Among Thieves totk-1

by Douglas Hulick

  “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 somehow 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.

  “You may be able to vanish if things go wrong, but we can’t. Not that well. I’m not going to tell my people to hunt down Solitude, watch half of them die in the process, and then take the imperial heat, just so you can come out of this with one less rival and a bunch of new glimmer at your fingertips.”

  Shadow stood up slowly. If it was meant to be intimidating, it worked. “It doesn’t matter what you want,” he said. “We have a deal. Solitude is in this. I’m in it. If you want to come out in one piece, you’ll follow my lead. I know how to deal with Gray Princes-do you?”

  “No, but I’m learning,” said Kells.

  “I’m sure you think you are,” said Shadow. “Now…”

  “I’m not finished,” snapped Kells. Shadow froze, and for a moment I wished Kells hadn’t decided to stand so close to me. “We cut a deal,” said Kells, “but it didn’t have anything to do with the empire or White Sashes or imperial glimmer. We agreed on three things: keeping my organization in one piece, rolling Nicco out of Ten Ways, and making sure Solitude doesn’t establish a foothold here. You stick to that, you make sure those things happen, and I’ll make sure you get the book when we’re done.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Shadow. “If I get my hands on that journal, your problems with Solitude and Nicco are over.”

  “Maybe,” said Kells. “But you promised to support me before the journal ever came up. Hell, you’re the one who came to me offering help, not the other way around. You wouldn’t have done that unless you needed me more than I need you.”

  “Believe whatever fantasy you like,” said Shadow, “but you need me, Kells. Your men can tell you-Drothe can tell you-that if I leave now, you’re doomed. Solitude has had more time to build ties, more time to lay groundwork, more time to import Mouths and get her plans in order. You’re flailing by comparison.”

  Kells stepped past me and folded his arms over his broad chest. He planted his feet, straightened his back, and spit on the floor between himself and Shadow.

  “I don’t renegotiate in the middle of a fight,” said Kells, “and have little use for cowards that do. The simple fact is, you get the book when my ass is out of the fire-not before.”

  I’m not sure what I expected-lightning to come down through the roof, Kells to be thrown about the room like a rag doll, or for the Gray Prince to simply walk over and casually eviscerate my boss-but none of those things happened. Instead, Shadow stood stone silent for a long moment, and then stalked past us.

  “We’ll finish this discussion,” he said, “after you’ve had some time to see just how bad things can become.” The door slammed shut behind him.

  Kells let out a long breath. “Well, that didn’t go as well as I would have liked.” He walked over and settled into his desk chair with a small grunt.

  “Now,” he said, leaning his head back and closing his eyes, “why don’t you tell me everything you’ve been holding back since you walked through that door? And it had better be good, because if it’s not, you and that journal will become my peace offering to Shadow.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I stumbled and caught myself on the banister beside the stairs. My left leg was numb, and my right felt like a pincushion. I ran a heavy hand over my face yet again-it still did no good.

  How many hours had I been in with Kells? Judging by the light coming in through the windows a floor below me, it was a fair number. No wonder I felt like I’d been up for days-I had been.

  I laid both of my hands on the banister and carefully guided myself down the last two steps to the landing. Then I sat on the bottom step, resting my head on my arms. It felt good, better even than the chair in Kells’s office. Of course, that seat had been uncomfortable for other reasons.

  I had told Kells what I knew about Ioclaudia’s journal: the imperial glimmer, the talk about tinkering with souls to control the magic, the hunt by the White Sashes-all of it. The only pieces I danced around were the talk with Solitude in my dream and the fact that Jelem had been the one who had looked at the journal. The first piece I didn’t want to share just yet, and the other I kept close for Jelem’s sake. Bringing him to Kells’s attention at this point would be far from a favor.

  I felt guilty. Kells had stood beside me and told Shadow to go to hell when it came to using me. Shouldn’t I return the favor by being completely up-front with him? I knew the answer, but I just hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it-not until I learned more about the deal he had cut with Shadow. Aside from our both being on the Gray Prince’s shit list, I didn’t know where my boss stood with Shadow in the grander scheme. That bothered me, especially since I was starting to figure into it.

  During my entire telling, Kells had sat unmoving, his eyes closed and his head back. He barely interrupted to ask questions.

  “Well, you certainly know how to ruin a man’s day, don’t you?” he had said when I was done.

  “You’ll pardon me if I’m not too sympathetic,” I said, “considering I walked in here to find you in Shadow’s pocket. Never mind that he seems to have been using me for Angels know how long.”

  “He’s using both of us,” said Kells. “Just as I’m trying to use him. There’s no surprise in that. And I’m not in his pocket.”

  “Oh, so where exactly does Shadow keep you, then?”

&
nbsp; Kells cracked an eyelid. “You think you’re the only one not happy with how this is turning out? Not only do I have Nicco and Solitude to contend with, but now I get to look forward to the empire knocking about Ten Ways, searching for a book on magical blasphemy. Recall what I said earlier: If the empire gets involved, we all go down.”

  “I remember,” I said, “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “No, I didn’t. Probably because I’m not sure anymore. Before you walked in here, I could have told you precisely where Shadow and I stood, but now…?” He shook his head. “He’s after more than just Solitude now.”

  “I suspect he always has been,” I said.

  “Very possible.” Kells’s hand crept up and began absently running along the edges of his mustache. “You think he’s after the same thing as Solitude? Becoming the next Dark King?”

  “Who the hell knows? I’m not even sure that’s what she’s after at this point. But Shadow? Yeah, I could see that.”

  “Is the journal safe?” said Kells.

  “For the time being.”

  “Good.” He rubbed his mustache some more. “We’ll need to get rid of it, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  Kells stared. “What do you mean, ‘oh’? That thing is a lodestone if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “It’s also the only thing that has been keeping me alive,” I said. “As long as I have Ioclaudia’s journal hidden away, Shadow, Solitude, and who knows who else won’t lay a hand on me.”

  “You think so?” Kells crossed his arms. “What would you do if someone were keeping something from you? What did you do to Athel? These are Gray Princes, Drothe. This is the empire. They won’t fuck around.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But there’s no good way out of this at the moment. The empire will lock me away for knowing about it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Shadow or Solitude dusted me on principle, once they have it in their hands. Keeping it hidden keeps me valuable. I like that.”

  “I don’t,” said Kells. “Too many people want it for too many reasons, and all of them will come sniffing around for you sooner or later. And since you’re mine, that means they’ll come to see me. That puts not just me, but the entire organization-all of us-at risk. I won’t have it.”