Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  “Another time, cousin,” called the voice from above.

  There was a dragging sound, followed by a thud. They had put Fedim’s “door” back in place.

  “Well?” said Degan.

  “Almost,” I said.

  We stood in the darkness. To my right, I could hear Degan breathing through his mouth, just as I was. It only helped foil the smell a little, and I knew we would start tasting the air after a while. I didn’t want to be down here that long.

  I stood still and let my eyes slowly roam the blackness around us, looking for the first hint of amber that would mean my gift was beginning to work. It was not long in coming.

  The first thing I picked out was a jutting brick in the far wall, showing dark red against the black. Next came the crimson and yellow flecked surface of the sewage, sluggish in some spots, fluid in others. I had forgotten how strangely serene it could look this way, a slow dance of colors that would have disgusted me in the light of day.

  Degan appeared next, rapidly followed by the arching walls and ceiling. I looked overhead and saw Fedim’s shaft closer than I had expected it to be. A true trapdoor was hanging open above the sewer from it. Larrios had neglected to shut it in his haste to escape. Good thing, too; otherwise Degan and I would be a pair of arrowriddled corpses by now.

  To the side of the trapdoor, a rope ran along the ceiling to a stone walkway. Anyone knowing what they were about would be able to shinny along the rope and land, dry and filth-free, on the pathway the imperial engineers used to inspect and repair the city’s sewers.

  I considered climbing back up for a moment, then considered the ambush that might very well be waiting for us on the other side of the trap box.

  “There’s a causeway to our left,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell Degan our dunking could have been avoided.

  I led him over to the causeway and helped him find footing to climb out. I followed.

  “Recognize anything?” he asked, crouching to avoid the arch of the wall as it rose toward the ceiling.

  I looked up and down the tunnel. There was an empty torch bracket nearby. I suspected the torch had made its way out with Larrios.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t think I ever made it this far in.”

  “Any sign of Larrios?”

  “None.”

  “There must be a way out nearby. I can’t imagine he came down here just to stumble around in the dark.”

  I nodded, then remembered Degan couldn’t see me. “Probably a drainage shaft or access tunnel,” I said.

  “Lead on.”

  I placed Degan’s hand on my shoulder and headed to our right. It seemed as good a direction as any.

  The stones of the walkway were slicked over with slime and rat droppings. In one spot, the edge of the causeway had crumbled away, forcing us to sidle past, our backs against the wall. Rats confronted us continually along the path, and I soon had my rapier out before me, sweeping the more belligerent rodents into the river of waste that flowed beside us. The rats squeaked in protest, and their cries formed a sharp counterpoint to the otherwise soft sounds of dripping and squelching that surrounded us.

  It was a short time later, while I was leaning over the sewage, emptying what little remained in my stomach for the second time, that Degan’s grip tightened on my arm.

  “Feel that?” he asked.

  I spit, stood up, and leaned back against the wall as best I could. The damn smell—it had always gotten to me.

  “What?” I gasped as I fumbled at my herb wallet with my cleaner hand. Thank the Angels, the oiled lining had kept the water out.

  “Cross breeze,” said Degan.

  I lifted my head and waited.

  “I don’t feel anything,” I said.

  I returned my attention to my herb wallet and managed to pull out two small parchment packets. One held echember roots, the other ground mysennius seeds. I ripped open the first with my teeth. Half of the echember fell out before I got the packet to my mouth. The powder was easier, and I poured what I hoped was half of it in with the roots. I chewed. The echember wasn’t bad, but the mysennius tasted awful without wine to mix it in. With any luck, my stomach would settle down soon and my senses would become sufficiently dulled to keep the stench from getting to me further.

  “There it is again,” said Degan, more excited now.

  This time I felt it, too—the lightest brush of air across my face.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Air movement meant ventilation. Ventilation meant a way out.

  We tracked the breeze to a side tunnel. Fresh air, or at least the ghost of it, met our nostrils.

  I went first. The tunnel had a low ceiling, forcing me to hunch my shoulders and Degan to bend nearly double. As we slopped along, I began to see a brighter patch of amber ahead—starlight and the smallest hint of moon glow coming in from above.

  “Something up ahead,” I said. “Either a grate or a small cave-in.”

  Degan made no response.

  After ten paces, the smell began to lessen. After another five, I allowed myself a small smile of relief. It was a sewer grate, set in the ceiling of the tunnel. Despite the drugs, I could even hear voices coming from the street above us.

  “It’s a gra—” I began to whisper, but Degan suddenly grabbed me and shoved me against the tunnel wall. He put a warning hand over my mouth.

  “Hsst!” he whispered through clenched teeth.

  I fell silent. Degan held me a moment longer, then released me. I turned to him for an explanation, but his attention was elsewhere. He had his head cocked, eyes staring off into the darkness. I realized he was trying to listen to the voices coming down the tunnel. After a moment, he shook his head in frustration.

  “Closer,” he whispered, his voice so faint it was almost lost in the few inches that separated us.

  We crept forward, one soggy, sucking pace at a time. When we were practically beneath the grate, we stopped again. The voices were still there.

  “. . . found nothing?” said a female voice from above us.

  “No swag worth taking, no,” replied a man.

  They couldn’t have been more than five paces from the grate, by the sound of it.

  “And the book?”

  “No sign of it.”

  The woman swore—proficiently.

  “All the payoffs,” she said, “All the damn planning, and we miss it by minutes!” Someone kicked something.

  “It wasn’t a total loss,” observed the man. Gravel being ground under a boulder, that voice.

  I looked at Degan. He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me from moving even that much. I could tell by the set of his jaw that he was clenching his teeth.

  “Finding out the book isn’t here is not the same as finding it,” the woman said.

  “Maybe,” said the man. “Maybe not. It depends on who got away with it.”

  The woman grunted. “My money’s on Larrios.”

  Degan’s hand tightened on my shoulder. I leaned toward the glow that marked the grate.

  “And the other two?” said the man again.

  “Hard to say,” said the woman. I realized suddenly that she had the smallest of lisps—hardly there, but alluring in its own way. “From what you told me, they weren’t there to see Larrios—otherwise, they wouldn’t have grabbed him. Does anyone know who they were?”

  The man’s voice turned carefully neutral as he said, “One might have been a degan.”

  There was a pause. I could imagine the woman staring at the man, waiting for him to continue.

  “And?” she said at last.

  “I don’t know—I wasn’t there, remember? Urios says he saw the degan’s sword. He says the other one was small, dark, and moved like a thief.”

  “A degan and a thief,” said the woman thoughtfully. I felt a sudden chill go down my spine. There was something about the way she said it . . . as if she could sense us below her in the tunnels. The owner of that voice seemed too confident,
too knowing for my liking.

  The man cleared his throat. “About Fedim . . .”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “Any number of people are going to be upset about that. And it’s going to play hell with my timetable.” She fell silent for a long moment. “Clean it up,” she said finally. “Dump the body somewhere and spread enough hawks around to keep people from getting too curious. I don’t want us associated with it.”

  “For how long? It’s only a matter of time before tongues begin to wag.”

  “For as long as we can afford it. In the meantime, find Larrios.”

  I heard footsteps beginning to move away. A soft jingling, like the music of tiny bells, or loose jewelry, accompanied them.

  “What about the degan and the other one?” said the man, his voice pitched to carry a short distance.

  The jingling stopped. “Let me worry about them,” said the woman, her voice farther away from us. “You just get me Larrios and that book.”

  Her footsteps began again, and now I could hear the man moving away from us as well. Soon, the only sounds we heard were the distant drips and squeaks of the sewer behind us.

  “How did you know?” I asked as I moved forward to inspect the grate. It was set solidly in the ceiling.

  “Know what?” said Degan.

  “Don’t insult me.”

  He moved up next to me. “I didn’t ‘know’ anything. I suspected.”

  I drew my boot dagger and began working at the mortar around the grate. “Like hell,” I said. “You don’t almost shove me through a wall on a hunch.”

  “You don’t know how close I’ve come to shoving you through one for less.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  There must have been enough light seeping in, since Degan pulled a small knife from his belt and began working beside me.

  “I figured there would be people looking for us,” he said after a moment. “After all, they knew we were in the sewers and had enough men to cover a good-sized area.”

  Mortar dust was falling onto my face. I looked down, shaking my head to get rid of it.

  “But when we first heard them,” I said, “you couldn’t have known they were talking about what happened at Fedim’s place.”

  “Seemed possible. You yourself said there was no swag in the shop.”

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  Degan paused to wipe some mortar from his own face, then kept scraping.

  I regarded him for a long moment. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  He pushed on the grate. “I think this end is coming loose—how about yours?”

  “Degan—” I began.

  “I thought I recognized one of the voices,” he said.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And I was right.”

  “And?”

  “And I can’t tell you any more.”

  I lowered my arm. “What do you mean, you can’t tell me any more?”

  Degan lowered his own knife and looked at me in the light of the sewer grate. “I can’t. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?” I said.

  “Can’t,” said Degan. “If it were just about friendship, I’d tell you, but . . .” He turned back to the grate and resumed scraping.

  I stared at him for a long moment there in that small patch of starlight.

  “It’s about being a degan, isn’t it?” I said.

  Degan kept working.

  I swallowed. “It’s about the fucking Oath, isn’t it?”

  The scraping stopped. Degan lowered his head. He didn’t have to say anything after that.

  “Well, hell,” I said.

  Chapter Nine

  When we climbed out of the sewer, the street was empty. No trace remained of the man or the woman we had overheard. Above, a narrow strip of sky stood black against the copper-amber tint my night vision lent the roofs. The moon was still up, so it wasn’t too late yet.

  Degan took a deep breath. “Who knew Ten Ways could smell so sweet?” he said.

  I didn’t reply. I was too busy trying to make sense of what had just happened in the tunnel.

  The Oath—Degan had brought up the Oath with me, which meant something had changed down there—something stemming from the conversation we had overheard, something about him and me and Ten Ways. And he wasn’t telling—couldn’t, according to him, because he was a degan, not that he could tell me why that made a difference all of a sudden, either.

  If I hadn’t known him better . . . but I did. I didn’t understand what had changed, or why, but I did know this much: If whatever he knew would make the difference between my living and dying, Degan would tell me. I had to believe in that, had to believe in him; otherwise, there wasn’t much point. You have to be able to trust someone—at least one person—with your life if it’s going to be at all worth living. Degan had earned that trust from me over and over again, just as I had earned it from him.

  The only thing Degan had said about the Oath was that, even if I’d wanted to give it to him, he wouldn’t accept it. That was fine by me, since I hadn’t wanted to give it in the first place—not over a dead Dealer and an ambush in Ten Ways. If I were going to put our friendship to that kind of a test, it would have to be for stakes a hell of a lot bigger than those.

  I followed Degan’s example and took a deep breath of the night’s offerings—not bad at all.

  “So,” I said, thinking back over the conversation we had overheard. “Any ideas about this book they seem to be looking for? Or can’t you talk about that, either?”

  “No, and yes I can,” said Degan. “Whatever it is, someone wants it pretty bad—bad enough to send a dozen Cutters after Fedim.”

  “Or worry about someone showing up to take it away from him.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Degan pursed his lips. “Do you think whoever killed Fedim was there for the same reason as everyone else?”

  “You mean, did whoever it was show up, not find what he wanted, and then dust Fedim out of frustration? Maybe. But it’s not the best way to track something down. Still, there’re plenty of Kin out there who cut first and think later.” I shook my head. “I had thought Fedim’s getting dusted was a message from whoever had been leaning on him. Now, I’m not so sure. There are too many paths crossing here, which reminds me . . .”

  I reached back behind my belt and drew out the case I had found in Fedim’s escape shaft. A little longer than my hand and about as wide, it was a rectangular box with a curved top and a flat bottom.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something I found at Fedim’s.”

  “You think it’s the swag Larrios was looking for?”

  “I think it’s whatever Larrios was planning to trade the book for.”

  “He had the book?”

  “He had something in his satchel, and he sure as hell didn’t want to share it. It might have been the book, might not.” I waggled the case in the air. “Either way, I’m betting this was his payoff.”

  Degan looked at the case, then at me. “Well?”

  I placed my hand on the hasp and brought it closer to my face. Degan leaned in beside me. The case was covered with filth and sewage, but I could make out traces of rosewood around the edges and a bit of ivory inlay in the cover.

  “No,” I said suddenly, lowering the case and tucking it back behind me. “No, I think this should wait until we’re out of Ten Ways. They may still be looking for us, after all.”

  Degan straightened and looked down at me. “This is because of the Oath, isn’t it? You’re getting me back for the Oath.”

  I began walking away down the street, mainly so he couldn’t see my grin. “Never!”

  “Uh-huh. Well, you’d just better hope we don’t meet another dozen Cutters.”

  We headed out of Ten Ways, watching our blinds all the while. If anyone was looking for us, they didn’t find us. As for the local talent, I suspect our looking, and smelling, like a pair of Dredgers kept them from bot
hering us. No one rolls sewer crawlers.

  By the time we were back in Nicco’s territory, we had discovered that not only did the Kin avoid us—Lighters and even the city watch quickly found someplace else to be when we came into range.

  “That’s one way to avoid the Rags,” I said, indicating the retreating red sashes of another Watch patrol.

  “Nah. Too easy to track you by smell.” Degan scratched absently at his pants leg. Like mine, his clothes were beginning to dry out, making them stiff and itchy.

  “Moriarty’s?” he suggested.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  Degan chuckled. “I’ll meet you there.”

  We parted company. I headed home to get a clean change of clothes to wear after the bathhouse did its work.

  A long evening at Moriarty’s—the idea hung before me like an illicit fantasy as I turned onto Echelon Way. A hot bath to wash away the filth; a cold one to shock the system back to some semblance of normalcy; and then a warm tub to enjoy the feeling of being human again. And after that, maybe one of Moriarty’s girls . . .

  Yes. Yes, that would work just fine. There would be time enough afterward to wade back into Ten Ways, to cross palms and crack heads. Time enough to gather rumors and run down Kin—including Larrios.

  But right now, all I wanted was to get clean.

  The apothecary’s shop was dark when I arrived, both above and below. I paused in the arch that led to the stairway, looking around the street and along the roofs. No one. Good. If I couldn’t see the people I paid to watch my place, no one with normal vision was going to spot them, either.

  My laundry was still at the foot of the stairs. True to her word, Cosima had left it. I stuffed a stray shirtsleeve into the basket and crept softly up the stairs, avoiding the three steps I intentionally left squeaky.

  In the end, it was the laundry that saved my life.

  I was on the top step when the assassin came at me, slipping around the banister and thrusting hard before I could react. It was a good move; my back was to open space, my footing uneven, with no place for me to retreat. Plus, I had my hands full. All I could do was stare as he pushed the stiletto into my chest—or, rather, into the basket of laundry I was holding in front of my chest.