No Old Knickers
25
FEB/21
A little over four years ago:
“Lookit that one,” Toad whispered, pointing to one of the figures working their way through the crowded market square. Wink nodded in assent as she spotted the young man wearing a simple nondescript cloak over equally nondescript clothing. Nothing about his movements or dress stood out in her mind, but Toad’s bright eyes noted details hidden to her. “See the way his right hand constantly sways back to the dark shadow on his hip? That’d be his purse I’d wager; he’s checking on it on the regular.” Wink strained her eyes and after a moment noted that his right arm did indeed seem to sway in a slightly irregular manner as the man moved through the crowd. The two of them ducked out from the alley and followed the figure from a safe distance.
Wink liked Toad a lot. He was several years older than she was, in his early teens, but he had been on his own a lot longer than she had and he had the wisdom of one forced to grow up too quickly. Her father had disappeared a few months ago which had forced her to find a way to fend for herself, a feat for which she had found herself woefully unprepared. Toad had been on his own for several years though, and was quite an accomplished knicker, as he called it – making his living picking pockets and stealing food and supplies from the market stalls.
Toad was a short, slightly chubby boy, with a tousle of straw blond hair, a quick smile, and bright green eyes. He told her that it was because of the color of his eyes that he got the nickname Toad, but Wink knew that the other urchins called him that because of his eyes were set slightly too far apart and his mouth was just a little too wide for his face. These were the same kids that called her Stink too, so she avoided them often as she could.
Unlike the other kids Toad didn’t have a cruel streak, and he had taken Wink under his wing when he had come across her panhandling in the streets of Raam. He tossed a ceramic in her cup and quickly returned with some warm food and a pair comfortable shoes and friendly conversation. As they ate the first hot meal Wink had eaten in many days, Toad told her of his life and plans. He had grand aspirations of recruiting a bunch of the neighborhood urchins into a little gang that all looked out for one another. They would make tons of ceramic pilfering from the snooty nobles, and eventually get enough to buy a big manor house in the center of the city that they could all live in. He just needed a handful of good knickers and a couple choppers – bigger kids who knew how to fight. He sized Wink up quickly and promptly decided that she was going to be the first knicker in his new gang.
A few months later, here they were in the market tailing a potential mark through the crowd from a close, but safe, distance. “What’s the first thing you notice about him?” Toad asked.
“Well, he seems to be looking around a lot, keeping an eye on everyone around him,” Wink responded. Alertness seemed like a bad trait for a mark to exhibit it seemed to her, wondering why Toad had settled upon this particular man to target.
“That’s true. But someone looking for something can also be easily distracted by giving them something to look at. It also means that they got something to protect most likely, too. What else?”
Wink thought for a moment. “Well, his clothes don’t seem very nice. There are richer people here for sure,” she answered, indicating to a few of the wealthier standouts in the crowd.
“That’s true, too,” Toad replied with a knowing smile. “But someone showing off their goodies, they must have a means to protect them. So look closer at his cloak.” She did, staring intently. “Sure, it is pretty plain,” he continued, “and just the right amount of wear on it, but there are no frayed edges, or stains, or caked mud or dirt. That cloak is something a theatre troupe might give to someone to play at being poor, then store it away nice and safe until it’s needed again.”
Wink began to see what he was talking about. When the man passed by others in similar garb, she could see that their clothes bore battle scars earned by a lifetime of hardship, while his looked free of such hard-earned trophies.
“Pay careful attention to the other details. Lookit their boots. Lookit the nails of their hands and condition of their teeth. Are there tan lines around their fingers or necks that might show recently removed jewelry?”
As he spoke, their mark began to grow into focus to Wink, and she began to see clearly what Toad was speaking about. This perfectly nondescript person stood out to him exactly because of his nondescriptness. “Sometimes to blend in, you have to stand out?” Wink asked, as the lesson began to take hold.
“Exactly!” Toad proclaimed triumphantly. “Now, how would we knick this fella? He’s a bit far through the crowd now, but if we had time?”
Wink shrugged, “Red card him somehow, but how to get to the pouch under that cloak?” The red card she referred to pertained to a game she and Toad played back in his shanty hut. Toad had a partial deck of playing cards, worn and bent, with the entirety of the red dragon suit missing except for the knave card. Wink would sit for hours, shuffling the cards and trying to make the knave appear where Toad told her to without him seeing her do it. “Put the red card third from the bottom, and between the green and black drakes,” Toad would say, and Wink would try to do as he instructed without him seeing the movements. When he did notice, he would say something akin to “I saw, that…sloppy palm. You just lost a hand” or “there goes yer head.” Toad did seem to be impressed that she exhibited a real knack for sleight of hand and had picked it up very quickly, however. Much faster than he had, he confessed to her with begrudging respect. In the past week he had only caught her a scant handful of times, and he had finally deemed her ready to move on to the next phase: picking a mark.
“Right, we know his goodies are on his right hip, where his hand keeps touching, but we can’t get under that cloak real easy.” Wink nodded in agreement. “Well, that’s where these come in,” Toad added, producing the pieces of flint he had been sharpening on a stone for the past few days as Wink had been working at her red card shuffling. The rocks had been filed to a razor sharp edge, and would cut through cloth – and flesh – with relative ease. “We use these to open the cloak on the first pass, then second pass to cut the string or base of the pouch to empty it. If only we had a third knicker, this would be real easy. One to distract, one to cut the cloak, and a third to cut the goodies free. Gotta be a bit more quick and clever with only two, and much more so if you only have yerself.”
“So how would we do it?” Wink asked, her heart racing at the thought of actually trying to lift someone’s coin purse.
“Well, you could call out ‘Thief!’ then everyone’s hands go to their goodies, so you could see where they’re actually at. Then when the panic dies down, their guard’ll usually drop too. I mean, what knicker would actually nab something after the call of alarm has gone out, right?” Toad winked at her conspiratorially. “Or make a noise or some other distraction. Hit someone near them with a big rock or trip someone in the street, create a little noise then come in and cut the cloak free when their attention is away. Knock over a market stall, even. That makes for a great distraction but also makes for an angry grocer. You just have to read the vibe.” Toad pulled up short as he spoke, stopping at the edge of the market street. “And also know when to let the mark get away,” he added, watching as the man exited the busy marketplace and was now moving down a more lightly trafficked cobbled road that winded towards the center of the city. A few dozen feet ahead of the man were two black cloaked militia guards that were headed their way from further up the street.
Toad grabbed Wink’s arm gently and led her into an adjacent alley. “Knicking is dangerous work,” he whispered, staring intently at her with his piercing green eyes. “Get caught once, and you lose some fingers or a hand, if you’re lucky. If you’re not, you lose yer head. Remember the rules?”
Wink responded dutifully, “Find a mark who can afford to get knicked. Have a partner and a plan. If you can’t have a partner, have a good plan. If you can’t have a good plan, have a good escape route. If you can’t have a good escape route, be lucky and be fast.”
Toad smiled. “Good. Also, no knicking when blackcloaks are around. And no knicking Cliffsters.”
Wink was puzzled by that last one. Why not Cliffster, she wondered? Weren’t they just another noble house? “How are they different from the other Houses?” she asked, confused.
Toad’s expression softened slightly. “Look Wink. There ain’t a lot of good in this place, as you know. You’ve lived it. The head of that house is as daft as they come, but they say that the lady of that house actually cares. You can see it on the faces of their servants. They ain’t beat down by all of this,” Toad said earnestly, motioning to the air around him with his arm. “We don’t knick from the needy and we don’t knick from the good. Not unless we absolutely need to.”
Wink nodded, and watched as the two black cloaked guards ambled down the street past their alley. One of them, a dark bearded, cruel eyed man, cast the two of them a wicked look as he passed, as if he could read the guilt of their thoughts stamped upon their souls, but he quickly passed out of view.
After a short moment, Wink and Toad emerged from the alley and slowly worked their way back towards the market, keeping a safe distance from the meandering guards. “When these two finish their rounds, it’s yer turn to pick a mark,” Toad whispered, flashing Wink his most confidant smile.
It had been years since Wink had seen Toad. They had worked together for several months before he had disappeared on her, just like her father had. At least Toad hadn’t left her with only faded memories and broken promises. He had just left.
For a long while, she liked to imagine that Toad had purchased his manor house with some squirreled away treasures, and that one day he would come for her and the other kids. But even then, she knew these were just the wishful dreams born of a broken heart. She mostly just assumed Toad had knicked the wrong mark and been killed – he always promised that his luck would run out someday. “There are no old knickers,” he had reminded her one cold night, as they laid on the roof of a building, staring up at the icy moon above. “You’ve got to build somethin’. Be somethin’. Or you’ll be nothin’.”
She saw him one last time about a year ago, wearing the garb and colors of a House Whithall slave. She didn’t recognize him at first, he was one of a handful of slaves being led through the city square by a burly Whithall taskmaster. He was skinny and pale, his blond hair was bleached of all color and his wide mouth was set in a worn frown. The middle three of the fingers on his left hand were missing, leaving just a pinky and thumb – evidence that he had been caught stealing from House Whithall, as they had a habit of removing the ‘W’ from the hand that robbed from them. The large brand on his cheek was the other trophy of his crime, marking him as a thief and the property of House Whithall for all to see.
When Wink recognized him, she pulled up short and panicked. She needed to find a way to free her friend from his fate. She ran through all of the tricks she knew: she could create a diversion easy enough, but the taskmaster was a large man and armed with a cruel whip, and the slaves were bound together with woven straw. She doubted that she could cut through Toad’s bindings quickly enough to get him free before the taskmaster noticed. Still, she had to try. Didn’t she?
As she began to work her way through the crowd towards the group, Toad noticed her and caught her eye. A myriad of emotions danced upon his face at the sight of her, but his expression quickly grew dark and severe and tears welled up in his bright green eyes. He shot her a stern look and shook his head tersely, pleading to her with his eyes for her to stop. They maintained their eye contact for the barest of moments, before Toad looked away and continued trudging through the city square. Wink felt helpless as she watched him walk out of her life, his head bowed from the strain of the burden he now bore.
“There are no old knickers,” Wink thought to herself wiping the tears from her eyes, as she turned to scan the crowd for her next mark.