RINGS (The Paladin's Thief Book 2)

by Benjamin K Hewett

  My hands disagree. Quality is always their business. I drop-slip down two-thirds. If I know what it is, I might be able to find a matching accessory, or a complimentary fabric, something to make the perfect effect.

  I know I’m rationalizing, but this time I don’t bother to stop myself. I ghost down the remaining silk, land quietly and tiptoe—though it’s more like a glide—through the master room, and have my hand in the box before I even really know what I’m doing.

  What’s this?

  The cloth is unspeakably soft. It’s a fabric I’ve never felt before, one that seems to carry its own warmth, and I can feel the heat in my hand reflected back from the thin fabric. I’ve never held anything like it.

  The shape of it is familiar—leggings, a little on the small side—and I know for certain they aren’t for the Fat Duchess. For one thing, she never wears leggings. For two, I don’t think the Fat Duchess has ever been this skinny. In fact, there aren’t many people in town these would fit. A few kids, perhaps. . . .

  I let it go, smoothing it back into its place, knowing I’ve been cooped up too long, looking for exits in all the wrong places.

  Just a little prowl?

  No. I need to be here, protecting my family.

  And my . . . friends, though the word doesn’t quite capture what I feel for Magnus, Lucinda and Carmen.

  I sit quietly between Carmen and Lucinda, who is almost as loud asleep as Magnus, and think about the mystery fabric, fascinated. I love quality, loved tracing Sara’s masterpieces, memorizing the folds and stitching so I could sell them for her. We were a good team. I could always tell who needed new shoes.

  Sanjuste had no chance against the two of us.

  My face burns at the thought. He tried to kill me today, even without any clear and present threat. And somehow he poisoned Sara, I’m sure of it now. It wasn’t a sudden fever after all. She’d cut herself on one of her tools, just a little prick.

  I feel sick inside. Why? Just for a bit of extra business? I’d call for justice, but that sort of prayer falls on deaf ears in Ector.

  The clouds clear for moment—driving away thoughts of revenge—and moonlight sprinkles the kitchen in silver. A pleasant breeze tells me Lucinda and Carmen have left the window open. The weather is cool and damp, Lady Autumn getting ready for winter. The air floats fresh, promising more rain than the river Neiss knows what to do with.

  My hand brushes against another masterpiece: red hair. I’ve always wondered but never been brave enough to touch it. The curl is coarse and weighty, as textured and living as I’d imagined. There’s a faint smell of charcoal about it still, but not unpleasant.

  I have the horrible realization that this would fetch a pretty penny on the black market. My lips snarl at the thought, and I let the last curl unwind from my index finger. That would be stealing.

  Hypocritical? Not at all. Stealing is when you take something because you can, even if you don’t need it. Acquisitioning is. . . .

  Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch. But there is a difference between a guy who takes your last meal and a guy who takes what he needs to get by. Lantern Street is a perfect example. The Widow Pétanque left some valuables to her nephew, Nori, when she died . . . a nephew I knew for a fact to be a con.

  So I’d planned a job with no cut for anyone else. It would probably set me up for a few months at least, and fake Nori didn’t deserve the inheritance. Of course, I didn’t know yet that Pale Tom had already moved in.

  It’s obvious now that Tom had expected me to visit Lantern Street. He’d set me up. And then died. Intentionally. It makes me wonder: was there anything else he meant me to have?

  I hear faint laughter in my ears.

  Of course. On Lantern Street.

  Tom’s permanent residence isn’t safe, not even for me. It’s where the Nightshades will look. But Lantern Street was our little secret. If he left me anything, it’ll be there. And if I’m just imagining things, at the very least I can retrieve my bag and a few odds and ends, some odds more valuable than others. . . .

  I climb back up to my knot-hole. There’s a cutaway in the wood-shingle roof, the one I used earlier to spy on Markel. It’s my secret way in and out of the house. I wiggle out through the hatch and I’m on the rooftops, enjoying the silver moon with a glance, saluting the cool stars, breathing brisk, wet air.

  In a second I’m running across the rooftops, flying between buildings. My toes grab hold of the grainy, wooden shingles between my feet, resisting the splinters by virtue of calloused sole.

  Pitter-patter.

  I know short cuts, places that aren’t dead-ends, up here between the shingles and the clouds. I hide behind chimneys when I need to, feeling the rough, warm brick on my ribs as the guards move about below.

  Ector has a curfew, but I don’t worry about it. There aren’t many guards surefooted enough to patrol the rooftops, and their leather armor (if they aren’t wearing metal) creaks and rubs like a farmer’s horse-cart harness.

  When I get to Lantern Street, I hear noise. Someone stooped at the lock.

  Fake-nephew Nori, out in the plain.

  I laugh to myself. Pale Tom didn’t even bother to trap that door. He bolted it to the stone. It doesn’t even open anymore. Nori’s going to be there for a long time, beating his head against a door just as fake as he is.

  I take the high road. Not metaphorically, because I rarely do that nowadays, but literally, across the remaining wooden rooftops—and then the slate ones, since uptown is just across the river from here, and the houses keep getting nicer from here on out.

  My clever, bare feet know the way, dancing until I can swing from the eaves one-handed, onto the third-story window ledge, to disable a new trap Tom has set on the window.

  Well, disable is a bit of an exaggeration. The window catch is easy enough to lift, but it’s attached to a wire too inconvenient to clip. I could smash the glass to clip it, but that’s clumsy and loud, and there’s no telling that there isn’t a second wire set to trigger the moment I open the window. Instead, I look for the delivery system.

  Ah.… There’s a small, wooden straw draining from the lintel above me, something clearly out of place. Cloud poison? Lung fungus? I tear a small, colorful patch from my shirt—I can repatch it later—and stick it in my mouth, soaking the fabric with saliva. I could plug the hole with something, but that generates pressure and there’s no guarantee that the plug will hold when I trigger the mechanism. Instead, I tie the patch around the wooden straw like a little nose-bag. In theory, the saliva traps the spores (or poison) while the air is free to pass. I cover my face anyways as I open the window and clamber in. There’s a hissing sound, but the “nosebag” does its job.

  Tonight there is no bone-saw breath, and no reason to hurry. The house is completely still, and my bag is exactly where I left it.

  I relax, just a hair. The house is beautiful, several steps above Number Five on Redemption Alley. Worked wood, diamond-paned windows, display cases and carved molding. It’s seen better days, but even in the dark the high ceilings speak to its sense of establishment. Of course, it isn’t cozy enough for my tastes.

  I poke about the house, double-checking a couple of promising drawers, finding a handful of kings—gold!—and a few bits of cheap jewelry.

  Fake-nephew Nori continues to scratch at the door below, and I’m a little surprised at his persistence. A real professional would leave and come back another night with a better plan. Sawing away at the new, fake door will only get him in trouble with the town guard.

  I take my time wandering about the house, tripping all the traps I can find. It’s good practice. Pale Tom’s traps are some of the most intricate I’ve seen: both well-conceived and elegant. It makes me wonder what the man might have been without the oaths.

  I’ve seen most of them before, scattered through the nicer houses of Ector, through the jobs commissioned by Petri or places visited in desperation. Even a Nightshade has hobbies, I guess. Tom’s was, it appears, t
o place his traps in places he expected me to frequent. I don’t understand it; if he’d wanted me dead he could have easily done it. Why the traps?

  And he’s trapped this place to the gills. Baited surfaces, weight-plates, pitfalls, ankle-wires. . . . There’s even a razor in the empty candy bowl. No wonder Petri asked me to raid it again. With all these traps, there’s got to be something of value here.

  My favorite one is a tarnished wooden box about the size of my hand, the kind that might hold a favorite ring or necklace. It’s heavier than it should be, but not by much, and resists being opened, ostensibly because of tarnished hinges. I know better than to force it, though. In acquisitioning, that sort of attitude is a sign of impending retirement.

  With a little moonlight, I notice that the tiny “nail heads” all along the southern rim of the box are actually hard, black putty, and they come away easily with a few scrapes of the knife. Beneath each and every bump is a silver glint. Probably 50 little needles all told. I prudently decide to open it with a very unconventional grip. The needles all stab out quickly and retract in a ripple as the lid is fully opened. I open and close it once or twice, and watch the little wave of silver pass around the lower edge of the jewelry box, amazed. A tiny metallic gear in each hinge drives a hidden mechanism.

  I’m about to pry the box apart for a better look when I notice the prize. One queenpence. My queenpence.

  Only it can’t be. I gave that to Petri.

  This one is tarnished black, except a tiny pinprick of silver on the regent’s face. But it’s a message, and I know it’s for me. I put it in my pocket.

  The magic traps I mostly leave alone. I’ve always been able to hear that ominous hum that no one else seems to notice.

  There’s one on a large wardrobe that I do give a try, tossing a wooden mug at it while ducking behind the bed on the other side of the room.

  Crack!

  The cup explodes.

  I try another.

  Crack!

  Maybe something bigger?

  Foom! The chair splatters across the room in a fountain of matchwood.

  I chuckle, suddenly guessing that a trap like this could keep an ambitious (and stupid) thief tied up for hours, hoping to wear it out. A dummy trap. The Auctioneers and Collectors are just going to have to deal with this one on their own.

  Eventually the soggy spell-books catch my eye. I don’t want them, but they aren’t the sort of thing that should be left around. Not those sorts of spells, anyways. I start a fire in the stone fireplace with the chair I magically dismantled and some spare tinder left on the mantel. This isn’t particularly professional, but it is a good joke, and a good acquisitioner never leaves a mess.

  The books hiss like demons, and throw off green and purple flames as they burn.

  “I dried out your soggy spell-books,” I joke to a black-robed specter that isn’t really there.

  “I’ll kill you and your lineage,” it jokes back.

  Urg. Pale Tom’s jokes are never funny.

  Hungry again, I raid the larder. There’s a small sausage in there, which I eat, and several poisoned apples (needle pricks and bad color), which I don’t eat. The scarcity of food is probably Tom getting back at me for burning his spell-books. An eminent Nightshade should have preserved calzones, hams, hard cheeses, and expensive wines. But then I realize his larder probably does. This house is only just a setup.

  I’m headed back upstairs when my bare foot brushes a divot in the larder floorstone, a divot you’d only notice barefooted. A divot the size of a queenpence.

  I get down and feel around it. I put my queenpence in the divot and it fits perfectly. The stone heats up and wobbles.

  Tom knows I appreciate a well-stocked larder, that I only wear boots in winter. And I know that Tom loves to trap things.

  I go to the dwindling fire and bring back a firebrand for light, just in case.

  Sure enough, there’s a needle—three actually—protecting this brick, down in crevice holes conveniently shaped for fingers. I remove them carefully with a pair of tweezers from my bag and set them to the side.

  When I get the brick out, I’m expecting something valuable. Diamonds would be nice. . . .

  Instead, there’s a wooden box that rattles a bit when I shake it. Not diamonds.

  I open it carefully, wary of more traps, drying a sappy-looking substance around the latch with some dirt from the hole. A different kind of poison.

  The box is filled with rings.

  Black rings that swirl on the edges.

  Nightshade rings.

  I feel sick in my stomach. Why am I here? The ring is a rite of passage. Your first kill, your first coercion. Things a Nightshade values. I can feel the power in that box, and it’s not something I want.

  I try each of them on anyways, feeling sicker and sicker. Each one is dirty, stained with the blood (I assume) of the previous wearer.

  Charged with a subtle current, they each play differently on my moods and emotions. Anger. Sadness. Lust. Vengeance. Frenzy. Insanity. None of them crackle like the black ring I stole from the desk upstairs yesterday evening and then lost in the brawl, but they all make my eyesight sharper and my movement swifter.

  Not worth the risk. I put them all back in the box and stow the box in my aquisitioner’s bag, adding the one from my pocket to the collection. These rings aren’t the sort of things you want in the hands of auctioneers and tax-collectors, who are hard enough to avoid as it is.

  I don’t know what to do with them, but Magnus might, and he definitely won’t tell me to pawn them to Petri. . . . As an afterthought, I add the black penny with the silver scratch. It belongs with them.

  I’ve had enough sneaking around for one night. I head back up to the third floor where I made my entrance. It’s a little harder to get back on to the roof with a bag tied to my belt, but I manage.

  I straighten and run smack into Petri, all set to pounce.

  “I thought you might be up here,” he chortles, crouching, knife in hand. “Hand over the rings.”

  “What rings?”

  “I know you have them. Sanjuste said you’d go for them.”

  “You sold me out!” My eyes are pulled to his left hand, to a patch of blackness. Tom’s ring. My ring.

  Petri stops mid-chortle. He’s never heard me angry before, and it seems to frighten him.

  “Easy, Teacup. Nobody needs to get hurt. I just need to get a box of rings to him and get my debts squared. You know about paying off debts.” He laughs, hoping I will, too.

  It don’t.

  “Give them.”

  I leap past him as his dagger descends, missing me by inches. I’m sliding down one roof and scampering up another, across the Lantern Street “high road” with Petri chasing me. Knowing he’s working for Sanjuste gives me new wings. Just one ring in the hands of that monster is unconscionable. If Sanjuste gets hold of just one—the one Petri is wearing, for instance—my family is history.

  Petri is faster than I remember him, and rather spry for a man with a damaged leg, but he doesn’t know all the tricks, and I can still climb faster. I can see the tiny wall cracks and go up the side of the baker's apartment while Petri’s still figuring out how to corner. I’ve just about left him behind when he does something crazy—a flying leap between two buildings, an attempt to cut me off. He hits the side of the shop instead; it knocks himself out cold.

  I stop and go back. I might be able to get Tom’s ring, too.

  Petri’s lying motionless on the ground below, in the middle of a soft herb garden.

  Suddenly there are hands grabbing me from behind. I drop to my knees on the rooftop, try to roll sideways, but there are two men behind me, city guards, holding onto my shirt.

  I launch myself off the edge, jerking one of them with me. Both let go, one falling on top of Petri, the other teetering in moonlit silhouette. I catch the edge of the roof for a second and then let go, scrabbling down the wall as I fall.

  The mud catches me
, and I’m up and running. There are voices now, shouting to each other, coordinating, and I realize that I’m in deeper trouble than I thought, even though the clouds have hid the moon again. Thief-hunters. Part of the town guard that I like least. I don’t have time to scavenge Petri’s ring as they close in. The men at the end of the alley are throwing ropes.

  One snares my foot while the others sail harmlessly past. I kick my leg forward, catching the man by surprise. He grabs his hand where the rope must have burned him. Should have double-wrapped or worn gloves. Amateur.

  I’m running, stumbling around another corner, and the crowd is closing fast.

  When I head for higher ground, my new tail snags on a nail. I jump back into the group behind me to unsnag it, dashing across a few lightly-armored soldiers, their muscled arms too slow to trap me. The “floor” falls out from under me, but I land four-footed on the ground, splattering mud into the air behind me with my fingers as I leap away. Three strides forward. Rolling under a long-legged guard open-stanced for the tackle.

  I jerk sideways and dash down a dark alley, a dead-end planted with vines I know I can scale.

  But the vines are gone.

  They’ve been cut away. A trap. Petri brought the guards tonight and left nothing to chance. Like I said, he knows numbers and probabilities, knows what it takes to catch a guy like me.

  Excrement.

  I turn, dashing back the way I came before they can close it off, frantically grabbing my way up the side of the building, knowing I can only get six feet up.

  But they don’t know that.

  Their line collapses as they anticipate me getting away, and they try desperately to grab me. At the height of my climb, I jump back over them, laying out in the air like a flapping squirrel, watching their hooks and lassos sail past. The last man, the only one to hold his position, tries to catch me and I let him. But I curl into a ball and explode away from him the moment we hit the street. I can feel my small foot pushing the air out of his chest as I surge away.

  With guards behind me and the rain on my face, I’m home free.

  I don’t notice the crutch rising out of the shadows behind a rain barrel until it’s too late. It takes me in the shin and I sprawl out on the cobblestone, bag flying from under my belt as my wooden buckle snaps.