Page 42 of The Games Gods Play
I get to the last pocket, a deep, vinyl-lined one on the back, but this time I drop what I pull out to the bed on a gasp. I stare at the gleaming gold-and-silver weapon lying there.
My relic.
21
This Is Real
Every pledge who graduates to master thief magically receives a relic. We believe the gifts are from Hermes for use in our trade. It is the only thing of significant value that we never have to steal or surrender to pad the Order’s pockets.
However, as a clerk, I didn’t technically graduate. There was no ceremony. No relic should have come to me.
But this axe showed up on my bed one day.
Silver with golden markings, it has a gold handle, the end wrapped in turquoise leather. A circle with a symbol of Zeus’ head stamped on it divides the larger blade from a smaller one on the backside that’s shaped more like a tip of a spear.
I assumed one of the other pledges was playing a mean trick, trying to get me caught with a relic that wasn’t mine, but every time I returned it to the coffers, it magically returned to me. No one—I mean absolutely no one—knows I have it.
“What is that?” I try to play naive. The relic looks like an ordinary handle to a weapon or tool, if only the handle remained, and I turn it this way and that as though trying to figure out what it is.
Boone rolls his eyes. “I’ve known about this for the past few years,” he says.
And never turned me in to Felix? I eye him sideways. “How?”
“I saw you practicing in the weapons range one night when I was late returning from a score gone sideways,” he says.
Oh.
Well…
Blast and brimstone.
I swallow.
Boone isn’t done, though.
Next, he pulls out a lockpicking kit. Not one of the cheap, larger, unwieldier ones the Order provides, though. This is Boone’s personal kit that he paid for himself, having to work off his own family’s debts for longer to buy it. It’s smaller. I’ll be able to slip it into the biggest pocket on the back of my tactical vest.
But… I shake my head. This is worth a lot to him. “I can’t.”
“You can,” he insists. “I’ll just use one of the Order’s until you get back.”
I stare at him. “I might not come back.”
His lips go crooked, but he doesn’t say anything before he digs back into the duffel bag. “And then there’s these.”
He holds out a drawstring leather pouch that rattles a little, something inside clacking. Curiosity always was a failing of mine. When I don’t immediately reach for it, he bounces it on his palm. “Come on, Lyra-Loo-Hoo. You know you want to.”
I pluck it from his grasp, then pour what’s inside into my hand and stare.
Teeth?
“Um…” I look at Boone. “Gross?”
“My relic,” he says, as if that’s not a big deal.
I almost drop them right there, and they clatter in my hand a bit. “Hells, Boone. You can’t give these to me.”
“They’re my relic. I can do what I want with them.” He shrugs. “They haven’t been useful to me as a thief anyway, so…”
