Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids

by Michael McClung

  I heard a hiss and a scrabbling of talons on the hardwood floor. I knew the thing was disgustingly fast. Probably fast enough to get hold of me before I made it outside. No time to turn and cast a knife. So I turned my lunge into a sort of pirouette as I reached the door, knife arm extending out to where I imagined it would be.

  I got it in the throat.

  It ripped my forearm all to hells, and when we landed in the street, it was on top of me. My knife in its neck kept it from biting my face off, though it still strained fiercely to get its slavering, beetly jaws on me. Its claws were starting to do to my front what they’d done to my back, though, scoring lines of blood and fire down my chest and belly.

  I got another knife into its side with my left hand. Using the two knife hilts as handles, I rolled over and arched my body away from its talons. However fierce it was, I had the weight advantage. I got it mostly on its back. Carefully, I put a boot to its neck and put my weight down on it as it twisted and writhed.

  Then I pulled out both my blades and with speed and precision borne of long, long practice, I planted one in each of its faceted eyes, until the tips grated against the back of its skull.

  “That’s for Locquewood, I suppose,” I panted, then sprang back, knives in hand. It thrashed a moment more, and was suddenly still.

  Bosch faced me from the doorway.

  “Impressive,” he piped. “I would clap, but, you know.” He raised his two blood-stained forelimbs, waggled them back and forth. Then he attacked. Where the hells is Holgren? I thought as I parried one of his limbs. The other tore a bloody gash along my thigh. Then I was under him, and eight metal stakes were rising and falling all around me, striking the cobbles with enough force to shatter them as Bosch did his best to impale me without actually being able to see me. It couldn’t have lasted more than a half dozen heartbeats, but for that brief eternity I was certain I was going to die as I twisted desperately to avoid being punctured.

  And then there was an enormous KRUMP sound. Above me, Bosch’s body crumpled inward as if a hundred war hammers had struck it all at once.

  Bosch staggered drunkenly away, the weird lights that played upon his now twisted body dimming. When they died out, he fell, motionless, to the cobbles.

  “Sorry I was late,” said Holgren as he staggered up to me, clutching his side. “Bosch evidently expected me as well, and prepared a reception.” I looked past him, down the street, and saw a wet lump about as big as a horse but covered in scales, ichor still spurting out of it in time to a slowly fading heartbeat.

  “Better late than never.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Both of us were tired and bleeding, and I had only a bare hour or so before I was supposed to give the toad to Heirus. But we couldn’t just leave the hell-spawned mess that had been Bosch and his daemonette lying there on the street. I ripped my ruined jacket into strips to bind up the worst injuries while Holgren did some magely thing to get hold of Kluge involving a prism–apparently they’d exchanged some sort of magical calling card that let them contact each other.

  Once I’d stopped my blood from watering the cobbles, I offered to do the same for Holgren, but he waved it away.

  “I’m going to check on Locquewood,” I said, and he nodded.

  “I’ll wait here, and keep an eye on these things.”

  I found and lit a lamp in the front of the shop, then carried back to the storeroom.

  He was dead. And mutilated. It was about as bad as I had expected. I hadn’t known him well, but I don’t think he would have wanted to survive what Bosch had done to him.

  Most of him was sitting in a delicate chair behind a delicate desk. I made a mental note to ask Bollund if he’d had any family. If Bollund lived.

  I was about to turn and go back out to Holgren when the package caught my eye.

  About the size of my fist, it lay on the floor, half-smashed, obviously knocked there in the scuffle. Its beautiful wrapping was spattered with Locquewood’s blood. I looked closer and saw my name written on the sky-blue paper it had been wrapped in. It looked like a feminine hand, one not terribly accustomed to writing.

  I picked it up, heard the tinkling of broken glass from inside it. Carried it and the lantern back out to the street.

  Holgren was bent over Bosch’s remains, trying to wrench off the amber block that held Bosch’s head.

  “Souvenir?” I asked him.

  “Ha. I want to retrieve it before Kluge arrives, which should be quite soon. Gavon will demand proof if you want the contract cancelled and your money back. Or had you forgotten?”

  “Actually, I had.” Hopefully Heirus had cancelled the contract, but a little insurance was welcome.

  With an audible crack the head came free. “There, that’s got it.” He turned to hand it to me, saw my hands were full.

  “What have you got there?”

  “The answer to a mystery, maybe.” I told him about Estra Haig’s girl looking for me, leaving a package for me with Locquewood.

  “Why Locquewood?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the answer’s inside.”

  “So why aren’t you opening it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve just suddenly got a strange feeling I won’t like whatever it is.”

  He just looked at me.

  “Alright, alright.” I put the lamp down and tore open the wrapping, exposing a square little rosewood jewellery box, sadly splintered in one corner. I lifted the latch.

  Inside was a scented piece of paper, folded small to fit, and bits of colored, broken glass. Broken glass I recognized from part of one green wing and from the delicate head and long, thin beak.

  The hummingbird that Corbin had swiped from me the day before he died.

  I fished out the note and set the box down. Unfolded the stiff, scented paper:

  Madam Amra,

  Corbin told me the bird had come from you, so I return it, and to show what I next write is the truth.

  Corbin was my man. Madam Estra holds my indenture, and he was going to pay it, to buy it out so he and I could be together. But Madam Estra didn’t like it, hated it in fact, that Corbin had chosen me to love.

  I know Corbin is dead and gone. I knew it as soon as you came into the Dream to tell Madam Estra. His name on your lips and the look on your face told me all. But you didn’t know about him and me. And I couldn’t tell you, not there under her roof. So I want to tell you that if Corbin came to a bad end as my heart tells me he did, it was Estra Haig that did the deed, or had it done rather, because that last night before Corbin never came back to me, she told me he never would. She told me I was hers, her property, and I could no more take her man than her hairbrush could, or her dog. And when I told her that was for Corbin to say, she laughed and told me Corbin wouldn’t be saying anything anymore.

  Corbin told me you were a fierce one, and that if I was to find myself in trouble, you was the one to find if I couldn’t find him. I’m not asking for anything, except for Corbin. If you’re looking for the one who laid him low, then now you know.

  I leave this with Corbin’s ‘connection’ as he never told me where to find you.

  Sincerely,

  Lyra Juvis Blackdaughter

  “That bitch.” I hissed.

  “Which bitch would that be?” Holgren asked, but I only half-heard him.

  “She sat there, twisting her napkin in despair, offering me assistance in hunting down Corbin’s killer, the fucking picture of sorrow!” I kicked the jewellery box down the street, scattering bits of colored glass along the cobbles.

  Holgren carefully took the note from me. Read it. Handed it back. I crumpled it in my fist, then forced myself to calm. I smoothed out the letter, folded it back up carefully and stuck it in my pocket.

  “So you’re going to kill her?” he asked.

  “Me? I’m a law-abiding citizen, Holgren. Especially when there’s an inspector in the vicinity.” I pointed my chin down the st
reet, where a carriage had just turned the corner, with a dozen city watch trotting behind, armed with pikes.

  “There’s late, and then there’s too late,” I muttered.

  Kluge didn’t have anything to say to me, which suited me fine. He listened to Holgren’s statement, then made a brief inspection of the shop and the corpses.

  “Where’s this one’s head?” he asked when he got to Bosch.

  Holgren looked like he wanted to feign ignorance, but he pulled his cloak back and showed the grisly trophy.

  “Is there a particular reason you want that?” Kluge asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Do I want to know what that reason is?”

  “Not really, Inspector.”

  Kluge let out a sort of disgusted sigh and said “Get out of my sight, both of you.” Then he gave his men some instruction regarding Bosch’s corpse. They got busy wrapping the thing in a canvas tarp while Kluge set about burning the demon corpses with magefire.

  “You heard the Inspector,” I said to Holgren.

  The sky was beginning to pink with dawn as we hobbled away towards my meeting with Red Hand.

  Chapter Thirty

  “I suppose you’re coming with me, then?” I asked Holgren as we made our way towards the Necropolis.

  “Well, it is on the way home,” he replied. He was smiling, but his hand was pressed against the wound in his side.

  “Got any magic for healing?” I asked. My back was still on fire, and the gash in my thigh wasn’t much better. Both were going to severely restrict my mobility in a fight.

  “Not my specialty, I’m afraid.”

  “Any idea what to do about Heirus?”

  “Well, you have two options, it seems. Give him the toad. Or make him take it.”

  “I just wish I knew what he wanted it for,” I muttered.

  Holgren gave a short chuckle. “What would the king of assassins want with a god-forged weapon, I wonder?’

  “That’s just it,” I replied. “I hate to say this again, but you didn’t see him. I did. He doesn’t need any magic blade to be the deadliest thing on two legs. It’s not going to make him a better killer, Holgren. You can’t improve on perfection.”

  “He obviously made an impression on you.”

  I shrugged, and darted out to hail a hack that had just turned the corner. At least I wouldn’t have to walk the entire way to my doom.

  #

  The gates were open when we got there.

  “Why don’t you go on home?” I asked Holgren as we walked in.

  “I think I’ll stay with you.”

  “There’s no point sticking your neck out. This isn’t your fight, never was.”

  “So you’ve decided to fight?” he replied, avoiding my point.

  “It’s just an expression.” We got to the hill, started climbing towards the Weeping Mother statue. It really was quite homely.

  “I think I know you well enough now to say that you’re wrong. It’s become fairly plain that you, Amra Thetys, given the choice between fighting and capitulating, will pick a fight every damned time.”

  “So you’re saying I’m stubborn.”

  “Oh, yes, very much so. Contrary as well.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Don’t look now, but you’re being stubborn. And contrary.”

  “I know you are, but what am I?”

  That got a laugh out of him. But it died away quickly and his eyes got hard. I followed his gaze.

  Heirus was standing directly beneath the Weeping Mother. He looked bored, and impatient.

  As we closed to the last few yards, he spoke.

  “You have it. Give it to me.” He held out a hand.

  “I have it,” I replied. “But I need to know what you’re going to do with it.”

  He cocked his head, and a confused look flitted across his face. “You know I can and will kill you, yet you continue to behave as though your needs, your questions matter.”

  “The question itself matters, not who it belongs to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you don’t need this Blade to become more powerful. You are the most deadly man alive. So, Heirus, Red Hand, what do you intend to do with it?”

  “An excellent question,” said the Arhat, who had suddenly appeared a few yards away.

  “I told you to keep that one away from me,” hissed Heirus.

  “And I told you he's not my dog,” I replied.

  The Arhat approached. “So, Kingmaker, Godslayer, why not answer the question? You well know what will happen if the Blade is loosed. What do you want with it?”

  “What I want with the Blade is none of your concern.”

  “You know that is untrue. I am tasked with guarding it.”

  “And you have failed.”

  “Not yet.”

  Heirus moved, and suddenly the Arhat had a knife in his gut.

  “Now you have failed,” sneered Heirus into his face. That’s when Holgren broke the magical chain around my neck.

  “Remember,” he whispered as it fell to the ground, “don’t kill yourself.” Then it hit the grass and everything changed.

  With a thought, the world stood still. I looked around me, and it was like looking at a painting. Holgren stood, lips still shaped around the last sound he’d uttered. The Arhat stared into Heirus’s eyes, his face only just beginning to show the agony of steel in his intestines.

  I made two knives appear and began to walk towards them. “Come on then, Red Hand,” I said and his head whipped around to me. “Let’s see how good you really are.”

  He smiled and pulled his knife out of the Arhat. He actually saluted me with it. And then he flew at me, still a blur.

  With a thought, I forced Holgren’s magic to match him, and met his thrust from a half-decent guard position, knocking his knife hand away to my left with my wrist and following it with a thrust of my own with the knife in my right hand. But he had already spun away.

  “You cannot sustain such magic. Either the toll it takes will kill you or I will. You cannot win.”

  I returned to the Aquila guard position, sideways to him, left arm and leg extended and right arm above my head, circling slowly, ready to strike from on high. It had been a long, long time since I’d been in anything like a formal knife duel. But you never forget. He was right, though; I could already feel the thirst building, as if I’d had nothing to drink for a long, hot day. He could just toy with me until I collapsed.

  So I attacked.

  I pushed the magic even harder, and came in with a showy feint to his eyes with my right while I drove my left down toward his groin. He jumped back, and back again, and gave me a shallow slice across the back of my left hand for my trouble.

  “I could have had your thumb,” he said, and I knew he was right.

  I was good with a blade. He was much, much better.

  When the cramps started I couldn’t think what they were for a moment. Then I realized they were hunger pangs; hours, days perhaps of hunger compressed into an instant. I gritted my teeth against them, and the aching flesh of my back, and the ragged gash across my thigh, and pushed the magic once more, and flung my right hand blade. I was hoping—praying, really—that once it left my hand it would not suddenly slow.

  It didn’t.

  It took him in the throat. He hadn’t even tried to block it.

  His eyes got wide. His mouth sagged. He made choking sounds.

  And then he pulled my knife out of his neck and laughed at me.

  There was no hole in his neck. There wasn’t even any blood.

  I sat down on the grass and put my head in my hands.

  “Can I have my toad now?” he asked.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Kerf’s balls.” I looked up and he was just standing there, smiling at me. Behind him, to my right, the Arhat was still dying by inches, a crimson stain spreading ever so slowly across the
saffron robes over his stomach. Why didn’t you change forms? It might have given you a chance. But he wasn’t ever going to answer that question now.

  I glanced behind me to my left, and there was Holgren, hand still raised from breaking the chain, infinitesimally moving back to his side.

  I let go of the magic. The Arhat fell to his knees, then rolled onto his side. He was dead, or so close as made no difference. No help could get to him in time. Foolish boy. What had he hoped to accomplish?

  Holgren came to stand behind me, and I could feel his power. He’d summoned up some sort of magic, and it was making the little hairs on the back of my neck fairly twist and jump.

  I dropped my forearms on my knees, considered the cut Heirus had made across the back of my hand, instead of taking my thumb. Beads of blood had formed along its length.

  Blood.

  “You want the toad?” I asked him. “There’s still one more I think you’ll have to go through.”

  “Who? The mage?”

  I shook my head, and wiped the back of my bloodied hand across the emerald cemetery grass. “They say you should never, ever spill blood in the Necropolis,” I told him.

  “Oh, really?” he replied. “And why is that?”

  “Because the Guardian will notice. And investigate. And it’s got a nasty disposition.”

  “Oh, I do,” said a voice like a thousand tombs yawning open. “That I surely do.”

  It sounded as if the voice had come from above. I glanced up, and the Weeping Mother statue stared back down at me. She had changed.

  There was no pity or compassion in that badly carved face now. It had been replaced with cruelty, and madness. A cold, cold wind started up, and the light bled out of the sky.

  “Who shed blood here in this sanctified place?” she asked, “and whose blood was shed?”