Empress of Rogues

by Carrie Summers

  Table of Contents

  Map of Ostgard

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Empress of Rogues

  Book Four

  Chronicles of a Cutpurse

  Carrie Summers

  Map of Ostgard

  Chapter One

  THE CRIERS ENTER Rat Town just after dawn, slogging through muddy streets emptied of nighttime debauchery and alleyway skulks. Their calls echo off clapboard siding and press through Myrrh’s latched shutters.

  “The Maire is dead and his murderer found!”

  “Ostgard’s Maire-elect will address the crowd at midday in the Neck’s market square!”

  Myrrh drags her covers over her head, as much to shut out the noise as to block the morning light and the worries it brings. Where is Glint now? Locked away in the dark? Chained to a post out in public where the sun’s first rays will finally stop the shivering that pulls against the deep wounds in his belly? Is he hurting? Afraid? …Alive?

  Outside, the sound of hammering joins the crier’s words. Myrrh grabs her pillow, intent on piling it over the top of the covers to further muffle the racket, but stops herself.

  She can’t hide from this. A sleepless night is no excuse to cower in her bed while Merchant Emmerst takes control of the city, using his accusation against Glint as the kindling to fuel his rise.

  She throws off the covers and stomps to the window where she shoves the shutters wide. Chill air washes over her but doesn’t penetrate her thief’s leathers. In the wee hours of the morning, she fell into bed fully clothed. Before that, Myrrh sat in council with the ranking members of Ghost Syndicate and the remnants of Glint’s inner circle, their low and furious voices filling the back room of Rikson’s Roost.

  But toward what conclusion? Given the security surrounding Maire’s Quarter, no doubt bolstered now that Emmerst has a scapegoat, how can a pair of thieves’ syndicates rescue Glint, much less clear his name?

  Ten days until his execution, or so Emmerst claimed.

  Nine now.

  From her second-story vantage, Myrrh scans slate-tiled rooftops and peers into the warren of narrow alleys that web Rat Town like animal tunnels. A few doors away from her safe house, broken glass is strewn on the cobblestones, a half-burned candle in its midst. She spies the lamppost from which the lantern was knocked, probably during some drunken argument.

  At the corner nearest the mess, a foot and lower leg stick out from the shadow of a building. The owner appears motionless, either drunk or dead. Equally likely states after a night out in Rat Town.

  She stares at the body, unable to help herself from imagining Glint’s face on the sprawled figure, his dark eyes sightless and cloudy, his aggravating smirk vanished.

  One of the criers rounds the corner, face twisted in a grimace as he glances down at the body. Shaking his head as he steps over the extended leg, he stops at the lamppost and pulls a leaflet from a satchel. He pins it against the lamppost and delivers a few hard whacks with a hammer to fix it there.

  Myrrh shakes her head. It isn’t hard to imagine the words scrawled across the paper. Whether they’re formal accusations against Glint or new laws imposed on the denizens of Rat Town and other commoner districts, hard times are coming.

  And not the sort of hard times in which thieves thrive.

  The crier cups hands around his mouth. “Attend the first speech delivered by Ostgard’s Maire-elect at noontime today in the Neck’s central square!”

  A speech in which the man will lay the blame for all the city’s ills at Glint’s feet, accusing him of murdering the former Maire and plunging Ostgard into chaos.

  And the worst part of it is that people will believe Emmerst. Even while disorder has allowed many of the criminal syndicates to grow stronger, the law-abiding citizens of Ostgard have suffered in the uncertainty and unrest. It’s been worse for the merchant class. The lack of leadership has ruined their ordinary tariff-skimming and bribery schemes. And the merchants, more than anyone, have resources to put behind someone who will restore order.

  Behind Emmerst.

  No doubt they’re slavering at the notion of seeing Glint executed. Especially since he managed to insert himself into their ranks under the guise of an invented character, Merchant Giller. He’s painted each of them as a fool, something Ostgard merchants can’t abide.

  “And don’t forget it’s your fault,” Myrrh mutters to herself. “Glint’s being blamed for something you did.” Although she didn’t murder the Maire, she did send Glint’s estranged father to a remote island where he’s imprisoned in a debtors’ colony. She could send a barge to retrieve him, proving Emmerst’s accusation as false. But the exoneration would come far, far too late for Glint.

  Myrrh yanks the shutter closed, but it bangs too hard against its housing and flies open again. She growls at it.

  “I’m trying to sleep over here, you know.”

  Myrrh jumps and whirls, hand reaching for her dagger on instinct even though she recognizes Nab’s voice. “What half-sixed reason makes you think it’s okay to sneak into my room?”

  The boy, hair mussed after the long night following Glint’s capture, sits up from a nest of blankets he’s piled in the corner. “Couldn’t sleep with all the people tromping through the common room downstairs,” he says. “Figured I’d bother you instead.”

  By which he means, but would never admit, that he’d come up here for comfort.

  “I see. Well, consider your bothering mission a success. And it was your choice to take a downstairs room, I might add. As I recall, you claimed that being near to the kitchen mattered more than whether it would be noisy.”

  The boy smirks as he flops back into his nest, arms flung wide. “Speaking of noise, did you hear the criers?”

  “Citizens of Ostgard!” As if on cue, the call rises from the street. Myrrh glances down to see the crier planted almost directly below her window. He’s produced a speaking horn and seems to be digging in for a prolonged shouting spree. It makes her wish for a full chamber pot.

  “The vile murderer of our former Maire has been apprehended at last. Now we wait for justice to be done and order restored.”

  “I don’t understand how Glint let this happen,” Nab says.

  Myrrh takes a deep breath. If there’s one good thing to come from the disorder in the city, it’s the near shutdown of the smelters. Not because it’s left people without work, but because the choking smog from Smeltertown no longer blankets Rat Town’s streets. The air isn’t exactly sweet, but at least it doesn’t sting her nose and throat.

  “He reached too far, too fast,” My
rrh says. “He had a plan to steal the whole sixing city out from under the merchants’ noses, and he almost accomplished it. With those kinds of stakes, the fall is pretty far.”

  Leaving the window, Myrrh steps to a small desk and takes a seat in the straight-backed chair. A stack of coarse paper, an inkwell, and a pair of quills await her orders for Ghost Syndicate. She stares at the supplies, not sure where to start. In the council last night, they broke off having only resolved to retrieve Glint by whatever means necessary. Problem is, no one knows what means those are. They have no idea where he’s being held or what security surrounds him.

  Well, at the very least she can make sure to keep Ghost Syndicate operating smoothly. To manage a rescue, she may need every thief and assassin at her disposal—and likely, all those reporting to Glint from Lower Fringe.

  Her mind fogged by lack of sleep and confused by the chattering worries for Glint’s safety, she nonetheless starts scratching words onto paper.

  Sometime in the midst of listing the petty crimes that syndicate members should avoid until they understand Emmerst’s plan, she lays her forehead in the crook of her elbow. Just for a moment, she tells herself. To rest her eyes.

  Sleep falls over her like a silken drape.

  ***

  “Mistress, wake up.”

  The voice is soft and gentle and unlike a thief’s. Myrrh raises her head, confused. She blinks. Turns. Nearly falls out of her chair.

  “Sorry, Mistress.” Nettle, the maid from the Pineshadow’s Stalwart Pony stands beside Myrrh’s chair, worrying her apron tie. A few days ago, she journeyed with Myrrh from the mountain village to Ostgard.

  Myrrh yawns and rubs a hand down her face. “I thought for sure you and Hawk would be gone by now.”

  “Gone?”

  “Back to Pineshadow to free those oathbound by Bartholomew.”

  The girl grimaces at Bartholomew’s name. The son of the castellan assigned to protect Glint’s holdfast used ancient magic from the Crags region to enslave the minds of countless residents of the castle’s surroundings. Nettle’s beloved and mother are among the oathbound, but the power to free them has passed to Myrrh’s mentor, Hawk. Myrrh assumed the pair would have been on the trail to Pineshadow at sunrise.

  Nettle chews her lip. “It doesn’t feel right to abandon the city after what happened to Master Glint.”

  “But there’s little you can do here,” Myrrh responds. “Better to help those you can, right?”

  A shy smile touches Nettle’s lips. “Well, I do believe Nab has grown fond of my baking. That’s one person I help, even if it’s to keep him from stealing pastries from respectable businesses. But it’s not about me. I don’t think it’s right to pull Hawk away until you’ve rescued Master Glint. You can use his advice, right?”

  Myrrh smirks at the pastry comment. Yawning to dispel the last strands of sleep, she glances toward the now-empty corner where the boy nested overnight. It’s probably for the best that he’s already cleared out the evidence. He’s many years too young for Nettle, but Myrrh suspects his taste for her baked treats has caused him to develop something of a crush on the young woman. He’d be humiliated for her to see that he’d dragged bedding into Myrrh’s room like a frightened child.

  “I always appreciate Hawk’s advice,” Myrrh says. “But we have to think of the people oath—”

  An awful crash from downstairs shatters her words. All sleep vanished like smoke in a gale, Myrrh jumps from her chair and rushes to the door. Her running footsteps thud against the wood floor as she races to the staircase.

  Below, the safe house’s common room is in chaos. A candelabra has toppled, and tongues of flame stretch from each of the candles. Splinters of wood from the smashed front door litter the entryway.

  Grunts and the clash of steel fill the air, while men and women fight atop the Ishvaran rug in the center of the room. Two men lie motionless at the edges of the fray. One, a city guardsman known as a Shield, is clearly dead, a yawning gash in his windpipe. The other is face down, but the thief’s leathers mark him as one of her own. Four Shields remain on their feet, facing off with three members of Ghost Syndicate. The thieves are holding, but they’ve been forced into a triangle, standing back to back.

  “Sixing rot,” Myrrh snaps as she runs down the stairs and yanks her dagger free. As she nears the bottom, she spots motion near the kitchen door. Nab is so absorbed in the sweet bun clutched in his sticky fist, he seems more bewildered than concerned by the brawl and fire.

  “Nab! Run!” she shouts.

  The boy blinks, looks from her to the fight, then finally tosses his pastry to the floor.

  “Hey!” he shouts, waving at the nearest Shield.

  Myrrh’s heart crams its way into her throat as the guard grunts, throws an elbow at one of her thieves, and turns on Nab. Sixing little flea. She dashes forward, dagger high.

  Nab twists his fingers through the intricate motion for the misdirection cantrip, a trick he learned from a now-dead rogue, Rattle. Myrrh slows as the guard freezes on his way to attack the boy.

  “These tumbledown hovels are all the same, right?” Nab asks with pointed casualness. “You thought you heard something suspicious inside, but it must have been rats. Unfortunately, rotten floorboards collapsed under your friend”—Nab gestures to the man with a slit throat—“and another of your squad blundered into a poisonous spider’s web.”

  The flames are spreading, and Myrrh can’t stand around like a fool while they reach for the room’s drapes. As she sprints past the fray, she spies the pair of needles jutting from a Shield’s neck. Right. Piebald’s blow-dart trap. How Nab managed to see the metal slivers and so quickly concoct the explanation about the poisonous spider, Myrrh has no idea. She’d never have come up with something so quickly. But misdirection only works if the target is inclined to believe the suggestion, so they’re fortunate Nab is so clever.

  As she yanks a tapestry—priceless, probably—from the wall and starts beating at the flames, something thumps down behind her. An arm falls across her view, the glove armored with ring mail, the sleeve the somber blue of the Shield’s livery. Fingers tremble then go still as the poison finishes its work.

  The flames stubbornly resist her efforts, leaping from the oiled wood floor each time she whips the tapestry away. Smoke begins to fill the room, smelling faintly of the citrus-scented candles now melting into puddles of wax.

  She whirls, glances up the stairs. Nettle stands atop the flight, her mouth making a small O. When Myrrh catches her eye, the girl nods and hurries down the stairs. She whips the shawl off her shoulders and starts attacking the blaze.

  “To call the decrepit building a death trap would be an understatement,” Nab continues in his calm voice. “You hated to leave your friends, but they were already dead.”

  With a faint shrug, the Shield under Nab’s spell turns for the ruined door. A look of confusion twists his brow as he passes the fight. Two Shields are still standing, and one casts him a look of outright fury. A thief leaps at the soldier’s momentary distraction and plunges a dagger into his midsection. The Shield coughs and goes down on a knee. The misdirected guard blinks and slows, his mind clearly at war with Nab’s cantrip.

  The flames are finally dwindling. With a shout, Myrrh leaps forward and slices the bespelled guard across the throat.

  “Hey!” Nab protests.

  “Mistress! Another!”

  Nettle’s shout sets Myrrh spinning for the door, blade raised. She expects another squad of Shields, but nearly trips when she sees the ornate servant’s uniform and the familiar face above it. As another of the Shields falls behind her, she locks eyes with Glint’s former butler. Or rather, the butler who served Merchant Giller, the persona Glint adopted when infiltrating the merchant class and city council.

  All at once, she understands why the Shields are here. Emmerst no doubt wants to eliminate Glint’s network of allies, and he must have started by interviewing the
staff that worked in Merchant Giller’s mansion in Maire’s Quarter. Glint kept his lives strictly separate, hiring two separate rosters of servants and forbidding the thieves working for him in Lower Fringe from visiting him at his Maire’s Quarter residence. To his associates on either side of the river Ost, his other self might not have existed.

  Only one person crossed the boundaries he set. More than once, Myrrh snuck into Maire’s Quarter to speak with him. Worse, she insisted on regular communication between her Rat Town safe house and Glint’s Maire’s Quarter residence. Communication that, while sealed with wax, likely hinted at illicit doings simply because no upstanding merchant had business in a Rat Town slum.

  When Emmerst came for Glint, the others present in his dining room could plausibly deny any knowledge of Glint’s dealings outside Lower Fringe. Attending a dinner was no crime, even in Ostgard. But with Myrrh present and now identified as a criminal…they probably looked as guilty as she did.

  But worst, she’s led the Shields straight to Ghost Syndicate. At the very least, the safe house is blown. Myrrh’s customary haunts are likely compromised as well.

  With a shout of frustration, she runs toward the butler, but the man is quick. He’s out the door before she reaches the entryway. She sighs as she peers out into the street. He’s gone.

  “Finish them off and collect your things,” she calls as she returns to the common room and gestures at the injured Shields. “We’re leaving.”

  Dismayed gazes meet hers. A hurried retreat from Ghost’s strongholds does not bode well for the start of the campaign to rescue Glint.

  For that matter, it doesn’t bode well for Ghost Syndicate’s continued survival.

  Chapter Two

  NAB GLARES AT her from his seat at the foot of the bed. His skinny arms are folded across his chest, and his feet don’t quite reach the floor.

  “Why don’t you go check your packing again?” Myrrh asks as she slides her nightstand from the wall to expose the hidden drawer in its back. Inside are the remains of the trove of Haava substances she recovered from Rattle’s hideout after Mink killed the aging rogue. A dose of etch that gives the ability to see a trail where someone has passed. Enough glimmer to provide night vision and accelerated reflexes to maybe eleven or twelve thieves for a night. Six crystals of phantom, the powerful substance that turns a person insubstantial. She shoves the whole lot into her satchel along with the small brazier she uses for burning and inhaling the etch.