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“So, your mother taught you to pick locks,” said Laney, without preamble, as she dropped down to sit on Rupert’s bed. His room was as neat as ever, books carefully stacked on his desk and laundry put away out of sight. “Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve?”
It was still technically the start of the winter holidays, if you didn’t have too narrow a definition of “start,” and Laney had barely touched her schoolwork. By this time last year, she’d been neck-deep in the differences between static and dynamic enchantments and wrist-deep in the Elsewhere, knotting as much power away as possible while she had the time and the mage’s dungeon to herself.
This year, however, she had three friends who were slowly chipping away at her need to fail quietly, and one of them was seated across from her on the bed, smile going sly around the edges.
Schoolwork could wait.
“Oh, of course,” started Rupert. “Mom loves to teach, and the people on her digs are always—interesting, to say the least. And Sez and Bart and I—” Rupert cut himself off, an idea sparking behind his eyes. “Here, I’ve got something I could show you.”
He started to get to his feet, brushing against Laney’s side as he did so and using her shoulder to lever himself up to standing beside the bed. When he offered her a hand up, Laney took it, and they stood opposite each other in the small room. The lull in classes meant that the usual shouting of frustrated mages or the laughter of teenagers joking in the hall was absent, and Laney could hear the clock Rupert had set up near his bedside tick.
“Well?” Laney said, after a moment had passed and it seemed like Rupert wasn’t going to continue the thread of conversation.
The same sly grin crept across Rupert’s face as he held up Laney’s Bureau-issued Academy ID—the one she usually kept in her jacket pocket.
Laney patted her jacket, coming up empty. She grinned back. “Really, Hammersfeld? Pickpocketing?” she teased.
Rupert shrugged, unapologetic. “Sez taught me and Bart when we were younger. Not a life skill for me personally, but it was fun to learn.” He raised one eyebrow. “It’s especially easy if you’re generally polite and unobtrusive.”
Laney let a smile crack across her face as Rupert handed back her ID. “Okay, go on, then. Show me how to do it?”
If Rupert had been asked the same question by Grey, he’d have started outlining the basic steps, pointed out potential mistakes and how to counter them, and debated the merits of theatre as it pertained to pickpocketing before they even touched a wallet. If Jack had asked, Rupert would have challenged him to steal the wallet currently at home in Rupert’s front pocket, then worked from there on honing whatever baseline Jack’s intuition had given him.
(Sez, when she had taught him and Bart several years earlier, had turned her lessons into a game between the three of them, and Rupert had spent three weeks dodging nimble fingers and trying to snatch more money than he lost. Sez had won, of course—she didn’t see the merit of going easy on rookies—but he had managed a respectable second place.)
But because it was Laney who had asked, Rupert just nodded and repeated his actions—this time, with her eyes fixed on his movements. He stepped in close, hand reaching into her pocket, and closed his fingers around her ID. Before he had the chance to do anything further, Laney’s hand was on his wrist, firm but gentle.
“Not very subtle, that time,” she pointed out.
“It’s meant to be done when you’re distracted,” he countered. “We can figure out how to do the whole song and dance later. For now—”
He pulled Laney’s ID out, caught between his index and middle fingers, and she let go of his wrist to pay attention.
“When your mark’s already distracted, your goal is to get your fingers around whatever you’re taking without actually moving the object, or letting them feel you’re there,” Rupert started. He replaced the card in her pocket and demonstrated along with his words, doing his best to follow the swaying of cloth with his hand. His other hand came up to rest a moment on Laney’s shoulder. “Then you do let them feel you—somewhere else. Your goal is to get them accustomed to touch, so that any bumping or jostling isn’t suspicious, but not to draw attention to the item you’re taking.”
Laney squinted. “Is that ‘between-the-fingers’ grip some kind of standard?”
Rupert pulled his hand out again, showing off the ID between his first and second fingers more deliberately. “Depends—for IDs, wallets, that tends to be the rule of thumb, no pun intended.” He put the card back in her pocket, switching back and forth between his earlier grip and holding it with his whole hand for contrast. The latter was certainly more noticeable. “You want the least amount of contact possible, but it is important to have enough that you can get a secure grip on whatever you’re taking.”
“That…seems like a given,” Laney commented.
“Playing it too cautious is actually the more common mistake,” he argued. “Your gut tells you not to overly intrude, especially when you also need to match up your movements to your mark, but it makes the next part more difficult.”
Nodding her concession, Laney let Rupert take up his earlier position. Like this, teaching mode in full swing, he seemed just as at home as he was knee-deep in pond scum fighting kelpies; there was a calm assurance settled around his shoulders in a way she didn’t often see outside of their “extracurriculars.”
Rupert’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Then, you need another misdirection to get it out quick. A bump of some sorts, so they don’t notice you’re touching them elsewhere.” He jostled into her, steadying himself with a hand on her other hip. He tapped one finger there. “Other side of the body.”
“So that they’ll check that pocket, if anything.”
“Exactly. And in that moment, you snatch what you’re aiming for.” Rupert gave Laney her ID, which found its home once more. “So, ignoring the fact that you need some sort of an excuse to start out so close to someone in the first place, you put it all together like—”
He stepped into her space again, bumped into her, and steadied himself just the same as before. When he looked up to meet her eyes, Rupert’s expression had formed itself into the “apologetic headmaster’s nephew” look Laney had only ever seen him wear to glide under the radar of important people, which she knew had no doubt been aimed at countless sycophants during fancy Bureau dinners.
“Oh, excuse me,” said Rupert with a self-deprecating smile she was glad was an act—because if it wasn’t, she’d start punching people. He brushed imaginary dirt off of her arms and moved past, and by the time she turned around, he had held up her ID again with the much smaller quirk of his lips that she had come to recognize as real.
Laney’s mouth slanted in response. “I see why being polite and unobtrusive is a bonus here.”
“The acting is half the battle,” he said as he handed back her ID. She had felt its quick slide out of her pocket this time, now that she was looking for it. “If you’re a random stranger bumping into someone, of course they’ll think you’re a pickpocket. You need to head off their assumptions.”
Laney turned the card over in her hands. It was made out of a thick paper that had started to wear away at one corner, near the embossed Bureau logo, and her name was printed carefully above the designation “Academy Student, Mage Track.” When she graduated in a few short months, this temporary identification would be turned in for a badge, with her status as a mage etched into metal. She tucked it away, turning the lesson over in her mind instead.
“So there’s three steps to this,” she said aloud. “Distract, get into position, distract again and pull.”
Rupert nodded. “Pretty much. The first is especially hard to practice, since, you know, we know it’s coming right now. But it’s the crowded train, the clumsy fool, the ‘helpful’ local pointing out the right location on a map—any excuse to get close to someone.”
With her first two fingers, Laney pulled her ID out of her own pocket, a slow test of her grip to start out. She played around with how it rested in her hand, debating the way she’d adjust her hold if she was stealing something a little heavier.
“It also helps to pick a mark who seems distracted, or with clothing that makes it easier, things like that,” Rupert continued. His fingers tapped against the front of his trousers mindlessly, where Laney knew he kept his own wallet. “But again, we can’t really practice that here.” The corner of his mouth ticked up. “And I imagine you’d likely be pickpocketing someone for a specific reason, not just to rob people.”
“No, I’ve decided my true calling is to make a fortune on the streets of Rivertown,” Laney drawled. “Much easier than Heroic Feats homework.”
The other corner of Rupert’s mouth ticked up as well, and Laney flipped the card around in her hand twice more.
“Do you want to try?” Rupert asked, aiming for offhand and mostly nailing it.
Laney weighed the question and came up with no good reason not to. While she preferred honing new skills on her own, this was by nature something that required more than one person, and there was no real way to ‘succeed’ at pickpocketing if Rupert already knew it was coming.
This is just for fun, she told herself. And it was Rupert—she could lower her guard, just a bit.
Laney shoved her ID back in its place. She pressed her side against Rupert, affecting a slight slump to position herself better against the shorter boy.
“Gee, this train is so crowded. Guess I have to stand really close to you,” Laney deadpanned, and Rupert seemed surprised at the snort of laughter that escaped him in response.
She followed the steps they had outlined—two fingers in the pocket, wait, hip check to pull them out—and held Rupert’s wallet aloft at the end. She wasn’t quite happy with how noticeable the last motion had been, but by anyone else’s standards, it was a decent first attempt.
Rupert blinked at her. “I didn’t know you knew what pocket that was in.”
“Again?” she asked with a wink, handing back his wallet.
Laughing quietly, Rupert tucked it away in his jacket this time.
“Oh no, this marketplace is so crowded,” started Laney, and they got back to work.
(Two days later, Laney tripped on uneven cobblestone as they made their way to lunch—when she righted herself under Rupert’s worried glance, his wallet was in her hand and her grin was blinding.)