Chapter 170 The Apron

Cadenza hissed from the rack, "Darling, a swap widens the Seat, I would hate to see you tailored by a rhyme."

"One swap is a price I can pay," he whispered, "the tape is already counting me anyway."

Sorrow answered gently, "It is only a number, child, the world has tried to measure you before."

Cold Read narrowed the hall to a short list, five hooks, four seconds, one bare hand, one pair of shears. Every joke he owned went quiet, the voices on the rack following, leaving only the hum of the smoking tape.

'Count it once. Take the five, then the wings, then run the numbers on the way out.'

"Magpie, you're up," he whispered.

Nilo breathed the name once through his teeth, the Thief's patched gray coat dropping across both his shoulders. The tape jumped to fourteen with a loud pop, smoke curling from its edges like a snuffed candle.

"Fourteen, how thrilling, you are growing right under my chalk, dear boy," the Collector said, bending closer to read it.

Magpie purred inside his skull, "Light fingers, lighter conscience... shall we empty the apron?"

"Five masks with the ghost fingers, the sixth with my own hand."

Five ghostly fingers unspooled from his gloved palm, gliding across the room toward the apron, thin as thread.

[ SKILL USED ]

[Five Finger Discount: five thefts within five paces]

Every hook in the hall began to hum as the tape crept toward fifteen, the walls leaning in to watch. The Pins stopped dancing to stare, a hundred thimble heads swiveling together like sunflowers following a very small bright sun.

Calla called from the rafters, "Eyes on me, tailor, I am the only thing in this room that bites."

A flask shattered at the Collector's feet, violet smoke rolling over the Pins as every thimble head swung upward. Five ghost fingers slid beneath the apron's hem, unhooking five masks in the time it took him to blink.

'Five stolen. Only the wings are left, they hang highest.'

Pins swarmed up the rafters after Calla, needles first, climbing over each other's shoulders like a living rope ladder. She leapt from beam to beam without a sound, shaking vials over the edge like a baker dusting flour.

"Seven Pins down, two hundred to go, I have honestly had far worse birthdays."

The Collector's head turned with the slow precision of a clock striking, his silver shears already open in his hand. He lunged across the table, yet the ghost fingers were already folding five masks into the lining of his coat.

"Put them back this instant, dear boy, or I shall be forced to—" the Collector began, then coughed as the violet smoke reached his table.

The tape cinched tight across his ribs in retaliation, forcing the air out of him in a thin whistle. Tears streaked down his face faster than the cloth could drink them, each drop hissing against the yellow weave.

Jingles babbled from the bandolier, "Breathe, breathe, you are very good at breathing, I have watched you do it for weeks."

"Five down, the sixth I have to take with my own hand."

A silver needle whipped out of the corridor toward his bare hand, aimed at the tip of his thumb. Gold light slapped it aside in midair, Zinnia's voice ringing through the strands like a blade struck against steel.

"Keep your fingers exactly where they are, I am busy cutting your tailor's assistant into regrettable pieces."

The floor of the hall stretched like cloth pulled by invisible hands, the far walls sliding back a dozen paces. His Seat was pushing against the room itself, the room slowly losing the whole argument with every breath he took.

"Fifteen, my word, the room is trying to apologize to you," the Collector crowed, chalk flying across the plate.

He strained against the tape until the numbers screamed past fifteen, his gloved fingers brushing the golden wings. The shears swung down in one silver bite, the glove falling in two neat halves to the floor.

His bare fingertips closed around the golden wings, lifting the sixth mask from its hook like a ripe fruit.

"Ouch, that was a good glove," Magpie sighed inside his head.

The Collector lifted both halves of the glove from the floor, turning them over with a tailor's reverence. He sniffed the leather once, eyes closing, wearing the face of a connoisseur tasting a very old wine.

"Thief's leather, cured in a Lower Town gutter, I could pick it out of a thousand gloves," the Collector murmured.

"Keep it, I have another one, it is a lot less torn up."

Warmth flooded up his arm from the severed glove, six masks pulsing against his ribs like six small hearts. Magpie laughed inside his skull, delighted, as the Wardrobe lit up with a bright brand new line of text.

[ BOND UP ]

[Magpie: Bond 4]

[Skill: Grand Return, a stolen item flies to its rightful owner wherever they stand]

[Price: the item must be in Nilo's hand first]

Magpie purred, "Return to Sender was only the postage, this one pays for the delivery."

"Then deliver," he said, lifting the six masks on his open palm.

'Go home. Please, all of you, go home.'

Six masks rose from his palm in a fan, trailing sparks, then shot through the walls like arrows homeward bound. Each punched through the wall toward a hall across the city, glowing like a comet with a name on it.

"They went right through the wall, nobody told the wall about the masks," Jingles gasped.

"Clean theft, good hands," Zilch said from the rack, and Cadenza added, "Darling, a bow, the audience demands it."

Through the trailing sparks he saw flashes of a long clinic ward, lamps low, a sleeper on every single cot. Each mask settled on a pillow beside its owner, glowing once, gently, like a lamp turned toward a sleeping child.

"A pillow for every owner, that is the best delivery I have ever made," he murmured.

Magpie purred, "Gratuity is optional, darling, though I accept gold, silver, and flattery."

Beyond the strands a column of gold light speared the ceiling, cracking Spindle's lullaby on a sour note. Zinnia's breathless laugh followed, the sound of a girl who just landed a hit she expected to miss.

"Is that the sixth mask, I distinctly heard the whole hall gasp from here?"

"Miss Nightshade, the rafters are not part of the tour," the Collector called.

"Then bill me," Calla answered from above.

"Young man, that was the most honorable burglary in recorded history, I am almost moved to tears."

Along the hooks a hundred cut masks swung toward the hole in the wall, a rustle like wind in wheat. They whispered one word over and over again, the word every stolen thing is secretly longing to say out loud.

"Soon," he told the hooks quietly, "I promise, every last one of you."

"We stole from the thief, we are the thieves of the thieves, I feel wonderful and slightly sick," Jingles squeaked.

The Collector stood motionless among his empty hooks, shears hanging open, the lamplight dull on his stitched face. Then the seam of his mouth, which never moved when he spoke, curled upward for the first time.

"Now you are interesting, Mister Nilo... I have waited twenty years for a customer who steals," the Collector said softly, "do tell me, what else can you take?"