King Pinch
Page 1
As Pinch dangled helplessly by his fingers, the slithering below grew louder. It was as if a host had been roused and not some single thing. In the near darkness, Pinch could barely see a gleam of white, perhaps the floor, though strangely folded and misshapen. He looked again, harder, straining to see clearly, when all at once the floor heaved and shifted.
Damn, I’m looking at bones.
His fingers creaked and almost gave way, so that Pinch couldn’t suppress a shriek of pain. The cry reverberated through the pit and, as if in eager concert to it, his voice was taken up by a sussurant hiss as the white gleam of the bones rippled and pulsed in a slithering crawl.
The floor was alive!
THE NOBLES
King Pinch
David Cook
War in Tethyr
Victor Milán
Escape from Undermountain
Mark Anthony
The Mage in the Iron Mask
Brian Thomsen
The Council of Blades
Paul Kidd
KING PINCH
The Nobles: Book 1
©1995 TSR, Inc.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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First Printing: May 1995
eISBN: 978-0-7869-6410-9
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v3.1
To Helen
Contents
Cover
Other Books in the Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
1 - Rooftops and Boudoirs
2 - Janol of Ankhapur
3 - Travelers’ Tales
4 - A Shortcut
5 - Dinner in Ankhapur
6 - The Prodigal Received
7 - Visiting
8 - Iron-Biter
9 - Beyond the Grave
10 - Thief Hunting
11 - Low Cunning
12 - Ikrit
13 - Scouting
14 - Night Work
15 - Morninglord’s Blessing
16 - Fatherhood
17 - Meetings
18 - Heart-to-Heart
19 - Walking Dead
20 - Coronation Day
About the Author
Prologue
In a far southern land, ten thousand people gathered in the afternoon haze, a miasma that started at noon along the shores of the Lake of Steam. From there it swelled through the streets of Ankhapur and cloaked the city in a moist cloud until sweat and air became one. No breezes fluttered the white banners on the rooftops. Not even the collective breaths of all those gathered could swirl the clotted air. Cotton plastered to flesh like a second skin, so that clothes hung limply on people’s bodies. Ten thousand people stood waiting in the clothes of the dead and the lifeless.
These ten thousand—the grandfathers, fathers, and sons of Ankhapur; the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters of the same—squeezed against the sides of the narrow streets, overflowed the balconies, and squatted in jumbles on stairs that coiled out of sight. They lined a single winding avenue, choked the streets that led to it, even crammed their boats along the quay where the avenue passed. At the edges of this mass were the kebab vendors with their sizzling meats, the wine boys who siphoned draughts from the kegs strapped to their backs, the fruit sellers pushing overripe wares, the gamblers who cunningly lost in order to win, and the ladies who profited from any crowd.
A traveler, caught in the edges of the thronged multitude, would at first assume he had stumbled upon a festival unknown in his far-off homeland. Perhaps the hordes waited for the devout pilgrimage of a revered saint. Maybe it was the triumphal entry of a conquering lord, or, most wonderful of all, the perambulation of a revealed god before the very eyes of his worshipers. That truly would be a story for the traveler to tell upon his return to some distant home.
As he pushed his way farther in, though, the traveler would begin to have doubts. Where were the lanterns, the bright streamers, the children’s toys he was accustomed to at every festival in his home? Was this the passing of a particularly dour saint, a victory too costly for the citizens to bear, or, worse still, the march of some vengeful death god whose gaze might strike down some unfortunate? There was no cheer or eager expectation in those around him, and as he plunged farther into the crowd, he would find only ever-increasingly somber face of duteous sorrow.
Upon finally reaching the center of this dour crowd, the traveler would be greeted by masses of red bunting, great swathes of the brilliant cloth hanging listlessly from the balustrades and lampposts that magically light Ankhapur’s nighttime streets. Were this the traveler’s fledgling journey, he might be mystified by the colorful riot that hung over his head. His journey had brought him, perhaps, to a city of the mad—lunatics who lived out their lives as the inverse of all normal reason—melancholy in their joy, merry when others called for sorrow. Shaking his head, he would quickly resolve to leave Ankhapur, perhaps noting its dementia in the notebooks of his travels.
This would not be the conclusion of a traveler more steeped in the whirling customs of different lands. He would look at the scarlet bunting and know that the language his own culture saw in them was not the language of Ankhapur. Before him was stretched a funereal display, just as black or white might symbolize the same in his land.
If he were truly cunning, he would guess the nature of the departed. No crowds throng for the passing of a mage. The deaths of wizards are intimate and mysterious. Nor was it the passing of some once-beloved priest, for then surely the people would congregate at the clergyman’s temple to hear the dirges his followers would sing. The passing of thieves and rogues no one mourned.
It could only be the death of a lord, and one great and powerful at that. Nothing less than the mortality of kings could draw the people into the humid afternoon, out to stand in the sun until the processional passed. Looking at the citizens with renewed insight, the traveler would see an old courtier in despair, his almost-realized expectations dashed. A young maiden shivers with tears, overcome by the memory of some forgotten kindness His Highness had bestowed on her. A one-eyed cripple, dismissed from the guard after his injuries in the last campaign, struggles to stand in the stiff posture of old duty. Farther up, a merchant leans out the window, his face a mask of barely disguised glee as he already counts the profits he will reap now that the oppressive lord is gone.
As the traveler studies his neighbors, the procession finally ar
rives. The honor guard broils under its plumes and furs as it clears the streets. Behind follow the priests of all the temples, the aged patriarchs carried in shaded sedan chairs while their acolytes swing censers and drone their prayers to the skies. Finally there comes a great gilded cart, draped in a pyramidal mound of red silk and pulled by three ranks of sacrificial oxen, the first rank the deepest black, the second a hitch of unblemished white, and the third all perfect gray. As the ox cart creaks and lumbers through the cobbled streets, all eyes strain to see the throne that sits at the top. There, dressed in the robes and furs of state, immune to their crush and heat, is their late king. Only his face shows, chalky gray and hollowed by the final touch of death.
A breath, held by ten thousand souls, is released as the cart passes each man, woman, and child of Ankhapur. The king is truly dead. The people begin to move once more, each citizen taking up again his course among the living. As the traveler passes through the crowd, a hand with a knife stealthily reaches for the strings of his purse.
Years later, when the traveler speaks of Ankhapur, he will tell of the funeral of the king of a land of rogues.
Rooftops and Boudoirs
“Crap! This wind stings like Ilmater’s wounds!” a thin voice loudly groused from the darkness of night.
“Quiet, you little fool!” hissed a second, deeper voice close by the first. “You’ll tip us for sure with your whining.”
“Fine then. You work these knots with your fat human fingers,” the other voice hissed back. His words were almost lost in a roaring gust. There was the furious snap of long cloaks lashing the air.
“Just work, damn you, before we both freeze.” The words were accented by the chink of metal grating against tile.
A flash of light swept across the pair.
“Down!” hissed the deeper voice. The light briefly illuminated two people—one large, the other absurdly small—perched on a precarious cant of rippled roof tile. The larger of the two was leaning heavily on a bar wedged in a crack between the terra-cotta shapes. The smaller one fumbled with a stout cord, knotting the end around a glazed chimney.
“Relax. Just a lamplighter,” the little one said. An icy gust rocked them, swirling their cloaks into fierce snarls.
Wind was a property of the winter-stung nights in Elturel. Each night it rose up with the fading sun to sweep through the hillside streets of the city’s High District. On a gentle night it was a dog’s whimper, patiently waiting to be let in through every opened door and window. But there were other nights, like tonight, when it snarled like a ravaging hound. The hunter’s wind, people called it then, and shuddered when they heard the noise as it bayed through the streets. Everyone knew the calls were the hounds of Mask, and no wise man went out when the unshriven dead called to him from the street.
At least not the honest ones.
Poised on the high, tiled rooftop, the two shapes—large and tiny—continued their work. A chill blast shivered over them and they unconsciously shifted on their roost until their backs were carefully turned to the numbing blasts. Never once did they break their attention from the glazed tiles beneath them.
There was another grate of metal on fired clay. “It’s up. Are you ready?” hissed the larger of the two.
The snap of rope as the smaller set his last knot was the answer. “Don’t drop me this time, Pinch,” the thin voice cautioned, only half in mirth.
“Don’t try to hold back the pelfry, Sprite-Heels. Saving the best stones for yourself’s not being upright. I could’ve let the Hellriders take you.” There was no humor in the man’s voice at all, and in the darkness it was impossible to see his expression. He passed the knotted rope through the small hole in the roof tiles.
Sprite-Heels mumbled an answer without saying anything, though his tone was suitably meek. Pinch, his partner, was not a man to cross needlessly. Sprite-Heels had tried it once and got caught cold at it. He could only guess Pinch must have been in a good mood that day, for the halfling was still alive. He’d seen, even helped, Pinch kill men for less provocation. He could say that Pinch just liked him, but he knew the old rogue better than that. Pinch didn’t have friends, only the members of his gang.
There was a faint slap as the cord struck the floor. “Down you go,” Pinch said with playful cheer. He wrapped the cord around his waist and belayed it with his arm, ready to take the halfling’s weight. Little folk like Sprite-Heels were small and short, which made them good for wriggling through tiny gaps made through pried up roof tiles, but they still weren’t light. Sprite-Heels for one was fond of his ale and cheese, which lent him an innocent-seeming chubbiness. That was all well and good for working the street, but the halfling was far from the lightest cat burglar Pinch had used.
The halfling studied Pinch in the darkness and then gave a shrug, unable to fathom the man. Pinch was a “regulator,” the master of his shifty and shiftless fellows. The air of studied threat about him was a mask worn too long, until Pinch knew practically no other. Indeed, pudgy little Sprite-Heels was not even sure he knew the real Pinch anymore.
“Stop dallying,” the rogue hissed.
The halfling jerked into motion. Squirming his rear for balance on the tiles, he tugged off a pair of thick boots and flexed his furred feet. Barefoot was better for working the rope, but a terra-cotta roof in the winds of winter was no place to creep unshod.
Pinch thrust the rope into the halfling’s calloused hands.
The halfling fingered the rope. “Why don’t you go down, Pinch?” he finally asked with a brazen smile. “I’ll steady you.”
Pinch smiled back with a grin just as predatory. “Bad knee—never any good at climbing.” They both knew the answer anyway. “Get going. We’re to be gone before the Hellriders come around again.”
The halfling grumbled, knowing what argument would gain him. He wriggled through the hole, snagging his cloak on the uneven edges. “Climbed up here well enough, you …”
The grumbles grew inarticulate and then disappeared as the halfling descended into the darkness. Pinch’s arms, wrapped tight around the rope, trembled and quivered with each jerk of the line.
As he sat on the roof, back to a small chimney, every second in the wind and darkness dragged into hours in Pinch’s mind. Time was the enemy. It wasn’t the guards, the wards, the hexes, or the beasts rumored to roam the halls beneath them; it was time. Every minute was a minute of more risk, a chance that some ill-timed merchant next door would rise from his secret assignation and step to the window for air, or that on the street below a catchpole would look up from his rounds to stare at the moon. There were endless eyes in the dark, and the longer the job took, the more likely that someone would see.
Pinch cursed to a rat that watched him from the cornice, flipping a chip of tile toward its pit black eyes. As the rat squeaked and ran away, Pinch damned Sprite for his slowness. There was another, Therin, who was a choice target of his oaths. It was he and not Pinch who should have been on the roof; that was the way Pinch had planned it. In fact it was all that damn-fool’s fault for getting caught in a nip when he shouldn’t even have tried. He hadn’t the skill as a cutpurse to try for a mistress o’ the game’s bodice strings, let alone the purse of a Hellrider sergeant.
Pinch was just pondering who was the right man to give an alibi for Therin when the line went slack through his fingers. Instantly he bobbed forward face first into the hole, catching himself before he plummeted to the marble floor thirty feet below. He strained to hear any sounds of scuffle or alarm, even the lightest tap of a soft footfall.
There was nothing and that was good. So far everything was going according to plan. Sprite-Heels was living up to his name, now padding silently through the halls of the Great Temple of Lathander, making for the great holy relic kept there.
Pinch had a plan, and a grand one at that. The relic was useless to him, but there were others who would pay dearly for it. Splinter sects and rival faiths were the most likely, but even the temple beneath him might
be willing to pay to keep their honor intact.
It was by far the most ambitious thing he and his gang had tried yet, a far cry from the simple curbing and lifting they’d done in the past. Diving, like this, they’d done, but never on so grand a scale. It was one thing to house break some common fool’s dwelling. Sending Sprite-Heels diving into the temple was quite another, almost as bad as cracking a wizard’s abode. Temples had guards, wards, priests, and beasts—but the rewards were so much more.
The plan was simple. The dark stretch of Sweetsweat Lane, an alley that barely divided the temple from the festhalls on the other side, was where Pinch had plotted their entry. A few nights’ pleasant scouting from the high floors of the Charmed Maiden had assured Pinch that the guards along that section were particularly lax. Still, Pinch shed a few coins so that two maids, Clarrith and Yossine, were sure to do their washing up in back, to draw off any curious eyes. Sprite-Heels had shimmied to the temple roof without a snag while Pinch took the rope and followed shortly thereafter. All went well.
Once on the wall, the pair of rogues had scurried across the guard walk and plunged into a maze of gables, eaves, and chimneys until Pinch’s estimate put them over the main hall. With a pry bar and a pettercutter, they had pulled up the tile and carved through the lead beneath—and now Sprite-Heels was inside.
Which was taking all too long. Pinch didn’t like it. His calculations were right, and the halfling was certain to be over the altar by now. All Sprite-Heels had to do was grab the relic and whatever else he could put his hands on quickly, and get back to the rope.
The problem was that Sprite was taking too long.
Carefully, so as not to lose his windswept seat, Pinch leaned forward to peer through the hole. At first his eyes, a little weak in the night, saw nothing, but slowly the inside divided itself into areas of profound dark and mere gloom. Straining, Pinch tried to interpret what he saw.
“Infidel!” roared a voice just as the darkness flared with light. Pinch practically flopped through the narrow hole as his gaze was filled by a corona of blinding after-lights.