Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2)

by Matthew Colville

  Calvus began packing up his things.

  “And it’s getting worse,” the polder said.

  “Can’t help you,” Calvus said. “You know the rules.”

  “The ragman’s rules,” Aimsley sneered.

  Calvus stabbed a finger at him. “Brick’s rules. Your rules. You and Brick created the fixer to subvert the castellan’s agreement and now you’ve got to pay for it.”

  Aimsley coughed up blood.

  “Your wife,” Aimlsey said.

  “What about her?” Calvus stopped picking up his equipment.

  “You remember last year, when your house burned down?” Aimsley asked.

  Calvus didn’t say anything. He was breathing faster.

  “That was Brick’s idea. Punishment for failing him on the…”

  “I know what it was for,” Calvus said, tightly.

  “That was me,” Aimsley said. “You didn’t know that, did you? Your wife was out of the house when it happened, you ever think about that? You ever wonder why? How often does she leave in the middle of the night Calvus?”

  “That was you,” Calvus said.

  “Of course it fucking was, you think Brick wanted any survivors? What would have been the point of that, he wanted you to suffer.”

  “I always wondered how…,” Calvus looked up at the ceiling, his eyes were red. “I thought it was a miracle.”

  “It was a miracle,” Aimlsey said. “It was a fucking miracle I found a way to get her out without anyone knowing, without Brick suspecting.”

  “Why would you do that?” Calvus challenged, his voice thick. “Why would you save her? Why would you give a shit?”

  Aimsley coughed. More blood. He spoke like he was ashamed. “You’re the one fucked up. She didn’t do nothing.”

  Calvus stared at him. Shook his head. Put a monocle in one eye and pulled up a stool. Sat down beside the polder. Looked at him with his unmagnified eye. "Then I owe you more than this,” he said, bending down an examining Aimsley's arm.

  Aimsley relaxed. It was working. He’d banked these little miracles for the day when the arrangement between the guilds failed. He wondered if Garth and Noor had done the same thing. Probably. He watched the alchemist work.

  Calvus looked more like an abbot than an alchemist. He was fat, bald, and looked made of lard. But he didn’t act like a complete prick all the time, so Aimsley didn’t mind his appearance. The polder liked the alchemist as far as that went.

  The Cold Hearth's mixer finished his examination, came to a conclusion. He looked up at Aimsley Pinwhistle with some alarm. "You got in a fight with a wizard."

  "Heh," Aimsley said.

  “Who was it?” Calvus got up and went to his desk. Opened a drawer and started selecting tools.

  “Oh, you know,” the polder stretched out in the chair. He was sore all over and exhausted. He looked like he wanted to go home and sleep. A well-known side effect of being healed by the priestly arts. “One of those big wizard shits. I don’t remember their names.”

  “Balls,” Calvus said into his drawer.

  “Yeah,” Aimsley admitted. Wasn’t sure why he tried to avoid the issue in the first place. “Hapax. Listen, you got anything to drink in this place?”

  The alchemist, half a dozen thin metal tools in his hand, stood up from his desk sharply.

  “You got in a pissing match with Hapax Legomenon?!”

  “Uh,” Aimsley scratched his nose. “Yeah. Found out some stuff though. Worth it, probably. Long as, you know, it stops at this,” he indicated his own arm and face.

  “She know who you work for?”

  “Not sure I know who I work for half the time,” Aimsley said. “I’ll take whatever,” he continued with his request. “I’ll take mead, you got it.”

  Calvus tucked the small metal implements into a pocket in his robe, and poured a small glass of ale for his guest. Then remembered who his guest was, and poured the glass back into the bottle.

  He carried the bottle over and handed it to the polder, who took it without saying anything and put it to his lips. He downed half the bottle in one long pull. Only stopping to breathe like he’d just surfaced after being underwater for hours.

  “You got out of there ok, I see,” Calvus said. He angled his head to look at Pinwhistle’s face. “Looks like she burned you pretty bad. You been burned enough, think you’d have gotten tired of it by now. So how did this happen?” he asked, tapping the polder’s injured arm. The alchemist began the laborious process of carefully picking out the pieces of crystal.

  “There was a lot of…you know, fire and stabbing. Got my own in,” Aimsley said with another sneer. “Figure she’s seeing a priest too. Ow.”

  Calvus pulled out the first tiny glittering, blood-dappled projectile. It was shaped like a tiny spiked glass ball. He deposited it in a metal bowl, along with an identical one. “Uh-huh,” he said, only half paying attention. “Then what?”

  “All I know is,” Aimsley said, taking another drink, “she pulled out some kind of stick—looked like a chair leg—and gabbled at me some more. Whole place exploded in glass. I mostly got away, but…,” he nodded at his arm. “Iordoros couldn’t do anything about it. Said I should see a farrier. Heheh.”

  “Good advice,” Calvus raised his eyebrows. “Someone with proper tools for pulling stuff out of hooves. But,” he said, dropping another piece into the bowl, “this isn’t glass.”

  “What is it?” Aimsley asked.

  “Diamond,” Calvus said, holding one up and showing it off. “These little things will worm under your skin, cut everything under there up. Your skin will heal, but eventually they’ll dig down into the bones in your arm and it’ll die from the inside.”

  “Wonderful,” Aimsley said. “Good thing I’ve got friends in low places.”

  “Won’t have friends anywhere, you pull another stunt like that.” About half the little spiked diamonds were out of Aimsley’s arm.

  “It’s my job,” the polder said, taking another pull from the bottle of ale.

  Calvus gave him a look before going back to work. “Not your job to shake down the Lens’ quester.”

  “Got work to do,” the polder said. “Need to know how the count is making deathless.”

  Aimsley hoped this statement would prompt curiosity from the alchemist. It did not have the desired effect.

  “Oh, the night dust. Yeah that’s a pisser.”

  Aimsley blinked, composed himself. “Word gets around.”

  “Well, you know,” Calvus said. “Word don’t have far to go around here.”

  That reminded Aimsley of something. Something nagged at him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “Tam,” he remembered.

  “Huh?” Calvus asked, prying another diamond orb free.

  “Roderick Tam,” Aimsley asked.

  “I know him,” Calvus said absently. “He was good.”

  “Was?”

  “Haven’t seen him for a while. Got in some kind of trouble with the Truncheon.”

  “Heh,” Aimsley grunted. “Good to know. I can follow that. See if he’s still with the Midnight Man. See if he’s been traded. You talk to him?”

  Calvus shook his head. “Not in years. He worked with some ratcatchers for a while. Paid him well but…dangerous work.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Which one’s what?” Calvus dropped another diamond into the bowl, there were dozens in there now, and a small pool of blood.

  “Which ratcatchers?”

  “The Fell Stroke. The Sunbringers. The Tapestry.”

  “Ok, that’s something.”

  “You shaking me down, fixer?” Calvus asked with some amusement.

  “Brick’s orders,” he said. “You’re in the clear.”

  “Brick don’t tell you to do shit.”

  “Well,” Aimsley said, “Brick’s forcefully worded suggestion. He was a little short with me.”

  Calvus laughed. Then stopped when he realized who he was tal
king to. Pulled the last diamond from Aimsley’s skin.

  “You’re done,” he said wiping his hands. “Now get out of here before someone…,”

  Without warning, Aimsley darted up. Calvus didn’t see him reach for anything, but suddenly there was a dirk in one hand, and a silver ball in another. He threw the small silver orb.

  “Shit,” a voice said from the thin air.

  The silver sphere impacted the wall and flashed bright white as Aimsley leaped in front of the alchemist.

  Three men in black were crouched against the far wall by the window. They had been invisible before.

  “Hey boys,” Aimsley said. “Busy night.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Why’d you have to come here, Fixer?” one of the thieves in black asked.

  Aimsley shrugged. “You were listening, Ulgar, you know why.”

  “You know we’re going to have to kill you now,” another thief asked.

  “It’s your dumb luck,” Aimsley said to Ulgar, “that I was so fucked up when I came here, otherwise I’d have noticed you before I spilled everything to Calvus and you might have gotten out of…what did you just say?” Aimsley interrupted himself, turning slowly to the second of the three thieves and pointing at him.

  Ulgar shrugged. “Sorry Fixer, we can’t let you leave alive.”

  Aimlsey looked from one thief, to the other, and then the third.

  “You didn’t come here for me,” he said.

  None of them spoke.

  “Calvus get downstairs,” Aimlsey said.

  There was no response from behind him, no word from the alchemist.

  Aimsley looked at Ulgar and tilted his head. “You dumb son of a bitch,” he said.

  “It’s not my fault!” Ulgar said. The other two, the thieves Aimsley didn’t know, looked at the senior cutpurse.

  “Did you get promoted to Black in about the last three days?” Aimsley asked. “Because then we’re having a discussion, otherwise you’re still Red and I have to fucking kill you because you just burned our alchemist,” he said, turning and pointing to Calvus who was, in fact, dead from a poison dart in his neck, “while I was telling him what I’ve been doing all day!”

  “Why are we talking about this?” one of the thieves asked. “Use the dust.”

  “Oh, right,” Aimsley said. He had forgotten about the night dust. Three red scarves armed with a flotilla of deathless could probably make trouble for him.

  Three black marbles hit the ground in front of him. He leaped back, past Calvus’ dead body, and then flipped backward through the window, smashing it.

  He heard the sounds of bone snapping and something, something that had been Calvus, snarling. He wanted to see what the effect of three of the marbles would be. But he had other fish to fry.

  It had been three years since he’d needed to worry about carrying silvered weapons. He favored a silvered garrote in the old days. But if he was fast enough, if he could beat the red, he wouldn’t have to fight the deathless.

  He lunged in one inhuman leap from the cobbled street outside to the roof of the apothecary. Lucky Calvus wasn’t more successful. A richer man would have had a two story shop.

  He bounded across the starlit rooftop and, without looking, without time to look, he flung himself out and over the alley separating the apothecary from the building behind it.

  Ulgar made the mistake Aimsley had counted on. A mistake no black scarf would make, probably no brown scarf would make. He assumed the alley would be clear, even though he could no longer see Aimsley.

  Ulgar was the first out of the window, the same window the three thieves had come in through. He landed in a crouch, and had time to stand up before Aimsley fell on him.

  He responded quickly, his training good, but he responded to the wrong threat. He went for his weapon, expecting the polder fixer to pull him to the ground and stab him.

  But Aimsley Pinwhistle had a different idea. He latched onto Ulgar’s neck, and rolled his body into a crouch as he fell past the thief, forcing the red scarf’s back to arch in response.

  He leveraged his weight and the fall to pull Ulgar up and backwards, throwing him back through the window. His body crashed into the next thief climbing out, knocking them both back inside the apothecary.

  A moment later, and Aimsley was on his feet, dirks out, looking unblinking at the open window. But the chaos had already started. One of the other thieves, desperate to get out of the room, was climbing over Ulgar’s prone body, trying to pull himself out the window. But he was caught on something, something else was pulling him down, stopping him from leaving.

  The Deathless.

  “Aahh!” he cried. “No! Nono!” He kicked and fought but black claws pulled him down. His eyes went wide, terrified.

  “Fixer! Help!”

  The thief was pulled down into the room. There was screaming and a sound Aimsley could only describe as a man being turned inside-out.

  Aimsley pulled a water barrel over, upended it, stood on it, and shuttered the window from the outside. As he closed the wooden slats, he saw the body of Calvus, now a ghoul, ripping Ulgar apart. The thief was desperately stabbing at the thing to no avail. Then the ghoul cracked the thief’s ribcage open.

  The other two thieves were fighting with what Aimsley assumed were shades. Black shadows of twisting gas, too impatient to wait for the supply of dead bodies to increase on its own.

  Aimsley wasn’t that interested to find out what happened next. He wedged the shutters closed with his dirk, felt stupid for thinking that would make a difference, and ran out of the alley.

  He was happy to let the Deathless feast on someone else, and felt no obligation to stop them.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  He kicked the door open. It had been a long time since he’d done anything like that and after dealing with Gwiddon, it felt good.

  The door to the Mousetrap flew open and one hinge came undone. As soon as he walked into the smoke-filled room, a dagger and a dart flew at him, bouncing harmlessly off his wards.

  He strode into the room, spoke a prayer. The smoke became suddenly heavy and fell to the floor, revealing about three dozen thieves of various genders, ethnicity, and species in the common room.

  A war-bred Urq stood up and swung a sword around. A prayer and Heden’s arm flashed into stone. He deftly deflected the sword and then punched the urq in the chest. The huge demi-man flew back, knocking several waiting thieves down.

  Heden pressed on. More thieves came. But Heden dispatched them. Their poisons failed, their blades betrayed them. For one moment, Heden’s entire form appeared to flash into that of a cloud, as he avoided a sorcerous arrow, and then returned to his natural form.

  He asked, and Cavall gave. Or was it Lynwen? What would happen when her patience finally ran out?

  An army of thieves prepared to spend themselves against then. Then a basso voice from the far end of the room.

  “Let him come!” The thieves melted away.

  The huge, pale, bald man known as Brick, or The Brick, sat at a table against the far wall. He watched Heden neutrally as Heden strode toward him, kicked the table away from him, and grabbed the guildmaster’s thick neck with his hand.

  “You send a man to my inn again,” Heden said, looking down at the man. “He dies.”

  Brick stood up. Heden was unable to stop him. He was tall and appeared able to ignore Heden’s fist around his throat.

  He placed a meaty hand on Heden’s stone arm.

  “You think you’re the first priest to come in here?” he asked.

  Brick was twisting Heden’s stone arm away, slowly, but without any apparent exertion.

  “Been in the game a long time,” Brick sneered. “Long enough to know how to deal with one such as you.”

  “Heden,” a voice said.

  Brick’s strength forced Heden to release his grip. His hand flew to the pommel of his sword.

  A dozen swords were drawn and he heard the pull of bowstrings
.

  “You stay away from my inn, do you understand me?” he said, not drawing his sword. Cavall’s favor was not endless.

  “Well now, I may, or I may not,” Brick said. “That’s as depends. Because I got no idea who the fuck you are. But see, when I find out, if your inn happens to be of interest to me, then I will fucking take it. Or burn it down. Or kill everyone inside, or everyone you know, or whatever the fuck I feel like doing and there won’t be anything you can do about it.” Spittle was flying from Brick’s mouth.

  “Heden, come on,” the voice at his elbow said. It sounded familiar, but it didn’t register.

  “I could kill you right here,” Heden said to Brick.

  “You think so? ‘Cause I don’t. You’re a priest, and I ain’t done nothing to you. So you’re going to stew is what you’re going to do. Because one such as you doesn’t walk in here and kill anyone. Because one such as you needs a fucking reason. Unlike one such as me.”

  “Brick,” the familiar voice said. “He don’t mean nothing by it. He’s out of his head. Come on,” urged the voice down by Heden’s elbow, and he felt something tugging at him.

  He looked down.

  It was the polder. Aimsley. Why was the polder trying to help him, if the Brick sent the polder to threaten him in the first place?

  “Come on,” he said, pulling Heden around to the back door.

  “Now Aimsley here,” Brick continued, “he’s vouching for you at the moment. And I owe him. A very little,” Brick stabbed a finger into Heden’s chest. “But that’s all your life is worth to me right now.”

  Confused, Heden let the polder pull him away a few steps.

  “It’s alright, Brick,” Aimsley said. “I’ll take care of it. No one’s dead,” the polder observed. “Let’s keep it that way.” At the polder’s urging, Heden started walking to the door.

  “You think you’re getting away?” Brick sneered at Heden. Heden stopped.

  "Come on!" Aimsley said, pulling at the arrogate. Two dozen thieves and assassins waited in the common room to see what would happen. The smoke began to rise again.

  "Let me tell you how it goes, little priest!"