Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  When his rake made contact, the entire lock seemed to thrum as if a spring had been released inside. He just had time to see the rivets move before he jumped backward and caught himself with his hands on the floor. His picks went flying and clanged musically on the stones, but for the moment he forgot all about them.

  “You’re quicker than we credited, as well,” Bellard said. He did not laugh this time.

  The rivets shaped like the faces of women were not rivets at all, Malden saw. They were more similar to the dust plate covering the keyhole in that they could slide away from concealed holes in the face of the lock. From each of these holes now emerged a needle as big as a carpentry nail. Had he not jumped back in time, those nails would have scratched his hands in a dozen places. He looked closer and saw that the tip of each nail was coated in a straw-colored fluid.

  “Poison, of course,” he said.

  “Old Krölt was a jealous cove, and he hated thieves. Of course, his poison dried up and flaked away centuries ago. The stuff we replaced it with isn’t lethal, since the lock is meant for training new recruits. Which is not to say it’s pleasant,” Bellard said with a shrug. “It would leave you in a fever for three days, during which time you would suffer such agonies you would most devoutly wish we’d used hemlock instead.”

  Malden rubbed at the sweat rolling down into his eyes. Though he made his living at an occupation beset with certain risks, tonight he was being threatened with death and pain far too often for his liking.

  And of course it wasn’t over yet. If he failed to get through this door and keep his appointment with Cutbill, his life remained forfeit. He needed to pick the lock—but in such a way that he touched none of the needles. He would have to take great care.

  He recovered his picks and then gripped them tightly by their free ends, to give them as much reach as possible. He had hoped it might be enough to let him pick the lock without touching any of the needles. Yet no matter how he tried, no matter how he strained or bent his hands into uncomfortable angles, the tools still didn’t make it all the way inside the lock.

  He sank back in frustration and anger and dropped his tools on the stone floor. What to do? What to do? He was not ready to give up. Sadu alone knew why he was being forced to this ordeal, to this series of gruesome tests, but there had to be some reason—he did not believe the master of this place would be such a sadist as to put him through so much just for grim amusement.

  So there had to be some solution to the problem. Some simple, elegant answer that would lend itself to a man who knew how to think. Malden had always counted himself quite clever. He wasn’t very strong—a bad diet had seen to that—nor was he accounted particularly handsome. He had the kind of face that no one remarked on, or remembered for very long. What he was, was smart. Quick, like Bellard had said. His best weapon now was his brain, his ability to think this through.

  There would be a solution. It must be in this room, since he was not permitted to leave. And it had to be something he could discover if he would just open his eyes. He looked around, trying to see what he had missed before.

  He glanced over at the dwarf. He hadn’t paid the little creature much attention before. He had barely been aware of what the dwarf was doing. Now he gave the dwarf’s piecework his full attention.

  The dwarf was sewing pieces of metal onto a pair of silk gloves.

  Malden went over to him with his friendliest expression on his face. “My, those are rather fetching.”

  The dwarf sneered. “They might fetch a fair price,” he said.

  Malden could feel all eyes in the room turned on his back. He ignored them. “May I?” he asked. He picked up one of the gloves and studied it. The dwarf had sewn several dozen small tin plates onto the back and palm of the glove. They wouldn’t work very well as armor in a fight, but they would be perfect for his current purpose. So perfect, in fact, that he could see no reason for their construction other than to help pick the poisoned lock. Malden opened his purse and took out a handful of farthings—copper coins cut into four pieces each. “I’m not sure how much you—”

  “It’ll do,” the dwarf said, snatching them from his grasp. He counted them quickly, rolling the coins in his hand. “Miserly thieves. Half what they’re fucking worth.” He held out the gloves and Malden took them. “Now, that’s just for hire,” the dwarf informed him. “I take them back when I feel you’ve had ’em long enough.”

  “But of course,” Malden said. He pulled on the gloves and hurried back to the lock. He had no doubt now they’d been made expressly for this purpose. The silk was quite delicate and would tear after even a little use, but it was also thin enough that it did not deaden the sensitivity in his fingers that was necessary for lock picking. The tin plates wouldn’t protect the hands from any but the feeblest blows—but when he attempted to pick the lock again, he found they easily blocked the needles from scratching his skin.

  Even with the gloves, though, opening the padlock wasn’t easy. The lock was enormous and had dozens of pin tumblers inside. He had to tease each one into the proper position with his hooks, then hold it there with a rake while he applied just the right amount of torque with his wrench. It required perfectly still hands, but if he did not lapse in concentration even for a moment . . . yes . . . there. When the lock clicked again, he nearly jumped away a second time—but there was something different about this click. It was weightier, more solid, more final.

  The needles retracted into their holes with a series of soft thunks. The shackle came loose and the lock hung swinging from the iron bar.

  It was open.

  Malden wound his picks back up into the hilt of his bodkin, then sheathed the weapon with a sigh. He removed the lock from the bar, though it was so heavy he could barely lift it, and set it down carefully on the floor. He stripped off the gloves, turning them inside out in case any of the poison had transferred to the tin plates. He tossed the gloves to the dwarf, who caught them easily. Then, going back to the door, he slid the bar out of the ring and pushed gently. The door opened with a creak.

  He looked back at Bellard.

  “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” the bravo said.

  Malden nodded and stepped inside.

  Chapter Five

  Beyond the locked door was a snug little office, heated by a charcoal brazier and kept insulated by heavy tapestries hanging on the walls. A massive desk faced the door, carved out of some expensive wood that had turned black over time, a very large and detailed map of the city posted behind the desk, a basin for washing one’s face and hands, and a sideboard with a flagon of wine and several goblets. No one sat behind the desk, however. Instead, the room’s sole occupant perched on a stool in the corner, scratching entries in a broad ledger held on a lectern before him.

  He was a very thin man with long, mournful features and eyebrows that arched high onto his bare forehead. His black hair had receded well back onto his scalp and was shot through with two streaks of gray. His eyes were at once very dark and very bright—narrow, merciless eyes that did not look up at Malden as he came in.

  Malden closed the door behind him and waited patiently for the man to finish his task. There were chairs, but he did not sit down, unsure what to expect inside this cozy room.

  The man’s quill pen scratched out a few more figures and then stopped.

  “Your mother was a whore,” he said, quite without inflection.

  Malden’s chest clenched but he understood what was happening. The man—who was certainly Cutbill, whether he looked like a mastermind of thievery or not—was testing him. Attempting to see if he would come at him in a fury or perhaps merely whine in offense.

  There was no denying the truth of the statement, however. “She was. A good woman in a bad situation, who did her best to raise me with care and patience. She died of the sailor’s pox when I was not yet a man.”

  Cutbill nodded, as if merely accepting this new bit of information as something to enter into his account book. “Y
our father?”

  “Half the men in this city might claim the title, yet none ever have.”

  “Sit down. You may be here awhile,” Cutbill told him. Malden chose a chair near the door. “You lived in a bawdy house for most of your youth, performing small tasks and running errands for the madam. In that time you probably saw your fair share of illicit activity. I daresay you might have engaged in some yourself—rolling drunks, cheating paying clients—or at least tricking them into overpaying—procuring small quantities of various illegal drugs for the harlots. It wasn’t until after your mother died that you began extending your activities to the larger sphere of the city, though.”

  “There wasn’t much choice in the matter,” Malden confirmed. “There’s not much room in a brothel for a young man—not when there are so many unwanted boys around to clean the place and run errands. I was given a few coins but told to go forth and find my own fortune. I decided I’d see how honest folk lived. It turned out the city had little use for a whoreson with no estate. This place isn’t kind to those who were born on the wrong side of the sheet.”

  If he’d been hoping to evince sympathy from Cutbill, he was disappointed. The clerkish man didn’t even look up.

  “I looked for work in various trades. I was too old already—no guild would take me on for prenticing at the advanced age of fifteen. I tried to find occupation as a bricklayer, as a carpenter, even as a stevedore down at the wharves. Each place turned me away—or demanded bribes. The gang bosses who organized such labor all wanted a cut of the pennies I would earn.”

  “And you were unwilling to pay such fees.”

  “How could I, and survive? It takes money to live in this world, money to eat, money for rent, money for taxes and tithes. The pay that work offered would have put me in debt the first week, and it would only have gotten worse. I’d seen this scheme before, and the ruin it caused.”

  “Oh?”

  “It is exactly how the pimps keep their stables of women in line.”

  “Indeed,” Cutbill said.

  Malden fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt. “There were no opportunities for one like me. None at all. Yet I needed money to survive. I could go out on the streets and become a beggar. Or I could turn to a life of crime. You know which I chose.”

  “And found you had a flair for it.”

  “You wish to know my life story entire?”

  “I already know it. I’m simply confirming it. For the last five years you’ve been making a paltry living pilfering coppers from the unwary. Occasionally you’ve run a trick of confidence, but your real skills seem to lie in your fingers, not your voice. It was only recently you turned to burglary. For only a few months now you’ve been breaking into houses. Care to tell my why you changed your game?”

  “People in this city know better than to carry much money when they go out. They know no purse is ever safe. The real money they leave behind, at home. It only seemed logical to follow the money, not the people.”

  The master of thieves made a small notation in his ledger. “You know who I am,” Cutbill said. “You spoke my name outside.”

  Malden waved one hand in the air. “All of the Free City knows the exploits of great Cutbill, master of thieves, procurer extraordinaire, purveyor of unlawful euphoria, betrayer of confidences, extortionist to the high and mighty—”

  “Spare me.”

  Malden sat back in his chair, a little dumbfounded. He had not expected the man to speak so plainly—or so abruptly. It was all he could do to keep up.

  “You know that I run this city, or, at least, the clandestine commerce within it. That I have organized and consolidated the criminal class. That I have taken in hand the scattered gangs and crews that exist in any city of this size and made of them something more cohesive, something efficient.” Cutbill put down his pen and sat up on his stool, lifting his chin in the air. “You know my reputation. I recounted your history to show I know yours as well.”

  Malden held his peace.

  “I do not appreciate arse-licking, nor false modesty, nor unplain speaking. So I will say this simply: I have kept a close and admiring eye on you, ever since I became aware of your activities. I keep accounts of all who commit crimes in the Free City of Ness, whether they work for me or not. But you, Malden—you I’ve watched quite closely. You have the skills of a born thief: the lightness of step, the deftness of hands, the ability to keep a secret. And you learned these things all on your own. No mentor guided you, no school drilled you up in the ways of our profession. I find this quite impressive. Or I did so, until tonight.

  “Tonight, you went in secret into the house of Guthrun Whiteclay, a master of the worthy guild of potters, and took from him a quantity of silver plate, some fancy cutlery, and a sack of silver coin he had hidden under his bed. Yet you failed to prepare for this jaunt properly.”

  Malden frowned. No one, he thought, could have been more prepared than he. “I cased the house for three days. Watched Whiteclay and his wife leave for a fete up at the moothall, saw him lock his front door but forget to latch a window at the side. I wrapped my shoes in cloth to deaden my footsteps. I studied the patrol patterns of the city watch and knew exactly how long I had to get in and out unseen. I even waited for a night when the fog would conceal the moon, and so darken the alley I used for my entrance and escape.”

  “Yes,” Cutbill said, “but you forgot to ask anyone if Guthrun Whiteclay had protection. Do you even understand this concept? I have an arrangement with him. Nothing formal, nothing written down, of course. Yet I receive from him each month a certain sum of money. In exchange for this small payment, he is guaranteed against burglary, robbery, blackmail, and murder at the hands of his business rivals. You may think it easier to simply take all that is his and be done with it—but I assure you, over the years I have made many times as much money from this arrangement than you might ever see from reselling his household goods. Now you have cost me money, because I must send out my agents to recover the things you stole and have them returned to Whiteclay’s house before he notices they are missing. Do you understand the magnitude of that task? Do you understand what it will cost me if I fail in it?”

  “I see,” Malden said, shifting in his chair. “So this is a shakedown. You wish me to return these things and to give you the silver I worked so hard to acquire. Well, I don’t like it—but what choice have I? You can have your pet swordsman out there skewer me like a pig on a spit if I refuse.”

  Malden had the impression that Cutbill had never smiled in his life. One corner of his mouth did pucker, though, as if he were savoring some tasty morsel of knowledge that he had not chosen to share.

  “Yes, yes, all of that. But more as well. I want you to join my operation.”

  Malden frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “I wish to offer you a job.”

  Chapter Six

  Neither of them spoke for a while, as the meaning of Cutbill’s words sank in. Malden had expected something quite different when he answered Cutbill’s summons. Mostly, he’d expected to have to pay back the money he’d taken, and then receive a savage beating (if not worse) by way of a receipt.

  “I’ve always worked alone,” he said finally.

  “And I cannot allow you to continue doing so. You are too good at this to be independent,” Cutbill informed him. “I don’t like competition. I’d much rather have you in my stable. There are compensations you’ll gain from accepting, of course. You know I have a considerable fraction of the city watch on my payroll, and more than one noble in the palace as well. Right now if you are caught stealing so much as one penny from a church collection box, you’ll be hanged for your trouble. Under my wing, you will have some measure of safety from that fate. Furthermore you’ll be allowed the services of my dwarf, Slag, who can provide tools of a fineness and quality you’ll never gain from any human blacksmith. You can continue to pick your own jobs, though of course you must abstain from burgling any of my clients. And I have something else
to offer you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your heart’s desire. The thing you truly covet. I can offer you freedom.”

  “Every man in Ness is free. There are no slaves here,” Malden pointed out. It was what made Ness a Free City. Outside of its walls most men and women were villeins, peasants, cotters—little more than slaves. They owned neither land nor livestock nor the clothes on their backs. They could not be married without the approval of their lord, nor could they move away from their farms unless they were sold to some other liege—and even then they could take nothing with them but their children.

  But in Ness a man was his own. He could work to make a life for himself and his family, or he could laze about and eventually starve in the street. But it was his own choice. The city’s charter guaranteed the right of a man to do either.

  “I didn’t say you were a slave. Rather, you’re a prisoner. You have no family, no birthright. You dress like a common laborer and you have the accent of a peasant. If you tried to leave this city—if you stepped outside its walls—you would be scooped up by the first reeve who saw you. He would sell you to some petty baron and you’d spend the rest of your days tilling some field. Ness is a very large prison, Malden, and the door of your cell is wide open. But only because the powers that be know you’ll never leave.”

  “If I had enough money—”

  “But you don’t, and living the life you do, you never will. If you keep operating independently you’ll end up swinging from a rope or, if you’re lucky, dying in poverty in some hovel. Come work for me and we’ll change that. It will take time. You will work harder for me than you ever would for some shopkeeper. But your money will be your own. And with enough money, even the son of a whore can be a man of importance. He can go where he likes and live as he chooses. Freedom, Malden, is what I offer. True freedom.”