The patron thief of brea.., p.1
The Patron Thief of Bread, page 1
Contents
Prelude
Summer
Chapter One: Our Daily Bread
Chapter Two: Master Baker
Chapter Three: Three Cheers for Duck
Chapter Four: Ash and Dust
Chapter Five: Night at the Fair
Chapter Six: Swords
Chapter Seven: Gnat’s Plan
Chapter Eight: A New Home
Chapter Nine: Duck the Baker
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven: Dinnertime
Chapter Twelve: Journeyman
Chapter Thirteen: Market Day
Chapter Fourteen: Tournament
Chapter Fifteen: Tabula Rasa
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen: Midnight Visitors
Chapter Eighteen: Yeasted Cakes
Autumn
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty: Suspicions
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two: Sunday Morning Services
Winter
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four: Feasts and Frolics
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six: Reassurances
Spring
Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Cake for Bacon
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Garden
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Handshakes
Chapter Thirty: Easter
Chapter Thirty-One: Marks
Chapter Thirty-Two
Summer
Chapter Thirty-Three: Suspicion, Again
Chapter Thirty-Four: Sickbed
Chapter Thirty-Five: Confrontations
Chapter Thirty-Six: Shadows
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Break and Enter
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Fight
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Under and Out
Interlude
Chapter Forty: Aftermath
Chapter Forty-One: Ruins
Chapter Forty-Two: To Catch a Gnat
Chapter Forty-Three: The Last Rite of Gnat
Autumn
Chapter Forty-Four: Our Daily Bread
Summer
Chapter Forty-Five: Benediction
PRELUDE
All the gargoyles on the unfinished cathedral in the dusty market district of Odierne face east except one.
Which means that all the gargoyles are insufferable early risers who begin their gossiping the moment sunshine hits their stone faces. Except one.
“Did you hear?” says one of the east-side gargoyles. “The tanner’s wife caught him buying a pint for that saucy new laundress!”
The rest of them chortle. “Well, which would you choose? One smells like fresh linens, and the other one stinks like the entrails of a boar.”
Only one gargoyle on the cathedral roof faces west, thereby avoiding the morning departure of the pigeons from their roosts, which means there is only one gargoyle who does not get coated in bird grime. Only one gargoyle who does not have to wait for the rain to wash the smelly splatters from his horns.
And that gargoyle, in faith, is me.
“Serves you right, you noisy scummers!” I hoot the minute I hear the slap-slap of white pigeon poop hitting the heads of the east-side gargoyles. “One of these days, you’ll get a special delivery right in the chops — that’ll teach you to talk so much!”
“Bite your tongue, ugly!” the east-side gargoyles screech back at me. “No one likes you!”
I chuckle to myself. Always to myself. Their words roll off my back like water.
There are five of them, of uniform size and shape except for their monstrous heads, which are chiseled to look like various beasts from God’s green earth.
They have a decent view of Odierne’s best streets, the vendors, our city’s front gates, the count’s manor. My ledge overlooks the Sarluire, a river of little color that winds between Odierne and an expanse of barley fields beyond. The water carries the city’s refuse, which tends to bunch at the nearby canal bridge. After ninety years of this view, I weary of it.
I weary of the gleam of the Sarluire at high noon, angled right into my eyes.
For ninety years, I have been blinded by that river.
For ninety years, I have had to listen to those east-side ninnies speaking about things I cannot see, their voices so loud I cannot hear anything else.
They were made by a different sculptor. Perhaps that is why it is so easy to argue with them. Or perhaps it is because there is little else to do up here except spin new ways to insult each other, new cruelties to shout across the roof like sermons.
Every day is the same when you are waiting. Tomorrow we will call each other guileless toads, wart-faced nanny goats, great horned devils. I will growl for quiet; they will refuse me my request. And above, the sun will burn a trail across the sky, and the moon will rise vapors from the sea. Time marches on.
Ninety years.
They call me ugly — but we are gargoyles. We are all ugly.
And ugly has never once stopped the birds. They roost in the eaves, in the bell-less belfries, safe from weather and wind. And when there is no more room in the hollow places of our unfinished frame, they try to roost on top of my head. Every time one of these feathered rodents steers too close, I bite at them,
hard as I can.
“Fly south forever!” I shout. “Get plucked!”
At night, when the birds think I am snoozing, they bring their sticks and leaves and pieces of straw to my mouth, hoping to construct a nest before morning. But I snap my jaws shut, aiming to squash them, and end up with dirty feathers between my teeth.
“I hope someone roasts you with fennel and rotten potatoes!” I call as they flap into the darkness. It’s a good thing I do not sleep, or else they would make a birdbath out of me.
The pigeons are enough of a plague, and my fellow gargoyles make me wish I could chip my ears right off my head, but they are nothing compared to the abbey next door.
The Glorious Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, it is called, and its sisters are a bunch of white-cloaked old hedge witches. After their morning prayers, which drone on and on, they stand in their garden and blend together in chant, as if each of their voices is a string and they must musick them into a benedictory banner that hangs above Odierne for all the town to hear.
It makes me sick. It makes me wish for a working spout so I could spit water and pretend to be throwing up whenever they start their singing.
“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” they sing.
“Praise butts, from where all droppings flow!” I sing back, as loud and triumphant as I can.
“Grow up!” the east-side gargoyles scold. “You’re revolting.”
So revolting, I have alternate verses for every hymn in the Glorious Congregation’s repertoire: “All Glory, Farts, and Honor,” “Sing to Him in Constipation,” “Of the Fathers Doves Were Smotten.”
I do not think God minds. I like to think He is on my side.
After all, God made the silence to be enjoyed.
Ninety years I have watched the river from my ledge.
Ninety years since I was chunked from a strange mountain and chiseled into shape and hauled onto this rooftop to keep our cathedral safe.
“A gargoyle is made to protect,” said my maker as she brought her tools up to my horns. And that is what I am supposed to do. Protect.
Ninety years since they started working on our cathedral. But I still remember.
How my stone fizzed with excitement when I saw where my perch would be — so high up, I could see all the way to the horizon. How our structure came together in bursts and bits, block by block, slathers of wet mortar and piles of split timber. All of Odierne came out to witness the birth of a new cathedral, a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. How I could not wait to keep watch over them. Whatever came through the city walls — sieges, storms, spirits — I would guard the people as my own.
And I remember when the workers left for a midwinter feast day and never came back. The hay they had stuck between our stones to keep the mortar from cracking in the cold was there for many winters and summers alike, until the mice carted it off for their burrows.
Odierne was able to forget. They forgot about us long ago. They stopped seeing our stones as potential walls. Now they look right past our deserted structure as if we are invisible. They walk around the foundation to get to the butcher, to get to the river, as if we are something fixed in the earth like a tree. We are an eyesore, an embarrassment. They have learned to ignore us the way you learn to ignore a festering pockmark on your chin.
And every evening, when we are silhouetted with the rest of Odierne’s skyline, I wonder if we will ever be finished? Or are we destined to rot up here for eternity?
“Someday they will come back and finish this box of bricks,” I tell myself when the taste of righteous longing overpowers the usual flavor of my tongue, sun-warmed lumière rock. “They will finish the choir. They will finish the last wall. They will put in the windows. This will be a functioning cathedral, and we will protect the city. I will be a functioning gargoyle—”
“You’re a functioning monster already.” Harpy, one of the east-side gargoyles, a real delight with an eagle’s head and the temperament of a snarling boar, can never pass up a chance to harass me. “You’re so ugly, you scared the financiers away!”
Gargoyles are supposed to be ugly. Ugly does nothing.
We are all ugly.
Someday I will be a proper spout, I tell myself. And the wa ter will come rushing up and out of me, and I will wash away this loose stone pressing into my rump. Those clucking east-siders will be so impressed by my power, they will be speechless.
Maybe then I will finally have some peace and quiet. And then I will be able to do what I was made to do — protect.
When I feel extra crackly and heavy-lidded, I mutter this to myself like a spell. Almost like a prayer.
Always to myself.
Only one gargoyle on the roof of the unnamed cathedral faces west. Only one gargoyle can see the sunset.
Light splinters into a stained-glass window — purples, peaches, reds. The last rays of the day skip golden across the ripples of the river, and then the disappearing of the sun — slowly, then gone, like a doused flame.
Shadows. And then it is night. The east-side gargoyles turn in early. They let out gusty, dramatic, overtired yawns, as if sitting on their rocky butts spying on the streets below wears them out. They are snoring by dusk.
Me, I am for the night. When the moon hits the water in a reflection that is whole and then broken and then made whole again, and the stars wink, and it is quiet — really, finally quiet — I breathe out.
Another day. My grimace softens; my horns relax.
It is a clear night for stargazing. Above me, the heavens glitter against the black sky. I do not sleep. Instead, I watch the stars spin. I could stare up into the sky all night — my neck is already made of stone.
I watch and I wonder.
I wonder when they will finish building our cathedral. I wonder what will happen if they do not. I wonder how hot a fire my stone can withstand. I wonder what it would be like to sink to the bottom of the river.
I wonder if I will be here long enough to count every star. I wonder what would happen if I were pushed off my roof. Does it matter if you are made of rock or glass when you are dropped from such a height?
I wonder what is inside the other gargoyles. Are they solid stone, like me? Or were they constructed piece by piece, claws formed and then fastened to legs, fastened to bodies, fastened to heads? Do they have stone organs? Stalactites for ribs? Does Harpy have a pebble for a heart?
I wonder if their makers ever thought of them. I wonder if my maker ever thought of me.
I do not remember much of my maker except for her hands. Dry and crackled from scrubbing away plaster, but warm on the cold of my slab. I remember that she liked to whisper to me as she blew the dust away from my form: “You will watch over so many others. You will protect them all.”
That is why I do not sleep. I do not close my eyes, not even for a moment. Not even when I am so sleepy, I feel like I have become a mountain again. It is my duty to watch.
Once our cathedral is finished, I will be a proper gargoyle, watching over my parishioners — but in the meantime, I keep watch over the moon as it climbs the sky. I watch the river pour past our churchyard, and I watch the horizon. My whole little world.
When midnight strikes, I ignore Odierne’s parish bells and whisper twelve chimes for the bell tower that lies scattered behind me. I wonder and I worry and I watch by myself.
Always by myself.
When it rains, we gargoyles are the first to know.
For ninety years, I have been pelted with hail, blanketed with snow, and blasted with the rays of the summer sun. But I will remember this rain tonight as the worst I’ve seen in all my days on top of our Cathedral Sans Nom.
This is what I call it, my stone tongue in my stone cheek. Our no-name cathedral. We almost had a proper name once.
Unfinished cathedrals do not keep their names.
The sky has been gray since dawn, with clouds thick as dyed wool hanging low above the city. All the birds stay tucked in their roosts, their dry feathers twitching. The river rages in the wind, which blows the waters to whitecaps and steely peaks.
When the rain began, just before vespers, it sprinkled lightly; now it pours down as if heaven has its own gargoyles draining the chilly water through their spouts onto the Earth.
I deepen my frown. If the cathedral were finished, I would be properly fixed to the gutters so I could siphon water off the roof, but instead it pools around me, splashes onto my claws. I furrow my eyebrows until my head hurts, trying to keep the droplets from running down my face, but to no avail.
It has been an unusually quiet day. In the distance, villagers work to secure the Sarluire’s plentiful northern bank from flooding the main thoroughfare. Homes are dark and still. Not a single candle flickers from the street lanterns.
Quiet, except for the east-side gargoyles, who talk even louder when it rains because their ears get clogged with water and they cannot hear themselves. They squawk like upset hens, their voices echoing off the wet cobblestones below.
“It’s been ages since we’ve had a good downpour like this,” Harpy says. “My skin’s been positively parched.”
“Good for the horns, too,” Goathead adds.
“Yes, that’s the stuff,” Harpy purrs as the rain intensifies. Fishy, Scales, and Snout all murmur in agreement. “Wash all that bird scum away.”
“Pipe down, beauty queens!” I call. “Some of us are trying to enjoy this without your commentary!”
“What kind of storm would it take to wash you away? Hmmm?” Harpy fires back. The others snicker.
I almost point out that we are made of mountain, harvested from deep beneath unknown hills, and so every time it rains, we become a little more weathered, a little more crumbled, a little closer to becoming dust. But I do not.
Let those east-side ninnies gargle the rain and marvel over the feeling of slick, cleaned stone. Let the water slowly wear them down. Let it wear down their mouths first, please.
A cluster of vagrants runs past our yard, all of them soaked like rats.
If our cathedral were complete, they would have a place to sleep. If our cathedral were complete, we would have a kind-eyed priest to push open the doors and usher in lost, drenched souls. “Come inside,” he would say. “Come get dry by the fire. You are safe here.”
But there is no priest at the Cathedral Sans Nom. In some places, there are not even walls.
On a night like tonight, it is easy to feel like there is not even a God—
A noise. Wet footsteps on the concrete.
I strain to listen beyond the pit-a-pat of raindrops on my ledge.
Footsteps dash up our half-finished porch. Footsteps that hurry, footsteps that do not linger in our hollow chambers but run up the scaffolding.
Someone is coming up to the roof.
“Be still, you miserable clucks!” The east-side gargoyles do not hear me above their blabbing, but they shut up when a hooded figure dashes to our rooftop, clutching something tightly to its chest with both hands.
The figure catches its breath, glancing over my ledge. We are eighty feet up, the river coursing beneath us. A dangerous fall for humans and gargoyles alike.
The person removes their hood, shaking the excess water from their face. Gobs of fire-red hair are instantly soaked by the rain.
A woman. Her cheeks are puffy, her eyes frantic and wild as she lowers her bundle to inspect it.
“Mmm-ba,” says the bundle. Inexplicably, my stone feels lightened. A baby.
The baby is pure rascal, a giggle in its eye. The woman wrings the rainwater from its wrappings and spares the child a smile—
But her lips tighten. There is noise and movement below.
A group of men, a dozen or more, and greyhounds on leashes, cutting through the fields. My eyes focus through the blur of the storm. The watch. Sent by constables or even by the sheriff himself.
They move so quickly, the rain cannot douse their torches. Something inside of me clenches when one of them shouts, “She came this way!”
The east-side gargoyles stay silent for once — here, at last, is the quiet I have been waiting for, but I cannot enjoy it. Not with this sensation of nerves in my haunches, all needles and pokies. Not with the fear on the woman’s face, plain as ink. Not with us grotesques holding our breath, even though we are made of hardened clay.
The watchmen charge past the city walls, making their way through dark doorways and the alleys of the market district, illuminating windows, the hounds nosing every corner.
“Ma ma ma,” says the baby, and then makes a noise that borders on a whimper.
“Shhh.” The woman tugs her hood back over her head and hunches over, trying to stay hidden. Tendrils of her wet hair cling to her face.
