“You mean Ommen Tarness?” she asked. “He was a simpleton. And anyway—you saved his life. Had he appeared before the procession in his natural state, Vry would have had him killed afterward.”
“I know,” Malden said. That wasn’t the point, though. In the last moments before the crown was returned, Ommen had said something that struck Malden to the core. He was getting smarter, he claimed. The imbecility was wearing off. He had not been born mindless—only the crown stole his wits, and without it he was becoming himself again. And he had stopped that process before it could properly begin.
But that was his burden to bear. He decided not to share it with Cythera.
After all, there was one other thing to discuss.
“Come away with me,” he said without warning.
She turned around very fast as he put an arm around her waist. He leaned forward and kissed her. Hard.
“I don’t have to stay here anymore,” he said. “I can travel the world. Come with me, and be my wife.”
Cythera glanced into the room, toward where Croy lay in bed.
“Forget him. You broke off your betrothal already.”
“Not in so many words.”
Malden grimaced. “I was the one who freed your mother. Not him.”
“And you think that means I must marry you now?” she asked. “That’s how the stories end, isn’t it? The hero slays the dragon, and the damsel throws herself into his embrace. Who lives in old stories now, Malden? Isn’t that something you always despised about Croy? This is the real world.”
“And here, now, I love you,” he told her.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and for a moment he thought she would say it in return. Then she leaned her head against his chest. “Malden, you’re a thief. A man of property now, but still—a thief. You must understand—you have to understand—that people in the real world do what they must to survive. To make their lives better.”
“And that means you will stay with him,” Malden said.
“You have a strip of land unfit for human habitation. He has a castle. Servants and retainers. A title. My children will have all those things, too. Do you understand why that matters? Look at my life. Look what my parents gave me. Can you accept that I would do anything not to pass on that inheritance?”
Malden let her go. He strode to the far end of the balcony and looked uphill, toward the palace. All around him the city lay in its unalterable tiers, with the poorest people at the bottom and the rich up top. So it would ever be.
She started to go back inside, to the sickroom. He stopped her by calling her name.
“Do you love him?” he asked.
“What a silly question,” she said, and then went inside.
Chapter One Hundred
Cutbill made a single notation in his ledger, then crossed out two lines. “There,” he said. “You are now a journeyman in the guild, with all rights and privileges of that rank.” He glanced over the edge of his book at Malden. “There is, of course, the question of the money you owe Slag. And I expect you to start earning right away, to keep my good favor.”
And that was it. No thanks, no reward. Fair enough, Malden thought. He’d expected nothing more from Cutbill. He had caused a great deal of trouble for the man, but now he’d repaired the damage. They were even.
And he was in the guild. Croy’s deed had made him a man of property, and now he was a man of profession. He could start earning money for himself, having ransomed his place in Cutbill’s organization. He was beholden to no one, his own master. He was truly free.
“You may go,” Cutbill said. Then he held up one hand, rescinding that. He looked to one corner of the room, where a tapestry was shimmying as if blown by a wind Malden did not feel. “Wait. Use that door, over there.”
Malden looked at the indicated door and frowned a question, but Cutbill offered no explanation. Malden stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Beyond lay the spy room, where one could observe what happened inside Cutbill’s office without being seen.
Malden bent his eye to the spy hole and watched as a tall man wrapped in a plain brown cloak walked over to Cutbill’s desk. The newcomer sat down behind the desk as if he owned the place, then pulled back his hood.
It was the Burgrave. He wore his golden crown and his eyes were very sharp. What was he doing there, unaccompanied?
“Milord,” Cutbill said.
The Burgrave was silent for a while. Then he said, “It seems I am once again in your debt. I don’t like owing you things, thief.”
“Then allow me to say that the debt is all mine,” Cutbill responded. “You permit me to exist, and to carry out my operations. If those operations are occasionally to your benefit, I consider it my honor to serve so great a man.”
“Honeyed words never sound right in your mouth.” The Burgrave got up from the desk and stormed around the room. “I never doubted Anselm Vry. I always thought he was a clerk, and nothing more. Someone gifted with moving numbers around on a page, but wholly incapable of treachery.”
“You make him sound like me, milord,” Cutbill suggested. He continued to work at his notations.
“Hardly. You—I’ve never trusted you. But you saved me from a rather unpleasant fate, and you’ll have a reward.”
“Many thanks. Tell me, milord, have you decided what to do with the two heroes of the day? I speak of Sir Croy and of Malden.”
The Burgrave shrugged. “Croy proved his loyalty well enough. I don’t suppose I’ll make an issue of him. I’ll leave his banishment intact but not enforce it. That way, if he crosses me again I’ll have legal standing to hang him. Who is Malden?”
In the spy room, Malden cringed. He rather wished Cutbill hadn’t used his name at all—it could only lead to trouble.
“The thief who stole the crown. And returned it. One of mine, though he was not acting under my orders in the first instance.”
“Oh,” the Burgrave said. “Well, he’ll have to be killed, of course.”
Malden nearly cried out.
“He knows my secret. I can’t have that.”
“Indeed.” Cutbill made another notation. “Understandable. Though . . .”
“What is it?”
Cutbill looked up from his ledger. “You said you would grant me a reward.”
“Yes, yes. Gold, jewels, what will you have? It can’t be anything official, of course. Nothing on paper.”
“Malden’s life. Spare it.”
Malden’s jaw fell open.
“Oh, come now! What do you care about one thief? You have dozens. Many more circumspect ones, at that. This one nearly got you killed.”
“But he didn’t. He proved far cleverer than he should have been.”
The Burgrave let out a curt laugh. “Enough reason I’d think you’d want him dead. Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental, Cutbill. I admit, I’d like to let him live myself, but reality is often unfair. You know that all too well.”
“Do not mistake me. I don’t ask out of a sense of justice. I have none. I ask because he could be an excellent earner, if I keep him under my thumb. He could make me quite a bit of money in the long run.”
The Burgrave studied Cutbill shrewdly. “You’ll keep him quiet?”
“I’ll sew his mouth shut if he threatens to speak out of turn.”
“Very well, then.” Then the Burgrave left the room, shaking his head in disbelief. He headed through the door that led back up to the Stink.
When he was gone, Malden stepped out of the spy room.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, staring at Cutbill in gratitude.
“Say only that I won’t regret this,” Cutbill told him. “Now. You may go. Don’t come back until you have some money for me.”
Malden nodded and headed out, into the city that was his home.
Acknowledgments
I didn’t think you would ever see this book. I wrote it for myself, for therapy, for fun. I wrote it intending to put it in a
desk drawer (well, the back of my hard drive) and forget about it. Nobody else was ever supposed to see it, but Alex Lencicki stood outside my cave shouting insults and dire threats until I threw some pages at him to make him go away. After that it was out of my hands. Russell Galen saw it next, and he beat me over the head with a club until I let go of the manuscript. Diana Gill and Will Hinton took it from there and made it into something better, something I’m proud to show the world. Without these people it could never have happened, and I’m very grateful.
David Chandler
New York City, 2011
If you enjoyed DEN OF THIEVES,
don’t miss the next adventures
by
David Chandler
coming soon!
A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
October 2011
HONOR AMONG THIEVES
December 2011
A Thief in the Night
Prologue
In a place of stone walls, attended by his acolytes and warriors, the Hieromagus knelt in the dawn rays of the red subterranean sun. Both sorcerer and priest, he wore a simple garment decorated with jangling bells. The sound of them was meant to draw him back to the real world, to the present, but for now he silenced them. For now, he needed to remember.
The ancestors spoke to him. For those long lost, forgetting was a kind of death. They pulled desperately at him, trying to draw him into memories of ancient forests, of a time before the first humans came to this continent. Before his people were destroyed, driven away, forgotten. He saw their great battles, saw the works of magic they created. Saw the small, tender moments they shared and the guilt and shame they tried to put behind them. He saw kings, and queens, and simple folk in well-patched clothing. He saw Aethlinga, who had been a queen—the seventy-ninth of her dynasty—but who had become something more. A seer. A diviner. Back then, in the depths of time, she had become the first Hieromagus. Just as he was to be the last.
His body twitched, his eyelids in constant motion as if he were dreaming. A serving girl mopped his forehead with a piece of sponge. He tried to wave her away, but lost in reverie as he could only raise a few fingers a fraction of an inch.
“I came as soon as I saw the sails. I knew you would want to see this with your own eyes,” the hunter said. Together the two of them climbed to the top of a forested ridge that overlooked the southern sea. One tree, an ancient rowan, stood taller than the rest. Aethlinga was old and frail but still she climbed the branches for a better look.
Out at sea the ships stood motionless on the curling waves, their sails furled now, their railings thick with refugees. Less desperate than they might have been. They had reached their destination. Down on the shore boats were landing, long, narrow wooden boats crammed with men. Hairy, unwashed, their lips cracked and cratered with scurvy. Their faces gaunt and grim after their long voyage.
Iron weapons in their hands.
“What are they?” the hunter asked. “They look a bit like ogres, but . . . what are they? What do they want?”
The Hieromagus's lips moved, eight hundred years further on. “They want land. A place to make a new start. What are they? They are our death.”
It was very difficult to tell, inside the memory, where the Hieromagus ended and Aethlinga began. He had seen this particular vision so many times. Remembered it, for simply to recall was a sacred rite. This was the history of his people. The thing that could never be forgotten.
Later, when the first skirmish was over and the men from the boats lay bleeding and cold on the sand—but others on the ships still stood out on the waves, watching—Aethlinga went to a private grove deep in the forest. A place where the ancestors wove through the tree branches, whispering always. She had her own sacred memories to recall.
But now she turned her face to a pool of water, a simple looking glass. She looked into her own eyes. Formed her own memory. “I know you will see this,” she said, and she spoke a name.
She spoke the true and secret name of the last Hieromagus. This memory was for him.
“I need you to remember. Not the past this time, but the future. Look forward and find what is to come. I have glimpsed it as well, and you know I would not ask this, were it not utterly necessary.”
The body of the Hieromagus, so far away now, convulsed and shook. The serving girl drew back in fear that he would lash out and destroy her. It had happened before.
Some memories were less pleasant than others, and this was the worst of all.
Except—this one was not a memory at all. Instead it was foresight. For one like the Hieromagus, who saw past and future all at once, the distinction had little meaning.
Looking forward he saw the knight. He saw the painted woman. He saw the thief. As he had so many times before. Always before he could put their images out of his head. Tell himself it would be many years before they arrived.
Now they crowded in on him as if they were shouting in his ears. He could no longer push them back, nor did he seek to. He only endeavored to separate them, to let them each speak in turn.
“Some demons are smaller than others,” the woman said, and it was her, though the images were gone from her skin she was the same one, and then a twisted hand crashed across her cheek, knocking her to the ground.
Her, the Hieromagus thought—her—it was the one he sought, but in the wrong time—she was cut loose from him still, but so close, so—
A man with the features of a priest, but the eyes of a murderer. This one only smiled, and did not speak. This one showed only the teeth of a predatory animal.
He dared not look on that one too long, even in memory.
Two knights with the same name, one dissembling, not a knight at all. He was something else entirely, something hated, and yet he was the key to liberation. A draft of bur-dock root, certain oils most precious, blisswine. An elfin queen throwing herself across a bed in the attitude of a whore.
Closer now—closer, but fragmented. The Hieromagus beat feebly at the floor with his fists, trying to force the memories—the forebodings—into proper shape. Into an order he could understand. He must see the path. He must choose for his people.
Three swords, deadly swords. Something worse, some thing far worse, a weapon of incredible potential. Two men pushing a barrel up an incline of stone.
Yes. Yes, he had it—
A flash of light. A burst of energy, searing and brilliant. Molten stone flowing down a corridor.
There, that was the future he sought. The one he'd glimpsed so many times, only to turn away in fear. The one he'd convinced himself was still a long way off.
This time he must watch the images all the way through. See it all.
“Malden!” the painted woman called out to her lover, desperate, watching him walk toward utter and certain death. The sword in his hand would be of no help.
So close now. After so long. So many years of dreading what was to come. Of trying desperately to find a way to forestall it. When it could never be prevented.
The human knight leaned down over them, his face warped by hatred. Spittle flew from his lips as he barked at the bronze-clad warriors. “You're going to die. Every last one of you will die! It's less than what you deserve for what you did to Cythera!”
The hatred—the death that was coming—the tumult—
“He knew,” the painted woman said. Her voice thick with loss, with dread at the sacrifices that had been made. “The Hieromagus had seen the future. He saw this, all of this. He knew that what he'd seen could not be changed. That this was the only way for his people to survive.”
The eyes of the Hieromagus opened like window shutters being thrown back.
“No!” he screamed.
No.
He saw the dead laid out in heaps before him. He saw himself, the Hieromagus saw through his own eyes, crawling over a pile of bodies, his feet treading on the faces of the ones he loved.
No . . . not like that. It couldn't come to that, to so drastic a turn. And yet . . .
It would. It must.
The painted woman was correct. What was foreseen could not be changed. And there was only one way forward, now. No turning, no detour was possible, though the way was choked with death and destruction.
He opened his mouth to speak. It was hard, so very hard to get the words out. He felt so very far away.
“They're coming,” he said, and the warriors and acolytes stirred, traded terrified glances. Grasped hands in hope. “Very soon now, they will return for us.”
Much muttering, much grave discussion followed in that place where the underground sun burned red. Yet the Hieromagus heard none of it, for his memory was not yet done. There was more to see.
Back in the sacred grove, Aethlinga watched the visions with him. Her face, so slender and beautiful, was deformed by fear and the sorrow for what was to come. For what was to come to him.
“Be strong,” she said. “I know what we ask of you. There is no justice in it—but you were born to perform this task. This bitter cup is yours to sip alone. I am sorry.”
A Thief in the Night
Chapter One
A thin crescent of moon lit up the rooftops of the Free
City of Ness, glinting on the bells up high in the Spires, whitewashing the thatched roofs of the Stink. The furnaces of the blacksmiths in the Smoke roared all night, but the rest of the city was asleep—or at least tucked away in candle-lit rooms with closed shutters.
It was the time of night when even the gambling houses started to close down, when the brothels shut their doors. It was the time when honest men and women retreated to their beds, to get the sleep they needed for another long day of work on the morrow. Of all the city's vast workforce, only a handful remained at their labors. The city's watchmen, of course, patrolled the streets all night long.
And, of course, there were thieves about.
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