The Thief Who Wasn't There

by Michael McClung

  “Well that’s the joy of a fresh start. You know nothing about it, but more importantly, it knows nothing about you. No dangerous gangs of criminals looking to spill your blood, for example.”

  “There is that,” he said, smiling.

  “I predict that inside a week, you’ll never want to leave Lucernis again.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “There’s no other place quite like it. You’ll see.”

  “I guess I’ll take your word for it. Oh, I came up to tell you. Marle says the thing in the crate is getting restless again.”

  “Ah. I’d best go and deal with it, then.” And I left him leaning on the rail, trying to imagine what his future might hold. Amra had seen fit to keep him alive at the cost of putting her in deadly opposition with her oldest friend. She must have seen something in him. I admit I valued his loyalty.

  Whatever the future held for Keel, I’d support him as best I could. Though I doubted he’d enjoy at least one of the things I had planned for him.

  Below deck, Marle was making sure our baggage was ready for disembarkation, for the hundredth time. Actually he was taking his turn keeping watch on the crate that held the rift spawn, as well as the single casket of gold I’d brought along. The last thing I needed was some light-fingered sailor cracking open the crate in search of loot. Things would get bloody, quickly. And on a ship, there was nowhere to run.

  “Master Marle. Our cargo is shifting again?”

  “Aye, magus.”

  I laid a hand on the crate. I could sense at once that it had been stealthily gnawing on the nets again. I strengthened them, and the enjoinders I’d woven into the nets. Halfmoon subsided with a faint growl.

  The rift spawn wasn’t housebroken yet, not by any stretch of the imagination. Between keeping the creature pacified and the project I’d been working on my every other waking moment aboard the ship, I was constantly treading the edge of exhausting my well.

  “How is Chalk?” I asked Marle.

  “The same, magus.” The armsman had elected to stay in my employ, but after the death of his brother, he had become taciturn in the extreme. His grief, in my opinion, was the worse because he seemed to feel that it should never, ever show. Which made it as plain a day.

  We’d laid Thon to rest in Jaby cemetery before we left Bellarius for good, Marle and I, in a crypt whose occupant had gone to dust and bone. Chalk looked on, head bandaged, eyes red from tears he refused to let fall. I’d sealed it up and put a binding on it, and that had been that, for Thon. The rest of the corpses that had been made that day, we dragged out into the street. I burned them with magefire. Then I’d gone to check on Halfmoon, hunting any stray rebels that might still be hanging about the tunnels under the mount along the way. There hadn’t been any, and Halfmoon had been exactly where I’d left him.

  I’d gone on, re-securing the Squareshank entrance. The construct had done for one or two of Gammond’s force, judging by the blood. But it was bound to the room, and didn’t know how to retreat. They’d stood just outside, out of its reach, and beaten it to pieces with Gorm only knew what. Everything they could lay hands on, judging by the pieces scattered across the floor.

  Effective.

  I’d walked up to the News. I gave the tap man a gold mark and a message for his employer. Moc Mien had shown up an hour later. I’d given him even more money, and by midnight the four of us had boarded a smuggler’s boat at the edge of the marsh, Moc Mien’s crew acting as porters. We rendezvoused with a proper ship somewhere down the coast before dawn, and then were on our way, finally, to Lucernis.

  I’d left most of my coin in the Citadel, not wanting to tempt Moc Mien into doing something we’d all regret. I also made damned sure anyone who tried to enter the Citadel in my absence wouldn’t live to regret it. I’d offered occupation of the Citadel to Greytooth, who’d shaken his head and said he’d rather live in a cesspit.

  #

  “Holgren, does Lucernis send out the army for every ship that docks?”

  “Eh?”

  Keel pointed to the wharf. Inspector Kluge was waiting on the dock, with a platoon of arquebusiers lined up behind him, looking quite sharp in their crimson and white uniforms.

  “No. No they don’t.” I had hoped to avoid Kluge completely. He knew where the hell gate was, of course, having helped to seal it. He wouldn’t be best pleased if he found out I intended to reopen it, and wouldn’t believe me if I told him it was perfectly safe. How he knew I was arriving, or even that I’d left, was a mystery.

  I told Marle, Keel and Chalk to wait on deck, and once the gangplank was lowered, I went down it, smiling. Sometime smiling helps. Actually it never helps, but you do what you can.

  “Good morning, Avrom. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Kluge inclined his long head. “Welcome back to Lucernis. I’d ask how your trip was, but I’ve already heard enough to know it wasn’t particularly restful, magus. Or should I say arch-magus?”

  “Why would you say any such thing?”

  “Because your stay in Bellarius resulted in the Telemarch disappearing and you taking possession of his tower.”

  “I claimed his Citadel, but not his position. And I’m surprised you heard anything about my journey, to be honest. I went to assist my companion with a spot of bother she was having. You remember Amra, I assume.”

  He ignored any mention of Amra. I suspect he held a grudge that she’d been able to talk her way out of Havelock prison. The law rarely enjoys seeing criminals walk free.

  “You did quite a bit more than help a friend and take possession of a tower, according to our sources.”

  I raised and eyebrow. “The sources of the City Watch?”

  “Hah. No.” But he didn’t elaborate.

  “Well, inspector—”

  “I’ve been promoted since we last met. I’m now the Watch Commander.”

  “My congratulations on your advancement. Now if you will excuse me?”

  “Lord Morno extends his invitation to meet with him. Immediately.”

  Morno. The governor of Lucernis. He wielded more power and influence than most kings. He was utterly loyal to Lucernia’s monarchy, and utterly humorless. I suddenly regretted helping Amra steal wine from his cellars.

  “Well, I suppose we shouldn’t keep the Lord Governor waiting. You won’t mind if I drop my compatriots and baggage off at home? It is on the way.”

  Nineteen

  The Governor’s palace was at the terminus of the Promenade, a little less than a mile from the manse that Amra had bought with the gold we’d plundered from the carcass of Hluria. I rode in a gilded carriage with Kluge; Keel, Marle, Chalk and our baggage followed behind in a distinctly less ostentatious rented hack. Kluge stopped, reluctantly and briefly, on the service road behind the manse so that I could unlock the house for them, and then we continued on down the Promenade proper. It was then that I knew that Kluge had been promoted into a position of authority far beyond a mere inspector. Only the Governor’s staff would be allowed to take to the Promenade on anything but foot.

  Our trip was almost completely without conversation. Kluge sat opposite me, and the carriage being small and both of us tall, our knees tended to brush the other’s whenever the carriage took a turn or rocked much.

  “You’ve lost an eye since I last saw you,” Kluge observed after perhaps fifteen minutes of muteness.

  “And you lost more hair,” I replied. He rolled his eyes and looked out the tiny window.

  Kluge was content to stay silent for the rest of the journey. I was content to let him. Though I had more than a few questions that cried out for answers, I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of choosing to answer or withhold answers.

  Mages play power games. Games not solely limited to the Art.

  We arrived at the huge old pile of pink granite that was the governor’s palace, and white-gloved valets opened the doors and folded down the steps. I followed Kluge into the ornate but surprisingly small foyer, and while he spoke to some functiona
ry I studied a rather striking painting of the river Ose at dawn, wraith-like narrowboats being poled through the rising mist. You didn’t see such boats much anymore. The artist had captured the truly ethereal sense of the setting. There was no signature.

  “This wouldn’t be a det Gueller, would it?” I asked Kluge, indicating the painting.

  “I’ve no idea,” Kluge replied. “Lord Morno will see us now.” And so I followed him up a set of marble stairs and down a dim, carpeted hallway. He knocked on an unmarked door, waited two seconds, then entered.

  Lord Morno was in his forties, but looked older. He looked careworn, dark circles under his eyes and skin loose on his face, as if he’d lost weight suddenly. He wore rich clothes smothered in embroidery but sported a trooper’s sheared, artless haircut. He was sitting at a massive desk that had been carved and gilded to within an inch of its life, and he was writing, pen scratching across the paper. He did not look up. Kluge did not sit down, though there were three low-backed wooden chairs ranged in front of the desk. This went on for a considerable amount of time, the only sound being Morno’s pen, the only break in the scratching being when he stopped writing to dip it in a silver-chased ink pot on the corner of the desk.

  Finally Mono finished with whatever he was writing. He set it to one side, and carefully laid his pen down on a blotter next to the ink pot. He rang a little silver bell and an aid came and made the paper he’d been writing on disappear. Morno looked up at me, and his eyes were mild.

  “Holgren Angrado. Sit.”

  “Lord Governor,” I replied, and sat. Kluge left.

  “I know far more about you than a person with as little interest as I have in the subject should. I tell you this so that you won’t be tempted to prevaricate. I don’t have the time to waste on verbal dancing.”

  “I very rarely lie, my lord.”

  “You are not a Lucernan citizen, therefore I am not your lord. You are Fel-Radothan on your mother’s side, and a Goslander on your father’s.”

  “Indeed. You are well informed, lord.”

  “If you were Lucernan,” he continued, ignoring my comment, “I could have you executed for treating with a foreign power as a private citizen.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. As you are a foreigner resident in Lucernis, I could have you expelled for any number of reasons. And then, as you are a thief, I could of course order your execution more or less any time it strikes my fancy.”

  “Is this meant to frighten me, Lord Morno?”

  “I doubt that’s even possible. My aim is to make clear to you that Lucernis is not Bellarius.”

  “I am acutely aware of that, and deeply appreciative.”

  “You overthrew the sitting ruler of a nation—”

  “Beg pardon, but I did not. The Syndic was dead before I arrived in Bellarius.”

  “I’ll thank you not to interrupt me again. The Syndic and one of the Council of Three died the night you arrived in Bellarius, his palace pulled down around his ears. You took possession of the stronghold of his chief ally, the Archmage Aither the next morning, and it would beggar belief that you did so in any way other than by stepping over Aither’s corpse. Days later, you assassinated one of the remaining members of the Council of Three. Days after that, you annihilated the army of the single remaining member of the Council of Three. It very much seems to me that you, Magister Holgren Angrado, are a very dangerous person, with a talent for the Art to rival Ardihal Flamehand, and a tendency to make rulers dead and governments fall.”

  “Well, when you put it that way—”

  “Therefore it falls upon you now to convince me that you are no threat to this city, or to the crown of Lucernia. If you can’t, I will give you until dawn to be gone from Lucernis before I issue your death warrant.”

  So much for my quietly stealing into Lucernis and opening the hell gate.

  “Well,” I replied, “First I must congratulate you on your information gathering agents, though I do take exception to the rather one-sided view of events they seem to have reported. While what you’ve said is the truth, it is in no way the whole truth.”

  “I set out the events that concern me the most. I did not say that they were the extent of my knowledge of the events.”

  “Lord governor, if I had any desire to rule Bellarius, I would not be sitting in your office now.”

  “I never suggested your aim was to rule Bellarius. I don’t know what your aim was. I do know you were in some way connected to the destruction of the sitting ruler and his dwelling, that you eliminated, directly, two of the four people who could legitimately have laid claim to the rulership after his death, and that you destroyed the army of a third.”

  “I did not kill the Telemarch. Or the Syndic. Or two of the three Councilors. I did kill Gabul Steyner, but only after he tried to have me killed, twice. As for destroying When’s army, I’ll merely note that I dispatched the fighting force of the rebel People’s Committee at exactly the same instant, for the simple reason that whoever won would surely have turned on me next. But since my time is apparently short, Lord Governor, can I suggest you simply tell me what it is that will convince you I’m not some rabid maniac, intent on toppling nations for the sheer joy of it? Because I do call Lucernis my home, and do not wish to be expelled from it.”

  Morno sat there, looking at me with his mild eyes, and his sallow, worn-down face gave nothing away. Finally he leaned forward a little and put his hands on the desk. I noted absently that he chewed his nails. Obviously he did it in private; his public persona was far too sanguine.

  “Magister Angrado, you have lived in Lucernis for nearly a decade. In that time you’ve done nothing to distinguish yourself, or indeed call attention to yourself in any way, other than to aid the Watch in dispatching a few daemonettes and in the closing of a hell gate. Yes, we know something of your illegal activities, just as we know about your workshop. But for the most part, you have lived your life in Lucernis as if you were an ordinary soul, rather than a mage gifted with rare talent and ability.”

  “I am a private person.”

  “Your privacy is at an end. That is, if you wish to remain in Lucernis.”

  “I’m not following you, Lord Morno.”

  “You state that you do not wish to rule. I believe you. If I did not, you wouldn’t be sitting in this office; you’d have been executed on the dock. But if you would not rule, then you must serve.”

  That did not sound at all good. “Serve? Serve who?”

  “The Crown, generally, and me more specifically. Or rather the office of the governor. What you cannot do is run around loose, answerable only to yourself. You will enter public service, or you will take ship and never return, on pain of death. You are simply too dangerous.”

  “So you wish to leash me. Using what? The threat of banishment? I’ve been banished before, Lord Morno.”

  “And I’m sure the memory is still a bitter one. But you seem content enough in Lucernis.”

  “Yes, it is. And yes, I am. I made a new life here, and am well content with it.”

  “You’ve traveled extensively I take it?”

  “I have.”

  “Does anywhere compare to Lucernis?”

  I shook my head. I had a feeling I knew where he was leading the conversation.

  “Let us speak frankly, Holgren Angrado. You made a new life in this city. My city, magus. Mine. Twenty years ago I was given Lucernis to govern, a huge cauldron boiling over with vice, anarchy, rage, murder and misery. The Jewel of the West was, in fact, a boil on the ass of the Dragonsea. Riots, food shortages. Disease and starvation. Pirates just off shore strangled trade, and they were paid to do so by merchant cartels right here in the city. Lucernis was a disgrace to humanity. There was a slave market not a hundred yards from Traitor’s Gate, for Isin’s love. It was an open secret. Women, children, foreigners and debtors, tricked and taken and stolen, and sold over the sea to Far Thwyll and Chagul.”

  He paused, looked out the window. I
suspected he was actually looking back into the past.

  “My king had had enough. He sent me to clean up the mess. I hanged the previous governor in Harad’s square. I broke the power of the merchant cartels. I crushed the gods-damned pirates. I took a broom and swept this city, if not clean, then at least clean of the worst filth. And now, twenty years later, I’m still sweeping. Because the moment you stop sweeping is the moment the filth starts creeping back in.”

  I waited a moment, but it seemed he had finished. So I said “Forgive me, but what does any of that have to do with me?”

  “Sometimes I need a bigger broom.”

  “Oh. No. I’m no tool.”

  “Everyone is a tool. At the moment, you are the tool of your own desires, whereas I am the tool of my king. I am also the tool of every resident in this city who wishes to live a life more or less free from the effects of misrule. There is great honor in being a tool used for the greater good. If you object to the term, choose another.”

  “Then I choose the term ‘private citizen.’”

  He did not smile. “If you choose that term, you’ll have to enjoy the use of it somewhere else.”

  “What do you want from me? Specifically?”

  “You will swear an oath of fealty to the crown of Lucernia. You will of course cease any illegal activities you are now associated with, assuming there still are any such activities. And you will serve as a special adviser to the Office of the Governor, at my pleasure and in any way that I see fit.”

  “So essentially I’ll do what you say, when you say to do it.”

  “I won’t be asking you to polish my riding boots, magus.”

  “Perhaps you could give me an example of what you would be asking me to do.”

  “Certainly. Some eighteen months ago a not-inconsiderable portion of Lucernis was burned to the ground. We know the fire was set deliberately, and we know that it was of magical origin. We do not know who or what caused it, or whether it might happen again. You will investigate, and at the end of your investigation, you will advise us that the threat has been dealt with.”