrais yesterday? Could I have forgotten more than that?

No smell of drink, and his head had no bruises, but his memory had disappeared. How can I be sure of anything? His calf ached, and there was a bandage wrapped it, the stickiness of dried blood holding the material tight. I've been cut. How?

On the next corner, a merchant sold beans and eggplants – summer produce, but which summer? Could I have lost a year? He almost asked, skulking close to the trader, when something caught his ear.