Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  How he felt the need to rush down there and follow her, to reach—quite gently, of course—for her hand in the shadows, to breathe her name and see recognition in her eyes. But not tonight.

  Not while the house was shielded so patently by some spell—a spell even she must wait to pass.

  Not tonight. Not until he could get his weapons back.

  It was time to find out what friends, if any, he had left in the palace.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next day Malden spent in preparation.

  It was mad even to consider going through with this. The job he’d been hired for was, if not impossible, distinctly ill-advised. It was going to make of him a pigeon in the midst of a pack of dogs. If the plan failed in the slightest particular, it would mean a quick but nasty death, a spear through his lights, or an axe through his skull. Cutbill’s influence could not protect him from that.

  Yet if it worked—it couldn’t, of course, it was the worst kind of folly, but—if it worked, he would be clear of his debt to the guildmaster of thieves before the sun rose tomorrow morning. He would be a full member of the guild, with all the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining. He would be a free man again. Better, by far, because he would be on his way to wealth. On his way to being a man of means.

  In the Free City of Ness, that was the only thing that counted.

  He made his way to the Ashes early, just as the sun was rising over the city’s wall. The gang of children that guarded Cutbill’s headquarters did not show themselves—they already knew he belonged there. Loophole, Lockjaw, and ’Levenfingers were inside the ruin already, though. As far as he knew, they were there all day, every day, sitting on the empty coffin. The old men greeted him warmly and asked him what schemes he had planned for the day. They asked every time he visited. “A little of the same,” he told them. “Though to be honest, my heart’s not in it.”

  “Be of good cheer, lad,” Loophole told him. “Money comes to them that keep their eyes open.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Malden would gladly have spoken with the old men, for he’d learned they were a sure font of wisdom. If any of them knew how this job could be done, this fantastically impossible job, surely it was one of them. Yet he knew that anything he said to them—even to Lockjaw—would be reported to Cutbill at once. In addition, Bikker and Cythera were quite clear that his fee included a hefty sum to make sure Cutbill never learned of the plan. So he kept his peace and headed inside.

  He had learned on his second visit, some days ago, that it was not necessary to travel by coffin every time you visited Cutbill’s burrow. That was just for new arrivals, a kind of object lesson to remind them their lives were forfeit if they crossed Cutbill in any way. Actual employees had their own entrance through a trapdoor hidden in the debris of the fallen house. It led to a door below, hidden behind a curtain. There were many doors in Cutbill’s domain, and all of them were hidden. Malden was certain he’d seen only a fraction of the guildhall in his visits.

  In the main room, Bellard was throwing darts at a target on one wall. The permanent dice game was going on in the corner, but only two players had risen so early. There were others there, thieves like himself, pimps come to pay their tithe to the master, procurers dividing up their stash, and one fellow dressed in dusty traveling clothes that Malden did not recognize. There was something odd about the man, but in the dim light he couldn’t get a good look.

  The traveler was sleeping on the divan when Malden came in, but before he could take two steps into the room, the man bolted upright and reached inside his tunic, probably for a knife. His beady eyes twinkled in the candlelight as he shot them back and forth, and his lips pulled back in a sneer as if he expected Malden to attack him.

  “Be at ease,” Bellard said. The dust-covered man nodded, lay back down and immediately returned to sleep.

  Malden glanced over at Bellard, who nodded and said, “That’s Kemper. An unsavory character if there ever was one.”

  “He’s a thief, like me?” Malden asked.

  Bellard cocked his head to one side. “Hardly. Little more than a sharper—a card cheat. A vagabond by nature, never stays in any one place for long.”

  “What’s he doing here? Is he one of Cutbill’s?”

  Bellard snorted in derision. “He’s no member of this guild but he pays his respects when he passes through. We wouldn’t abide his sort at all if we had a choice, as he’s wanted by the reeves of every village within a hundred miles of here. He’s called on an old tradition of sanctuary, though, so we must let him lie here until he thinks it’s safe to head out again. Of course, the tradition doesn’t preclude Cutbill from charging him rent.”

  Malden shrugged. Good to know such a tradition existed, he supposed—who knew when he might need it himself? Yet his business was with Slag, the dwarf, so he made his way quickly to the workbench and brazier at the far side of the room.

  “Need somewhat?” the dwarf demanded, looking up as Malden approached. He was no less ugly in daytime, though of course the sun never shone down in Cutbill’s hiding hole. “Or you just wanted a kiss?”

  Malden smiled. “There’s a job I’m casing right now,” he said, “and it’s going to be tricky. I need a few things to see it out.”

  “If I can’t build it, you’re not good enough to need it,” Slag replied.

  Malden listed his requirements and the dwarf nodded. He said he had everything in stock—the items Malden requested were not too exceptional—and would provide them for hire, for a price. The price was steep, but Malden could cover it with the coins in his purse, just barely. Good thing, too, as the dwarf expected payment in advance.

  “That way, when your arse is killed on the job, I don’t have to go down into the fucking Bloodgod’s underworld to get what you owe me.”

  “Your confidence in me is inspiring,” Malden said. He waited for the dwarf to go to his storeroom and fetch the things. It took quite a while, so he played at darts with Bellard to pass the time. He managed to lose another tuppence before the dwarf returned. Malden had deft hands, but Bellard had the keener eye.

  The tools came wrapped in sailcloth that had been treated with tar to make it waterproof. It would keep the rust off. “Return ’em in the shape you found ’em, or there’s an extra fee,” Slag told him.

  “And so I shall. Farewell, Bellard. Farewell, all.” Bellard grunted a response but no one else even looked up as Malden headed back to the light of day. The three old masters were a bit more cordial, but he didn’t spend long speaking to them.

  He had some time to squander, so he walked all the way uphill to the old Chapterhouse of the Learned Brothers, which was said to be haunted, before heading south around the curve of the city wall, down through the warren of close-spaced houses that marked the eastern extent of the Stink, then farther south to the homes of the fishermen and sailors who took the goods of Ness to ports around the world. It was a very long and pointless route, but it kept him always in the broad streets where most honest people traveled, and away from dark alleys and sheltered closes.

  It also led him past the King’s Gate, so called because it opened on the road to the royal fortress of Helstrow, a hundred miles away. Malden paused a moment to muse that Helstrow might as well be on the far side of the moon. He had never traveled more than a mile in any given direction in his life. He could not, bound as he was by the city’s walls.

  The gate stood twenty feet high—tall enough for knights to ride through with their lances raised. It was made of the same bluish stone as the city wall, and on this side was fronted by a massive triumphal arch celebrating some military victory or other. Malden doubted anyone living in the Stink could have told him what battle it commemorated. He let his gaze wander briefly over the carved figures of soldiers fighting wicked elves, but what really drew his eye was the land beyond the gate.

  It was green, for one thing. Green grass grew out there, catching the sun. It was so wide and open, and not a soul in sight. Malden
took a few steps into the narrow tunnel of the gate and found the guards there didn’t even look at him. No, of course not—they had no brief to keep people from leaving. The people of Ness were free to go outside if they pleased. They just weren’t free to come back in.

  The sun on the grass out there looked so warm and inviting. A summer breeze played with the blades of it, stirring them gently, then letting them fall back. Behind Malden, in the Stink, all was noise and grime and desperation. Out there it would be quiet, he thought. Quiet and peaceful and—

  “Make way, you little fuck!” someone shouted, and suddenly a brown and black dog was snarling at him, its wet teeth snapping shut on his cloak. Malden looked up in startlement and just had time to jump back as a mounted man came thundering through the gate, heedless of where his horse’s hooves fell. The owner of the dog, a footman wearing the same coat of arms as the rider, shoved Malden back against the wall of the gate with a cudgel. “There’s people of importance trying to use this gate, and you’re just standing here gawking?”

  Malden tried to stammer out a reply. “I assure you, I was simply—”

  The footman knocked him down with the cudgel, and probably would have beaten him senseless if he hadn’t needed to run off then, to keep up with his master. Down in the dust Malden felt at his ear where the footman had struck him. He was glad his fingers didn’t come away bloody.

  “Oh, just get out of there,” a guard said, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the gate. “You’re lucky I don’t dump you outside and let the reeve take you.”

  Lucky indeed. The green grass out there might look inviting, but the second he trod on it he would have legally become a villein. A slave, in all but name.

  But if he had a little money to his name—if he could purchase even a small plot of land in some cheap place . . . the story would be different. And that was what Cutbill had promised him, wasn’t it?

  Cutbill had said he was a prisoner in Ness. Malden had never felt that way before—now he could think of himself in no other terms. A prisoner. And Cutbill had the means to set him free.

  It could happen tonight, for the price of a little risk.

  The rest of the morning he spent cutting purses down at the fish market by Eastpool. He needed to earn back all he’d spent or be penniless by nightfall. He supped on cockles at a little shack by the river gate and then rented a room in a doss-house frequented by sailors. He would gladly have gone back to his own rooms above the waxchandler’s but he had to make sure none of Cutbill’s people saw him when he met Cythera later.

  Much of his movement during the day had been for this purpose. He knew that Cutbill would have spies watching him, especially if he seemed bent on some specific task. Then there would be the unaligned thieves, the pickpockets and grifters of too small account to join the guild. They tended to follow Cutbill’s people around the way gulls will follow a galleon, hoping to pick up scraps left behind by the more established thieves. Malden knew he had to make sure none of either sort were aware of what he was doing, so he spent the day acting as if he had nothing planned at all. There had been no reason to rise early, and in fact he spent the afternoon asleep in his rented bed. It was just past midsummer, with the festival of Ladymas less than a fortnight away, and the sun would not set until well into the evening.

  When he rose, he brushed the bed’s freight of insects from his hair and clothes, then climbed out the window and up onto the roof of the doss-house. He was relatively certain no one was following him, but to be sure he crossed three streets by the rooftops, leaping silently from one building to another. When he dropped down to street level again he was at the very edge of the river Skrait. He traveled northward again, upriver, by moving from pier to dock to wharf—hundreds of them stuck out from the riverbank, as each house along the Skrait had its own. He ended up deep in the Smoke, the region of manufactories and workshops where tanners, papermakers and bookbinders, hatters, blacksmiths, brewers, and bakers all plied their trades. The shops stained the air with their fumes and turned the river black with their dumping, and the smell was intense—the region downwind of the Smoke was called the Stink for good reason. It was here that Malden was to meet Cythera.

  He had time to consider what he was doing. He had time to wonder if he was mad, or if he truly expected to live through this. He had time to think of that green grass beyond the gate, and how good it would feel under his feet. Eventually the sun went down and he had no more time to think.

  When she came for him, gliding out of the vapors in a tiny boat she rowed herself, she asked him if he was ready. He spoke no word, but simply dropped into the boat and grabbed a pair of oars.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As they hauled away from the Smoke and up the river toward the Golden Slope and the Spires, the docks and piers that stuck out into the water grew fewer in number. The river narrowed and grew faster, so they had to row all the harder. The water turned clean again, with only the occasional floating bit of sewage or debris to mar its churning surface. The river Skrait had driven its channel right through the northern half of Castle Hill, creating a winding canyon through half the Free City. Conforming to the slope of the hill, the ground along the riverbanks grew higher until it had to be held back by retaining walls, so that eventually they traveled between two high and sloping walls of ancient brick, with moss slowly eating away its mortar. Here and there a tree had taken root directly into the bricks, and its branches swayed over them, its leaves making the moonlight flicker through the mist that hung over the water.

  The river bent away from them, concealed by the rising wall. Malden saw a glimmer of light. “Hold, someone’s coming,” he whispered, and reached back to grab Cythera’s arm. He was strangely hurt when she yanked her arm away before he could touch it.

  What he saw took all his concentration and kept him from thinking why. A long boat came nosing around the corner—little more than a dugout, really, its sides well-patched. An old woman stood in the stern, poling the boat downriver, while half a dozen children leaned over the thwarts. They skimmed the water with long hooks, snatching at every piece of jetsam they passed. One held an oil lamp just above the surface, illuminating a milky patch of water.

  “Move aside and let them go past,” Malden said. Cythera steered her boat over toward the last of the docks on the southern side of the Skrait. One of the children raised his dripping hook in thanks.

  “What are they looking for?” Cythera asked, her voice a tight whisper, no louder than the rustling of leaves.

  “Anything they can sell. A cloak dropped into the water from the bank of the Royal Ditch. Waste leather from one of the tanneries in the Smoke.” Malden shrugged. “A dead body that might still have a purse on its belt.”

  He heard Cythera gasp. “Truly? They might find such a gruesome haul? Those poor children!”

  Malden frowned. He knew she had money to spare, but could she really be so sheltered by it that she didn’t understand basic necessities? “They would cherish it. It would mean they could eat for a week.”

  The old woman waved cheerily at them as she pushed past. Malden waited until the boat of mudlarks was gone from view, then signaled to Cythera that they could move again.

  “It’s not well that they saw us,” she suggested, but as if she hoped he would reassure her.

  “Even if the city watch found them and asked what they saw this night,” he said, “they’d never describe us. They know if we’re abroad this late we’re of their kind—of the great confraternity of desperate folk. They’d never betray us.”

  Behind him, he heard her sigh in relief. He wished he could assure himself so easily. But there was nothing for it—they couldn’t turn back now. Pushing on, they made their way up the river until the walls surrounded them on either side.

  There was no sound but the dripping and knocking of their oars. They saw no more boats, not at that late hour. Malden kept an eye on the tops of the retaining walls, making sure no one was looking down to follow their
progress. He did not see anyone.

  It was hard work, rowing upriver, and for a while they did it in silence. It was boring work, too, however, and eventually Malden started talking just to have something to do. He kept his voice very low, knowing that sound travels far over water, but she did not try to silence him.

  “I’d pay good coin to know how you pulled that trick yesterday. When you just appeared like that on the roof of the university. It was magic, was it not?”

  “If you could define what magic is, and what it is not, you would be wiser than the world’s great sages,” she told him. “It was simply what you called it. A trick.”

  “Hmm. And do you know many such?”

  “Not many.”

  Malden saw that up ahead a zigzagging set of stairs had been carved through the wall, which at this point was nearly thirty feet high. The stairs ended at a solitary dock, but there were no boats at it. All the same, he held his tongue until they were well past.

  “And the way you held my gaze? I could not look away, even with that great mountain of a man coming up behind me. Surely that was wizardry.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. There was no guile in her eyes.

  “You charmed me,” he said, looking over his shoulder, intending to take her to task for enchanting him. Yet she looked as puzzled as he. “You used some spell.”

  “You give me too much credit. I know no such incantation.”

  Yet of course it had to be a spell she’d cast on him. Didn’t it? What else could have explained his sudden interest in her eyes, her hair? What explanation would satisfy the facts, other than that she had ensorcelled him?

  Malden had grown up in the company of harlots, and knew well the ways of physical love. He’d often heard them talk of the other kind, of romance and true love. They’d even talked of the fabled love-at-first-sight, though most had considered it a myth. He himself had never considered he might feel that way about another human being, much less an enchantress covered in tattoos.