Naium stammered. He couldn't remember the password.

Azor gave Naium a vexed look. He hooked his eyebrow as if that could fish the word from Naium's muddied mind.

An older boy snorted, shoved Naium against the alley wall. "Go back to begging," he hissed. "You'll never get into the thieves' guild. Freeze up like that at the wrong moment, and you'll get us all caught."

"But I stole a wh-wh-whole--" Naium started, in protest.

"Stole a hole!" The boys jeered and trotted off into the darkness.

Azor shrugged and followed his new friends into the night.

"A whole skin of wine," Naium whispered, patting the bulge under his ragged cloak. The other new boys had filched smaller items: rope, apples, nails.

Naium could slink like a shadow. He could sweet-talk guard dogs. He had the sharpest eyes and the sharpest ears. But he couldn't remember a stupid word. As if words had power. As if words had magic.

His fingers had magic enough for him. "Who needs a guild," Naium asked the night. He'd work wholly alone. Some day he'd be wealthy from all his clever toil, and then he'd be the one jeering at scruffy guild-thieves.

Naium pattered down the alley, hunting a corner out of the wind to spend the night. Maybe he'd have a taste of the wine, then sell it in the morning. So many travelers in town, he could pretend to be a merchant's apprentice. No one would know the wine was stolen.

Naium halted outside the town wall and listened. His keen ears picked up the faintest echo on the breeze -- a haunting melody, chords weaving, trembling, trilling straight to his heart, filling him with an unearthly joy.

The wind changed. The music faded.

Naium shook his head and went on, listening for bleats. He climbed a stack of barrels outside a caravansary, scaled the wall, slid down to the stable courtyard inside. He was in luck. Sheep mingled with travelers' donkeys. No finer a bed for a cold night than nestling with wooly ewes.

The boy slept until midnight. He didn't stir for a drunken argument, nor for a spate of coughing. But the woman's cry woke him. She panted. She moaned. She shrieked, and not far away.

Naium burrowed deeper into the straw, hugging his wine skin, trying to stave off memories. His mother, crying out. Her travail, her agony, her death. The baby she had labored to bring into the world -- it had died, too. His family had fallen apart. Naium blinked with the ache of it. The woman muffled another scream.

At last there came the cry of a baby. And murmuring. Two low, glad voices.

The air trembled again with that distant melody, melting Naium's heartache. Wondering, he rose, edged toward the lamplight.

A young woman laid a swaddled newborn into a pile of hay. Her voice sounded dry, scratchy from her toil.

His heart swelling with a sudden, unexplainable gladness, Naium held out the wineskin. A gift. No words needed.