Though Ghaffar could not understand the why of the djinn’s oath, he realized he could work it in his favor, so he bargained that she would swear never to bring the sword into his presence so long as he lived, and since Ghaffar had become certain he would never be killed except by this sword, the deadly maiden the soothsayer had foretold, he had been entertaining the thought of immortality the whole time he and his small force had waited near the village fountain. There was no sign of the djinn, but he was certain that she would return the moment the boy was dead.
At the same time Bakri saw his uncle he understood the man’s error. Ghaffar, given his own invulnerability, was inclined to ride straight ahead and slash until everything was dead.
Bakri and Adilah had advanced on the east side of the fountain. The two men approaching from the southwest and the two approaching from the northwest could not immediately close upon him, owing to the square bulk of the fountain itself. If he moved fast, he could engage Ghaffar’s guards before the others neared. A slim chance, indeed, but then he had seen what Gray Maiden could do. He snarled and charged.
This Ghaffar had not expected. “Stop him!” he shouted.
Even a trained warrior can hesitate when facing a running man with a weapon. Their swords were out, but the first went immediately on the defensive, swinging up to parry. He lost his arm at the elbow for his efforts and fell screaming. His companion thought to slice Bakri while he was distracted, but the scream was unsettling, the slice astonishing, and his blow uncertain. Bakri half turned, sucking in his chest, and only the sword’s tip struck, slicing through his clothes. Behind him he heard Adilah shout that the men were dogs, and to his left he heard men splashing through the fountain, but he had eyes only on the warrior before him, who was partly off balance. If that warrior’s blade had been as supremely balanced as the Gray Maiden, it might be that he could have recovered his footing, but it was a simple sword, and when Bakri struck him through shoulder and neck he fell stone dead and motionless.
To Bakri, Ghaffar’s eyes seemed wide almost as saucers. The sun was rising now, with enough light for the boy to recognize actual fear in his uncle’s face. The older man held his sword out before him protectively as he backed away, and the gems in its hilt caught a little of the daylight. Bakri advanced after him, almost negligently slicing to his left at the sound of rushing feet and dropping a man with a solid blow to the chest. His uncle’s thugs muttered amongst themselves in amazement, for in the space of a few heartbeats the boy had stilled three hearts forever.
Three of them had wrestled Adilah into submission and two held her now, one with a knife to her chest. The other lingered, not wanting to advance, and the remaining two followed Bakri but did not rush his back. Not after what they had witnessed. Too, they recognized Ghaffar’s fear. Service with Ghaffar had brought them riches and women, but he was an uncertain master, and they had little wish to die because of a problem of Ghaffar’s own making. Thus they hesitated as Ghaffar commanded them to strike.
The boy turned sideways as he walked, so that he could see both Ghaffar before him, and the men behind.
“My men have the girl,” Ghaffar told him, slowly retreating.
“You will not distract me.”
“They hold a knife to her, now. If you do not surrender, they will kill her.”
The djinn had suggested this plan, though Ghaffar had thought the matter an unneeded precaution at the time. He would never have supposed Bakri would prove so dangerous. It was the sword, he knew, from which he could not take his eyes. So it is when men first spy the maid they are destined for.
“Look,” Ghaffar said, his voice quavering a little. He forced steel back into it as he went on. “I will order the others back, so you can see. And I will step back, out of range.” So saying, he retreated almost to the mud wall of the tanner’s house behind him, and Bakri remained two sword lengths out. Ghaffar barked at his men, so that when Bakri looked south, to his right, they were eight paces behind, and stepping back, their swords down, so that the two holding Adilah might push her forward. He saw her beautiful eyes, glinting fiercely.
“Surrender the sword,” his uncle said, “and I will let you both ride free.”
“Lies,” Bakri said. He’d meant to say more, but somehow that seemed enough.
“You are wiser than I realized. You know that you will die, when you turn it over. But this I promise you. I will have them let the girl go, and you will set the weapon down.”
“No!” Adilah shouted to him. “Do not listen to him!”
Bakri doubted this as well. Like as not his uncle would order the girl killed as Bakri lay dying, so that he would hear or see her fall. He was not sure what, now, he could do to save her, and the surge of anger and energy that had fueled his advance was now faded. He was bone-tired after his long journey, and the choices which had only moments ago seemed so effortless now were wearying.
Even from twelve paces off Adilah saw his hesitation, and it came to her that he meant to sacrifice himself for her, because she had seen the love in his eyes from the first. That she could not allow, partly because she did not think herself worth the life of one so brave, but mostly because she did not want such a sword to fall into the hands of so evil a man as Ghaffar. She acted then with more bravery than many seasoned warriors. She resumed her struggling, swaying away from the knife, and as the soldier tightened his grip on her hair and brought the blade closer, she thrust herself upon it.
Her own soft gasp as the weapon pierced her flesh was drowned out by the cry of dismay from the soldier with the knife. It was a deep chest wound, and the blood flowed swiftly out.
“I didn’t mean to, general!” he cried, stepping back. “She just … threw herself at it.”
The gathered soldiers looked back and forth among themselves, and the slumping girl, and Ghaffar.
Bakri let out a wordless cry of rage and swung forward.
Ghaffar could scarce believe it. Everything had come crashing down so swiftly. A moment ago he had been the most feared man in a week’s ride. Yesterday it seemed he would soon have the only weapon that could kill him, and he would melt it down. Moments ago he’d sprung an ambush that surrounded Bakri nine to one, and after that the girl’s fate had frozen the boy with indecision.
He felt the hand of fate upon his shoulder. That is not to say that he did not fight, for he raised his weapon and struck at his nephew with a curse.
Bakri felt that slash to his shoulder only dimly. The whole of his attention was focused upon the neck where his sword struck, and the long clean line he drew through his uncle’s flesh, and the blood that sparkled in the wake of the head that went flying from the body. He was a little mad, then, and slashed the body twice more as it fell. He spun and charged toward Adilah.
The warrior who’d been holding her had set her down, almost tenderly, and the others withdrew, for they wanted no part of what they sensed would follow. Too late, the man with the knife threw it aside and fumbled at his blade. In moments he too lay dead, and Bakri snarled at the others to get back. This they did. He was aware, too, that shuttered windows had been thrown open and that closed doorways around the square now framed bleary-eyed villagers. This was not a fully Muslim place, remember, so there had been no call to prayer.
He knelt down beside the girl, setting Gray Maiden at his side, and cradled her head. She was breathing fast, and there seemed a great deal of blood already on her clothes. Her blouse was soaked. She looked up into his eyes and raised a hand toward his face.
The warriors watched. They began to think of the youth’s exposed back, and the sword that lay apart from him, and how it might feel to wield such a weapon themselves, and they licked their lips and glanced at one another, trying to summon the courage to act.
The djinn appeared in a shimmer of blue in front of the fountain. The villagers gasped and the warriors drew back, but Bakri looked up slowly, with little fear.
“Give me the sword,” she said, “and I will heal the girl.”
/>
He looked down at Adilah, who blinked blearily at him but did not speak. Color had drained from her face. And Bakri looked up at the djinn, and he thought of how the creature had summoned Habab and the others against him, and how it had said it desired the sword. “You brought my uncle here,” he said, knowing as he said it that he spoke the truth.
“We made a bargain,” the djinn acknowledged. “Now I shall make one with you. Give me the sword and I shall heal her. But you must act fast. Her life ebbs and I cannot raise the dead.”
Bakri reached out, put his hand to the sword, rose slowly, and sliced at the djinn.
It was like striking the finest silk, for there was the barest resistance as the Gray Maiden passed through the creature’s waist. Finally there was a changed expression, one of shocked surprise, as the djinn fell into bright fragments that then faded to nothingness as they settled toward the earth. With a cry of rage he thrust the point of Gray Maiden into the soil and called for the villagers to bring a healer.
But there was nothing that could be done for Adilah. She died in his arms while he wept and told her he would do everything he promised.
He kept his word. He brought Islam to the warriors who thronged to serve Bakri, djinn slayer, and to the village, and to the regions he conquered. He was just, and honorable, though he had changed overnight into a grim and humorless man. He took wives, but had no sons, and when in the fullness of time he died, it was said the last words upon his lips were not from the Koran, which he had long since memorized, but the name of the girl, Adilah.
As for the sword, it passed into the hands of the caliph as a gift, and from there to the treasure rooms, where it lay, undisturbed for decades, waiting until a righteous hand might come to wield it once more.
Honors Among Thieves
Esther Friesner
Ladies and gentlemen of the Pitchbrook Chapter of—
All right, all right, settle down. Yeah, I know what I called you. My old Da always told me to start off a speech with a joke and that was it. So—!
Miserable, poxy, lowlife ragamuffins, cutpurses, second-story men—sorry, Snaggletooth Lil, I meant to say second-story persons—thugs and thugettes, light-fingered rapscallions and assorted embarrassments to the Pitchbrook Chapter of the Greater Salamanzor City Thieves’ Guild, as your duly elected Chief Filch and Pilferer, it is my inescapable obligation to introduce tonight’s guest of honor. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking that is not before a magistrate, I am nonetheless eager to fulfill my duties. I’ve got a tale to tell and I guarantee it’ll warm the heart of your cockles.
Or if it don’t, there’s plenty of brandy on the tables. Some of it’s still in the bottles. Enjoy.
It’s a wise thief who knows better’n to rush things. We don’t dawdle in our profession, but we do take what time’s needful for the job. You know what happens if you just jam your hand into a gent’s coin pouch without first making a careful study of your best getaway route and if he looks fit to chase after you, should your fingers fumble. And what do we call the hasty burglar who fails to give sufficient study to the house he’s got in mind to loot?
I don’t know either, but it always begins with “The late, lamented.” So drink up and bide patient. You won’t regret it.
This story begins some years ago, during the reign of Duke Salamanzor the Fourteenth, better known to us and all his woebegone subjects as Duke Sal the Enthusiastically Vicious. It was winter, though to be honest—Shut up, Lil, that wasn’t a joke—while old Sal was infesting the throne, every day seemed like winter. Those were lean times for us hard-working guildfolk. The penalty for stealing was a slap on the wrist. Trouble was, they used an ax to do the slapping.
But this was winter for real, the sort of winter where rats breathed icicles, dogs were scared to lift their legs against iron gates, and my old lady actually welcomed me into her bed. It was a foul, cold night, and I was hanging around—Oops, pardon my non-sensitive language there, all you members of the Gallows ‘n’ Gibbets Surviving Spouses Book Club—I was waiting around the Guild headquarters in case any of our members needed to avail themselves of our All Night Loot-Fencing service. There came a knock at the door, and when I went to answer it, there they were.
I recognized her right off: Mimosa Claycraw, thief among thieves, troll among trolls, and five-time winner of the Duchess Amabel Memorial Flower-Arranging Competition.
I didn’t see him, at first. How could I? He was in her shadow. You young sprats in the audience were born too late to see Mimosa alive and kicking—and many’s the man still walking funny who found out just how hard she could kick—but let me tell you, that troll was big. Massive. Epic. Not so much big on the toes-to-topknot line but definitely on the crossways stretch. There weren’t many doorways in this town she could walk through straight on, and some were a challenge to her even when she tried sidling over the threshold. When that happened, she just plowed herself a new doorway, and that’s why Salamanzor City’s known for its two-oxen-abreast tavern entrances.
“Evenin’, Mimosa,” I said, pleasant as you please. “What’ve you got for us tonight?”
“This,” she said, and she reached her right hand back a ways and gave something a gentle shove forward.
I got my first good look at him as he crouched there in the light spilling into the street. He had a badly patched cloak covering him, the hood so deep that you’d think the troll was dropping off a bundle of laundry. Then she said, “What’d I tell you, Ash? Stand up straight! Be proud of what you are!”
He obeyed her right away, which was all the proof I needed that he was a smart’un. He uncurled his spine, pulled back his shoulders, and let his hood fall away from a filthy shock of short, tangled hair likely to harbor its fair share of head lice. I couldn’t gauge the poor mite’s age by looking at him, but a rough guess placed him somewhere between Nothing But Porridge on the one end and Starving to Death on the other, with cheeks gaunt enough to declare he was leaning much closer to the second one. He was snub-nosed, mud-and-worse-stained, and ugly as a dungeon piss-hole, but there was one thing he was not:
He was no troll.
I was baffled. I guess it showed, because Mimosa snorted hard enough to cover me with snot-gobbets and said, “No, he ain’t no troll, but he’s still my boy, and I want you to take him on as a Guild Trainee, and ‘Prentice rank to follow that.”
“How—?” I began, glancing back and forth between the two of them so fast I swear I heard my eyes rattle like dried peas being shook up in an empty box. I just couldn’t believe it, y’know? Our Mimosa, she wasn’t exactly famed for looking after anyone but herself, and the notion that she was seeing to the welfare of that little mite left me drop-jawed and right boggled. “Maybe we’d best take this inside,” I said, expecting a long explanation and not willing to freeze my dumplings off while Mimosa gave it.
The troll just shook her head. “No thanks. I got … reasons. Him an’ me, we can stand the cold. And you best be able to do the same or I’ve still got the means to make you regret it.”
When Mimosa Claycraw made a threat, there was teeth behind it: dragon’s teeth. I leaned against the doorframe, tried hugging myself warm, and told her to carry on.
She took a deep, shuddery breath. “I found ‘im,” she said. “Some years back, when Duke Sal first come to rule here, back when that toad-ticklin’ slop-slurper was doin’ the city-wide sweeps to bring in folk like me. You remember.”
I did. We all do. Most of us lost friends and family to those bad old days, and the so-called honest citizens of Salamanzor City who’d been happily jabbering about how much safer they’d feel o’ nights now that a strong hand was comin’ down hard on the riffraff, well, they soon found that strong hand clutched tight around their own fat throats before it dug deep into their pockets. It was the first time them ‘n’ us found common ground, tryin’ to survive Duke Sal.
“Where’d you come across the lad?” I asked.
“Outside of Lulu’s place.”
/> Friends, a moment of silence to honor the memory of Miss Lulu, one of the finest practitioners of the more complex, warm-an’-sticky amorous arts that our fine city ever knew. Things just haven’t been the same around here since she shut up shop, pensioned off her girls, and changed her name when she married into the royal family. A fine citizen and a social climber to be reckoned with, that ‘un!
Anyway …
“He wasn’t more’n four years old then, near as I can tell,” Mimosa went on. “Bold-faced little thing, half-starved but never a whimper out of him when I grabbed his arm and nigh broke it.”
“Break a little kid’s arm? Gods above, below, and sideways, Mimosa, that’s harsh, even for you!” I said.
She snorted again. “I said almost broke it. And you’d done the same to anyone you caught with his grubby fist buried in your coin purse. Thanks be, I had good reflexes back then and I stopped myself the moment I saw how puny and young he was. Ain’t that right, Ash?”
The kid nodded vigorously and his thin lips lifted in the ghost of a mischievous grin. I sized him up some more and for no sane reason found myself liking him.
A lot.
Maybe too much. It was a weird feeling that I couldn’t lay a name to or find a reason to back it up.
“He still looks kind of young and puny,” I said, trying to reclaim my professional attitude. No one comes to the Guild house except as they’ve got business to transact and a con or two to try putting over on the hard-working fence on duty. It wouldn’t do for me to go soft.
Shut up, ladies.
“He is.” Mimosa shrugged and might’ve been about to say something more, but instead she began to cough. It was a chilling sound, like a landslide coming at you fast. Clouds of white dust spewed from her mouth. I can see by the looks on your faces that some of you know what a cough like that means to a troll: nothing good.
Guilds & Glaives Page 5
