Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids

by Michael McClung

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Nothing. Right now that pin is rolling around like a sailor four hours into shore leave. He’ll know you’ve gone to see a mage, of course, but he would have known that if I’d simply severed the connection. Better he wonder who you might know who could tie his spell in knots.”

  “What? Why? You’re putting yourself in line for unnecessary scrutiny, aren’t you?”

  He smiled. “When you came here you assured a knock on my door from the inspector, I think. I’d rather he come wary and respectful. When mages meet, there is a tendency towards discovering who has the greater talent. Occupational hazard, I suppose. Sometimes making the discovery can be hard on the furniture. Now he knows that, whoever I am, I am most likely his master in the Art. It will help head off any possible unpleasantness.”

  “If you say so. Still, I’m sorry to have gotten you involved. I owe you.”

  He waved it away. “I am sorry about your friend. And interested in these statuettes, to tell you the truth. If you care to, you can come by again and I’ll take a look at the one you have. If it is pre-Diaspora, I might be interested in purchasing it from you. I’d give you more than a hundred marks for it, and it will never see the open market.”

  “I’ll think about it. I have a feeling it might be useful to me in the near future.” As a lure, or a threat. “I’ll stop by tomorrow if I can.”

  “What will you do next?”

  “Get some sleep. Find out what there is to know about this Elamner that Corbin contracted with. Decide how best to approach him.” How to get in, knife him, and get out with a whole hide.

  “What about this one?”

  “Bone? I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to do, and looking after that slob will be a pain.” I looked at the dog. He’d fallen asleep on his back under Holgren’s scratching, scarred ears splayed out like little wings, tongue lolling.

  “You could leave him here, for now. Until you make other arrangements. I could use the company. And he will make a nice pretence for your visit here when the inspector comes calling.”

  I glanced around at the various bits of bodies under glass. “You aren’t in need of dog parts, are you?”

  His expression was one of pained indignation.

  “Hey, I was going to make you an offer. Cheap.”

  #

  I managed to catch a hack just south of Daughter’s Bridge. On the ride back I mulled over my options, tried to figure out what my next move was. Corbin’s death had stirred up a hornet’s nest.

  Kluge and company would be scrambling to find someone to pin his death on, before Corbin’s family came to town with blood on their mind. Heirus, I could safely assume, would still be looking for what he’d been willing to kill for. And of course some cold-eyed killers would be arriving in the next few days, come to collect their pound of flesh for Corbin’s old man. From every perspective, all roads could at some point lead to me. It was too late for me to back out, even if I wanted to. I didn’t want to.

  There would be interesting days ahead.

  Chapter Six

  By the time I got home it was late afternoon. I was dead tired. Sleep beckoned. I checked my hidey-hole just to make sure the golden toad was still there. It hadn’t hopped off. The heat was oppressive. I stripped down to my undershirt, grabbed a bottle of sweet white Gosland wine, and crawled into bed. I lay there sweating and thinking and sipping until sleep came.

  Sometimes theft can be as simple and direct as a fist in an unsuspecting face, and sometimes it can be as complex as a military operation. And just like a barroom brawl or a pitched battle, whatever plan you went in with, simple or complex, was bound to be stretched and twisted as events played out. But you’d better have some kind of plan, or you were going to get trounced. Or worse. I was planning a death, not a burglary, but in many ways that just made it easier. Taking a life was, in my experience, a damned sight less complicated than taking jewels from a hidden strongbox.

  What I was facing was getting messier by the moment, however. I needed more information. I needed to act, rather than react. There was too much I just didn’t know. Information had to be my first priority. Without it, I’d end up stumbling into a knife. Or a noose.

  So I needed to case Heirus’ villa. And I needed to brace Locquewood, Corbin’s fixer. I needed to find out more about that damned toad, and I needed to throw the various dogs off their various scents and give myself some breathing room.

  One last swig and I re-corked the bottle and blew out the candle.

  #

  I slept far later than I usually do, deep into the night. But it was a restless, broken sleep, between the heat and the bad dreams. In my dreams I saw Corbin hacked up there in the street, except he kept grinning at me, white teeth pinked with blood. And there was the whispering. Like he was trying to tell me things. Awful things. Terrible truths it was better not to know. Things that made my head pound and my chest constrict.

  And so when an unfamiliar sound intruded, it woke me. Head throbbing, I cocked an ear to the dark. It came again; the stealthy creak of a shutter being slowly eased open. It came from the parlor.

  Amateur. Should have brought some grease along, I thought, and slipped out of bed, knives in both hands. Every room in my house has easily accessible knives. I’d had a lover for a short time that found it off-putting. He went. The knives stayed.

  It was near pitch black. The dark didn’t bother me; I knew the layout of my own house very well and so the dark was more asset than liability. Sliding down the narrow hallway that connected my bedroom to the parlor, I kept low, presenting as small a silhouette as possible.

  I caught him—it—as it was climbing through the window; a black outline against the faint glow from the moonlit street. A humanoid form; head, arms legs all in the expected places. But the head sported knobs and spikes in silhouette, and wicked looking barbs sprouted from the fingers, a dirty parody of brass knuckles.

  Just seeing the outline of the thing made me want to kill it. Hate boiled out of my soul, an unreasoning, vicious hate tinged with disgust. I wanted to kill it. I had to kill it. I felt my lips pull back over my teeth, felt a snarl start way down in my lungs. I threw a knife. I aimed for the throat, but it shifted at the last instant, and the blade struck the meat of the thing’s shoulder with a wet thwock. It hissed in pain and surprise, and toppled backward into the street. I rushed to the window, ready to cast again. It was too quick. I caught the barest glimpse of a mottled grey form loping down the alley. It was swallowed up by the dark an instant later, along with the unreasoning hate that had consumed me.

  “Kerf’s crooked staff,” I breathed. And that was it. The whole thing, from waking to stabbing, had lasted less than a minute.

  Now that it was over I began to tremble. I locked the shutter, went to the pantry and tossed down a large portion of the Fel Radoth that I’d banned Corbin from for gulping.

  What in the eleven hells was the thing? I had no idea. What did it want? How had it found me? No idea. But I was certain it hadn’t been some sort of mistake, no random break-in. I don’t believe in chance. I believe in cause and effect.

  As for the tide of hate that had washed over me, I had no explanation. But all of it was bound up together. Somehow. The fact that something could compel me to feel hate, or any emotion for that matter, made me feel a hot kind of hate toward whatever the cause was. Yes, I am aware of the irony.

  The only cause I could think of was that damned golden toad.

  #

  I spent the rest of the night in a state of controlled panic, starting at every creak, every sound from the street. That thing had not been human, and it disturbed me more than I liked to admit that something could take control of my emotions.

  I thought about how it could have tracked me. No way that thing had shadowed me all across the city, from Corbin’s to Holgren’s to my house. Not in that form, at least. But for all
I knew it could be a shape changer. Still, I doubted I’d been tailed. Which brought to mind how Corbin had said he’d gotten careless himself, when he’d lost the other twelve statuettes. Something was going on, something I didn’t understand. Maybe magical. Probably magical. I supposed it was possible that someone or something was looking for the statues with a different kind of sight. Hells, the creature could have sniffed the statue out for all I knew. In any case, I had to assume that the creature, presumably acting in Heirus’ interests, had a way to find the statue wherever it was. Which made things more complicated than I liked.

  When grey dawn crept through the shutters, I went down and looked over the alley the creature had disappeared down.

  I found my knife halfway between streets. The blade was covered in a grey-green slime, and pitted with corrosion. I tapped it against a wall, and the tempered steel blade broke like chalk.

  Shit. Good blades didn’t come cheap.

  #

  My first stop of the day was Corbin’s fixer. Locquewood had a small curio shop near the Dragon Gate. Most of his custom was from the manses along the Promenade, wealthy merchants and minor nobility who could afford the expensive baubles he sold. I would have preferred to brace him after I’d checked out the Elamner’s villa, but with last night’s visitor, I was feeling pressed for time. Things were starting to heat up.

  I came in the back way, through the service entrance. Bollund, Locquewood’s muscle, sat whittling in the back room among packing crates and scattered straw. He glanced up when I came in, then fixed his attention back on his carving. I think it was supposed to be a pheckla, but mostly it looked like a turd.

  “Bollund! Still twice the woman I am, I see. I need to talk to your boss.”

  Bollund glanced up at me, fingered the smashed gristle of what presumably had once been his nose. He’d been a bare-knuckle fighter before becoming ensconced in Locquewood’s back room.

  “You don’t see ‘im. ‘E sees you.”

  “Well he needs to see me. Now.”

  Bollund smirked. He was two heads taller and his bulk could make three of me. He wasn’t impressed and he wasn’t intimidated.

  I pulled out the toad from my leather satchel, unwrapped its silk covering. The buttery glow of the gold drew his beady eye.

  “He’s got five minutes, then I’m taking this to Daruvner.”

  Bollund’s jaw clenched. He shifted his bulk up from the slat-back chair that somehow supported him. Locquewood was a fixer, not a fence, but Bollund knew enough not to make decisions for his employer where money was involved. The toad would fit in tolerably with the kinds of things Locquewood stocked his shop with. A little older, a little uglier, a little less precious, by appearances.

  “Stay ‘ere. Don’t touch nothing.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  He glared at me, then disappeared though an inner doorway.

  I had no interest in selling the thing, of course. Not yet, and not to Locquewood in any case. I just wanted to pump him for information. Whether I would get anything was doubtful; Locquewood’s lips were tighter than a frog’s arse, which was why he was trusted enough by untrustworthy sorts to be a fixer. But he might let something slip.

  Locquewood appeared a few minutes later, a cadaverous dandy in pale yellow silk and bleached lace. He ran manicured fingers through thinning hair and licked his lips.

  “Amra, you know the arrangement. You can’t just show up—”

  “I can do whatever I like when a man trusted to fix commissions gets one of my friends killed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Corbin. I’m talking about Corbin, Locquewood. The client you fixed him up with cut off a few of his more important fingers and then knifed him to death.”

  His pale face turned a delicate shade of green. “Why I never—that’s—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  So Locquewood had been the fixer Corbin had used for this commission. I was fairly sure before, now I was certain of it.

  “Save it. Corbin was a friend. He was killed because of this.” I let him have a glimpse of the toad. If Heirus already knew I had it, I risked nothing. And Locquewood needed to know I wasn’t just spouting off. “He died because of some damned statue, and because his fixer didn’t check the client out well enough. That is, if you weren’t in on it to begin with.”

  “Amra, I can assure you I, ah, am as circumspect as possible in all my business dealings. And I would never poison my own well, so to speak. I am sorry about Corbin’s death. But I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Says you.”

  He got a little impatient. “What do you suspect me of? Having Corbin killed? Taking out a contract on him? Next you'll be accusing me of hiring Red Hand himself to do the deed.”

  “Who was the job for, Locquewood?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  I could tell he wasn’t going to give me anything more. That was fine. I’d planted the idea that I didn’t yet know who Corbin’s customer was and, hopefully, had set Locquewood on a collision course with Heirus the Elamner. Locquewood had more than two marks to rub together; I was willing to bet he would spend what it took to send a message, and keep his reputation as an honest fixer secure. How much good it would do, I didn’t know. But I figured stirring up trouble would help keep eyes off me. It’s easier to swim unnoticed in muddy water, so to speak. Not that I know how to swim.

  I glared at him, mouth tight. He returned my gaze with a bland one of his own.

  “If I find out you had anything to do with this,” I hissed, “you’ll regret it.” And I stormed out of his back room, slamming the door.

  When I walked away from his shop, it was with a spring in my step. It had been a good performance. Maybe not good enough for the Clarion Theatre, but good enough. I was certain Locquewood had bought it.

  My next stop was one I enjoyed less.

  Chapter Seven

  The May Queen’s Dream was a red brick, three-story building on Third Wall Road, with red painted shutters and riotous flowers in every window box. It was as far from the whore’s cribs on Silk Street as silk is from a sow’s ear, but it was a whorehouse none the less.

  A frock-coated butler offered to take my satchel. I declined, and stepped from the staid entry hall with its dark wood panelling into the lush, cool parlor.

  It had been a long time since I’d been here. I’d forgotten Estra’s uncanny decorating tastes. It was a huge room, but managed to convey a sense of intimacy. A creamy marble floor glowed under crystal chandeliers lit at all hours, and the walls were covered in red satin. Plush couches and chairs were arranged around the room in such a way as to create little pockets that invited conversation and intimacy. There were fine sculptures and fine paintings everywhere you looked. A bar ran the length of one wall, dark stained oak topped with pink granite. In one corner stood one of the new harpsichords, though no-one was playing it at the moment. And at the end, a grand, carpeted stairway led to the rooms above. The entire effect was somehow one of understated ostentation.

  This was where Corbin had spent a fair amount of time. He came for the woman I was here to see, but also, I think, for the atmosphere. Perhaps it reminded him of the beauty he must have grown up with. Perhaps Estra had, too. They fought like rats in a bag, to hear him tell it, but he always went back to her. Their relationship wasn’t placid, but it was… constant.

  Only three girls lounged in the parlor. It wasn’t even noon yet. A black haired, green eyed-beauty stood and glided her way towards me. Her pale skin was flawless. Her crimson lips were flawless. The cleavage that pushed out over the top of her whalebone corset was ample, and flawless. I struggled not to hate her.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Welcome to the Dream. Can I offer you some refreshment?”

  “I’m here to see Estra. I have some news for her.”

 
“Madame usually breaks her fast now. Shall I say who is calling?”

  “Amra Thetys.”

  “And this is in relation to?”

  “Corbin. Tell her it’s about Corbin.”

  Something flickered in those emerald eyes. Those perfect lips gave the slightest twitch, as if they wanted to say or ask something, but knew better. Curious. She did a perfect little curtsey and glided off. I walked over to the bar and asked the elderly, white-coated barman for an ale. It was the cheapest thing they served. At the Dream, everything they served was quality, and none of it at bargain prices. But I wasn’t looking forward to telling Corbin’s lover he was dead. I needed something.

  A few minutes later, Raven-hair, face remotely serene, ushered me into the ground floor apartments of the owner of the Dream, Estra Haig. The same taste that had furnished the Dream’s parlor had turned a more intimate, cozy eye on the private rooms. Everything was sunlight and creams and pale pastels, crystal and blonde wood and greenery. Pleasing textures.

  She was sitting at a small table in a beige silk dressing gown, the remains of her breakfast laid before her. She was a well-preserved, striking woman in her late forties. The morning sunlight that streamed in from the glass window showed high cheekbones and delicate crow’s feet, long nose, strong jaw, and the loosening skin of her neck in equal measure. I wouldn’t look that good at her age. Hells, I didn’t look that good at my age. Even without all the scars, I wouldn’t look that good.

  She turned her grey eyes to me and smiled. We knew each other, slightly. Not enough to be chummy. If I was here with news about Corbin, I could read in her face, it wasn’t anything she’d be pleased to hear. She had the look of someone bracing for bad news.

  “Amra. Sit. Have you eaten?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” I sat. “How are you, Estra?”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Listen. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. Corbin’s dead.”