Home by Sarah Prineas

come in, the potboy nodded, then pointed with his chin toward a dark corner. At a table sat three men and a woman, all wearing black clothes, all smudged with soot. From the doorway I looked them over carefully. None of them were the men who’d beaten the fluff out of me but they were chimney swifts, sure as sure. My plan was to sit at a table near them and use Pip to listen to their conversation, and then to follow them to wherever they lived.
    One of the swifts was thin and small enough that he looked like he might squeeze himself into a narrow chimney and then get stuck, but the other two men and the woman were bigger and burlier, more like minions. None of them did go up chimneys themselves, I realized. Whenever you saw a swift in the streets, walking to a job, he always had a soot-smudged kid following him, a boy or girl dressed in black, carrying one of the bristly brushes or a bag. They were the ones who went up the chimneys. The kids were the ones doing the stealing, then, working on the swifts’ orders.
    I could go up a chimney, couldn’t I? And I was a very good thief.
    I knew what Nevery would say. Don’t be stupid, boy. He’d want me to be safe and careful . But careful wouldn’t get done what I needed to do. Sure as sure, this was a better way than sneaking and spying to find out what I needed from the chimney swifts.
    Pip slunk under a nearby bench and I walked up to the swifts’ table. The four of them sat with their heads down, leaning forward, talking in low whispers. Seeing me, they broke off.
    â€œWhat d’you want?” asked a long-faced man with red-rimmed eyes. He took a drink of ale and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving a clean patch in his sooty face.
    â€œNever mind what he wants,” said the woman, who wore a black woolen dress with a black shawl over her broad shoulders. “Take yerself off, boy.” She pointed at the smokehole door.
    The four turned back to their conversation, but I stood there waiting.
    They gave me narrow-eyed, sidelong glances, then the woman whispered something to the burly man across from her. He nodded, put his hands on the table, and pushed himself to his feet, then climbed over his bench and reached for me. Before he could grab me and throw me out the door, I ducked under his reaching hands and said, in a loud whisper, “ Locus stones .”
    The four of them stared at me, looking around to see if anybody else in the tavern had heard.
    The burly man held me by the scruff of my neck, standing behind me like a wall. The woman grabbed me by the front of my ragged vest and jerked me closer to the table. “What d’you know about locus stones, gutterboy?” she hissed.
    I couldn’t shrug because burly-man had a tight grip on me from behind. “I know you steal ’em,” I whispered. “And I could steal ’em, too.”
    The woman’s eyes narrowed. “How’d you manage that?” she asked.
    â€œI have quick hands,” I said.
    The fourth man at the table, the skinniest one, leaned forward. “What d’you want, gutterboy?”
    â€œWhat d’you think?” I asked.
    From behind, burly-man gave me a rough shake. “Answer,” he growled.
    Right. “I’m a thief,” I said. “I want to be a chimney swift.”
    â€œHuh,” the woman said, and let me go. Burly-man kept his grip on my scruff. “You want to work for us, you mean?”
    I nodded.
    She looked past me at burly-man. “What d’you think, Drury?” she asked.
    He let go of my scruff and grabbed my arm. “We take him to Sootle, is what.”
    The others got up from the table and, dragging me with them, went out the door of the smokehole tavern and into the dark streets of the Twilight.
    On the way out, I saw the potboy staring, and then shaking his head.
    But I wasn’t worried. This was a very good plan.

C HAPTER
    13

    I figured Sootle, the