Free Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 by Daniel Polansky Page B

which most of the world seemed to take as evidence of superior intellect. But Thistle did what needed to be done, did it without any trembling, of his hands or his conscience. That made him special, and despite what Felspar might croon to the halfwit slatterns who mooned after him, when something needed to be done he put his eyes on Thistle, like all the rest of them.
    Felspar went in first. Thistle gave him thirty seconds and followed. It was a small market like any other you could find on the lower levels, the sort of place that sold anything and everything, goods uniform only in being overpriced and of poor quality.
    ‘Mother needs beef marrow,’ Felspar was saying to the man at the counter.
    ‘Ain’t got no beef marrow,’ said the proprietor, who was north of forty, grey-haired, fat and friendly-looking.
    ‘You’re the fifth shop I’ve tried.’
    ‘That may be the case,’ the merchant said affably. ‘But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have any beef marrow. Try Sickle’s butcher shop, it’s up two streets on your right.’
    ‘I tried Sickle’s,’ Felspar pleaded. ‘Sickle said to come here.’
    Thistle had edged his way to the corner pantry, made like he was inspecting the stock. The trick with pocketing merchandise is that there isn’t any such thing – just make the snatch and don’t fuss around. It didn’t help that Thistle looked like the sort of kid who’d be up for a lift, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about that.
    ‘But if you don’t have beef marrow,’ Felspar continued, ‘and Sickle doesn’t have beef marrow, then how am I going to get my mother any beef marrow?’
    The owner leaned against his counter, somewhere between annoyed and bemused. ‘I guess you’d better start looking for a cow.’
    Thistle wedged the bottle into his front pocket, the owner all but ignorant of his presence, attention occupied with Felspar’s quest for goose marrow. They were in the clear. All Thistle needed to do was keep his head down, walk out casual, pass the thing off to Rat. They’d be drunk and happy inside of an hour. At the very least they’d be drunk.
    But then Felspar muffed it, caught Thistle’s eyes as Thistle went to slip out the door, a second or two longer than he should have, long enough for something to click in the owner’s mind. ‘What are you doing there, boy?’
    Thistle figured it was best not to wait around and discuss it, pushed past his bumbling confederate and made for the exit with all the speed he could manage. Felspar picked up a second behind him, almost knocked Thistle down coming out of the door, and the owner started to shout, and the whole thing went sideways.
    That they’d been noticed at all was Felspar’s fault. That there were two Cuckoos making their way upslope as Thistle came outside, strutting down the middle of the street just like they’d been waiting for him, that wasn’t nothing but bad luck. Officially they were the custodians, though everyone on the Fifth, which is to say everyone Thistle knew, just called them the Cuckoos, after those treasonous avians known to lay eggs in the nests of other birds, which then hatch early and destroy their clutch-mates. You almost never saw one so far downslope – there were always plenty hanging out by the docks but they were just there to make sure everything went smoothly with their pay-off, not to hassle anyone. What in the hell reason they had for being in the Points that day, Thistle never did learn.
    Nor did it matter. ‘Bolt,’ Thistle ordered Treble and Rat as soon as he’d stepped outside, and they didn’t need him to say it twice.
    As a breed the Cuckoos were not renowned for their competence, but then you hardly needed to be to notice four boys sprinting off in separate directions while a shop owner screamed at them. The first Cuckoo was old and fat, and Thistle didn’t have any worries about losing him. But the second was young and trim, with the slicked-back hair that