Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  “Done answering questions?” said Kells. “You’re a Nose, damn it—my Nose! Answering questions is what you do!”

  “No!” I said. “Sifting information is what I do. Separating rumors from leads is what I do. Putting my ass on the line so I can get a better picture of the street is what I do. And I do it for you, not him.” I pointed at the looming figure off to my right. “I’m not going to spill anything until I get some answers about him; about what the hell is really going on in Ten Ways; and about that damn journal everyone wants!”

  Kells stepped in close and raised a finger in my face. “Your job,” he snarled, “is to gather the pieces, not to assemble the puzzle. If I wanted you in the middle of things, I would have put you there. I didn’t. So don’t complain when I remind you of your job. You seem to need it.”

  “Wait,” said the cloaked figure.

  Kells winked. I pushed on, although I doubt I could have stopped if I’d wanted to.

  “You make it sound like I want to be here,” I said. “Like I enjoy having my ass kicked by more people than I can count.” I gestured toward the door and the cordon beyond. “I’m in Ten Ways because Nicco sent me here, not because I wanted to come. And I stayed here because I didn’t want to see your organization go down the shit hole. Not that it isn’t on its way already, from what I’ve seen.”

  Kells moved in even closer to me, the twinkle going out of his eye. “Are you saying I can’t run my own organization?”

  This wasn’t a ruse anymore, I realized, but I no longer cared. It felt good to be saying this, to be laying it out in front of Kells. I’d gone through too much in the past seven years, let alone the past seven days, to be playing games anymore.

  “I’m saying you should have taken this seriously when I first brought it to you,” I said. “You knew Nicco was going to come after you, but you had to try to play games.” I swept my hand toward the cordon beyond the room. “Well, what the hell has it got you?”

  “Wait,” said the figure again.

  “And what would you have done?” demanded Kells.

  “How the hell should I know?” I said. “I’ve been too busy dodging White Sashes and assassins and Nicco’s people to have time to consider tactics. Besides, I’m just a Nose—all I’m supposed to do, apparently, is listen to whispers and report. Angels forbid I get a clear idea of—”

  “Wait!” The word exploded out of the depths of the cowl as if it were echoing up from a cave. Kells and I both stopped and looked at the cloaked man. He pointed at me. “You mentioned ‘that damn journal,’ ” he said, his voice back to its normal coffee-dark tones.

  “So?”

  “Who told you it was a journal?”

  Shit. “What?”

  “No one’s ever called it anything but a book, but you just said ‘journal.’ ”

  I stared at him.

  “You have it, don’t you?” he said.

  I looked at Kells. He was watching me carefully, waiting, his eyes narrowed. At my look, his head gave a shake so subtle, I almost missed it from a foot away.

  I looked back to the cloaked figure.

  “I don’t have it,” I said, “but I think I know where it is.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said the dark figure. “Now go and get it.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Why is it so important to you?” I said. “Why should I make sure you get it instead of someone else?”

  The dark cowl regarded me for a long moment. “I don’t explain myself to minions.”

  Minions?

  “Screw this,” I growled.

  Before Kells could react, I was past him, my left hand scooping up one of the lighted wine goblets. I slipped over the corner of the desk and deposited myself in front of the walking cloak.

  “Enough games,” I said as I reached up and grabbed his cowl, shoving the candle forward and pulling back on the hood at the same time. “If you think—Angels!”

  The cowl didn’t move. Even though the edges of the hood crumpled and shifted in my hand like regular cloth, the cowl itself refused to shift back from his face. It was like trying to push over a brick wall wrapped in wool.

  Worse, though, was the darkness inside the cowl: it didn’t shrink from the light. Instead, a veil of gray-black shadows confronted me, shifting and rolling as if it had a depth greater than the hood that held it. I thought I caught a brief hint of chin here, a wisp of nose there, but I couldn’t be sure. Somehow I knew that, even without the candle, my night vision would be useless—there was no piercing this darkness.

  My stomach went cold and small.

  The man in the cloak didn’t move, didn’t react at all. He simply whispered something, a word too low for me to hear. Then I was flying across the room, my ears ringing from the power he’d spoken. I hit the far wall, bounced off it, and met the floor face-first. I stayed where I landed.

  I heard a voice, felt hands on me when I didn’t answer. I wanted to respond but just . . . didn’t have the focus. Blinking was an effort at the moment.

  I was put in a chair. I felt water on my face. That helped. Blinking became easier—then moving.

  Then the pain came. I began to groan, caught myself, and gritted my teeth instead. Like hell I’d give him the satisfaction.

  I lifted my head. Kells was prowling before the desk, anger and concern mixing freely on his face. Behind him, now seated in the big chair, was the cloaked man.

  “Explanation enough?” said the latter.

  There was only one explanation—for the cloak, for the darkness, for the glimmer, for Kells’s reactions—and I didn’t like it.

  I’d known there was a Gray Prince involved; I simply hadn’t considered that everything that pointed at one could just as easily point toward two. They did tend to keep track of one another, after all. And there was only one Prince this one could be. Hell, he’d been wearing his identity like a badge, and I’d been too dense to notice.

  “Shadow,” I croaked. “You’re fucking Shadow.”

  The Gray Prince’s cowl dipped in acknowledgment. “Just so.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A Gray Prince—the Gray Prince, by some accounts. Nastiest of the nasty. Talking to me. Crap.

  And the other Gray Prince—along with Iron Degan—was on the other side of the war, with Nicco. Which put all of us lesser Kin in the middle between them.

  Double crap.

  “All right,” I said softly, “I’m impressed.” I hoped Shadow took the tremor in my voice as a sign of fatigue, but I wasn’t counting on it. “But you still haven’t answered my question: Why do you want the journal?”

  Kells stopped his pacing before his desk, but I didn’t look at him. I was focused on the shifting darkness inside Shadow’s hood.

  “You owe me an answer,” I said, leaning forward in my chair.

  “I owe you?” said Shadow.

  “The way I see it,” I said, “I’ve been dancing to your tune since the beginning of this whole mess. Tracking Larrios, fighting Sashes, getting the journal—it’s all been for you, hasn’t it?”

  The cowl dipped once.

  “And Fedim—that was you, too, wasn’t it?” I said. “You’re the one who gutted him in his shop and got me in trouble with Nicco in the first place.”

  Another dip of the cowl.

  “So yes, I think I’ve earned something,” I said. “I don’t like being used, even if it is by one of you.”

  “You talk as if you haven’t gotten anything out of it,” said Shadow.

  I laughed bitterly. “You mean besides beatings, blood, and seven years’ worth of work in Nicco’s camp down the sewers?”

  “I mean a dead assassin floating in your bedroom.”

  That caught me up short. Shadow had been watching over me? I glanced over at Kells but got no help. He looked as surprised as I was.

  “Task was out of your league,” said Shadow. “Just as the next Blade would have been. And the one after that, if you som
ehow managed to live that long. I simply took the liberty of sending a message on your behalf.”

  “On my behalf, or yours?” I said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters if it made things worse,” I said. “It matters if people think I have the resources to find and float Task on my own. What the hell am I supposed to do when they send someone even better after me and you aren’t around? Angels! Couldn’t you just leave her with her throat slit in an alley and send a fucking note?”

  “Has anyone put a Blade on you since?”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “That’s precisely the point!” said Shadow. “My removing the Blade sent a message: You have backing. My backing. And no one has tried for you since. So, say thank you and tell me where you hid the journal.”

  “I’m not yours,” I said, “backing or not. So like I said—why do you want it?”

  Shadow’s hand formed itself into a fist. “You aren’t as indispensable as you think, little Nose.”

  “Yes, he is,” said Kells. I looked over to find his arms crossed and a hard expression on his face. “Drothe is my man, not yours, and I’ll decide if he’s dispensable. You and I may have a deal, Shadow, but it doesn’t mean you can use my people however you please. You said yourself you’re playing catch-up with Solitude in Ten Ways—you’re the one who needs my organization. If you want something done, you go through me, or it doesn’t happen. The same goes for my people—you ask me. Understood?”

  I bit my tongue, not because I wanted to kiss Kells for what he was doing—I did—but because he had just told me who the other Gray Prince was—the one who had Iron Degan in her pocket and had strolled through my dreams to warn me about the journal. Now I had a name to put to the face and the voice: Solitude.

  For his part, Shadow sat silent for a long moment. Then he dipped his cowl ever so slightly. “Of course,” he said. “My apologies if I overstepped.”

  “Tell Drothe what he wants to know.”

  “Very well,” said Shadow, turning to face me. “You want to know why I want Ioclaudia Neph’s book? Because Solitude wants it. Because she’s wanted it for a while. And because if she considers it to be that important, I expect I’m better off with it in my hands than in hers.

  “Solitude’s smart. She knows if she makes an open move on Ten Ways, the other Princes will try to stop her. This cordon is too important for us to let any one person control. It’s where Isidore got his start. It’s the one cordon that has resisted control since he fell. To take Ten Ways is to achieve something only he has done. Can you imagine what it would mean for a Prince to take Ten Ways?”

  I nodded. More than a few Baldobers and Street Bosses would give the Clasp to a Prince who united Ten Ways. And if she took down Nicco and Kells in the process? The power vacuum would only add to the swell.

  “They’d be on their way to becoming the new Dark King,” I said. I hadn’t been mad.

  “Precisely,” said Shadow. “And I’m not willing to bend the knee to her, nor to anyone else. That’s what worries me. Solitude knows one or more of us will move to stop her; yet she’s going ahead, anyhow. That tells me she has an advantage—something she thinks will guarantee her taking Ten Ways. I think that something is the book.”

  I fought the urge to look away, to blink, to show any reaction at all. Shadow was more right than he knew, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. Instead, I stared directly into his cowl, forced my voice to remain steady, and asked, “So how many other Princes are involved?”

  “Right now, just Solitude and I.”

  “So if this is so important,” I said, “why all the games? Why use me instead of sending your own people?”

  “But you are ‘my people,’ ” said Shadow. “Just as you are Solitude’s, and the Dance Mistress’s, and Ash Tongue’s, too. It all depends on who is pulling the strings when. You don’t honestly think every piece of information you sifted from Nicco’s people and passed on to Kells was dredged up by your efforts alone? Did you ever consider the possibility that when you pulled strings to make Nicco’s organization less stable, someone might have been pulling your strings in turn?” A dark chuckle came from within the hood. “You, of all people, should know that the easiest way to manipulate something is from the inside. I—we—just do it at a deeper level.”

  I’d always heard this was how it was supposed to work with the Gray Princes, but there’s a difference between casual street speculation and knowing something for a fact. To hear it put so bluntly, so casually, sent a chill down my spine.

  Shadow leaned forward on the desk, exposing the sleeves of a fine charcoal gray doublet beneath his cloak. “Now it’s your turn,” he said. “Tell me about the journal.”

  I looked into that midnight cowl and was tempted—tempted to tell him everything and let someone else worry about the book and Ten Ways and the war. If I talked, if I gave Shadow the journal, it would be done—no more running, no more puzzles, no more having to balance what I suspected against what other people knew. Let the Gray Princes fight it out—they were better suited to it than I. Let him thwart Solitude; I could just walk away and go back to being a Nose.

  It was tempting, but I knew I couldn’t do it. “Don’t give that book to anyone,” Solitude had said in my dream. “Not even to me.” That didn’t fit with what Shadow was saying. If she was so intent on using it, Solitude wouldn’t have told me what she did. “I’d rather see Ioclaudia’s book lost again than in the wrong hands,” she had said. That was too big a gamble, even for someone as subtle as a Gray Prince; telling me that had raised the odds of my destroying journal too high for it to be a bluff.

  Yes, Solitude wanted the journal, I realized, but not for the reasons Shadow and I had been thinking. I remembered what Baldezar had said about Solitude and Ironius, and a chill went through me. “They want to use it against the empire.” I hadn’t quite believed it then; now was a different matter.

  “I’m waiting,” said Shadow.

  I glanced over at Kells. He was staring at me as well. No help there—or was there? How much did Kells really know? How much would he want to know?

  I put on my best resigned face and settled farther into my chair.

  “The journal,” I said as I dug out a seed, “was written by Ioclaudia Neph. She was an imperial Paragon to Stephen Dorminikos back when he was still a normal person.”

  “It’s that old?” said Kells.

  “It’s that old,” I said.

  “Have you opened it?” said Shadow.

  “Of course I have! With everyone after it, how could I not?”

  “And?”

  “I’m no Mouth, so I can’t say for sure, but the people I had look at it told me there was talk of glimmer.”

  Shadow’s hand slapped down on the desk, making the candles flicker inside their wineglasses. “I knew it! What does the glimmer deal with? Did they say?”

  “Yeah, they said.” I leaned back farther in my chair, letting the moment draw out. I looked from Shadow to Kells. I waited, then bit down hard on the seed. Kells nearly jumped at the sound. Perfect. “It’s imperial,” I said.

  “Splendid!” crowed Shadow. “I’d only half—”

  “What?!” Kells exploded, just as I’d hoped. “Imperial glimmer?” He spun toward the desk and almost climbed into Shadow’s cowl. “You said those White Sashes in the Barren were looking for a relic, not a book on forbidden magic!”

  “Relics come in all shapes and sizes,” said Shadow. “This one just happens to be more useful than most.”

  “Relics are personal items used by the emperor,” I pointed out. “This isn’t a relic. I doubt the book ever came into contact with any of the incarnations.”

  “It deals with the emperor,” said Shadow testily. “That’s close enough.”

  “Nor do relics draw the interests of imperial Paragons,” I added.

  Kells’s snowy brows descended into each other. “Paragons?”

  “I can’t imagine them
not coming after it at some point,” I said.

  “Paragons?” said Kells. “Damn it, Shadow!”

  I could almost feel the glare coming at me out of Shadow’s cowl. I smiled at him.

  “The important thing to remember,” said Shadow pointedly, “is that we have the journal. If Drothe is right, the information in there could make Nicco and Solitude nothing more than minor annoyances.”

  “And what about the empire?” said Kells. “They’re not going to just fade away.”

  “They might,” said Shadow, “if we hand them the proper scapegoat.”

  “That’d have to be a damn big scapegoat,” I said.

  “My thought exactly,” said Shadow.

  I considered. “Nicco?”

  “Solitude,” said Shadow. “She’s a bigger fish, and she’s already after the journal. All we need to do is make sure the right words reach the right ears. Then, when the time comes, we arrange for her to fall into imperial hands.”

  I laughed. “Set up a Gray Prince, just like that? Forgive me if I doubt you—even you—of being able to pull that off. But let’s say you do—she’d still talk. There’s no reason for her not to.”

  “Not if she’s dustmans.”

  “Not good enough,” I said. “I can’t believe the empire would be satisfied with one body and no book. I’ve been on the receiving end of some of their relic hunts, and this is a hell of a lot more valuable to them than a ratty old cassock.”

  “Then give them a few legitimate charred pages and a pile of bogus ash,” said Shadow. “They’ll put the pieces we give them together and come to the conclusion we want.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Frankly, I think you’re giving the empire too much credit.”

  “And I don’t think you give it, or us, enough,” said Kells, walking over to stand behind me. “Have you been by the Tower of Gonias lately? It’s still smoldering, and the Whites and Paragons dragged that Mouth out of there during Theodoi’s fifth incarnation, three hundred years ago! If they’re willing to go to the trouble of making brick burn, let alone that slowly, just to make a point, I’m willing to bet they won’t be put off by a corpse and a pile of charred paper.