Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  “What?”

  “I used to be a courtesan and am still a dowager baroness—I’ve had some experience with secret letters and messages, Drothe.”

  I stared at her, hesitating.

  Christiana sighed. “Drothe, why did you come here?”

  “To warn you,” I said. “And to get some sleep.”

  She nodded. “Mm-hmm. And when was the last time you came through the front door?”

  “I . . .”

  “Drothe, you’re nearly asleep on your feet. You’ve been going for Angels know how long, and have a dead assassin and a Djanese magician in your home. But even with all that, I know you didn’t walk in here because you’re too tired to climb the garden wall.”

  “It is a high wall . . . ” I said.

  Christiana leapt to her feet. “Fine, dammit! Go ahead and be a stubborn son of a—”

  I couldn’t help myself; I started laughing.

  Christiana stopped and glared at me. Then she grinned just like she used to when she was eleven. It was good to see.

  “You bastard,” she said.

  “You’re still easy.” I reached into the pouch and pulled out the slips of paper. Little sister or no, she had a point—she dealt with codes and ciphers more than I did.

  Christiana took the scraps almost casually, but her demeanor changed as she looked them over. She held them up, frowning, and turned the papers this way and that. Finally, she went over to the entrance to the garden to stand in the sunlight.

  I resumed my seat on the bench and leaned my head back, Releskoi’s image perched above me. “Lay your odds on her not cracking them,” I said to the Angel. He didn’t take the bet. I chose to take that as a good sign.

  I closed my eyes.

  And awoke to Christiana kicking my foot.

  “Where the hell did you get these?” she said.

  I rubbed at my face, trying to wake up. The closest I managed was consciousness.

  “What?” I said.

  Christiana waved the slips under my nose. “These,” she said. “Where did you get them?”

  “I told you—off a smuggler and a turn-cloak. Why?”

  “Is that all you know about them?”

  I looked at the papers, then up at my sister. There was enough tension running through her for the both of us. I felt myself finally starting to wake up.

  “What did you find?” I said.

  “It’s what I didn’t find,” she snapped, turning away in a swirl of linen and perfume. “No codes, no hidden sequences, no secret writing. Nothing.”

  I noticed the room had changed while I was asleep. A low desk had been brought in, along with a chair and a small reading table. A handful of books were scattered across the table, some open, others piled at the corner. The desk held two more books, a candle, several bowls, and a collection of small vials and bottles. Beyond them, the garden was in partial shadow.

  Midafternoon, then. I’d been out for two hours at least.

  “These don’t make any sense,” complained Christiana, waving the strips in the air. “There’s not enough consistency for a code—you need actual writing, or at least repeating symbols, for that. I checked them against a mirror, in case they used a reversal or partial cipher, but that didn’t show me anything, either. And none of them matches up against one another, or against any common printing type I can find, so it’s not a text cipher, either.”

  “Invisible ink?” I said.

  “I tried the four most common reagents,” said Christiana, gesturing at the desk.

  “What about the less common ones?” I asked.

  “Poisonous, expensive, or both.”

  I thought back to the dead Blade floating in my bedroom. “ ‘Too dangerous’ and ‘too expensive’ aren’t necessarily limiting factors here.”

  Christiana shrugged. “Fine, I can test the others later, but I don’t think it will do us any good.”

  “Why not?”

  Christiana came back and leaned down over me. Nutmeg and musk, with an mild undertone of salt from her sweat, came to my nose. “Look at the line where all the writing stops before it reaches the far edge,” she said, handing me one of the slips. “That means whoever wrote this did something to the paper when he wrote on it, something that broke or stopped the writing at that point.” She straightened up and ran a hand absently through a loose strand of her hair. “If we want to break this, we need to physically do something to the paper—manipulate it in some way.”

  I stared at the ideograph fragments, the dots and lines that surrounded them, and the razor-edged strip of whiteness that ran along one edge, cutting through the marks. I could feel something trying to take shape in the back of my mind, something from long ago, but, when I reached for it, it faded away.

  “Have you tried folding it?” I asked.

  “More ways than you can count. You can get a few marks to match up here or there, but the rest is still gibberish.”

  I leaned back against the wall. My shoulders complained, but I ignored them. “We have to be missing something,” I said. “These were meant for Kin, not imperial spies. If someone was sending written instructions to Athel and Sylos, I don’t think he’d make the cipher more complex than the message.”

  Christiana grunted and straightened up. She began to chew absently on her lower lip, twisting a strand of hair around her finger as she did so.

  I looked up at Releskoi. “Should have taken the bet,” I murmured to him.

  “What?” said Christiana.

  “Nothing.” I levered my way to my feet and walked over to the desk. “These other reagents for invisible ink,” I said, turning around to face my sister. “How hard are they . . . ?” And I froze.

  She was standing, looking at me, arms crossed. The strand of hair she had been playing with now hung beside her ear. It had curled slightly from her worrying it.

  “Your hair,” I said, pointing.

  Christiana raised a hand self-consciously. “My hair? Drothe, what are you talking—”

  I looked from her to the mosaic of Releskoi—at his staff with the parchment spiraling around it. At his credo written on the parchment.

  Of course.

  “There!” I said, pointing up at the Angel. “The staff. And your hair. And my own damn habit of wrapping the paper around my own fingers. I should have seen it!” I brandished one of the strips. “You don’t fold it or hold it to a mirror or look for hidden writing,” I said. “You spiral it around something so the marks match up and form ideographs!”

  Christiana’s eyes went wide. “A scytale cipher?” she said. “Those haven’t been used in centuries.”

  “All the better,” I said. “Who would think of using something that old? You didn’t.”

  Christiana humphed but didn’t argue. “It makes sense,” she admitted. “All they would need is the same diameter rod, and they could wrap the paper to either write or read the messages. It’s certainly simple enough for anyone to use. Did either of the corpses have a baton or rod of some sort? Something innocuous, that no one would question their keeping on them?”

  I hadn’t seen Sylos’s body, but I’d gone over Athel’s things well enough to be able to see them again in my head. “A pipe,” I said. “Athel had a long-stemmed pipe. Sylos may have had the same.”

  “I don’t suppose you still have it?”

  “No,” I said. “But I remember what it looked like.” I began to tuck the papers away. “If I get over to Ash Street right now, I ought be able to cover at least a halfdozen pipe sellers before—”

  “Nonsense,” said Christiana. She clapped her hands. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. And I’ll not sit around waiting while you do.”

  Josef came gliding into the room, stopped at a respectful distance, and bowed.

  “I find myself in need of tobacco pipes, Josef,” Christiana pronounced. “A wide array of tobacco pipes.”

  “Very good, madam. How many tobacconists would you care to interview?”

  “Star
t with a dozen.”

  “And when would madam wish them to call upon her?”

  “Immediately.”

  Josef bowed again. “I will send runners at once. Shall I have them assemble in the solar?”

  Christiana inclined her head. “Please. And inform Cook that Drothe and I will be taking an early dinner in the garden.”

  Josef bobbed a third time and hurried from the room.

  Christiana turned back to me and arched a satisfied smile. “And that, dear brother,” she said, “is how a baroness does ‘legwork.’ ”

  Chapter Sixteen

  They were just bringing down the shutters and closing the main door when I bulled my way into Baldezar’s shop. One of the older scribes stepped forward and tried to cluck at me about the place being closed for the day. I gave him the back of my hand. By the time I reached the stairway to the upper level, there was a visible trail of scattering scribes and drifting paper in my wake. I took the steps two at a time, strode to the master scribe’s door, and threw it open.

  Desk, parchment, books, quills and ink, but no Baldezar.

  I turned around and looked out over the shop, leaning on the walkway’s wrought-iron railing. I’d come straight from Christiana’s. The continued lack of sleep hadn’t improved either my mood or my appearance. “Where?” I demanded.

  The room fell silent. I heard a piece of paper settle to the ground. A bottle rolled off a scribe’s stand and clattered on the floor.

  “Where is your thrice-damned master?” I yelled.

  “Gone.”

  Lyconnis was standing in the doorway to the palimpsest room, where they scraped and cleaned parchment for reuse. His sleeves were rolled up, displaying a pair of thick, hairy arms. His apron had done little to keep the pumice and chalk dust off his scribe’s robe.

  “Gone where?” I said.

  Lyconnis shrugged.

  “Up here,” I said. “Now.”

  I went back into Baldezar’s office. Books and scrolls filled the shelves behind the desk, along with small boxes full of penknives, sharpening stones, mortars and pestles, uncut quills, seashells for holding pigments, and ink-stained rags. Save for a neat array of sealed ink pots, the desktop was bare.

  I slipped in behind and tried the two drawers in the desk—locked. I pulled my spiders from my pocket, bent down, and got to work.

  Feet thumped heavily along the walkway, came into the room, and stopped. I didn’t glance up.

  “What are you doing?” said Lyconnis.

  “Not what I was hoping to do, I can tell you that,” I said. I felt the pick catch on one of the wards in the lock, then slip free. I shifted the pick slightly, felt it miss again. Wrong head, I decided. I pulled the spider out and fished for another.

  Lyconnis sighed and settled into the narrow chair on the other side of the desk.

  “What has Master Baldezar done?”

  “Lied, for a start,” I said as I selected a pick with a heavier curve and slipped it in alongside the tension wrench. “Forged a letter from my . . . patron. Set me up. Maybe even put a Blade on my trail.” I felt the pick slip past the ward, tickle a tumbler, and push it home. I moved on to the next one, then the third. I turned the tension wrench, felt the lock give, and heard a scraping click. I pulled the drawer open.

  I looked up to find Lyconnis staring at me.

  “He tried to have you killed?” he said.

  “He sure as hell didn’t send flowers.”

  “But . . . he hired . . . a . . . an . . .”

  “Maybe,” I said, sitting down in Baldezar’s desk chair. “Maybe not. I doubt he could afford the people who were sent. But he had a hand in it.” I pulled the scraps of paper from my ahrami pouch, then reaching into my herb wallet, drew out the pipe Christiana and I had gotten from the sixth pipe merchant who had come calling.

  “You know how a scytale cipher works?” I said as I set them on the desk. Lyconnis nodded. “Have a read.”

  Lyconnis wrapped, read, unwrapped, and wrapped again as I scoured the contents of the drawer. I didn’t need to see his face to know what he was seeing—I’d read and reread the strips so many times at Christiana’s, I’d committed them to memory.

  The message from Athel’s bag had been straightforward. The thief is getting anxious, it read. Trade imperial relic for book. Stall the Nose until we can make other arrangements. There is new action in Ten Ways—act with haste. Whoever Athel had been dealing with, he had decided it was better for him to trade the relic than to sell it to me. I suspected “the thief” was Larrios, and that he’d demanded payment sooner than they had expected. I didn’t know if the book was supposed to be a final payment or just collateral until they could get him the hawks, but, either way, the plan had gotten Athel—and likely Fedim—killed.

  Why hadn’t Athel told me what he’d done with the book? Had he or his masters been afraid I would go after it? Why had it been worth dying for?

  Or killing for, for that matter?

  The message to Sylos had been a more hastily scrawled thing: Jarkman says Nose got to Athel. Has made arrangements. Blade will deliver the message, arrange for cleaning. Cooperate. I had no doubt the Jarkman in question was Baldezar, but I had been wanting to confirm it in person. That, and find out why they had felt it was necessary to dust me in the first place.

  The first drawer held nothing more than a few incriminating letters on some minor gentry and a handful of falsed seals. I dumped it out on the desk, checked the bottom and sides for hidden panels, and then got to work on the second lock.

  “He said it was an exercise,” said Lyconnis as I tickled the second set of tumblers.

  “What?” I said.

  “The letter to you,” said Lyconnis. “An exercise for me. And a lesson for you.”

  I stopped picking the lock and looked up over the desk. Lyconnis was staring down at the strips in his hand.

  “You forged the letter to Chr—To the baroness?” I said.

  “ ‘A good scribe should be able to compose his cephta in almost any style,’ ” recited Lyconnis. “At least, that’s what Master Baldezar says. I don’t agree, but he’s a master of my guild, and I’m in his shop. If I ever want to be a master in my own right, I have to heed him. So I do copies and minor forgeries from time to time.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why he was having you forge a letter to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He’s a master in my guild,” repeated Lyconnis, this time almost pleading. “He told me it was to show you up—to teach you a lesson. You have to believe me when I say I didn’t know what it was about! If I had even thought he was capable of hiring a . . . an . . .”

  “I get the idea,” I said sourly. “Baldezar was covering his ass, and he used you to do it.” I bent back to the lock. “If things didn’t work out and I came hunting, he could point out the flaws and deny writing it.” And, I thought, point to Lyconnis if I got too close. I had no doubt that if it had come to that, Baldezar would have made sure Lyconnis wasn’t in a position to argue by the time I made it to him.

  The second lock gave way more easily than the first. Among a collection of castings for chops and silk sealing ribbons, I found four blank strips of paper that matched my own and a narrow wooden rod. Beneath the rod was a fifth strip of paper with markings on it. I picked it up and wrapped it around the rod. The symbols lined up perfectly.

  Heard the second attempt failed, it read in a shaky hand. Nose suspects me. I need protection. I need— The message ended in midsymbol, unfinished. That meant Baldezar had either been in too much of a hurry to finish it, or that he had been interrupted by someone before he disappeared. I hoped it was the former, because I wanted him alive.

  “Best tell your guild they need a new master here,” I said, standing up.

  Lyconnis stared at the slip as I unwound it and put it in my ahrami pouch.

  “Is he dead?” he said.

  “If he’s not,” I said, “he will be by the time I’m d
one with him.”

  I put the word on the street to watch for Baldezar, but I didn’t hold out much hope. If he was smart, the scribe was already out of the city; if not, he was likely hiding or dead. Either way, the chances of someone spotting him in passing were slim.

  Which left me Ten Ways.

  Kells was right: I needed to stop Nicco from going to war, or at least delay him. Ten Ways was an avalanche waiting to happen—one that could very well sweep me along if I wasn’t careful. There were too many things tying me to the cordon now, and too many ways they could go wrong. Long Nosing aside, if Kin started killing Kin down there, someone could use it as an excuse to take care of me. Loose ends and vendettas are easy to resolve when blood is already running in the gutters.

  A little asking around told me Nicco had gotten back into Ildrecca earlier in the day. I found him at his favorite gymnasium on the east side of Stone Arch cordon. Stripped to his smallclothes, he was working in the sandpit with a towering slab of muscle almost half his age. I couldn’t help noticing that the younger wrestler was both dirtier and bloodier than his opponent, which didn’t surprise me. Even when training, Nicco made a habit of using nasty tricks whenever he could.

  I approached the ring and was stopped a dozen feet away by Salt Eye. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “What the hell?” I said, staring up at the Arm.

  “He’s busy.”

  “And?” I said, throwing on a heavy dose of bravado.

  Salt Eye hesitated. He was used to letting me pass, used to not giving me a second glance. That he now had to do both told me my status had changed. That he hesitated told me the change had happened recently.

  “Screw you,” I said as I feinted left and dodged right. I could hear Salt Eye spin and come after me. I sped up my pace, but not so much that I lost any dignity in the process.

  “Drothe,” said Nicco, not looking away from his opponent as I neared the oval pit. “Nice of you to come see me on your own for a change. Salt Eye, it’s all right.”

  I heard Salt Eye stop, then retreat behind me.