Free Stories 2011

by Patrick Lundrigan, Larry Correia, Travis S. Taylor

  The Talisman's Trinket

  by P.C. Hodgell

  I

  The Moon in Splendor was full that night.

  Apprentice thieves laughed, and drank, and diced as always. Roughly every hour the plates mounted on the walls rattled as next door; for reasons best known to themselves, an obscure lay brotherhood let fall a rock, from a considerable height, on a bound chicken. Three plates had fallen so far.

  All, in a word, was normal.

  However, a feverish unease gave an edge to the prentices’ sport and to the shouts with which they toasted each shattering platter. After all, it was only two days since the Sirdan Theocandi had beaten his opponent Men-dalis in the Thieves’ Guild Election. By now the defeated thief lord should either have fled or fallen prey to an assassin’s wiles. Instead, he had shut himself up in his fortress-like headquarters and there awaited gods only knew what developments.

  A burly journeyman shoved his way onto the bench, thrusting drinkers aside, joggling Patches’ hand. Beer splashed on the crazy quilt of her sleeve – black velvet, forest green linen, purple satin, carefully pieced together by her mother out of a dozen different rag bags.

  “Still waiting, ha?” he said with a booming laugh, jostling her again with an unwelcome elbow to her ribs. He was very drunk. “I said old Penari and your precious Talisman couldn’t pull it off. You owe me three coppers, Townie.”

  Patches moved her mug out of his reach. “Not yet, Denish, and watch where you put your damned hands. Is that blood on your shirt?”

  He started back, showing the whites of his eyes, and jerked shut the lapels of his coat. “Don’t you know wine stains when you see them? Then again, when have you ever been able to afford anything but small beer?”

  His knife-fighter’s d’hen jacket was royal blue, marking him as one of Men-dalis’s followers. Many more were at the Moon that night than one would have expected, given their master’s defeat. That was another strange thing, along with Men-dalis’s continued existence: By now his followers should have melted back into the body of the guild, hoping that their former alliance would be overlooked. That should hold especially true for Denish, who was one of Men-dalis’s inner circle with a reputation for doing his master’s dirty work. Why was he so on edge? What were they all waiting for?

  Patches herself anxiously awaited news that Jame and her master Penari had successfully stolen the fabled second Eye of the idol Abarraden. Penari had snatched the first orb half a century ago, making him even more respected in the guild than the Sirdan his brother, who had chosen politics over craft. Now, however, Penari was old, and blind. It was the Talisman’s skill on which Patches had wagered money that she didn’t possess.

  Her thoughts slid back to earlier that evening, when she had conveyed Penari’s message to his prentice that he wanted to celebrate her promotion to journeyman. After nights of nursing the dying dancer Taniscent, Jame had looked exhausted, but shadowed eyes couldn’t hide the fine, attenuated bones of her face or the supernatural grace of her movements. Perhaps both came of being a Kencyr, one of the few in Tai-tastigon, perhaps in all of Rathillien as far as Patches knew, including that odd New Pantheon god Dalis-sar who was rumored to be not only Kencyr but Men-dalis’s father and whom Dally proudly claimed as his stepfather. Temple concubines made for some odd family trees.

  More than looks and lineage, though, Patches admired the Talisman for her achievements. Like herself, Jame had started out as an outsider but had won grudging respect for her skill, matched by amusement at her refusal either to lie or to steal anything truly valuable.

  An honorable thief. Who had ever heard of such a thing?

  That also had to do with being Kencyr, although Patches didn’t really understand why.

  She had warned Jame not to go out that evening, given the unsettled state of the city.

  “One wrong move now and bang! Guild war. That sort of thing, no one wins."

  "Sounds like a good time to go hide under a haystack,” Jame had replied with that wry, twisted smile of hers that seemed so at odds with the clean-cut lines of her face, as if she were at perpetual war with her own destiny. “What about Dally? How is he managing?"

  “Wouldn’t know. No one's seen him since the Election. I expect he's holed up in the fortress with his brother.”

  Patches could have said more, but the rest hadn’t seemed important at the time. Then as now, she was more concerned that, despite her warnings, the Talisman had indeed gone out to meet her master and there at the Crossed Stars one of the Sirdan’s henchmen had challenged Penari to repeat his great feat of so many years ago.

  Denish slapped the table, making cups jumps. Gods, but he was wild tonight, as if desperate for distraction. “More wine, and bring some for our Talisman’s pet trinket, here. D’you know how this little Townie got into the Guild in the first place?”

  “We all know,” said Raffing, sitting opposite. “Pipe down, Den.”

  Denish ignored him. “Remember her brother, Scramp? He challenged the Talisman to steal something important for once and she did: the Peacock Gloves. Oh, they were nothing compared to the other treasures in the Tower of Demons, but still. Then what, monkey-face, heh?”

  Patches tried not to squirm, either at the history lesson or at the reference to her own unfortunate features. “My brother accused her of lying. They fought. He lost.”

  “And his master disowned him. And he hanged himself.”

  “And the Talisman gave Patches the gloves to buy her way into the Guild,” Raffing finished impatiently. “So what?”

  “So how does it feel to owe everything to your brother’s murderer?”

  Patches glowered into her drink rather than meet his challenging leer. Murderer be damned. As far as she was concerned, Scramp had played the fool from beginning to end.

  A young prentice burst into the tavern, wildly excited. “They did it, they did it!” he crowed. “The Eye is taken! And guess what? All this fuss and it turned out to be nothing but glass after all!”

  Patches relaxed, relieved. She had wondered how Jame was going to get around her self-imposed restriction only to steal things of little or no value.

  “Seems you owe Patches three coppers after all,” said Raffing with a grin.

  “What?” Denish hardly appeared to be listening, or not at least to anything in the tavern. “Don’t be daft. You heard the boy: the Eye was worthless.”

  “But not the skill that it took to steal it.”

  “Never mind,” said Patches as Denish lurched to his feet.

  Other thieves had also risen and were craning to listen to an approaching uproar in the street. Denish bulled his way out the door of the Moon.

  “What d’you mean, ‘never mind’?” Raffing hissed under cover of the growing commotion. “I know how empty your pockets are.”

  “Do you?”

  She drew out two coppers, a clipped silver coin, and something that flashed gold. Raffish gaped. “You picked his purse! But how? Everyone knows that he carries his valuables in a sealed inner pocket.”

  What no one know, not even Jame, was that Patches had the knack of reaching through things to take what she wanted. Mere fabric, even reinforced with metal mesh, was no obstacle. It was only a knack, though, not something of which she was particularly proud, compared to genuine skill. Mostly what she stole automatically became the property of her master, but surely he wouldn’t begrudge her such small pickings as these.

  She examined the gold item. It was a button with a monogram inscribed on it. Being illiterate, Patches didn’t know what the latter meant, but it did look familiar. She also noted dark specks on it like splashes of dried wine ... or blood.

  “The Square!” someone outside shouted. “The Mercy Seat! Gods, come and see!” The tavern emptied out. Her curiosity piqued at last, Patches rose to follow.

  II

  The crowd swept her up and hurtled her toward the Judgment Square at Tai-tastigon’s center. Nearly there, she met a figure in a cream vel
vet d’hen walking blindly back against the flood. It was Darinby, one of Jame’s few friends among the Guild’s upper ranks. The mob thrust Patches into his arms.

  “What’s happening?” she gasped, clinging to him.

  He looked down at her without focusing

  “Go back,” he said. “I told Jame as much but she wouldn’t listen. Don’t follow her.”

  Then the crowd pulled them apart.

  Go back? Not if the Talisman had gone before her. Patches pressed on.

  Here was the great square, surging with people. Every thief in the city seemed to be there, in Men-dalis’s royal blue or the Sirdan’s austere black. The Mercy Seat loomed at its center, occupied.

  Steal a peach, steal a plum, see to what your carcase comes ...

  Patches wriggled through the mob, for once glad of her stunted, wiry stature. By common accord, all had left an open space around the seat, and in front of it knelt the Talisman, bent over, retching.

  Oh, that terrible figure lolling on the stone chair, that busy buzz of flies. Dally appeared to be clothed in a garment of black and white diamonds -- where his skin was, where it was not, the margins blurred with a seething coat of flies. Only his face remained unmarked, as if to make the rest more unbearable. Spread over the chair’s back was his royal blue coat. Gold monogrammed buttons glittered down its front, all except where one was missing at the throat.

  “This is Bane’s doing!” howled a voice in the crowd. Patches recognizes Denish’s cracked bellow, taken up by many more. “The Sirdan’s journeyman has done this!”

  Those in black drew back, confused, appalled. Those in blue surged forward.

  “This is war!”

  Patches wretched her eyes from that terrible figure, that handsome, easy going boy of whom (admit it) she had been so jealous.

  “Storm the Guild Palace! Make Bane and his master pay!”

  “But that’s not right,” she thought. “I have to tell Jame.”

  The space around the chair flooded with people. Jame had disappeared. No, there she was, pushing her way through Theocandi’s stunned followers, Men-dalis’s men roaring on her heels. If she was bound for the Palace, she would never make it before the mob. On the edge of the crowd, however, she burst free, flung herself at a wall, and began to climb. A figure rose above the ramparts to strike her down, then instead grabbed her arm to help her up. Patches remembered that Jame had friends among the roof-top dwelling Cloudies.

  She would have followed, but the crowd swept her on, half the time off of her feet altogether.

  They were in Fleshshambles Street now among the butchers’ closed shops. Ahead, cresting the River Tone, rose the prow of Ship Island where the Thieves’ Guild Palace resided.

  Someone grabbed Patches’ bare wrist and twisted her around. Denish shook her. His eyes were blood shot and his breath stank like a slaughter house.

  “What did you do with it, brat? Oh, I felt you rubbing up against me like a bitch in heat, and now it’s gone. Where is that button?”

  She tried to pull free but he was too strong. Her shoulder creaked, about to dislocate. Over his head she saw one of the statues that lined the street’s rooftops – a giant stone bull. Cloudies were busy chipping at its moorings. Jame must have asked them for a diversion to slow the mob. The bull stiffly tipped the six foot span of its horns toward the street below.

  “Denish, look out ...”

  Too late. Here it came with a deadly rush, blotting out the moon. People in its shadow looked up and screamed, but they were too tightly packed to retreat. It shattered into the pavement, flinging lethal stone missiles. Patches fell, throwing an arm over her face, sure she was about to be smashed to red ruin.

  Some time later she woke sick and dizzy, on top of a bed of sharp debris. All around her people groaned or screamed or lay all too still. Denish’s hand still gripped her wrist, but it was no longer attached to his body. That lay smashed under the bulk of the stone bull while his blood leaked out between the cobbles.

  Down the street, she saw the prow of Ship Island backlit with flames. The palace was burning,

  Thal’s balls, how long had she been unconscious? Long enough for the street to fill with black jacketed figures instead of blue, but they too were howling:

  “The Sirdan is dead! The Talisman has killed him! You, girl, where has she gone?”

  Hands grabbed her jacket and jerked her to her feet. Oh, her head! Could she possibly have phased through the flying debris as she had earlier through Denish’s pocket? Flesh to flesh as in Denish’s grip she had been helpless, but otherwise ...

  Ah, save that thought for later.

  Jame, to have assassinated the Sirdan, though? She might, to avenge Dally, but surely not without knowing all the facts. It was her fault that Jame didn’t.

  “Let me go!”

  She twisted in the grip of her captors and suddenly was free despite their startled shouts. Where would Jame have gone? Quick, lead them in what she hoped was the opposite direction, back into the maze of streets. Let them follow if they could.

  III

  They chased her westward though the labyrinthine city, up lane and down alley, past shuttered shop windows and under narrow, leaning houses. She knew Tai-tastigon better after Jame’s tutelage than most of its inhabitants did, but not as well as the Talisman herself, which is why Patches suddenly found herself in a dead end before a locked door. Hunting cries echoed behind her. She could tell that this time, in their frustration, they were out for blood. When she pounded on the door, however, no one answered.

  What would the Talisman have done? Climbed the wall? Picked the lock? Turned and fought? But she was only the Talisman’s Trinket, not the Talisman herself.

  All right. Now or never to test what had happened when the stone bull had failed to crush her. Patches screwed her eyes shut and pushed at the door. Her hands first meet resistance, then one of them slipped through. Wood clamped over her sleeve like a vise. She fumbled desperately inside, feeling the lock, twisting it. The door swung open, taking her with it. The house’s occupants huddled against the far wall, staring at her wide eyed.

  “Help,” she said, but they didn’t move.

  Bracing herself, she pulled at her trapped hand. It slid backward up into the bunched sleeve, then into the room with the rip of cloth, leaving half of the coat trapped in the door. Mother was going to be furious, or at least as much so as she ever got.

  Patches slammed and locked the door, leaving a neat, fabric fringed hole in the middle of it.

  “Sorry,” she gasped at inmates. “Just passing through.”

  Fists pounded on the outer panels and fingers groped through the hole. The family were piling furniture against the door as Patches staggered out the front of the house.

  She was back on the edge of the now empty Square. No, not quite empty: someone different sat on the Mercy Seat. What was this, some cruel game of musical chairs?

  Although taller and older than she, Dally had seemed small there, like an abandoned, broken doll. He who occupied the stone chair now lounged like a tattered king. They hadn’t stripped off his black d’hen, but it had been cut to fluttering ribbons. The skin beneath glistened with the blood that still flowed sluggishly from too many wounds to count. From there it trickled down to pool on the flagstones. While the flies still buzzed over it in a swirling cloud, however, none landed to touch.

  A white face framed in black hair turned toward her and smiled, horribly. For a moment she thought that it was Jame. Although the lines of the cheekbones and jaw were familiar, they were also heavier. Oh gods. Bane.

  He laughed, a terrible, wheezing sound. “Are you amused, little thief? Was it your friends who did this to me?”

  Patches gulped. “Not mine. Not the Talisman’s. How many?”

  “Two dozen. Three. None stuck less than once, some many times. Of all the children with whom I have played, that I should die for one who never felt my touch ...”

  “You didn’t flay Dally?”r />
  He snorted. Blood trickled out of his nostrils. “Of course not. Jame would have killed me. What she saw in that pretty poppet, though ... innocence, perhaps. Dally never hurt anyone except once, when a little thiefling tried to assassinate his precious brother.”

  Patches remembered Dally’s face and voice the last time he had visited Jame after the election, when she had spied on them.

  “I never killed anyone before,” he had said, looking sick. “I didn’t like it.”

  At the time, she had thought him weak and whining.

  Bane’s silvery eyes slid sideways toward her and his mouth twisted. “Yes, innocence. Such a heady lure. Are you innocent too, little hobgoblin? Yes, I can smell it on you despite your blood, like Dally, like Jame, although her state is more complex. Innocent but not ignorant, oh yes.” He laughed again, weakly, wheezing from punctured lungs. “Not so I, ignorant but not innocent, the worst of both worlds.”

  Despite herself, Patches drew nearer. After the attentions of Men-dalis’s followers, the man was clearly a sieve all but drained of blood. “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “A Kencyr dies hard. One without his soul dies hardest of all.”

  She hadn’t known that he was Kencyr although perhaps she should have guessed. He and Jame really were much alike in their dark glamour. As for his soul, she could see that for herself now that she looked, for even in that moon-bright square he cast no shadow.

  “Honor,” he groaned. “Honor is all. Seven years ago I gave my soul in trust to the Kencyr priest Ishtier to preserve it. He has it still and while he does, I can not die. Tell him, little thief. Tell him to let it go and me with it.”

  Patches thought of her six younger siblings – none of them to Bane’s taste, perhaps, but he had flayed many more alive before the Talisman’s purity had caught his interest. He was a monster who deserved worse than this, and yet ... and yet ...