Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  Malden’s legs started walking toward the sorcerer before he thought to move them. He’d had every intention of doing as he was bid, but it seemed the sorcerer wanted to compel him anyway. When he was standing only a few feet away—inside knife range, he thought bitterly—his legs stopped and froze in place.

  Hazoth gestured with the book he held in his hands. “If I needed a table boy, or someone to muck out my stables, I could have you with a thought. I could render you mindless and servile. Bind you to my service for the remainder of your life, and do it in such a way you would be unutterably happy, thrilled every morning to rise from your pile of straw and spend another day working for me until your fingers bled. If I wanted that, it would already have begun.”

  Malden swallowed carefully. His heart was racing.

  “Such a waste that would be, though. You can read. Do you understand how rare that is? Reading is the difference, the mark, of a being capable of thinking beyond its own petty concerns. It is the one thing that truly separates humanity from the beasts. Somehow you have managed the art, and like a trained dog that can count with its paws, you amuse me. So no, I won’t give you a job. Or my protection. But you may have this instead: the greatest treasure I can convey, or at least the greatest that you will be able to comprehend.” Hazoth pressed the book into Malden’s hands.

  It was bound in calf’s leather and was duodecimo in size. Gold characters were printed on the spine but in an alphabet Malden did not know.

  “Read it at your leisure. I’m sure you’ll find it most edifying.” Hazoth smiled, revealing a double row of perfect white teeth. “You may thank me.”

  “Thank you, Magus,” Malden said.

  “It is nothing. Now. Cythera—perhaps you will see our little friend out. Take him the back way, so no one sees him leave. I have no doubt Vry is already watching this house and saw him enter. Or,” Hazoth said, turning his frigid eyes on Malden, “did you not consider that when you came?”

  Malden had not been told to speak, so he held his peace.

  “Come,” Cythera said, and headed toward a door at the far side of the library from which they’d entered. Malden glanced over his shoulder on the way out and saw that Hazoth was no longer in the room.

  “A neat trick,” he said as she led him down a side corridor. “This vanishing and appearing. You know it as well,” he added, remembering how he’d first met her, when she appeared out of thin air on the roof of the university cloister.

  “A simple one, once it’s mastered. Mostly it is a matter of misdirection. Of moving when no one is looking.” She pushed open a wide set of doors and brought him into the villa’s dining room. Its walls were of carved oak, and the table could seat sixteen in spacious comfort. The chairs were pushed up against the walls—they were carved of some glossy wood in intricate patterns and looked far too delicate to support the weight of a human being. The table itself was a slab of marble three inches thick. Something about it demanded Malden’s attention. When he looked closer, he saw it had no legs. The slab simply floated in the air, perfectly motionless. He couldn’t resist the urge to push down on one edge, but the table easily resisted any force he put on it. Cythera sighed in frustration and pointed toward the door. “Leave that be, Malden. You must go now, and quickly, before he changes his mind. He is known to be capricious.”

  “Oh? You think he’ll take his book back?” Malden asked.

  “He has decided to let you live for today. I’m worried he’ll rethink that choice.”

  At the back of the dining room was a small preparatory, where food brought in from the kitchens could be arranged on platters before going to table. The preparatory had a single high window that was open to catch the breeze. It didn’t look like it could be locked.

  “You’re concerned for me,” Malden said as she opened the doors to the garden. “I’m touched.” He blinked in the sudden rush of sunlight when she led him out onto a gravel path.

  She turned to face him, her face an impassive mask. “I don’t like to see people hurt. It gives me no pleasure. In that way, I am different from him. But don’t count on that fellow feeling for too much.”

  He sketched a simple bow as they hurried along, and made a show of stumbling so that his foot kicked a spray of gravel against the side of the villa with an annoying rattle. They were passing the kitchens, which were housed in their own outbuilding. That way if they caught fire they would not burn the main house.

  “Do you find me handsome?” he asked, with a grin on his face.

  “I find you brazen. If you think I’m going to swoon over your looks, or give you my kerchief to tie around your lance, you’re fishing in the wrong pond.”

  “Ah—but you smile when you see me. You admire my courage. You like me, I can tell. Well, working for that sort, I can understand why you’d turn your affections toward gutter trash. We’re easier on the heart.”

  She stopped in the middle of the path and turned to face him directly.

  “After today, I will never see you again. So it really doesn’t matter if I care for you or despise you, does it?”

  Malden stretched his hands out at his sides. “Life is long, and the city is not so big. Only a fool says ‘ever’ or ‘never.’ ”

  “Then think me a fool.” She moved her hands through the air, and it felt like a cloud passed through Malden’s body and was gone. “There. The barrier is down. Go, and do not return.”

  She held out one arm and pointed toward the gate. But he didn’t move. Not until she looked at him, as if to see what was the matter with him and why he didn’t flee.

  He caught her eye, though she tried to look away. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but he held her gaze until she stared back at him defiantly. Still he looked into her eyes, the only part of her he could see that was not covered in the images of sorcery. He held her gaze until something behind her eyes softened, if only for a moment. Softened, and looked back into his eyes, and did not flinch away.

  “Just as I thought,” he said. Then he touched his forehead in salute and left without awaiting a reply.

  The back garden gate brought him out a hundred yards from the towering Parkwall, which cut off the sun and left him in deep shade. He hurried along the wall’s length until the houses surrounding the common swallowed him up again, and only then did he allow himself to relax. As long as he had been in sight of the house he was certain he was still being observed. Once he was in the Stink proper, though, he headed toward a tavern several streets away and immediately headed into a private room in the back. A serving boy brought a flagon of small beer and some sausages when he called for them, then left him alone. Malden sat back in a chair to wait.

  It was only a moment before Kemper walked through the wall and sat down next to him. “How went it, lad?”

  “Like a charm,” Malden told him. “They let me in with barely a question, and Cyth—that is, his servant—showed me half the house without meaning to. I even offered to come and work there, though I was rebuffed.”

  “A job! Y’asked fer a job!”

  “Of course,” Malden said. “Think on it—after a day inside those walls, I would have learned more than I can studying it from the outside for a month.”

  Kemper laughed heartily. “A bolder scalliwag I ne’er yet met. Ye’ve cased the premises, and him none the wiser, ha ha!”

  “He even gave me a book,” Malden said, and reached inside his tunic to bring it out. “I can’t read the title, but it must be worth a fair handful of silver.” He examined the small volume and admired the snug binding, the gilt lettering on the spine. He put a thumb inside the cover and started to open it, intending only to look and see if the contents were in the same alphabet as the title.

  “He just gave it t’ye?” Kemper asked, his eyes suddenly suspicious.

  “Well, yes,” Malden said. “He was so impressed by— Blast!” He dropped the book to the table, where it fell open, facedown. A tiny droplet of blood welled up on his thumb. “I cut myself on the paper,”
he said. A second drop appeared on his flesh, and he stared at the wound. It didn’t look like a paper cut. It looked like a rat bite.

  “Lad,” Kemper said, jumping away from the table. “Lad!”

  The book was crawling across the table. It arched its back—its spine—and pushed itself along the scarred wood with its pages like a slug. It was headed for a sausage on a plate and left a trail of drool or slime behind it as it moved.

  “He tried to kill me,” Malden exclaimed, jumping out of his chair. “I went in there to give him a friendly warning, and he tried to kill me.” He watched the book move for a moment, fascinated by its silent slithering. Then he drew his bodkin and brought the point down hard through the cover of the book. The thing flapped and shook for a moment, then a trickle of black ink ran out from underneath its dead pages.

  Kemper stood as far from the table as he could get, and refused to come back.

  “It’s all right,” Malden said. “I think it’s dead now.”

  Kemper shook his head in distaste. “I’m glad I never larnt t’read,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Malden said as he cut a slice of the sausage and popped it in his mouth. He kept one eye on the predatory book, not unafraid it would rise again and come for him once more. “Before, I had nothing against the sorcerer. I was only going to break into his house because I had to.”

  “An’ now?” Kemper asked.

  “Now I’ll be happy to take this bastard down a peg. Kemper, tell me—how did you make out? When the barrier spell came down, did you get inside?”

  “Aye, son, aye,” Kemper said. “An’ none as saw me either. Let me tell ye what I found.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Kemper had been reluctant to help Malden in his reconnaissance of Hazoth’s villa, yet he admitted he owed Malden a significant debt. Had Malden not rescued him from the Burgrave’s dungeon, he would have been tortured to death.

  Besides—the plan had been half Kemper’s idea, or at least it inspired by the card sharp’s offhand comment the night of their carouse. Kemper had asked him why he didn’t just go in and ask for the crown back. He had, of course, been joking. Yet when Malden sobered up he realized that he did in fact have the perfect cover story to get him inside the sorcerer’s house. And casing the place was essential if he was to steal the crown back.

  “I can see no other way to resolve my difficulties,” he’d told Kemper. “Will you help me?”

  “Aye,” the intangible scoundrel had said at last. Together they formulated a scheme for it. Kemper could walk through normal walls like a ghost, but the wizardly wall surrounding Hazoth’s villa would keep him out as well as if it had been made of solid silver. The wall had to be dropped, however, every time someone came in or out of the grounds. When it was lowered for him, Kemper would have a chance to sneak in as well.

  After the fact, Malden was deeply glad they had worked the thing so carefully. The wall didn’t just immobilize those who tried to cross it. It searched him with invisible fingers, combing through his pockets and his clothes with studied precision. Had Kemper been caught in that wall even for a moment, the jig would certainly have been up—Hazoth would have known the game they were playing and would have destroyed them both in the time it took him to blink an eye. It had been a major risk anyway, since they had no way of knowing just how aware Hazoth was of who was in his house at a given time. They had proven, Malden decided, that it was possible to enter the house without immediately alerting Hazoth to one’s presence, and that was a major step forward in the plot. Something to be grateful for anyway.

  “I could tell, o’ course, when it came down,” Kemper said, leaning forward to suck drink through his reed. “I could feel it in me bones, smell it in the air. I knew I must be quick, so I dashed in through the garden, while the guards weren’t payin’ close watch. I think they was watching you up front, mostly, and I learned long ago how t’keep low and out o’ sight. The door hard by the kitchens was closed, but ’twas no problem for the likes o’ me. I slipped through neat as eel pie and found the stairs what servants use afore the wall was e’en up agin.”

  Malden had guessed beforehand—and been proven correct—that what he’d be allowed to see of the interior of the house would be restricted to the lower floor. In his experience, most rich men kept their offices on the ground floor of their homes, rather than force their guests to climb stairs. Thus he had tasked Kemper with exploring what he could of the upper two floors.

  “The second story’s about what ye’d expect, plenty o’ bedrooms, a couple o’ garderobes, storage fer linens, clothes, and whatnot. I didn’t check much there, seein’ I was bein’ careful wi’ the time. The third story’s where things get int’restin’, though. His own bedchamber’s up there, and ooh, is it grand. Silken sheets and pillers, divans an’ lookin’ glasses ever’where. There’s chains hangin’ from the ceilin’, too, with manacles on ’em, what felt like cold-forged iron. What you think he gets up t’wi’ those, eh? Eh? Maybe human lasses is too normal for his lot. Maybe he’s conjurin’ up suck-you-bye from the pit t’have his way wi’. What you s’pose that’s like, eh? Eh?”

  Malden’s eyes went wide just with imagining. In the House of Sighs, the most expensive of the city’s whorehouses, there was a famous fresco of a succubus copulating with a sleeping man. He had run many errands to the House of Sighs as a boy, and that image had been impressed firmly in his youthful mind. He’d never before considered, though, that succubi might actually exist. Did they have wings, like in the painting? And horns, and— But enough. “What of the rest of the floor? Surely there’s more than just the one bedchamber. There must be. Did you see the crown?”

  “Nay, lad, nay. But I think I mighta seen where it’s hid. There’s a study on that story, a mickle space for him to write letters and do his reckonin’s. Then there’s a workshop fit for a dwarf, wi’ all manner o’ tools and materials waitin’ to be fashioned. There’s a room full o’ glassware, I ne’er seen its like, all manner and shape o’ tubes and pots and bowls, some bubblin’, some smokin’, some full o’ what looked like ghost-stuff. I didn’t spend long in there for the smell, which were like rotten eggs. The biggest room up there’s at the end of a hallway, ain’t never used by the folk o’ the house. There’s dust on the rugs in there, and the doors is all locked up tight, and the lock’s half rusted. I’m figurin’ there’s traps all over that corridor, set for any thief what dares to try for the big room.”

  “But what’s in this big room?” Malden asked.

  “That,” Kemper said, “shall remain a mystery, I fear. I was bein’ extra careful in that hall, in case there’s such a trap as could kill a nosy ghost, mind. I was barely inside th’ hall when I heard ye out in the garden, scuffin’ up gravel and chattin’ all frien’ly like wi’ yer tattooed lady.”

  “I tried to make as much noise as I could, without causing fuss, and stall as long as possible to give you time to make your escape,” Malden promised. It had been their agreed upon signal that he would make some noise when he was being ejected from the house. Kemper had to exit the place at the same time he did or risk being stuck inside the magical wall when it was brought back up.

  “Oh, aye, ye did marv’lous well. I fled down th’ stairs and out th’ side, where some trees grow right up t’th’ fence. Now, trees or fence, it makes no diff’rence fer one o’ my proclivities. I was out like a crossbow quarrel and away, e’er ye was finished makin’ time. So who’s yer leman, huh? Who’s this bird, anyroad? Ye’ve taken a fancy to her?”

  Malden blushed. He actually blushed at the thought. “She’s fair enough to look at. Not fair as in light of complexion, of course. But underneath all that ink she’s a beauty. But—this is silly talk. She’s betrothed, I think. Or at least promised.”

  “Betrothed ain’t the same as wed,” Kemper said with a leer. He tried to jog Malden’s ribs with his elbow, but of course it just went through Malden’s flesh like air. He felt his breath turn to ice and coughed out a
puff of vapor.

  “Betrothed . . . to a fellow with a whacking great sword,” Malden clarified. “I don’t know that it would work out. She seems to like strapping men with chiseled features. I like women whose paramours can’t cut my head off for looking upon them.”

  “No woman’s perfect,” Kemper admitted. “ ’Course, if’n you was diddlin’ her, well, she’d be right useful t’ a fella wanted t’break into her house, wouldn’t she?” He sucked up a great sip of his drink. “What in the Bloodgod’s hairy arse is this? Small beer?”

  Malden shrugged. Small beer was what you served children, of course—milk being too useful for making butter and cheese, and water being nowhere in the city so clean you’d give it to any child you liked. “I figured after last night—well, my head’s still pounding.”

  “And th’ cure for that’s this weak brew?” Kemper shook his head. “Nay, lad, ye’ve much I can teach ye yet. What we need now’s brandy, and great lashings of it. Call the servin’ wench. We’ve a great vict’ry today, let’s celebrate it!”

  Malden did as he was told, though in truth he didn’t feel much like celebrating. He’d seen the inside of Hazoth’s house, yes. But what he’d seen had told him his work was cut out for him. Stealing the crown had been hard.

  Stealing it back would take a miracle.

  Part III

  The Crew

  Interlude

  Cythera prepared Hazoth’s dinner that evening—a good haunch of venison and a plate of radishes soaked in milk—and laid it out on a silver tray. She started to walk from the preparatory to the dining room where he normally took his evening meal, alone at that enormous table. He had invisible footmen to serve him, but he didn’t trust them to make his dinner—they lacked tongues or noses, and so had no idea how to properly spice meat, he said. Cythera suspected he had another reason for demanding that she cook for him. Perhaps it was yet another of the indignities he liked to heap on her, for—