Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  She shook her head bitterly. “You’ll think me wicked,” she said. “Please . . . please don’t think me wicked. Last night—you met a thief in the darkened streets, did you not? He was doing some work for Hazoth. Foul business. I was to meet him, with Bikker, and receive the goods he’d stolen.”

  “He seemed a good enough sort to me,” Croy said. A twinge of something ignoble went through his heart, but he couldn’t help himself. “A . . . friend of yours?”

  Cythera shook her head. “Oh, he’s just a cutpurse. Someone Bikker found—we needed a thief, and—well, that’s a long tale. The point is this: Hazoth decided he must die. That he knew too many secrets, and that once we had our prize, we were to kill him. Bikker offered to do it, of course, but Hazoth seemed to find it more amusing if I was to be the instrument of destruction.”

  “You told him you wouldn’t do it, of course.”

  Cythera turned her face away from him. “Croy, I had no choice. I must obey him. So when the business was complete, I—I asked the thief to kiss me.”

  Croy’s entire body stiffened, but he said nothing.

  “You understand, don’t you? What that would do? Every curse I’ve stored up over the last five years would be released at once, into the poor thief’s body. He would have been slaughtered in an instant. But he refused me. Lucky for him, he knew your name, and knew the effect it would have on me. He’s really very clever for a pickpocket. And then he ran off, and I could not give chase. When I returned and told Hazoth that the thief had escaped, he was furious. He stormed about his library, making books jump off of their shelves, and his eyes glowed with magic. I thought he was going to turn on me and try to blast me with some spell. He has a terrible temper.”

  “Did he hurt you? You said he punished you—what did he do? Cythera, tell me!” Croy wanted to grab up her hands or pull her into an embrace. He didn’t, of course. It would be his death.

  “He cannot. His magic is no use against me. He can’t even have his guards beat me. And that just made him angrier. So he did the thing I’ve dreaded for so long. He turned on my mother instead.”

  “The cur,” Croy swore.

  “He has her in one of his rooms, trapped inside a magic circle. She has languished there for so long at his pleasure, but never before has he actually taken advantage of her imprisonment. I thought . . . I believed that when this time came, he would use magic against her. That he would wrack her with a curse, or perhaps attack her mind with his mind. But he didn’t.”

  Cythera covered her face with her hands.

  “He had her whipped,” she said. “With a plain leather bullwhip. Ten strokes across her back until the skin peeled away. And . . . he made me watch.” She lowered her hands and stared into his face. “He made me keep count.”

  Croy stood up to his full height. “Wait here while I fetch my swords. I’ll kill him. I swear it, Cythera. I will slay him, and free you and your mother from his bonds, and then—”

  “Croy,” she said, very softly, but it was enough to quiet him. “Croy, if you go there now, girded as for war, he will destroy you.”

  “If I die for honor, for love, for fellow feeling—”

  “You’ll still die. No matter how noble the principle, you can only die for it once. And then you’ll be no help to anyone. I do not wish you to get yourself killed for my mother’s sake, Croy.”

  “You can’t ask me to listen to this story and do nothing,” he insisted.

  “No,” she said. She straightened the hem of her dress. “No. That isn’t why I came here. There is something you can do. Some action you can take that might help me.”

  “Finally,” Croy said, with a sigh. “Tell me all.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Malden needed a plan, desperately. He needed some stratagem that would see him inside Hazoth’s house, where he might find the crown and escape with it to safety. He needed to do a great deal of thinking and hone his wits to a razor’s edge.

  First, though, he needed to get drunk.

  He could tell himself that he was looking for creativity in a cup, that the best plans were based on the kind of daring folly that came to one only when the mind was befuddled and the tongue loosed.

  Mostly, though, he just needed to drink until he wasn’t afraid.

  “Ale,” he said, and the barkeep obliged. Malden slid a wedge-shaped farthing across the bar and it disappeared. He did not have many left. He had chosen a particularly filthy tavern in one of the worst parts of the Stink, not for the ambience, but because it was cheap and his funds were small. The place had a few grimy windows made of the bottoms of old glass bottles stuck in plaster. Only a few beams of blue and green and brown light made their way inside. There was a bar made of an old door up on trestles, and behind that a stack of barrels with leaking bungs. There were a few tables but most of the patrons stood and drank from leather tankards and wiped the foam from their beards with their sleeves. A brawl had just been dying down when Malden entered, and one poor fool still lay knocked out on the floor. The serving wench stepped high over him every time she had to pass.

  “More,” Malden said when he was done with his cup. The barkeep waited until he took another farthing from his purse and laid it on the bar.

  The fear of death was nothing new to Malden. At their first meeting Cutbill had threatened him casually enough, and he stood up to the promise of death without quaking in his boots. That had been different, however. The threat was meant as a spur, to make him take the action Cutbill desired. It was understood by all parties that he retained an option, that he had a chance to save himself. That had just been good faith negotiation. There were countless other times over the years he’d been in mortal danger, and every time he’d kept good cheer and found the way through. Even in the Burgrave’s palace, when he faced instant death from the traps and the demon, he had known there was a way through if he was clever enough to find it.

  Stealing from Hazoth, though, was another matter.

  Bikker would slay him the moment he walked through that gate. There was an enchantment over the entire house—he had watched the footpad lifted into the air and held there like a starling impaled on the claws of a cat. There were armed guards all over Hazoth’s estate, and no diversion to draw their attention.

  Worst of all, should he succeed, and find some route into the sorcerer’s inner sanctum—he would then be prey to magic.

  No man was wise who flaunted wizardry. Magic was unpredictable at the best of times. Students of the arcane were more liable to blow themselves up—or drawn down bodily into the pit by angry demons—than to live long enough to ply their trade. Those who did succeed in their studies, however, became powerful. They gained access to abilities normal men could scarce imagine. And Hazoth was one of the greatest sorcerers of history.

  Malden had begun to believe all the stories he’d heard about the sorcerer. There was the tale of how Hazoth drove the elves away from southern Skrae by making every tree for a hundred miles wither and die in a single night. Old men sometimes spoke of the day Hazoth wiped out an entire barbarian army almost single-handed, how a simple wave of his hand rooted the painted berserkers to where they stood so they could do nothing but rave and curse as the knights of Skrae cut them down at leisure. The stories of what Hazoth had done to men who crossed him were too gruesome for Malden to want to remember.

  The sorcerer might place some dread curse on him that would make the rest of his life a living hell. Hezoth might make his skin turn inside out. He might boil his stomach inside his body, so he died shitting out parts of himself over a course of days. Or he might simply flay the flesh from his bones with a word and a wave of his hand.

  “Another,” Malden said, and slapped his money on the bar. He was starting to feel the liquor in his veins. It wasn’t helping.

  For distraction, he turned and studied the low-lifes in the barroom. Most of the patrons were honest enough folk—laborers in leather aprons, covered in flour or candle wax or soot from some forge.
They talked loudly to each other and laughed lustily and stamped their feet when they made some jest or swore an oath. In the back of the room, near the hearth, a card game was in progress. The players looked like the kind of desperate bravos who would cut each others’ throats over a mislaid wager. They were playing in earnest, though, and were almost silent as they took turns laying down their trumps. The game they were playing was unknown to Malden, so he wandered over to observe. One of the players, a mangy fellow with an unkempt beard and a smear of dirt on his forehead, looked up and growled, but the others insisted he play his hand, and he ignored Malden after that.

  The game, it turned out, could not be simpler. The cards were thin pieces of paper with hand-drawn pips on one side and nothing on their backs. They were numbered from one to ten. Each player had a hand of five cards, drawn at random from the deck. He would throw coins into the center of the table based on how high his cards ran, and the others were required to match his wager or forfeit the hand. Then the player would lay down his cards to show the table what he had. If none of the others could beat it, he took all the money. Everyone who had played would draw a new card and the cycle would begin again with the betting.

  One of the players had the king’s share of the coins before him. Clearly the cards had been running his way. From the way the others glared at him, they must have been wondering how he got so lucky. He did not bother to look their way, instead pausing in his play only to drink from his cup. Bizarrely enough, he had a hollow reed stuck in his tankard, and when he wished to drink would place his lips around its end and suck up ale like water through a hosepipe.

  “Are ye playing, lad, or gawkin’? ’Cause there’s a tax for gawkin’,” the lucky player said. The others guffawed, but Malden’s mouth fell open. He had been paying attention to the cards and not the faces of the players, or he would have recognized the man sooner.

  “Kemper?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  A ripple of anger went around the table as each player in turn stared wide-eyed at the lucky man.

  “Kemper?” the gambler with the dirty face said, rising from his stool. “I’ve heard of a cove called Kemper. A cheat, they call him.”

  “Then they lie, don’t they?” Kemper told him. “Now sit back down, ye piebald cur.”

  “I’ll not sit at table with a card sharp!”

  “Play, or leave, ’tis all the same to me.”

  “You’ve been taking my wages all day!” the gambler shouted. “Let me see those damned cards of yours. They must be marked!”

  “Sit an’ play,” Kemper repeated.

  Malden jumped back as the gambler grabbed up the table and hurled it aside. Coins and cards went flying as he rushed at Kemper, his belt knife suddenly in his hand. Kemper did not rise from his seat as the gambler thrust the knife again and again into his chest.

  There were screams and shouts from every corner of the room, and the barkeep stormed out from his post with a hand spike, but it was already over. The gambler had gone milky white and stared at the knife in his hand. There was no blood on it. He staggered backward, and Malden saw that Kemper was unharmed, sitting with perfect composure on his stool, still holding his cards.

  “Clean this up, then,” Kemper said to the gambler, “and get back t’playin’, a’ready.”

  The dirty-faced gambler ran gibbering from the barroom. The others eased away from Kemper as if they’d seen a demon jump up and save him from the knife. All but one of the cardsmen, anyway, who bent down to anxiously grab up coins from the floor.

  “Leave ’em,” Kemper insisted. “They’s mine. For me trouble, like.”

  The greedy gamester nodded and hurried off.

  “Ah, lad, yer timin’ is not of the best. Yet I’m glad to see ye, I am,” Kemper said, and finally rose from his stool. He pushed his cards in his pocket and stepped toward Malden.

  “That knife—his aim was deadly serious,” Malden said. He wondered if his face showed as much shock as he felt. “Yet there’s no drop of blood on you.”

  Kemper laughed. “Here, shake me hand an’ see why.” He held out a callused and scarred hand, and Malden reached to take it.

  It could not be done, however. Malden’s hand passed right through Kemper’s as though it weren’t there. He felt nothing more than a cold clamminess, as if he’d tried to hold a wisp of fog. He gasped and grabbed at the man’s arms and then his hair, unbelieving. He could not touch the man at all. He might as well try to grapple with his own reflection in a mirror.

  “You’re—a ghost,” Malden said.

  “A livin’ ghost,” Kemper agreed. “Which’s the saddest contrary I ken.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Kemper drew too many stares after that to allow any comfort in the tavern. He gathered up his cards and his drinking reed—and of course the pile of coins scattered across the floor—and the two of them headed out into the streets, bound on a wild carouse. Perhaps just to spite those who glared, Kemper handed Malden his things and walked right through the closed door, which rose more than a few startled gasps. Malden bowed deeply to the astonished patrons and then walked right into the door himself, smacking his face on its wooden boards. Perhaps his three cups of ale had more of an effect than he thought.

  Without looking back he opened the door and stepped out into the road. Kemper was waiting for him, whistling random notes that never quite added up to a song.

  “It’s good to see ye, son, it surely is. ’Tis always a pleasure t’have such company as one can speak plainly to, and not have t’worry ’bout keepin’ secrets and bein’ circumspect. I’ll just have those,” Kemper said, and took his things back. The reed and the coins went into his tunic, but he kept the cards in his hand and riffled them as he walked.

  “How is it you can hold those cards, when you cannot hold a tankard?” Malden asked. He had already worked out that the reed was necessary as Kemper’s hand would pass unheeding through any drinking vessel he tried to pick up.

  “Well, now,” Kemper said, coming to a stop and lifting his chin like an orator. “The curse on me’s a strong ’un, yet a mite imperfect, if ye catch me meaning. If I concentrate hard ’nough on it somewhat, I can grip it. With long practice, I can hold just about anythin’. Like me reed, and me cards, which I’ve had since afore ye first soiled yer bedclothes in the night. I’ve mastered sittin’ in a chair, and lyin’ abed, an’ food an’ drink are available t’me. Seems the wizard what did this wanted me livin’, and not allowed the peace o’ death. I’ve not touched a woman, nor e’en changed me clothes, since the day ’twas done.”

  “It’s a pitiable condition,” Malden sympathized.

  “Yet not without its consolations, y’know, for a gentleman of fortune like me an’ yerself. It’s a rare gaol that can hold me, an’ I can carry coins, if they’re silver. As ye see.” He flashed a coin between his fingers and twirled it for Malden.

  “Only silver?”

  “None as is livin’ can say why, I reckon. Yet silver’s a metal no magic e’er touches, y’see?”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Malden admitted.

  The card sharp sighed. “Some virtue o’ the metal, some property arcane, or mayhap a fault in the way magic’s woven, who knows? Yet ’tis a fact. Silver’ll cut through any spell, and no curse works ’gainst it. So even if I’m t’be punished for me sins, still I can clutch silver coins.”

  “Ah! Hence the silver chains—in the Burgrave’s dungeon,” Malden recalled. “I wondered why they would use such precious rope to tie you.”

  “Aye, lad. Only silver can hold me, and most places’re too poor to afford so much as a silver bootlace. Ye can imagine the advantages this offers t’ a man o’ my profession.”

  “And when you disappeared—I thought you had run up the dungeon stairs, but instead you must have just walked out through the walls.” Malden shook his head in wonder. “Yes, I can see how that would be advantageous.”

  “Yer a smart lad, I can see,” Kemper said. “
’Tweren’t easy, I don’t mind tellin’ ye. I had to walk through solid rock, aye, for what felt like leagues. Never really got a feelin’ for that. Ye’re blind as a bat the whole time, and wond’rin’ whether ye’ll come out sixty feet up over the Skrait.” The card sharp reeled a bit as he walked—clearly he’d been drinking himself and wasn’t quite sober. “Or, or, and this’d be worse, that ye’ll just keep walkin’, goin’ deeper and deeper into the world till ye come out again in the pit itself, with ugly old Sadu starin’ up at ye with them fiery eyes of his. I always figgered if’n that happened, I give him a proper salute, like, and walk right past like unto I owned the place. Confidence, confidence is key in our game. Hold up. Hold up, lad, I’m goin’ to piss.”

  Malden stood at a corner and waited until the card sharp was finished. He had to admit a certain curiosity—would Kemper’s water be as immaterial as his body? He thought it impolite to ask, though.

  “How d’you like the look o’ this place? Think they’d take kindly t’gamin’ inside?”

  Malden looked up and saw that they had come to the door of another tavern. Such were not infrequently found in the Stink. He knew this one by its sign, which depicted an ogre’s severed head. “It’s where the local priest of the Lady comes to drink,” he said, shaking his head doubtfully. “Good honest folk come here.”

  “Me favorite kind,” Kemper said with a smile. “Them’s as honest themselves never cease to doubt the honesty o’ their fellows. And if ye know a man don’t trust ye, ye know how to gull him, right enough.” He gestured for Malden to open the door for him.

  There was much ale that followed, with Kemper graciously picking up the bill from his winnings. The night devolved from a continuous narrative into a series of isolated incidents, separated by muddy stretches Malden would not remember clearly in the morning. There was a lot of singing, he knew, and he was encouraged to add his own voice, which was untutored. There was a great deal of gambling, at which Kemper proved more than lucky.