One typically cold winter morning, a wrathful pounding reverberated through the entry hall and into the classroom where we were teaching the orphans how to impersonate nobility. Moments later, our door creaked open and Mrs. Lomond poked her head in. Deliberately ignoring the bedsheets we’d pressed into service as cloaks or evening gowns with trains – the laundering of which she would have to supervise – she inquired, “Should…should I get that? Or…should someone else…?” Her tone hinted at a pretty strong preference for the latter.

“We’ll get it,” I answered.

Her head vanished before I could change my mind.

“Ooooh,” yawned Faith, “that sounds too much like real work. Mantis, you should really work on your accent. Brightstone children roll their r’s more.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ash told me.

Double-checking my concealed blades – “Kids, note where she keeps her knives,” Ash instructed – I led the way to the front door, which was rattling on its hinges and obviously needed reinforcing, just as soon as we took care of whatever business awaited on the other side.

Said business turned out to be a bear of a baker, who had one large, floury hand on the scruff of Spider’s neck and the other on the Azael’s. “These are yours, right?” he growled, giving the boys a little shake.

Both dangled with the limpness of deep chagrin.

With a sigh, Ash pulled out his purse and began counting out slugs. “I see there are reparations to be made,” he observed. “How much did they take?”

“It’s not about the money!” snarled the baker, completely unmollified by the sight of hard silver. “It’s about you controlling your gang!” And with that, he bowled the two boys past us.

Since starting my self-defense lessons, all the orphans had learned how to fall without hurting themselves (beyond the inevitable bruises). Now Spider and Azael tucked, hit the floorboards exactly right, and rolled to a gentle stop. When I knelt to check them, they refused to meet my eyes and stayed huddled up.

Smirking, I stood and hand-signed at Ash, They’re fine. Just humiliated.

“We’ll speak to the hierarchy,” he was promising the baker in a conciliatory tone. “We’ll make it clear to the orphans – ” he stressed the word just slightly, appealing to the man’s humanity – “whom they should and should not be disrupting.”

The baker scowled at the disruptions to his day, who were still quivering in pathetic little balls at our feet. “This isn’t the first time. I never want to see them again, taking all my pastries.”

Donning the harassed expression I’d seen on my governesses right before they quit, I played the concerned teacher. “Can you tell us what they did, sir? Can you give us more details?”

“They’ve been running a two-man con!” roared the baker, waving his arms around like a windmill. “That one – ” one thick finger stabbed in Spider’s direction – “distracts me, while that one – ” the finger jabbed at Azael next – “crawls along the floor, snakes his filthy, thieving hand up behind the counter, and steals the pastries!”

That was ingenious.

And it definitely bore no resemblance whatsoever to any of the heists my brother and I might have pulled as children, no what the Anixis cooks might claim…. I was going to have to sit down with the boys for a postmortem, wasn’t I, the way Mother used to? Map out the bakeries they’d targeted, analyze the frequency with which they hit each one, warn them not to establish patterns, the like?

Squelching a snicker, I assured the baker in my most earnest voice, “We’ll hold a school assembly. We’ll make it clear to all the orphans that theft – ” or rather, getting caught at it – “is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

Perhaps the admission of responsibility for our orphans’ escapades would smudge – or slightly dent – our reputation with the Crow’s Foot citizenry, but it seemed like a small price to pay.

At my words, the two boys peeked up at Ash and me, assessing whether we secretly approved of their scheme. I shot them a quelling glare, which they didn’t need any training in hand signs to interpret as, I’m proud of your creativity, but I am not proud that you got caught. They drooped.

Unfortunately, like the Coalridge citizenry, the Crow’s Foot citizenry had also drawn certain conclusions about our crew’s extra-educational, extra-legal activities, and the baker interpreted my expression as easily as the boys did. He looked frankly appalled.

“What else can you tell me about their operations?” I asked.

“They’ve been hanging around my shop. I was warned about them. By the other bakers.” He glowered at the tops of Spider’s and Azael’s heads. “They always steal the sweet things.” A predilection that, given the scarcity of sugar, was anathema in Doskvol.

Pulling a sympathetic face, Ash pressed a handful of slugs into the baker’s palm. “That should cover your losses.” He shrugged ruefully, as if to say, “What can you do? Kids love sweet things,” and explained in a tone of utmost reason, “But the children were doing their best, and their scheme was sound – they just got caught. But you know, everyone gets caught once in a while.” Wagging a pitch-black index finger at the boys, he admonished them, “You can still go there, but next time you have to pay.”

Spider, who as one of the Insect Kids received an allowance from us, pouted but nodded obediently. Azael, who wasn’t in that privileged circle, shot him a hopeful glance.

Sometime during that exchange, the classroom door had cracked open, and now Faith stormed out, ruffles bristling with indignation. “If you don’t reform, your thieving ways will lead you into a life of crime that can only end on the gallows!” she raged, making a sympathy play on the baker in her own inimitable way. “You and you! Your non-moldy bread privileges for this month are revoked!”

Our local purveyor of non-moldy bread was actually mildly moved by the prospect of two children dying from food poisoning. “No, no, you don’t need to do that, miss, they’re just kids,” he mumbled, edging backwards down the steps. “Just – ” He caught himself on the last step and tried to look firm. “I’ll – I’ll cut them a deal on stale pastries next time. We expect you to control them, but their lives are awful enough already.”

“And we’ll make sure to keep them that way,” Faith promised with a serene smile.

After the baker tromped off, Spider and Azael cautiously unfurled themselves and stood back up, looking sheepish as only two boys who’d literally gotten nabbed with their hands in the pastry case could.

Although Spider still didn’t dare to meet our eyes, Azael ventured, “So…we’re not really getting moldy bread, are we?” His eyes darted among the three of us, gauging the severity of our respective expressions, and settled on Faith as the most likely disciplinarian. (I was struggling to contain my mirth, while Ash looked merely disappointed.) “Miss Karstas?”

“I haven’t yet decided,” Faith informed him. “It depends on how you do on the exam.”

“Right, um, I’m, um, I’m going to go study! Really really hard! And you’re going to be proud of us!”

Faith just gave him an absent pat on the head. “Run along now.”

He was only too happy to obey.

Spider, on the other hand, scuffed a toe, guilt spelled out in every line of his body. “’M s’rry we got you in trouble too,” he mumbled, at a volume just above the threshold for human hearing.

“That’s not trouble,” Ash snorted, his brusqueness suggesting that he was on the verge of laughter. “Let me show you trouble, Spider.”

The boy hung his head and sketched patterns on the grimy floorboards until Faith dismissed him too.

None of the orphans did particularly well on her next exam, which was a debate forcing them to argue positions they didn’t believe in.

She still didn’t feed them moldy bread.

I did, however, break them into small groups to develop plans for stealing low-value objects in diverse environments (a Coalridge general store, a Silkshore street stall, a Crow’s Foot bakery, say). Then they presented their ideas to the class, and we critiqued them as a group – as an intellectual exercise only, I was careful to stress.

Given that the vast majority of our orphans were already diabolically clever about petty theft, they did much better in my class than they did in Faith’s math class.

“If you can’t do simple arithmetic, how are you going to count your money?” she scolded. “Do problems one through a hundred in the back of the book for tomorrow!”

For once, Ash backed her up, and then did her one better – by introducing them to the concept of compound interest.

Once he explained why that was important, they set to work with a will.