“You wee thief. I know ’tis my bag because it has my initials sewn in it.” Loki picked it up and made sure the coins were all inside before indicating to Gil that he could set the lad down.
“Why are you stealing?” Loki asked. “Where are your parents?”
“We don’t have parents.” By the look of their grimy faces and dirty clothing, Gil had to believe he was telling the truth. “Who needs them anyway?” He cast a disgusted look at Loki.
“Tell me the truth about why you’re stealing. I’ll feed you if you’re hungry, but even growing lads like you don’t need this much coin to eat.”
Loki planted his feet apart and stood in front of the one who’d taken his coin, his arms crossed. The lad joined his friend back on the rock.
The smallest of the two, a lad with red hair and freckles, started to cry. The older one said, “Shush, you wee bairn.”
The lad bawled on, sputtering out a few words they could make out here and there. “Kill…catch us…dinnae want….to die.”
“Lad,” Thorn said, moving closer. “We’ll not kill you. We were all orphans, too.”
The older one looked flummoxed by the news, but the small one kept wailing. “They said if we make enough coin for them, they’ll take us to a nice place for orphans.”
Gil was surprised to hear that word of Loki’s work had traveled all the way into Edinburgh, though they did journey there at least once a year. It infuriated him to think they’d been used as incentive for thievery, especially since he had little doubt the men behind this had no intention of following through.
“Stop,” he said to the laddie. “We’ll not kill you.” Hearing him carry on so tore a hole in his heart. Though he’d been older when his family had passed on, closer to the older one’s age, he’d felt like the wee lad in front of him.
Alone with no one to help him, no one to feed him, no one to talk with. He wasn’t surprised to see the wee one with the older one. What would have happened to him otherwise? “How do you know each other?”
“I protect him,” the larger boy said. “He’s too small to be alone. And there are really mean people out there.”
But the wee one kept sobbing.
Finally, the older one said, “He’s not afraid of you killing us.”
“But I am afraid,” the small one said, sniffling. “I’m afraid to die, even if you’re not. I’m afraid of all of them.”
“Out with it,” Loki said firmly. “Who are you working for and who do you fear will kill you?”
The thief finally said, “Will you buy us each a meat pie if we tell?”
Loki nodded.
“We work for a man who lives in a castle beyond the walls, from far away. He leaves men in Edinburgh who watch over us and make us steal. They feed us, but hardly enough. My belly is always growling.”
Gil recognized what the lad wasn’t saying. “You give the laddie some of your food, do you not?” He would have done the same.
The lad continued, “We never see the man in charge, but he tells the others whether or not to beat us. Some of them beat us whenever they wish, though. They don’t care if we deserve it or not.”
Simon had been like that. He’d never understood what set him off—if he’d known, he would have stopped the behavior. Eventually, he’d decided the bastard swung out whenever he was angry, and he didn’t care who he hurt.
“So we steal,” the lad said. “My apologies to you.”
Loki looked from Gil to Thorn and Nari. “Sounds familiar. I recall men trying to make me steal, but I always got away from them.”
“We’ll take you with us,” Gil blurted out, remembering a time when he’d wandered these streets, alone and desperate. Remembering where he’d ended up before finding the Grants. He didn’t want that for these lads. “We live in a castle for orphans. ‘’Tis as we said. We’re all orphans.”
The wee one stopped crying and whispered, “Ye will? Who runs the castle?”
“They’re telling you lies,” the thief said. “I’ve asked the nuns, and they said the only place they know that takes in all orphans is Castle Curanta, way up in the Highlands. She thought there was another one, too, but it’s even farther in the Highlands.”
“Mayhap they are not lying, Daw,” the wee one insisted.
“Shut your mouth, Herry,” he replied.
