Read Online The Thief by Stephanie Landsem - Free Book Online

streets and around the marketplace. As they reached the bridge linking the upper city to the temple, a river of rejoicing pilgrims swept them along. A song of praise filled the air. “ Give thanks to the Lord of lords, whose mercy endures forever. ”
    A woman dressed in rough wool and sturdy sandals smiled down at Nissa. “Come on, boy. Sing!”
    Nissa moved her lips to the words. “ The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad. ” She’d be glad when she had money to pay the rent.
    The crowd marched south to the Huldah Gates. Men and women herded children and carried lambs, pigeons, and baskets of wheat. They lined up to enter the temple through the massive double doors.
    Beggars lay on the steps below the doors, crying out for mercy. Blind men like Cedron, men with the vacant eyes of infants, grotesquely disfigured men. But it was the women who made Nissa’s heart twist in pity. Women who were little more than piles of dirty rags. One clutched a skeletal baby to her withered breasts. See what trusting in the Lord brought you?
    She cut through the line, weaving amid the packed pilgrims through the Huldah Gates into wide passageways that crisscrossed under the temple mount. The crowds of pilgrims shovedtheir way up two steep staircases and finally emerged in the Court of the Gentiles.
    Nissa blinked at the bright sun reflecting off a sea of polished stone and searched for Dismas.
    The immense Court of the Gentiles ran along three outer edges of the temple. Its wide paved squares were open to both Jews and Gentiles, even to beggars and the diseased. Along the east side stretched the Royal Stoa, four rows of towering stone columns—each as big as the trunk of a cedar tree. A carved cedar roof spanned the colonnade, forming three covered walkways wide enough for ten men to walk abreast. In each walkway, stacks of cages held turtledoves and pigeons, lambs bleated in cramped pens, and money changers stood at tables cluttered with scales and weights.
    Groups of pilgrims from Babylon, Thrace, and every other province of Rome lined up to buy sacrifices and change their silver for the Hebrew coins they needed to pay the temple tax. The din of animals, shouts of merchants, and clang of silver ascended like a discordant song to heaven.
    Yes, it is a good day to steal.
    There was Dismas, in the shadowed stone columns of the Stoa, next to a group of brightly dressed Alexandrians. She slipped past warm bodies and eased close to him. He glanced down and winked.
    “Do you see soldiers?”
    He craned his neck. “On the east side. By the Beautiful Gate.”
    In the center of the complex stood the temple sanctuary, rising on terraced platforms and guarded by stone balustrades. A tall, ornate entrance, rightly named the Beautiful Gate, glittered at the top of fifteen wide stone steps. Inscriptions carved in both Greek and Latin warned any Gentile against passing on pain of death.
    Languages from every corner of the empire swirled around them as Dismas wove through the crowd with the grace of a leopard.Nissa followed, sliding through even the smallest gaps between pilgrims.
    Nissa eyed a gaggle of rich women—the wife and daughters of a high priest, perhaps. One ran a hand over her shining black hair, brass and silver bangles tinkling on her wrist.
    These preening pigeons haven’t gone hungry a day in their lives. Nissa stumbled forward and came down hard on the black-haired woman’s delicate sandal.
    “Watch yourself, boy!” She bent to rub her scraped toes and glare at Nissa.
    “Please, lady, I’m sorry,” Nissa mumbled as she tucked three bangles into her tunic.
    A jeweled brooch dangled precariously from the older woman’s elaborate braid. When she bent her head toward her giggling daughters, Nissa helped herself to the brooch without disturbing a hair on the woman’s head.
    Nissa shifted through the milling pilgrims, avoiding the