by David Cook
Fear is what made the guards stand to, not admiration.
Pinch made his way through the long interconnected halls of the palace. His fine clothes, the vanity of his days, were sagged with loose wrinkles that come with constant wear and the dull edge of morning sobriety.
The wrinkles were reflected in his face, a leathery map of his nighttime indulgences, with sad, pouchy bags under his eyes and feeble folds around his neck. Pinch was battling time, as all living things do. Even the endless elves slowly succumb to the Great Master’s advances. Death could be beaten, cheated, and postponed, and the gods were frail by comparison. Even they felt the yoke of years settling over them. Time was the enemy Pinch could not outwit, the treasure locked beyond his bony fingers.
Right now exhaustion was weakness. Pinch felt want of sleep in his bones, but there was no time for the luxury of rich sheets. Plans were already in motion, some of his own doing and more that were not. Plots needed counterplots, and those needed their own counters. Looking forward, there was no end to the webs that filled the future, not here or even if he left Ankhapur.
So Pinch slipped through the halls, down colonnaded corridors that threatened to devour him with their hungry boredom, past galleries that whispered with the ancestors of a past not his. A blind man would have heard only the random wet slap of leather polishing a marble that was green veined and solid like cave-ripened cheese.
It was at the entrance to the Great Hall, as he was being swallowed farther and farther into the deceitful stagnation of the palace, that Pinch spied Iron-Biter, the grotesque. Before purposeful thought could will it, Pinch had already sidled out of view, angling himself where he could watch but not be watched.
Once there, he observed. What he hoped to see, he did not know, but this dwarf was an adversary. Vargo’s displays had foolishly revealed the misshapen courtier’s strengths; now Pinch hoped to see weaknesses. A direct confrontation with Vargo’s enforcer was unwinnable without an Achilles’ heel to exploit. “Thieves’ courage” some called it. Pinch didn’t give a damn.
Sheltered by a window shuttered with pierced rosewood, Pinch watched as the dwarf prowled the grand chamber. Apelike Iron-Biter appeared to move with no purpose, paying mind first to a candelabrum, then to the cracks between the marble blocks in the walls, with all the intention and interest of his kind. Dwarven fascination for stone was beyond Pinch’s understanding. A block of marble was a block of marble. You couldn’t sell it, and even carved well it hardly had enough value to make it worth stealing. Dwarves would go on about how well veined and smoothly solid a single stone was—for days if one let them.
Still, if there were collectors willing to pay for a block of stone, Pinch would steal it. It was all a case of what the brokers wanted.
Approaching footsteps clacked through the sterile halls. Pinch coiled around the pillar and watched as a servant tottered into the hall. The old servitor’s arms were draped with fabric—costumes of succulent silk that spilled out of his arms in hues of minted gold, their buttons like fat nobles worn smooth between a usurer’s greasy fingers. Explosions of lace flared in pleats of ethereal smoke, banded roots of brocaded ribbon bound everything into one mass, and perched on top of it, like a vessel on a wave-tossed sea, was a pair of masks, grotesques of the finest manufacture.
Masks?
Iron-Biter raised the first one with all the critical judgment of proud torturer examining his craft. It was a face of sharp-stretched leather, a cow’s flayed skin stretched to fiendish form. The honey-gold leather glistened under a sheen of wax buffed to shellac hardness. It was a face of deception, a gleaming smile of diabolic cheerfulness.
Apt for the owner, Pinch felt, but why masks?
The scrape of a door signaled more arrivals. Iron-Biter waved the servant away as Prince Vargo entered the hall, dressed in the careless elegance of his morning gowns. The royal heir stretched with feline abandon, ignored his dwarf henchman, and went to the table where he idly poured a goblet of ruby wine and poked at the silks and leathers cascading over the back of the chair. The dwarf stood patiently silent, his little hands barely touching across the vast plain of his chest. The soaring darkness of the hall heightened the little man’s grotesque proportions, making him a fat, bright-shelled beetle over which some human giant would tower.
With an arch sniff at his wine, Vargo flipped the mask he’d been examining back onto the table. “Not very original … best you could do, Iron-Biter?”
Echoes bedeviled Pinch’s ears, taunting him with words he could almost hear.
“I chose them to show restraint, milord,” the dwarf rumbled like a kettledrum. “… appear modest during the ceremony. It will not do for the chosen … decked out like a harlequin.”
Vargo glanced over his shoulder at Iron-Biter, deigning to give the man the least of his attention. “I … calling for the ritual in the … masque … undignified enough. You … advising … a fool of me?” With a gentle brush at his mustache, Vargo sipped at his wine.
Behind the pillar, it was hopeless for Pinch to hear their conversation clearly, and he dearly needed to. They were plotting, and plots discovered were what would give the rogue the edge. He needed to be closer. Carefully he scanned the ground between himself them. On the opposite side of the hall and much closer to his quarry was another line of pillars, a good spot to lurk and pry. The morning sun and the flickering stubs of the night candles cast a weave of half-shadows across the floor between here and there, not quite darkness and not quite day. A quick, quiet shift and he would be in position to hear all.
With the care of a carnival tightrope walker, Pinch sidled away from the shelter of the pillar. Iron-Biter seemed absorbed in the presence of his lord, and Vargo viewed the world with bored indifference, but Pinch knew the latter, at least, was a lie. His elder cousin was the hawk who never quite looked on the world with closed eyes.
With one eye to the floor and the other always on his adversaries, Pinch drifted across the gap to the other side. Years of practice made the move look effortless, indeed casual. He took care never to move fast enough to catch attention, stepped softly so that the kiss of leather to stone would not give him away. Nonetheless, his blood raced at the thrill of risk. There was little question that if Pinch was discovered, Vargo would find some excuse to let his sadistic underling play.
Precaution and skill carried the rogue to the blind safety of the other colonnade. Once there, he quickly flitted from pillar to pillar until he was so close he could have reached out and poured a sample of Vargo’s wine.
During the time it took to reach his new position, Pinch had been focused on silence, not words. The conversation had gone on without him. Vargo was asking something, a question in response to Iron-Biter’s plottings.
“And what makes you certain I will be king?”
The huge dwarf bent his knees in the best imitation of a bow that he could manage. “Are you not the most worthy ruler of Ankhapur, milord?” The flattery was oily and insincere, though it did not presume on Vargo’s talents. The lie was couched in the vagaries of the choosing, for even a priest could not attest to the will of the higher powers and the creaking wheel of fortune.
“Besides, milord,” Iron-Biter continued, fully knowing the weakness of that explanation, “there will be no other choice. The test be damned. You will seize the throne as is your right. Throdus is a coward. Before the masque, he will have heard one hundred reasons not to challenge you.”
Vargo nodded agreement but held out a finger in caution. “True enough, though it must not be too obvious. The lords who support him have considerable backing.”
“It shall be discreet, milord.”
“And Marac? He has more spirit. My youngest brother will not be bullied so easily.”
Iron-Biter shrugged, his massive shoulders grinding like a builder’s cranes. “Perhaps you are a better judge of him than I.” The words held a cocksure arrogance, not quite openly challenging the lord. “His power is weak, his support thin among th
e nobles and the army. Most of the guests at the masque will be your vassals. Challenging you at the festival will be impossible, complete folly. If you act forcefully and proclaim yourself king by right of possession alone, Marac will not dare challenge you.”
“What about Bors—and Cleedis? The troops are more loyal to him than anyone.”
From where he was hiding, Pinch could barely see Iron-Biter grin. “Bors is an idiot. Even the gods wouldn’t choose him. Let him take the Cup if you want—but only after the other two have declined. When Bors fails, it will only confirm that you were meant to be king.
“As for Cleedis—well, he is only the chamberlain. If he protests, I will kill him for you. After all, he will be a traitor to the state, won’t he?”
Pinch couldn’t see him, but he heard Vargo chuckle. There was a clink as another glass of wine was poured. “The Feast of Wealth.” Vargo’s thin hand came into view, holding a glass
The dwarf accepted the drink. “To your coronation, Your Highness.”
Pinch smoothed himself against the cold, polished column as the two left the hall. He understood so much more now. The masks made sense and so did Manferic’s haste. The Carnival of Wealth was coming, that time of year when the city erupted into riotous gaiety. He’d been away too long, forgotten the days, the dates, and the order of things. Every year the city celebrated its greatest resource and its greatest benefactor—gold—in a three-day celebration of greed and cunning. There would be drinking in the taverns, feasts sold in the markets, dances and celebrations, and all culminating in the Great Masque held at the royal court itself.
And this year, it would be the scene of a royal coup. Pinch had to admire the plotting, the sheer boldness of the crime. In all his years as a rogue, he’d stolen just about anything that had come across his bow, but never had even he imagined a robbery as bold as this. Vargo proposed to steal an entire kingdom, to rob his brothers of even the chance at their heritage. Oh, Pinch dearly wished that he could someday plot such a crime.
The festival had to be soon. Feeling chagrined to have forgotten it at all, now memory rushed in. He remembered it was always on the new moon. That part was clear, for the fat purses he found on those dark nights had always meant good takings for him, a youth learning the cutpurse’s trade. After fifteen years, though, he’d lost track of the dates and must have assumed the festival had already passed. It could surely be no more than a week or less away.
That did not leave much time for plans or action. There were too many players in this game for Pinch’s taste, and too many unexplained things. What was the voice he’d heard in the tunnels? Who had saved him from death? Was Manferic truly something undead, or was this a trick on Cleedis’s part? Did Manferic or Cleedis or both suspect Vargo’s plans? What was their reason for switching the regalia anyway? Should he betray them to Vargo? Or should he betray Vargo to them?
And how did he stay alive and on top, when all was said and done?
Pinch puzzled away at these as he resumed his mission through the morning-chilled halls.
Therin’s strong hand seized Pinch’s doublet just as the thief came even with the bottom rail of the balcony.
“Up you are, then!” the Gur grunted as his fingers dug into Pinch’s shoulder and, with a strained heave, he hauled the regulator half onto the platform.
Pinch was hardly surprised that Therin was there and waiting. Climbing was never the regulator’s strong suit, and he’d made enough noise to sound like a bull elephant to a thief’s trained ears. Sure enough, Therin, Sprite, and even Maeve—looking clearer-headed than usual—were there to greet him.
With a certain lack of dignity, Pinch kicked his legs over the rail and flopped to the wooden floor of the balcony. Easy climb or no, the effort, combined with a full day and night of no sleep, was exhausting.
“Gods, dearie! You’ve been hitting the blackjacks a bit, haven’t you?” Maeve exclaimed. The regulator was a sight, at least by his own standards—rumpled clothes, bleary eyes, and a full day’s crust of grime. He hardly looked their leader, the one who kept himself urbanely polished and clean.
“Found himself a woman, too, I’ll wager,” Sprite added with merciless glee. It wasn’t often he got to pluck such fun at his senior.
Pinch struggled against the urge to yawn and lost. “Found more than you know, furry foot,” he finally shot back as he made a grab for the halfling’s curly toes. Sprite skipped out of reach, giving Pinch enough space to heave to his feet and stumble inside. Yesterday’s, last night’s, and today’s adventures fell on him as he collapsed into the largest chair he could find.
Arms flopped over the rests, he looked at the three sideways as they filed in and stood semicircle around him: Sprite amused, Maeve curious, and Therin with the clear gaze of suspicion. Someday, Pinch thought to himself, someday that Gur is going to get it in his head to challenge me.
“We’ve work to do.” Sprawled in the chair, the regulator hardly looked serious, but his companions knew to judge by the tone of his words, not simple appearances. “How have you come on finding a bolt hole?”
“Slipping the ring here’s no problem, Pinch,” Therin bragged. “Like you said, the door’s always watched but the balcony’s easy. We can avoid those cursed hellhounds by climbing up instead of down and taking out over the roof. Once we get up there, it’s an easy scramble to the wall. Then we just watch the guards and go over the side.”
“What about you, Maeve? Can you keep up with these two monkeys?” Pinch knew the wizardess wasn’t trained in acrobatics like the other two.
“We’ll help her along,” Therin assured, before she could say a word.
The woman glared at the big, cocky Gur and added, “I’ve got spells, too. Don’t you go worrying about me.”
“Well laid, then.” Pinch cut their bickering short. “Use it tonight. Go to the ordinary across from the lower end of the fish market. It’s run by an old man named Sarveto. He’ll have rooms for you.”
“What’s the job, or are you just running us off, Pinch?” Therin posed suspiciously.
“Work.” Pinch glared at his lieutenant. Ever since starting this journey, the man had been insolent. After this, Pinch decided, Therin may have to go. Without taking his gaze from Therin, the regulator continued.
“Sprite, you’ve an eye for the stones. Find me an artificer of cunning hands, one who’s hungry or likes the women too much. Just as long as he does good work and keeps himself quiet.”
“Aye, Pinch. What’ll his commission be?
“I want a copy of the Cup and the Knife. He’ll know what I mean.” The man leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “Therin, you and Maeve case the temple of the Red Priests. Mark their guards, whether the catchpoles are near at hand, and what the hour is of their walks. Maeve, use your charms to get yourself through their doors. Make friends with their servants. Note the hasps on their doors and what spells they lay about. Oh, and pay particular mind to their gossip. We’re looking for this Cup and the Knife.”
Therin smirked, perhaps wondering if Pinch had finally gone mad. “A cup and knife? Any old one or one that’s particular?”
Pinch was suddenly alert and forward in his chair. “Not a cup and knife, the Cup and Knife.”
“And what makes this set of trinkets so special?”
“They’re the royal symbols of Ankhapur. Without them, a body can’t be king or queen.”
“So you’re going to steal them and become king of Ankhapur!” Sprite blurted in a dazzlingly ambitious leap of conclusions.
“Hah! Me, king?” Pinch actually broke into laughter at that one. “Can you imagine me sitting on some throne. I’ve as much chance of becoming king as you, Sprite, have of becoming the lord high master of the Zhentarim.”
“I think I’d make a fine Zhent. Don’t you, Therin?”
With a grin the Gur twirled up a dagger. “Good Zhents are dead Zhents, Sprite. Want I should scrag you?”
The halfling comically ducked behind a bronzewood chest. �
�Well taken. I’ll not be a Zhentarim and Pinch’ll not be king of Ankhapur.”
“But I don’t understand,” Maeve said with a quizzical whine that cut through their play. “If you had this cup and knife, why couldn’t you be king?”
The regulator, playing the role of wise teacher of the lore, settled back into his chair. “It’s because of what the Cup and Knife do. You see, a long time ago—oh, back whatever ages of man it takes to forget such things—”
“Yesterday, for Maeve,” Sprite-Heels sniped. Therin guffawed. With a mouselike shriek, Maeve kicked a footstool the halfling’s way.
“However long it was, there was a falling out of the royal household. The first king of Ankhapur was dead. Apparently, the old king had been fond of his bedchamber though, ’cause he left behind more than a score of sons and grandsons, at least as many as what people knew about.”
“One of the rewards of royalty,” smirked the Gur as he settled into the chair across from his senior. Sprite turned up the stool and plopped onto it while Maeve leaned over Therin’s shoulder. It was beginning to look like a long tale and one that might merit their attention.
Pinch yawned as the morning sun warmed the chair. “Of course, every one of those sons and grandsons considered himself the only fit successor to the old king. The rest were fools, idiots, and just plain enemies who didn’t deserve the throne. It was a terrible time for the city.”
