Thieves World tw-1

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Shive stared after the customs inspector. An Aurveshan raised in Sanctuary and now employed by their mutual conqueror, Ranke. As well as by an informal league of Changers and Sanctuary's foremost thieves; those so successful they employed other thieves. With a distinct curl of his lip - a cultivated artificial manoeuvre - and a brush of his double-curled left moustachio, Shive returned his attention to the prying of a nice ruby from its entirely too recognizable setting.

  Just now Cusharlain's prowling the Maze was in service of still another employer, for he was an ambitious and ever-hungry man. An amenable man, to opportunities for profit and new contracts. Today he was merely collecting information about the former apprentice ofCudget Swearoath, who had been swung shortly after the new Prince-Governor came out from Ranke to 'whip this Thieves' World of a town into shape'. Above bribery, beyond threat, the (very) young ass actually meant to govern Sanctuary! To clean it up! Young Kadakithis, whom they called Kittycat!

  So far he had angered the priesthood and every thief and Changer in Sanctuary. And a good three-fifths of the taverners. And even a number of the garrison soldiers, with those baby-clean, revolting competent Hell Hounds of his. Some of the old villa-dwellers thought he was just wonderful.

  Probably wets his bed, Cusharlain thought with a jerk of his head - at the same time as he expertly twitched his robe's hem away from the touch of a legless beggar. Cusharlain knew very well that the fellow's legs were single-strapped up under his long, long, tattered coat. Well, and well. So one boy of nineteen or twenty, a thief, hated another, a half-brother of the Emperor sent out here because it was the anus of the Empire, good and far from the Rankan imperial seat! This the customs inspector had learned today, while gathering information for his secretive and clandestine employer. Hanse, Hanse. In all his life this Hanse had held regard for one person other than his cocky self: Cudget Swearoath. Respected senior thief. And Cudget had been arrested, which certainly would not have happened in the old days. The days BDP, Cusharlain thought; Before this Damned Prince! Far more incredibly, if there could be grades of incredibility, Cudget had been hanged!

  Prince Stupid!

  'Ah, the lad knows he can't hope to do injury on the prince,' someone had told the night proprietor of the Golden Lizard, who had told Cusharlain's old friend Gelicia, proprietor of the popular House of Mermaids. 'He schemes to steal from the very Prince-Governor, and make a quick large profit in the doing.'

  Cusharlain stared at her. 'This young gamecock means to try to rob the very palace?' he said, feeling stupid instantly; so she'd said, yes.

  'Don't scoff, Cusher,' Gelicia said, waving a doughy hand well leavened with rings. This noon she was wearing apple-green and purple and lavender and mauve and orange, all in a way that exposed a large portion of her unrivalled bosom, which resembled two white cushions for a large divan and which Cusharlain was singularly uninterested in viewing.

  'If it can be done, Shadowspawn'll do it,' she said. 'Oh, go ahead, tip yourself some more wine. Did you hear about the ring he tugged from under Corlas's pillow - while Corlas's head was on it, sleeping? You know, Corlas the camel-dealer. Or've you heard tell of how our boy Hanse dumb up and stole the eagle off the roof of Barracks Three for a lark?'

  'I wondered what had happened to that!'

  She nodded wisely with a trembling of chin and a flashing wing of earrings whose diameter was the same as his wine-cup - which was of silver. Her wine-cup, that is; the one he was using. 'Shadowspawn,' she said, 'as Eshi is my witness. Had a prodigal offer from some richie up in Twand, too - and do you know Hanse wouldn't take it? Said he liked having the thing. Pisses on it every morning on rising, he says.'

  Cusharlain smiled. 'And ... if it can't be done? Reaching the palace, I mean.'

  Gelicia's shrug imparted to her bosom a quake of seismic proportions. 'Why then Sanctuary will be minus one more cockroach, and no one'll miss him. Oh, my Lycansha will moon for a while, but she'll soon be over it.'

  'Lycansha? Who's Lycansha?'

  Nine rings flashed on Gelicia's hands as she sketched a form in the air exactly as a man would have done. 'Ah, the sweetest little Cadite oral-submissive you ever laid eyes on, who fancies that leanness and those midnight eyes of his, Cusher. Like to ... meet her? She's at liberty just now.'

  'I'm on business, Gelicia.' His sigh was carefully elaborate.

  'Asking about our little Shadowspawn?' Gelicia's meaty face took on a businesslike expression, which some would have called crafty-furtive.

  'Aye.'

  'Well. Whoever you're reporting to, Cusher - you haven't talked to me!'

  'Of course not, Gelicia! Don't be silly. I haven't talked with anyone with a name, or an address, or a face. I enjoy my ... relationship with some of you more enterprising citizens' - he paused for her mirthful snort - 'and have no wish to jeopardize it. Or to lose the physical attributes necessary to my availing myself of your dear girls from time to time.'

  Her snickering laugh rose and went on up to whoops about the time he reached the street, assuring him that eventually the successful Gelicia had got his parting joke. Red Lanterns was a quiet neighbourhood this time of day, after the sweeping up of the dust and tracks of last night's customers. Now sheets were being washed. A few deliveries made. A couple of workmen were occupied with a broken door-hasp at a House down the street. Cusharlain squinted upwards. The Enemy, a horrid white ball in a horrid sky going the colour of turmeric powder laced with saffron, was high, nigh to passing noon. One-Thumb should be stirring himself about now. Cusharlain decided to go and have a talk with him, too, and maybe he could get his report made by sunset. His employer did not seem as long on patience as on funds. The customs inspector of a fading city whose chief business was theft and the disposal of its product had learned the former, and was ever at work on increasing his share of the latter.

  'Did what?' the startlingly good-looking woman said. 'Roaching? What's roaching mean?'

  Her companion, who was only a little older than her seventeen or eighteen years, stiffened his neck to keep from looking anxiously around. 'Sh - not so loud. When do cockroaches come out?'

  She blinked at the dark, so-intense young man. 'Why - at night.'

  'So do thieves.'

  'Oh!' She laughed, struck her hands together with a jangling of bangles - gold, definitely - and touched his arm. 'Oh, Hanse, I know so little! You know just about everything, don't you.' Her face changed. 'My, these hairs are soft.' And she left her hand on that arm with its dark, dark hairs.

  'The streets are my home,' he told her. 'They birthed me and gave me suck. I know quite a bit, yes.'

  He could hardly believe his luck, sitting here in a decent tavern out of the Maze with this genuinely beautiful Lirain who was ... by the Thousand Eyes and by Eshi, too, could it be? - one of the concubines the Prince-Governor had brought over from Ranke! And she's obviously fascinated with me, Hanse thought. He acted as if he sat here in the Golden Oasis every afternoon with such as she. What a coincidence, what great good fortune to have run into her in the bazaar that way! Run into her indeed! She had been hurrying and he'd been turning, glancing back at one of those child-affrighters of Jubal's, and they had slammed together and had to cling to each other to avoid falling. She had been so apologetic and in seeming need to make amends and - here they were, Hanse and a palace conky unguarded or watched, and a beauty at that - and wearing enough to support him for a year. He strove to be oh so cool,

  'You certainly do like my gourds, don't you.'

  'Wha-'

  'Oh, don't dissemble. I'm not mad. Really, Hanse. If I didn't want 'em looked at I'd cover 'em in high-necked homespun.'

  'Uh ... Lirain, I've seen one other pearl-sewn halter of silk in my life, and it didn't have those swirls of gold thread, or so many pearls. I wasn't this close, either.' Damn, he thought. Should have complimented her, not let her know my interest is greed for the container!

  'Oh! Here I am, one of seven women for one man and bored, and I thought you were
wanting to get into my bandeau, when what you really want is it. What's a poor girl to do, used to the flatteries of courtiers and servants, when she meets a real man who speaks his real thoughts?'

  Hanse tried not to let his preening show. Nor did he know how to apologize, or to fancy-talk beyond the level of the Maze. Besides, he thought this pout-lipped beauty with her heart-shaped face and nice woman's belly was having some fun with him. She knew that pout was irresistible!

  'Wear high-necked homespun,' he said, and while she laughed, 'and try not to look that way. This real man knows what you're used to, and that you can't be interested in Hanse the roach!'

  Her expression became very serious. 'You must not have access to a mirror, Hanse. Why don't you try me?'

  Hanse fought his astonishment and made swift recovery. With prickly armpits and outward confidence, he said, 'Would you like to take a walk, Lirain?'

  'Is there a more private room at the end of it?'

  Holding her gaze as she held his, he nodded.

  'Yes,' she said, that quickly. Concubine of Prince Kadakithis! 'Could anything as good as this bandeau be bought in the bazaar?'

  He was rising. 'Who'd buy it? No,' he said, puzzled at the question. i' -

  'Then you must buy me the best we can find after a short search.' She chuckled at the sight of his stricken face. The cocky creature thought she was a whore, to charge him some trifle like any girl! 'So that I can wear it back to the palace,' she said, and watched understanding brighten that frightening yet sensuous pair of onyxes he wore for eyes, all hard and cold and wary. She slid her hand into his, and they departed the Golden Oasis.

  'Of course I'm sure. Bourne!' Lirain twitched off the blue-arabesqued bandeau of green silk Hanse had bought her, and hurled it at the man on the divan. He grinned so that his big brown beard writhed. 'He has such needs He is never relaxed, and wants and needs so badly, and so wants to be and to do. He is so impressed with who or rather what I am, and yet he would deny under torture that I was anything but another nice tumble. You and I both well know about low-borns who hunger for far more than food! He is completely taken in and he'll be the perfect tool. Bourne. My agent assured me that he is a competent sneak-thief, and that he wants to rob and gain a leg on Prince Kittycat so badly he can taste it. I saw that, right enough. Look, it's perfect!'

  'A thief. And competent, you say.' Bourne scratched his thigh under the tunic of his Hell Hound's uniform. He glanced around the apartment she occupied on nights when the prince might come - hours from now. 'And he has a valuable halter of you now, to sell. Perhaps to brag about and get you into trouble. That kind of trouble ends in death, Lirain.'

  'You find it hard to admit that I a woman - have accomplished this, love? Look here, that gourd-holster was stolen today in the market-place. Sliced through in back and snatched off, in a single act. Some child of about thirteen, a dirty girl who ran off with it like a racing dromedary. I did not tell anyone because I so hated its loss and am so mortified.'

  'All right. Maybe. That's not bad - forget the part about its being sliced in back, lest it turn up whole. Hmm - I guess it won't. Likely perfectly good silk will be dumped while the pearls and gold thread are sold. And how competent was he at the couching, Lirain?'

  Lirain looked to the heavens. '0 Sabellia, and we call Thee the Sharp-Tongued One! Men! Plague and drought. Bourne, can't you be more than a man? He was ... fair. That's all. I was on business. We are on business, love. Our assignment for those "certain interested nobles" back in Ranke - my hind leg, it's the Emperor himself, worried about his half-brother's pretty golden-haired magnetism! - is to embarrass His pretty golden-haired Highness K-adakithis! He's been doing that well enough all by himself! Trying to implement civilized law in this roach-nest of a town! Continuing to insist that temples to Savankala and Sabellia have to be mightier than the one to the Ils these people worship, and that Vashanka's must be equal to Ils's. Priests hate him and merchants hate him and thieves hate him - and thieves make this town go!'

  Bourne nodded - and demonstrated his strength by drawing a fifteen-inch dagger to clean his nails.

  Lirain tossed her girdle of silver links on to a pile of cushions and idly fingered her navel. 'Now we provide the finishing touch. There will never be a threat to the Emperor from this pretty boy's supporters again! We help Hanse the roach into the palace.'

  'After which he is absolutely on his own,' he said, pointing with the dagger. 'We've got to be uncompromised.'

  'Oh,' she said flaunting, 'I shall be a-couching with His Highness! The while, Hanse steals his Rod of Authority: the Savankh of Ranke, given him personally by the Emperor as symbol of full authority here! Hanse will wish to negotiate a private, quiet trade with Kittycat. Rod for a fat ransom, and his safety. We will be busily seeing that word gets around. A thief broke into the palace and stole the Savankh! And the Prince-Governor is the laughing stock of the capital! He'll either rot here - or, worse still, be recalled in disgrace.'

  The big man lounging so familiarly on her divan nodded slowly. 'I do have to point out that you may well rot here with him.'

  'Oh, no. You and I are promised reprieve from this midden-heap town. And ... Bourne ... particularly if we heroically regain the Savankh for the honour of the Empire. After its theft is just terribly well known, of course.'

  'Now, that's good!' Bourne's brows tipped up and his lips pursed, a rather obscene spectacle between the bushiness of brown moustache and beard. 'And how do we do that? You going to trade this Hanse another halter for it?'

  She looked long at him. Coolly, brows arched above blue-lidded eyes. 'What's that in your hand. Guardian; Hell Hound so loyal to His Highness?'

  Bourne regarded the dagger in his big hairy hand, looked at Lirain, and began to smile.

  *

  Though hardly beloved nor indeed particularly lovable, Hanse was a member of the community. Though a paid ally, the customs inspector was not. Hanse heard from three sources that Cusharlain had been asking after him, on behalf of someone else. After giving that thought, Hanse traded with a grimy little thief. First Hanse reminded him that he could easily take the five truly fine melons the boy had been so deft as to steal, all in an afternoon. The boy agreed to accept a longish, stiffish piece of braided gold thread, and Hanse gained four melons. With his hilt and then thumb, Hanse made a nice depression in the top of each. Into each he tucked a nice pearl; four of his thirty-four.

  These he set before the hugely fat and grossly misnamed Moonflower, a S'danzo who liked food, melons, pearls, Hanse, and proving that she was more than a mere charlatan. Many others were. Few had the Gift. Even the cynical Hanse was convinced that Moonflower had.

  She sat on a cushioned stool of extra width and sturdy legs. Her pile of red and yellow and green skirts overflowed it, while disguising the fact that so did her vast backside. Her back was against the east wall of the tired building wherein she and her man and seven of their brood of nine dwelt, and wherein her man sold ... things. Hanse sat cross-legged before her. Looking boyish without his arm sheaths and in a dusty tunic the colour of an old camel. He watched a pearl disappear under Moonflower's shawl into what she called her treasure chest. He watched the melon disappear between her lavender-painted lips. Swiftly.

  'You are such a good boy, Hanse.' When she talked, Moonflower was a kitten.

  'Only when I want something, passionflower.'

  She laughed and beamed and tousled his hair for he knew that such talk pleased her. Then he told her the story. Handed her, disguised in carefully smudged russet, a strip of silken cloth: two straps and two cupped circles bearing many thread-holes.

  'Ah! You've been visiting a lady in the Path of Money! Nice of you to let Moonflower have four of the pearls you've laboriously sliced off this little sheath!'

  'She gave it me for services rendered.' He waved a hand.

  'Oh, of course. Hmm.' She folded it, unfolded it, fondled it, drew it through her dimple-backed hands, sniffed and tasted it with a dainty tongue-ti
p. A gross kitten at her divining. She closed her eyes and was very still. As Hanse was, waiting.

  'She is indeed a c- what you said,' she told him, able to be discreet even though in something approaching a trance. 'Oh, Shadowspawn! You are involved in a plot beyond your dreaming. Odd - this must be the Emperor I see, watching from afar. And this big man with your - acquaintance. A big man with a big beard. In a uniform? I think so. Close to our ruler, both. Yet ... ahh ... they are his enemies. Yes. They plot. She is a serpent and he a lion of no little craft. They seek ... ah, I see. The Prince-Governor has become faceless. Yes. They seek to cost him face.' Her eyes opened to stare wide at him, two big garnets set amid a heavy layer of kohl. 'And you, Hanse my sweet, are their tool.'

  They stared at each other for a moment. 'Best you vanish for a time, Shadowspawn. You know what becomes of tools once they are no longer needed.'

  'Discarded,' he snarled, not even bemoaning the loss of Lirain's denuded bandeau, which Moonflower made vanish within a shawl-buried vaster one.

  'Or,' she said, keeping him fixed by her gaze, 'hung up.'

  Lirain and her (uniformed?) confederate were tools then, Hanse reasoned, prowling the streets. Prince Kadakithis was nice to look at, and charismatic. So his imperial half-brother had sent him way out here, to Sanctuary. Now he wanted him sorely embarrassed here. Hanse could see the wisdom of that, and knew that despite what any might say, the Emperor was no fool. So, then. They two plotted. Lirain gained enough knowledge of Hanse to employ Cusharlain to investigate him. She had found a way to effect their meeting. Yes; though it hurt his ego, he admitted to himself that she had made the approach and the decisions. So now he was their tool. A tool of tools!

  Robbing Kadakithis, however, had been his goal before he met that cupidinous concubine. So long as she helped, he was quite willing to let her think he was her dupe. He wanted to be their tool, then - insofar as it aided him to gain easy entry to the palace. Forewarned and all that. There was definitely potential here for a clever man, and Hanse deemed himself twice as clever as he was, which was considerably. Finally, being made the tool of plotting tools was far too demeaning for the Hansean ego to accept.