Thief's Curse

by C. Greenwood

  CHAPTER TWO

  Frozen in horror, I watched the remaining length of rope slip free of the bedpost and begin sliding over the window ledge.

  “Ferran!” I cried.

  In the space of a few breaths, I recovered my senses enough to rush across the room and catch the line. The rough cord bit painfully into my hands, burning my fingers and palms as I struggled to slow my brother’s fall.

  It was too late. I had hardly snatched the rope when it grew slack and I felt the weight at the other end hit the ground with awful speed. My heart stopped. A sick feeling rushed over me. I leaned out the window, terrified of what I would see. The cruel moon chose that moment to dip behind a cloud. I could make out nothing but darkness in the grounds below.

  “Ferran!” I shouted desperately into the shadows, no longer caring whether my voice drew unwanted attention.

  There was no answer. I had to find out what had happened. On legs that felt made of water, I went to secure the end of the line to the bedpost—tightly this time. My hands shook so badly I could hardly form the knot. When I had finished, I clambered over the ledge, holding on to the rope, and half climbed, half slid down to the ground.

  I reached the bottom, landing on my feet with a hard thud that sent pain shooting up my ankles. My hands were numb from rope burn and sticky with something that was probably blood from my raw palms. I had been in such a clumsy hurry I hardly knew what I was doing on the climb down. I just kept wondering what I would find waiting for me.

  I stumbled around in the darkness, looking for my brother. I hadn’t gone far when I tripped over something—a still form sprawled across the ground. Ferran.

  I dropped to my knees and shook my brother. I spoke his name and cradled his head in my arms. But he remained limp and unmoving. With a feeling of unreality, I felt for his pulse and found none. Ferran was gone.

  * * *

  I should have felt pain or anger. But at that moment, all emotion seemed to drain out of me. I fumbled for the magic amulet at my neck with a vague idea of putting it on my brother. Then I remembered I no longer wore the charm. It couldn’t bring him back now anyway.

  Dimly I grew aware of a noise in the distance, the sound of many approaching feet. I recalled I was in enemy territory and had been yelling Ferran’s name. Moreover, I had left behind an injured man who had probably revived and summoned the praetor’s guards. I had to get out of here. If I lingered any longer, I would be captured.

  With a hollow feeling of detachment, I laid Ferran down and got to my feet. I couldn’t bring him with me. There would be no way to carry him over the castle wall that still stood between me and safety. As quickly as that, my escape plan clicked into place, the instinct for survival driving out all other thought. I welcomed the single, unemotional purpose. I must evade the guards. I must reach the outer wall and the safety beyond.

  I slipped away into the shadows, without looking back. I left Ferran behind for the last time.

  * * *

  Later, I could hardly remember how I escaped. Somehow I melted into the night, avoiding the soldiers searching the grounds for an intruder. I summoned the strength to ascend the outer wall on limbs that were no longer weak or trembling. I must have been going off sheer adrenaline, because by this time my muscles should have had all the climbing they could take.

  Before I knew it, I was back on the grassy knoll overlooking the small Deerwood forest. I rounded the castle, following the road downhill toward town but taking care not to get too close to the street. It might soon be filled with searchers.

  When I reached the main part of the city, I clung to crooked backstreets and alleys, making for the common district and the ragged quarter. I passed decaying lodging houses and filthy moonlit courtyards, before reaching the familiar sight of the Ravenous Wolf. I shared a room with Ada above the tavern. The place was eerily silent at this hour, its windows shuttered and no light escaping from within. I crept around the building and went through a low gate and into the cobbled yard. As I passed a small storage shed, anxious whining and snuffling sounds from inside told me that Ilan, the hound dog Ferran had adopted, must have heard my arrival. She gave an inquiring yip, but I didn’t stop to quiet her.

  I let myself in the back door of the tavern, crossed the empty common area, and climbed the narrow stairway leading to the lodgings above. My friend Ada woke when I entered the dark room we shared. Until recently, Ferran had shared it with us.

  But I wouldn’t think of that. I didn’t bother trying to be stealthy as I came in. While Ada used her magic to create a glowing orb of light, illuminating the room, she asked where I had been. Briefly and matter-of-factly I told her what had happened. I felt nothing as I watched tears slip down her cheeks. She had been fond of Ferran but naturally not as close to him as I. Why then was she more affected than me? She had questions about the details of the death, but I pretended not to hear them. I didn’t have the energy to go into it.

  I went to a wooden chest that stood below the room’s single dirty window. I had bought the trunk recently because we had so few furnishings or places to stow our belongings. Lifting back the lid, I looked down at the knotted kerchief resting inside the box. A faint purple glow emanated from it. But I didn’t touch the bundle containing the magic amulet the riverwoman had given me. If I had put it around Ferran’s neck long ago, instead of my own, he might be alive now. Of course, I wouldn’t be. I rubbed my throat, where the rope that was used to hang me only a day ago had left a ring of raw skin. I wondered whether if I put the amulet on right now, it would purge the memory of what had happened back at the castle. It had taken away so many happy memories from my past. Maybe it could take away bad ones too. Maybe it could make me forget Ferran ever existed at all. But I didn’t put it on. I only looked and thought.

  I was dimly aware of a soft knock at the door. Behind me, Ada answered it. After a moment, I overhead her conversing in soft tones with whoever stood out in the hall. I recognized the newcomer’s voice without needing to turn around and look. It was Javen, another friend and fellow member of the local thieves’ guild. Ada’s tone became insistent. They were arguing about something. I drew my mind back from Ferran and the amulet and listened to what they were saying.

  “He demands everyone be there,” Javen was saying. “It’s an urgent guild meeting. He’s in a rage about something, and I don’t know what he’ll do to anyone who doesn’t answer the call.”

  There was no question of who was meant by “he.” The thief king ruled our guild with an iron fist, and none dared disobey his summons. There was also no need to ask where the meeting was occurring. Ever since the city guard had raided the thieves’ old den, their current favorite hideout was an ancient temple in old town. That was where these meetings usually happened.

  “Rideon is in no condition to go,” Ada insisted. She dropped her voice but not so low that I couldn’t hear her add, “His brother just died.”

  “I’ll attend the meeting.” I interrupted loudly. My voice sounded strangely flat and unemotional.

  I needed to get out of this room and go somewhere busy, someplace where I could be distracted from wondering if Ferran’s lifeless body had been discovered yet and how our enemies would dispose of it. Filled with a sudden restless energy, I snatched my magic bow from the corner where it rested against the wall. Here was one enchanted object I didn’t resent.

  Over Ada’s concerned protests, I joined her and Javen in leaving the Ravenous Wolf and heading out toward the meeting place. As the three of us followed the dark, crooked streets leading toward the most ancient part of the city, I could tell by my friends’ silence that they were worried about me. They thought I shouldn’t be getting on with business immediately after losing my little brother. They probably thought I should still be resting and recovering anyway from my “death” the day before.

  But I needed to keep moving. My body was sore and tired; my eyes were aching and dry. But my mind demanded distraction.

  The sky was lightening
from black to deep gray as we passed through the crumbling gates and into the abandoned old town. This always seemed a strangely silent place, a pocket of stillness in the middle of an otherwise bustling city. The earliest inhabitants of Selbius had dwelt here once. But they had been wiped out by a plague hundreds of years ago. More recent residents had built the rest of the town, leaving this area vacant. The dark ruins of old houses stood like hollow shells lining either side of the way. As we walked up the row toward the remains of the temple, I felt much like these desolate buildings, an empty frame with nothing inside.

  Embracing this strange state of non-feeling, I took the temple steps two at a time and entered the torchlit interior. The place held a couple hundred thieves milling around, a combination of friends and almost strangers who I knew only by face or name.

  A large brazier of hot coals stood at the center of the room. Its flames and those of torches mounted at intervals along the wall cast patterns of light and shadow dancing across the stone walls. The low hum of voices echoed up to the ceiling high overhead. The snatches of conversation I overheard as I pushed through the gathering made it clear no one was quite sure why they had been summoned so unexpectedly.

  I made my way to the front of the crowd, where I had a view of the thief king sitting on his throne-like chair at the head of the room. His famous black blade rested on a block at his side. The Thief’s Blade as we called it was the symbol of the head of the guild. None but the captain of the thieves could wield it. The sword was generally used to mete out cruel justice on those who crossed the guild or its leader. More than once I had nearly felt its bite.

  The thief king looked agitated as he watched his followers continue to trickle in. His one good eye seemed to burn with angry intensity. The other eye was hidden behind a leather patch surrounded by scarred skin stretching from cheek to brow. Rumor had it the disfigurement was the result of a fight between the thief leader and a follower who betrayed him and attempted to take control of the guild. It was said the traitor had thrust a torch into the thief king’s face. I knew that betrayer’s heart now rested in a clay jar in a crypt below the temple.

  “I trust our captain will eventually let us know what we’re gathered here for,” I said to the shaggy-haired young man I found myself shoulder to shoulder with. Kinsley was a friend, one of my best within the guild, despite the fact we had nearly killed one another the first time we met.

  Before Kinsley could answer, the thief king leapt suddenly from his seat. He must have decided enough of us were assembled for whatever he had in mind.

  He paced in front of us with an air of barely contained ferocity, like a hungry wolf.

  His voice rang across the room. “We have a thief in our midst.”

  His accusation was followed by a brief silence, then uncertain laughter from guild members who thought he was joking. They were mistaken.

  “There is a traitor among us,” he continued, eyeing us all with a scowl. “Someone has robbed me and also each of you, stealing from the treasure hoard.”

  He was talking about the pile of stolen goods and coins heaped in the crypt below. It was considered to be the shared property of the guild, the result of all our work. But in reality, it was treated as more or less the thief king’s private treasure.

  “One of you knows who the betrayer is,” the thief leader continued, slowing his pacing to examine each of us in turn.

  I felt a stirring of some uncertain emotion as his sharp gaze swept over me before passing on to the next man. I knew exactly who had sneaked down into the crypt and carried away the missing items. It was me. Thinking to make safe my future and Ferran’s in case things went wrong with the guild, I had recently siphoned away a tiny part of the thief king’s riches and stowed them in a safe place.

  Did he guess it was me? I should have been afraid at the thought. Instead, the idea of a clash with the cruel captain of the thieves sent a little thread of excitement through me. I couldn’t survive such a confrontation. But defiance and the anger that came with it would be a relief. It would feel good to fight.

  For the first time since it happened, I was able to block out the haunting image of Ferran’s trusting face as I lowered him out the window. I stopped remembering all the times I had promised to protect him. I focused instead on the words of the thief king, as he walked up and down, ranting at all of us, threatening torture and death on anyone who withheld information. Despite all his raving, no one gave me up as the thief. No one but Ada knew what I had done, and I was confident that she, at least, would say nothing.

  Listening to the thief king’s shouts, I fed this new streak of rebellion. I stoked my resentment against the guild leader, desperate for someone to hate, some new battle to fight. Anything to take away the terrifying emptiness that threatened to engulf me when I thought of Ferran.

  After a while, the leader of the guild ended his tirade. Although he was clearly unsatisfied with the lack of results, he let us disperse with a warning that he would be watching all of us. He would find the traitor, he swore.

  While everyone was making their way outside, I saw Ada waiting for me on the temple steps. I didn’t go to her. Instead, I veered around a corner and hid among the shadows of the soaring columns just inside the entrance. I waited here, concealed until Ada finally gave up and left. All the thieves departed. Even after I saw the thief king go, I stayed in my hiding spot. Someone could be watching, waiting to see if the mysterious traitor would make his move and attempt to get into the treasure room again. I would outwait them.

  It wasn’t until a golden dawn chased away the last shade of night that I finally emerged from behind the columns. The place was empty. I was sure of it.

  I crossed the temple, but it wasn’t toward the treasure room I went. That could be reached by sliding aside a large statue behind the ancient altar and descending a set of hidden stairs into the crypt. But I wasn’t interested in riches right now. I had my eye on a different kind of valuable. I went to the thief king’s vacant throne and picked up the ceremonial black-bladed sword resting beside it.

  It wasn’t until the Thief’s Blade was in my hand that I fully realized the growing idea in the back of my mind. I was going to challenge the leadership of the thief king.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maybe it was a sudden streak of courage that made me bold enough to snatch the Thief’s Blade. Or possibly it was because I no longer had anything to lose. Maybe I half hoped to be caught and killed by the thief king. For whatever reason, I carried the sword openly through old town and then down the busy streets of the common district. On crowded roads and in the broad light of day, I dared someone to notice it, to report my rebellious act to the guild leader.

  I saw no one I knew along the way, but I knew that would change. The Ravenous Wolf was silent as I approached the ugly building with its bowed upper story sagging over the lower level. The wooden sign hanging above the door, bearing the likeness of a snarling wolf’s head, squealed on rusty hinges as it swung in the morning breeze. It was one of the rare times of day when few people were about. Last night’s patrons would have gone home in the early hours, and tonight’s visitors wouldn’t arrive until later in the day. Eventually they would come for the food and drinks and to gamble over the vicious beast fights that took place in a great pit indoors. This was a popular place for the thieves from the guild to spend their evenings. When they arrived, I meant them to see me with the infamous black sword. There was no doubt word would spread quickly after that and the thief king would soon learn who now carried the Thief’s Blade.

  Letting myself into the walled yard and through the back door, I found the common room empty, except for Ada, who was busily sweeping the floor. She worked here as part of her deal for lodging upstairs rent free. Another part of her job was to pocket the customers’ valuables when they got careless. She passed those on to the owner of the establishment and sometimes to the thief king himself, who had arranged her place here.

  I had hoped to slip by Ada and g
o upstairs to get a few hours of sleep. This past night had been a long one. But she caught me halfway up the stairs.

  “We need to talk,” she said, thrusting her broom in front of me to block my way.

  “Later,” I said, sighing and rubbing wearily at my forehead with one hand. I was in no mood for conversation.

  Ada’s gaze dropped to my other hand, the one that gripped the stolen weapon. Her eyes widened. “Is that…?”

  “Yes, it’s the Thief’s Blade. I stole it.”

  She shook her head. “You’re mad,” she said. “You know what the thief king’s capable of for lesser offenses than this. Why would you provoke him at such a time?”

  “Why do you think?” I asked resignedly, pushing her broom aside and shoving my way upstairs. My rush of nervous energy from earlier had passed, and I felt only exhaustion. The sword suddenly seemed such a heavy weight I considered abandoning it on the stairs.

  Ada followed after me. She would say no more now, but I knew as soon as we were safely in the privacy of our room she would lecture me on my reckless behavior. I was in no fit state to argue, because even I knew what I had done was foolish. Now that my anger had seeped away and adrenaline no longer rushed through my veins, what I had just done seemed without purpose. With Ferran gone, all things were pointless.

  I strangled the thought. I wouldn’t dwell on my brother or wonder whether his corpse was under the ground yet. I must think of anything but that.

  I entered our room, dropped my sword and bow in the corner, and collapsed onto the pile of blankets that served as my bed. If I could get a little sleep, maybe my head would be clearer when I woke. I turned my back on Ferran’s empty pallet next to mine, instead facing toward the trunk that held my belongings. My magic amulet was in that box. I wondered again if putting it on would dim the memory of my guilt and failure, as it had taken away so many other memories.