Read Online The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner - Free Book Online Page B

really think you know where it is?” Ambiades persisted.
    “Yes.”
    “Where?” he asked, while I shook my head in disbelief.
    “If it really exists, why,” I asked, “after hundreds of years are you the first one to locate it?”
    “I’m not.” The magus’s answer surprised me. “According to the records I’ve found, a number of other people have gone to look for the stone, but those who came closest to where I think it is hidden never came back. This makes me think that in one way at least they were poorly equipped.” He smiled benignly at me across the fire. “Traditionally it took an exceptionally talented thief to bring away the stone, and that’s why you’ve been invited to grace our party.”
    “Would those records you found be the ones you think survived since before the invaders?” Things that old I’d have to see before I believed in them.
    “Yes,” said the magus, hooking his linked hands over one knee and rocking back and forth in self-congratulation, “although they survive no more. Once I elicited the information I needed, they were destroyed to prevent anyone else from following the same trail.”
    I winced. It would have been better if the records hadn’t been discovered at all. Ambiades asked again where we were going.
    “You’ll see when we get there,” said his master.
    “And why are we going?” I asked derisively. “So that you can be king of Eddis? A hopelessly backward country full of woodcutters?” It was the most charitable description of Eddisians that I had heard in the city.
    “I will give the stone to Sounis of course. He will be king. I will be the King’s Thief.”
    This pricked my professional pride. I was going to do the stealing, and he was going to take the credit. His name would be carved in stone on a stele outside the basilica, and mine would be written in the dust. I reminded him that it was my place to be King’s Thief. “Or do you expect me to hand you Hamiathes’s Gift and then get knifed in the back? Is that why you brought Pol?”
    He didn’t rise to my bait, and Pol didn’t so much as shift his weight on the far side of the fire. A little chill ran up my spine.
    “That won’t be necessary,” said the magus coolly. “No one would mistake you for anything but a tool, Gen. If a sword is well made, does the credit go to the blacksmith or to his hammer? How much smarter than a hammer can you be if you flaunt the proof of your crimes in a wineshop?” I flushed, and he laughed. If I hadn’t already been angry, it might not have seemed unkind laughter.
    “What would you do if you were King’s Thief, Gen? Chew with your mouth open in the royal presence? Chat with the court ladies, dropping the h’ s at thebeginning of your words and garbling the ends of most of them? Everything about you reveals your low birth. You’d never be comfortable at the court.”
    “I’d be famous.”
    “Oh, you’re that already, Gen,” he said pityingly.
    I’d have been amused myself if Ambiades’s snicker hadn’t rubbed me on the raw. I changed ground.
    “And Sounis trusts you to bring the stone back to him?”
    “Of course,” the magus snapped. I’d hit a sore point. He’d made sure that Sounis had to trust him, destroying all the records so that no one else could locate the stone.
    “Are you sure?” I needled him. “Maybe that’s why Pol is along. Maybe you’re the one to be knifed in the back.” His eyebrows flattened over his nose. He was angry at last.
    “Don’t be stupid,” he said.
    “And why should Sounis be king of Eddis as well? He already has one country,” I said. “And all they have up there”—I waved to the mountain behind me—” is trees. A lot of trees. Does he want to build boats?”
    “No,” the magus explained, remembering that I was hardly worth being angry at, “he wants the queen.”
    I dropped my mouth open in patent disbelief. “We’re doing this so that he can get—”
    “—married,” said the magus.