Hood Read online

  He shrugged again, “If you have a ghirit, these kinds of things are pretty easy to figure out.”

  She sent her ghirit back into it. There were a lot of little parts. She wasn’t sure how you made the wheels turn to line up the notches. It wasn’t simple. It certainly didn’t seem easy. A genius for math isn’t the same as a genius for mechanics, she thought. Or, she thought uneasily, maybe he did train under some master criminal.

  Tarc turned, “I think there’re twenty to thirty thousand golds in this safe!”

  Gloria looked over his shoulder, saw stacks and stacks of the little coins and let out a little gasp. She ran a quick calculation in her head to convert golds—which she almost never saw or used—into labor, which she had a better feel for. That’s almost 2,200 man-years of unskilled labor! She shook her head in puzzlement. “Why would they keep that much money in this safe? Don’t they have a big vault somewhere?”

  “Doesn’t take a big vault to store gold,” Tarc said thoughtfully. “Maybe this’s the money Farley gave them. The money they aren’t crediting back to their depositors?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t think that. I’m just wondering. Suspiciously.” He glanced at her, “How could we tell?”

  “Are there any papers in there saying what the money’s for?”

  He shook his head, staring intently at her.

  Self-consciously, she poked at her hair and rubbed her face. “Do I have something on me or something?”

  “No,” he said, looking puzzled, his eyes still flitting from spot to spot about her face.

  “Why’re you staring at me then?”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, suddenly turning back to the contents of the safe as if he’d been caught doing something wrong.

  “Well?” she persisted.

  “Um,” he said, leaning forward to peer deeper into the safe. He mumbled, “It’s just that, with the lamplight falling on you from the side like that…” he hesitated for a moment, then finished in a rush, “in that light you look even more beautiful than… than you usually do.”

  She felt heat rising in her cheeks. I’m blushing again! she thought. But she felt warm all over too. Say something! “Thank you,” or something! But her throat had closed up. She cleared it, then managed to rasp out, “Thanks,” though she wasn’t sure the word was intelligible.

  Apparently, it was, since he replied by mumbling, “You’re welcome. Shall we go?” He said this while still staring into the safe.

  “Are you going to take what they owe you?”

  “No!” he said, sounding appalled. “I’m not sure they owe us.”

  That doesn’t sound like someone who’s been trained by a master thief, Gloria thought with some relief.

  ~~~

  They went to Farley’s mansion but their ghirits showed them several people were still moving around inside.

  They went to the former Hyllis Tavern, now Watson’s. There were still five people in the bar/dining area. Someone was behind the bar, presumably Mr. Watson.

  “Oh well,” Tarc said, turning back.

  “We’re going back?” Gloria asked, surprised.

  “Yeah, I’ll come back in a few hours when everyone’s asleep.”

  “But we could go in and have a beer. Chat up Mr. Watson. Ask him how his business is doing.”

  Tarc turned and looked doubtfully at the tavern. “I’ll take you home, then I’ll come back and try it.”

  “He might recognize you if you’re by yourself. If you’re there with a girl, he’ll be less suspicious.”

  “But you need to get some sleep.”

  “So do you.”

  “Your mom’s going to expect you to run the shop tomorrow. I can sleep in if I want. Besides, working as a guard, I’m used to odd shifts.”

  “If you can do it, so can I. Besides, I owe you for my dad’s life.”

  Even in the faint light from the windows of the tavern bar, she could see him roll his eyes. “Okay,” he said, starting up the stairs.

  As they entered the door, the man behind the bar quickly said, “We’ll be closing soon.”

  “Can we just share a quick beer?” Gloria asked.

  The man looked at her for a moment, then his desire for profit won out. “Sure.” He turned to his tap.

  “You haven’t owned this place forever, have you?” Gloria asked when he set down a mug of beer.

  “No, I picked it up after that business with Krait. The people who owned it were Krait collaborators and had to leave town in a hurry.” He smiled, “I got a good price.”

  Gloria felt Tarc stiffen beside her. She put a hand on his arm and he relaxed.

  Watson handed Gloria a second glass so they could split their beer. Tarc gave him coin, but said nothing.

  She said, “Oh, that’s… nice, but I guess it could’ve been a problem. Did your business suffer because it’d belonged to… collaborators?”

  The man shrugged, “Probably a little at first. But word got around pretty quickly.” He looked self-satisfied. “We’ve been doing quite well.”

  “Really?” Gloria asked. “I heard you were having trouble paying off your debt.”

  He shrugged. “I could pay if I wanted to. But after hearing what Krait did, I decided the collaborators didn’t deserve any more of my money than they already got.”

  Gloria put her hand back on Tarc’s arm, but this time he hadn’t tensed.

  They finished their beer and got up to leave about the same time Watson was telling his other patrons they had to go.

  As they started back toward Farley’s place, Tarc said, “Thanks. You were awesome.”

  “You’re welcome. What’re you going to do?”

  He shrugged, “Go back later, find his money, take what he owes us and leave him his promissory note labeled, ‘Paid in full.’”

  “You’re thinking you can find his money with your ghirit?”

  “Probably. I’m betting it’s hidden in the basement. In a jar or box that looks like ordinary supplies. Maybe somewhere else.” He shrugged, “Probably he has some of his money in a bank. But with the recent problem the banks had, I’ll bet he’s hedging his bets by keeping a lot of it where he thinks it’s well hidden. There’s a secret room in the basement so he might be keeping it there, but of course, I can not only sense the room, but I know where it is and how its door latches.”

  “Oh,” Gloria said. A ghirit’s turning out to be so much more potent than I thought at first.

  Tarc bent over. At first, Gloria thought something had gone wrong, but he stood back up and kept walking. He held his hand out in front of him, palm up. “Can you sense this pebble with your ghirit?”

  At first, she looked with her eyes. But there was so little light on this moonless, overcast night she really couldn’t see with them. Without even really noticing it, I’ve been using my ghirit instead of my eyes to get around these dark streets, she thought with some surprise. She focused her ghirit on his hand and could sense a small pebble there. “Yeah,” she said in response to his question.

  “Try to… grab it with your ghirit and push it to the other side of my palm.”

  “What? Push it?” Confused, she asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Push it. Like you would with a finger, but use your ghirit instead.”

  She snorted, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Come on,” he said, sounding a little impatient. “Even if it’s ridiculous, it won’t hurt you to try.”

  “Okay,” she said, finding it again with her ghirit. She imagined herself pushing it. Nothing happened. “I tried. It didn’t work.”

  “You call that a try? Come on! Try harder!”

  “What?” Gloria said, feeling a little hurt. Though she liked him, harassing her like this didn’t fit her image of him.

  He stopped, holding the pebble just in front of her. “You can’t just give it a little poke. You’ve got to really try to push it. Make an effort. Grunt a little.”

  This�
��s absurd, she thought, wondering if was some kind of joke. She tried to examine his face with her ghirit to see if he was grinning. She thought she was getting better at using her ghirit to tell what his features were doing.

  He didn’t seem to be smiling.

  Okay, she thought. She focused her ghirit back on the pebble, tried to grasp it, then imagined herself pushing it as hard as she possibly could. She grunted as if she were straining to lift something heavy. Her ghirit slipped… or something. The pebble was gone. “Oops,” she said. “I, um, lost it.”

  Tarc said, “No, you teleported it.” He sounded inordinately pleased.

  Now when she examined his face it seemed like he was smiling. Hugely. “I… I what?”

  “You teleported it. You made it go somewhere else. Jumped it across the intervening space. It’s a hugely useful talent.”

  She blinked, “What?”

  Tarc held out his palm. The pebble appeared there. Well, it seemed like it floated onto his palm from beneath his hand, but, all she could say for sure was that his palm had been empty and now the pebble was back. No, she thought, puzzled, the pebble’s bigger. Or, it’s a different pebble.

  Gloria was about to ask about the change in the size of the pebble, but Tarc interrupted her train of thought. “This time, try to just move it from one side of my palm to the other. Usually on your second time, it’s a lot easier. You don’t have to grunt or strain.”

  Gloria wanted to ask about the pebble’s change, but decided to try moving it first. She found it with her ghirit, grasped it, and pushed—this time aiming for the other side of his palm.

  The pebble vanished from where it was lying next to his little finger. It was, instead, suddenly over on the thumb side. “What?” She blinked her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear it.

  “Yeah,” Tarc said, “it really happened. You teleported the pebble across my palm.” He stopped and gave her a little hug. He let go and they started walking again.

  She wanted another hug.

  He said, “That’s really awesome. Sorry about pestering you there, but it seems like, the first time, most of us have to be chastised a little to give it enough effort to make it work.”

  “So,” she asked hesitantly, “one of the things a ghirit can do is to move things from one place to another?”

  He explained that most people who had talent could sense things with their ghirit, but that when it came to actually doing things with their talent, different people could do different things. Some could teleport. Some could do other things. As far as he knew, no one could do more than one of the other things.

  “What other things?”

  “Telekinesis, telepathy, precognition.”

  Tarc had to explain what those things were. When he finished, she wasn’t sure if she understood correctly. What he was saying seemed impossible. “Are you saying you can do one of those things?”

  He nodded, “Telekinesis.” He held out his hand, palm up with the pebble on it. The pebble floated up into the air.

  She stopped abruptly, staring, “What?!”

  “Telekinesis. I’m not actually that good at throwing knives. I cheat and make them hit the target using my telekinesis.”

  In consternation, she listened to his explanations, continuing to feel like she couldn’t be understanding him correctly. Or, that he was imagining things. Am I dreaming?

  Gloria was opening her mouth to ask more questions when Tarc said, “It looks like pretty much everyone’s gone to bed. Just two people upright, I assume those’re the guards.”

  Gloria looked around and realized they’d arrived at Farley’s mansion again. She sent in her ghirit. In addition to the two guards, there were seven other people. Four were in the attached building in back; she thought a servants’ quarters. Three were sleeping together in one bed in a big room upstairs. One of them was big, presumably Farley. Suddenly, Farley sat bolt upright in bed as if he’d been frightened. The two smaller, presumably female, persons with him sat up as well, getting out of the bed and moving away from him. Gloria nudged Tarc. “Something’s happening with Farley.”

  “Yeah. I’m talking to him.”

  “What?!”

  Tarc took a moment and explained how he could shake the air molecules in the room to make sounds Farley could hear. Then he hurriedly explained how she could listen in using her ghirit. It took her a while to get that to work. When she did, what she heard was Farley’s voice saying, “…that’s bullshit!”

  Then she heard Tarc’s voice say, “You’d better return the rest of that money to the banks. Tell them they’d better return it to their depositors.”

  Farley’s voice, “Or what?!”

  Tarc’s voice, “Or you’re all going to be sorry.”

  Farley, “Who the hell are you?!”

  Tarc, “Call me Hood.”

  Tarc turned and walked away, angling toward Gloria’s home. Gloria’s ghirit could hear Farley still asking questions, “Hood? Is that your first name or your last name? Where do you live?”

  Gloria trotted a few steps to catch up to Tarc, realizing his jacket had a hood on it. Like the name he’d given, Though the two can’t be related, she thought, can they? She asked, “Are you going to keep talking to him while we’re going home?”

  He shook his head, “No. I’ll be out of range pretty soon.”

  “You know he’s still asking questions?”

  Tarc’s head turned toward her and she thought she could sense a grin on his face. “He’ll probably find it stressful if they go unanswered, don’t you think?”

  She thought about it for a second, then gave a little laugh. “I thought only witches did evil things?”

  He grinned again, then held out his thumb and index fingers a few millimeters apart. “I only do little evils.” He walked on a little bit, then shrugged and spoke sadly, “Well, that’s not true. Unfortunately, sometimes I do big evils. Though I do my best to only do them to evil people.”

  Gloria immediately thought of Krait and his men. Those bastards deserved what they got, she thought.

  It wasn’t until she was back in her bed and starting to fall asleep that she realized Tarc hadn’t taught her anything more about her teleportation talent. I’ve got to get him to… she drifted off.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gloria made breakfast in the morning.

  Apparently, her mother’d left on an errand before Tarc woke up. He’d gotten up in the middle of the night and hitched the Blacksmith’s wagon to Bayby. Tarc had collected the Hyllis’s money from Watson’s cellar. Then he’d visited each of the three banks and Farley’s mansion. He’d only returned an hour before dawn, but he found it embarrassing that, as a guest, he hadn’t been up when Sally left.

  Gloria fried potatoes and onions in a little bacon grease, put bits of bacon back into it and stirred in eggs. She took some food back to her father, then she and Tarc sat down to eat in the kitchen.

  Tarc thought the food was wonderful—though he knew his mother’d chastise him since he hadn’t eaten any vegetables for days. Wait, I just ate some onions. And I had a couple of apples yesterday. He thought about it. She still wouldn’t be happy.

  They were just finishing when Sally Blacksmith came back. She sat down at the little kitchen table and focused intently on Tarc. She said, “Gloria tells me you introduced yourself to Sheriff Farley as ‘Hood’?”

  Tarc couldn’t keep his eyes from flitting over to Gloria, wondering just what she’d told her mother.

  Gloria looked uncomfortable, but Tarc thought it was because she’d thought her mother’d keep her disclosure in confidence. Nonetheless, she said, “Sorry.”

  Tarc wondered what else Gloria might’ve told her mother, hoping she hadn’t revealed anything about their talents. He turned back to her mother. “Yeah. I needed a pseudonym. I didn’t want him knowing I’m a Hyllis.”

  “First time you’ve used that pseudonym?” she asked, still looking tightly focused.

  Oh crap! Tarc thought,
giving a slight shake of his head.

  “Used it in Realth?”

  Tarc pursed his lips, wanting to deny it, then sighed, “Yeah.”

  Gloria interrupted, sounding irritated that her mother was harassing Tarc. “What’s this about, Mom?”

  Sally turned to her daughter, looking thoughtful. For a moment Tarc thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she sighed, “I’m sure you’ll find out anyway. The word is that someone named ‘Hood’ overthrew the king of Realth a couple of weeks ago.”

  Tarc closed his eyes. I’m an idiot. What was I thinking, using the same name! When he opened them Gloria was staring wide-eyed at him.

  On the other hand, her mother’s eyes were narrow. She only said, “Why?”

  Feeling sullen, Tarc said, “He was an asshole.”

  “Being a jerk does not deserve a death sentence.”

  Tarc sighed, “Beyond a jerk. You know Realth has a temporary enslavement policy for lawbreakers?”

  Sally nodded.

  “He was having pretty young girls arrested on trumped-up charges, then…” Tarc hesitated and his eyes darted to Gloria.

  Sally grunted, “I’ve got the gist. No need to spell it out.”

  “He was enriching himself from the public purse and killing people who disagreed with what he did. Some people think those are a king’s prerogatives, but I think a king who commits capital crimes should be subject to capital punishment.”

  Sally stared at him for a moment. “You know with absolute certainty that he was doing these things? Rumors spread by unhappy people aren’t necessarily true, you know?”

  He nodded decisively, “With absolute certainty on rapes and contracted murders. I was a witness.”

  “He was doing these things in public?!”

  “No, but I managed to… to see what was going on.”

  “How?!”

  “I’d rather not say.”