The thief looked nervously down at the floor when I’d have expected the offer of coin to give him pause for thought.
“The Esquire has coffers as handsome as his linen.” I gestured at Temar’s elegant lace collar. “He’d have paid a bounty for those treasures in any case.”
“Tell us who put you up to this, to whom they answer, if you may, and you can be well rewarded.” Temar offered with honest sincerity.
The thief’s tongue poked at the oozing split in his lip but fear was still tarnishing the greed in his eyes. There was something about Temar that really unnerved him, I realised. I knew something else as well. This was taking too long. I had one ear cocked for any sound below and wouldn’t have bet a Lescari Mark on the silence lasting much longer. I studied the thief’s face; he wasn’t just looking warily at Temar, his glance kept sliding to the leather bag and not because it held his spoils. “You’ll be glad to see the back of those things, whoever takes them, won’t you?”
It was drawing a bow at a venture but the thief’s sharp intake of breath and involuntary hunch of his shoulders told us both I’d hit between the joints of his harness.
“How well did you sleep, with all this under your bed?” Temar balanced a battered silver goblet on his outstretched palm, hand steady as a rock. “Did you dream? Did you feel the imprisoned crying out for release? Did you feel their confusion, their pain?”
I was impressed. Temar was striking a resonant balance between sounding scarily archaic and speaking clearly enough to be understood by latterday ears. It was just a shame this bluff was so threadbare. But as I thought that I saw a new determination light in Temar’s cold blue eyes. He reached into the leather bag, and what came next nearly made me cry out loud, never mind the thief.
“Milar far eladris, surar nen jidralis.” Temar slid into a rhythmical chant, eyes glazing. As he did so, a face coalesced above the black-streaked silver. Faint at first, like early streaks of mist lurking in hollows in the road, the image thickened like fog. It was pale as mist, a washed-out greyness to the skin, lips bloodless, unseeing eyes all but transparent. I couldn’t tell if it were man or woman, old or young, indistinct, with hair no more than a wispy suggestion.
“Shall I send you to join these shades?” Temar stopped his incantation and the shape shivered in the air. “Or shall I call them forth, to pursue you to the very borders of the Otherworld? If I do that, you can only be safe when you slit your own throat and Saedrin locks his door behind you.”
It was a good thing Temar was able to do all the talking because my throat had closed tighter than an oyster’s arse. I moistened dry lips and saw the thief staring at Temar as if the young Esquire had revealed himself as one of Poldrion’s own demons. A new stink added to the general stench in the room as the man soiled himself.
“His name’s Queal, Fenn Queal.” He stumbled over the name. “He works out of the Copper Casket, over near the limekilns on the bay.”
“What did he tell you?” demanded Temar. “What did he promise?”
The door on the ground floor below rattled. Our luck had just run out. “Hush, both of you.” I put my sword to the man’s throat to ensure his silence.
“Jacot? Jacot, you putrid pig?” An indignant voice yelled up the stairs. “You left the door unlocked, shit for brains!”
“Are you up there?” A second voice sounded faintly suspicious.
“Answer him.” I prodded the thief. “Say sorry.”
Jacot managed a hoarse shout. “Right, sorry about that.”
I cursed under my breath as I heard heavy boots on the stairs. “You’ll be more than sorry if anything’s been lifted, dungface,” a halfway drunken voice threatened.
There was no time to untie Jacot, and anyway, if it came to a fight I didn’t want him free. Whoever was wanting to pick an argument threw back the trapdoor and the indignation died on his lips as he realised Temar was standing there, naked blade ready to top his skull like an egg.
“We’ve no quarrel with you, pal,” I said with pleasant menace. “We’re just about done with Jacot here and then we’ll be leaving.”
The newcomer was a tall man with a weeping sore on his cheek that looked suspiciously like the scald to me. He was cleaner than Jacot, from what I could see of his shoulders, wearing a dun broadcloth jerkin over a plain shirt. All the better to go unnoticed about his thievery, doubtless. His dark eyes were red-rimmed and crusted but alert enough as they scanned the room; first the bed, the bound Jacot, myself and finally Temar, who smiled nastily at him.
“Whatever you say, you’re the man with the sword.” He looked unconcerned at Jacot’s reddened and bleeding face. “Never was good for his rent, anyway.”
I’d been half wondering about taking the thief with us to give Messire a matched pair for the gallows, but bilked for his rent or not I couldn’t see this bully letting us take Jacot with us. No matter. We had the Kellarin artefacts back and I’d wager gold against copper that Jacot would get his neck stretched soon enough.
I let my smile fade into hard-faced threat. The man gave the darkness under the bed one last look before sliding down the ladder, helpfully drawing the trap shut after him.
I raised a finger to shut Temar’s opening mouth and, kneeling, lifted the trapdoor a fraction. There were too many voices asking puzzled questions for me to pick out the words clearly and then a door below shut them off.
I scowled. “Do you reckon they’ll let us just walk out of here with his loot on your belt?”
“I somehow doubt it.” Temar looked down through the crack of the trapdoor. “We fight our way through?”
I sat back and looked round the garret. “If we have to. I’d rather try and go round them and just run.”
“Almost certainly safer,” Temar said dryly. He bolted the trapdoor, which would give us a little more time to consider our options.
The tiny window was thick with soot, decaying round the frame, and it didn’t look as if it had ever been opened.
Knocking it out would take time, make noise; I wasn’t sure Temar could get his shoulders through it, let alone me, and in any case I didn’t fancy trying to race thieves over the rooftops.
“Gag him.” Gesturing at Jacot, I went over to the chimney breast. A flimsy wooden wall on either side was all that separated this garret from the next house. I looked more closely. The aging stonework had shifted over the generations and pulled away, leaving the flimsy crosspieces none too deep in the walls. The cheap planks were rotting where last winter’s rain had found a way through the coarse stone slates and most of the wood looked worm-ridden. I looked over at Temar, who was tying a thick knot in a stained rag to wedge into Jacot’s mouth.
“Let’s use him to weigh down the trapdoor.” I lifted one side of the chair. Temar took the other and we carried Jacot carefully over, fury choking him almost as effectively as Temar’s gag. Temar took a deep breath, held it and then carefully moved the chamber pot to stand on the crack by the trap’s rope handle. I nodded my amused approval as I stripped the pallet and greasy blankets off the bed and lifted up the frame.
“We smash through that wall and get clear as fast as we can.” Even if the thieves below thought we were just beating Jacot up, the noise would give them an excuse to interfere so we wouldn’t have much time.
Temar swung the bed frame with me. “On three?”
“On one.” I put all my strength behind the blow, Temar with me. The bed frame twisted and splintered but the wall buckled more, cross pieces ripped out of the chimney breast. We hit it again, and again, as hurrying boots came charging up the stairs. One last shove sent the ineffective partition crashing down and we forced our way through the gap. The garret next door was a mirror image of Jacot’s and we raced to its trapdoor. Finding the bolt took a few unpleasantly tense moments in the half darkness, but then we were through and sliding down the ladder. Temar tried to pull it away but it was too securely fixed to the wall. I shoved him towards the stairs.
Shouts sounded in t
he room we’d just left, mainly of disgust as whoever tried to come bursting up through the trap was covered in Jacot’s ordure.
I drew my sword and spared a breath to hope no innocents appeared and tried to stop us. Those runes rolled our way; this house was dark and we reached the ground floor unopposed. Temar cocked his head like a listening hound. The roar of pursuit from above didn’t quite cover the shuffle of feet in the street outside the front,
“The back.” I was betting my hide and Temar’s that there’d be an alley to match the one Eadit had used to get back to Charoleia.
This house had a door to its kitchen and we bolted it behind us as we ran. Once through the outer door, we found ourselves in a pitch black yard. Scrambling over the chest-high wall, we dropped into a narrow alley with an open sewer running down the middle. We ran on, swords in hand, eyes fixed on a spill of moonlight where the terrace gave way to a lane. Our footfalls echoed back from the walls on either side, rousing dogs from their kennels, hounds barking until doors opened on warning shouts. As we reached the open space we heard running feet to match our own and naked steel shone bright as three of the thieves came skidding round the corner.
The first one made a wild swing for my neck. This was no time for the niceties of a formal bout. I parried with a block hard enough to send him staggering. Grabbing his hilt with my free hand, I curved my sword down to rip it up the back of his calf. He dropped his blade to clutch at the wound as he fell crippled to the floor and I kicked it away into the darkness. The other two had both gone for Temar, each thrusting cuts that the younger man’s ancient sword skills competently swept aside. One tried a vicious hack at his wrist but Temar saw it coming and pulled back. The thief leaned a hair’s breadth too far forward and Temar had him, cutting down to the bone in the angle of his elbow. I was moving to take the last man but a shadow stepped up behind him, grabbing his head to draw a dagger across his throat in one practised movement. Temar and I recoiled but I still got spattered with hot sticky blood.
“Come on.” Eadit dropped the corpse and we followed him to the street. Charoleia was waiting, Arashil beside her, the gig barely pausing as we three grabbed the sides and back, scrambling to cram ourselves aboard. The whole neighbourhood was rousing by now, cries raising lights in curious windows. The thieves who’d pursued us down the alley came running after us and two men appeared from nowhere to grab at the horse’s head. Charoleia ripped into their hands and faces with her metal-barbed whip and they fell away. The bay sprang forward but, hampered by the unevenly weighted gig, was hard put to outpace our pursuers. Charoleia wrenched the reins to turn it first round one corner, then another. We hit a wider road and she lashed the beast to a reckless canter, leaving the sounds of the chase fading behind us.
I stared backwards until I was satisfied we’d left anyone after our blood behind. “What do you know of Fenn Queal, Charoleia?”
She kept her eyes on the road. “If he paid that thief, someone is paying him ten times as much.”
“Would he have lied to us?” Temar asked. “The thief, I mean.”
“Not and risk Queal finding out and skinning him for it.” Charoleia slowed the pace a little as we reached a street with ordinary people going about innocent Festival business. “We’ll discuss this indoors.”
“Where are we going?” I checked my bearings and it was clear we weren’t heading either back to D’Olbriot’s residence or north and west to Charoleia’s house.
“Somewhere safe.” Charoleia glanced back at the three of us with a frown that still couldn’t mar her beauty.
“D’Olbriot’s is safe,” I protested.
Charoleia ignored me. I reached to touch her shoulder but Eadit held my arm back. “You asked for her help, you take it.”
I gave him a hard look but he met my gaze squarely.
Charoleia turned down another back street and then another. She took a lane that ran right beneath the solid bulk of the old city walls and finally steered the weary horse into a tidily swept street where we drew up outside a respectable merchant’s house. Eadit got out to take the horse’s head while Arashil sorted the keys chained at her girdle. “I’ll need to wash that blood out at once,” she said, suddenly seeing the gore spattered all over me and Temar. “Or you’ll be going home in your drawers.”
“Sorry about that,” said Eadit perfunctorily, leading the horse away.
We went inside to find a small hall with a single lantern burning low on a table. Arashil lit a candle from it and opened a door on to a sparsely furnished parlour where she lit another lamp. “Don’t get blood on the furniture.”
Temar and I looked at each other and at Charoleia. “I’ll get some blankets,” she said with a faint smile as she turned to disappear up the stairs.
“I don’t want to be at the laundry all night,” snapped Arashil. “You’ve nothing I’ve not seen before.”
I stripped off my jerkin and shirt, folding them carefully to keep the bloodied sides innermost. Temar did the same with visible reluctance as I sat on a plain but well-polished chair to take my boots off. I didn’t know just what I had trodden in this evening, but I didn’t imagine Charoleia would take kindly to me tramping it through this house.
“And the breeches.” Arashil tapped an impatient foot. I considered refusing. I could feel the stickness against my skin, but once the blood had dried it would barely show on the dark cloth. Then I saw how the spray had caught Temar, leaving stains all across his pale breeches. He was blushing furiously and I couldn’t leave him to be the only one standing there in his linen, not if it embarrassed him so badly. I stripped and bundled up the clothes, giving Temar an encouraging wink.
Charoleia came into the room as Arashil left and tossed us each a warm blanket dyed an expensive blue. I tucked mine round my hips, not really wanting it in this heat. Temar wrapped himself tightly as he sat on a high-winged settle and some of the colour faded from his face.
“We all stay here tonight,” she said, businesslike with no hint of flirtation. “If Queal was behind this, he won’t take kindly to being robbed in turn. Will Jacot be able to tell him you were D’Olbriot’s men?”
I nodded. “We said his mate had given him up, so no one would go looking for who else might have passed on the word.”
“My thanks for that.” Charoleia dimpled. Perhaps I’d been wrong about the flirtation.
“You think Queal would try to get the artefacts back again?” I tried not to sound too sceptical.
“Do you want to risk it?” Charoleia turned melting blue eyes on me. “Wouldn’t you be staking out every road to D’Olbriot’s residence if you were Queal? You won’t get close enough to call out the guard before ten or twenty men rush you, believe me.”
“Can he rouse that many men so fast?” Temar frowned.
“He can,” Charoleia assured him. She looked back at me. “Queal wouldn’t only want a sackful of gold before he’d agree to organise robbing D’Olbriot. It would have to be someone important asking, important enough to make a marker with their name on it worth the risk.”
“Can you find out who that might be without putting yourself at risk?” I felt concern twisting my gut. “Could he possibly suspect you were the one who gave him up? Is that why we came here, not to the other house?”
“I’m simply being careful.” There was a suspicion of laughter in Charoleia’s voice. “Queal won’t trace anything back to me. I’ll go home later tonight and then you two can leave here in the morning. No one hereabouts even knows Queal’s name, let alone how to get word to him.”
I hoped Charoleia’s confidence was justified but a yawn interrupted me as I tried to find a way of asking if she was sure without insulting her.
“Would there be anything to eat?” Temar asked hesitantly. “And to drink?”
Charoleia smiled at him. “Naturally.”
As the door closed behind her, I yawned again. “I think we’ve managed a full day, haven’t we? And just what were you thinking of back there? How much Artif
ice can you work now?”
“You have seen the sum total of my learning.” Temar looked somewhat embarrassed. “Not much, I grant you but sufficient for bluff. I did no more than you last night.”
“You certainly picked that up quickly,” I complimented him. “But that shade or whatever it was, that was no mere trick.” I managed to keep my distaste out of my voice.
“You are the one we have to thank for that particular incantation.” Temar laughed. “Once Guinalle heard you had seen an Elietimm priest raise the image of its owner from an artefact for the Aldabreshin, she worried at the notion like a dog with a bone until she had perfected the incantations. She can still do it ten times better than any other adept, but Demoiselle Avila cannot do it at all. I have no idea why it came so easily to me.”
“Make sure you lock that bag somewhere secure and well away from the bedrooms for preference. We all need an undisturbed night’s sleep.” Something must have shown on my face.
“I am sorry if raising that image reminded you of your enslavement.” Temar shifted a cushion behind his back to avoid meeting my eyes. “Is that why you dislike Artifice so?”
“What made you suspect Jacot had been dreaming about the people still under the enchantment?” I countered.
“Thinking of the girl from the shrine,” Temar answered as if it should have been obvious. “And of when Guinalle was devising that incantation to raise the images. I remembered Halice saying it looked like something out of old tales of necromancy, raising shades of the dead.”
“Halice is more Livak’s friend than mine. How’s she faring in Kellarin?” I asked, offhand, studying the purple line of the new scar on my arm.
“You keep turning the subject,” Temar said with blunt exasperation. “Why does Artifice disturb you so?”
His irritation sparked my own anger. “The first time I had aetheric magic used on me, Artifice, call it what you like, I was a prisoner of the Elietimm.” He’d asked and perhaps I owed him a fuller answer. “That bastard who’s been sending them over here, to rob and kill, he went ripping into my mind, looking for any information he wanted. I betrayed my oath, my Sieur, myself, and there wasn’t a cursed thing I could do about it. That’s what aetheric magic means to me. It happened to Livak as well, and I wasn’t lying when I told that thief she’d rather have been raped.” I gave him a hard look. “Have you ever met a woman who’s been raped?”
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