The Thief’sCrown

Warden Dane stepped beneath the bridge carrying a release paper. “Your sister,” he said. “For the crown.” I kept my coat closed. “You could have released her yesterday.” “Yesterday you hadn't earned it.” There was a brazier beside his boat. A small crucible rested in the coals. Not large enough for a man. Exactly large enough for a crown. Under my coat, the bronze went still. “What happens to it?” I asked. Dane smiled. “Gold has no opinions.” “Mostly bronze,” the crown murmured. He heard. His hand tightened around the paper. “Now you understand why I need it.”

I had stolen jewels before. Jewels did not usually complain.

“Your hands are cold,” the crown said as I lifted it from its velvet cushion.

I nearly dropped it.

“And you are not the prince.”

Behind me, the vault door began to close. The crown sighed.

“Put me on, thief. We have about three seconds to become convincing.”

I put it on.

“Open the door. I am late enough already.”

The prince's voice came from the bronze above my ears. Beyond the door's speaking grille, a guard apologized. The door stopped.

I slipped into the maintenance passage before he opened the grille.

“That was convincing,” I whispered.

“He was late. Eleven years ago.”

“You can make me sound like him?”

“I can repeat him. There is a distinction.”

In a linen cupboard, I wrapped the crown in my spare shirt.

It objected to the smell.

“You're stolen property. Lower your expectations.”

“I remember everyone who wears me. Twenty-seven rulers so far.”

“And apparently every laundry.”

My sister Bea used to laugh at that sort of thing. Before the bridge accounts went missing. Before every worker on the bridge was jailed for the missing wages. Bea had kept the accounts; that made her especially convenient.

For six months, I had sold everything I could steal to pay the prison's release fee. Each payment somehow increased it.

Yesterday a broker had offered one final exchange: this crown for Bea's freedom. He knew my name. Imani Reed. He knew hers.

I had mistaken that for reassurance.

A kitchen cart got me through the palace gate. I lay beneath cabbages while the crown whispered a king's complaint about soup.

“Does knowing all those kings help?” I asked when the cart stopped.

“Mostly it prevents admiration.”

Under the river bridge, I unwrapped it. Moonlight caught a repaired split in the bronze.

“Do you have a name?”

“No one has required one.”

That answer was worse than the complaints.

I showed it the broker's seal: a hooked fish stamped in red wax.

“Do you recognize this?”

“The prison warden's private seal.”

I looked across the water at the barred windows where Bea slept.

The man selling me her freedom was the man keeping it from her.

Behind us, footsteps reached the bridge.

I slid the crown beneath my coat and kept my hand on it.