The Thief Who Wasn't There

by Michael McClung

  That was really the deciding factor. Either he was holed up behind layers of protection, or he was in hiding, for he had to know I would come for him, after his failed assassination attempt.

  I might slaughter my way into his house, only to find him gone.

  I rested my forehead against the cold, rough, broken stone of the wall beside the gap. My eye was bothering me, little sharp, spearing twitches of pain. I consciously kept my hand from going up and rubbing futilely at the patch.

  I had planned to just walk in and start killing my way towards Steyner, if you could call that a plan. I might have been a little angry the previous day. Considering how close his residence was, and how reckless my original plan was, I decided it would be far more reasonable to kill Steyner from the safety of the Citadel. Less satisfying, certainly; nothing will provoke a mage more than violating his sanctum. But the job at hand was to kill Steyner, not risk myself needlessly. Nobody else was going to bring Amra back if I went and got myself killed.

  So.

  Steyner’s hired killer had surprised me with his magic-nullifying trinket. I decided to return the favor, in a way that would no doubt surprise Gabul Steyner greatly in the moments before he expired. More importantly, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest where he was. I wouldn’t have to know his location beforehand–such knowledge normally being crucial to the success of a spell. I would have to form a connection to him, true; but it wouldn’t be a normal one, and it certainly wouldn’t be one that any mage had a hope of blocking. A bloodwitch might, but I very much doubted Gabul Steyner had a bloodwitch in his employ.

  I went downstairs and stepped outside. The assassin’s corpse was right where I’d left it, which rather surprised me. I was half-certain Keel would make it disappear overnight. I suppose he took me more seriously than I took myself. Or maybe he was just at a loss as to what to do with the corpse. I certainly was.

  I stepped back inside, called the younger of the guard brothers to help me drag the corpse inside and lay it on the table.

  I peeled back the thug’s eyelids and stared into those dead, dirty green eyes; or rather, at the dull reflection on the skin of them.

  My mother was a bloodwitch, and a rather powerful one. She’d also had the skill to make the dead speak, though none for prophecy. She’d passed on some of what she was capable of to me; unusual if not unheard of, for a male to inherit such power. Much more unusual, she’d actually trained me to use the powers I’d inherited from her. To a degree, at least. Enough for the task at hand, certainly.

  Blood magic wasn’t as straightforward as the usual variety, however. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Emotion seemed to up the chances of success, so as I stared at those cold, going-milky eyes, I summoned up the hate I’d felt when this hired killer had bled his life away in front of me. Then I leaned in, close enough for our noses to touch. “Show me,” I hissed. “Show me Steyner.” And those dead eyes began to glow ever so faintly.

  Slowly, reluctantly, a picture formed in them as they continued to brighten. Or at least the left eye. I couldn’t see his right one of course. I saw a hard man in rich clothes. Short hair, going gray. A mouth that seemed set in an ever-so-slight curl of disdain. The picture began to move.

  The man spoke, but of course there was no sound. He handed me, or rather the thug, a heavy velvet purse. Then he turned away, clearly dismissing me/him.

  The light in the corpse’s eyes had been growing steadily stronger all the while. Now it flared white and hot, and the image burned away along with those dead orbs. I backed away hastily, the smell of burnt flesh strong in my nose. I had what I needed.

  I had Gabul Steyner’s image, now, collected from a dead man’s eyes–and so I had enough to kill him without ever leaving the Citadel, and without having to resort to a locating spell that I could not cast anyway, without Steyner’s blood or hair or tissue. I wouldn’t have to chew my way through all the mercenaries he’d have about him in order to finish him.

  That’s one I never learned from my late, not-in-the-least lamented master. Nobody mixed blood magic and the Art. Very few had access to both. If anyone else did, it wasn’t something that I’d ever heard tell of. Not anyone living, at any rate. But I’d experimented enough to find a few very useful and very dangerous combinations. It was one of the reasons Yvoust had despised me so. He’d called me an abomination, but really, he’d abhorred me having powers he himself did not. Enough to try to break me, and when he failed at that, to set me up for failure, and disgrace.

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts of old, bad memories. Working with blood magic called for emotion, and it also called forth emotions. They were not so easy to dispel.

  “Magister?” asked the armsman. “Are you all right?”

  “Quite. Let Keel know he can dispose of this now,” I said, indicating the corpse. “I’ll be occupied for the next several hours. Please make sure I’m not disturbed before lunch.”

  #

  It took a dozen gold marks and two hours of casting, and at the end I had a golden spike as long as my hand and as thick as my little finger, needle sharp at one end and flat at the other. It hummed in my hand. As it got closer to its target, its pitch would increase. By the time it got to Steyner, the wail would be deafening. Once it had found his heart’s blood, its song would be complete, and it would self-destruct. Which meant that anybody around Steyner at the time would also probably ‘kark it’ as Keel liked to say, depending on how far the barb had to fly before it reached its target. A little dramatic, perhaps, but I wasn’t going to bother building in a sub-spell to safely channel any excess, residual power. I wasn’t making a Gate; I was making a weapon. Weapons kill people. And anyone in close proximity to the Syndic-Elect wasn’t someone whose welfare I was concerned with.

  Also, I was exhausted. This working had brought me to the edge of my limits with the Art. I wasn’t up to adding any unnecessary frills.

  I broke the circle with a swipe of my hand. I levered myself up from the floor, arms and legs trembling, and stumbled my way downstairs to the library.

  I went to the window and flung it overhand towards the stupid, oversize bronze hammer that topped Steyner’s tower. I had no idea whether he was actually there, but it made a convenient target.

  The spike flipped end over end out over the city, defying gravity and winking in the sun, and then suddenly it plunged downward, a needle pulled to a lodestone. The humming went louder and higher, then suddenly cut off as it drove its way through the masonry of Steyner’s house.

  He was home after all, then.

  Stone was no barrier to it, of course. That was part of the working. If he happened to be in the bath, I might have a problem. Such a quick working demanded trade-offs. The barb would dissolve at the touch of water, and the backlash of power would likely kill me. Nothing ventured and all that.

  Nothing for one second, two, three…

  Then an ear-splitting wail, swiftly rising up into registers impossible to hear, but somehow still felt. Which meant it had found Steyner’s blood, and would presently explode.

  It did. Gabul Steyner’s house fell in on itself. I saw the idiotic bronze hammer fall into and be swallowed by the boiling masonry dust that billowed up to meet it, just before I passed out.

  I’d scraped the bottom of my well to make that little show come off, and the bill had arrived.

  #

  “Gabul Steyner is dead.”

  I opened my eyes, beheld a bleary image of Greytooth. My head was pounding, and my mouth was as dry as the Broken Lands.

  “He’d damned well better be,” I croaked, “after what I just went through to make him that way.” I was lying in the newly erected bed, in one corner of the library. The one I’d ignored the night before in favor of sleeping upstairs in the inner sanctum. I sat up, put my feet on the floor. Swallowed a wave of bile that tried to make an escape.

  “Have you turned political when I wasn’t looking?” Greytooth asked.

  “Not that I’ve
noticed.”

  “Then why did you assassinate Steyner?”

  “It wasn’t politically motivated, Fallon. It was completely personal. That’s what happens to someone who invades my sanctum.”

  He frowned. “And just how did Steyner manage to bypass the Telemarch’s wards and violate the Citadel, may I ask?”

  I dug the magical sink out of a pocket. “He hired somebody who had this.” I tossed it to him.

  He caught it, then dropped it as if it were hot. Pushed it back toward me with the toe of his boot. I leaned down to pick it up and nearly lost my balance, and the breakfast I hadn’t had. My skull felt as if it had turned to chalk.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for a headache?” I asked.

  Without a word he stepped around the amulet and over to me. He laid a hand on the top of my head, and then whispered something. It felt as if the top of my skull had been ripped off, spun in a full circle, and slammed back down. I nearly vomited from the pain, but when the dust settled, my headache was gone.

  “Thanks, I think,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “You might not have meant it as a political statement, but Steyner’s death is having consequences. The bulk of his forces have shifted over to Councilor When, being suddenly unemployed. What was a more or less evenly matched, three-cornered affray has now become a contest between When and the Just Men. When will win.”

  “Ah, but when will When win?” I said.

  “This is not a joke, Holgren.”

  “Fallon, The fate of Bellarius is up to the Bellarians. I’m here for one purpose only, and once I’ve got what I need, I am gone.”

  “And how are you going to get what you need, when virtually the entire population of the Girdle believes you either wish to rule or are supporting When’s claim? It will be a neat trick, hunting a rift spawn through the neighborhoods of thousands who are baying for your blood.”

  I sighed. “Great Gorm, it’s always something.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Why should I do anything? All of this is just a distraction, and I find myself in short supply of patience. Amra is out there, somewhere, and every moment I’m forced to deal with the ugly, monotonous child’s play that is Bellarian politics is a moment I’m not getting her back!”

  A silence stretched between us, then Fallon cleared his throat. “Got that out of your system, now, have you?”

  I sighed again, then held up a thumb and forefinger, about half an inch apart.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I suppose I’d better go talk to whoever’s in charge of the Just Men, hadn’t I?”

  “Send Keel. He’s got some credit with that lot.”

  “No. I’ll go myself, and alone. I’m sick of this cold pile of stone, and I’m sick of sitting on my hands while others do my bidding.”

  “Up to you, of course. If they don’t kill you on sight, you’ll want to speak to Gammond. But I didn’t actually come here to strategize.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out to me.

  “What’s this?” I said as I took it.

  “All I could find in my own library that was relevant to your quest.”

  It was in Old Imrian, and more or less intelligible:

  And sodeinly that lord of lordes

  the greet hell-duke, Xom Dei,

  rase up and took the wickid swerd

  And smyt the neck of Laghne.

  And Laghnes heed, with swiche glarynge open eyen,

  rolled acrost the floor.

  And Xom Dei, laughyng, gat him thene the book, and the key,

  And smylyng bar them awaye.

  “It’s from ‘Lagna’s Reward,’” said Greytooth. “I found it interesting because it mentions not only a book, but also a key.”

  “It didn’t happen to mention what either one did, by chance?”

  Greytooth shook his head.

  I put the paper in my own pocket and extended a hand. Greytooth shook it.

  “Thank you, Fallon.”

  He shrugged. “It’s little enough.”

  #

  I walked down the mount in cold but golden afternoon light. Half of the houses of the gentry were deserted, and the other half armed camps. I walked down the center of the street, garnered a lot of hostile looks, and not one challenge.

  I wondered how the mercenaries were finding their way up the mount, considering the revolutionaries held the docks and the Girdle. A moment’s thought gave me the answer. Of course, Mount Tarvus went all the way around, as the saying goes, and there had to be routes into the city from the hinterlands of Bellaria to the north and east. Not good routes, perhaps, but obviously good enough. And every border is porous. I couldn’t help but think that, if the rebels had made a push earlier, they might have cleared out the gentry before the gentry could gather the mercenary strength they now had at their disposal. That mistake might well cost them their revolution.

  “Not my problem,” I muttered.

  When I finally came to the barricade, I was distinctly underwhelmed. I also understood how Keel managed to sneak back and forth at will, even hampered by his arm. It was just barrels and crates and furniture piled up at choke points created by the narrow streets. If anyone was half-determined, they could find a dozen ways around the barricade–roof to roof, through a window and out a door. The roofs weren’t sentried from what I could tell, and while some doors and windows were blocked or boarded up, many above the ground floor weren’t. I wondered if anyone was actually in charge of the Girdle’s defenses, or if it was all just ad hoc, disorganized volunteerism.

  “Not my problem,” I reminded myself once again.

  “It’s the fucking mage,” said one of the rebels manning the barricades, his bald head poking up over a chest of drawers perched on top of a pile of broken bricks. “What the fuck do we do?”

  “How do you know it’s the mage?” asked his companion, who was out of my line of sight.

  “He’s got the badge, don’t he? He’s missing an eye, ain’t he?”

  “I’m half-blind, not half-deaf,” I told them.

  “You stay right there!” the first one called.

  “Hanger,” said the second, “We should send a runner to the Chop, ask for instructions.”

  “Send a message to Gammond,” I said. “Say I want to parley. Now.”

  “You don’t get to be bossing anyone around, uh, around here,” said Hanger. “Stay still, now, or I’ll have to be arresting you in the name of the People’s Committee.”

  “I thought you were the Just Men.”

  “Well there’s a whole lot of Just Men who’re women, ain’t there? We changed it.”

  “Cussed women did go on and on about it,” I heard the other one mutter.

  “Are you going to send my message or not?”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I’ll turn that sorry excuse for a barricade into a bonfire and go looking for Gammond myself. Your choice.”

  He thought about it. “Send the runner,” he told his companion.

  Seven

  Gammond, as it happened, was a woman.

  “Let me guess,” I said as climbed stood atop the barricade and frowned down at me. “You were behind changing the name to the People’s Committee.”

  “Hells no. I don’t give a dead god’s piss what we’re called. What do you want? If you’re here to assassinate me like you did Steyner, it won’t do any good.”

  “Why? Are you magically protected?”

  “Not even a little bit. But killing me won’t kill the revolution. Not even a little bit. Another will just take my place.”

  “I’m not interested in killing you, or in politics.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “Many things. Chiefest among them being leaving your fair city and never, ever coming back as long as I live.”

  She gave me a long, hard, unblinking look. Without taking her eyes from mine, she pointed her thumb behind
her in an offhand gesture. “Docks are that way. Have a safe trip.”

  I smiled. “If only it were that easy.”

  “It is. Just put one foot in front of the other until your boots get wet.”

  “I require something before I can go. Something in the Girdle, as it happens.”

  “I think your kind have taken enough from those of us in the Girdle.”

  “My kind?”

  “Gentry.”

  “I’m not a member of the gentry. I’m not even from Bellaria.”

  She sucked her front teeth and spat at my feet. “Let me explain in a fashion that will leave you without a doubt as to my meaning. There are those in the world who produce, and then there are those who consume. ‘Gentry’ is the generic term for those who produce nothing and consume the product of the useful members of any society. Another term would be parasite, or thief.”

  “I’m not really int-”

  “At the end of the day, magus, there are only two sides: production and consumption, creation and destruction, promulgation and ruin. Birth and growth, or decay and death. Tell me, you with your Art—how much destruction have you caused, compared to what, if anything, you have created?”

  “I’m not getting into a philosophical debate with you, Gammond. I haven’t got the time.”

  “You haven’t got a chance of winning, you mean.”

  “Fine. Put succinctly, your position is fundamentally flawed and dangerously simplistic. First, every producer is also a consumer, or did you dine on air and sunlight this morning? Second, without the forces of death and decay, any system would eventually become a hell due to the demands of an infinitely expanding population and a finite set of resources. Third, any philosophy that takes as its core tenet an ‘us versus them’ proposition of any sort is doomed to become a totalitarian nightmare. If this is what your People’s Committee truly believes, then all you’re doing is reshuffling the haves and have-nots. I find it sadly apt that you’ve eliminated the word ‘just’ from your name.”