Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel

by Bell, Hilari

  A thud as his feet hit the floor, and an extravagant gasp. If they’d really been strangling him, he couldn’t have been so verbose. But my hand still tightened on my sword hilt.

  “You’ve got the money?” The thug sounded thoughtful. Reluctant to give up his vengeance, but if his victims weren’t here…

  “Money, yes. For you and your…ah, for the city tax. Yes, of course.”

  A wooden clack as Fisk opened the hidden compartment behind the counter, revealing its location in his eager haste.

  “Here, here’s ten silver roundels for the payment, and an extra six! One for each of you, to apologize for that little misunderstanding. Because we’re all very, very sorry.”

  “There’s some silver left in there,” another voice said. “Almost another ten, I think.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ve already started saving for the next payment,” Fisk babbled. “Wouldn’t want to fall short again. I won’t fall short. I really, really won’t.”

  “Take another five,” the first voice said. “Call it Master Roseman’s interest.”

  “Interest?” I swear, Fisk’s voice shot up a full octave. “But that’s half a— No, wait!”

  A crash, as one of the remaining glass candle lamps dropped to the floor.

  “No, that’s fine, interest is fine! I’m happy to pay it. Delighted. Delirious. Just don’t break anything else. Please?”

  “Week after next, Master Roseman wants twelve silver roundels from this shop. And every week after that, till he’s satisfied.”

  “Twelve? But that’s… That will be fine. I’ll get it. Somehow. But I’ll have the money. Promise.”

  The door closed.

  Silence, for a long moment, then a derisive snort from Fisk. A cupboard door opened and a brush swept glass into a dust pan, then ’twas emptied into a bin.

  I came down the stairs quietly, Hannibas thumping at my heels. Fisk greeted us with the lazy grin of a well-fed cougar.

  “Told you. Nobody bothers to intimidate someone who’s already cowering. And the ‘tax’ only went up twenty percent. Master Roseman must be feeling generous.”

  I glimpsed bruises beginning to darken under his loose collar, but I wouldn’t sully his victory by saying so.

  “That was brilliant. What next?”

  “Next, we need to get this place running again,” Fisk said. “You mentioned something about workers?”

  * * *

  On the way to acquire our new apprentices, I took a detour to pick up the rest of our gear and make a deal with the landlady. The shop had beds for the family and a number of workers on the second floor, but there was no stabling. Chant and Tipple seemed content in the landlady’s care, even putting up with the gaggle of girls who’d taken to braiding flowers and ribbons into their manes, so we’d decided to leave the horses there.

  As for True, it seemed to me that there were other children who might like a dog.

  * * *

  I put True on collar and leash, to take him to the abandoned warehouse where the orphans had rescued me—only yesterday, though so much had happened I felt as if a longer time had passed.

  To use the door on the street might attract unwanted attention, so I led my child-bait into the alley where I’d so nearly been trapped. It seemed rude, and possibly dangerous, to enter uninvited. I pulled the heavy bin a bit farther from the wall, and knocked on the loose board to announce myself.

  Then I stepped back into the open to wait. I could feel their eyes, behind the knotholes in those weathered boards, but several long minutes passed before One-eye came from behind the crate to confront me.

  “Did you figure out a way for us t’ get the Rose?”

  “Already? That will take weeks. Months, mayhap.”

  I had, of course, no intention of involving them—but I knew better than to say so.

  “Then what’re you doing here, wasting our time?”

  In the daylight he looked to be about ten, but his young voice held an adult’s terse challenge. His gaze strayed to the brindled hound who sat beside me. True wagged his tail and grinned invitingly.

  “I’m still thinking about how to bring down Master Roseman, but I do have another need you and your friends might fulfill. One that may fill a need of yours, as well. I don’t think you have much money?”

  The word “money” drew his gaze away from the dog, which told me I was right.

  “What do you need, and what’s the pay? We got a couple can steal, but we won’t put no one down. Not ‘less they deserves it.”

  It sounded as if they’d been offered such jobs before, which probably shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Fisk calls me naive, and mayhap he’s right.

  “Nothing like that,” I said. “My friend and I have acquired a chandlery, but we’ve no workers beyond one senior apprentice. He says we need at least six men.”

  Actually, Hannibas had said three. But these workers were half-size, so I thought I could persuade Fisk to take that many.

  One-eye was patting True by the time I finished listing my requirements. And if I’d had any doubt that the whole orphan clan was listening on the other side of that wall, it vanished as my new employees began trickling out.

  First came two burly lads, about thirteen, one with straight brown hair and the other with black curls.

  “What are your names?”

  As their employer I had both right and need to know, but they froze, turning to One-eye. The younger boy hesitated a moment, then shrugged.

  “They’s Bran and Talts. I’m Timasus.”

  Next came a boy, mayhap fourteen, who introduced himself as Jig and made a bee-line for the dog. After him was a girl, about eleven, with fine, flyaway hair. She said nothing when I asked her name, but she gave me a shy smile and offered True a hand to sniff before she started petting him.

  Timasus, who had somehow gotten the leash out of my hand without my noticing, told me Alessa didn’t talk much, but she had deft hands for fine work.

  I had known Fisk long enough to guess this meant she was good at picking locks.

  The last boy barely fit through the gap in the planks. He must have been at least sixteen, with a scraggly beard. His britches were too small and his shirt too large. But his open, eager smile was that of a much younger boy. When I asked his name, he said he was Jer. Timasus added, a bit defiantly, that he was strong, willing, and a hard worker.

  “Then he’ll be perfect,” I assured them. “In fact, I think all of you will do just fine.”

  We set off for the shop, which I hoped these waifs would soon be calling “home.” They were more interested in True than me, and Timasus had to settle a quarrel about who got to hold his leash. He also ordered Jer to carry my packs, and I began to see that while Hannibas might be the master craftsmen, Timasus was clearly the shop foreman.

  Noting that True had stopped to scratch, I made another stop at a herbalist’s shop and picked up a large batch of fleabane.

  I knew better than to try to keep True from sharing the children’s beds. And I probably wasn’t the first employer to insist that his workers start their job with a bath.

  * * *

  I didn’t really think the neighbors were reporting to Roseman’s thugs, but I took my workers in though the back of the shop anyway.

  Fisk had been going through the chandler’s accounts, but he looked up when we came in. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and his expression became very bland as child after child trooped through the door.

  Hannibas’ dubious expression was more open. “Bit young, ain’t they? For a whole shop, at least.”

  “You’ll have Fisk and me and Jer here—” I slapped his shoulder, and after a blink of surprise he beamed at me. “—for any task that needs a man’s strength. And how many such tasks are there, making candles?”

  “A standard slab of wax,” Fisk glanced at the ledger to confirm it, “weighs thirty pounds.”

  His voice was as neutral as his face, and I opened my mouth to reply. But Timasus stepped f
orward, glaring from him to Hannibas and back.

  “We can do anything a man can do, ‘tween us. ‘Cause we work together.”

  All the children nodded firmly, and I realized that this creed was how they’d survived on their own.

  “Well then,” said Fisk. “I’d better figure out how to feed you. Unless Michael is prepared to handle that?”

  I’m a fair camp cook, for one or two, and might manage a simple breakfast for nine—but anything more was beyond my skills, and Fisk knew it.

  “You wanted a labor force,” I told him. “I brought them. It’s your turn to figure something out. But baths before food.”

  Several young faces fell.

  Despite his initial resistance, Hannibas proved competent at heating water and setting up baths for one child after another.

  We offered Alessa the first, as she was a lady, and Jer went in last, when the tub was most full. I threw True in after him, and gave the dog a thorough scrub. He got his vengeance, shaking dirty water over me and half the shop floor, to the children’s glee. It must be admitted, the fleabane stank.

  We had just emptied the bath and mopped the floor when Fisk returned, with two boys from a local cook shop helping him carry bread, soup, and hot meat pies.

  “Why does Trouble smell like burning sewage?” The dog was nudging, Fisk who carried the pies.

  “Master Michael made him bathe, ‘long with the rest of us,” Jig said. “And he didn’t like it, either. But I thought his name was True.”

  “So does Michael,” Fisk said. “But Trouble and I know better. Call him, and you’ll see.”

  In point of fact, True will go to anyone who calls him by any name, including “that cursed mutt.” But the children had some fun discovering this, calling the dog using any name that took their fancy, while Fisk and I set out our dinner. I forgave the commotion when Alessa called True “Kitty,” and then doubled over laughing when he came. ’Twas the first time I’d heard her speak.

  I thought that Fisk had ordered too much food, until I saw the hungry children tucking in. As we ate, he told me he’d paid the cook shop to send us luncheon and dinner daily. Since I’d brought him six when Hannibas asked for three, I could hardly tease him about the extra expense. Not even when he added, “You know the difference between a bandit and an apprentice? At least with bandits, you don’t have to feed them too.”

  This startled snickers out of several children, but for a moment I still hoped these simpleminded jests hadn’t found their way to Tallowsport.

  Then Jig said, “What’s the difference between a bandit and an apprentice master?”

  “I don’t know,” Fisk completed the formula. “What?”

  “A bandit don’t call you a lazy lout when he beats you and takes your money.”

  Even the sensible Hannibas was grinning. “What’s the diff—”

  “Please,” I begged. “Not a whole tribe of you. Fisk is bad enough! No more bandit jokes. Not in my hearing.”

  They were new enough to our employ that they did as I asked. Though in the days to come, I would hear them whispering behind my back, followed by a storm of giggles as they “sneaked” their jokes past me.

  I feared that easy trust would be disrupted when they saw the broken circles that mark me unredeemed upon my wrists. It happened the day after they came to work for us. I’d rolled up my sleeves to keep them clear, as we poured hot wax from one kettle to another, and the laces on the leather guards kept flopping into the wax so I took them off. I was so relaxed in the children’s presence by then that I thought nothing of it, till I noticed the widening circle of silence. Jer, holding the other kettle, looked around in puzzlement. Timasus stared at my wrists wide-eyed. Hannibas was scowling…not at me, but at Fisk.

  “You didn’t tell the chandler that. You didn’t tell any of us…that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I began. “’Tis—”

  “I told the chandler about Michael,” Fisk interrupted. “And I told him the truth.”

  I wondered what Fisk had told him.

  “If the chandler knew that,” Hannibas said, “he wouldn’t have made the choice he did. He’d have… Oh.”

  “Exactly,” said Fisk. “Who do you trust more? Michael? Or Atherton Roseman?”

  Hannibas’ scowl vanished into a look of troubled bafflement.

  “You can trust me,” I told them all. “I had some…difficulty with the Liege’s law. But what I did was not dishonorable. I swear it.”

  Timasus snorted. “Ain’t like the law gives a flip about us. Don’t see why we’d care about it.”

  As far as the other orphans went, that seemed to settle the matter. But for some time after that, I would look up suddenly and catch Hannibas gazing at me with worry in his eyes.

  Those first days, as we cleaned up the shop and started making and selling candles, were interesting in many ways. Hannibas and Timasus took charge of the backroom as if they’d been born to it, while Fisk handled our finances and manned the front room, in his persona of the chandler’s timorous nephew.

  Fisk was wary of allowing me to become known in this neighborhood, lest someone report my presence to Roseman’s thugs, so I was relegated to distant errands, and helping Jer with tasks that required strength and little skill. The children learned to handle the rest with remarkable speed.

  Working together, they slowly began to trust us, and Fisk and I learned bits of their past. Though listening to them talk to Hannibas taught us more.

  “How’d you lose that eye?” he asked Timasus one day. “Did the Rose’s thugs do it, as a lesson t’ your parents or something?”

  “Nah.” Timasus, stirring chips of wax into a melting tub, didn’t look up. “’Least, not deliberate. My Pa, he was a baker, and he fell behind on his payments. Like your chandler here, only he really didn’t have the money. Second time, they was going t’ break his hands. For a baker, can’t knead…” He shook his head.

  “So what happened to you?” Hannibas persisted. I wouldn’t have dared, but after a moment Timasus went on.

  “I ran t’ try t’ stop ’em. Which was stupid, but I was only six. I bit one of ’em, and he threw me aside. My eye hit the corner of a table. It hurt horrible, and I was all wobbly and dazed. Mam wrapped a clean cloth over my face and told me to run ‘t next door, and I did. But I wouldn’t have, if I’d knowed what she was going t’ do.”

  “I heard about that, I think.” Hannibas voice was matter-of-fact, but his face had paled. “The Baker’s Wife. Killed three of the Rose’s thugs with a bread paddle, she did.”

  “Only two,” said Timasus. “According t’ what the neighbors said, anyway. But after…”

  “I’m sorry,” Hannibas said. “She was a brave woman.”

  The others had fallen silent, listening.

  “Brave don’t mean nothing with the Rose,” Timasus said coldly. “The Rose’s guard, the Rose’s judicar, the Rose’s noose. And all of us, hiding like rats in the walls, trying t’ nibble at his great house. Master Michael promised t’ help us hit him, in exchange for us saving him from them thugs, and that’ll do for now. But one of these days, when we’s old enough, when they’s enough of us, we’s going ‘t have a chat with Tony bloody Rose. Then we’ll see who’s nothing but a pack of lousy orfinks.”

  A murmur of agreement swept the room, and the cold hate in those young faces chilled my heart. I had made them no such promise, whatever they thought, but their lust for vengeance troubled me.

  Atherton Roseman must indeed be brought down, before he broke more children’s souls.

  The next day, Hannibas sent me out to a market nearer the countryside to buy herbs to scent a batch of sickroom candles. Since I wasn’t expected back soon, I took a detour to find the headquarters of the High Liege’s guard.

  I knew better than to go to the town guard. The children, customers, the suppliers we dealt with, all told us that the whole town government was in the Rose’s pocket.

  But I knew something of the world outside
this town, and I couldn’t believe the High Liege would appoint a corrupt man to such an important post.

  I told the clerk at the outer desk that I wished to see the ranking officer, to make a complaint.

  Even when your clothes are splotched with wax, a noble’s accent and a confident tone can get you a long way. It took only half an hour to work my way past his subordinates, into the presence of the Liege Guard’s commander.

  It didn’t look like the office of a corrupt man. Fisk has taught me to look for the small luxuries that betray a man living beyond his means. But the inkpot on the desk was plain pottery, and the blue and silver coat of a Liege guardsman, hanging on the rack behind, him was of unadorned wool. No bright gold buttons, no rings on his hands. The day was mild enough he’d chosen to work in his shirtsleeves, and that shirt was ordinary linen, without even a scrap of lace.

  He was young for such a post, in his late twenties I thought, despite some lines of care that marred his pleasant face.

  “I understand you have some complaint?” he asked briskly.

  “I’ve recently acquired a business, here in Tallowsport, and I’ve been told there’s a special tax, beyond the one paid to the city’s treasury.”

  “There is such a tax.” His expression was so guarded, I could read nothing from it.

  “Yes, but this one’s paid every two weeks, and all other taxes are quarterly.” I tried to sound guileless without being too stupid. “Men come to fetch these payments instead of billing you, and ’tis curst high! I couldn’t help but wonder if the High Liege has approved this.”

  “Pay the tax,” he said. “That’s all I can do for you, sir. Pay the tax, on time, without grumbling.”

  He put a hand to his throat as he spoke. Under his shirt I glimpsed a thick strap of leather encircling his neck, for all the world like True’s collar. He saw me looking at it, and his hand fell away.

  “Tallowsport is a rich city with a thriving market. If you’re competent at your trade, you’ll manage. Don’t complain to the Town Guard, either. And don’t come back. There’s nothing anyone can do.”