Thieves' World: Turning Points

by Lynn Abbey

  gods and words and Sanctuary itself. He moved into the doorway. Outside, the rain had stopped, but only in the immediate vicinity. It formed a curtain around the manor's

  front drive. Standing before the main doors was the red-clad form of Jennicandra, Mistress of the Crimson Scholars. Behind her loomed the green-mawed ape made of hewn rock. "Heliz," said Jennicandra, the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile. "Great-grandmother," said Heliz, his throat tightening. "You've caused me a lot of trouble, child," she said reproachfully.

  Her mannerisms were careful now, those of an old person. She looked like a child playacting. "I'm sorry," said Heliz, feeling his knees tremble and threaten to go out. "I didn't mean to destroy the tower. I didn't know the word was that dangerous. Don't kill me."

  The smile blossomed fully on the young/old woman's lips. "Kill you? Hardly. Not while you have that useful word in your mind."

  "But the tower?" Jennicandra laughed harshly. "What of the tower? Fifty scribes. A word that powerful is worth five hundred. I've been looking for words like that. Original words. Words of Destruction and Creation. Show me the word you learned, child. I'll be happy to leave you in this hole of a town if you just show me the word."

  She said something else, something that Heliz heard and then forgot immediately. Something that slid off his brain, leaving a muzzy residue behind. He wanted to speak, but his throat tightened at fear of his

  great-grandmother. He shook his head, more in confusion than in negation.

  Again she added something else, the extra syllable that strained at the gates of Heliz's mind. Heliz made a gasping whisper. "I'm sorry," he managed. Despite himself, he clutched at the notebook resting over his thundering heart.

  Jennicandra took another step forward. "You disappoint. All those deaths are meaningless, child, unless I get the word. Unless I get the power. It's your purpose in life. It's in your notebook, isn't it? I can take it off your body. Don't fight me, child. Your blood comes from me. You owe it to me. Give it to me. Give me the word."

  This time the syllable struck like a blade against the bounds of his mind, and the torrent came loose. He felt the sudden need to pull the small notebook out, to show his Great-grann-nanna what he did, to make her proud of him. He reached for the book.

  And something large and heavy slammed into him, knocking him against the side of the door. Something sharp broke inside Heliz's mind, and he realized that he had fallen beneath one of Jennican-dra's own words of power.

  Lumm, rubbing his shoulder, bellowed, "Use it, Heliz! Use it on her!"

  Heliz looked at the staver. "But the town…"

  "Will be my first test of power," said Jennicandra, and she shouted, "NOW, GIVE ME THE WORD!" and added her word of power. Behind her, the rock-ape bellowed in chorus.

  Heliz opened his mouth and screamed, bellowed the word of power that had been unspoken these many months. It was a short word, but charged with the power of sun and stars and earth and creation. It pulled fury with it, and detonated right where Jennicandra was standing.

  And as Heliz shouted the word, he changed it, twisting it in his mind and his throat to merge it with the diminutive form he had discovered earlier in the evening. He appended it more as a hopeful prayer than as a real attempt to control the damage.

  A bright light flashed, one that Heliz had seen once before, long ago in the tower. It blossomed outwards, encasing his great-grandmother, the rock-ape, and licking at the entrance of the manor itself. Yet it was contained, folded back upon itself by its diminutive suffix. It looked as if a massive ball of lightning had detonated among the manor houses, turning the region to brief, sudden day.

  And as suddenly as it appeared, it diminished again, collapsing like energy without matter to house it, pulling itself inwards and evaporating in a single point. The area in a fifty-foot circle was blasted black, and the stone front of the manor house was charred and blackened. All that remained of the rock-ape was a pair of roughly hewn feet, which could be imagined as being anthropoid only with a vivid imagination. Of the Great-grandmother of the

  Crimson Scholars there was no sign. The rain was falling again in the courtyard, and the thunder grumbled in the sky like a god disturbed from its slumbers.

  Lumm helped Heliz to his feet. The linguist had not realized he had collapsed. "You got her," said Lumm, self-satisfaction in his voice.

  "No, you got her," assured Lumm. "If she lived through that, she's a better thesaurus, or sorceress, or whatever, than she should be."

  Lumm thumped down the broad steps of the manor house, then turned. "You coming?"

  Heliz was quiet for a moment, wrestling with his thoughts. "Yes. Let me take you to the Unicorn. I suppose I owe you a drink."

  Lumm shook his head, then spat, "You owe me a house, linguist." He growled, "And I just hope you like working in the central courtyard, because that's where you're going to be until you pay me back."

  And with that the barrel-maker headed down the slope, listening as he walked for the footsteps of the linguist behind him.

  Raymond E. Feist. One to Go

  The flea moved.

  Jake the Rat held motionless, ignoring the irritation as the tiny bloodsucker sought out another location where he could visit more misery upon the old thief. Jake could feel the tiny parasite hop down his right calf toward his ankle, already covered in scab-capped welts. Slowly, with a patience born of a lifetime spent being patient, he moved his leg, bringing it to a point where his gnarled fingers could lash out and seize the tiny malefactor.

  "Ah ha!" he shouted in triumph as his still nimble digits struck downward, fetching up the flea between calloused forefinger and thumb. "I have you!"

  "Wot?" asked Selda.

  "Damn flea that's been biting me for the last hour. I got it!"

  Selda had been tending her knitting. She put down the two bone needles and sat back in the rickety chair she had appropriated for that purpose approximately five seconds after entering the hovel for the first time, seven years earlier. Fixing her husband with a baleful gaze she said, "Ain't that wonderful! Now you can set about catchin' the other thousand or so wot's still in residence with us."

  Ignoring her sarcasm, Jake held the tiny creature up for inspection. He moved it closer and farther away under the dim light of the lantern above the table and couldn't quite seem to get it into focus. "Damn," he muttered. "Are these fleas smaller than they used to be?"

  "No, you old fool. It's your eyes wot ain't what they was."

  Not taking his eyes from the tiny bloodsucker, he muttered, "Nothing wrong with my eyes, old woman. I can still spot a watchman a mile away." He rolled the flea between thumb and forefinger, very hard. "You've got to mess them around a bit," he said as if conducting lessons on the execution of vermin. "They've got hard shells and if you just try to squash them, they'll leap away. But if you roll them hard, it breaks their legs or something and they just sit there." He did so and deposited the flea on the table. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw the insect twitch. Deriving satisfaction from the thought that the thing might be suffering in retribution for the misery inflicted upon others, Jake hesitated a moment, then drove a bone-hard thumbnail into the wood, bisecting the tiny creature. "And there you have done with it!"

  "It keeps me relaxed while I'm waiting," he answered.

  She knew that. She knew everything about Jake. Selda and Jake had been together for thirty years. They'd even had a child together once, though the boy had run off when he was twelve. They had called the boy Jaxon. They'd heard he'd become a sailor, but didn't know if it was so. Neither had mentioned his name to the other since the day he had left. Both knew to do so would be to open the debate as to who had been responsible for the boy's leaving, and both knew that would be the end of them. So they remained silent on that one matter.

  But on any other subject, they had argued so often and so repeatedly that each could hold the argument even if the other was off somewhere. But tonight was different.

 
Jake looked over at Selda and said, "Wot? You ain't going to say something about relaxing?"

  She put down her knitting. With a scolding tone she said, "And wot good would it do? None at all. It's a sad situation we're in, in'it? And there's nothin' for it but for you to go off and get yourself killed, you old twit."

  He stood from the other chair, as he always thought of it, her chair and the other chair, and made his way around the table to where Selda sat, clutching her needles in hands so tight her knuckles showed white. "Who you callin' an 'old twit,' you old shrew?"

  She jabbed at him with the needles and shouted, "You, and you are an old twit, you old twit." Eyes rimming with tears she said, "You're going to get yourself killed, then where'll I be?"

  He easily avoided the jabbing needles and bent over her. She turned her head aside and tried to brush him away with both hands, but he would have none of it, circling her in his arms as he had tens of thousands of times in the past. "It'll be good, you'll see," he said.

  Tears ran down her cheeks and she said, "I'm frightened, old man." Suddenly she leaned into him and clung to him as if fearful of letting him go. "Must you?"

  "I must. I told you, old woman, three jobs and we'd be out of this pest hole."

  Showing the resiliency he had known for most of his adult life, she pulled away and shouted, "Aye, and whose bit of thunderous wisdom was it brought us to this pest hole, this 'Sanctuary,' out here at the edge of nowhere, in the first place?"

  "Now, don't you go starting up with me on that, old woman," he admonished.

  "We should get out of the Empire, he says," she mimicked his voice. "We should head out to Sanctuary. I hear it's lively out there, with all manner of people wot never been this far east before. Easy pickin's for the likes of us, he says. No Imperial thief-catchers chasing us for bounty. No merchant's guild hiring assassins to stalk us in the night, he promises. No revengeful nobles sending soldiers out by the dozens to cut us down in the city square like bowmen slaugh-terin' lambs in a pen.

  "No, he says to me, it'll be fun, lots of interestin' folks, and some easy days." She held up her hands to describe the hovel in which they lived, one table, two chairs, a lamp, a tiny brazier over which they cooked their meager food, and a sleeping roll on the floor they had shared for the last seven years. It was located at the darkest end of an alley abutting a wall on the other side of which lay the city's busiest slaughter house. "Does this look like easy days?"

  "An' let's not forget the Cult of Dyareela wot's running around killin' people 'cause they think it's holy. Lovely bunch they are. Then there's that lot over at the Vulgar Unicorn."

  He let his head sag, knowing that he wasn't going to get any peace until she had finished her rant.

  "You've got sorcerers who'll turn you into a toad for a giggle. People who are I-don't-know-what carvin' each other up for all manner of odd thingies, runes, books, gems, and the like, except I think a couple of them are already dead and you can't carve them up unless they want you to, but they do get by with having pieces fall off now and again! Freebooters and rogues, murderers and scoundrels, and some of 'em aren't even human, I wager! And the way they talk—can't hardly understand a word. They're all foreigners!

  "And you've got more thieves in the Maze than who've been hung on the Imperial Gallows in Ranke since the first Emperor was a pup! You can't bend over to pick up one of their greasy little coins without bumpin' your head with a thief, and your arse with another behind you. You pick a man's pocket and discover he's the fellow who'd picked yours five minutes before!"

  He'd heard the rant nearly every day since the end of the first year after they'd arrived in Sanctuary and was always astonished at how little it varied, though the part about Chief Arizak's bodyguards had only been added about a year and a half ago. He resisted the temptation to join in as she finished—

  "And for this misery, what do I get? Do I get riches and good food, my ease as servants stand idly by waiting for my merest whisper to do my bidding? No, I get this!" And as always, she stood up, with her arms outstretched on the word "this!"

  Squelching a sigh of relief the last of the rant was now over, he stepped before Selda and put his arms around her. "Hush, old woman. I know you're frightened. But I told you, three more jobs and we're done with Sanctuary. I boosted the Jade Cat from the royal caravan just as it left, to square my debt to Bezul the changer, and to get these!" He showed her a leather packet, the contents of which were known to her. "Then I lifted six full purses in one night on the first day of the tourney to give to the caravan master for passage back into the Empire and to give to Pel Garwood, to concoct a mix for my chest, so I can do tonight's job without a coughing attack."

  "We've already paid our passage. Why another job?" she asked him for the uncounted time.

  Patient as always he answered her as he always had, "Because we have passage only to Ranke, and I want enough after getting there that we can live quietly in something better than this." His hand described the hovel.

  "But Lord Shacobo, the magnate?"

  "He's the obvious choice." "Then why has no one has ever boosted his place?"

  "An' they hung him for it! Or do you think that was a success, just having gotten in for a bit and wanderin' about?"

  "Woman, I've told you all this before. The night before Hetwick danced the gallows, his woman came to see him in his cell and he told her something, something she told me for a price, and it's the reason I'll succeed where Hetwick didn't."

  "Oh, and you're a man of vision and genius and Hetwick was just another fool, is that it?"

  "Woman, remember who was the greatest thief in the Empire!"

  "You old fool, most nights you weren't even the greatest thief in the room!" She held up her hand before his nose and wiggled her fingers. "These beauties boosted a fine number of fat purses in their day, you can't deny it, can you?"

  He hugged her fiercely and said, "You did that, old girl, you did that."

  "You're not going to tell me what it was Hetwick's woman told you, are you?"

  "No. You'll just worry over it." He kissed her cheek. "You remember wot I told you?"

  "Yes," she said with frown. "I 'member wot you tol' me. I wait here until the final tournament starts. Then I take what I got"—she waved to a small bundle of personal goods—"and gets to that little inn out by the old ford across the White Foal. Wait there until you come by, just afore dawn."

  "I talked to Landers—he runs the Hungry Plowman—and he'll let you bed down under a table in the commons for a padpol or two."

  "Then we makes for the fields where they're unloading caravans 'til the tourney stands come down—which we won't be here to see, will we?—and head out to Ranke at first light."

  "Remember, as my old mentor said, 'Timing is everything.' "

  "Mentor? You never had no mentor. You 'prenticed with Shooky the Basher. Not much craft in bonkin' a mark over the head wif a club and rifling his purse as he lies on the ground moanin'. Got himself hung, remember?"

  "True, but he knew a thing or do, did old Shooky. And he was right about timing; if he'd been out that door after he murdered that bloke one minute earlier, they never would have hung him."

  He grabbed up a shoulder bag from a peg by the door and slipped his head through the noose. Picking up the small leather package from the table, he slipped it into a pocket sewn into the inside of his shirt. He adjusted his rope belt, as if concerned for his appearance, and said, "That's it, then. Remember, something odd's about to happen this afternoon, but it'll be all right. Don't worry about it. Just wait until it's time to go, then head for the Hungry Plowman. I got to go now."

  Without another word he slipped through the door and into the alley.

  As Jake anticipated, the streets were deserted. The final day of the tournament was on high, and if he judged his timing rightly, the crowd was at its maximum capacity this moment, with Master Soldt, acknowledged the greatest swordsman in Sanctuary, if not most of the known world, facing the mysteriou
s woman called Tiger. Jake had chanced being spied by the local guardsmen, who might or might not have noticed him—but why take unnecessary chances?—just to see the previous day's matches. The woman was unlike any Jake had ever seen and Jake had seen a lot of women in a lot of different places, from a lot of different places. Under all that armor she looked lithe and slender, and she was a tiny thing. Wonder if she was pretty? he absently added.

  Now she'd been something, he thought with a smile, as he scampered down a twisting street leading through the Maze. Not a thin girl, but not thick either. Just right. Brown hair, again not too fair or dark. Clear blue eyes and an odd bit of a nose, just slightly too big for her face, but again not by too much. He liked it. He had liked her first time he put eyes on her. She must have liked him, as well, for they were in his bed that first night, and she'd been in it every night since for thirty years.

  Not that he didn't look at other women. He was a bit past fifty years, but he wasn't dead. He still appreciated a slender leg, rounded rump, or a wicked smile. But no matter how tempting another woman looked, he'd still not found one to match his old Selda.

  But as fascinating as the woman called the Tiger was, his reason for attending the semi-final bouts was to see where Lord Shacobo would be. As hoped for, while the otherwise penurious trader might stint in most things, he liked the reflected glory of being located near the great and near-great. His box was the first to the left of the true nobility and must have cost him enough to have made him wince when he paid over the fee to the stadium managers. Jake was certain Shacobo would be back in that box today.

  For an absent moment, Jake wondered at how much the Rankans were paying for that thing they had built in the old market and Caravan Square. It was no Imperial arena, but it took a lot of men and lumber to build the damn thing. Seemed a shame to start tearing it down tomorrow.