Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  “Wuzzat?” someone said. Someone nearby. Someone whose voice suggested to Malden that he would be quite a bit larger than himself. A slow shuffling step started toward him, drowning out the tired wails of the unseen prisoner.

  Malden looked around him in a panic, searching for a place to hide. There was none whatsoever. He had dropped into a narrow room with a vaulted ceiling—a ceiling from which hung sundry articles of iron, many of them with sharp points, others made of heavy chain. The tools of a torturer. The shaft’s opening was just a square of darkness on the ceiling, the spikes inconspicuous among so much hardware. Arches led away in four directions, with light coming from cressets set between each arch. Beyond one arch lay a flight of stairs heading up—surely the normal method for accessing this underground hell. The echoing footsteps came from another arch. He could have gone left or right and hoped the torturer was slow enough in chasing him—but he saw a better idea and took it. Jumping to his feet, he ran backward up the stairs until he reached the first landing, then walked back down them at a more leisurely rate.

  As the torturer ducked through the arch, the man would only see him coming down the stairs as if he had just arrived.

  “Who the blazes’re you?” the torturer asked when they came face-to-face. He was an enormous man, though not overly tall, his body bloated and lumpy, his hair falling out in clumps. He looked half like an ogre and half like something that should not have been able to crawl out of its sickbed.

  “The new kitchen boy,” Malden said. “I was sent down to fetch you. Fire’s broken out above, and they need every man to help put it out. Hurry, you must get up there at once! Are there any others down here who can also help?”

  “Just me.” The torturer’s mouth fell open and his eyes turned to slits. Malden had the impression he was squinting at him. The big man already had a massive wen over his left eye, so it was hard to tell. Other purplish growths adorned his chin and one side of his neck, like a grotesque beard half shaved. “Fire, you say? No great concern of mine, that. Naught to burn down here.”

  “Nor any other way out but these stairs,” Malden insisted, hoping very much this was not true. “If the palace falls down on top of us—”

  “Oh,” the torturer said, his right eye opening wide. “Oh! Fire! I’d best get up there, see what I can do to help!”

  He rushed past Malden on his way up the stairs, nearly knocking him down. Malden cheered him on as he thundered up the risers. Then he darted through the arch the torturer had just vacated, intent on finding another way out before the brutish man thought to wonder why a man of his age was working as a kitchen boy.

  He had not gotten more than a dozen strides into the dungeon, however, before someone called out to him.

  “You! Yes, you—ye’re Cutbill’s man, ain’t you? Thank the Lady, ye’ve come to rescue me!”

  Malden considered keeping on, ignoring the cry for aid. Had he truly been one of Cutbill’s thieves, those honorless blackguards (whom he had been doing his level best lately to emulate), he would not have faltered in a single step. But he was, in some ways, still his mother’s son. He turned aside from his path and went to look for the man who’d called him.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Croy dashed into the shadows, keeping his head down as arrows buzzed past him left and right. If he could just get to where the archers couldn’t see him— Yes. The wall of the kitchens proved exactly the cover he needed. Its shadow cut through the moonlight like a scythe. Of course, there was one problem. The kitchens abutted the defensive wall, so he had just trapped himself in a corner.

  He turned around quickly and saw four men of the watch come hurtling toward him. Their cloaks billowed around them as they came, the eyes woven into the fabric seeming to blink as the cloth snapped back and forth. The four of them spread out as they approached, forming a half circle before him. That was smart. He could easily have taken them on one by one, but if he tried to attack any of them now, he would be leaving his left flank dangerously exposed.

  The blades of their halberds flashed out and toward him, the weapons swinging in unison, just as their drill instructor had surely taught them. Croy had taught enough guards in his own time to recognize the technique. He couldn’t see their faces under their hoods but he understood. These were men handpicked for duty on Castle Hill, trained well and ready for anything.

  Croy reached over his shoulder. Ghostcutter he left in its scabbard—it was only for fighting demons and sorcery. Instead he drew his shorter, nameless blade. Nothing but honest steel to meet their iron.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I know you’re just doing your duty. However, I cannot allow you to arrest me tonight.”

  One of the watchmen snickered at that, an ugly sound. Another took a step forward and made a feint of cutting at his blade. Croy did not respond, drawing the sword back rather than let the halberd make contact.

  “The Burgrave wants your head,” the snickerer told him. “They say he’ll pay good new-minted silver for it. There won’t be any arresting.”

  Croy frowned. That did complicate things.

  He knew exactly how much these guards earned. Once upon a time, when he’d lived on Castle Hill, he drew the same salary in the Burgrave’s service. He knew they would be grateful for a chance to supplement their income.

  Yet they must be good men at heart. They served a properly anointed lord and protected the Free City of Ness. So he couldn’t just kill them. He knew Bikker would have—in fact, Bikker was probably doing that just now on his own way out of Castle Hill. Yet Croy prided himself on being made of different stuff. He would have to find another way out of this predicament.

  “Last chance, gentlemen. I ask you, as honorable men, will you let me go in peace?”

  A halberd spike came jabbing toward his face—and this time it was not a feint. He had received his answer. He smashed the point aside with the forte of his sword and then dropped low into a ducking sideways hop, moving like a crab as the four of them advanced as one. Two halberds clashed where his head, a moment before, had been, their wooden hafts thudding like drums. Another came low and nearly swept him off his feet. Croy jumped forward and smacked that watchman in the temple with the flat of his blade. It was a stunning blow, not a killing attack. The watchman staggered backward, nearly dropping his heavy weapon as he reached up to grab his ringing head.

  Halberds were powerful weapons, half spear and half axe so they gave the user a wide range of effective fighting styles. They were slower than swords, however. By the time the next blow came toward him—this one a cutting swing aimed at the top of his skull—Croy had danced back and was able to lean away from the chop. As the weapon flashed past his face, he reached out with his free hand—his off hand—and grabbed the halberd right in its middle. Putting his back into it, he twisted the halberd sideways and out of the watchman’s grip and then rushed forward, knocking down two of his opponents in a heap. He threw the halberd away from him and then sheathed his sword. He could kill all four of these men easily, but he had no stomach for it. They were honest defenders of the public weal—what good could possibly come from their deaths?

  The last standing watchman ran at him, but Croy sidestepped the charge. Then he dashed to the side of the kitchen building and clambered up its wall. It was a half-timbered structure with protruding beams and nearly as easy to climb as a ladder. A halberd blade whistled past his feet as he made the roof, but it missed cleanly.

  From the top of the kitchens it was simple to reach the parapet along the top of the defensive wall. Where he went from there was another question. He stood atop a length of curtain wall that lay between two watch towers. From both of them, men were pouring out of doors or jumping down from the tower tops to get at him. He seemed to be out of options.

  Then he looked down and saw the river Krait, flowing briskly by a hundred and fifty feet below him. He tilted his head back and laughed heartily. The men of the watch would be on him in seconds, with orders to s
laughter him where he stood. There must be a full company of them coming at him—far more than enough to take him down, fancy swords or no.

  Jumping into the river from this height was utter folly. If he didn’t hit the bottom hard enough to shatter his bones, there was a good chance he would drown. Of course, there was the slimmest of chances that he would survive.

  He jumped, of course.

  The air whistled past him as he fell, as fast as the proverbial stone. He could see nothing—it all flashed past him so quickly—and he could barely tell which direction was up. Somehow he managed to get his legs pointed downward with the toes extended so he hit the water like a knife blade.

  Still, he hit it hard enough to jar every bone in his body. The shock of immersion in the cold river nearly stopped his heart. The breath exploded out of him in a torrent of silver bubbles. His brains reeled with the impact and his legs stung as if the skin had been flayed from them. Then he opened his mouth to inhale—he had no choice, his body was not accepting the commands of his will—and his lungs flooded with water. He flailed blindly, trying to swim up, unable to tell what direction he was facing, barely cognizant of the difference between right and left.

  His head collided with something hard and wooden, adding injury to injury. His vision spun with blackness and he knew he was about to die. He nearly gave up then and there—if this was the time the Lady had appointed for his death, who was he to gainsay Her wish? Yet there was something in Croy that failed to stop even when lesser men could do naught but yield. He grasped at the wooden obstruction above him and pulled himself up and over it. His face hit the night air with a gasp and he sucked in breath—then turned his head sideways and coughed up a great gout of cold water. He shook his head to clear his eyes and finally looked at where he was and what he was holding onto. It was the rail of a tiny boat.

  Sitting at its oars was Cythera.

  The woman he’d risked all to find. The woman whose love he would defy even death to beseech.

  Surely only one explanation could satisfy this great coincidence. The Lady had smiled on him. Far from choosing this night to bring him to Her bosom, She had let him live, so that he could see Cythera once more. He nearly let go of the boat, wanting to raise his hands to the heavens in thankful prayer.

  “You’d better get in, as we’re going to be spotted any minute,” Cythera said. “Stop playing around and— Hold. You’re not Malden.”

  She made no attempt to help him. She did not reach for him. But then, it would be his death if she embraced him. Her curse made it so. She peered over the gunwale, searching his face with wide eyes.

  “Croy?” she asked, looking horrified.

  He pulled himself over the rail and into the boat. For a while he could do nothing but lie there gasping, looking up at the sky. At the top of the wall tiny faces were peering down at him, tiny arms pointing with urgency at the little boat.

  “Row, Cyth. Row away from here,” he panted. He couldn’t help but smile.

  “I’m supposed to meet someone—”

  A rock hit the river, not three feet from the boat, and sent up a great column of water that splashed them both.

  “I don’t think they have boiling oil,” Croy told Cythera. “But I know they have plenty of archers.”

  “Let us away, then,” she said, and bent to her oars.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  As a child growing up in a brothel, Malden had possessed few friends his own age or sex. Yet whenever he chanced to find himself in the company of other boys, one of the favorite topics of conversation had concerned this very room—the torture chamber of the Burgrave. The boys would name and describe all the instruments of torture they could, and speculate wildly on their possible applications. One frequent debate was held over which device one would least like to be subjected to. It had all been in good fun, of course, a gruesome contest of oneupmanship. He had never considered the idea he would actually be in this room, or see its true inventory.

  “O’er here, lad, and sharpish! I can’t take much more. Oh, oh, I’ll kiss the Bloodgod on the lips for this, when I meet him,” the prisoner announced.

  As Malden headed through the arch to the torture chamber proper, he was more afraid than he had been facing down the demon above, or when he first climbed into Cutbill’s coffin. On every side were the nightmares of his youth. The boot, and also its cruel if prosaically named cousin, the instep borer—which drove a screw through the fleshy part of a man’s foot. The tramp chair, which didn’t look so bad until you realized you would be locked inside it, unable to stand. The heretic’s fork lay on an anvil where the torturer had been sharpening its prongs. Iron-rimmed breaking wheels lined the walls, while a selection of bone-breaking hammers hung by straps from the ceiling. Close by the arch, leaning up against one wall, was the scavenger’s daughter (sometimes called the reversed rack). In pride of place stood the dread crocodile shears, which were only ever used on the slayers of nobility, for that which they took away could not be seen. At least not while the victim wore breeches. There were at least three sets of branks, or witch’s bridles—specially designed headgear with an iron spur arranged in such a way that it projected into the mouth and placed a spike against the tongue. Any sorcerer who tried to speak a curse or cast a spell while wearing such a bridle would shred their tongue instead. A handy appliance to have, Malden thought, in a place like the Free City, where wizards vied with Burgraves and sent thieves to do their mischief.

  “I heard yer voice, I know ye’re still there. Come on, boy!”

  But of all the things that could be done to a human body, all the bits of iron that could be plunged into soft parts, all the different ways to stretch sinews and ligaments until they burst, one device was always rated the worst. None could really say why—it did not seem half so horrible as the choke pear. Yet generations of boys had passed down the sure and certain knowledge that the paragon of suffering-inducing machines had to be the strap.

  The prisoner’s hands had been bound behind his back, then a hook inserted between his wrists. He had then been hauled up on a pulley until he dangled from the ceiling. His arms were twisted around behind him, and as a result his chest thrust forward at an awkward angle. To make this worse, a chain was wrapped around his feet, and from this chain depended a large, round stone. The weight pulled down on joints already strained by the strap that held the man aloft.

  “Ah, and there ye are, ye clever son. There, over there—that knot!”

  Malden stared with gaping mouth at the prisoner, and not only because of his state of distress. The man was naked, gaunt, and haggard of expression. He was also someone he recognized. It was the vagabond he’d seen in Cutbill’s lair, the one who’d claimed right of sanctuary.

  “You’re the thief Kemper, are you not?” Malden asked.

  “For the nonce. Sooner’n I’d like, I’ll go by a different name,” Kemper agreed.

  “I’m . . . sorry?”

  “They’ll be calling me ‘the late’ thief Kemper, if’n you don’t get me down.”

  Malden recovered his wits with a start. “Of course, at once,” he said. He hurried to the wall where the other end of the strap was tied around an iron hook. He undid the knot with shaking fingers and lowered Kemper carefully to the floor.

  For a while the vagabond merely rolled about on the flagstones, his face split by a piteous grin.

  “Oh, I’ve never found such happiness at the bottom of a flagon, nor between a girl’s legs,” Kemper moaned. “Ye’ll never know such ecstasy, lad, and ye should be thankful for that.”

  Malden had many questions for the man. “How did you come to be here? It was just this morning I saw you, at Cutbill’s. You were safe enough there—how were you taken so soon after?”

  Kemper grimaced. “A man can only abide so much stale bread and water. Cutbill gave me sanctuary, to be sure, but his hospitality was a mite lacking, if you catch me. Of all things, water to drink, ye’d think I was a horse! If I wanted real victuals, I
decided I must go abroad. I snuck forth just afore dawn, made right for the Smoke, where I knew I could catch a game.”

  Kemper rolled over onto his side and moaned in pleasure. “Found it easy enough. Didn’t reckon one o’ the players was a cloak-of-eyes on his off-shift. The bastard recognized me just fine and tried to haul me out o’ there. Figured I was safe enough, as I’ve always been. Been caught more times’n you’ve kissed a girl, I figure, and always got free again before. Never thought they’d ken out me one weakness. Now, if ye please, me hands and ankles.”

  Malden went to free the vagabond’s extremities and found they were bound by matching chains of bright metal, seemingly far too thin to hold up Kemper’s weight. They tinkled merrily when he pulled them free.

  “Keep’m as souvenirs, if ye like,” Kemper told Malden, when he saw how the thief stared at the chains. “I’ve no desire to see’m again. Should be worth a mite, seein’ they’re solid silver.”

  “Silver?” He could make no sense of it. He knew nobles could demand that they be hanged with a silken rope, rather than the hempen cord commoners received. But why in the world would a petty thief be strapped with silver? It made no sense.

  “Good ’gainst curses,” Kemper said, as if that explained everything. “Mind, I’ll need a cut on what ye sell’m for.”

  “But of course,” Malden said. He pulled the chains free and stared at them in his hands. Why bind a man with silver? What had Kemper meant about curses? He lifted his eyes to ask the man directly, but in vain. Without a sound, without so much as a fare-thee-well, Kemper had disappeared.

  Chapter Thirty

  Malden rushed back through the arches, thinking Kemper must have slipped up the stairs while he wasn’t looking. He sought only to warn his fellow thief that no good would come of heading that way. Yet as he reached the bottom of the stairs he thought better of chasing Kemper up the steps. No doubt the vagabond would be caught as soon as he made the surface. He would only be sacrificing his own freedom if he followed too close on the man’s heels.