River of Thieves

by Clayton Snyder

  ***

  Cord had his feet up on the table again, turning the vial of acid over and over, a pipe in his mouth. The others made their way to their rooms, the afternoon fight having worn them out. In truth, I was exhausted as well, but Cord had other ideas.

  "Someone knew we were here," he said.

  "Seems obvious now. How long you think we've got in the house here?"

  "Few hours. We're gonna move as soon as we can."

  "How do you think they found out?"

  "I suspect Torlc ratted on us. At least that's what I'm gonna tell myself for now. The other possibility is a bit depressing—that one of us is leaking info."

  "Why would anyone do that?"

  Cord sighed and set the vial down. "Why would anyone do anything, Nenn? Greed, self-preservation, revenge?"

  "They don't hate you that much, do they?"

  He looked at the door, contemplating. Finally, he shook his head. "No, I don't think so. But we've got history, and history is complicated, all knotted up like a skein drawn out too far."

  "So what's next?"

  "We'll move into the Citizen district."

  "Aren't those houses all occupied? No one actually leaves a Citizen home empty if they've got the means, right?"

  "Right," he grinned around the pipe stem. "We're gonna 'borrow' one. Now go wake up the others. We've got to get moving."

  ***

  The trip from shop to residential districts was short, and as we had a strict policy of not even breathing the same air as the guards, uneventful. A low wall ran around the Citizen district, creating the illusion of safety. In reality, it wasn't much higher than four feet, and though composed of brick, it looked like a stiff wind might blow it down. Cord had an opinion about this, as he did most things—locks and walls only kept honest people out. The determined would still get in. We hopped the wall with that same determination—not even enough to break a sweat really—and crept across neat lawns and carefully tended gardens.

  Guards patrolled the streets here, and though lanterns lined the road proper, they did little to light the hedges and garden walls we hid behind. The houses were tall and straight here, fresh paint covering them in bright colors, the stones of the walls neat and unbroken. Some lawns held swings and slides, and others outdoor grills for entertaining. We wound our way across the neighborhood until we reached a neat blue home, its windows clean, its lawn clipped to precision. Cord approached the backdoor and pulled a key from his jerkin, slipping it into the lock. It popped with a gentle click, and we were through.

  The home was austere but tasteful, simple wooden floors and plaster walls hung with little more than decorative blankets. An armor stand stood in one corner of the living area, a blade propped against it, black boots shining in the moonlight. A set of stairs leading to the second level and three bedrooms stood in one corner. In the kitchen, a simple wooden table stood beside a basin for food preparation, and a trapdoor leading to a cellar. In the privy, a pile of one-sheets beside a raised stool with a hole in the seat. Cord held us in the living room, talking in a low whisper.

  "Nenn, get the cellar open. Rek, come upstairs with me. Lux—keep an ear out."

  We split, and I moved to the kitchen. The trapdoor was set with a simple brass ring, and I gave it a tug, revealing a set of wooden stairs. They led to a storage area, jars of preserved food on the shelves, and dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. It smelled of dill and dry earth. I found a lantern hanging from a beam and lit it for a break from the near-blackness. It revealed an area a little deeper from storage, shelves of papers and a table, and supporting posts. I checked over a few of the papers and noted they were names and ranks beside payment numbers and posts. My stomach started to knot.

  A banging from the stairs pulled me away, and I spun, blades in my hand. I half-relaxed, seeing it was Cord and Rek leading a bound and muffled man down the stairs. His eyes were wide, and he wore a nightshirt stained with sweat, his black hair plastered to his forehead. He struggled, but against the two men could not free himself, and finally slumped as they bound him to the desk. He watched us, still fearful.

  I pulled Cord to the side.

  "Watch him," he told Rek, then turned to me. "Yes?" he asked, a grin on his face.

  "Cord," I seethed, "is that the fucking captain of the guard?"

  "Well, you know, titles are tricky. One guy gets promoted over another, and then-"

  "Cord."

  "Yeah, that's him."

  "Why are we in his fucking house?"

  "We're going to have a conversation with him."

  I glared at him.

  "Okay, an interrogation."

  "Abso-fucking-lutely not. I will not torture anyone."

  "A mental interrogation," he tapped his head. "You're going to torture me."

  I fingered my blades, squinting in suspicion.

  "I've been smoking slipweed all night. I can't die, and I heal fast. I need him to see that if you'll hurt me, you'll hurt him worse."

  I thought about it, then nodded. It was Cord's turn to squint.

  "You didn't have to agree so quickly," he said.

  "I'm a team player."

  We walked over to the captain, who was regarding us with a mixture of fear, annoyance, and curiosity.

  "Captain," Cord said, "we need information. Give it to us, and my friend here won't vivisect you."

  I grinned and picked at a nail with a knife. His eyes flicked from me to Cord.

  "We need to know where the vault is, and what the guard disposition is like there."

  The captain's eyebrows came together and he shook his head, droplets of sweat spraying the table. He tried to rise, and Rek put a heavy hand on his shoulder, slamming him back into his chair, teeth coming together with a clack.

  "Nenn?" Cord said.

  I slipped the knife back into its sheath and moved. My fist caught Cord across the jaw, and I heard his teeth rattle, a single white molar popping out of his lips and skittering across the table. He spat blood. The captain stared, eyes again the size of saucers.

  "Captain? You gotta help, or she's gonna kill me."

  He shook his head a second time, and I hammered my knee into Cord's balls, and when he doubled over, brought my fist down again. His head rocked, and Cord swayed, but he kept his feet.

  "You gotta help me man, this bitch is crazy!" Cord shouted at him.

  The captain flicked his eyes back and forth, and sweat redoubled its efforts on his forehead. I grabbed Cord's hand and snapped his pinky, the sound like a small branch breaking. Rek winced, and the captain made a muffled sound of horror.

  Cord leaned on the table, pale and sweating himself now. He loomed over the captain. "You believe in law and order, right? Justice? Are you gonna let her kill me? What do you think she's gonna do to you?"

  The captain lowered his lids, and I did the thing I'd been saving up. I grabbed Cord's hand and flattened it against the table. He fixed me with a panicked look, then one of agony as I brought my blade down, severing the broken pinky. The stump sprayed blood across the table, marring the captain's nightshirt. His eyes went wide as Cord collapsed and I approached the bound man, blade held low. I pressed it against the inside of his thigh, and the stink of urine filled the air.

  Muffled sounds of protest issued from below the gag, and I nodded at Rek. He pulled the gag down.

  "Gret's balls, please don't cut my dick off please don't cut my dick off."

  "You have an answer for me?"

  "It's in the low town. Anaxos knew no one would ever look there. Four guards, plainclothes, and a Harrower."

  "Thanks," I patted his cheek.

  Cord popped back up, grinning. He held a bloody rag to the stump of his finger. The captain cursed.

  "Okay, Rek," he said.

  Rek nodded, and punched the man, once. The captain slumped, unconscious. The room returned to quiet.

  "Really Nenn, my finger?" Cord asked.

  I shrugged. "You said you heal fast."

  "
Yeah, but I don't regrow limbs. That was my favorite finger. It fit places."

  "Stop whining, you have two."

  He showed me another finger, and I climbed the stairs to get some rest.

  Bad Timing and Good Lovin'

  Dreams are right in that weird country between home and a city you've never visited before. The ground feels familiar—here a tree you used to play under, there an old dog, his one ear tattered from too many fights—and wrong, as if the walkways developed hillocks you didn't remember. In this one, I'm seven, maybe eight, in the yard of Our Lady of the Constant Weeping and Moaning, or some such thing.

  Kids played in the dirt, fenced with sticks, or just beat one another to a pulp over a bit they'd squirreled away, a piece of fruit saved up from lunch. We were the orphaned ones. Sure, some of us had dead family—flux, war, robbery—but a good portion of us were there because our parents couldn't afford us anymore. So they sold us for a few silvers or a crown, and they got to eat for a few months. Some turned it into a job. And before you start to judge, don't. The state kept us alive, and selling us kept them alive. You did what you could. Survival for most people isn't an optional instinct, and when it kicks in, you fight like a rabid dog to keep what's yours.

  So there I was, playing in the dirt when I hear a shout, and a big kid—probably only weeks from shipping out to the state laundries—steps over to a girl. She's got some sort of bauble, probably just a single copper bit, but in my dream, it's a glass sphere, and in that sphere, lives we could have lived. He knocks her over, and before I can think, I'm on him. Biting, clawing, spitting. He goes down crying, his head suddenly that of a donkey, braying into the hot sun.

  The kids, they raise me up, chant 'Nenn, Nenn, Nenn', and the girl hands me her bauble. I see a beach. I see tanned flesh and cold drinks, and I see white sand and blue surf. Something on my face is wet, and when I wipe it away, the dream breaks.

  ***

  I groped around in the dark and pulled a cigar from my pack, lighting it and savoring the thick heady smoke. It had been a while—I'd learned a long time ago that a woman smoking a cigar in public was like a man with a dick on his forehead. People remembered that shit.

  Something outside caught my attention, and I crept to the window, peering out. The street was dim, lit only by a single lantern from my vantage point, but I could make out two shapes. One, a hunched man in a cloak, stood near to another with wild hair. I couldn't make out their speech, but could tell they were deep in conversation, gestures and hand bobs marking it a lively one. Finally, they split, the man in the cloak drifting away into the dark, and the other turning. The light caught her face and Lux glanced over her shoulder before heading back toward the house.

  My brain tried to stitch together any scenario where this made sense. Maybe she was buying info. Maybe she needed a fix. Maybe she was selling us out. This went on for a while until my door opened. I turned, light from the hall outlining Lux's slim form. She hesitated a moment, then closed it, padding to me, sitting on my bedroll.

  "Can't sleep," she whispered.

  I decided to keep what I'd just seen to myself, until I'd sorted my thoughts. Truth was, loneliness and the dream ended up working me into knots, and I didn't trust myself to make a decision untainted by emotion.

  "Wanna talk about it?"

  She turned her head, gave me a smile. Her breath was sweet, like late roses, her skin lovely.

  "It's lonely, death," she said. "You can't imagine—you'd think there would be all of these people on the other side, waiting for you—family—but it's just another land like this one. You have to make your own way. And maybe they're out there, waiting. Maybe that land is just another test, but it leaves you cold. And if you come back—it comes back with you, that emptiness."

  I didn't know how to respond to that. Instead, I set the cigar down and wrapped my arms around her. She smelled of autumn leaves, and placed her head on my shoulder, then turned until she faced me. She leaned in and kissed me on the lips, and I hesitated only for a moment. Then I returned it. Her skin was softer than I'd expected, her body warmer than I'd anticipated, her lips sweeter than I thought possible.

  ***

  I woke alone and padded down the stairs to find Lux at the kitchen table, working on a plate of simple wheat cakes. Another sat to the side for me, and I dug in, glancing once or twice at her. She did little to return the notice, and I mentally shrugged. Of all the times to get entangled, this wasn't the best. I filed away the talk I'd wanted to have with her for after we were done, and finished my breakfast, pushing the plate away when done.

  "Where are the others?" I asked.

  I wanted to talk to Cord about Lux sneaking around the night before. Despite what we'd shared, it hooked barbs into my gut, and I knew she wasn’t ready to share whatever secret she kept. Rek would wax philosophical about morality, or tell me a story about the time the four of them fell into a pile of pig shit and discovered a rose. I needed someone who wouldn't bullshit me.

  "Downstairs," Lux said. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes. Whatever happened the night before kept her up, even after our entanglement.

  I shoved away from the table, and took the cellar stairs down. I paused at the bottom. Four wooden planks standing upright occupied the storeroom floor, each holding a lock. The captain was gone, and in his place was a makeshift map. Rek sat in the chair, looking it over, and Cord leaned against a post, a smug look on his face.

  "Where's the captain?" I asked.

  "Dumped him in the shantytown after a nice dose of nepe."

  "Wow," I said, "Well, if he remembers his name by next week, I'll be impressed."

  "That would be good timing," Cord said.

  "So what's all this?" I asked.

  "Practice," Rek rumbled without looking up.

  "Each of these is an approximation of the lock on the vault," Cord said.

  I leaned in, taking the locks in. They were solid steel, four bolts coming from the edge of the door, the keyhole in the shape of a clover. I assumed Cord's key would fit that hole. Several sigils surrounded the doorplate in concentric circles. I ran my hand over them.

  "What are these?"

  "Wards. Strengthening for the wood and iron, alarm for the lock, pain for anyone trying to crack it. These aren't as strong as what we'll encounter at the vault, but they still bite."

  "I thought you had a key."

  "Yeah, but if something happens to me, you'll need to know how to crack this."

  "Why not Lux? She's the mage."

  "By the time we get to the vault, she'll be restricted. The mages are bringing their Leashmen."

  "How do you know this?"

  "She told me."

  That must have been what I'd seen the night before, then. Lux paid for information. I let relief loosen my shoulders a little, then looked at the locks and sighed. I wasn't tickled with being the sacrificial lamb here.

  "Okay, where do I start?"

  ***

  The door sparked, and the chalk in my hand popped out and skittered across the floor, electricity seizing my muscles. I screamed through clenched teeth, and Lux sighed behind me.

  "No, NO! You've got to bisect the first orbital, then trisect the second, not the other way around! You're going to get us all killed." She turned to Cord. "She's going to get us all killed."

  I flipped her the bird and picked up the chalk. I couldn't wrap my head around the damn sigils on the door. Every time I looked at them, they seemed to crawl across the wood, and I couldn't make out where one circular set started and the other ended.

  "What if we just scrape them off the door?" I asked.

  "They they'll be scraping you off the wall," Lux said.

  "Cord, tell her to relax, or I'm going to use blood to bisect these orbitals."

  "That'll never work," Lux said.

  "She means yours," Cord said.

  Lux shut her jaw with a snap, and I turned back to the door, studying the runes again. They were simple constructions, on
es Lux claimed most fledgling mages learned in their first couple of years at the Arcanum. The trick was, every time I cut a circle, the second actually did move, making the sequence I needed to part there harder to suss out. It was a simple but maddening countermeasure.

  I thought of those puzzles they sold at the carnival, sliding bits of wood where you moved pieces one way, then the other, back and forth until you had the picture they made. I put the chalk to the wood, crossing out the first set of symbols. A snap, and the second set rotated, putting them out of alignment with the first.

  I stepped back and looked, trying to see the picture, where the pieces should be, instead of where they were.

  "You admiring your squiggle?" Cord asked.

  I ignored him and made quick motions with the chalk, splitting the second line. It cracked, and the third spun, but by then I had the trick of it, and worked my way down, cracking the lines like they were children's' puzzles. The last snapped, and I stepped back.

  "Gret's balls, she did it," Lux said. "We might not all die."

  Cord grinned and handed me a set of picks.

  "Now the lock."

  I grinned back and took to it. It was complex, but not impossible. I set two of the picks, using a third to hold tension, then the other two in the same configuration. Then, I worked a bar across the entire set, twisting them at the same time. It resisted. I gave it a bit more torsion, and the lock snapped open. Cord clapped me on the back.

  "Holy shit, I think the weird one's right. We might not die."

  Rek called me over to the map they'd laid out on the desk. I didn't recognize the districts, but red highlighted one area, and another encircled.

  "Lowtown and the vault?" I asked.

  Rek nodded. "Way I see it, we're gonna need a distraction. A bloody big one."

  "I got that," Cord said. "I have a plan."

  We groaned in unison.

  Does This Mean You Want Your Shirt Back

  There are few things as maddening as trying to figure out why someone slept with you when they would rather not talk about it. I looked at Lux, reclined on the captain’s couch, head tilted back, eyes half-lidded. I wanted to yell at her, to shake her, to throw cutlery. Instead, I sat on my couch and brooded, staring at the knots and whorls in the wall like they offended me, and I had pledged a blood oath against their families.