Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2)

by Matthew Colville

  She danced up to him and grabbed his elbow, steering him around and locking arms with him.

  “Where are you taking me,” she asked, “to celebrate our reunion?”

  Heden allowed himself to be steered.

  “It’s on me,” Heden said. “Your choice.”

  “Of course it is! How about we go to the Ship?” she suggested, and made a motion like she was snuggling up to him. It was a degree of familiarity Heden wouldn’t normally put up with, but he knew Hapax. It was just her way. She was like this with all her friends. Heden wasn’t special.

  “Sure, I like the Ship,” he said.

  “Me too. And I love the idea of being seen there with you of all people.”

  It was a turn’s walk from the tower of the Lens to the expensive end of the docks, where the Sinking Ship tavern was. It was the kind of place you could only eat at if you were making a lot of money off the trade coming in and out. Heden considered it a waste of money, but liked the food. He found it hard to reconcile his father’s frugality with his own taste for good food, expertly prepared.

  They talked about nothing as they made their way down the cobbled streets, found a table at the Ship, easy at this time of day, and ordered drinks.

  “Why must our love go unconsummated?” Hapax asked, typically theatrically.

  “You’re not my type,” Heden said.

  She lowered her head and gave him a very knowing look. “Really.”

  “I don’t go in for women with, ah…,” Heden said.

  Hapax looked down at her impressive landscape.

  “…husbands,” Heden finished.

  Hapax rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said. “Everyone knows what that’s about.”

  “Everyone,” Heden said.

  “I wasn’t always married,” Hapax said, no longer flirty or theatrical. “But you were always a shit.”

  Heden liked her better this way.

  She let her eyes wander over his face.

  “I can’t imagine what you’d be like now if she hadn’t sunk her claws into you.”

  “We’re not doing this,” Heden said. Why did she have to ruin it? “I need some information.”

  Hapax pursed her dark red lips. “I got all kinds of information, what are we talking about?”

  Heden took a deep breath, reached into a vest pocket, and pulled out the black marbles the polder thief gave him.

  “What is this?” Heden asked, holding it between his fingers.

  Hapax looked at it, and smiled.

  “It’s night dust,” she said. Heden looked from her to the marble in his hand. “Keep it, I’ve already got some.”

  “You’re fast,” Heden said.

  “Not always,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  Their drinks arrived.

  “How much do you know?” Heden asked.

  “Not much,” Hapax said, taking a drink. “A little. What’s it worth to you?”

  “Depends,” Heden said, sitting back in his chair and relaxing. He was happy to have someone like Hapax Legomenon dealing with this. “I guess I was hoping it falls inside your normal brief.”

  “It does,” she said. “Have you heard what the count’s up to?”

  “Sort of,” Heden said. “I’ve been out of the loop for a few years.”

  “You were never in the loop,” Hapax said, taking a drink. “It was part of your charm.”

  “If you’re already working the night dust,” Heden said. “I guess I can relax. Let you take care of it.”

  “Take care of it?” Hapax asked.

  Heden shrugged. “Does that not qualify as a reliquary?”

  Hapax held the black marble up. Peered at the smoke swirling inside it, like a living thing trying to escape. “We’re working on that,” she said. “We’re not sure where it comes from. We have some ideas, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to charge off to war against the count.”

  “That’s between you and your charter,” Heden said. “I’m happy to stay out of it.”

  She put the marble down, used the tip of her finger to stop it from rolling.

  “You’re thinking about a censure,” she said. He could see her mind working. This gave him assurance. Having someone smart dealing with it. Why were all the smartest people he knew women?

  “Depends on how many of those the count has. If it’s a dozen? No. If it’s a hundred? An army of deathless? You tell me.”

  She looked exasperated, but not at him. “Heden we have to get approval from the castellan to field a Censure in the city, you know that.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard. You’d be doing it to protect the city.”

  Hapax nursed her drink. “You’d be surprised how different the castellan’s idea of protecting the city is from ours.”

  “You stopped that whatever-it-was that was turning people into those snake things last summer.”

  “Yeah and like 200 people died," the wizard snapped. "It took 12 of us throwing everything we had at it. We had to get help from the Sundial. You know they had to slow down time in order to stop the outbreak?”

  “Ah,” Heden said, a little taken aback. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Well these are the kinds of things we deal with,” she said, getting angry. “The kinds of things you idiots keep digging up.” She nodded at the black marble.

  “I’m not a campaigner anymore,” Heden pointed out, defensively.

  “And yet here you are with more dug up crap.”

  “You have no idea where it comes from!” Heden got the sense he’d stepped over some line, was eager to step back.

  “You know there’s something like 60,000 years of dead civilizations buried around here,” she gesticulated, indicating the whole world. “Not including whatever bizarre mindbending shit the elves got up to before the dwarves came along. Lives are at stake whenever someone digs some of this shit up, and no one but us to stop it. So you come to me with this and say ‘censure,’ and I tend to get upset. I start to think you want me doing your dirty work.”

  Heden pursed his lips and was properly contrite. He let Hapax cool down.

  The food came. Neither of them started on it.

  “You said you knew a little,” Heden said.

  Hapax grabbed a fork and skewered her meat, taking her anger out on the dead duck.

  “It’s alchemical,” she said.

  Tam, again. He knew about the alchemy connection but chose to say nothing lest it upset her further. He grabbed some bread and buttered it.

  “Covers a lot,” he said. She nodded.

  “But there’s something else,” she said. “It’s alive.”

  This was new.

  “Alive?” Heden asked. “What does that…how is that possible?”

  “We don’t know yet,” she said. “We’re doing research. There’s a fungus on the big island of Ix, can have a similar effect. We don’t think this is a fungus, but it’s a lead.”

  “You’ll let me know more when you find out?”

  Hapax waggled her head back and forth, weighing the idea. “Probably,” she said. “I’m a sucker for feeling needed.”

  Heden let her eat in silence.

  “I’m shouldn’t have tried to dump this on you,” he said. “Take advantage of our friendship. I’m sorry.”

  Hapax said nothing for a moment, slicing off another piece of duck. Then without moving her head she threw Heden a glance. “How sorry?” she asked, smiling a little.

  Heden smiled. “Not that sorry,” he said.

  Hapax shook her head. “Probably for the best,” she said. “After all these years the act could never live up to the anticipation.”

  “Oh yes it could,” Heden said, his voice low.

  Hapax put her fork down and stared at Heden, suddenly speechless.

  Heden snickered. Turnabout was fair play.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Martlyn pulled the door open. She knew there was something wrong immediately, although it took a moment to recognize it. Apart from
the girls running down the brightly lit, red carpeted hall in a panic, there was something else. A smell.

  Smoke. The building she was in, the Rose Petal, was burning.

  “What’s going on?” her clotpole asked from the bed behind her.

  “Get dressed,” she barked, no longer an innocent girl.

  “But we haven’t…”

  She spun, grabbed her robe and shawl.

  “The building’s on fire idiot,” she said.

  Throwing her clothes around her, she abandoned her customer to his own devices and went out into the hall.

  Girls were running back and forth, milling around, some customers were trying to get out. She saw Bann descend from the third floor, called his name.

  “Martlyn” Bann said, his voice tense but not afraid. He pushed his way toward her, annoyed at the mad activity around them. Even though she was taller than most of the girls, Ban loomed over her. “Good. Take this,” he said, and pressed a long coil of rope into her uncomprehending hands.

  “What’s happening?”

  “The building’s on fire,” Bann said. “The entrances are blocked. The count’s men are killing anyone who tries to get out.”

  “Black gods,” Martlyn was panicking, her legs felt like jelly.

  “But you’re going to get everyone out,” Bann said, pointing at the rope in her hands.

  “Where am I supposed to go?” Martlyn asked, her bowels freezing in fear, far more worried about where to go and what to do than the fire. This was home, she’d been safe here. Would no safety last?

  Bann grabbed her by the shoulders. “Stupid,” he commented to himself. He spun her around, faced her toward the second story window.

  “Where do you think?” he growled, his voice carrying above the screams. Girls were running past them in every direction. He pointed at the window. “The Hammer & Tongs. Find the priest,” he said. They both knew who he meant.

  She turned back around, the rope hanging limp in her hands.

  “I can’t!” she said, afraid.

  “Yes you can,” he rumbled, turning her around again. “Chest of drawers,” he pointed to the heavy oak chest at the end of the hall perpendicular to the window.

  “Tie this to the leg,” he said, taking the rope from her, only to push it back into her chest, make her hold it

  “Tie it tight, like I taught you. Pretend it’s a clotpole’s ankle or wrist,” he said, trying to smile. “Then out you go. The other girls will follow, let them. Lead them to the inn. To the priest’s inn.”

  Martlyn stared at the window, blackness outside. Bann squeezed her shoulders.

  “You got it?”

  She nodded.

  Bann drew the huge two-hander from his back. Turned to go back downstairs.

  “Where are you going?” Martlyn asking, panicking. Bann couldn’t leave her.

  “I’m giving you a chance to get out,” Bann said. “The fire is a diversion.”

  Martlyn watched as Bann pushed his way to the stairs down, disappearing into the smoke.

  She turned back to the window at the far end of the hallway. She clasped the rope to her chest.

  The stairs down were now impassable, whether because of Bann or fire or both she didn’t know. The girls were now desperately looking for her to do something.

  “I don’t fucking believe this,” she said, angry and crying at the same time, cursing her fate.

  She pushed her way to the end of the hall, the other girls following her blindly.

  Chapter Forty-two

  “Where is Violet?”

  The count lit a cigar, sat back in the velvet upholstered chair and crossed his legs. He smoothed his blonde mustache with one hand after taking a drag on the cigar. The flames from the back of the building were not yet visible, but smoke seeped in from under the doors.

  Miss Elowen coughed, and spat up blood.

  “Heden’s got her,” she said. She tried to get comfortable, but the leather straps holding her to the chair prevented much movement.

  The count raised his eyebrows and looked at Garth.

  “The priest,” Garth said from his position behind Miss Elowen.

  “Right,” the count said, nodding.

  “She was with Heden,” Garth explained. “She’s not now.”

  “Where is Violet?” the count asked again in exactly the same sing-song voice he used the first time.

  “I don’t know,” Miss Elowen said.

  The count took a drag on his cigar.

  “Where is Violet?” he asked again, this time smiling.

  “I did what you asked,” Elowen said. “You wanted Violet gone, I took care of it. I waited until she had a fit, I went and got the church, and they took her away. They said the exorcism would kill her. That’s what you wanted, right? That’s the last I saw of her. She’s nothing to do with me now, go ask the church.”

  Garth looked at the count expectantly. Not only did Elowen do what the count asked, she did what the count wanted, which was harder. Making sure people died when they needed to with no direct connection to the master of the guild was not easy. Garth knew this better than anyone.

  As though reciting from a prepared script, which for all Garth knew he was, the count continued as though Elowen hadn’t said anything.

  “We are currently without a wizard,” the count said, “so alas we have no access to the Aduro Vera. But!” he said, flourishing his cigar, “I think a more common fire may urge you to tell the truth.

  “I am telling the truth,” Elowen said. Garth held his tongue. Talking would just make it worse for her.

  “Well, that’s the benefit of the wizard’s fire. It removes all doubt. Forgive me,” the count said with a little bow from his seated position. “I don’t mean to say I doubt you, I don’t really. It’s just that I’m not certain and, also, I enjoy the idea of burning down the only thing you’ve ever cared about,” he gestured to the Rose Petal. It was very warm now. They could hear screaming upstairs.

  Garth took a deep breath, but held his tongue. Miss Elowen and the Rose Petal had been a useful front, an easy way to scrub their income clean, a font of information. The count was getting reckless thanks to his newfound power, and he knew it, and he didn’t care if Garth knew it and bringing it up would just cause this woman more pain.

  “I’m in a position now, you understand, to indulge myself,” the count continued. “Also, I wanted Garth here to witness the fact that I did not rape you, in spite of the fact that many in the guild assumed I would.”

  Elowen shrugged. Her years of refusing the count were going to catch up to her someday, she knew, and this was a better end than many she’d imagined. At least, she though, Bann got the girls out. It never occurred to the count that Elowen might not care about the building, only the girls.

  “What is it about her?” Elowen wondered. “I gave you a dozen girls, you don’t care about any of them, you never cared about Violet. What is it about her? What does she have over…,” Elowen’s eyes narrowed. “What does she know?” Elowen asked, one corner of her mouth curling with a knowing smile.

  The count took a drag on his cigar again. Theater. Then repeated, “Where is Violet?”

  Elowen sniffed again, blood from her nose flooded into her mouth. She spat it out, one huge bolus of snot and spit colored almost black with blood smacked into the count’s right eyebrow, spattering all over his face.

  The count surged to his feet with a snarl. Stood over Elowen seething.

  Garth suppressed a grin. She won, he thought. In the decade-long contest between Elowen and the count to see which could finally provoke the other to anger, Elowen had the last word. Garth regretted she had to die.

  The count produced a kerchief to wipe his face. Once used, he threw it to the ground and produced a dagger. Pressed it against her cheek, drew a little blood. Elowen didn’t flinch.

  “I could ruin your face,” the count said, “but what would be the point. It will be a melted pile of boiling fat in a few moments anyw
ay.”

  He turned, strode to the table next to his chair, picked up his drink, tossed it onto the expensive, imported tapestry, and lit it with his cigar, then dropped the cigar, turned, and walked out.

  “Come on,” he said to Garth as he walked past.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Garth and the count stood on the street while the Rose Petal burned, lighting up the night sky.

  “That felt very good,” the count said, smoothing his hair back. “She always thought she’d get the best of me. Stupid bitch.”

  She did get the best of you, Garth thought. Wasn’t difficult.

  He thought about what Elowen had said. About why the count had his horn up so bad for the girl. There was something there.

  She was smarter than the count. Smart enough to have thought ahead.

  “Come,” the count said. “We must away. It’s still early for us to be seen outside.”

  Garth hesitated. The count frowned.

  “I need to check on something,” Garth said, and walked back up to the door of the burning Rose.

  He opened the door. Miss Elowen was standing, rubbing her wrists. Coughing in the smoke. Next to her, the explanation for how she got free.

  Bann. The seven foot tall war breed stood, unflinching, facing Garth. He pressed Miss Elowen behind him, and she ran. Back through the flames. There’d be a window, a door she could exit through.

  Garth turned to the count. “You go back,” he said, raising his voice above the sound of flames. From the street, the count could not see that Miss Elowen was escaping. “I’m going to make sure the job is done.”

  The count bowed sharply. “Very well,” he said, and walked away crisply, his cloak flowing.

  Garth entered the room with Bann. It was like the inside of an oven. The rear wall was on fire. Soon the whole room would be on fire, like the upstairs, and then the building would collapse on them.

  Bann didn’t run. He was buying time for Miss Elowen.

  “This is stupid,” Garth said.

  “As stupid as burning the building?” Bann growled. “As stupid as slicing up Miss Elowen, who never did nothin’ but what the count asked?”

  Garth gritted his teeth, in tacit agreement with the war-breed.