He imagined he could have found this same reception in any brothel between the Golden Slope and the city walls. One of his jobs when his mother had still been alive was to run errands back and forth between the various houses of prostitution, and he learned early on that whores had three special talents other women lacked: one was the obvious, but another, less widely advertised, was that they took care of their own. They had to—even by the liberal standards of the Free City of Ness, a working woman was on the absolute bottom rung of the societal ladder. If they had problems, they turned to one another to solve them, because no decent citizen would ever stoop to aid a whore. The children of whores were treated like royalty among their number—because outside the walls of the brothel, they would be treated worse than livestock.
“It’s been so long,” Elody said, playing with a curl of her hair. The henna she used for dye left it thin and fragile, but she could never stop playing with it. “Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
Malden smiled at her but made no answer. When he left, when he’d grown too old to be a baby of the house, when the previous madam of the place shoved him out in the streets, she’d not been unkind but was firm. There was no place for him there any longer. The house that had been his only home when he was a boy had suddenly seen him as a seed between its metaphorical teeth, and spat him out into the streets of Ness with as little ceremony. He could still remember the look on the faces of Elody and the other “girls” that day. They’d fought with themselves not to show him any pity. And they’d won.
For a while afterward, while Malden tried to find honest work—and then when he began his life of crime—he’d sworn to himself he would never return.
Now, seeing how Elody received him, he realized what a fool he’d been.
The madam patted his hand and let his silence go. She filled it with her own words instead. “So much has happened that I must tell you about. Wenna had her baby, she’s a pretty little thing, and Gildie actually made good on all her promises, and bought out her contract, and is living with a wood-carver now, she’s an honest woman at last. She who was the most scurrilous of commodities once, as you’ll no doubt remember.”
“Really? I thought she was all bluster, that one.”
Elody laughed. “Nothing stands still for long these days. Even old baggages like me can change our ways when the wind blows—oh, and have you heard the latest? It’s all the talk today. The Burgrave’s tower fell down! It seems a wonder, even now when I’ve had time to grow accustomed to the notion. Eight hundred years it stood. They say it was lightning that done for it.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Malden said.
“You must be the last.” She squinted at him suddenly. Malden tensed, thinking she might guess he’d had some hand in the tower’s collapse. She was a shrewd woman, Elody—one had to be to get to run a bawdy house in Ness. Could she see it written all over his face? “There’s something different about you,” she said finally.
“I’m the same as ever,” he protested.
“No. What is it? What do I sense here?” Her face opened wide with a bright smile. “You’ve met a woman! You must tell me all, at once!”
Malden’s shock could not be overestimated. “I—I—ah—yes,” he finally said, simply glad to change the subject, not thinking overmuch on what he said. “But—how did you know?”
“You’ve combed your hair!” Elody said, exploding in laughter.
Malden reached up and touched his short hair. It was true he’d groomed himself before heading out that morning. He’d wanted to look presentable when he turned over the crown. It did not occur to him that he had done so thinking that he would see Cythera again, but—
“It’s nothing,” he protested. “She’s a beauty, and far beyond what I might hope to attain. I’ve done nothing but make a fool of myself when I’m around her. Surely she’s not interested.”
“Some women like that,” Elody told him. “But I can see your discomfort talking on this, so I’ll let it be. For now. Tell me, Malden, why you’ve really come here,” she said, a sparkle in her eye. He knew he hadn’t heard the last of this. “I know you aren’t here just for advice on love.”
He set his cup on the ground and looked up at a shriveled lemon hanging from a branch above him. “I’m looking for someone. Either of two people, actually—a man and a woman.”
“We’ve plenty of the latter, to meet all requirements,” Elody japed.
He smiled and looked her in the eye. “How much of this place does Cutbill own?” he asked. He still wished to keep the master of thieves as far out of the job as he could manage, just as Cythera and Bikker had asked.
“That scrawny weevil? None,” she insisted.
“In truth?”
Elody sighed. “You know we’re not the finest house, nor the most lucrative. Truth be told, we’ve fallen on hard times, Malden. Cutbill could buy this place ten times over, doors, windows, coneys and all, and not feel the pinch. He never made so much as an offer. He steers clear of us because he doesn’t want to absorb our debts.”
Malden nodded understandingly. “I’m not sure if the people I’m looking for were ever clients of yours . . . or of any woman plying the trade. But perhaps you’ve heard tell of them.” That was the third great talent of the harlots: they heard things. Men were famous for talking in moments of extreme relaxation. The working girls tended to share the juicier bits of gossip they acquired with each other. Had the Burgrave himself a dark secret to hide, if he whispered it into the ear of his favored concubine at midnight, for certain it would be the small talk of streetwalkers in the Stink by midday.
“Let’s see what we can learn.” Elody offered him a hand to help him rise from his cushions and led him up the stairs to the private rooms, where the girls were getting ready.
Once there, he described the shifting tattoos on Cythera’s cheek to a girl who billed herself a Barbarian Princess (in truth, she was only tanned by the sun). While a trull twice his age coated her face with white lead to hide her wrinkles, he spoke of Bikker’s acid-spitting sword. A girl of fifteen put powder of belladonna in her eyes while he elocuted on Cythera’s ability to appear from thin air. When she was done, she looked as surprised as he’d been on the roof of the university, but she had no news to share with him.
It wasn’t until he reached Big Bess’s closet that he found what he was looking for. Bess was taller than Malden by a full head and broader through the shoulders. She wore a tight bodice that made her substantial bosom look as big as Castle Hill. Perversely enough, her specialty was for dwarves—the diminutive craftsmen liked their women sturdy, and far from home they would settle for Big Bess’s powerful frame. It seemed they weren’t the only ones.
“A bit wild, but a smooth talker, you say. Big sword over his shoulder, oh, aye.” Bess grunted. “He leaves his chain mail on when he ruts.” She rubbed red powder onto her cheeks to make them look permanently flushed, then smeared some between her breasts as well. “You say he’s called Bikker? Milles is the name he uses, but of course it’s not what they call him at home. He doesn’t come often, but when he does I make him pay for the full night because I know I’ll be bruised and no good for anyone else in the morning.”
“I imagine we’re speaking of the same man,” Malden told her. “Bess, do you know where he lives? Or at least where I might find him?”
“Are you going to kill him?” the trollop asked while gluing on a set of horsehair eyelashes. “Because I won’t have that on my conscience.”
“No, no,” Malden said. “Perish the thought. He owes me money.”
“Ah!” Bess exclaimed. “In that case—”
Chapter Thirty-Four
When the Seven Day Fire finally burned itself out, leaving nearly half the Free City in smoldering ruin, a great wave of religious mania ran through the people. Both Sadu and the Lady were exalted for stopping the fire, and their adherents carried their icons through the streets in endless processions. Zealots of the two faiths came to blows in the streets, and
thus began a civil war that might have finished what the fire began. The Burgrave stepped in then, crushing the leadership of the Bloodgod’s mob with brutality and a lack of discrimination. When the bodies were cleared away, he declared the Lady the official tutelary of the city. In honor of this patron deity, he seized an entire neighborhood of houses where Sadu was the only god and had them pulled down. Every timber, every stick of furniture, was demolished and carted away. The people who had lived in those houses went to live with family members if they could, or to the streets if they must. The very ground where the houses had stood was cleared to bare soil, so no sign of the neighborhood would ever be found again.
Protests had been minimal. There were already plenty of martyrs with their heads on pikes up by Castle Hill, and even the most devout were loath to join their coreligionists there. Besides, the houses the Burgrave tore down had mostly been destroyed by the fire already. Yet the Burgrave’s intention was clear—he had demonstrated that the faith of the Bloodgod was no longer an accepted religion in the city. If he allowed it to be practiced at all it was strictly at his pleasure, and he could clamp down on it whenever he saw fit. He needed a monument to that intention, and the cleared ground would be the place for it.
A stone wall ten feet high had been constructed around the six acres thus reduced. There were no gates in that wall, nor any way to enter the ground inside once it was completed. All sign of human habitation was removed from what came to be known as the Ladypark. Plants and wild animals were allowed to flourish there unchecked. Rumors persisted—and were reinforced by the roars and howls that plagued the district by night—that the Burgrave had introduced some large predatory creatures to the preserve before sealing it up. It was well known that anyone who climbed over that wall, perhaps looking to steal fruit from the many trees inside the park or to poach some of the holy game, would never climb back out in one piece.
It was a dangerous place, and a sacred one. Which meant that the watch never bothered to guard it. Perfect for Malden’s needs.
The top of the wall surrounding the park made a narrow avenue winding through half of the Stink and all the way down to the common of Parkwall. Malden ran along its top, where an endless row of wrought-iron spearheads stuck up from the capstones. One slip and he’d be impaled, but Malden never slipped.
When he reached the end of the wall he squatted down and peered through the darkness. A sliver of moon lit the scene, while vapors of mist curled on the grass of the common where a few stray sheep slept on their feet. Beyond the Ladypark’s south wall a hundred yards of open ground surrounded a grand villa. Parkwall was known for its enclosed houses, which belonged to those citizens rich enough to afford mansions yet willing to live so far away from the crowded merchant neighborhood of the Golden Slope. This house was the largest of them all: a massive three story pile of white stone, busy with gables and flying buttresses. Its walls were pierced in a hundred places by broad windows of clear, smooth glass—expensive—and in the front by a twenty-foot-wide rose window of stained glass, worked with cabalistic symbols—ruinously expensive. It would look very much like a cathedral, Malden thought, had it possessed any spires.
Smaller outbuildings clustered the forecourt, while in back of the house was a broad and meticulously tended garden of topiary and fountains. The whole was surrounded not by a wall, but by a simple fence of iron bars, pointed at the top to discourage anyone from climbing over. The fence looked imposing, but Malden might have laughed at the security it provided (had he not been trying to stay quiet as a mouse). A boy, or even just a very thin man, could slip between those bars by turning sideways.
He was not a fool, of course. He knew whose house this was, and that the fence would be the least of its defenses. It belonged to Hazoth, the only sorcerer of real power in the Free City of Ness. Malden knew of the man by reputation. Growing up in the city, unruly children were often threatened with a visit from the sorcerer, and even some adults used his name as an oath. Though Hazoth was accepted as a leading citizen (the only prerequisite of that status being gold), he was a reclusive figure who only came out of his home for grand public occasions. Such a character naturally attracted his share of attention and superstition—a reputation that was worth a dozen walls and moats and palisades. Whether Hazoth was truly as powerful as the legends made him out to be, no thief with natural survival instincts would risk drawing the man’s attention.
Trespassing on the grounds of a sorcerer was reckoned a kind of self-slaughter. There was no telling what dread curse Hazoth might levy on a trespasser. He might turn your guts to water or make your eyes burst in their sockets with a simple wave of his hand. No doctor could heal that kind of injury, nor would any touch you for fear of suffering a like fate.
No, only a fool would bother Hazoth in his own home.
Even without the threat of magic, Malden had eyes in his head to see that there were armed guards patrolling the garden behind the house. They went with shining lanterns around the corners of the stables and the kitchens, looking for anyone who dared to slip through that fence.
Malden would never have approached the place in a hundred years—had he not had legitimate business there. His investigations told him this was where Bikker was to be found, and likely Cythera as well.
So he assumed that Hazoth had to be his ultimate employer. It must have been Hazoth’s orders that sent Cythera and Bikker after the crown. What in the Bloodgod’s name could a sorcerer want with it, though? Clearly it was enchanted—normal crowns didn’t talk to people. Perhaps, Malden thought, the wizard merely wanted to study the magics imbued in the simple coronet of gold. Most likely he would never know the true answer. The motivations of Hazoth’s kind would always be mysterious to the uninitiated.
The main result of Malden’s discovery was to make him all the more eager to be quit of the thing. Hand it over, collect his pay, never think of it again. It seemed the only proper course.
Of course, it would have to be done with care. Hazoth had sought to escape scrutiny, hiding his complicity in the crown’s theft behind a double layer of employees. He would not take kindly to even his own hired thief walking up to his gate with the crown in hand, not now.
Malden made his way along the wall until he was directly over the darkest part of the common. As he had expected, it was not completely deserted. A boy in a dark-colored cloak was crouched in some bushes just below the wall. He had a cudgel on the ground next to his right hand and a sloshing jug clutched close to his chest. He also had a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face, which was a bit of a giveaway.
Malden drew his bodkin, then stepped carefully over a spearpoint until he was directly above the boy’s head. The young footpad didn’t even look up. He was too busy watching the common, looking for any poor shepherd who might have come late to collect his sheep. The take would be piss-poor, but for a certain class of desperate criminal no score was beneath plucking. Even shepherds had clothing, and there were places in the city where you could sell clothes in the middle of the night where no questions would be asked.
Without a sound Malden dropped down onto the footpad’s back. The robber struggled and started to cry out, but he placed the point of his bodkin in the join between the boy’s jaw and neck.
“If I wanted to slit your throat, I’d have done it already,” Malden said. “Now, will you be quiet? I want a word.”
The boy started to nod—and stopped when he realized that doing so would impale him on Malden’s weapon. “Certainly, milord,” he sputtered out. The alcohol on his breath was enough to make Malden’s head spin. He supposed that lying-in-wait was thirsty work.
“You’ve a chance to earn some coppers tonight, lad,” Malden said, and moved his knife a fraction of an inch away from the boy’s jugular vein. “But first you must answer me a question true. Who do you work for?”
“My own self! That’s all! I swear, your honor, I’m a good fellow, I say my prayers as often as I remember, and I’ve never done anything like
this before, I—”
“You don’t report back to Cutbill? He doesn’t take a share?”
The boy squirmed violently. Perhaps the lad thought he’d been sent by Cutbill to kill him for unauthorized thieving.
“That answer’s good enough,” Malden said, easing up a little more. “Now let us converse like gentlemen of fortune.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The boy’s face was freckled and his chin weak, when the scarf was removed. Malden held onto his cudgel and his jug while he conveyed the message. Walking like a man on the way to the headsman’s block, the boy crossed the common and went right up to Hazoth’s gate. He gave one last look over his shoulder—even though he couldn’t possibly see Malden so far away in the dark—and then stepped inside the open gate.
The effect was immediate, and startling.
A crackling sound rustled through the grass, and then the boy lifted into the air, as if he’d been snatched up by some invisible hand. Inside the sorcerer’s laughable fence all was suddenly action. Guards rushed out to see who the intruder was, and Malden heard dogs barking in their kennels and horses stamping in their stalls.
Slowly the boy sank back down to earth. There was a sudden flash, not of light but of darkness—like the pulsing of shadows after lightning strikes. Malden’s eyes narrowed. He was glad he’d sent the boy in his place. Apparently the iron fence was only a symbol for a quite different kind of protection.
The guards circled the boy and drove him to his knees. The boy lifted his hands above his head as a spear was jabbed into the small of his back. Malden could hear him wailing out his message, the one Malden had made him rehearse several times to get every word right.
You never told me it could talk, the message ran. Let us three meet at midnight, at the Godstone.
It was a risk, sending this message. Someone might be listening—someone who belonged to the city watch or some other enemy. If they were, he had given them the time and place where they could seize him with ease. Hopefully the words were obscure enough to confuse anyone who didn’t know all the particulars of what had happened.
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