Den of thieves

Chapter Twenty

“You’re-You’re mad,” Malden had said two days before, when Cythera finally revealed what she was after. “The crown of the Burgrave? What possible reason could you have to steal that? Why would anyone? If I’m caught with it, I’d be drawn and quartered!”

“You needn’t be caught, if you stick to our plan,” Cythera said. Though he could see in her eyes that she knew no plan was ever perfect, that events could always conspire to catch a thief. She was asking him to take an enormous risk.

“But-why? It’s made of gold, to be sure, but it’s only so big. Melted down, it isn’t worth a tenth of what you’re paying. And you would have to melt it down. No fence would ever touch it. If you so much as showed it to a fence, they would have no choice but to call in the watch.”

“We have our reasons for wanting it. Intact,” Cythera said.

“As soon as it goes missing, every watchman in the city will come looking for it.” Malden shook his head. “They’ll tear down the Stink looking for it, and for me. I don’t-”

“No, they won’t,” Bikker said. He’d been standing by the fire, staring down into the flames. They danced in his eyes like light from the Bloodgod’s pit. He came clanking over to where Malden sat and loomed over him, his face split by a grin. “That’s the best part. As you say, there’s not much to the crown on its own. A good goldsmith can make a replacement in a day. If the Burgrave appears in public without the crown even once, he’ll look a fool. Everyone will ask where it is, and what will he say? That he just forgot to put it on that morning?”

Malden had to admit he had never seen the Burgrave without it.

“That’s the heart of the plan,” Bikker said, thumping the back of Malden’s chair so he nearly fell out of it. “Do you see? He and his advisors will be too embarrassed by its absence to say a word. They won’t call out the watch-they’ll keep this a secret, from everyone they can. They will never let it be known, anywhere, that the crown was ever stolen. They won’t even dare to come looking for it, because then they’d have to tell the watch what to look for. Do you really believe every watchman in the city would keep such a thing secret? No, the bailiff and the Burgrave will just pretend it was never stolen. They’ll trot out a replacement, and that will be the end of it.”

Bikker squatted down in front of Malden and cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. Just hard enough to leave marks. “So what do you say?” he asked, his eyes bright. “Are you the man for this job?”