Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  “I tried last night, but you were out,” I said.

  “I heard.” Nicco feinted low at his opponent, went high, and locked his arms around his neck and behind one shoulder. It didn’t seem like a good hold to me, and the other man began to easily twist his way out. That was when Nicco brought his knee into the other man’s midriff, lifting him off the ground. When the younger man hit the pit floor, Nicco was there in an instant, managing to kick sand in his face even as he got the pin.

  Nicco rose, dusted himself off, and strolled over to the edge of the pit. He didn’t spare a backward glance for the man busy trying to brush sand out of his eyes; nor for the scowling trainer who handed the Upright Man a bowl of water but kept his mouth shut. No—Nicco merely drank, spit, and stepped out of the pit. All that mattered was that he had won.

  “Come with me.” Nicco led me to a series of doorways on one side of the training room. He opened one and gestured for me to enter. I did.

  The moist heat hit me immediately. It was a hot room—the first room of a three-room private bath, used for scrub massages and steam baths. Beyond the opposite door were the warm and cool rooms, for washing and relaxing respectively. I hoped Nicco would head to the last; instead, he sat down on one of the benches and started filling a shallow bowl from a tap beside him in the wall.

  The sweat started gathering beneath my arms and along my forehead almost immediately. Nicco ignored my loosening my collar and cuffs, and instead sluiced water down his back. Then he refilled the bowl.

  So, it was going to be like that.

  I helped myself to one of the towels stacked in a corner, wiped my face with it, and sat on the heavy marble massage table in the middle of the room.

  “You have to know you’re on my shit list,” said Nicco as he watched the bowl fill. “I’ve been hearing things about how you’ve been sitting on information; about how you tried to keep rumors of a Snilcher from me; about how you paid some piece of shit named Larrios to dust that Dealer for you. Hell, people are even saying you’re trying to sabotage Rambles—and my operation—in Ten Ways.”

  “People?” I said.

  Nicco shrugged. “All right, Rambles.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “About an hour ago,” said Nicco.

  Shit! While I had been hunting Baldezar, Rambles had gotten to Nicco. That was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to happen. I was starting to have too many balls in the air to manage.

  “And you believe him?” I said.

  Nicco looked at me sidelong. “Shouldn’t I?”

  I let out a derisive snort. “Well, if you want to listen to Rambles’s fairy tales, then of course I’m going to come off as a complete—”

  Nicco held up a hand. I stopped talking.

  “I know how to pick through what Rambles tells me,” he said, “just like I know how to pick over the information you supply. Don’t look so surprised—I don’t take anyone completely at their word, including you. But things are adding up, Drothe. You’re fucking up, and it’s costing you. And me.”

  “I . . .”

  “I’m not finished,” said Nicco. He paused to pour the bowl over his head and sighed. “You don’t want to fall out of my good graces, Drothe,” he said, “but you’re damn close to doing just that.”

  I watched as he sat there, nearly naked, letting the water run down his face, his eyes closed. And me across from him, fully clothed—and fully armed.

  It was tempting. One step, one cut, and it would be over. No Nicco meant no war in Ten Ways, or, at least, not as ruthless a war for Kells. I could live with that.

  My fingers began to itch for my dagger handle.

  Then I remembered the wrestling pit and Nicco’s seemingly weak grab, followed by a hard kick and a footful of sand in his opponent’s face. Was he setting me up? Testing me? Me?

  I studied the Upright Man without seeming to. Yes, there—Nicco’s eyelid twitched ever so slightly, revealing a sliver of color beneath it.

  The son of a bitch was watching me. He was ready. Waiting. Testing.

  And in that instant, I knew I was in trouble. If Nicco had to see if I would go after him, to see if I would confirm what Rambles had been saying, then I was already on my way out. Rambles had the upper hand with him now; anything I might accuse the Ruffler of would only seem petty—or defensive.

  I put my hands on the massage table in easy sight and pretended not to have noticed Nicco’s test. “All right,” I said, “maybe I’ve been fucking up lately, maybe not. Either way, I’d like to think everything I’ve done over the years would count for something, maybe give you reason to cut me a little slack. But that’s not the point right now. The point is what’s been happening in Ten Ways. You’re being played down there, and not just you, but the whole cordon. Someone’s been setting up a war for months and—”

  “I know,” grated Nicco. “Kells.”

  “No,” I said. Almost shouted. “Not Kells. That’s what—”

  Nicco’s eyes snapped open.

  “Don’t tell me he isn’t behind it!” yelled Nicco. “I have five people lying in the street in Ten Ways. Five, with two of their killers next to them. And do you know what those other two are wearing?”

  I felt a sinking sensation inside me. “I can guess.”

  “Gray-and-red ribbons on their arms,” said Nicco. “Kells’s war colors. He’s not just trying to embarrass me anymore, Drothe—he’s fucking calling me out.” Nicco stood and began stalking about the massage table, circling me. “War cords! I didn’t think he had the balls, but if he wants to throw that glove in my face, I’ll pick it up. Cord for cord, man for man.”

  I shook my head. A pale imitation of the colored sashes that identified the different arms of the imperial military, war cords were the closest thing we had to uniforms among the Kin. Wearing a cord was the same as declaring your allegiance. It was an invitation for attack, an excuse to let blood and take revenge. It was war among the Kin.

  Except it was all a dodge. I knew firsthand that Kells hadn’t put cords on anyone in Ten Ways—not yet.

  “Think about this for a moment,” I said, turning to follow Nicco as he paced his circles around me. “This is Kells we’re talking about. It’s not a matter of his having the balls to do something—it’s a matter of his even considering doing this. War cords? Unannounced, and in Ten Ways? That’s not his style. It’s too obvious, too direct. Kells doesn’t work that way.”

  Nicco gave me a dark look. “Since when did you become a fucking expert on Kells?”

  I raised the towel and wiped at my face, hiding my expression. I was suddenly grateful Nicco had brought us into a steam bath—in here, I had every reason to be sweating.

  “You forget,” he continued, not noticing my reaction. “I know him. Knew him . . . damn well. He’s a cold, calculating bastard, but he’s not half as smart as he’d like everyone to believe. Kells can be as hottempered and bloodthirsty as the next man, and there were plenty of times I was the next man. I wouldn’t put this past him if he thought he could pull it off. Especially against me.”

  “But what if it’s not personal?” I said. “What if it just looks that way? I don’t think—”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you think,” Nicco snarled. “I’ve already told Rambles to put cords on our people. We’re going to war in Ten Ways, and we’re going to bring that son of a bitch to his knees.”

  “You’re going to fight him in Ten Ways?” I said. “You don’t have the people down there to take him on!” Kells didn’t have the people there, either, but I wasn’t about to share that tidbit of information.

  “It’s taken care of,” said Nicco. “If you’d been Nosing like you’re supposed to, you’d know that.” Nicco paused and let his breath out. He rolled his shoulders. Something popped. “Besides, we have more friends there than you think. Rambles has seen to that.” Nicco grunted. “At least someone can do his fucking job.”

  So, there it was: Rambles not only had Nicco’s ear; he had arra
nged for “friends” in Ten Ways as well. It wasn’t a stretch to guess who two of them were, either. The only question left was, would Nicco believe me if I told him about Iron Degan and the Gray Prince? Would he even care?

  To hell with it. The war was on, and Nicco no longer trusted me. I was a marked man, even if Nicco hadn’t decided it yet. My chances of swaying him at the moment were nil. I needed to find some way to get back in his good graces, or to walk away. I couldn’t do either of those dead, and that was how I would end up if I pushed him now.

  I slid off the table and onto my feet. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmingly tired.

  “Where the hell are you going?” said Nicco.

  “To go do my fucking job,” I said. “Unless Rambles has seen to that, too.”

  Nicco didn’t answer—he just stared at me as I walked past him and out through the other two rooms of the bath.

  I didn’t work the streets that night, didn’t do anything except find my way home and collapse onto my bed. I vaguely recall noticing Task’s body was gone from my rooms, but, to be honest, I wouldn’t have cared either way at that point.

  When the knock came at my door sometime later, it felt early. The muted daylight slanting in through the shutters suggested noon. After the last two days, that was early.

  “Who?” I called through the door, my boot knife in my hand.

  “Assassins!” called Degan cheerily. I let him in, anyhow.

  Word, it seemed, had gotten out on the street about Task and her singular appearance in my rooms. As things went, it wasn’t the worst rumor to have making the rounds; if nothing else, my showing that kind of backing—inadvertent or no—would make it harder for whoever was after me to recruit a replacement. My concern was they’d find a Blade who could do the job, regardless.

  I washed up from a basin as Degan told me what he had been able to find out about Iron, which was little enough. Iron Degan hadn’t taken a new Oath in a long time—at least several years; this suggested he had been working for his Gray Prince for a while now. Nor had Degan been able to find out which Prince Iron was working for, but that wasn’t surprising. Tracking a Gray Prince was like trying to catch a bird’s shadow.

  During the last few years, though, Degan said, Iron had repeatedly been in and out of Ten Ways. He had also traveled across the empire three separate times. Each time had been to one of the most ancient cities of the empire—former seats of either Stephen Dorminikos, or one of his incarnations shortly after he began his cycle of resurrections. That was when the emperor had still gone on progress, surveying his nobles and lands, sometimes for years at a time—back before the walling off of the Imperial cordon and the first rumors of his rising paranoia.

  “Sounds like Iron’s been looking for something,” I said as I pulled on a change of clothes. There were a few small spots of blood in the laundry in my hamper from Tamas’s attack, but nothing so bad I couldn’t wear it. “Something old, too, given where he’s been hunting. Tyrogennes, Lonpo, Crosswinds and Ten Ways—all of them predate the empire.”

  “Something old,” said Degan, “or something that talks about something old. At least two of those cities have respectable libraries.”

  “And libraries have books,” I said. I buckled on my sword belt and put my knives back in place. “And who do we know who has a book, I wonder.”

  “Larrios,” said Degan.

  Which meant Ten Ways—again.

  I stopped by Eppyris’s shop on the way out. The apothecary didn’t have more than four words for me, even when I told him about Task’s body—minus the glimmer. He simply handed me a fresh supply of ahrami, closed his shop’s door, and headed over to his apartments. I heard his and Cosima’s voices raised in argument when I left with Degan.

  Given what had happened with Task, I hoped Eppyris would persuade Cosima to leave. In fact, I decided, if he didn’t, I’d make arrangements to get them both out when I returned. Cosima wouldn’t like it, but it was getting to the point where I needed to cut back on my distractions and worries, and they definitely fit under both headings now.

  It wasn’t hard to tell that Ten Ways was on edge when we arrived. As if sensing the coming war, the city guard had put almost four dozen Rags outside the main entrance to Ten Ways. They were gathered around campaign lanterns—large iron cages on tripods, filled with fuel that could burn all night when lit—checking their weapons and eyeing the cordon nervously. Several of them watched Degan and me as we went into the cordon, but none moved to stop us. I suspected it would be a different story when we tried to come out.

  It was still twilight, but already the streets in Ten Ways were emptying of Lighters. Nicco’s men were in full sight, walking in groups, gold-and-green war cords openly displayed on their arms. A few gave me a small nod, but most kept it to a cool eye. Rambles would have told them about me. I wasn’t wearing a cord; I wouldn’t have even if I weren’t working for Kells—a Nose did his best work unseen, or at least unmarked. Putting on a cord would have made me an instant target outside Nicco’s territory.

  There were other Cutters on the street, too—back alley toughs who had either been bought, or who were using the war for their own ends. This was their time—a time of killing and rape, when atrocities could be blamed on the war, and retribution from local bosses was less likely. The Upright Men’s soldiers and their allies would be too busy watching out for one another—they wouldn’t bother with minor talent as long as it didn’t get in their way.

  “So, what’s the plan?” said Degan.

  “We wander and wait,” I said as two men came rolling out of a doorway in front of us, cursing and biting and hitting each other. We stepped around them.

  “Until?”

  “Until the person I need to talk to finds us.”

  “Until he finds us?” said Degan.

  “Yes.”

  A woman’s voice joined the fray behind us. I heard the solid thunk of something large and heavy hitting something soft and breakable. One of the men screamed.

  “I would have thought,” said Degan, “what with your being a Nose and all, you might go looking for him. Maybe ask around.”

  “I’m going to,” I said, “but I doubt I’ll have much luck—I don’t know his name.”

  “No name,” said Degan. A dog started barking back at the fight. “Do you know anything else about him?”

  “He wears a big dark cloak.”

  Degan clicked his tongue. “And this unnamed man in a big dark cloak is your best lead on Larrios?”

  “At the moment, yes.”

  “And here I was worried you didn’t have a plan,” said Degan.

  In truth, we did more than wander. Since I didn’t have a network in Ten Ways, I had to resort to the basics: eavesdropping, rumormongering, and whisper buying. We roamed the streets, loitered at corners, and crawled in and out of more basement taverns and smoke holes than I could count.

  I didn’t find my man right away, but I did hear any number of rumors about what was happening in the cordon. Most were more fantasy than fact, but, after a while, I was able to discern a common thread running through all of them: Everyone—in terms of local gangs and organizations—was getting hit, and most of them were blaming either Nicco or Kells. Even if there wasn’t any proof of their involvement, the common wisdom on the street was that the two Upright Men were positioning themselves for a takeover of the cordon itself. And that wasn’t sitting well with the local Kin.

  It was exactly what Degan and I had feared, and it had the Gray Prince’s fingers all over it. Not only was the Prince going to get Nicco and Kells to go to war with each other, but she was also prepping the local gangs to fight the Upright Men for her. I doubted she’d be able to call all the shots once the fighting began, but I was certain she was ready to step in and come off as the hero in the end. And, if we were right, this was only the beginning.

  My one chance of preventing all this was the book. Whatever it was, she clearly wanted it. If I could find Larrios and get my hands on i
t, I could use the book as leverage to negotiate with the Prince. I doubted I’d be able to save Ten Ways, but maybe I could ransom the rest of the Underworld from her; or at least keep Kells and his—my—organization in one piece.

  It was two hours past midnight when we came out of yet another dive. This one had smelled primarily of sweat and vomit—definitely a step up from the previous two.

  “I think I’ll just burn the whole damn cordon down and be done with it,” I said to Degan as we took a deep breath of the night air. “Easier for everyone that way.”

  Degan laughed. “There’ll always be a Ten Ways,” he said. We started walking. “Burn it down tonight, and tomorrow morning someone will be building on the ashes.”

  “And that would only be a cover so they could dig for melted hawks,” I said.

  “My, but you’re a pessimistic one,” said a voice off to our right.

  Degan had his blade out and pointed at a deep doorway in an instant. I put a restraining hand on his shoulder but otherwise didn’t move. I’d recognized the voice.

  “I find that pessimism keeps me from being disappointed,” I said.

  A piece of shadow moved within the doorway and stepped out. Tall, cloaked, hooded—he could have been anyone, except for the voice.

  “Prudent,” said the cloaked Kin. Once again, the cowl was so far forward, and the shadows so dark, I couldn’t see his face. The hood turned to face Degan and held out his hands, palms up. “Your friend and I have an arrangement,” he said.

  “Do you now?” said Degan.

  “We do,” I said. “He’s the one who’s going to lead us to Larrios.” I turned to the Kin. “Assuming he’s managed to find Larrios, that is.”

  He bowed slightly from the waist. “I can show you where he was staying as of sunset.”

  I nodded, then looked at Degan. He still had his sword pointed at the Kin. I was about to say something when Degan dropped the tip of his weapon and sent it home to its scabbard with a snap.

  “Lead on,” I said.

  The cowl shook back and forth. “Payment first,” he said, holding out a gloved hand.