Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune

by Lynn Abbey

  The door below swung open, and SaVell stepped inside with the stranger, her face a mask of displeasure. Beside him, her ivory features looked pallid, her gray hair colorless. Only then, Dysan noticed the swarthiness of the man’s skin, his thick brows, and well-shaped features. Everything Dysan noted, he transformed into words in his mind He would not allow himself to forget this man.

  “I’ve brought your translation,” the Raivay said.

  The man barely nodded, though, when he spoke, he sounded gracious. “I’ve brought your payment.”

  “Keep it,” SaVell said, her voice a warning growl. “I want only two things from you.” She held the papers in a firm grip.

  The young man’s eyes went from the paper to her face.

  “A name. Your name. And a promise that you will not use our work for evil.”

  The man’s lips set into a grim line. Dysan wondered if he struggled for the first request or the second. In Sanctuary, a man’s past and intentions belonged to no one but himself. “I would not use what you have given me in good faith to harm the decent folk of Sanctuary.”

  It was a promise full of holes. SaVell had some small magics, but Dysan doubted she could compel the man to keep his word. Dysan held his breath.

  SaVell waited, still holding the paper.

  “And I am called Lone.”

  The name brought the last scattered pieces into place. Dysan had seen this man before, in some of the same dark corners he also preferred. He had learned that the youngster, also known as Catwalker, was a thief of great competence and growing renown. Dysan also heard things he should not, things whispered in places honest folk would never dare to go, things that simply knowing could get a man killed. Lone was, some said, the reincarnation of the infamous Shadowspawn. Sources Dysan trusted more claimed he simply apprenticed to what remained of that notorious burglar, a crippled old man long past his second-storey days.

  In either case, if men who knew the inner workings of every rat-hole and palace of Sanctuary masterminded the revival of the Dyareelans, all seemed already lost. What have I done? Abruptly Dysan desperately regretted talking his oldest mother into handing over the means to the city’s destruction. He had fallen prey to his own pride, believing he could single-handedly stop the resurgence of a maliciously immoral cult that had warped and slaughtered men, women, and children in droves. It had taken the combined might of so many magicians and warriors to unseat them. He wondered what madness had made him think he could deal with this problem alone.

  Yet, now committed, Dysan did not hesitate. He hurried down the ladder as the papers changed hands and rushed to follow the young thief into the city. He opened the door a fraction of an instant after Lone exited. As swiftly as Dysan had moved, as prepared as he believed himself, he found the Promise of Heaven empty.

  Muttering epithets his mothers would never believe he knew, Dysan headed back inside to grab some breakfast before putting his plan in motion.

  Dysan made his way through the Shambles, down Wriggle Way, to the gate of the shop yard of Bezul. This late in the day, any goose the Changer might have forgotten to pen should already have made its presence known. Nevertheless, Dysan tripped the latch with caution, listening for a faint rustle, the light snap of a twig, the coarse honk of an irritable goose. Barely reassured by the silence, he shoved the gate open and stepped into the yard. When nothing feathered charged him, he breathed a sigh of relief and made his way to the shop with quiet and practiced stealth.

  Dysan found Bezul alone in the shop that also served as his home, humming while he shifted objects from one dusty shelf to another. As always, the room contained a wide assortment of necessities, strange objects, and sundry bric-a-brac that changed every time Dysan entered. Not wishing to fill his mind with a clutter of details he would have to reduce to words, he did not bother to look around any further than it took to assure that nothing could imminently harm him. Instead, he fixed his attention directly upon the proprietor.

  Bezul ceased humming at the sight of Dysan and turned him a welcoming grin from beneath a mop of sandy hair nearly as wild as Dysan’s own. He seemed particularly happy, apparently a good day for trading. Dysan was just pleased no other patrons competed for the Changer’s attention; and that his two massive temporaries, Jopze and Ammen were not with him. Dysan liked Bezul’s wife, Chersey, but making small talk with more than one person at once taxed his limited abilities. He avoided those situations as often as possible, though he knew that, in itself, seemed rude.

  As usual, Bezul spoke first. “Good day, Dysan. What can I do for you?”

  Dysan breathed a faint sigh of relief, glad the Changer had obviated the need for chitchat. “I … was just wondering.” He found the words harder to speak than he expected and wished he had rehearsed them.

  Bezul dipped his head, encouraging.

  Worried someone else might come into the shop, Dysan forced himself to continue. “That man I saw in here, a while ago. Pel, you called him.”

  “Pel Garwood. The healer. Yes.”

  “Yes,” Dysan repeated, shifting from foot to foot. He let his gaze wander over a shelf of neatly stacked crockery. “You do sell him his … flasks and vials and such.” He dodged Bezul’s gaze. “Don’t you, Bez?” He cursed himself for further shortening the man’s name. That only encouraged the Changer to do the same to his, and he hated when anyone called him Dys. It reminded him that his name started with the same syllable as the Bloody Mother, Dyareela. He added lamely and too belatedly, “ … ul, cleared his throat, and put it all together.”Bezul.”

  Bezul regarded his single patron more intently, squinting, the grin growing slightly. Dysan trusted no one fully, but he relied on Bezul more than anyone else in Sanctuary. He had no way of knowing whether or not the Changer had ever cheated him, but he always managed to buy the things he needed here. When he laid a handful of coins on Bezul’s counter in payment, the Changer rarely claimed all of it. “It would seem so, yes. When I have it, I sell or trade him what he needs.”

  Dysan could not imagine Bezul ever not having anything. No matter what he wanted, he found it here amid the clutter of junk and finery, even the time he sought snakes, rats, and mice. “If I were buying a cure from him today, what would he put it in, do you think?”

  For an instant, the Changer’s dark eyes showed a spark of curiosity, but he did not ask Dysan’s purpose. He never did. Instead, he turned, walked to the opposite side of the room, and perused his inventory. He tapped a finger over generous lips. “A large or small amount of … cure?”

  The recipe had demanded a single dose of “a treatment for buttocks boils distilled from tamarask bark.” It was the only difficult item in the brew, so poorly described that it would take an expert with potions to create it. The other objects, such as salt and red dust, a vat of soured wine, a specified number of rat hairs, the blood of an orphan and a virgin, could come from almost anywhere. “A small amount.”

  Bezul rummaged through crockery. “So long as there isn’t anything that reacts with clay, he would use …” His head disappeared among the wares, his toned, round-cheeked bottom swaying as he shifted through the mess for the right piece. He pulled it out and turned simultaneously. “ … this.” He held up a well-cast bottle. “And he’d wrap it in this.” He dangled a dingy triangular pouch by the strings.

  Without bothering to examine them, Dysan moved to the main counter, mostly free of disorder. He tossed his own small purse onto the top as Bezul came over with his finds. As usual, Dysan dumped the entire contents for Bezul’s perusal. Padpols spilled out, more than five by Dysan’s crude form of counting. Bezul claimed three, shoved the rest toward Dysan, and handed him the bottle, now swaddled into the pouch. Dysan swept the remaining coins to his purse, tying both at his left hip.

  “Dysan.”

  The young man looked up cautiously, anticipating some sort of warning. Bezul would not question, but he might remind Dysan that the new healer performed an important service for Sanctuary. He would not
want to do anything that caused Pel to change his mind about coming to ply his trade in this mudhole. But Bezul said only, “Be well.”

  Dysan nodded, heading toward the exit. The healer was not his concern. He worried for the future of Sanctuary itself, for the return of the murders and maimings. He could not risk his new mothers; they came from an imperial world where the politics had more to do with money than survival. They opened their hearts and home too easily, and they trusted men whose own fathers would not dare share a confidence. Pel was a stranger to Dysan, one who bore a striking and terrifying resemblance to a cultist Dysan had once known. That likeness kept him a cautious distance from Sanctuary’s new healer and the Avenue of Temples, though a neighboring street to his own. The many shattered buildings in the area gave him plenty of places to hide and watch the patients who came and went from Pel’s growing building. Not all of them seemed innocent or wholesome.

  Dysan headed there now, trotting down streets that grew more familiar daily, choosing a route that took him through as many darkened alleys as main thoroughfares. He changed his manner from habit as he entered each one: winding congenially through the regular masses or slouching through the puddled shadows of the alleys. Feigning focus allowed him to appear deaf to the conversations, though he heard, and inadvertently memorized, every one. It allowed him to dodge the small talk that usually defied him and the cutpurses seeking larger and easier prey. He stopped only once, to partially fill his new-bought bottle from a washerwoman’s tub.

  At length, Dysan reached the home and shop of Sanctuary’s healer, every bit as new as his own, yet not quite finished. The Sisters of Sabellia had prepaid for the stonemasons and builders with a large amount of money that came from their temple in Ranke. Pel, on the other hand, had had little coinage, forced to barter his trade for the work and materials to rebuild a crumbling temple bit by bit. Like Dysan, Pel had suffered Sanctuary’s dark and icy winter without adequate protection, but Dysan believed he had a lot more experience. Now, they both had four solid walls and a roof that shed the rain, though Pel’s was not yet completed.

  Well-hidden in a dense patch of greenery that had sprang up amid the wreckage of Ils’s temple, Dysan watched people come and go from Pel’s apothecary. Some approached boldly, others limped or came steadied by friends or family, and one woman sneaked to the door beneath the cover of a dark hood, mincing every step as if stalking the building. Pel took them all inside in turn, nodding his head and shaking his long, white-veined hair. Some left empty-handed, others with a hidden bulge at their waists or clutched tightly beneath their cloaks. A few openly carried bottles that looked much like the one Bezul had sold to Dysan. Fewer still threw guilty or nervous glances around the neighboring wreckage before slinking, red-faced, from the apothecary. No one visited after nightfall, but Dysan continued to watch until Pel extinguished the last candle, leaving his newly built home as dark and hulking as the ruins all around it. Only then, Dysan realized he had eaten nothing since breakfast.

  Swiftly, he headed home. His mothers rarely questioned his comings and goings anymore, but they would force food upon him. He did not intend to protest.

  Dysan resumed his vigil just before sunup the following day, pressed deeply into a tiny crevice of a mostly toppled wall that had once served the followers of Vashanka. His handlers had taught him how to twist, stretch, and bundle his undersized body into holes more fit for rats than men. He found the tight quarters secure and surprisingly comfortable. Though he had tried to sneak out without awakening his mothers, SaMavis had beaten him to the larder and forced a midday meal upon him. It now lay, still wrapped in a tattered rag, near the shambles of an altar. Smashed artifacts studded the mushy ground, long ago looted of anything valuable. Nervous excitement kept Dysan’s stomach in knots, and he regretted the few bites of breakfast he had managed to swallow.

  Wedged into his hiding place, Dysan watched the comings and goings of Pel Garwood’s patients through the morning, seeing patterns where none had previously existed. He noticed many of the same people who had left with nothing the day before now held bottles in their hands or concealed in folds or sashes, their purses flatter. The elderly widow Sharheya, who owned the northside lumberyard, arrived with her son-in-law, the surly sawyer Carzen. Pel opened his door and waved them inside; but, unlike the others, Carzen did not comply. The three exchanged words, not wholly civil by their expressions and gestures. Then, Pel shut his door and led the other man around his shop and home, indicating a large area of his roof completely devoid of planking. Only a thickly oiled sheet of canvas protected Pel and his valuables from the elements, and that would not last long in a place as stark and damp as Sanctuary. Already, the wind worried at the edges, tattering them into streamers. Only half the roof had secure boards in place, and not a single tile had yet been laid. Carzen nodded grudgingly.

  Again, Pel opened his door for the pair, and, again, Carzen refused the invitation. Pel entered alone, swiftly returning with a large bottle in a rough-sewn pouch. As famed for his discretion as his potions, clearly unaccustomed to handling transactions on his doorstep, Pel looked more nervous than his clients as he handed the pouch to Sharheya. No money exchanged hands, and the pair left, the woman clutching her potion like a gleeful toddler with a new doll. Those two had not visited the day before, and Dysan guessed they had a standing order that Pel delivered weekly or monthly to ease some chronic discomfort.

  Still Dysan waited, seeking some sign of Lone among the healer’s other patrons. He had assumed the young thief had gone straight to Pel after disappearing from Dysan’s view, transacting his business in the time Dysan had shopped with Bezul. He doubted a cure for buttocks boils would prove that exotic or difficult, though a man might not wish for others to know of such ills. He doubted shame would hold Lone back, though; payment bought Pel’s silence as well as his wares.

  A worrisome thought struck Dysan. In some cases, the healer might deliver his potion the day of its request. Perhaps Pel kept some on hand or the customer waited while he mixed the order. What if the whole transaction went down Yesterday? What if, at this very moment, the worshippers of the froggin’ Bloody Mother are already mixing their vile concoction?

  The thought spiraled a chill through Dysan, and he suddenly felt trapped. He eased from the crack in the construction, seized by an urge to run. Screams and sobs filled his ears, broken images of steaming entrails tossed onto stone-cold altars, the overpowering stench of blood and sex and death. He had never left the confines of the ironi. cally named city. Despite all he had heard, he felt caged within Sanctuary’s borders, as if the world beyond was only a figment of men’s imaginations. He pictured himself sprinting in frenzied circles while Dyareela consumed the entire city in an enormous blood-flooded, shite-stinking repast.

  No! Dysan screwed his eyes and mind shut. It’s still early. Lone may still come. He wished the Raivay had not trusted him so much, wished he had not sounded so confident when he said he could handle the repercussions of giving over the proper translation of the old Dyareelan scriptures. As much as he needed the women’s mothering to rescue him from the barbarity the Hand had battered into him nearly since infancy, they needed his experience and suspicious mind to save them from their own instinctive kindness, which often bordered on naiveté.

  Dysan melted back into the shadows of the ruin. Banishing the past from his thoughts, he concentrated on trying to predict Lone, a task that seemed nearly impossible. From what he understood, Shadowspawn had selected his thefts with care. A notorious cat burglar of astounding competence, he rarely if ever stooped to common thievery. To follow in the master’s footsteps, Lone would have to pattern that behavior. Serving the will of the cultists seemed beneath him.

  Yet, Dysan had become jaded enough to believe that money might drive any man to serve the will of evil. Perhaps Lone did not understand the slaughter that could result from assisting Dyareelans, or he did not care. Curiosity was a capital crime in Sanctuary, where silence and secrecy cost less t
han tangible goods. Men who asked too many questions did not live long here.

  As the sun sank slowly toward the horizon, Dysan continued to wait and watch. Color touched the sky, dimmed by Sanctuary’s infernal dampness. Dysan’s gut finally rumbled, and he slipped from his new hiding place to claim the wrapped parcel SaMavis had given him. It contained a veritable feast: crusty bread soaked in last night’s grease, dried fish twisted into a cheerful braid, and two shriveled apples. Dragging the food to his vantage point, Dysan spied a tall, wary-looking man dressed in a cloak too warm for the season slithering from the apothecary with a bottle-shaped pouch at his belt. With only a swift glance left and right, he headed into the deepening twilight.

  A moment later, another figure emerged from the fog, a creation of mist and shadow that appeared to arise from a shattered wall and hurried along the Avenue of Temples. Dysan recognized him at once, though his utter darkness muted into the gloom: black clothing and buskin boots, ebony hair, darkish skin. Lone. Dysan had missed whatever exchange had occurred between Pel and the thief, apparently in those sparse moments when he had dared to unwrap his meal. Dropping the fish, Dysan padded soundlessly into the twilight, attention fixed unwaveringly on Lone. His quarry had disappeared on him once and never again. Dysan could not afford to lose Lone now that he carried the most difficult of the Dyareelan’s ingredients. Once mixed, that potion had the potential to destroy Sanctuary again, to initiate another rampage of murder.

  The gray dank of evening deepened as Dysan followed Lone through the city. Both men moved as soundlessly as the shifting shadows, Lone with natural ease and Dysan from desperation. Twice, Lone paused, melting into his surroundings as if sensing his tail and seeking him among the regular stalkers of Sanctuary’s roads and alleyways. Both times, Dysan found a ledge or crevice that fully hid him from the other man’s view. Neither attempt lasted long. Apparently intent on a goal of his own, Lone clearly did not have time to ferret out his tracker in the filthy, wild tangle of streets.