Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  “Noble as you ever were,” Vry said, “and just as stupid.” He started to pull the lever.

  His hand was stayed, however, at the last possible moment. There was a flash of light that was instantly swallowed up by a thick cloud of yellow smoke. Croy’s lungs filled and he was overwhelmed by a powerful reek of rotten eggs that made him gag and cough. He tried to stay upright and maintain his composure but the stench was just too great. He worried he might vomit—not exactly what the people would expect of a knight of the realm, not in public—

  “Hold still, you freakishly large livestock copulator,” someone hissed in the midst of the yellow cloud. The noose was lifted away from his throat, then a knife cut through the rope holding Croy’s hands together. Small hands pushed him from behind. He went staggering forward and over the edge of the gallows platform. It was all he could do to land on his feet. Down at ground level the yellow smoke was rarefied and he could breathe again, but still he could see nothing.

  Fortunately a figure with a cloth across its face was there to guide him. He was dimly aware that the figure was only about four feet tall. A child? Some magical sprite, with the appearance of a child?

  “Stop standing there manipulating yourself in an erotic fashion. We don’t have much time before the feces-smelling watch is upon us!”

  Ah. No child. There was only one sort of creature in the world with such a vulgar tongue, yet such an academic grasp of human language. “Murdlin?” Croy asked. “Is that you?”

  “It won’t be either of us in a moment, if we’re both dead as horse urine!”

  They wasted no more time. Using the melee as cover, the man and the dwarf hurried out of the square. Once they were clear of the yellow smoke, Croy was able to understand why Murdlin had covered his face with cloth. It must have filtered out the worst of the stinking smoke and allowed the dwarf to breathe easy even in its midst. Was there no end to the cleverness of the diminutive folk?

  “Murdlin, I am deep in your debt now,” Croy said as he was led around a corner into Greenhall Street.

  “Considering what you did for the dwarf king’s daughter, the debt is crossed out,” Murdlin told him.

  “I only did my duty, as bid by my king,” Croy pointed out. A year earlier the dwarf princess had been traveling to Helstrow, to be received at the royal court of Skrae. Along the way she’d been abducted by bandits who intended to hold her for ransom. Croy had spent six weeks tracking the bandits down and eventually rescued the princess. The dwarf king offered him anything he desired—steel, gold, even the princess in marriage—but Croy had never considered there might be a reward. A crime was committed, and someone had to put it right, that was all.

  Clearly Murdlin felt some recompense was still owed.

  “This way, most hurriedly, like a rabbit making love,” Murdlin called.

  Even as they dashed across the cobblestones, a wagon full of hay pulled up beside them. The driver was a dwarf with a hood pulled low across his face to keep out the sun. The wagon rolled to a stop as soon as it reached them.

  “By the Lady, you work fast,” Croy said.

  “The moment I realized it was you on the gallows, I knew what course things must take. I sent one of my servants at once to fetch this conveyance. Now please, get into this body-odor stinking hay. It will hide you from view. The wagon will take you outside the walls. By the time you arrive I’ll have a horse waiting for you, so you may run off like a goblin that has fouled its own pants.”

  “You make escape sound less sweet that I would have thought it an hour ago,” Croy admitted.

  “It’s only a figure of speech. A common expression in my first language,” Murdlin told him. “I am taking a great risk doing this, Croy. Now, please! Into the hay that itches like pubic lice.”

  Croy rubbed at his chafed wrists. Then he started walking backward, away from the dwarf, almost breaking into a run. “You have my eternal thanks, envoy. But I’ve work to do yet, here in the Free City. My lady is still enslaved. What is freedom to me when she is in chains? Fare thee well!”

  The dwarf cursed him and shook his small fists in the air, but Croy was already on his way, turning a corner into Brasenose Street and back into danger.

  Just the way he liked it.

  Chapter Eleven

  For a while Malden’s world was only a terrible ringing, as if a bell were struck right next to his ear, and darkness, a kind of darkness that hurt. He could feel his body being moved about, but only from a distance, as if he were watching some other poor bastard being carted around. The pain he felt made no sense, really, and he kept probing at it with mental fingers, trying to remember what had happened.

  Eventually he heard sounds over the ringing in his head. Gasps and shouts, and then the shriek of chairs being pulled back. His poor body was dumped without ceremony on a flat surface, and suddenly he rushed back into it, though that just made things hurt more. Gradually he managed to tease out voices from the noise all around him.

  “—might have killed him with a punch like that. And we’d be back where we started. You really ought to learn some discipline.”

  “What? That little tap? I’ve hit flies harder than that. Look, he’s already waking up. I couldn’t possibly have done more than jiggled his brains a bit.”

  The voices were vaguely familiar. Malden couldn’t quite place them, though. He was having a lot of trouble stringing thoughts together, even though the horrible ringing noise had faded away from his ears. He attempted to make a catalog of the things he knew for sure. He was certain, for instance, that he was lying on a very hard surface. Also, that his face hurt.

  Suddenly his face hurt a very great deal.

  “Oh,” he moaned. “Oh, by the Bloodgod. Oh . . .”

  “Open your eyes now, boy,” Bikker said. “There’s a good lad.”

  Malden looked around without sitting up. He was in a tavern, lit by smoking oil lamps. The few patrons present at that time of day were all staring at him. The alewife, a heavyset woman of middle age, was coming toward them with a tankard full of beer.

  “Which one of you is paying for this?” she asked. “This isn’t a sickhouse.”

  Slowly, Malden got his elbows under him and sat up. He had been laid out flat on a long table, a slab of oak that felt as hard as stone. It was patterned with old dark rings where tankards had overflowed, and was held together with strips of iron that dug into his back and legs.

  Cythera—the tattooed woman—handed the alewife a farthing and passed the tankard to Malden. It was of the kind that had a lid on a hinge, to keep out flies, an earthenware vessel sealed at the bottom with pewter. An expensive bit of crockery. That told Malden roughly where he had to be—on the Golden Slope, the region of rich houses and expensive shops just downhill from the Spires. Had to be, as there were no taverns in the Spires, while if his two strange captors had carried him any farther downhill, the tankard would have been made of leather sealed with pitch. Knowing that was important. When he made his escape from this place, he would need to know where to run to first.

  Wherever he was, though, he had to admit he was very thirsty. He lifted the lid and sipped carefully at the contents, thinking it must be some medicinal draught—but in fact it was only small beer. A drink fit for children.

  “You like that, boy?” Bikker asked.

  “I’m not an infant,” Malden said, taking a long drink. “I’m almost twenty. Please stop calling me ‘boy.’ ”

  Bikker smiled broadly, showing off the gaps where some of his teeth used to be. “You going to try to run off again, boy, as soon as you can stand? Or are you going to talk to me now?”

  Cythera glanced around the room. Whenever her blue eyes passed over one of the staring patrons, they flinched and looked away. “Bikker,” she said, “we need more privacy than this. Where should we go?”

  “I’m tired out after chasing this cur,” Bikker told her. “I like this place just fine. You lot, out now. Barkeep, you can go, too.”

  “By Sad
u’s eight elbows, I will not,” the barkeep told him. “Just run off like a scolded brat, and leave you here with my till and all my stock?” She snorted in derision.

  Bikker shrugged hugely. Then he reached behind him and drew his sword.

  It made a strange slick sound as it came out of its scabbard, and when revealed, was not the shiny length of steel Malden had expected. Instead it looked like a bar of iron, three feet long, with no real edge. The iron was pitted and rough, like something that had been left in a tomb for centuries before it was picked up again. It looked a little slick, too—and as Malden watched, bubbles formed on its surface, then congregated in thick clots until it looked like the sword was drooling. A drop of the clear fluid ran down the sword’s edge and dripped on the dirt floor, where it hissed and smoked on the packed earth.

  “You may wish to move aside,” Bikker said to Malden, who jumped off the table quickly, ignoring the throbbing pain in his face and head. Bikker swung the sword around in a wide arc that brought it crashing down on the oak table. With an explosive hiss like a dozen angry snakes striking at once, the blade sank through the thick wood and through the other side. The table fell in two halves, split clean down the middle, against the grain of the wood. The wetness of the blade—it must be vitriol, Malden realized, of some very potent type—gave off foul vapors that stung his nose. For a moment he could do naught but look at the sundered table. It was still bubbling and dissolving wherever the acid sword had touched it. Then he looked up and saw that everyone—patrons and barkeep alike—had fled the room.

  “There,” Bikker said. “Privacy.”

  Cythera sighed deeply, though there was an affectation to the sound that made Malden think she was accustomed to being annoyed with Bikker’s antics. “They’ll be back soon enough. And they’ll probably bring the watch.”

  Bikker shrugged. He sheathed his sword. Malden saw that the interior of the scabbard was lined with glass, no doubt to keep the acid from burning its way through. The big man said, then, “So let us speak quickly to the boy, and then we can all be on our way. Boy,” Bikker called.

  “Malden. At least use my name.”

  “Boy,” Bikker said, walking over behind the bar and pouring himself a pitcher full of strong ale, “you are a thief, is that correct? This wasn’t the first time you ever cut a purse. Judging by the way you scampered up those rooftops, I imagine you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  “Listen,” Malden said, “the silver I took from you, it’s all—it’s here somewhere.” He reached down across his chest and realized that his sling and his fake arm had been removed. Looking up, he saw that Cythera held them—and his bodkin, too. “I’ll give it back, right? And everything else I took today, you can have that as well. Just let me go.”

  “Bugger the silver! There’s plenty more where it came from!” Bikker shouted. He lifted his pitcher and drank lustily from it until foam drenched his beard.

  “We don’t wish to punish you,” Cythera said. “We wish to hire a skilled thief for . . . well, our purposes must remain unspoken, of course. We wish to hire a master thief for a certain job.”

  More where it came from, Malden thought. More silver. Enough the brute didn’t even bother keeping hold of the pittance he’d had with him. More. “Are you?” he said. “Well, luck is with you, for I—”

  “Can you recommend anyone like that?” Cythera asked.

  “I—I can indeed,” Malden said, and raised himself up to his full height. “I know a thief with no equal in the Free City. One more than up to whatever task you set him.” He gave her his most dashing look.

  “Yes?” she said patiently.

  “Milady, I am at your service.”

  She frowned. “No, I mean, what is his name, this paragon of thieves?”

  “It’s—well, me.”

  Bikker laughed so hard he spilled his ale. Cythera’s face didn’t change, but her icy blue eyes looked Malden up and down and then flicked away.

  “We don’t want a pickpocket, boy! We want a thief. A . . . a burglar, a . . . second story man, a—”

  “And I tell you, you’ve found him.” Malden brushed past Cythera—she gave a short gasp as he nearly touched her—and over to stand before Bikker. He had to look up to meet the swordsman’s gaze but he held it. “Why, just the other day, Cutbill, the master of thieves, expressed his deep admiration for my skills. He listened to the story of how I stole plate and silver from Guthrun Whiteclay’s house and said he’d never heard of a finer scheme enacted so skillfully. And he should know.”

  “Cutbill.” Bikker glanced across at Cythera. “You’re one of his crew?”

  “Indeed,” Malden said.

  “Only—we need this to stay between us. It can’t get back to him, or the world will know our business. At least, it will if it has the coppers to buy the information.”

  “Discretion is my watchword. Though it does cost extra.”

  Bikker shook his head and quaffed more ale.

  “You’ve seen how quick I am,” Malden insisted.

  “We did, at that,” Cythera agreed. “He would have gotten away from you, Bikker, if I hadn’t been there to distract him. And the man we need will have to know how to climb. He showed us that as well.”

  The swordsman hunched his shoulders. He was half convinced, Malden knew, and he already had Cythera on his side. Time to close the deal, before Bikker could reconsider.

  “For this job I will require the sum of one hundred and one gold royals,” Malden announced.

  Bikker smiled. “You haven’t yet heard what it entails. We might be getting a bargain for that price.”

  A bargain at one hundred and one royals? More silver where that came from, Bikker had said. How much more? “Of course, that does not include incidentals, the fees of the dwarf who makes my gear, bribe money, hazard bonuses, surcharges for quick resolution, gratuities—”

  Bikker leaned back against the bar. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Malden.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The sorcerer Aelbron Hazoth lived in an imposing four story edifice where the Lady’s sacred parklands abutted the city wall, most of the way downhill from the palace, in the district called Parkwall.

  It was not the safest district in town, though it had its recommending features. Like the Ashes, it had originally been a residential district for the poor until it burned down in the Seven Day Fire. Unlike that wasteland, Parkwall had been laboriously cleared, the remains of the old houses scraped away and the land allowed to go to seed. Now Parkwall was a zone of lush grass, a green common kept cropped by the sheep and goats of the people of the Stink, a spacious greensward in a city that had very little green space. The tall crowded houses of the Stink drew away on either side to let in the air. It was rumored to be the healthiest place in town—the plagues that swept through Ness every few winters often skipped Parkwall entirely—but its openness and lack of well-lighted streets had drawn footpads and thieves, and it was counted terribly dangerous by night. A few fine houses had been built in Parkwall to take advantage of the pleasantly rustic environs, but these were all surrounded by their own walls and wrought-iron fences to keep out the uninvited.

  Such as Sir Croy, for instance.

  The knight had found lodging at a nearby villa. After escaping from the gibbet, he thought he would be a hunted man, that no place would be safe for him, but in fact it did not take long before he had a place of refuge. He did not lack for friends in the Free City, some of whom were stalwart enough to hide him from the watch. A rich merchant had found him wandering in the Golden Slope and begged to bring him home. Croy accepted, though he had no money to pay the man. The merchant insisted none was required, and Croy had praised his good heart in all the words he knew. The merchant assured him that Croy would bring him great fame and social status, but Croy knew the man was just being kind. He gave Croy a suite of rooms all to himself and ordered his servants to see to his every wish.

  This night he was laying spread out on a benc
h in a roof garden, pretending to take his ease. It was a likely enough occupation. This close to Ladymas and the hottest time of year, anyone with sense was up on a rooftop or in a garden, trying to catch a breeze. Anyone who saw him might think him yet another pampered noble attempting to stay cool. In truth, he had come up to the roof garden to watch Hazoth’s house. Croy was a man of action, but this evening he had spent almost motionless on the bench, taking only a little wine and some nuts for sustenance. One thing only would bid him tarry so. For hours he had kept an eye on the place, watching who came and who went, hoping to spy a glimpse of Cythera.

  After midnight he got his chance. She and Bikker came traipsing over the grassy common. The place had a reputation for being full of footpads after dark, but the two seemed to pay no special heed to their surroundings. Instead they were deep in conversation. Croy even got the sense they might be arguing.

  He placed a salted almond between his lips and bit down hard. He longed—oh, how he desired it!—to call out, to wave, to get her attention somehow. He longed to jump down from his perch and run to her side, to catch her up in his strong arms (even knowing what a mistake that would be) and carry her off to his castle. Failing that, he would have been glad even for a moment’s soft conversation, for a renewed exchange of promises and honeyed words.

  But it would not happen tonight. Tonight he could only watch.

  The guards at Hazoth’s door challenged the pair, but Bikker reached for his sword’s hilt and the armored sentries fell back. The two of them stopped just inside the sorcerer’s gate, however, and waited for something Croy could not see. When it came, he felt it instead. There was a sudden change in air pressure, or perhaps merely the crickets in the grass all fell silent at once. It was like the night itself held its breath.

  It lasted a bare moment. Then it was over, and Cythera and Bikker entered the villa’s grounds and went their separate ways. He, toward a low shed at the side of the house that Croy knew served as barracks for the sorcerer’s guards. She, into the house through the stables—like a common servant.