by AC Cobble
“You never know,” said Rew. “There might be some benefit to being aware of the hidden ways and leaving them be. The duke has little concern for petty thievery, and by allowing the gate to continue operation, he could watch for true threats, like spies or hostile spellcasters.”
“If he is watching the thieves’ way…” mumbled Raif
“We have to risk it,” continued Rew. “The main gates are certain to be watched, and we’d be staking our lives on any disguise we concocted. The walls are too tall for us to easily scale, so unless we want to revisit the sewers, I think this is the best route.”
“It’s been decided we’ll try the thieves’ gate,” said Anne. “There’s no use chewing over it now. Either it’s watched or it’s not. If we are to continue, we’ve all agreed it’s the best plan we have.”
“In that case,” said Zaine, “we need to go down there.”
The young thief pointed to a small settlement that was wedged between the walls of Spinesend and the lake that lapped at its feet. It was a place for fishermen who wanted to avoid the duties at Duke Eeron’s wharf and for foresters who couldn’t stand the thought of entering and exiting the city gates each day on the way to the woods. From afar, it was obvious it was a humble place filled with humble men and women. With any luck, it was beneath the notice of the duke and his minions.
Rew glanced at the sky above them. “Several hours of sunlight left. I think it won’t take us more than a few to move around and get into position at the edge of the woods. I suggest we rest there, hidden in the forest, and then we enter the village under the cover of night. Zaine, I’m guessing the thieves are used to nocturnal visitors?”
“Of course,” she said.
Rew looked around at the party, seeing nervousness reflecting in their eyes but determination in the set of their shoulders. “Let’s go, then.”
They’d moved slowly through the forest near Spinesend, taking the woodsmen’s trails, moving closer as darkness fell, following the foresters who retreated from the trees to the comfort of hot suppers and beds back in the village. By the time the party reached the edge of the wood and peered out at the nameless village that housed the thieves’ gate, full dark had fallen.
The village was lit sporadically with the glow of fires and candles that escaped through shuttered windows. There were no lights on the street. Not much of a street at all, really, and no lights from watchmen or from guards. The village was outside of the city’s administration, which was a comforting thought to Rew.
High above the settlement, Spinesend’s battlement rose like a cliff. There were braziers lit to guide the steps of the guards on patrol, but the light of those fires hardly kissed the thatch roofs below. Between the crenellations of the battlement, they could see soldiers walking about in regular circuits. Others were stationary, looking into the forest below or, more often, huddled close to their fellows in conversation.
The guards seemed relatively alert, which Rew guessed was unusual, but the Investiture had begun, and these men must know there had been combat several days away with Baron Worgon’s forces. Even after a resounding victory by their side, it’d take some time for their comfort to return, for the worry of a retaliatory attack to fade.
From fifty paces above, though, looking out into a dark forest, the men would have almost no chance of seeing the small party as long as they didn’t give themselves away with their own light. The celestial glow in the sky intermittently shone through sparse clouds. Thick thunderheads would have been better, but there was enough cover that they could time their walk across the open area between the forest and the village without the moonlight giving them away.
“Ready?” Rew asked, turning to look at the party.
The younglings were bunched tightly together, their cloaks swung over their packs, their hoods tugged forward to cover their heads. They looked like lumpy, wool-covered monsters. Anne had her hood back, as if she thought the chances anyone would recognize her were nil. Rew pantomimed her pulling the hood up with a wry grin. If some of their party was walking undisguised, it would only make the younglings look guilty. Consistency was key to appearing as if they belonged, and it was cool enough outside that no one should think twice about the hoods. Besides, any thieves’ gate was likely to have regular nighttime visitors, so Rew was not overly concerned that someone would suspect anything was amiss. Getting to the village and into the tavern which housed the hidden gate should be no problem. Of course, once they got there…
Rew rolled his shoulders, winked at Anne after she pulled up her hood, checked his own, let his fingers trail over the wooden hilt of his longsword, and then started out of the forest, standing tall and walking at a steady pace. Crouching, the younglings followed. Rew glanced back and saw Anne walking behind them, her eyes twinkling with mirth at the youths’ furtive behavior.
Rew led them to the village, his eyes restless, scanning back and forth from the crudely constructed buildings, to the darkened spaces between them, and then up to the battlement that rose like a terrible wave blocking the dim light that escaped the clouds. There was no alarm within the village at their approach, and no one called out from the battlement, though he supposed even if they were seen, maybe there would be no outcry. Unless someone identified them, there wasn’t anything suspicious about a group of people walking into a village. Even after dark, people must occasionally come and go.
When they reached the village, a stray dog came out and began barking at them. A voice from inside a low hovel shouted at it to stop barking and be quiet. It didn’t, but no one looked out to investigate. The windows and the doors of the village were shut tight to keep out the autumn chill, but many of them fit poorly and spilled enough illumination that Rew and the others could see where they were going.
At the end of the maze of low-slung buildings and sheds, they found one structure that was properly lit—the tavern Zaine had described. There were two torches framing a thin, plank door. There were windows covered in waxed paper that let out a warm glow from within, and gaps around the chimney bled light profusely. It looked as if the builders had found the drunkest mason possible to mortar the stones together. Smoke leaked out with the light, filling the street with the smell of burning oak and fat that sizzled as it fell into the cookfire. Rew wondered how much of the smoke actually made it to the top of the ramshackle chute.
The sounds of people talking spilled out as well, along with the thin timbre of a flute, but no rattling dice, no shouted revelry or singing like they might find at a popular inn inside of the city walls. This was a place for the locals to enjoy an ale and to catch up with their neighbors, and Rew guessed they couldn’t afford to gamble away their pitiful earnings. As they drew closer, the wail of the flute grew louder, and he supposed they also couldn’t afford any decent entertainment.
Leading the way, Rew pulled open the plank door of the tavern and stepped inside.
The place was as he’d expected. There were several tables that looked to have been cobbled together from the spare pieces of ancient fishing boats. The walls were adorned with the tools of that trade and, as far as Rew could tell, might have hung there since before the raising of Spinesend’s towers. A few of the patrons might have predated even that.
A pair of geezers who had more fingers than teeth—and they didn’t have all of those—looked to the party as they walked in. Their eyes slid past Rew and Raif to settle on the women, and their grins turned lecherous. The old men must have noticed enough about Rew and Raif, though, that they didn’t make any comment. At the old men’s age, experience was no longer an advantage when it came to a fight.
There were a dozen other men who looked to be fishermen of the sort that spent half their income on feeding their families and the other half on ale with nothing but debt left over. Rew would have gambled against all of that debt that they were spending the evening telling each other how years ago, things were easier. There was a young man perched on a chair atop one of the sturdier tables playing a simple
tune on his flute with the kind of skill that wouldn’t earn him a stage inside of the city, overseeing a floppy cap that was empty of tips. A pair of crones, who might or might not have been affiliated with the geezers and who might or might not have been sisters, cackled at each other, sharing jokes that would have made Cinda blush had she been paying attention. The crones and the geezers wore the only smiles that Rew saw in the room.
Commanding the space from behind a ramshackle bar was a middle-aged woman of prodigious bust with a nest of curly orange hair that stuck up from her head in defiance of everything Rew had ever been taught about the laws of physics. She leaned forward, putting her wares on display as soon as she saw the men enter. She might have shot the girls a jealous look, but it was difficult to tell as her face had been plastered with enough coats of powder and paint to cover the hull of one of the fishing boats tied to the posts along the lake.
Rew grinned.
The proprietress of the place was made up and posing like a trollop, but she was too young for so much makeup, and she didn’t have the world-weary slump in her shoulders of one who had decided that spreading her legs for strangers was a better business than running her tavern. There was too much life left in her to be the owner of such a place. The sparkle in her eyes as she assessed them when they reached the bar confirmed Rew’s hunch, and he was certain they’d come to the right tavern. Now, they only had to convince her to show them the gate and see them through.
“Let me guess,” drawled their hostess, winking at Rew. “An ale for my mate here. For his lady, my finest wine, which I’m sorry to say is not very fine. No wine, but cider for the girls? And for the big, strapping lad, a mug of milk.”
“Milk?” spluttered Raif.
“Aye, lad,” said the woman, standing up and adjusting her top. “Milk.”
“I haven’t drank milk since I was a child,” snapped Raif.
“Not that long ago, then?” questioned the woman.
Rew put a hand on the quickly reddening boy’s shoulder and warned, “She’s trying to provoke you.”
The woman winked at him.
“Why are you trying to provoke the lad?” Rew asked her.
“Just having a little fun,” claimed the woman. “No harm meant by it.”
“You know why we’re here,” said Rew.
The woman rolled her shoulders, her bosom moving like the waves of the sea. “Aye, I’ll dip your ale, and you can spare me the story about how far you’ve traveled and how you can’t stand the thought of traveling even farther into the city. You’re in luck, mate. Our ale is just as cheap and almost as good.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” said Rew quietly.
The woman raised an eyebrow, which was quite a feat, as the thing was painted on her face like wood glue.
Rew scratched his beard then looked at Raif. “Ah, I see. The milk. We’ll take that milk.”
“And?” asked the woman.
Rew hid a grimace behind his hand, still scratching his beard. A password. The woman was looking for a password, and none of them knew it. They’d discussed this problem on the journey to Spinesend, and unfortunately, Zaine didn’t have a solution. She told them that when she’d come through, others had done the talking, and that if there was a password, it was likely changed frequently. The thieves hadn’t burrowed all of the way through Spinesend’s wall for interlopers. The fewer people they allowed to use the gate, the more valuable the way was to the thieves.
It seemed they’d already stumbled, and now the woman was just prodding them to see how much they knew. She would likely go report to her superior the moment they turned their backs.
Rew smiled. In a low voice, he told the woman, “I don’t know the password, but I know there’s a way into Spinesend through here, and I’d like you to show it to us.”
“Ain’t no way into Spinesend ‘cept for the city gates, mate.”
“We can’t risk the city gate,” said Rew, “so we mean to take the thieves’ gate. We can pay.”
The woman shook her head, her lips curling into a lazy smile, but her eyes glinted with intelligence. “I told you, mate, ain’t no gate that I know of. Maybe if you loan me the big lad for half an hour, he can jar my memory a bit, eh? Could be one gate I’ll let the lot of you make use of.”
Raif raised a fist, looking at the woman curiously.
“That’s not what she wanted to be jarred with, Raif,” muttered Rew.
“He’s as fresh as a daisy, ain’t he?” cackled the woman.
“We have a message from Fein for the leadership of the guild,” said Rew.
The woman’s smile froze. “Who? I thought—I ain’t heard of no man named… What’d you call him?”
“You’ve heard he’s dead, then,” guessed Rew. He nodded back toward Cinda. “She’s a necromancer. She’s been in contact with his ghost. He has a message for the guild.”
The woman stared at the ranger, her smile locked in place, her eyelids blinking slowly. She didn’t know what to say to that.
“Get me the ale, the wine, the two ciders, and the milk, and we’ll wait for your superior,” said Rew.
“Three silver,” said the woman.
“That’s expensive milk.”
The woman shrugged. “You said you could pay.”
Rew dipped his fingers into his purse, made a show of shuffling through the coins, clinking them loudly against each other, and then finally pulling out three shining silver ones. He put them on the bar counter, and the woman scooped them up. She turned and dipped him an ale then got the others their drinks as well.
Scowling at the milk, Raif picked it up and followed Rew to a table. He declared, “I am not going to drink this.”
Rew sipped his ale and winked at the boy.
“You can have my cider,” said Cinda. She pushed it to her brother then leaned toward Rew. “Why did you tell her I’m a necromancer?”
Rew didn’t respond. He was watching the proprietress, who ducked through a curtain at the back of her bar. He turned and looked over the rest of the patrons at the decrepit watering hole.
“Can necromancers really speak to ghosts?” asked Cinda.
“No,” responded Anne. “Not like that.”
“Then why did you…“ started Cinda before becoming flustered and staring at Rew in confusion.
“Are you planning to follow her?” asked Zaine. “She must be going to get others. If we tail her, maybe we can slip away on the other side before she comes back, or at the least we can take her and force her to show us the gate.”
“We’ll wait until they return,” said Rew.
“You’ll talk your way through?” asked Zaine.
Rew nodded.
“That didn’t work well last time,” mentioned the thief. “Remember, you and I were almost killed, and Jon was?”
Rew sighed, thinking that was a bit harsh. “It won’t go the same way this time.”
“Won’t it?”
He didn’t respond.
Throwing up her hands, Zaine looked to Anne, but the empath only shrugged and sipped her wine. She spit it back into the mug and declared, “This is terrible.”
“Poisoned?” worried Raif, looking down into his half-empty mug of cider.
“May as well be,” complained Anne, pushing the wine away and sitting back, crossing her arms over her chest. To Rew, she said, “This had better work.”
“It will work,” said Rew. “There’s enough truth to the story they have to consider if the more outlandish parts are true as well. It’s not going to be the job of some low-level sentry to speak to us about it. It will be a senior guild member, and that’s who we need to speak to. No one else will take the risk of letting us in.”
Anne frowned at him.
“No one comes to this tavern for the wine,” Rew told her.
“The cider isn’t too bad,” said Raif. He peeked into his sister’s mug. “How’s the milk?”
“In your lap unless you show me proper appreciation for shari
ng,” she retorted.
“I’ll be back,” said Rew. He stood, looking around the room to see who was drinking ale and who was drinking wine. The trick of detecting magic, high or low, was to know that it was there. When you were looking for a specific spell, it made it that much harder for the casting to fool you. He sniffed the air and ambled across the room to the two crones who were still cackling madly at their own jokes. “This place is so dour. Mind if I join you?”
“You can join us, young man, though you may have trouble with our husbands,” cried one of the old women, clapping and then gesturing to the two old men nearby.
“Oh, I think I’m no threat to them,” said Rew, turning to look at two mostly-toothless grins as the pair of geezers gawked at him.
“You young ones are so modest. My husband wasn’t half the man you are even before he got to be half the man he was.” The old woman held up a finger and let it curl down toward her palm. “I’ve just been waiting for my opportunity. You want to take us somewhere private, or do it right here?”
“Right here,” said Rew, sipping his ale.
The crone spluttered.
“What would happen if all of these people saw who you really are?” he asked.
“What are you talking about, young man?” asked the second crone, leaning forward on spindly elbows, her leather-like skin stretched taut across her skeletal face. Her teeth were yellowed and jagged, the half that were there, at least. Tufts of white hair stuck from her head like horns, and her bony fingers were laced beneath her chin, showing off long, claw-like fingernails.
“The change is a bit obvious, don’t you think?” asked Rew. “When I walked in, you looked like my grandmother, but now, you look like one of the witches my grandmother used to make up stories about. If I wasn’t convinced a moment ago, all you’ve done is show me that I was right.” Rew grinned. The crone blinked at him. He asked her, “If I was to yank away that glamour, what would happen?”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” responded the first woman.
