Thief's Blade

by C. Greenwood

  Inside the city walls, we were swept along by the crowd. Soon we seemed to be entering a market area, which accounted for the press of bodies and the noise of sellers hawking their wares. I suggested this would be a good place to spend the last of my coins on something to eat.

  “Save your money, Rideon,” Ada suggested. “I’ve got a better idea. You two stay here.”

  And she was disappearing into the crowd before I could stop her. I wasn’t pleased to be splitting up so soon after entering a strange city where none of us knew our way around. What if we couldn’t find each other again? But she was already gone, so there was nothing for it but to follow her command and wait where we were.

  It wasn’t a spot I would have chosen. We were directly in front of a butcher’s shop. Slabs of red meat hung in the open windows, and flies buzzed everywhere. Foul smells floated out of the shop and filled the street.

  Nonetheless, Ferran and I sat down out front, our backs to a wall, and watched the streams of people rushing by. Ferran soon made friends with a scrawny-looking, black-and-white dog hovering around the doorway. But I had nothing to do but watch the faces of the crowd.

  It was as I stared into the milling mass of humanity that I became aware of an uncomfortable sensation, a streak of heat radiating over my back. Strange as it seemed, the warmth seemed to be coming from the bow I wore slung across my back. And it was growing hotter by the moment. My thoughts jumped to the warning of the peddler woman who had given me the weapon. What awful magic was this?

  I stood up, thinking to remove the bow and cast it away from me before it singed through my tunic. But standing suddenly brought me to a level to see out over the heads of passersby. When I did, my distracted eye passed over a familiar figure with a scarred chin and a three-cornered hat pulled low over his forehead.

  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest, and I instantly forgot about the hot bow. All my blood seemed to rush to my head. How could our enemies have tracked us this far? I had thought we were free of them when we crossed the border.

  As I followed the movements of the scarred man, I tried to calm myself. He hadn’t seen us yet. If he had, he would be coming this way. We still had time to act.

  “Ferran,” I said urgently over the noise of the crowd. “Follow me quickly.”

  My brother looked at me questioningly but did as I asked. We both darted around the side of the butcher shop. There was a battered wooden fence out back and behind it a pile of stinking hides and bones. I helped Ferran scale the fence and dropped down after him. Together we peeked over the fence to look back the way we had come.

  No one followed us.

  The uncomfortable heat from my bow was fading away as quickly as it had first flared up.

  “What’s happening?” Ferran asked. “Why are we hiding?”

  “Some bad people have caught up with us,” I explained. “But we can’t run far, or we’ll never find Ada again. She’s expecting to meet us in front of the shop.”

  The idea of abandoning Ada and fleeing on our own occurred to me, but I quickly discarded it, ashamed of the selfish thought. From here, we had a clear view of the street, and if I kept an eye out, I should see Ada whenever she returned this way. Equally important, the scarred man wouldn’t see me. I only hoped the red-bearded man wasn’t somewhere nearby too or we would have two of them to worry about.

  While Ferran amused himself, poking at a nearby pile of stinking animal hides with a stick, I removed a dirty blanket from my traveling pack and wrapped it around my bow before securing the weapon across my back again. Even though the bow had now cooled and looked perfectly ordinary, I wasn’t taking any chances of it trying to burn me again.

  After that, I kept close watch for our enemies. The all-too-familiar clenched feeling had returned to my stomach. I had been wrong to think we were safe in this new province. It seemed we would never be safe again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was probably only an hour before Ada returned, but it felt like longer. I saw her pushing her way through the crowd toward the butcher shop, her eyes scanning the throng for us. The man with the scarred chin had long ago disappeared, so Ferran and I leaned over the fence and caught her attention.

  When she reached us, I explained hastily that our enemies were back. Then the three of us left the butcher’s yard to cut down a shadowed lane behind. Here it was a relief to escape the press of people even if the street noises still echoed down the lane after us.

  When we were safe from prying eyes, Ada removed from beneath her coat a loaf of bread. It was still warm from the oven. After a day without food, the smell of it was mouth-watering. By now I knew our silver-haired companion well enough not to ask how she had come by such a find. Once I would have disapproved of the theft, but now I was too hungry to care. Besides, Ferran needed to keep up his strength.

  We devoured the entire loaf at once, Ferran sharing little pieces with the stray dog that had reappeared to follow us from the butcher shop. As we finished the last of the bread, I realized it was now early evening. Soon it would be dusk, and we had yet to find anywhere to spend the night. Ada informed me that she had asked around on her outing and learned of a place where we could stay for a day or two, before pushing on toward Dimmingwood. I wondered what sort of place she had in mind. Another abandoned lodging house? We certainly couldn’t afford to pay for beds and a roof over our heads.

  Ada was about to lead the way to this mysterious shelter of hers, when I looked around suddenly and realized something was wrong.

  “Wait. Where’s Ferran?” I asked.

  He had been beside me only a moment ago, playing with the dog. Now both he and the animal had disappeared.

  Ada must have seen the panic on my face. “He probably just wandered off after the stray,” she assured me. “Call him.”

  We hurried down the lane, calling out “Ardeon,” although I privately doubted whether he would remember to answer to the name that wasn’t really his. We peered behind garbage piles and through gaps between buildings, checking anywhere that looked like a likely hiding place for a small boy. We didn’t find him.

  The more time that passed with Ferran out of my sight, the more fear gnawed at the back of my mind. Maybe my brother had roamed off innocently enough on his own. But he could easily be picked up on the streets by the man with the scarred chin or his bearded companion. Perhaps they had him even now.

  We came out of the secluded lane and scanned the busier surrounding streets, but it was no good. Ferran had truly vanished.

  “We’ll never find him like this,” I told Ada. “He could have gone any direction. We have to split up.”

  She nodded. “You take that street, and I’ll take this one,” she said, pointing up and down the two intersecting streets before us. “We’ll meet here again at dusk. Even if you don’t find him, come back to the dial and we’ll decide what to do next.”

  The dial was a large sundial standing in the middle of the intersection.

  The plan agreed upon, we parted ways, Ada quickly fading away into the crowd that pressed back toward the city gate and the market area. I took the opposite course, traveling slightly uphill. Along the way, I stopped to look down shadowed side alleys and question passersby.

  It wasn’t until I paused in front of a forge that I had a bit of luck. When I spoke to the blacksmith, he remembered seeing a boy matching Ferran’s description chasing a skinny dog up the road. He indicated the street and the direction I was already traveling.

  With this information, I pushed on, quickening my pace. I had become so worried about my little brother I no longer had any fear of being spotted myself by our enemies. My greatest concern was that Ferran would be discovered and taken alone, with no one to protect him.

  The street I followed continued sloping gently uphill, but the scenery changed the farther I went. There were no longer shops but fine tall houses with clean, neat little gardens out front. The way grew less crowded. The people passing by looked better fed and dressed than
those I had left behind. Sculpted hedges lined the street.

  I came to a high stone building surrounded by blossoming trees amid large open grounds. The place seemed to be some sort of temple. There was a little walled area around the side closest to the street. As I passed this, I heard muffled voices conversing. I couldn’t see over the stone wall, but the voices were enough to stop me in my tracks. I recognized one of them.

  It was Ferran. Someone had my brother in there, trapped behind the wall. I glanced around to be sure there was nobody to see me. Then I climbed up the face of the rock wall to peer down the other side. My view was obscured by the wispy fronds of drooping trees and a tall row of yellow flowers on stalks. Quietly I slipped over the top of the wall and dropped onto the moist mossy earth behind the trees. From there, I could spy invisibly on the other people in the garden.

  There were only two of them, Ferran and a stranger. I had expected to see the pretend rescuers who had snatched us from the tower. Instead, I found my brother with a priest. Robed in the simple gray costume of a cleric, he sat on a bench watching Ferran throw leaves into a trickling water fountain full of golden fish. The scrawny black-and-white dog from the butcher’s shop wandered between them. Not only did Ferran not appear to be in any danger, he was cheerfully chatting with the stranger.

  “I used to live in a castle with lots of servants and a pony,” he was saying. “My father was very important, and everyone did what he said.”

  I burst out of my leafy hiding place before he could give away more.

  “There you are, Ardeon,” I said. “I’ve been looking all over the city for you. You can’t go running off like that. Ada and I thought something awful had happened to you.”

  I glared at the gray-robed stranger, who could so easily have been the “something awful.”

  My brother looked ashamed. “Sorry, Rideon. I was chasing Freckles. It turns out he isn’t a stray at all. This is where he lives.”

  He pointed to the speckled dog. The friendly animal looked from him to me, wagging its tail uncertainly.

  “It’s my fault for delaying the boy,” spoke up the stranger. “He told me he was lost from his brother, and we were just discussing how to find you.”

  When he stood to face me, he was taller than I had realized. His height might have made him intimidating if not for his affable manner. Looking at him up close, I reconsidered my initial assumption that he was a priest. Despite the gray robe, he looked too young to be an Honored One. His broad face, with its long jaw and straight nose, was youthful. I doubted he was much older than me. Besides, he wore his dark hair long and loose, which I had never seen a real priest do. When he moved, I distinctly heard a soft, clinking sound and caught the glint of metal between the gaps in his robe. Chain mail. Was I looking at a man of peace or a young soldier?

  Uncertainty made me cautious, even as the stranger extended his hand to introduce himself.

  “I am Hadrian,” he said. “A humble visitor to the Temple of Light and soon-to-be Blade of Justice. Or so I hope, although I have yet to complete my training.”

  So he was to be a priest of the blade. I had heard of this order of roving warrior priests, whose self-proclaimed mission was to establish justice across the provinces. None of the tales made me eager to meet one of them. In fact, their famed respect for truth gave me the feeling this Hadrian was the last sort of person Ferran and I should be around right now.

  But his hand was still extended, so I had to accept it briefly and say something.

  “You’ve already met my brother Ardeon,” I said. “And my name is—”

  The young priest interrupted before I could introduce myself. “That isn’t really your brother’s name.”

  Uneasiness rippled over me. “Of course it is.”

  He just looked at me strangely. I was instantly uncomfortable beneath his scrutinizing gaze. Those sharp eyes seemed to know much more than I had spoken.

  “It’s all right,” he assured me, as if sensing my discomfort. “You don’t have to tell me who either of you truly are. I’m not in the habit of prying into business that’s not my own.”

  I said carefully, “I don’t know what my brother has told you about us, but he has a very big imagination. I wouldn’t take anything he says too seriously.”

  “It isn’t anything he said,” Hadrian answered. “I always know when people are lying. I have a gift for sensing the emotions of others and guessing at the causes behind the feelings.”

  I was skeptical. “You’re claiming to read minds?”

  “Not at all. Only feelings,” he said.

  “So you’re some sort of mage?” I asked, thinking of Ada and her powers.

  He winced as if I had insulted him. “I would never go by that name. Magery, or trained magic, is a dark skill. It involves capturing power and forcing it to do one’s will, often through the use of charms and spells. I prefer the term ‘magicker,’ one who is born with the gift but only coaxes it, not manipulating. Not everyone agrees with my definition, and some possessors of the ability blur the line between magery and magickery. But I like to think most of us respect magic in its freest, most natural form, without all the potions and enchanted objects.”

  I didn’t think Ferran, wandering around the garden again, had been listening to our exchange. But he interrupted now with, “We have an enchanted object—a bow. The peddler woman who gave it to us thought it was cursed. Does that make us dark mages?”

  Hadrian laughed. “Don’t worry, little friend. There are many magical items in the world, and simply holding one doesn’t make you a mage.”

  He glanced at me and grew more serious. “Just the same, if you have an enchanted object, I would be curious to look at it. Perhaps I can tell you something about it.”

  I was immediately on guard, feeling strangely possessive of the bow with its newly manifested magic. I wished Ferran hadn’t mentioned it. I knew it was safely concealed by the blanket I had wrapped around it earlier. Just the same, it felt heavy across my back all of a sudden, and I shifted self-consciously. I didn’t want this stranger examining my bow.

  “We don’t have time,” I said abruptly. “A friend is waiting for us, and she’ll be worried.”

  It was true. The evening shadows were stretching long across the garden. Ada would soon be waiting at the dial where we had agreed to meet.

  “In that case,” said Hadrian, “I bid you both farewell. Perhaps we will meet again sometime.”

  “Yes, maybe,” I said in a rush. “Ardeon, let’s go.”

  My brother hesitated until he remembered Ardeon meant him. Then he said a hasty good-bye to the black-and-white dog, which Hadrian promised to look after well. I thought we would leave the same way I had entered, over the garden wall. But the young priest showed us a gate half-hidden under creeping ivy, and we exited through that.

  Then we were out in the street, hurrying down the gently sloping hill the way I had come earlier. It was dusk by the time we reached the intersection and found Ada waiting beside the dial.

  We gave a quick explanation of where we had been, and Ada expressed relief that we hadn’t been captured by our enemies. At the reminder, I was impatient to be out of the open street, where we were so exposed. Now that Ferran’s brief adventure was over, it was time to think again of more pressing dangers.

  Ada must have noticed my uneasiness.

  “I’ll take us to the hiding place I spoke of before,” she said.

  Her familiarity with Selbius was evident, as she led us unerringly down crooked little side streets to a dilapidated part of the city. We passed a rough sign proclaiming it to be the common district. We were now entering the beggar’s quarter, Ada said. She surprised me here by approaching and lifting aside a filthy-looking sewer grate. We looked down on a set of steps spiraling into darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Welcome to the under-levels,” Ada said. “A sanctuary for beggars, criminals, and others either desperate to avoid the upper world or just lookin
g for free shelter.”

  I was incredulous. “You learned of this place simply by ‘asking around’?”

  She shrugged. “Anything may be learned if you ask in the right places.”

  I felt queasy, looking down into the tunnel. The darkness and thick walls reminded me all too strongly of the Eyeless Tower. It was hard to voluntarily enter a place that felt so much like a prison. I assumed Ferran would feel the same, but he surprised me by being the first to pass through the grate and start down the stairs.

  If he wasn’t afraid to enter, I could hardly refuse to.

  Ada and I ducked through the grate and followed him. It was a gloomy, dank world we entered. The shadows that immediately closed in on us were pierced only by the occasional glimmer-stones cemented into the walls. The levels were a maze of stone and clay tunnels and caverns spreading like far-reaching roots beneath the cleaner, brighter streets of the city above. Once, they may have been intended as part of a sprawling drainage system, but it appeared they had been abandoned incomplete.

  As we descended into the stillness, the air grew foul and a deeper chill set in. There was no movement of fresh air here to carry away the stink of so many bodies living underground. Neither was there the comfort of natural daylight, only the eerie, greenish glow of the glimmer-stones, casting a permanent and unnatural dusk over the scene.

  At the bottom of the steps, we came to a large cavern with offshooting tunnels that branched in every direction. In this open space, inhabitants had constructed rough shelters of blankets, pieces of lumber, broken doors, or other bits of rubbish. I supposed this was to give them a degree of privacy. There was no real need for additional roofs or walls, not when this area was already sheltered by thick stone above and below. Viewing the hovels, I thought the overall effect was of a bunch of people living amid a great garbage heap.

  Even coming as I did from the tower, I had never seen squalor like this before. There must have been hundreds of people crowded down here. The floor was strewn with sleeping figures, huddled over scattered straw or rolled in filthy blankets. There was a constant hum of noise, the sounds of too many people packed into an enclosed area. Conversation buzzed, infants wailed, and barefoot children darted about, chasing one another between hovels. There were also the noises and smells of illness. Many of the level dwellers appeared to be diseased or lame and went untended in their suffering.