Skulduggery

by Logan Jacobs

  “Kid, we don’t have time for this,” I sighed. “I’m going to swing you, okay? One, two--”

  He let go before I said “three,” which meant that instead of the gentle landing I’d planned, he crashed into the ladder with such a bone-jarring crunch I was amazed he had the presence of mind to hold onto the top rung.

  “Okay now just--” I started, but he was way ahead of me.

  The little halfling scampered up the ladder and hopped over to the windowsill closest to it. Then I watched him heave his little body up and wriggle his way inside without so much as a thank you.

  I’d have shouted out some suggestions for ways the kid could improve his manners, but I had bigger problems. The tension of the rope was too much for the lamppost. Its base splintered with a loud crack, and then it sent me and a red-hot avalanche of burning coals crashing down onto the river of stampeding livestock. I bounced along their backs and did my best to avoid taking the pointy end of a horn to the eye.

  The broken lamppost was still tied to the end of my rope. Lampposts in this part of town weren’t made of hard, heavy wood, but rather a kind of bamboo. It was hollow, and therefore light enough for me to move around even though it was two stories high. I tugged on the rope and pulled the lamppost closer to me, close enough so it was within my reach.

  The post rolled along the backs of the stampede like a log floating on whitewater rapids, its movements erratic but buoyant. I made my way to the back of a broad-shouldered bull and got my legs underneath me like I’d seen trick riders do. Once I was standing up, unsteady though I was, I had enough leverage to hoist up the lamppost and chuck it like a spear.

  The flying post clattered against the narrow walls of the street and landed sideways. It made a kind of fence held taut by the rope that was still tied to the other lamppost back by the Guild gate. The effect of that fence was immediate.

  The stampede were still livestock after all, docile when they weren’t terrified, and the sudden appearance of a barrier seemed to snap them out of their fugue. They ran into the makeshift fence and then stopped, wave after wave of animals skidding to a halt as if they hadn’t been rampaging a second earlier.

  I picked my way across the backs of the animals and reached the Guild gate. I had hoped that if I opened it, these city livestock would act just like the sheep did back on the farm. The ones nearest the gate sensed what I wanted them to do immediately. They funneled through the gate and into the courtyard, and they flicked their tails and nipped at each other like the sheep always did when it was time to head into their pens for the night.

  As the crush of animals thinned out, I was able to hop down onto the ground and herd the stragglers in. The courtyard was a tight fit for all of them once the gate was shut, but at least they were contained.

  Just like that, the street was empty.

  Well, save for the debris from all the destruction the stampede caused, and the smoldering wreckage of the lamppost now blocking one end of the street. I’d let the neighbors sort that one out.

  As for the courtyard full of somebody else’s livestock, well, maybe Hagan would count that as my thieving for the day.

  I retrieved my torch from where it had fallen during the excitement, and amazingly it was still lit. Whatever was in dwarven peat, it sure burned well. I’d heard old shipwrights claim they could even burn underwater, but everybody down at the docks liked to tell absurd stories like that. Ask any of them what the biggest fish they ever caught was, and they’d forget you in their haste to one-up each other with their stories. It was a very useful trick for anyone looking to inspect the cargo holds of ships without any dockworkers asking too many uncomfortable questions.

  I’d been half afraid I’d find Penny’s crumpled body lying in the street once the stampede was gone, but there was no sign of her. Up and down the street, I saw cracks of light as the neighbors pried open their shutters and checked to see if the chaos was over.

  Each window provided light for the street, and they highlighted the danger I had narrowly escaped as the beasts charged onward in the sudden night. My chest was tight with worry, since I still feared for Penny’s life. She was tough, but a stampede of livestock wasn’t the scariest phenomenon that wandered the streets when this sort of thing happened.

  Penny could have taken shelter in one of those houses, but I doubted it. I had to think. Darkness notwithstanding, it couldn’t have been later than noon. Hagan gave Penny the day off. Where would she go on a bright sunny morning with nothing to do?

  An idea popped into my mind, and I laughed.

  It was so obvious.

  I wound my way over to the spice quarter, just a few blocks away from the Guild. The merchants in the market had their lanterns already lit, and business carried on like full darkness at midday was the most normal thing in the world.

  Then again, in our world, it kind of was.

  Shoppers held candles, peered at fragrant mounds of spices, and haggled with spice mongers and hawkers of all sorts of imported goods.

  Thief’s paradise, you would think, but in reality those of us in the professional ranks tended to consider the place out of bounds. The only place to fence anything you lifted at the spice market was to another stall at the spice market. So, other than the occasional pickpocketing run when I couldn’t be bothered to go farther afield, I hardly ever came here.

  I watched an old dwarf lady shake a fistful of cinnamon bark at a shopkeeper and unleash a torrent of scrabbling dwarvish curses.

  “What do you mean it’s not real cinnamon?” he pleaded. “It’s the good stuff, the deep brown bark. It only looks red like that because of the candlelight.”

  The dwarf woman didn’t look convinced. She set a stick of cinnamon alight with her candle, and it sent up a gust of acrid smoke that smelled like a bakery fire, and then chomped down on it. She spat the charred remains out, clapped a copper coin into the shopkeeper’s hands, and trundled off, evidently satisfied.

  “Er, thank you! Hope to see you tomorrow, Mrs. Bilkzucher!” he called after her.

  “If we have one!” she retorted, but she didn’t bother to look back at him.

  I saw several people in the market blanch at that. We all had to put up with the erratic dawn and dusk times, and it never really mattered much.

  But full dark out of nowhere? That was new territory. I was sure I wasn’t the only one ill at ease.

  I veered left off the main row of stalls where the spice vendors were, and then I cut through a large tented stall that specialized in clockwork toys that delighted young and old alike. Until they broke, of course. Which was usually about twenty minutes after the vendor got your money.

  Just to the rear of the clockwork vendor, nestled between a hot corn stall and the monkey trainer whose star performer could crank out wheezy renditions of dancehall tunes on a miniature accordion, I saw the archway I was looking for.

  I pushed back the beaded curtains and felt the sweet, pungent blend of incense and tobacco smoke burn my lungs. This was nominally a hookah bar, but that was not how the proprietors made their money. It wasn’t a terribly large room, but I’d never been there when it wasn’t packed. People of all walks of life lounged on cushions or huddled around little low tables as they puffed on hookah pipes and sipped the acid-green tea the bar served in tiny crystal cups. Someone picked at a lute somewhere upstairs behind one of the veil-draped alcoves, and no one seemed the least bit aware of the celestial miracle that had transpired outside. Inside this place, it was always night.

  I found Penny where I would find her in any room, right in the center of the action. She sat cross-legged on a giant tufted seat, more of a throne than a chair, and her coppery head rested on her delicate ivory hand as if deep in thought. She looked at the cards fanned out in her other hand, then glanced at her compatriots. They were a motley crew of dwarves, grizzled ancient halflings, and a knobbly, woody sort of fellow someone had once told me was an imp. They all looked completely smitten with her, which told me she was reall
y working them today.

  Penny shuffled the cards in her hand, plucked a single one out, and slammed it down onto the table with a flourish. Then everyone else at the table groaned as Penny cackled and swept all the chips on the table over to her side. The regulars, used to Penny’s tricks, gave out a cheer.

  I took a step forward and coughed loudly.

  Penny paid me no mind, happily occupied as she counted her riches.

  I coughed again, louder this time, and Penny snapped her head up with her green eyes ablaze. I never saw her more alive than she was when she’d just gotten the better of some hapless man.

  She sprang up and zoomed over to me in one balletic leap that scattered chips everywhere. No matter, nobody in this place would dream of stealing from anyone in the Guild.

  Relief got the better of me. Instead of the stern things I’d planned to say, I just blurted out what was forefront in my mind.

  “You’re safe,” I sighed.

  “I’m flattered you give a damn,” Penny purred, “but it wasn’t necessary. Although, we do need to move up the date of the warehouse job.”

  “Move it up? We’re not ready,” I argued with a frown. “We have more plans to set up. Dar hasn’t finished his recon job. We’re not ready.”

  “You said that twice,” Penny laughed. “And none of it matters. It’s now or never, Wade.”

  I blinked at her in shock. “Now?”

  “Right now,” Penny said firmly. “How long do you think this dark is gonna last? The day priests will change it back soon, and we both know they won’t give it up to the night priests for a week at least.”

  Then, she ran out into the dark, and I had no choice but to follow.

  Chapter 4

  Penny and I ran through the ink-dark streets in silence.

  I took the lead and held my torch low so we could see any obstacles on the road. There were plenty, thanks to the stampede earlier. An overturned poultry cart blocked most of an intersection, the cages smashed and strewn in every direction, the chickens once inside now happily going to town on a burst sack of grain some poor baker’s errand-boy must have dropped during his escape.

  The neighborhood folk had already begun to find ways to carry on with their days, despite the unscheduled nightfall.

  I waved to Madame Rindell, the proprietress of the local dancehall, whose army of buxom waitresses had formed an assembly line to fold, light, and hang multi-colored paper lanterns from the eaves of the candy-apple-red roof of their establishment. The effect was cheery enough I wouldn’t have been surprised if they kept them up like that permanently.

  “Is that Wade down there carrying a torch like a caveman?” one of the dancers, Miss Teacake, trilled.

  Her outfit was ridiculous in every sense of the word, with a flouncy short skirt and a hat which placed a golden teacup atop her golden hair. The bodice of the costume was covered in packets of tea, and customers could pluck them off to add to their cup as she danced. The only rule was they had to replace any packet they took with a coin.

  All the girls at Madame Rindell’s had silly nicknames like that, based on whatever they sold out of the trays they walked around the dancefloor with. It gave the girls a bit of anonymity, and made it easy for the Madame to replace one of them without most of her patrons noticing. The latest Miss Teacake was a halfie, not to be confused with a halfling. She was a genuine hybrid, with an elf father and a human mother. Fraternization of that sort was one of the very most illegal things in a city where damn near everything was illegal. Whoever Miss Teacake’s unlucky mother had been, she was probably banished to The Gutters as soon as the Miss was born, if not sooner.

  However, some men found halfies like her so interesting they’d hand their whole paychecks over to Madame Rindell just for the opportunity to whisper into Miss Teacake’s pointy ears.

  They enjoyed the mystery that surrounded her, and the danger they faced every time they talked with her. She may have been considered a diamond in the rough, but men liked the risk and the reward of Teacake’s undivided attention.

  “And his little girlfriend, too,” cooed Madame Rindell, who fanned herself and looked down through her opera glasses at Penny.

  Penny tensed any time the Madame noticed her. She enjoyed thievery and hated when she was forced to put on a display for a man’s pleasure. Penny would have cut them to pieces before she let any of them lay a hand on her, but Madame never understood this part of her personality.

  The Madame loved to pile on affectations like that. The fan, the miniature gold binoculars on a long wand, the paste-on beauty spot shaped like a heart. All of the Madame’s money went right back into the hall, to dazzling effect. Then there were the piles and piles of jewelry I had once taken a professional interest in, only to discover it was all gold-painted tin and colored glass.

  Penny suppressed a groan. “Hello again, Madame Rindell.”

  “You ready to come over here and make some real money?” Rindell asked. “I’d pay a pretty penny for you!”

  She loved that joke.

  “I’m still not looking to make a career change, Madame,” Penny said with forced cheer.

  Madame made the most money of anybody in the neighborhood and was one of the few in The Gutters who had cordial relationships with the palace. So, like it or not, it was safest to stay on her good side.

  The Madame huffed as she usually did when Penny gave that response.

  “If I’m ever looking to make a career change, you’ll be the first to know,” Penny assured her with a falsely sweet voice.

  I kept my torch behind her so there was no chance of the Madame being able to see Penny’s expression, which wasn’t nearly as friendly as her voice at the moment.

  “She’s too salty to work here,” sneered Miss Bubblegum, an angular brunette who didn’t even try to make her personality match her title. “The moneybags would hate her.”

  “Maybe I should set up shop right out in front,” snapped Penny, “and relieve all your big customers of their money before they even get to you. I could reduce your fancy hall to a turnout joint before you even finished troweling on your makeup tomorrow morning.”

  Turnouts were what the girls here in The Gutters called men with no money, and turnout joints were the lowest-rung establishments that made patrons turn out their pockets before leaving to prove they’d spent all the money they had.

  “Can’t you stop these cats from yowling, Mariah?” said an icy voice from inside the hall.

  The speaker stepped outside, and his blue-white skin sparkled in the lantern light. He was only partially dressed, but from the cloak slung over his shoulders I could tell he was an elf guard, and a high-ranking one. No one else would have dared to call Madame Rindell by her given name.

  I felt Penny freeze beside me. The dancehall girls suddenly found themselves fascinated by the lanterns they were working on, far too busy to meet his stern sapphire gaze. He inspected them all, and the curl of his lip said he found them all unsatisfactory.

  If ever an elf enjoyed anything, I hadn’t seen it.

  “Oh, you know how girls can be,” said the Madame as she swatted him on the chest.

  We all held our breath, shocked by the overly familiar gesture, but he ignored it and continued his inspection of the surroundings.

  His unearthly blue eyes fell on me, and the key started to burn hot in my pocket. Could he tell it was there? Osman had felt it, but djinn were exceptionally magical beings. With elves there was more of a range, and ones with strong powers didn’t tend to go into the military.

  I fought the impulse to stick my hand in my pocket. It wouldn’t do anything to block whatever magic it was that Osman picked up on, but it would make me look like I was hiding something.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Penny melt into the darkness, ready to run. I desperately wanted to do the same, but I’d only call more attention to myself.

  The elf sniffed the air, and his spiky ears twitched. The night-worshippers were like bats. Dark w
as nothing to them.

  That gave me an idea.

  Slowly, calmly, I moved my torch up to my lips and breathed on it, not to blow it out, but to make it burn brighter. The flames obliged, and the embers let up feathers of orange light that obscured my face. I couldn’t see the elf, but I heard him snort in irritation. The night ones didn’t like bright light. It hurt their eyes.

  He snapped his hood up over his head and went back inside without another word. Even Madame Rindell relaxed.

  The look on the girls’ faces said they were as uneasy about Rindell’s new paramour as we were, but what could any of us do about it?

  Guilder street was a hive of activity by the time we got back. The assassins were making use of the darkness to clear out some evidence, judging by the reeking burlap sacks that oozed into the gutter. The Counterfeiters Guild’s errand-boys ran around scooping up armfuls of goods the more well-heeled citizens had dropped in the chaos. One of them held up a genuine gilt-edged patens letter for the other lads to admire, which they did with whoops and cheers. People were forced to show those letters to the gatekeepers any time they left the city, and a believable fake was worth thirty, maybe thirty-five silvers at least.

  No one on this street had bothered to rig up any lanterns, or even to light the streetlamps. The less you could see, the less the law-abiding could see, too.

  I picked the front door lock to the Thief’s Guild as Penny tapped her foot impatiently behind me.

  If there had ever been any keys to this door, they were long gone, but what did it matter to a Guild full of thieves? Back when I was still learning the art of picking, I’d had to spend more than one night out on the street after the lock got the better of me, but these days I could do it in the blink of an eye. I’d never seen Penny do it, though, and I had a strong suspicion she’d never learned.

  “What would you do if I wasn’t here to open this door for you?” I teased.

  She shrugged. “Ask it nicely.”