The Thief Read Online Free PDF

cobblestones and onto my naked legs, gooseflesh came out under the dirt. I shivered and swore as I bent into the stream.
    While I rinsed under the pump, the younger Useless arrived. He kept well away from the splattering water.
    “Put those down in a dry spot,” said Pol, “and fetch a couple of sacks from the stable.”
    When Useless came back, Pol took one of the sacks he’d brought and handed it to me with a square block of soap. Crouching beside the water, I soaked the sack and rubbed the soap across it. It made a tremendous lather, and I stopped to smell it in surprise. I laughed. It was the magus’s scented soap. Useless the Younger must have dug it out of one of the saddlebags.
    I scrubbed myself with the sacking, washing away what felt like years of dirt. I rubbed hard and then rinsed and soaped myself up again before Pol could stop pumping water. I dragged the sack across the back of my neck and as much of my shoulders as I could reach and scrubbed my face again and again, thinking to myself that my nose would be smaller, but at least it would be clean.
    The younger Useless stood and watched, and I wondered what he thought of me. The iron waistband had left deep bruises in a circle around my waist, and I was covered in flea bites and sores, but the ones on my wrists were the worst. Where the manacles had chafed there were raw spots partially covered in scabs that were black against my prison-fair skin. Once I had cleaned most of the dirt off myself and rinsed my hair, I squatted down in front of the spraying water and tried to find the place where the water would fall most gently on my wrists. Several of the sores were infected, and they needed to be cleaned out, but it was going to be a painful business. My whole body was shaking with the cold, and I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering while I leaned into the water.
    Pol stepped around the pump and leaned over me to look at the sores. The water flow slackened.
    “Leave them,” he said. “I’ll work on them inside.” He gave me another piece of sacking to dry off with, and when I was done, he handed me a pile of clothes—pants and a shirt as well as an overshirt and a pair of stout workboots. I looked around for my own clothes and saw the younger Useless disappearing into the stable with them in his arms.
    “Hey,” I yelled. “Come back with those!”
    He turned around uncertainly. “Magus told me to burn them,” he said.
    “Everything but my shoes!”
    Useless looked into the pile in his arms and wrinkled his nose. “All right, but if Magus says to burn them, you’ll have to give them back.”
    “Fine, fine,” I said as I hopped across the wet cobblestones in my bare feet and took my shoes out of his arms. The rest of the clothing I consigned to the fires without regret, but I’d had the shoes made specially. They were low boots just a little higher than my ankles, reinforced on the soles, but still supple enough to let me move unsuspected through other people’s houses. I carried them back to Pol; then I looked for a dry place to stand while I got dressed. The pants were heavy cotton and bagged at the ankle where they tucked into my shoes. They bagged even more around my waist, but there was a belt to hold them up. The shirt was cotton as well. There was something wonderful about rubbing a clean shirt against clean skin. I was smiling by the time I pulled the overshirt over my head. It was dark blue and short-sleeved. It came down to my thighs and was enough too big that when I moved my arms across my chest, it didn’t bind. I checked to be sure.
    “Gods bless that magus, he thinks of everything, doesn’t he?” I said to Pol. He grunted and waved me toward the inn’s back door.
    We went inside to the taproom, where the magus and the two Uselesses were waiting for us. There were deep bowls of stew set out on the table, but before Pol would let me have mine, he wanted to look at mywrists. The magus looked over his shoulder and