Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2)

by Matthew Colville

  “Why waste your life too?”

  Bann grunted. “Not a waste if Miss Elowen gets away.”

  Garth looked through flames. There was nowhere she could run to that he couldn’t follow. But maybe he didn’t have to.

  “Alright,” Garth nodded, “your life for hers.”

  Bann relaxed a little. His death would not be in vain.

  He drew his massive two-hander. Garth drew Apostate.

  The contest was short. Bann took one roundhouse swing. Garth stepped neatly back. Bann swung overhand, Garth stepped to the side. The massive broadsword slammed into the floorboard, buckling them. A blow that would have split Garth in two, if it had landed.

  Bann feinted, swinging his broadsword in one hand. When Garth leaned out of the way, Bann grabbed him with the other hand.

  Bann sneered. His yellow eyes sparking in the fire. His white teeth and tusks practically glowing against his black skin. He’d been able to give Garth a surprise.

  But Garth didn’t mind surprises. Once grabbed, he let Bann pull him closer and while the war breed opened his mouth to tear at Garth’s head and shoulders with teeth and needle-sharp fangs, Garth simply stabbed him. Once. Through the heart. With Apostate.

  Bann froze, sucked a final breath in. Dropped his sword, put a hand on the blade in his heart. He looked down in confusion at Garth.

  His legs buckled. Garth didn’t have the strength to hold him up on the sword, and so let him drop, pulling Apostate from the war breed’s chest.

  “Sorry, Bann,” Garth said to the gurgling, gasping figure at his feet. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  He finished the job, wiped off his blade, and turned his back on Miss Elowen, and the Rose.

  Chapter Forty-four

  When Heden returned from dinner with Hapax Legomenon, he found a packed inn. Standing room only. Something was happening. Something he wasn't in the mood for.

  There were something like 30 girls, all sitting and standing around. In and amidst another 20 customers. There was a low roar as they all talked and frittered. They were shaken. Something had happened. None of them seemed to notice Heden.

  He pushed his way through them and noticed they were all young, and all dressed...dressed very nicely. Dressed like Martlyn and Caerys.

  "Oh no," he said out loud.

  One of the girls turned around. Caerys. He hadn't noticed her.

  "Your lordship!" she called out, putting one hand on Heden's chest as the other flew to her mouth.

  "What in the horny hells is going on in here?" Heden asked.

  "Uh, well," Caerys said, looking around, her pretty face pinched in a worried frown, "there was a ...something happened," she said, trying to answer him without saying anything.

  "The count burned down the Rose Petal," a voice said. Heden turned to see Martlyn, looking older.

  Heden slumped a little more and put one hand to his forehead. "Gods," he said. "Cavall."

  He looked around the inn at all the girls. Now he knew why they were here and so desperately afraid.

  "'It's not safe to be your friend,'" he quoted under his breath.

  "What?" Caerys asked, it was hard to hear with the noise in the inn.

  He looked at her. She looked back at him. Without saying it, he read the expression on her face. 'What are we going to do?' it said.

  "Is everyone alright?" Heden asked.

  Caerys looked around. "No!" she said. "They're terrified. Bann...no one knows what happened to him."

  "He stayed behind," Martlyn said flatly. "To give us time to get out. I don't think he made it."

  "Now they're afraid the count's coming for all of us," Caerys said.

  Heden shook his head. He gestured and the girls stepped closer.

  "That's not going to happen. He won't come in here. He won't attack this place. He tried and it cost him three men. Everyone's safe here, do you understand?"

  The girls listened, looked at the others milling around in the common room. Many had stopped talking and were watching Heden, aware the man was someone important.

  "Can they stay?" Caerys asked.

  "I don't know," Heden said straightening up. "I don't...,"

  "We want to tell them they can stay the night," Martlyn said. There was something in her voice.

  Heden looked at her. She was going to leave. If Heden didn’t agree to this, Martlyn would leave and then Caerys would leave. What would Vanora do, he wondered. Stupid question.

  “Alright,” he said. “They can stay. For now.”

  Caerys clapped her hands together. Martlyn just nodded.

  “Where’s Vanora?” Caerys asked. “We need her.”

  “No we don’t,” Martlyn said.

  “She’s safe,” Heden said. “For now. I have to work fast. I need to find an alchemist named Tam. You’ll be safe here while I look. The count wants Vanora, not you.”

  “We can help!” Caerys said, but Heden wasn’t paying attention. Something had distracted him. Someone in the inn.

  The press of bodies randomly parted and closed, revealing a woman sitting at a table by the fire. She was alone. She held a small glass of uske beet as if the glass itself gave her warmth and sustenance.

  She was pretty, but plain. Her hair was long and brown, she was Heden's age, and wore no makeup. Her eyebrows looked thin and her lips almost non-existent. She was wearing a plain brown cloak.

  Heden looked around. None of the girls recognized her. Without her magically enhanced hair coloring, her makeup, her finery, they didn't realize Elowen was sitting right there with them. The woman under whose roof they had worked and lived for years. Now as anonymous as any other patron.

  "Take care of the girls," Heden said. “Keep the place open, serving customers. Give them something to do.” Caerys and Martlyn nodded as Heden walked away.

  He approached Elowen's table, pushing his way past the girls and occasional patron.

  He stood in front of her. She looked up at him. Her eyes were red from crying and, seeing Heden, it seemed all about to start again.

  Heden's hands balled into fists as his restrained his anger at the count.

  "Meet me at the bridge," he said.

  Elowen looked up at him, and then back down at her drink. She nodded.

  He retreated and went to the door to the cellar.

  Chapter Forty-five

  “What do we do?”

  Martlyn pressed her palms into her eyes, tried to clear her head. Think. She and Caerys stood in Vanora’s room trying to determine their fate against the low roar of activity from the common room below.

  “What are we going to do?” Caerys asked again.

  Martlyn pulled her hands from his eyes, and grabbed a drink. Threw back a shot of uske. “I’m going back to the Rookery,” she decided, and planted her empty glass on the table.

  “You…,” Caerys fretted. “You shouldn’t do that!”

  Martlyn shrugged. “What choice do I have?” She still smelled of smoke even though she’d changed her cloths at the inn. It was in her hair.

  Caerys, her whole face knotted up with worry, pleaded wordlessly with Martlyn.

  “I’m not going to work for him,” Martlyn said, “he’s going to get us all killed.”

  “So we help him,” Caerys said. “He can stop the count.”

  “Not alone he can’t!”

  “He’s not alone. We can help,” Caerys stressed.

  Caerys looked at Martlyn hopefully. Martlyn sneered and shook her head once. Her red curls looked black in the moonlight.

  “Help,” she spat.

  “We help him," Caerys repeated, "he kills the count, and we can do whatever we want.”

  Caerys suddenly realized that Martlyn could not really be as skeptical, as hard, as she wanted everyone to think, otherwise she would have already left. She wanted to be convinced.

  “We help him,” Caerys repeated, “and we run this place like Miss Elowen ran the Rose.”

  Martlyn was obviously intrigued by this idea “
What can we do?” she asked.

  Caerys took a breath, tried to calm down. “He needs to find an alchemist named Tam. Us? The girls? How many clotpoles do we see? Some of the girls work here, they work at the Wheel, the Purse. How long do you think it would take to find this alchemist? To find anyone we need?”

  Martlyn nodded. The idea appealed to her.

  “We don’t do anything,” Caerys said. “The priest has his horn up for the count, he’ll go after him on all his own. All we have to do is find the alchemist.”

  Martlyn fired a nail. Took a drag.

  She blew the smoke out, held her right elbow in her left hand the way she’d seen Miss Elowen do when she smoked.

  She looked down at the younger girl. “Tam?” she asked.

  Caerys smiled.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Wellbridge was a small stone bridge, running over a canal used to divert water from the Wehl river for use in the city's sewage system. The water, as it ran under the arch of stone, was clean and the smell and sound were pleasant. Lovers often came here. At times, the Dusk Moon spun overhead lighting the river with a dull red color that made the water look like wine. Now it sparkled in starlight. The same starlight under which Heden had only two hours before, killed four black scarves.

  He heard, rather than saw, Elowen take a position next to him on the bridge. He turned to look at her.

  She stood there, a cloak around her for warmth, leaning on the stone, looking out at the river. She wasn't wearing heels. She looked like a normal girl. For some reason, to Heden, this made her more attractive.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  She nodded.

  "This is...it's probably my fault," he said.

  "I know," she said flatly, not looking at him.

  She sighed and shook her head.

  "Here," Heden said, handing a collection of papers rolled up with twine to Elowen. "Take these."

  Elowen took them gingerly, and gave Heden a look. "Parchment?" she asked.

  Heden shook his head. "Paper. Money. Few thousand crowns. Capital currency."

  She gripped the rolled papers tighter. "Capital," she said in a whisper.

  “There’s a deed in there to an apartment, mine. I’ve signed it over to you.”

  “You have an apartment in Capital?”

  “Yeah,” Heden said. “It’s not much, a few rooms. Some servants. Been years since I've been there. Doubt I'll ever go back.”

  “Servants?” Elowen’s voice squeaked a little.

  Heden shrugged. “Comes with the territory. I’ve given you right and title to all my holdings in Capital,” he said. “There's a few tens of thousands of crowns in an account in one of their banks. I never needed it. And there’s this,” he said, handing her something else.

  She took what looked like a sliver of wood, a few inches long. White bark on one side, like someone had peeled the bark off a birch tree and some wood had come off with it.

  “Wood?” She asked.

  “Ok,” Heden said, pressing his hand to his forehead. He hated explaining things like this. “We did a favor," he said meaning the Sunbringers, "a big favor, for one of the Lords of Capital." Elowen looked at him, her eyes wide, reflecting the stars above them.

  She nodded.

  “Her name is Lliara,” he said. “Well, that’s not her full name; I could never remember the whole thing. Take this to her. She’ll help you. She’ll give you all the help you need. More. She owes me a lot. A lot more than a brothel.”

  Elowen looked at the pale wood. It was hard to tell in the starlight but it looked bluish.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “It’s some of her skin,” Heden said.

  Elowen snapped a look at him. “What?”

  Heden shrugged. “She’s one of the Lunar Celestials. There are a few still left in Orden. She can’t leave Capital for some reason, she never explained it to me. I did her a favor and there was some kind of ritual and afterward she took a knife and…,” he gestured to the wood. “It’s like…you know, when men are being stupid and cut their palms to make an agreement? Same thing,” he said.

  “She’s made of wood?” Elowen asked.

  “She doesn’t look like a tree or anything, she looks like a normal woman. Well, ‘normal.’ You’ll see.”

  Elowen took the wood and bundled it with the parchment. “I’ll see?” she said dully.

  Heden shook his head. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “You’re giving me something like half a million crowns in coin and property and you’re apologizing to me?”

  “Which would you rather have,” Heden asked. “The Rose and the girls, or that,” he nodded to the parchment.

  Elowen smiled that smile she used when Heden was being stupid. “This,” she said, holding the papers up. “Don’t be stupid.” She laughed a little. “You get my place burned down and I end up a rich woman. Typical. And you want to apologize.”

  “You were happy in the Rose,” Heden said, not accepting her answer. “You don’t like change.”

  “No,” she corrected, “you don’t like change. I’ve been dreaming of Capital all my life,” she said. “You’re so naïve sometimes. Especially with women.”

  “I guess,” Heden said.

  She gave him a look.

  “What?” he asked.

  She stepped closer to him.

  “Come with me.”

  Heden took a deep breath. Not this again.

  “Someone has to look after the girls,” he said.

  “Heden the girls will be fine,” Elowen said, smiling, shaking her head. “They don’t need looking…you need looking after,” she said. “You need a woman like a boat needs water. Everyone knows it.”

  “Everyone.”

  “Most everyone,” she said. She turned and leaned on the stone railing of the bridge, looked out at the water under starlight.

  “I know you’ve never…,” she shook her head. “You’ve never thought of me like that,” she began.

  “What are we talking about?” Heden asked, leaning on the stone, watching her watch the water.

  She looked at him for a moment and looked like she was going to cry again. Then the softness disappeared.

  “I was never stupid enough to let myself fall far you,” she gripped the roll of parchment. Heden raised his eyebrows.

  “But we could be happy in Capital,” she said. “It would be a lot of fun,” she urged. “You could use some fun,” she said. “You deserve to be happy,” she said.

  Heden tried not to let his distaste at her use of the word ‘deserve’ show.

  “It’s tempting,” he said.

  She spun on him. “No it’s not,” she snapped. “You’d never consider it a million years. I’m not enough. You want to know why I never…because I’m not enough. You’ve got such a twisted sense of…Negra wasn’t enough. Rhiaan wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough, apparently,” she held up the bark. “None of us can compete with,” she threw a hand in the direction of the Tower of the Quill, “which is stupid, because we’re not competing with Reginam,” she said, and tapped her forehead. “We’re competing with the completely horseshit version of her you created in your head when you were kids. No one can compete with that, not even the real thing.”

  Heden felt helpless again, as he often did around women who wanted more than he could give. Why was this all his fault?

  “You’re like a fucking knight, except even the Hart comes to the Rose,” she said. “It was stupid of me to ask. They burned down the Rose because of you and I should be furious, but all I feel is stupid because I asked you to come with me.”

  Heden didn’t say anything. Silence grew.

  Eventually she held up the papers. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Careful with them,” Heden said. “It’s all paper. They do everything with paper there. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Probably,” she said.

  “I’m going to take care of the girls,” he said, and realized
he was swearing another oath.

  “Find them nice homes?” she asked, looking down at the water. She wouldn’t look at him.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, I’m trying to take this one day at a time. Some of them have already been…doing business there for days. Nothing horrible seems to have happened. They seem like nice normal girls.”

  “Of course they do, what did you expect?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought…,”

  “Trulls are just like anyone else,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t imagine any of them are as fucked up as you.”

  “Ok,” Heden said, letting her know he’d gotten her point.

  She let go of something inside, relaxed. Turned to him.

  “I know how your mind works,” she said. “How long will you be able to ignore what they’re doing? Act like nothing’s going on? This isn’t a problem to solve, Heden,” she said.

  “Well,” he said thinking. “I don’t like what they’re doing.”

  “Do they like it?”

  “Yeah,” Heden said. He wasn’t answering the question; he was confirming its legitimacy. “Don’t think it matters what they like.”

  “Doesn’t matter a little?”

  “You think if they’d had different lives they’d be on the game?”

  She couldn’t argue with this.

  “But they didn’t have that life," she said. "This is what they know, it’s what they’re good at and most of them enjoy it.”

  Heden thought about this.

  “No,” he concluded. “No, you’re wrong.” She gave him a look. “I think,” he added diplomatically.

  “They enjoy the sense of family," he explained. "They enjoy belonging. They enjoy having a place where they feel safe. Feel like someone’s watching over them. They enjoy feeling like they’re earning a living, feeling like they’re independent, have some control over their lives. And they maybe enjoy having this sense of power over men. But it’s horseshit. It’s the men who have the power, the men who pay.”

  “Is that why you never opened the inn?” she said.

  It was like someone had slapped him. “What?” he shot back.

  “You serve a customer. He pays you," she said. "You have to do what he came in for. You’re obligated. He has the power.”