The Lyre Thief

by Jennifer Fallon

  And the crown prince was a spoiled little monster. Right now, one of his father’s most trusted generals was languishing in a cell, being tortured on a daily basis, because he’d had the temerity to scold the heir to the throne about not keeping his heels down as he rode. That wasn’t the official reason the general was arrested, of course. Alaric had concocted some ridiculous story about overhearing the man plotting against the king, but everyone knew the true reason Meyrick Kabar currently resided in a dungeon was because he would tolerate no nonsense from the young crown prince of Fardohnya.

  What will he do, Naveen wondered, if the little horror ever decides he doesn’t like me?

  “What are you offering?” he inquired, feigning disinterest.

  “A safe haven,” Sophany said, sounding much more certain of herself now she had managed to rattle him a little. “I can arrange my brother, Liance, the Prince of Lanipoor, to provide an estate where you can retire after the king dies. Somewhere safe in our province. And I can arrange for you to get there in one piece. Before Alaric decides to put you to the sword along with the rest of the harem.”

  Naveen didn’t answer immediately, although he should have. He should have scoffed at her offer and sent her packing, lest he betray how much her prediction of his fate once Hablet died had affected him.

  “Well?”

  “I will give the matter my serious consideration, your highness.”

  “Then I will return to the harem,” Sophany said, “where I shall approach my sister-wife, Princess Sybill, the mother of our heir, and volunteer to aid in the care of our most precious Prince Alaric, only son to our beloved husband. It will be an honor to be in a position to influence his . . . opinions.”

  If threats were a substance that could be bottled and sold, Naveen could have gotten rich just off what was dripping from Sophany’s words. He didn’t resent her for it. Naveen admired a worthy adversary, particularly one who might be in a position to save his life someday.

  How many more politically savvy vipers like Sophany are there, lurking unseen and unsuspected in Hablet’s harem?

  “The king will announce his decision at the banquet in honor of our Hythrun guest tomorrow evening, your highness.”

  “I will expect to be invited,” she said. “Along with my daughter.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he promised. “For both of us.”

  She studied him for a moment, as if trying to determine his sincerity, and then she nodded. “Very well. I will await your . . . I mean, my king’s decision, before I write my brother about any arrangements he may need to make for your future.”

  He rose and treated her to a respectful bow. “Good morning, your highness.”

  Sophany didn’t respond. She simply turned on her heel and strode toward the door, leaving Naveen watching after her, wondering if she would return to the harem to praise him to the future king of Fardohnya or condemn him to an unfair and undoubtedly painful death.

  Probably the latter. She was right about that much. Alaric was a spoiled little monster.

  Naveen sighed and picked up his quill. There really wasn’t any decision to make. Princess Lani had offered him gold to promote her daughter, but money didn’t interest him. He’d spent a lifetime as a court’esa, so no offer of women or any other sexual perversion could entice him, as Princess Palina had found out when she suggested he put forward her daughter.

  No, none of the offers he’d received, until Sophany walked into his office, held any real attraction for him.

  Alarmingly, she had known his currency. That bothered him almost as much as her reasons for doing this. Her story about protecting her daughter from the bloodbath that would inevitably follow Hablet’s death was reasonable enough, but there had to be something more.

  He would not rest until he discovered what it was.

  Then, when the time came and Sophany betrayed him—as he was sure she was planning to do—he would have his own currency to use against her.

  Naveen picked up his pen, dipped the quill into the ink pot, tapped it on the side to shed the excess drops, and then carefully wrote the name Her Serene Highness, Rakaia of Fardohnya, into the blank space reserved for the name of the daughter Hablet was trading for unfettered access to the mountain pass at Highcastle.

  He sighed again when he realized that not only did he have to sort out a bride for Lord Branador, but, thanks to Alaric’s tantrum, he needed to find a new general somewhere, too. He’d have to put some feelers out. There were plenty of men who had the coin to buy the position. After years of dealing with Lecter Turon, word had got about that everything the king owned was for sale, one way or another.

  It was time Fardohnya learned that Naveen Raveve was in charge now.

  Things were going to change.

  Chapter

  2

  PEOPLE WOULD NOT think the life of an assassin so exciting, Kiam Miar thought as he shifted his weight from one foot to another to ease the stiffness, if they realized how much of the job involved sitting around, bored witless, waiting, chewing on a strip of venison jerky to stop a betraying stomach rumble from giving his presence away.

  He glanced up at the moon, hoping it would slip behind the clouds again before he had to move. Up here on the Burglars’ Bypass, as the roofs of Greenharbour were known, it paid to stay in the shadows. There was a truce of sorts between the assassins and the thieves of the city, but they didn’t like the idea of assassins knowing their business, any more than the assassins liked the idea of thieves knowing theirs.

  Kiam’s target was late. His instructions regarding this kill were explicit and detailed, and came—he suspected—from the target’s long-suffering wife. That was another sad fact those who romanticized the life of an assassin would be horrified to learn: by far the majority of clients who hired the guild were disgruntled wives who had come to realize life as a widow in Hythria was far more comfortable than life as a divorcée.

  This errant and soon-to-be-dead husband was a tailor named Shilton Rik. He would be at the Fullers’ Rest, as usual, by midnight, his informant had assured him, where he would drink himself into some courage before amusing himself with the house entertainment, which was, Kiam knew, a diverse selection of amateur court’esa. Far from the accomplished professionals a man like Shilton Rik could probably afford, these amateurs were usually poor country girls and boys, scratching to make a living in a large hungry city. They arrived from the provinces looking for work every spring, full of expectation and hope, expecting Greenharbour’s fabled streets to be paved with gold.

  A few months later, by the time they found their way to places like the Fullers’ Rest, those hopes and dreams were long turned to dust and they were trading their bodies for a roof over their heads and enough sustenance to keep themselves alive.

  A cloud drifted across the face of the moon, plunging Kiam into darkness once more. Down in the street a couple of drunks staggered through a puddle left over from an earlier rainstorm. The Fullers’ Rest was doing a roaring trade, all the windows but the one Kiam was watching ablaze with warm yellow light. That window lighting up was his signal. But it should have happened before now. His informant—who Kiam was quite certain was the man’s wife—seemed to know his routine intimately. It made sense that Shilton’s wife had arranged this hit. Even with the reforms the High Prince had made this past decade, divorce still favored a man in Hythria, particularly when there were children involved. And being a widow was still more socially acceptable than being a spurned wife.

  Rik was a tailor with a small but profitable business he ran with his wife in one of the better parts of the city. They weren’t rich, but they were comfortable enough for Shilton to afford whores and Madam Rik to afford an assassin. He couldn’t imagine who else would want the man dead. It was unlikely the tailoring business was so cutthroat that a competitor would use the Assassins’ Guild to have him removed, and a disgruntled customer would surely just take his business elsewhere.

  Not that it mattered. Kiam was
not privy to the name of his employer. No assassin was ever told who had contracted them for a kill.

  And he didn’t have time to dwell on the identity of his employer in any case. In the upstairs window across the street, the room was slowly filling with warm yellow light, as someone carrying a lamp moved farther into the room.

  Kiam rose to his feet. Hours ago, he’d established the best route across the rooftops to the Fullers’ Rest, and the easiest way to access the room where his unsuspecting victim was getting ready to have his way with some poor, disillusioned country girl. There was a narrow balcony outside the room—or at least a poor man’s version of one. The balcony—and the three others like it facing the street—had a wrought-iron balustrade and a landing barely wide enough to stand on. But they gave the building an air of grandeur it truly didn’t deserve—not to mention a convenient place for an assassin to land when he lowered himself down from the roof.

  It took him more than a quarter of an hour to work his way silently across to the other side of the street. It narrowed to a slender laneway closer to the wharves, making it a simple jump across the shingled rooftops from one side of the street to the other. Shouldering his knotted rope and grappling hook, Kiam ran noiselessly along the tiles, jumped across to the roof of the Fullers’ Rest, and then counted the steps he’d estimated would place him directly above the small balcony opening into the room where Shilton Rik was enjoying his last few moments of happiness.

  Once the rope was secured around the chimney, he lowered himself down, hand over hand, onto the balcony. The lock on the diamond-paned glass doors was the decorative type designed to keep only honest people out. It took only seconds before Kiam heard the faint snick as it clicked open. He pushed the door open in time to find a middle-aged, portly, and stark naked man push a terrified girl onto her back on a large four-poster bed.

  The girl saw him. Her eyes widened in terror at the sight of the black-hooded apparition coming through the window.

  That’s torn it, Kiam thought.

  He wasn’t here to fight Shilton Rik to the death. This was supposed to be a quiet assassination. He would have to move fast. Before the girl warned her client of his approach.

  Pulling out his long dagger with its raven-etched blade from his belt, he braced for a struggle as he crossed the room in three strides, mentally kicking himself for not taking measures to silence the girl first, or at least waiting until Rik was done with her before he burst in here like a rank amateur.

  But the girl did nothing to alert her customer that his death was approaching. She lay there as he pushed himself on top of her, head turned to the side, and watched Kiam as the man tore at her clothes. She said nothing, did nothing, to warn him. Her face was etched with terror and disgust, and yet she did nothing to stop what was about to happen.

  Even as Kiam grabbed Shilton Rik from behind, pulled back his head and sliced his throat open in a spray of warm blood, the girl didn’t make a sound. No scream. Not even a whimper.

  Just that wide-eyed look of terror and disgust.

  Kiam lowered Rik to the floor as the last breath gurgled out of him. Pulling off the glove of his right hand, he dipped his Assassins’ ring into the blood puddling on the threadbare rug and then pressed it into Shilton Rik’s forehead, leaving the impression of a bloody raven behind. With that taken care of, he stood up and turned to look at the witness he now had to deal with.

  “Are you going to kill me, too?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. Covered in blood and not much else, she had scrabbled back to the far corner of the bed, pulling her knees up to make herself as small a target as possible.

  Kiam took a step closer to look at her. He’d thought her a young woman when he came through the window, but on closer inspection, she didn’t appear to be much more than a child. She was caramel-skinned, making her part-Denikan or perhaps from somewhere like the Trinity Isles where the various races of this world had interbred so much that they had almost become a different race in their own right. The girl certainly wasn’t from around these parts.

  “Gods, how old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  He shook his head in wonder. It wasn’t his place to judge. Or to remedy the many ills in this world. “Well, lucky for you the person who wanted this man dead couldn’t afford to make it look like an accident. You just tell them an assassin came through the window.” Kiam pointed to the bloody raven on Shilton Rik’s forehead. “I’ve already told them the same thing.”

  She said nothing, still curled in a ball of terror in the corner of the bed. Kiam turned for the window as someone out in the hall bashed impatiently on the door. “Half-hour’s nearly up, Rik! It’s another ten rivets if you plan to stay longer.”

  Kiam didn’t have time to hang about. The Assassins’ Guild was tolerated as a necessary evil in Greenharbour, but being caught red-handed was an entirely different matter.

  “Please . . . take me with you.”

  He turned to find the girl standing behind him, dressed in her torn and blood-soaked shift. Her eyes were still terrified, but she wore a determined look.

  “I can’t take you with me.”

  “If you leave me here, I’ll die.”

  “You don’t know me, girl. For all you know, I’d take you with me, rape you, and kill you as soon as we’re outside.”

  She shook her head. “Assassins don’t kill innocent bystanders,” she said. “And you would have killed me already if you were going to.”

  “Not killing you out of hand does not equate to being willing to let you run away with me,” he told her, stepping onto the balcony. This discussion had gone on long enough. He wasn’t responsible for this child.

  “My name is Tritinka Berin,” she told him, managing a remarkable amount of dignity, given the state she was in. “I arrived in Greenharbour two days ago on my brother’s ship, the Sarchlo.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you ran away and wound up here, but it’s not my—”

  “I didn’t run away. I was shopping in the markets. Someone threw a hood over my head and dragged me here against my will to punish my brother. They told me if I didn’t want to earn my keep entertaining the guests, they’d kill me.”

  “Don’t make me come in there!” the innkeeper yelled, bashing on the door again with his fist. “You want more time, you pay more money.”

  Tritinka’s dark eyes filled with tears. “If you won’t help me, sir, will you at least get a message to my brother? He’ll pay you, if that’s what you’re worried about. But you’ll have to find him tonight,” she said, brushing away her tears. “The Sarchlo sails on tomorrow’s tide.”

  Kiam cursed, and grabbed her by the wrist. He pulled her toward the tiny balcony as he tried not to count how many types of a fool he was for buying into this. The door handle began to turn. He lifted her slight frame bodily onto the roof and then swung himself up after her, pulling the rope up in the nick of time. Below them the innkeeper bellowed in horror when he realized his customer was lying on the floor with his throat slit and there was no sign of the girl he had paid to deflower.

  Pushing Tritinka flat against the roof, he held her there as the innkeeper ran out onto the balcony, looking for the girl or his customer’s killer, obviously convinced they were one and the same. Kiam lay against the warm tiles of the roof waiting with his arm around Tritinka, still as a cat, for the man to retreat inside. He could feel her trembling, but she didn’t make a sound.

  Once he was satisfied the innkeep was no longer on the balcony, he lifted his arm from the child, placing his finger on his lips to warn her to silence. She nodded, let him help her up, and then followed him carefully up the steep slope to the narrow ridge capping at the peak of the roof. The building below was alive with shouts and people running back and forth. Someone was yelling to summon the City Watch. Kiam knew they only had moments before somebody inside the inn ran into the street and thought to look up. He glanced up at the sky. The moon still lingered behind the clouds, but the wind had picked up a
nd their cover was starting to break up.

  Still holding Tritinka by the hand, he motioned her to stay down, as much to lower her center of gravity as to remain unseen, and ran along the ridge cap with her small hand tightly gripping his until they reached the end of the building. He stepped across the small gap to the chandler’s shop next door. Barely hesitating, Tritinka jumped across after him and followed him trustingly to the end of the next building.

  The sounds of chaos and alarm at the inn faded with the distance. Another three rooftops and Kiam unfurled the rope, hooking it around the chimney, and then turned to tie the other end around the girl. She held her arms out to give him room. Kiam could smell the blood on her as he secured the rope under her armpits, although in the darkness he could only make out a dark stain on what was left of her shift. He would need to find her something else to wear before walking her through the streets of Greenharbour. He’d certainly never get near the Sarchlo and Tritinka’s brother with her covered in all that blood. At least, he was certain he knew what he would do in her brother’s place if he spied a strange man roaming the docks with his missing sister looking like that.

  Once they were down at street level, Kiam retrieved the rope and took Tritinka by the hand, a little daunted by the trust she was showing him by letting him take her anywhere. He led her behind the row of narrow terrace houses, clinging to the shadows as they walked. He glanced over the fences for a washing line that might provide something more respectable—and less bloody—for the child to wear. Most of the lines were empty, but there was one, almost at the end of the lane, that was still laden with washing. It looked as if it might have been there for a few days, which meant it was probably hung out by a slovenly bachelor rather than a house-proud wife, liable to chase them down if she caught them stealing anything.

  “Stay here,” he whispered as he reached over the gate to unlatch it.