The Phoenix Thief

TWO

ALL DAY LONG Kilter hurried along the rooftops of Istravol. At first he tried following the two Watchmen who'd taken the feather, in hope that perhaps, somehow, he could get it back. But shortly after reaching the labor triad of the city he had to let them go, the streets having filled with warehouse workers on midday break. Any of them could have noticed Kilter on the rooftops and pointed him out to the nearest Sentry at a street corner – it had happened before, and Kilter didn't want to repeat the ordeal of escaping them. Especially not today.

Creeping back to the solitude of the lower city, he sat down behind a chimneystack, put his head on his drawn up knees, and didn't move for a long while.

What he was to do, how he was to tell Dmal that he'd let the Watchmen get the feather, he didn't know. Dmal would gaze at him with those dark eyes of his, but not say a single word, and Kilter knew he wouldn't be able to bear it. Just thinking about it made him want to curl up into a little ball.

So he didn't think about it. He shoved it from his mind, willing himself to ignore the ache settling heavy and constricting on his shoulders and to face instead the other problems he'd made for himself that day.

He'd have to relocate his workroom. Drawing those two Sentries away was only a temporary protection for it, and it wouldn't be long before they went at the hatchway door with crowbars, again. But it was too dangerous to go back there so soon. For the time being, he would have to stay hidden. Focusing on this, Kilter managed to get through the day, pushing away the pangs that jabbed him whenever he remembered Dmal and the feather.

A short distance away from Dmal's tower, across the roofs of three boarding houses and a storehouse was a storage shed, in the foundation of which was one of Kilter's other 'nests'. All the canvas and leather he managed to sneak from cast-aside pieces in the trash were kept there. He carried several bundles from that nest, taking a different route back to Dmal's tower every time, then scavenged through the middle triad garbage to find enough food to last him a few days. Chestnuts were good, yes, but one got tired of them quickly.

He even brought wood and metal bits from the scrapyard by the gates leading to the cropland. This took the longest, as one of the biweekly deliveries of food through the gates was happening, and Inquisitor Watchmen were everywhere, inspecting every wagonload with their extra-long truncheons and scenthounds and sending the yellow-scarfed Messengers under their command back and forth constantly. The sun was nearly finished with its westward arc by the time he was finished bringing building supplies to the tower and was able to fetch a bundle of clothes he'd hidden under a flight of stairs outside of Warehouse Seven.

Panting, he pulled the bundle of clothes through the broken window after himself, trudged down the stairs, and set the bundle beside the rest of his gathered goods. They were piled on the side of the tower opposite where Dmal lay nearby his nearly dead coals, still sleeping as a rolled up ball of patched cloth. The light seeping through the cracks and scattering bits of multi-colored flecks on the walls was now red, as if an exceptionally large piece of broken tinted glass had been hung from the sky itself, over the setting sun. Out in the city, the machinery of the warehouses still rattled and thundered, but Kilter knew they would soon cease and the streets fill with workers returning home. He had little time to find a good place to wait for night to fall before he'd risk being noticed.

For a moment he stood, staring at softly snoring Dmal, then shook his head and turned away. He blinked at the blurriness in his eyes as he knelt beside his heap of supplies, and glanced around at the walls and roof.

The tower was so unlike his workroom. There, the wide faces of the clock poured in broad streams of light and the shafts higher up, where the bells were located, always supplied fresh air. Here in the tower, if Kilter stayed inside too long, the crumbling walls seemed simply waiting to fall in on his head.