Valdemar 07 - Take a Thief

by Mercedes Lackey

  But with the haul he’d just made, he shouldn’t have to.

  Better be careful. Be just my luck now t’ get hit with some’un pullin’ a smash’n’grab. That was the crudest version of the liftin’ lay, a couple of boys careening at full speed down the street, one after the other. One would knock a mark over, while the other came in behind and scooped up whatever he dropped. If that happened to Skif, while the Watchman’s eye was still on him, the Watchman would be suspicious all over again if Skif didn’t pursue his attackers, or refused to swear out charges against them. And at the moment, he couldn’t afford the suspicions that might lead to being searched!

  So he clutched his bundle tightly and raised his eyes to look up and down the street for the little eddies of activity that would mark a couple of smashers on a run.

  And that was when he saw the red glow above the rooftops.

  Fire.

  He picked up his pace.

  A big fire.

  And from the look of it—somewhere near home. There would be a crowd, a mob—and a mob meant opportunity, even in a neighborhood as poor as his, for fire drew spectators from all over. He might not be an expert at the liftin’ lay, but he was good enough to add to his take in the kind of crowd drawn by a big fire.

  He moved into a trot. Get home, empty out his pockets, then go out in the mob—

  He joined a stream of running, shouting spectators and would-be helpers, all streaming toward the fire like so many moths attracted to the light. Now he could see the lick of flames above the rooftops. He was jostled on all sides and had to concentrate to keep hold of the bundle and keep his own head cool while everyone around him was caught up in the fever of the moment.

  And he couldn’t help notice that he was getting nearer and nearer to his own home. Excitement began to take on a tinge of alarm. Hellfires! It’s close! Wonder who—

  He turned the corner with the rest of the mob—and stopped dead.

  His building. His home. Now nothing but flames.

  8

  THIS was no place for a Herald. But then Herald Alberich was no ordinary Herald.

  He hunched over his drink and rubbed at eyes that watered from the smoke filling the room, his ears filled with the droning of drunks, his nose wrinkling at the stench of too many unwashed bodies, burned food, and spilled beer. He had been in this part of Haven to meet an informant in a disgusting little hole of a tavern called “The Broken Arms”—an obvious and unsubtle reference to what would happen to a patron who displeased the owner. The sign above the door, crudely and graphically painted, enforced that—human arms do not normally bend in four places.

  The informant had never showed his face, which didn’t really surprise Alberich. He’d never reckoned the odds to be better than even at best. The man might have gotten cold feet; or he might even be entirely cold at this point—cold and dead. If so, it was fifty-fifty whether Alberich would ever find out what had happened to him. Bodies didn’t always turn up. Even when the river was frozen over, there were plenty of ways in which a corpse could vanish without a trace. The people Alberich suspected of intrigue against the Queen were powerful, and had a very great deal to lose if they were unmasked. They had the ways and means to insure that more than one petty informant vanished without a trace if they cared to make it so.

  The Herald sipped his stale beer, and watched the rest of the customers from beneath lowered eyelids. In the back of his mind, he felt his Companion fretting at the situation, and soothed him wordlessly. He knew that no one was going to recognize him, no matter what Kantor thought. Alberich did not stand out in this crowd of ne’er-do-wells, pickpockets, and petty thieves.

  He probably wouldn’t had he not bothered to disguise himself; he never would wear the traditional uniform of Herald’s Whites even when presiding over the classes of Heraldic Trainees in his capacity as the Collegium Weaponsmaster, preferring instead a leather uniform of a slightly darker gray than the color used by the Trainees.

  Herald’s Whites—let those with fewer sins on their souls wear the Whites. He’d have worn black, if the Queen hadn’t expressly forbidden it.

  “Bad enough that you look like a storm cloud,” she’d told him. “I won’t have them calling you ‘Herald Death.’ You stand out quite enough as it is from the rest of the Heraldic Circle.” He didn’t point out to her that they might as well call him “Herald Death,” that his business was Death, the ways and means of dealing it out. He simply bowed and let her have her way. She was the Queen, after all.

  But at the moment, he was not on official duty, and he wore nothing like a uniform; his clothing was as drably no-colored, as tattered and patched as that of any man around him. His unfashionably short hair was concealed beneath an ancient knitted cap of indeterminate shape and origin. Only his sword and knives—themselves both disguised beneath plain, worn leather sheaths—would have told a different story about him.

  Or perhaps not; to a slum-dwelling bullyboy, his sword was his life, and many of them bore weapons of superior make. A blade that bent or snapped, or wouldn’t hold an edge, wasn’t the sort of tool to risk your life on. Alberich was supposed to be that sort of sell-sword, a man whose blade went to the man with the price of it, with no questions asked on either side.

  In the absence of his informant, Alberich was going to have to pretend he was here for the same reason as everyone else; to get drunk. He would probably have to use this tavern again, and he definitely needed to keep in character; he didn’t dare break this carefully constructed persona. It had taken too long to build.

  Most of the beer was going to hit the floor, though. Like many of the patrons here, he had his own mug, a leather-jack, tarred on the inside to make it waterproof and kept tied to his waist when not in use. Only, unlike theirs, his had a hole in the bottom; he seldom took an actual sip when the mug went to his lips. He relied on the slow but steady leak and the crack in the table he sat at to conceal where the rest of it got to. No one in this place was going to notice beer on the floor under the layer of rushes that hadn’t been changed for a year or more. Only when his mouth dried or he needed something to wash the stench of the place from his tongue did he actually drink. The beer, stale and flat, was still preferable to the taste left behind in breathing the miasma of this miserable tavern.

  Impatience made his head throb, and he forced himself to look bored instead of pained. He was wondering just how many more mugs of the noxious stuff he’d have to down before he pretended to stagger out, when the street outside erupted into what sounded like a riot.

  Shouts—screams! His heart rose into his throat, and his pulse hammered in his ears as every nerve in his body reacted to the alarm.

  He—and virtually everyone else in the tavern—jumped to their feet and ran for the door. He wasn’t slow to react, but there were still plenty of people who were between him and it. He ran right into a wall of jostling bodies.

  He told himself that this was a good diversion to get out and back to the Collegium, but he couldn’t help himself. The noise out there was of panic and fear, and he had to respond. For the rest, of course, any disturbance held a potential for profit. . . .

  Sweat stink mingled with a different kind of smoke—this was coming from the street outside. The noise now was like nothing he’d heard off a battlefield. He shoved his way through the crush at the door ruthlessly, elbowing one man in the ribs and brutally kicking another in the knee to get them out of the way. Both men swore and turned on him; both shrank out of the way when they saw who it was. He had a formidable reputation here; another reason why he was reluctant to sacrifice this persona. He could virtually come and go as he liked unmolested, and it had taken him no few knife fights to build that reputation. He had yet to draw his sword in here, which was a mercy, though his opponents only thought he was showing his contempt for them by meeting their swords with his knives. The poor fools had no idea that he was saving them from almost certain death at his hands if he pulled the longer blade. It wasn’t his skill he
was worried about, it was theirs; he’d seen drunken brawls end fatally when one idiot slipped and rammed himself onto another’s sword. It had happened while he watched far too often to want to see that happen with him holding the blade. And it wasn’t because he liked them that he spared their wretched lives, it was because if he killed a man, even by accident, the Watch would come, and there would be questions, and there would go his hard work in establishing Rokassan among the bullyboys.

  That was why it was Alberich here, and not another Herald. He was . . . practical.

  He delivered another elbow blow to a set of ribs, this time with enough force to it to make the man in his way whuff, curse, and bend over, and Alberich was out into the not-so-open street.

  It should have been dark and relatively empty. It wasn’t. It was filled wall-to-wall with a churning mass of spectators and a growing number of those who actually were doing something. A lurid red glow reflected off their filthy, upturned faces as the wretched denizens of this neighborhood organized themselves into lines of hands that passed buckets of water away toward Alberich’s right.

  The source of the glow was as hellish as any Sunpriest sacrificial fire Alberich had ever seen in Karse.

  An inferno that had once been a building raged madly against the black of the night sky. It was one of the nearby tenement blocks, and it was a solid sheet of flame from its foundation to its roof. It couldn’t have been more fully involved, and Alberich was struck motionless for a moment at the sight, for he couldn’t imagine how it had gotten that way so quickly—short of a Red-Robe Priest’s demon calling. For one horrible moment he wondered wildly if a Red-Robe had infiltrated the capital of Selenay’s Kingdom—

  But then an acrid whiff told him the real reason the building was so thoroughly engulfed.

  Tar. Someone had been painting the sides of the building with tar. The heavy black smoke roiling over the tips of the highest flames confirmed it. A sudden wind drove it down into the street, and screams turned to coughs and gasps.

  Now, that wasn’t uncommon in this part of the city. Landlords didn’t care to spend more than they had to on maintenance of these old buildings, and when they got word that an inspection was in the offing, they frequently created a new and draftless facade by tarring and papering the exterior with any of a number of cheap substitutes for real wooden siding. The work could be done in a day or less, and when finished, presented a less ramshackle appearance that generally fooled overworked inspectors into thinking that the building was in better shape than it actually was. With so many buildings to inspect and so little time, the inspector could easily convince himself that this one didn’t need to be looked at any closer, and move on. The work would hold for a while, but soon the paper would disintegrate, the tar soak into wood left unpainted for so long that it soaked up anything, and the place would revert to its former state. A little darker, perhaps, and for a while the tar would fill in the cracks that let in the winter winds, but nothing more.

  Still . . . it seemed odd to Alberich that the thing should be blazing with such fiendish enthusiasm. Slum landlords were as stingy with their tar and paper as they were with everything else, and to burn like this, someone must have laid the stuff on with a trowel—

  “Stop him! Stop that boy!”

  Alberich sensed, rather than saw, the swirl in the crowd that marked someone small and nimble bouncing off the legs of those around him. Then a wiry, hard body careened into his hip.

  He was running to the fire. Somehow, Alberich knew that—and his ForeSight showed him what would happen if the boy made it through the crowd.

  A small body writhing in the flames, screaming, dying—An echo of the sacrificial fires of Karse. His gorge rose.

  Automatically he reached out and snared the tunic collar of the boy before he could get any farther.

  The boy turned on him, a spinning, swirling fury. “Let me go!” he screamed. “Let me go!” He spat out a stream of invective that rivaled anything Alberich had ever heard, and flailed at Alberich’s arm with hard little fists. “I gotta get in there, ye bastid! I gotta!”

  Screaming and writhing in the flames. . . .

  Alberich didn’t bother arguing with the brat, who was red-faced and hysterical, and he didn’t have time to calm him. No doubt his family was in there—

  Gods. He pulled the boy off his feet, and the brat still fought.

  Well, if they were, they were all dead, or they were somewhere out in the street, sobbing over the loss of their few possessions. Nothing could survive that inferno, but there was no reasoning that point. Alberich couldn’t let the boy go—

  But there was work here; he might not be dressed in Whites, but he knew his duty, which was to help to save the buildings around the doomed one. He couldn’t do that if he was playing nursemaid. With a grimace of pity, Alberich pulled his dagger as the boy continued to struggle toward the blaze, and tapped him behind the ear with the pommel nut the first moment the target presented itself.

  The boy went limp. Alberich was still near enough to the door of the tavern to struggle back and drop him just inside, as far out of harm as possible in this neighborhood. Then he joined one of the many bucket brigades coalescing out of the mob. Until the Guard and the pumps and hoses arrived, they had to help convey water to soak down the buildings to either side of the fire to keep it from spreading. Already Kantor was raising the alarm for him, and help could not be more than a few moments away.

  But he felt a moment of pleasure at the way people around him were responding to the emergency. So they weren’t all villains, even though that was all he’d met since he began frequenting The Broken Arms. Even in this neighborhood, people could work together.

  With one accord, the water throwers wisely concentrated their efforts on the buildings that were merely in danger and let the blazing tenement burn itself out. Anything and everything that could hold water was being pressed into service, with men and strong women sending the heavy, laden vessels toward the fire and smaller women and children passing the empties back to be filled again. Alberich’s concentration narrowed to a few, vital tasks. Breathing. Taking the bucket. Passing it on with a minimum of spillage. Turning back for another.

  Before he lost track of anything but the pain in back, shoulders, and arms and the cold that soon penetrated his soaking wet hands, legs, and feet, Alberich saw buckets, pots, pans, and even a chamberpot making the circuit up and back, up and back, while people shouted incoherent directions, and the flames laughed at their efforts.

  Skif woke stiff and cold, with his head aching so much it hurt to open his eyes. He would just as soon have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but the pounding pain behind one ear and the cold prevented him from doing so—as did the sudden and electrifying realization that he wasn’t in his bed.

  He sat up abruptly, despite a stab of agony that made him yelp.

  The cold, gray light of the street coming in at an open door next to where he sat completely disoriented him. Where was he?

  This isn’t home—

  Then it all came back, in a rush. The triumph of the successful run.

  The fire.

  The man who’d grabbed him, keeping him from—from—

  With an inarticulate howl of grief, he scrambled to his feet and staggered out into the street.

  He coughed in the miasma of fog and stale smoke that met him like a wall. He fought through it, staggered a few paces—and stared, unbelieving, at the absolute ruin of his home.

  Gone. All gone. A few blackened timbers stuck up out of the wreckage, marking where the staircase had been. The rest—was an unidentifiable pile of charred wood and still-smoldering wreckage.

  The vultures were already hauling away whatever they could claw out, for in this place, even charcoal could serve to help eke out firewood and grant a few more hours of warmth. They had baskets, barrows—their clothing and faces black with soot.

  Somewhere under there was his home—Bazie—and the boys.

  Another howl to
re itself out of his throat, and he hurled himself at the burned-out building, scrambling over what was left of the wall to the corner where the secret stair should have opened to Bazie’s little den. It was underground—surely it was safe, surely they were safe—

  They have to be safe!

  But he couldn’t help thinking . . . how long it took them to get Bazie out on the rare occasions when he emerged from the room. What a struggle it was to get him to the latrine, much less up the stairs. And that was on a bright spring day, not amid choking smoke and flames—

  He began to dig, frantically, first with his bare hands, then with a piece of board until that broke, then with the blade of a shovel he found, still hot enough to blister. His throat closed, his gut clenched. He welcomed the pain in his hands—he should have been there! If he’d been there—if only—

  He dug, with his eyes streaming tears and his heart breaking, dug and dug and dug until finally he was too exhausted to dig anymore.

  He collapsed among the wreckage, and wept, leaning against a broken beam, until his sides ached and his eyes burned, and still he could not weep himself free of the pain.

  Gone. All gone . . . I should have been here. All gone . . . it’s my fault. All gone, all gone. . . .

  Around him, people continued to scavenge, oblivious to his grief, or ignoring it. His grief turned to anger, then, and he stood up and tried to scream at them for the plundering ghouls that they were—but his throat was raw and his brain wouldn’t work and all he could do was moan.

  In the end, it was Jarmin, unlikely Jarmin, clerkly proprietor of the shop who bought their plundered silks, who found him there, whimpering like a whipped dog. Jarmin, who stepped mincingly into the wreckage, looked him up and down and asked, without any expression at all, “Got swag?”

  Skif, shocked out of his grief for a moment by the sheer callousness of the query, began to shake his head. Then, suddenly remembering that triumph that seemed to have happened a hundred years ago, nodded.