Among Thieves totk-1

by Douglas Hulick

  Baldezar opened his mouth, shut it, and cleared his throat. “A code, you say? Intriguing.” He laid the strip out on his desk, studying it. After a minute or so, his hands stopped shaking. Baldezar rotated the strip a few times, looking at the markings from all angles, and then turned it blank side up. He ran his fingers over the paper and hemmed to himself. Then he sat back.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  Baldezar held up his hands placatingly. “It’s not any language I recognize, if it is a language at all. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the markings. Nothing indicates a code or message of any sort.”

  I stood up and leaned over the table. “There’re pystos and immus right there,” I said, pointing. “And what about the repeating marks. .. here… and here, and here again? And these two here and here. Those might be fragments of common cephta.”

  “Not everyone uses imperial ideographs for writing, Drothe.”

  No, just most of the people in the empire. “Okay, so maybe they’re those things the western Client Kingdoms use for writing…”

  “Letters?”

  “Right, letters.”

  Baldezar let out a long sigh. “Perhaps. Or they might be a portion of an illumination exercise. Or unsanded errors. Or an attempt to use one of those useless new printing machines. But I see no traces of any cipher here, Drothe. What you have is a scrap from some scribe’s rubbish.” He flicked the paper. “Hardly worth threatening anyone over,” he added as he began to crumple the slip into a ball.

  I held out my hand. “All the same…”

  Baldezar stopped, looked at the paper, and then held it out in his palm. I took the slip and put it back into my ahrami pouch. When I looked up, he was studying me.

  “You’re convinced the paper is that important?” said Baldezar.

  Hell, no. It could have been a scrap, a pipe taper, even a bit of trash that had fallen to the bottom of Athel’s bag. But it was also the only thing I had gotten from Athel that hadn’t come to me under duress. Even with his last breath, Athel could have lied, and I needed something to confirm or deny his story. The paper was the best lead I had, no matter how pathetic that lead might be.

  So naturally, when Baldezar questioned the paper’s importance, I lied.

  “Positive,” I said.

  The scribe began drumming his fingers on the table. “It occurs to me,” he said slowly, “that I may be able to impose on one of my colleagues who know more about these things than I. It would cost a bit, and I would need the ‘document’ in question to show him, of course, but it might provide you with some answers.”

  I could tell it pained him to admit anyone might know more about a subject than he did, let alone that he needed to consult them. Good.

  “Tempting, but no,” I said. “The paper stays with me.” A thought stuck me. “Who is this ‘colleague’?”

  He hesitated a moment too long before answering. “No one you would know.”

  I regarded the Jarkman, smiling slightly as I did so. Was he trying to keep me from going to his friend on my own, or had he been hoping to up the price for the consultation and take a cut of the profits himself? Either way, I’d likely end up paying a steep price for little gain.

  “Nice try,” I said. Baldezar’s eyebrows rose in surprise. I waved away the beginnings of his protestations, yawned and stretched in the chair. “No games,” I said. “I’m too tired for games. Either you help me or you don’t.”

  Baldezar stared at me for a long, hard moment. Then, without taking his eyes off me, he called out, “Lyconnis!”

  I heard the large scribe thumping quickly up the steps and along the walkway to his master’s office. He wasn’t quite breathing heavily when he entered the room.

  “Yes?” he said, ducking his head toward Baldezar.

  “Drothe has some garbage he wants you to look at. He thinks it may be a cipher of some sort.”

  “A cipher?” said the scribe. If his master hadn’t been here, I expect he would have rubbed his hands together in delight; as it was, the excitement that came over him was practically tangible. “May I?”

  I sent a quizzical look at Baldezar even as I pulled out the strip and handed it to Lyconnis.

  “Lyconnis here has made a study of secret messages and early imperial spymasters,” said Baldezar drily. He sniffed. “Imagine my surprise at it suddenly proving useful.”

  Lyconnis bit his lip at his master’s rebuke and bent over the slip of paper. He manipulated and examined it in a manner that was fast becoming familiar to me. He frowned. “Where did you get this?”

  I crossed my arms and stayed silent.

  Lyconnis blushed. “Of course. Excuse me for asking. You noticed the cephta for pystos and immus, I take it?” he said. I nodded. Lyconnis held the paper up to the light again, then shrugged and handed it back to me. “There might be something there, but I think it’s more likely a bit of scrap of some sort. Is it important?”

  “Life and death,” I said, thinking of Athel. Lyconnis’s face became solemn. I smiled despite myself at that, wondering if the scribe was more worried for me, or for the person who had had the paper. Likely both.

  “How about someone named Ioclaudia?” I said.

  “Who?” said Baldezar.

  I turned back to the master scribe. Had he been peering at me? “Ioclaudia,” I repeated.

  “Outside of some of the more obscure histories, no, I’ve never heard of anyone by that name. Lyconnis?”

  Lyconnis shook his head. “No,” he said. He smiled timidly at me. “Not anyone living in the last three centuries, anyhow.”

  “The way my morning has been going,” I said as I rose, “that doesn’t surprise me.” I nodded to Baldezar, gave a respectful bow to Lyconnis-mainly to irritate his master-and headed out of the shop.

  On a normal day, it was a short walk from Baldezar’s to my home; today, it took just as long, but felt like five times the distance. The sun seemed brighter, the crowds denser, the streets dirtier. I didn’t have the energy to deal with any of them.

  By the time I arrived at the apothecary’s shop I lived above, I was little more than a shambling mass of dulled senses. I let out a small sigh of relief. For a moment, I considered going into the shop to pester Eppyris for some ahrami, but the thought of my disheveled, lumpy mattress won out. I began moving toward the stairwell.

  “Nose.”

  The voice came from somewhere far, far away-maybe ten whole feet behind me. Turn around? No, ignore him instead; he’d go away.

  “Hey, Nose!”

  Still there? Angels, this person couldn’t take a hint! I made an eloquent, sincere, and highly profane gesture without turning, and continued on my shuffling way.

  “Dammit,” said the voice. Something heavy laid itself on my shoulder and spun me around.

  Habit and adrenaline kicked in. As I turned, I let the small dagger (the poisoned one) drop from my wrist sheath into my left palm. At the same time, my right hand sought out my rapier.

  There were two of them and they were big-obelisk big, blot-out-the-sun big-and they were good.

  One blocked my left arm and took away my dagger, a bored look on his face. The other put his hand on my right wrist and stopped the rapier in middraw.

  I knew them.

  “Niccodemus wants to see you, Nose,” said Salt Eye. “Now.”

  Chapter Four

  In the “argot of the underworld,” as Baldezar would no doubt call it, I am what is referred to as a Nose. This means I make a living by sticking myself in where I don’t belong, sniffing around for dirt, and generally making a nuisance of myself. I’m an information broker, and I gather what I can by almost any means I can: paid informants, bribes, eavesdropping, blackmail, burglary, frame-ups… and even, on rare occasions, torture-whatever it takes to get the story.

  That’s what sets a Nose apart from a run-of-the-mill rumormonger: We not only collect the pieces; we also put them together. Any Mumbler can sell you a rumor for
the right price; but if you want to know the why behind the rumor, when and where things are coming together, and how it got started in the first place, you go to a Nose. Noses don’t just gather whispers off the street-we sift and assemble them, putting together the pieces most Kin miss. We don’t just find out something is happening-we find out why it’s happening in the first place.

  And then, we sell the information.

  Whom you sell it to depends on what kind of Nose you are. If you’re a Wide Nose, you work the street and sell what you learn to the highest bidder, pure and simple. It’s dangerous work, since not everyone wants you sharing what you learn, but a smart Nose knows how to hold just enough information back to keep people from bothering him.

  Long Noses, on the other hand, keep their heads down and their information tight. They ply their trade by infiltrating a rival crime lord’s organization and feeding information back to their real boss. Being a Long Nose takes that special mixture of guts and stupidity usually reserved for mongooses and imperial tax collectors. You typically don’t find out someone’s doing the Long Nose until he turns up floating in the harbor.

  The third kind of Nose is the Narrow Nose. That’s what I do for Nicco-keep tabs on his people, find out who is or isn’t cheating him, and generally solve minor problems before they get big. It doesn’t exactly make me popular with my fellow Kin, but it does give me something the other two types of Noses don’t have-backing. If anyone wants to come after me, he has to think about what Nicco will do to him in return. That’s not a bad place to be. However, like everything else, it has its trade-offs, one of which is that I have to answer to Nicco-a lot.

  It’s that last part that comes back to haunt me, usually at the worst possible times.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened, and I was ushered into the office by the two Arms. It was a bare-bones affair: a desk, two chairs, four blank walls, and a small window looking out onto the street. A wooden platter with the remnants of Nicco’s breakfast sat on the desk, giving the room a greasy, meaty smell. Two men were waiting in that smell.

  Nicco was standing at the window, heavy hands clasped behind him. I blinked at the beam of sunlight streaming in, but didn’t look away. That would have been disrespectful.

  In his prime, Nicco had been a slab of bone and muscle, easily big enough to make two of me. Now, he was a late-afternoon shadow of himself-still big, still strong, but losing some of his harder edges. Jowls were beginning to gather under his jaw, and more of the meat on his frame came from food than from fight. Gray smudges had settled under his eyes, making them look haggard in the wrong light. His hair was thinning. But even aging, Niccodemus Alludrus was harder than most men. He’d proved as much three months ago, when he broke an assassin’s back even as the garrote had tightened around his neck. No one questioned whether Nicco still had what it took.

  The other man in the room stood leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, silver rings glittering on his hands and in his ears. Long and thin, he had a sharpness about him-in his face, his clothes, his mind. His name was Rambles, and he was one of Nicco’s senior street bosses. But whereas Nicco favored the lead pipe when it came to solving problems, Rambles took after the stiletto. By all accounts, Rambles and I should have gotten along famously-similar approaches, kindred spirits, and all that crap. Instead, we managed to make oil and water look tight.

  Neither man seemed in a particularly good mood. I made it unanimous.

  Nicco spoke without turning toward me. “Drothe, good of you to come. Sit down.”

  I sat. Behind me, I could hear the Arms taking up positions on either side of the door. Between them and Rambles, this wasn’t a good sign. Nicco and I usually met alone; he didn’t believe in anyone getting information before he did.

  “I’m not used to waiting two days for people,” said Nicco.

  I sat up straighter. Two days? Shit. Mendross hadn’t mentioned the call had come yesterday. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up. I slid a seed into my mouth.

  “I was in the middle of another dodge when I got word,” I said. “I didn’t realize you’d been waiting.”

  “Way I hear it, you were already done with the smuggler when you got word.”

  I blinked. How the hell did Nicco know about Athel? I’d gone to a lot of trouble to keep that job hush.

  Oh. Of course.

  “Shatters,” I said.

  “That Agonyman had a few things to say about you,” said Nicco, still looking out the window. “None of them good.”

  “That sadistic bastard is just mad because I…”

  Nicco held up his meaty hand. “I don’t give a crap about your side work, Drothe. As long as I get my cut, I’m happy. What I do give a crap about is my people not doing their job.”

  It wasn’t hard to figure out that “people” meant me. “Look,” I said, “I’m late and I apologize. Sincerely. I didn’t know you’d been waiting-”

  Nicco spun toward me. “Screw the waiting!” he bellowed. “I shouldn’t have needed to call you in, Drothe. If you’d been doing your job, instead of dicking around after relics, I’d have heard about Ten Ways two days ago. As it is, I’ve been having to get word from the street. I shouldn’t have to listen to the fucking street, Drothe-that’s what I pay you to do.”

  “Ten Ways?” I said. I sucked on the seed in my mouth and ran through everything Mendross had told me about the cordon earlier, then through everything I’d heard about it in the last two months. Nothing important surfaced. “Why the hell are you worried about what’s happening in Ten Ways?”

  “The street,” said Rambles.

  I looked over at him. “Was I talking to you?”

  Rambles smiled coolly. “The street says someone’s planning on making a move against Nicco down in Ten Ways.”

  “ ‘The street’?” I said. “What the hell do you know about listening to the street?”

  “I have ears,” said Rambles.

  “Yeah, I can see them from here. Nice jingle.”

  “Word is it’s serious.”

  “Serious,” I said. “All right. Then answer me a couple of questions, O Sage of the Streets. Did you run this by anyone else? Maybe another Nose, or someone in the cordon? Did you drag your ass down there and check it yourself? Did you stop to consider this might just be a rumor? Or did you come running the moment you heard it?”

  Rambles pushed himself away from the wall. “I don’t need a Nose to tell me how to work the street!” he snarled.

  “Of course you don’t,” I said. I turned back to Nicco. “He’s full of crap.”

  “Why?” said Rambles. “Because you don’t agree with me?”

  I made a show of crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair. The light from the window was playing hell with my exhausted eyes, and I could feel a nasty headache coming on, but I smiled benignly nonetheless.

  “Answer him,” said Nicco.

  “Why?” I said. “If Rambles wants to believe everything he hears on the street, that’s his business. I don’t give free lessons to the help.”

  Nicco took a step. The floor creaked beneath him. “I said, answer him.”

  I bit down hard on the ahrami in my mouth. The crack of the seed was audible in the room.

  “Listen,” I said, starting to get annoyed. I’d been dragged in here for this? “This is bullshit. One person gets leaned on, and suddenly it’s a move against you? Think about it. This is how Ten Ways works. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool. If Rambles wants to-”

  For a big man, Nicco could move fast. I didn’t have time to flinch before he’d taken a step and backhanded me across the face.

  The blow sent me halfway out of my chair and filled my head with a ringing sound. For a moment, my cheek was numb-then the pain made its way inside. I felt hands grab my shoulders and haul me back into the chair. At first I thought it was Nicco, but when I saw him standing in front of me, I realized the two Arms at the door hadn’t stayed in the room for show. They were behind me, leaning down
on my shoulders, holding me in place.

  I worked my jaw, tasted blood. I could feel the liquid starting to slip out of my mouth and into my beard. My cheek felt half the size of my face. If that weren’t enough, the headache that had been threatening moments ago was now in full, agonizing bloom.

  Out of habit, my hand reached for the herb wallet at my belt. There would be painkillers there-waxed packets full of powders and leaves and unguents, maybe a little Saint’s Balm for my cheek…

  One of the Arms stopped me before I could reach it.

  “Careful,” said Nicco. He was rubbing the hand that had hit me. “Be careful here, Drothe.” He leaned forward, putting his face close to mine. I noticed he had had onions with breakfast. “You know why you got that?”

  I nodded and slowly retrieved my hand.

  “Because you agree with Rambles?” I said.

  “In part. And?”

  “And because I indirectly called you a fool?”

  Nicco’s fist drove into my stomach. I started to double over, but the Arms hauled back on my shoulders, arresting the movement. I sat there, gulping for air, my body trying to convulse in on itself. I decided that if I threw up, I was going to aim for Nicco’s shoes.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Nicco, straightening up. “And?”

  He waited while I gasped and gagged. Finally, when I could move enough air to talk, I said, “And because I didn’t answer him the first time you told me to.”

  “The first two times I told you,” corrected Nicco. “You don’t want to go for three.”

  I nodded weakly and took a deep, ragged breath. There was definitely something going on here-Nicco might be a violent bastard, but he didn’t usually knock me around for arguing with him. Something was bothering him.

  I blinked and tried to clear my head. Between the pain and my lack of sleep, I wasn’t exactly putting the pieces together as well as I might.