Honor among thieves abt-3

by David Chandler

  “I could simply take the blade. It doesn’t properly belong to you,” Juring said. His eyes were very calm. Malden was impressed. Normally men who tried to conceal their rage gave themselves away through their eyes. But Juring was in total control.

  Malden had never cared for situations where someone else held all the cards. Luckily, he still had one up his sleeve. “The blade is safe. If you kill me, you’ll never find it.”

  He tried not to think about the fact that a man could be tortured for days without killing him.

  “I wonder where you hid it,” Juring mused. “You have yet to go home to your little room since you returned to Ness, so it can’t be under the loose floorboards there. Is it in the Ashes? In some deep part of Cutbill’s lair? Or perhaps you put it in Coruth’s care, on the Isle of Horses.”

  Malden frowned. The Burgrave’s spies must have been watching him all day if Juring knew his itinerary that well. Or perhaps the Burgrave had employed some wizard with a shewstone to track his movements. Perhaps he had seen everything…

  But no. If that were the case, he would already know where Acidtongue was. The sword wasn’t guarded or even hidden particularly well-Malden had not thought anyone would want to steal it from him. It wasn’t easy to get to, but any reasonably agile person could find it, if they knew where to look.

  “I’ll be riding out tomorrow morning, at dawn, at the head of my Army of Free Men,” Juring said. “You’ll present the blade to me then, before I reach the gates.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Juring rapped on the roof of the carriage with his mace. The driver brought his horses to a stop in Market Square, just outside the entrance to the fortified part of Castle Hill. Juring’s home. Men with torches came running from the gate-footmen in livery, but also one man in the silk robes of a major functionary. Malden recognized the robes, though not the man who wore them.

  “Malden, please allow me to introduce Pritchard Hood,” Juring said as he stepped down from the carriage. “Bailiff of the Free City of Ness.”

  The bailiff bowed low-to his lord, not to Malden.

  The thief studied Hood carefully. The position of bailiff was one of paramount importance in Malden’s world. The bailiff was tasked with maintaining civic order, which made him the head of the city watch, and gave him free rein to arrest anyone he saw as a threat to Ness. In many ways the office of bailiff was the antithesis of Cutbill’s position. The position Malden now held.

  “Pritchard will remain here when I march out,” Juring told Malden. “He will be my eye and my hand in my absence. He will assume all my normal powers. Pritchard, this is Malden, the master of the guild of thieves.”

  “Well met,” Malden said with a warm smile.

  The bailiff sneered and looked away.

  “Pritchard: as you know, the previous holder of your office, Anselm Vry, had an understanding with Malden’s guild. He looked the other way when certain crimes were committed, and made a point of not hanging thieves whose guild dues were paid up. He did this with my tacit approval, for the thieves provided certain services I could not otherwise acquire.”

  “Our aim is satisfaction,” Malden said wearily. He had an idea he knew where this was going.

  “Malden here is going to perform one of those services tomorrow. When he does so, Pritchard, I want to reaffirm my-silent-approval of this most unconventional arrangement. Of course, if he fails to do what I ask, that approval will not be forthcoming. In fact, should he fail me, I want you to arrest thieves of the guild on a distinctly punitive basis. I want them hanging from every gallows in the city. I want you to be tireless in your extermination of such vermin. And I will want you to make it clear, as plainly as you see fit, that this purging will be Malden’s fault, and his alone.”

  “As you wish, milord,” Hood said, and bowed again.

  “Good night, Malden,” Juring said, waving through the open door of the carriage. “My coachman will take you wherever you wish to go. Perhaps you should go home and get some rest. Don’t sleep too late, though. I’ll see you at dawn.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  T he sky glowed a deep blue-black that made Malden’s head hurt as he began to climb the spire of the Ladychapel, the tallest church in Ness. Lack of sleep was catching up with him. His hands ached as he pulled himself up onto a gargoyle in the shape of a toothy fish. His feet kept slipping on even the widest ledges.

  Down below him, in Market Square, the Army of Free Men was forming up. The Burgrave’s rotting battle standards snapped in the wind as men with drums signaled their companies to come together. The soldiers formed semiorderly squares, their weapons leaning on their shoulders. Serjeants in the colors of the Burgrave walked up and down between the formations, flailing at their men with batons to get them into better lines.

  Up on Castle Hill, behind the wall, a white horse was being dressed in steel barding chased with silver. A whole train of sumpter horses laden with chests and barrels were brought around the side of the palace, while two oxen drew a wagon full of clanking iron-armor and weapons, presumably, an abundant panoply for the general who would lead all the men in the square.

  As dawn drew near, the men kept coming. The thousand Malden had seen the day before marching in the square were nothing to the numbers that arrived now. They filled Market Square to bursting, and overflowed into the streets beyond. They formed up in the cloister of the university and on the forecourt of the Ladychapel. They did their best to stand in orderly rows on the Cornmarket Bridge, even as mounted men raced back and forth between Castle Hill and the Spires, carrying messages or delivering loads of weaponry.

  Malden found a perch on the steeple and sat down, head in hands, to watch. He still didn’t know what he was going to do. As the first red ray of dawn painted the wall of the Burgrave’s palace, he scratched his nose, then got to his feet and slipped inside the belfry.

  Acidtongue was there, right where he’d left it. Hidden in plain sight of half the city. The swallows that nested up there had avoided it-perhaps birds were more sensitive to dangerous magic than men. There weren’t any droppings or curled feathers on the scabbard. Anyone who could climb a ladder could have come up here and just taken it.

  Why hadn’t the Burgrave just had his thousands of men scour the city for the blade? That would have saved Malden the trouble of deciding. Now he was out of time. He must jump one way or another, and either give the Burgrave what he wanted or defy the man and risk everything.

  A sword he didn’t need. A sword he barely knew how to use. Give it away, he told himself, and buy a little goodwill.

  Croy wouldn’t like that, of course. To Croy, the Ancient Blades weren’t just weapons. Croy considered Ghostcutter to be the manifest form of his own soul. And when Croy had given Acidtongue to him, the knight assumed that he would come to feel the same way. Croy had always intended to take him under his wing, to teach him the proper use of the sword and make a knight of him.

  Malden could imagine few fates he’d relish less. But still… to Croy, the Ancient Blades were not commodities to be traded like coins. They meant something. And Malden didn’t trust the Burgrave, not an inch. This free nation Tarness wanted to build-it was just the same old feudal system with different management. No question about that. The Burgrave could use all the pretty words he liked, but it came down to one thing: he was going to usurp the throne of Skrae. In the process he would start a civil war that would mean unending bloodshed and pain for the people he claimed to represent. And if he handed over the sword, he would be helping to make that happen.

  But still…

  He had a responsibility to the thieves of the guild, too.

  If he didn’t do this, Cutbill’s men-Malden’s men-would be hanged, one by one. That was the threat, and he understood it just fine. Hood, the new bailiff, would wipe the guild off the map. Long before he finished the last one off, though, Malden himself would already be dead. When the other thieves realized what he’d brought down on their heads, they would
turn on him. His life wouldn’t be worth a farthing.

  The sun showed half its disc over Eastwall. Orange fire traced the ribbon of the Skrait as it wound through the Free City of Ness. The old stones of the Spires, of the Golden Slope, and of Castle Hill, were washed with yellow light.

  Down in Market Square, the Burgrave rode out. Under the biggest and brightest of his faded banners, he rode in iron armor painted black with enamel, with silver filigree coating every inch of him, head-to-toe, in a convoluted floral pattern. Old-fashioned stuff, but that was the point. Ommen Tarness, the current Burgrave, wanted people to associate him with Juring Tarness, the ancient general and founder of the city. Bright red plumes bobbed on his shoulders and helmet, and he carried a lance pointed at the sky.

  The assembled men cheered to see him, and together their voices roared like the ocean pounding on the shore.

  Tarness had no retinue but the packhorses and wagons that followed after him. He had no knights to protect him, nor any priests to bless every prancing step of his horse. That would be intentional, of course. Supposedly he was just like all the men who followed him-free and equal. Maybe dressed a little better, but really, just one of the boys. It was hard to believe anyone would fall for such nonsense, but then in times of hardship-in times of war-every man clutched at straws.

  Tarness stopped his horse and made a very brief speech Malden could not hear. Then he paused awhile and just sat there, looking left and right.

  Malden knew what he was looking for.

  Time to give it to him.

  The decision was made. He had to accept it could never really have gone another way. The Burgrave was just too powerful, and too dangerous. Thwarting him would be suicide.

  His own feelings didn’t matter one bit. He had to do this, and he had to do it now. He would give Acidtongue to Tarness and let historians decide if he’d done the right thing.

  He paused to let out one long, pained sigh. Then he leaned over and grabbed the hilt of Acidtongue where it lay in the belfry. Tried to pick it up.

  The sword wouldn’t budge.

  Malden stared down at the weapon, confused. The thing was heavy, surely, but he’d lifted it many times before. He tried to pick it up again, with no better luck. Tried to pry it off the floor of the belfry. Heaved and grunted and sweated as he tried to lift it.

  Acidtongue might as well have been fused to the belfry floor-or carved out of the stones themselves. It would not, no matter how hard Malden tried, shift even a fraction of an inch from where it lay.

  Down in Market Square the Burgrave made a gesture. Pritchard Hood came running over to take his lord’s final orders.

  “No,” Malden said. “No! You fucking bastard, let go!”

  But the sword wouldn’t move.

  In the square, Hood nodded in understanding, and then headed back into the walls of Castle Hill. The Burgrave dipped his lance, and there was more cheering, and then almost every able-bodied man in Ness followed him as he trotted downhill toward Hunter’s Gate, and glory.

  Up in the belfry, Malden kept heaving and shoving and prying at the sword. Eventually, the last soldier cleared Hunter’s Gate, and its massive doors were shut behind the army, and bolted, and locked up tight.

  And only then-only when it was too late-did Acidtongue move. It came free from the floor in Malden’s hand as if it had never been stuck.

  “Sorcery!” Malden cursed, fuming with rage.

  But even then he knew he was wrong. It wasn’t sorcery that had bound the sword where it lay. It had been witchcraft.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The air in Coruth’s house felt like it had been replaced with thick jelly. Cythera gasped in great breaths of the thick stuff and stared at the candles around her. The flames burned low and greenish, as if they burned not wax but strange vapors. She was too weak to ask why, too weak to do anything but hold her head up as she slumped in a straight-backed chair.

  Directly before her she saw her mother’s face, framed by its wild iron-gray hair. Coruth’s eyes met hers exactly, stare for stare. Then the old witch nodded, just once.

  “Good,” she said. “You did well.”

  Cythera struggled to speak. Every muscle in her body felt heavy and weak. What she’d done… what they’d done together, made no sense to her. She had felt the power moving through the room, like a wind so subtle it could not even stir her hair, and yet so vast and world-engulfing she thought it might pitch all of Ness into the sea.

  “Is… it… always…” she gasped. She couldn’t finish the thought.

  She didn’t need to. “It will get easier,” Coruth told her. “You’ll learn to work with the natural currents and eddies of the ether, rather than fighting them. That is what a witch does. She works with what is already there. Do you understand?”

  Cythera thought she might be starting to get it. And that terrified her.

  “Was… it…?”

  “Necessary?” Coruth asked. “You want to know why we thwarted your lover. It does seem strange, doesn’t it? I like the boy. I did not choose this to inconvenience him, girl. I am not that petty. Close your eyes.”

  Cythera felt Coruth’s thumbs touch her closed eyelids, felt her mother’s fingers digging through her hair to her scalp. Coruth’s nails were ragged and they scratched her skin. “I’m going to give you a vision now, child. Just a little glimpse.”

  What she saw then made Cythera scream for her mother to stop. War-bloodshed-bodies piled before city walls-fire lancing across battlefields-a sword-always the sword- the sword, Acidtongue, the one she’d enchanted just as dawn came up. The sword she’d touched with her own power. She saw the sword in a number of different hands, and knew she was seeing possible futures. She saw Skrae fall. She saw the barbarians driven back, cut to pieces as they screamed for mercy, and Skrae saved. She saw a war that never ended. All the images were superimposed one atop the other, yet she could make each one out distinct and so vivid it had to be real.

  The hands that held the sword were all bloody, but Malden’s hand-she recognized it instantly-was only flecked with gore, where others were stained so red they could never be washed clean.

  “Nothing is necessary,” Coruth said. “But some things are more devoutly to be wished for than others. The sword must stay with Malden. No matter what.”

  “Even if-he doesn’t-want it?”

  Coruth clucked her tongue. “This is the problem with being able to see the future. You see how little what people want matters. And you watch them make terrible choices, and do things you know they will regret. Malden will have no joy of that sword. But if he does not keep it, everyone will suffer.”

  Cythera understood-though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Being a witch was about making hard choices. Or maybe it was about having no choices at all.

  “Even if Malden keeps the sword, though…” she said, close to sobbing now. She was certain she would collapse soon, and fall into black, deep sleep. She lacked the energy for anything else, but she could not rest until she knew. “Even if he-keeps it. I saw-I saw multiple futures where he still held it. Which one will come to pass?”

  “That’s not for me to say. It’s up to you.”

  “Me?”

  “There’s a reason I demanded you start your training now. Malden will have a role to play in the shape of destiny to come. Yours will be even larger-and darker.”

  The look on Coruth’s face was almost sympathetic now. Cythera knew why, because she’d seen herself in those glimpses. She’d seen her own fate.

  In some of those futures Malden put down the sword and took up a golden ring which he slipped on her finger. Those futures were already fading, receding as they became less and less probable.

  In some-still bright and lucid, still distinctly possible-he turned away from her and they never saw each other again.

  And in others just as real to her, he used Acidtongue to strike her down, to slay her, while tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Chapter Forty-Eight />
  Morget whirled his axe through the air and brought it down hard against his makeshift pell-a block of fire-hardened wood driven into the ground. The axe bit deep into the post and he felt the bones of his arm flex and twist with the blow. The pell was already scarred in a hundred places, and chunks had been taken out of its sides, revealing pale wood underneath.

  He lifted the axe for another stroke.

  He had, after all, nothing better to do.

  At his back two thousand warriors cooked food or sang old drinking songs or sharpened weapons or gambled or fought among themselves. Most of them were drunk. It was the oldest barbarian remedy for boredom. But Morget never touched ale or mead. He drank milk when he could get it, or water when he must. Unlike most people, he never got sick from drinking well water. Whatever fate drove him would not let the flux or an ague bring him low. His abstemiousness made him a rarity among the eastern clans, and added to his fearsome reputation.

  But it did mean he had to sit through every boring moment of a warrior’s life (of which there were far too many) stone cold sober-and therefore prey to his own dark thoughts.

  Two hundred yards away the walls of Redweir loomed over him, blocking out the morning sun. Whatever architect or engineer had designed this place had done a better job than they did at Helstrow. The bricks of the wall were made of red sandstone, impervious to any weapon the barbarians had brought with them. The city’s gates were sealed tight and barred with stout iron that would resist his battering rams. The defenders inside refused to be drawn out to fight for their city, despite constant taunting and the threat of a protracted siege. Though Morget had been camped for three days outside the wall, well clear of arrow range, occasionally the soldiers inside would still come out on the battlements and fire an arrow at them. The barbarians made sport of running out into the no-man’s-land to collect these missiles and then running back before the archers could nock another arrow. Only one man had been killed, when the defenders had been smart enough to send up two archers at a time.