Arash-Felloren

by Roger Taylor

  Pinnatte had been luckier than average in his career. He had had many narrow escapes but had only been caught twice. On the first occasion he had managed to escape by paying a substantial bribe to a Weartan officer, while on the second he had had to serve a spell as a bound worker in one of the lesser noble houses. But as he stood looking into the bubbling water of the fountain he felt as though all the punishments he should have had were now about to be brought down upon him.

  Hardly noticing what he was doing, he turned and began making his way through the crowded square. Again like a wounded animal, his instincts were now leading him to where he felt safest – Lassner’s Den.

  It’s only a mark, he kept saying to himself, over and over, but there was no comfort in the thought. A peculiar darkness had come into his life that refused to be so casually dismissed. For some reason he could see nothing beyond it.

  Not that he was without resource. In a more practical attempt to push the concern from his mind, and in direct contradiction of his earlier vow, he had managed to steal two purses before he turned into the familiar twisted street with its uneven, cart-rutted surface and disordered tiers of neglected and abandoned dwellings on either side.

  Lassner was in his usual position; apparently asleep, with his hands curled over, the top of his stick and his chin resting on them. The dingy room, off an equally dingy entrance hall, had a welcoming air that Pinnatte had never noticed before. He threw the two unopened purses on the table in front of the old man. ‘Clean cuts,’ he said, as Lassner’s eyes snapped open and looked at him sharply. The simple statement, meaning that the owners were unaware of their purses being taken, was more than a casual remark. A chase attracted attention. Faces otherwise lost in the crowd might be recognized, and perhaps remembered at a future time. A Den Master might decide that a particular area was to be avoided for the time being. Failure to report a chase was liable to bring down a punishment on the offender’s head – sometimes severe, particularly if the chase had been brought anywhere near the Den.

  Lassner half-closed his eyes to acknowledge the message then looked at the purses shrewdly before emptying them on to the table. After carefully rooting through all the pockets to ensure that nothing had been missed, he threw them to an old woman sitting in the corner, with a few rapid instructions about how they were to be altered. There was a brief, ill-tempered exchange at the end of which the woman turned her back on him and, muttering to herself, bent over her work. It was a regular ritual; Lassner issued the instructions, she ignored them and went her own way and, within a couple of days, the purses, as new, but quite unrecognizable, would be for sale on a stall somewhere. Lassner could sell the bark from a dead dog, his friends proclaimed.

  Bony fingers flicked quickly through the coins and personal items on the table, assessing and ordering them. Personal items, like the purses themselves, would be altered and resold, if possible, for the ‘funding of the Den’, though no one ever questioned the fate of the money from such sales. Coins would be returned to the thief, with a premium being paid to the Den Master. When he had finished, Lassner drew a pile of coins and a ring towards himself and looked up at Pinnatte.

  ‘Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Pinnatte did not actually agree. Lassner had been taking too much by way of premium lately, but nothing was to be gained by arguing the point. He swept up the balance of his day’s work and turned to leave.

  ‘What’s the matter, lad? Theywere clean cuts, weren’t they?’

  The questions made Pinnatte start. For a moment he considered making an off-hand reply, but experience had taught him that it was pointless trying to keep anything from the old man once he had chosen to ask about it. Thus the tale which earlier he had hoped to tell bravely and with great style to win himself free lodge for a day or so, stumbled out almost incoherently.

  Lassner’s attention was rapt nevertheless, and a few sharp questions ordered the events as nimbly as his finger had ordered the contents of the purses. ‘Bad mistake,’ he declared when Pinnatte had finished. ‘Very bad.’

  ‘There was nothing to show who he was.’ Pinnatte anxiously repeated what he had already said. ‘No staff, no robes, nothing. Just another plum for picking.’

  Lassner frowned, but nodded. The excuse was accepted. Pinnatte did not normally make mistakes, least of all anything as serious as this. He reached out. ‘Give me your hand.’

  Pinnatte thrust out his right hand stiffly, half-fearing some form of punishment. But Lassner merely took it and examined the mark.

  ‘A typical Kyrosdyn trick,’ he pronounced disparagingly, releasing the hand. ‘Something to make you fuss and fret – chew your nails over. And it’s working, isn’t it? Look at you. You’re here, but your mind’s skittering about the city like a cat with a tin on its tail.’

  ‘He used Kyroscreft on me,’ Pinnatte insisted. ‘He just pointed at me and I couldn’t move my legs. And he was surrounded by… something.’ He rubbed the back of his hand. ‘What if he’s done something to me?’

  A flicker of impatience crossed Lassner’s face and he let out a loud breath. ‘You’ve got the makings of a good thief, young Pinnatte. That’s why you’re here and why I don’t take much premium off you for the learning you’re getting. You could go far… get a Den of your own one day, perhaps. But you’ve still a lot to learn; there’s more to real thieving than just cutting purses.’ He became unexpectedly confidential. ‘Some of the best thieves in the city are heading trading houses or serving on the Council. The only difference between them and us is that we’ve got a sense of honour.’ He waved his digression aside then tapped his head. ‘Making people think they’ve seen something that they haven’t, or seen nothing when they’ve seen something, is as important to you as learning how to use a sharp knife and a soft touch when you’re taking purses.’

  ‘There was no trickery,’ Pinnatte protested. ‘I felt what he did to me. I couldn’t move my legs.’

  Lassner shrugged. ‘I’m sure you couldn’t,’ he conceded, ‘as you thought. Kyrosdyn aren’t people to trifle with, for sure, everyone knows that. But from what I’ve heard, they can’t do anything that I haven’t known many a good thief capable of.’ He became almost earnest. ‘When you’re frightened, your mind plays tricks, betrays you. They play on that. And play well. They’re treacherous and clever.’

  Pinnatte shook his head and made to speak.

  ‘Listen to me, lad.’ Lassner’s tone made Pinnatte stiffen. The older man had an ugly temper at times, and though he no longer had the skills that had once made him one of the Guild of Thieves’ finest, he was still highly respected, and someone to be reckoned with. ‘What you need above all else in this business is to see things as they are. Not as you think they are, or as you think they ought to be, but as they are. Use your eyes, use your wits, look into the heart of what’s happening. Let everyone else be confused, chasing shadows… but not you. You need to be the one who sees what’s really happening.’

  Pinnatte nodded earnestly. Tempered with relief that no punishment was coming, it was a mixture of respect and fear that was holding him there now that he had told his story. Though he was listening to the old man, he had no idea what he was talking about. How could you not see something the way it was? he thought scornfully. All he wanted to do was get to his room and set about his hand with hot water and a stiff brush. Lassner looked at him for a moment, then his eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘Get some hot water and give that hand a good scrub,’ he said.

  Despite himself, Pinnatte gaped and momentarily stopped rubbing his hand. The old man chuckled darkly and waved him out of the room. ‘You see how easy it is, lad, when you use your head and your wits. See things as they are.’

  The demonstration made a vivid impression on Pinnatte, but his dominant concern soon returned. Within a few minutes he had collected a pan of hot water from the grumbling and dangerous boiler at the back of the building, and made his way up the rickety stairs to his own room on the first floor. There he
began vigorously scrubbing his hand, grimly determined to remove the Kyrosdyn’s mark, no matter what Lassner chose to say about it. Within a few minutes the back of his hand was red raw. But the mark was unchanged. As he stared at it, the memory of the sudden loss of the use of his legs, and the Kyrosdyn’s eerie presence as he had taken his hand, returned with dreadful clarity. His hand was trembling as the brush slipped from it and clattered on to the floor. For a moment, fear threatened to overwhelm him completely. Unclear but intense visions rushed in upon him, telling him of a future where somehow he would be irrevocably bound to the service of the Kyrosdyn. A crystal glittered in front of him.

  ‘I’ll have your worthless soul. Bind it in here. Listen to its futile struggling. Trapped. For ever.’ The voice, the manner, everything, chilled him.

  ‘When you’re frightened, your mind plays tricks, betrays you. See things as they are.’

  Lassner’s words entered his swirling confusion. He latched on to them. Lassner, at least, he knew. Insofar as anyone could be trusted, Lassner could – whatever else he did to his charges, he didn’t lie to them. A trick, he’d said. Something to make him fuss and fret…

  ‘And it’s working, isn’t it?’

  But he hadn’t been able to move his legs. And the stain wouldn’t go…

  A howling cry built up inside him.

  For an instant there was only darkness – closing all about him.

  Then, years of assessing consequences made themselves felt. If he gave in now, succumbed to the darkness and the scream within him, what would follow? He might be one of Lassner’s favourites at the moment, but that would soon change if he became a trembling clown who sat shivering in his room all day.

  Another future unfolded in front of him, displacing that of the Kyrosdyn’s bondage. One in which he had neither Den nor Den Master. In which he was without friends and companions, sliding relentlessly down through the complex social order of Arash-Felloren, down to begging and scavenging around the decaying slums that pocked the city, down to scuttling about the tunnels and sewers, capable of preying only on his own kind, down to some dismal, unsung death.

  The cry found a different voice, soft and strangled and full as much of anger as fear.

  ‘It’s a mark on the back of my hand,’ he whispered desperately through clenched teeth. Nothing more than some fancy dye like the old woman downstairs used to colour purses. You could scrub that until the skin peeled and it wouldn’t come off. That’s all it was. That, and a mess of sinister-sounding threats. How could he be put in a crystal, for pity’s sake? It made no sense. A grown man caged in a thing like that. It was ridiculous! How could he not have laughed outright when the words were spoken? Lassner was right, they were tricks, that’s all – tricks. Still, now he really knew why the Kyrosdyn weren’t to be trifled with. They were good at playing tricks – very good. Even Lassner had made him think for a moment that he could read minds. Who could say what could be done by someone who practised that kind of a deception day in, day out, just as he did cutting purses?

  He was breathing heavily, forcing air in and out of his lungs as he did whenever he was about to tackle anything particularly difficult.

  ‘It’s a mark on my hand,’ he said again. ‘Nothing more. Like the old woman’s dye, it’ll wear off in time.’

  He walked over to the window and looked at the mark closely in the dust-filled sunlight. He was still shaking from his ordeal but, seen with his new vision, the mark looked quite innocuous. He blew out a relieved breath. It was fortunate he hadn’t made a bigger fool of himself in front of Lassner.

  As he twisted and turned his hand, he fancied that the mark had a slightly green hue to it.

  He flopped down on the crude mattress that served for a bed. He felt drained. It had been a bizarre and terrifying day. He needed to think, to rest.

  He looked at the faint lines and patches of colour that were the surviving remnants of a painting that had once decorated the cracked and stained ceiling. A painting done presumably when the house had been part of a more salubrious area, though it had had many tenants since then. The shapes and patterns were reassuring in their familiarity. He was fortunate indeed just to have a roof over his head, let alone to be part of a Den, especially Lassner’s Den. But even as the thought came to him, so did another, provoked, perhaps, by the vision he had just had of the dismal, degraded future that might lie in front of him. He must never again allow anything to happen that might bring him to the head of that road, yet while he was out in the streets, snatching such things as he could, the risk would always be there.

  ‘Some of the best thieves in the city are heading trading houses or serving on the Council.’

  Lassner’s words told Pinnatte nothing that he did not already know. Indeed, such ideas were an envious commonplace amongst all the city’s thieves. But Pinnatte saw them now as he had never seen them before.

  It was not enough to be a stealer of purses.

  True, he was good at it, and it would always make him a living. But what kind of a living? The cracked ceiling suddenly looked tawdry and squalid, exuding nothing but countless years of neglect. The question came again. What kind of a living? He sat up.

  This was not enough.

  He had been scared out of his wits today – for what? For a lousy room in a lousy house and a few coins to jingle in his pockets. The memory of the Kyrosdyn’s purse returned, bringing a new message this time. He could not have afforded such a purse with the proceeds of an entire year’s thieving. And if he had stolen the purse, what would he have sold it for? A mere fraction of its true worth. There would have been shaken heads and in-drawn breaths from even his most reliable buyers – ‘Difficult to sell quality stuff like this.’ But someone, somewhere, would sell it for something like its real price, and walk away with his money.

  ‘See things as they are.’

  Pinnatte nodded to himself. Lassner’s advice was sound. He would do just that. And though it was not a conscious decision, he started with Lassner himself. Questions began to form such as had never occurred to him before. They were disturbing, but Pinnatte could do nothing to stop them. Who was this old man that so dominated his life, sitting in his dingy room all day and living little better than his Den charges? His Den Master was not only a respected man amongst the city’s thieves, he was, reputedly, a wealthy one. But surely no one would live like that if they had the wealth to live otherwise? And could even Lassner afford such a thing as that Kyrosdyn’s purse? Suddenly Pinnatte had no doubts about the answer. It was No. And with that realization, starker contrasts burst in upon him. This was only the man’s purse! His miserable purse, a trivial thing, a minor piece of property. Whatever its value, it was the least indication of the man’s true wealth. If he had a purse like that, what would be the worth of the rings on his fingers, or the clothes on his back? What possessions would he have back at the Vaskyros? What did it cost him to employ a bodyguard to follow him round all day? Was it likely that such a man would now be lying on an ancient, crushed mattress, staring up at a cracked and grimed ceiling?

  Pinnatte ran his hand across his forehead. He was sweating with excitement. Whatever else had happened today, a new pathway had been opened for him. He looked at the mark on the back of his hand. It held no terrors now. It had been a stupid, petty gesture by a man embarrassed and angered by a mere thief. But it had unbound that thief. Turned him into someone entirely different.

  Pinnatte lay back. Only minutes before he had been tired, but now he was wide awake. Now he must think. It was one thing to concoct grandiose ideas, but quite another to do something about them. For one thing, he was bound to Lassner for another year. Not by any written document, but by his word – the code which every thief in Arash-Felloren honoured. Well, nearly every thief. Those who were rich and powerful enough – or dangerous enough – to go their own way did so, accountable to no one, but that was not a choice available to Pinnatte. To break his word to Lassner would be to bring repercussions on his head which
would leave him without any allies, and more concerned with saving his life than enriching it! Thus, Lassner must not learn of this new-found ambition. Care must be taken to see that he got no wind of it. He might not be able to read minds, but he read people well enough. Any hint of disloyalty or untrustworthiness and Pinnatte’s other future could yet come to pass.

  A slight twinge of guilt intruded into Pinnatte’s exhilaration. Was he right to do this? Lassner was the nearest thing he had to a father. The old man had taken him in some five years ago when he had been changing from one of the city’s homeless waifs into a wild and unstable young man, destined to end his days on someone’s knife or under a hail of Weartan staffs in an alleyway somewhere. Lassner had given him a home, of sorts, and had also taught him many things, not least a modicum of discipline. Now he had taught him something else, albeit unintentionally.

  The moment passed. His obligation to Lassner was based on necessity, not affection. And some of Lassner’s teaching had been brutal. The old man could use his stick for more than leaning on and Pinnatte had received many beatings in his early days until he had learned that Den Master really meant Master. And now, contrary to his constant protestations, the money he took by way of premiums was excessive. Pinnatte did something he had never done before other than to evaluate his day’s takings – he did a calculation. There were at least forty in this den; few of them earned as much as he did, but most of them would earn at least half as much…