The invisible hands lowered him to the ground again—but held him still.
“Good morrow to you,” Malden managed to croak out. He caught the eye of one of the guards. “Will you let me speak?”
The guard came over and jabbed him in the chest with the butt of his pikestaff. Hard enough to rattle his sternum. “What business have you here, dog?”
Malden licked his lips. His mouth was still very dry from the night before. “I have a message for Hazoth. One he desperately needs to hear.”
The guard smiled broadly. “Tell it to me, and perhaps we’ll let you go.”
Malden nodded agreeably. “Would that I could. I’m afraid it must be communicated directly to the sorcerer, however. It is information of a . . . delicate nature, and best not spoken aloud where unwanted listeners might hear.”
The guard scowled. Yet he walked over to one of his fellows and conferred with him a while. Malden could do naught but wait—the invisible wall still held him pinned. He could not so much as scratch an itch.
The second guard ran into the house. He was gone quite a while. The others moved closer to the gate, weapons at the ready in case Malden had some charm that would free him from the invisible wall.
Not very clever of them, he thought. They should have been watching the fence, looking for some armed force approached from another direction. His own approach could have just been a diversion to hide the advance of a more dangerous force. The fact that he, who had no training in security, could see as much told him something. These were not soldiers, then, but only bravos hired to look menacing, not to effectively guard the villa. Good to know.
Not that he could make use of that information if the invisible guardian continued to hold him. It seemed he waited forever, exposed under the sun, unable to move. For a span nothing happened. Eventually, though, the guard returned from the house. He rushed over to his post as if nothing had happened, and Malden wondered if he should be left there, suspended in nothing, until he died of thirst.
But then Cythera stepped out of the doorway.
The hood of her velvet cloak was up, hiding her face in shadows. Her hands were bare, though, and seeing tattooed coils of ivy twisting around her fingers, Malden knew it was her.
She approached him directly, stopping five feet away. He supposed that spot must mark where the barrier ended on the inside—another useful thing to know.
“I am very glad to see you,” he said, smiling down upon her. “I’d bow to you, as you deserve, but as you can see, I’m a bit indisposed. If you’d be kind enough to let me down I’d be most obliged.”
“You’re a fool,” she said. “You’ll die here.”
“I’m desperate,” he told her. “If not here, I’ll die elsewhere, and just as certain.”
She gave him a look of uncertainty. A questioning look. As if she could not believe he had come here and risked so much. He smiled in return, hiding his true fear. A part of him was woefully glad to see her again, and not just because she was the only one who could get him out of the barrier.
“As you wish,” Cythera said.
She lifted her hands in a complicated gesture, her fingers tucked in or stretched outward in weird contortions. She spoke a word that Malden could not hear clearly, even at so close a distance.
The air flexed with magic and he dropped to the ground, falling on his knees and scraping his hands on the gravel. The magic wall was gone. “I offered to bow, and now you see me kneel. You have my thanks, lady.”
Cythera did not offer to help him up. Instead she turned on her heel and walked back toward the house. The guards weren’t even looking at Malden. He staggered to his feet and then raced after her, through the massive stone doors and into the coolth of a dim portico.
Chapter Forty-Seven
When Malden’s eyes adjusted he found himself in a broad marble hall held up by massive columns of braided stone. Light streamed in through tall windows at the far end of the room, which looked out over a garden maze. The glass alone in those windows would be worth ten times what a craftsman up in the Smoke might make in a year. Along the walls stood alabaster statues of ancient scholars and wizards, some of whom he recognized by the things they held or the way they were dressed. There was Antomach the Sage, who had proved the world was round. He was identifiable by the compass he held before him, his other hand held high with a miniature planet floating above his upturned palm. Malden could not see how it was suspended—perhaps by magery. Another statue depicted the necromancer Vull, a figure of such antiquity no one living now remembered what land he’d hailed from. He was shown here in one of his favorite shapes, that of a massive bear with skeletal human hands. Other statues were draped in cunningly wrought shrouds of stone, or stood nude with wolves curling around their titanic legs.
At the center of the hall a double staircase of worked stone rose gracefully toward a gallery above. Standing next to the stairs on a stone plinth was something that shocked Malden as incongruous—a globe of iron, its surface pitted and mottled with rust. A fine sifting of red powder made a crimson shadow on the floor around it. It must have been fifteen feet across and was as ugly as the sharp end of a crossbow bolt. What it was doing in such elegant surroundings was a mystery.
Cythera’s footsteps rang on the floor, which had been polished near unto a mirrored surface. “He’s waiting for you through here,” she said, and gestured toward a tall doorway in the wall to Malden’s right. “Don’t anger him by tarrying here while you gawk.”
He nodded and let his gaze run over the hall’s features one last time before following her.
“Surely you must realize you are unwelcome here,” she whispered to him as she opened the door and ushered him inside. “I thought you were smarter than this.”
“Think me not clever?” he asked, mocking hurt feelings. “I waited until Bikker went out, did I not? How soon do you expect him back, by the way?”
Her brow furrowed, though it was hard to tell from the tattooed creepers that grew upward from her eyelashes. “Bikker? He shan’t be returning.”
“Doesn’t he live here?” Malden asked. “I thought he was a retainer of the sorcerer, like yourself.”
She shook her head. “He’s no servant of my master. And I am no retainer.” She seemed unwilling to say more. She brought him into a long hallway lined on one side with doors. More windows pierced the outside wall, their glare cut down by gauzy curtains that hung from the ceiling. Small tables and display cases stood between the windows, holding curios, some that Malden would very much have liked to stop and examine more closely, and others that made him flinch and look away. He saw one case that held a collection of severed human hands, while another was full of what appeared to be giant pearls. A stuffed and lifeless snake lay coiled on one table, holding a carved ball of white jade in its jaws. The purpose of such things—or if they even had a purpose beyond mere ornament—was lost on him.
At the far end of the corridor Cythera opened another door, which led into a library. Despite himself, Malden’s jaw fell open once again.
It was a comfortable, snug space, though several times larger than the common room at Cutbill’s lair. Sumptuous rugs covered the floor, and a fireplace filled half of one wall. Couches and chairs upholstered in leather stood here and there, where a visitor might choose to sit and read, and an enormous tapestry map of the continent hung from the ceiling showing all the cities, roads, and rivers of Skrae and the Northern Kingdoms in cunning detail. What really astounded Malden about the room, however, was the collection of books.
Books were expensive. They had to be inscribed by hand, then bound in costly hides. Illuminators and engravers were employed in their construction, and since very few people in the kingdom could read, there was a premium on their production. Even the Burgrave might have had only a single shelf of books in his palace, mostly devotional works praising the Lady.
Yet Hazoth had hundreds of books here—perhaps thousands. Far more than Malden could count. Thin folios a
nd massive tomes, miniature librams that would fit in the palm of the hand, grimoires bound in carved wooden covers inlaid with gold and silver and bronze. Books adorned with gemstones, and others with leather covers tooled with a pattern of skulls and bones. Some shelves held loose papers in great sheaves, bound with string, or scrolls and palimpsests wound about ivory rods, or forms of printed matter Malden had never imagined—books built into miniature chests, or folded fans of paper, or books made of pentagonal signatures tied together with ribbon. Books that glowed with their own light, and books that looked like they had scuttled into the shadows at the back of deep shelves, as if afraid of the sun. Opened books sat on lecterns or scriptoria, written in languages and even alphabets he did not recognize. Ink pots of black and red and purple were arranged around one table, and quills from birds far more exotic than the typical goose or crow.
He had a chance to look at only a few of the titles inscribed on the spines of the books nearest to him, but they inflamed his imagination. A Season Within the Pit, Marloff’s Compendium of Diabolic Keys, The Book of The Names of The Dead, The Fraternity of Fame, Wand’ring Formes and Theyr Dispelment.
“How could he read them all within one lifetime?” Malden breathed.
“He’s older than you think,” Cythera said.
“Older even than she knows,” Hazoth replied.
Malden’s feet left the floor in surprise. He whirled around to find the sorcerer taking his ease in one of the leather-bound chairs. He was dressed in a simple black robe and matching hose, with a black veil down over his face. Malden was certain he had not been sitting there a moment ago.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“So you can read, boy? I’m impressed.”
Malden lowered his head in humility. “I have that gift,” he said. “Milord Hazoth, I beg your pardon for my intrusion. I assure you I would not have come here had I not been in possession of certain information, which—”
“Cythera,” Hazoth said, ignoring him, “perhaps things have changed since I was last abroad in the world. It is possible that manners have changed. Is it common these days for peasants to speak before they have been bidden?”
Malden looked up to see Cythera blush beneath the ink on her face. “Malden is no peasant. He is a free man, master. At least as long as he resides within the city’s walls.”
“Indeed?” Hazoth said, sounding surprised. “And that entitles him to come to my house and disturb my studies?” He rose from his chair and walked across the room to the tapestry map, as if trying to recall to himself where he was. “And if I were to, say, transport him instantaneously to—let us see—to here?” He pointed at a place close to the Western Reach, a region marked on the map as devoted to agriculture and possessing no towns large enough to merit inclusion at the map’s scale. “If he were to find himself in the midst of a bean field, on some petty viscount’s estate, with no way to return. What would become of him?”
Cythera glanced at Malden and shook her head a tiny fraction of an inch. He was not to speak now, that much was clear.
“He would be arrested for trespass by the reeve of that place,” she replied. “Most likely he would be forced to accept an oathbond, and would spend the rest of his life toiling as a common farmhand.”
“And then he would be required to pay proper respect when brought before his betters.” Hazoth reached under his veil and stroked his chin. “It would require a certain ritual to send him thence, however, and such operations take time. Far quicker, I think, to simply ensure that he does not talk out of turn again.” He brought his free hand up in the air and made a complex gesture.
Malden felt as if an iron pincer had gripped his throat. He tried to open his mouth and felt the invisible force constrict until he could barely breathe. It was much like the barrier outside that had held him aloft in the air, but worse—the barrier had been unpleasant, but this was actually painful. He had no doubt that if Hazoth so chose, he could cause the force to squeeze until his windpipe were crushed.
“There,” Hazoth said, and moved back to his chair. “Much better. I hadn’t finished speaking, boy. I had more to say, and now I can. I was going to say how impressed I was with you. Cythera has spoken quite highly of your abilities as a thief, but that is a subject I find uninteresting. I am far more admiring of your willingness to overcome your—quite natural—fear of anyone more powerful than you. Coming here today was an act of uncommon valor in a lowborn not-quite-peasant such as yourself. And valor is commendable, even in its cruder forms. Rudeness, however, is always unacceptable, and I will not have it in my house. Had you not impressed me so much, I would extinguish your life like that of a rodent I found in my larder, do you understand? But I have chosen to be merciful.” He waved his hand. “You may now say, ‘Thank you, Magus.’ ”
The hold on Malden’s wind was gone, as if it had never been there.
“Thank you, Magus,” he said.
“You are most welcome. There. Not so hard to be polite, is it? You may speak.”
“I apologize,” Malden said, his heart burning in his chest, “for my rudeness.”
“Quite all right. I believe you had a message for me. Say it now.”
Malden cleared his throat. “I’ve come to tell you that you are in danger. Anselm Vry, the bailiff of this city, is searching you out even now. He knows the crown has been stolen, and he intends to recover it regardless of who might be inconvenienced.”
“That’s all you came to say?”
Malden nodded. The sorcerer had not told him he could speak.
“Very good. It is ever so kind of you to come and tell me this. It shows good business sense as well. You were hired to perform a task and you were paid handsomely. I take it your coming here to offer me warning was all part of the service, hmm? You are acting out of pure altruism, and want nothing further as recompense. Surely you didn’t think this would earn you some more coin. After all, the gold I gave you already should last a lifetime for one of such humble aspirations of yourself. That is, if you haven’t already drank it all, or spent it on some shiny but worthless bauble. You may speak.”
Malden chose his words carefully. “I admit, Magus, that my intentions were not unalloyed with self-interest. Vry intends to torture anyone connected with the theft until they provide the crown’s location. I fear he has some way of discovering my involvement, and that he will put me to the ordeal. It had occurred to me that you might be able to offer me some protection from that fate. It would be in our mutual self-interest, as then I could not reveal—”
“You and I have no mutual interests of any sort,” Hazoth told him. “Tell me something—you may answer me this—do you know why I wear this veil?”
Malden lowered his eyes. He thought of Anselm Vry’s hedge wizard, and what came from peering into his shew-stone. “It is my understanding that magic is never free. That power comes from the demons a magician treats with. So as his power grows, his body is twisted and deformed to resemble the creatures of the pit. I assume you wear the veil to hide some disfigurement.” An eye out of place, a face turned the texture of tree bark, a beard of writhing flesh . . .
“Oh, very good! And yes, that is the reason for the tradition. I don’t suppose your brain is capable of understanding what happens when one siphons power through the flaws in the underpinnings of our fractured cosmos, but you have the gist down pat. Perhaps you will brace yourself to take a look at what is beneath my veil.”
Malden’s stomach tightened as Hazoth reached up to lift the black crape away from his face. For a sorcerer as powerful as Hazoth, the price of magic must have been exceeding steep. Would the uncovering reveal skin as scaly and shiny as an asp’s? Would there be pus, and open sores that never closed, or even wounds so deep the skull would be visible? Would the face look human at all?
Then the veil was rolled back and Malden saw Hazoth’s face and he gasped in surprise. For the countenance thus exposed was perfect.
It was the face of a demigod. The cheekbones were hi
gh, the limpid blue eyes set perfectly far apart, the nose powerful without being over prominent. The skin was as clear as milk, with no blemish visible anywhere. It was a face of youth, of compassion, of inherent goodness and decency—except for the eyes, which were as hard as iron.
“I wear this veil,” Hazoth told Malden, “because if I did not, no one would take me seriously. They would think my power slight, my magic untested. Whereas in fact the opposite is true. When one becomes powerful enough, one is able to shape one’s appearance to fit one’s fancy. And I am quite powerful indeed. Let Anselm Vry come to my door, as you did. I will welcome him inside, and if he troubles me, I will dispatch him like an obnoxious fly.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Hazoth rose from his chair and went over to one of his bookshelves. He ran his finger along a number of spines before selecting a slim volume and pulling it free. “It was good of you to come here and give me your warning, boy. However little it was needed. Do you have anything else to say before you leave? You may speak.”
Malden bit his lip. Circumspection was everything now. “I can only plead with you then, Magus. Beg, if I must. I’m in a great deal of trouble, trouble I earned in your service. Does that not entitle me to some consideration? It would be a trifle for you to offer me some protection under your roof. If nothing else I could come work for you, in whatever capacity you saw fit.”
“A job? You want a job? But you already had one, dear boy. If there were risks involved, you knew them when you took it. Or perhaps you will claim you didn’t understand the magnitude of your crime. Well, considering your limited resources, I suppose that’s understandable. Come here.”
Den of Thieves Page 22
