Rise of a Merchant Prince

by Raymond E. Feist

  “You wouldn’t have lived; trust me. Now, as I was saying, you have ten minutes to flee. Go to Mother’s and establish whatever new identity you need; those agents of mine who know you by sight do not know who you really are. They know you only as a merchant I wanted watched. Some no doubt think you to be an agent of Great Kesh or some other political foe. Those who know you by reputation and deed have no idea what you look like. I’m enough of a Mocker at heart to give you that much.

  “But I will always be able to find you. Never for a minute doubt that, Lysle—for that’s how I always think of you.”

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  “I don’t doubt that for a moment, Jimmy the Hand. One thing.”

  “What?”

  “Were all the things they said about you true?”

  There was a ironic laugh. “Not half of the truth, Lysle. Not a half of it. I was a better thief than I thought I was, and not half as good as I claimed, but I’ve done things no other Mocker has ever attempted, let alone succeeded at.”

  “Gods, that’s the truth,” came the grudging reply.

  “No man can argue that; never been another thief who’s risen to the rank of bloody damn Duke and single most powerful man in the Kingdom next to the King.”

  “Now, where’s Tannerson?”

  “You’ll probably find him hiding out in a whorehouse called Sabella’s—”

  Across the porch from Roo, de Loungville turned and hissed into the darkness, and then said quietly,

  “Sabella’s!” A figure Roo hadn’t seen there a moment before scurried off into the darkness.

  “I know where that is. Have a witness for me first thing in the morning.”

  “She’s dead, you know. If she rats out Tannerson and the others I have to put the death mark on her; you know Mockers’ law.”

  “Get me a young one,” said James. “If she’s pretty and smart, I’ll find a home for her in a distant city; maybe even save her from a whorehouse and put her with a noble family as a companion for their children. You never know. But she’d better be young enough she’s not too set in her criminal ways.” A pause, then, “After all, I was fourteen when I met Arutha, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.”

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  “That’s the gods’ truth, Jimmy, that’s the truth,”

  said Lysle.

  Suddenly the door opened and Lord James, still covered from head to knee in a great cloak, swept down the steps. He paused for a brief moment next to Robert and said, “You heard?”

  “I heard. Word’s been passed” was all de Loungville said, and then the Duke of Krondor vanished into the night. In the gloom down the street, Roo could see others fall in around him, and in a moment the street appeared to be empty again.

  Roo glanced at de Loungville, who held up his hand, signaling they should wait. The next ten minutes dragged by; then suddenly de Loungville put two fingers to his mouth and blew a shrill whistle.

  From a side street a squad of soldiers ran up, while Jadow and Erik dashed from across the street. To the soldiers de Loungville said, “You! Into that building and arrest anyone you find there. Confiscate every document you find and let no one in or out of this building after you seal it.” To Roo, Jadow, and Erik he said, “Come with me.”

  Roo said, “Sabella’s?”

  “Yes. And if we’re lucky, your friend Tannerson will resist arrest.”

  Jadow said, “Man, don’t he sound happy at that prospect?” De Loungville said, “Haven’t had a good excuse to kill anyone in too long a time, Jadow.”

  In silence, they hurried deep into the Poor Quarter.

  Roo followed close behind de Loungville and they reached the street where Sabella’s occupied the first third of the block.

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  De Loungville whispered to a man at the corner,

  “Are the men in place?”

  “Waiting for you,” came the reply. “Thought I saw something up there on the roof a few minutes back, but it might have been a cat. Things are pretty quiet.”

  De Loungville nodded, half seen in the gloom, then said, “Let’s go!”

  They entered the whorehouse as if it were an enemy camp. Jadow struck a bouncer a head-ringing blow that brought the man to his knees before he could stop them entering the room, and as he knelt on the floor, Erik caught him with another blow that rendered him unconscious.

  Roo ran past de Loungville and a couple of women too startled by the eruption of violence to do more than sit in openmouthed astonishment. He reached the stairs, where a large woman of middle years had just turned to see what the disturbance at the front door was. She found Roo’s dagger at her chin. “Tannerson?” he said in a quiet voice dripping threat.

  She went pale but whispered, “Top of the stairs, first door on the right.”

  Roo said, “If you’re lying, you’re dead.”

  The woman looked and saw Jadow and Erik coming toward her, and for the first time registered the size and lethal aspect of the two men bearing down on her. “No, I mean first door on the left!”

  Roo was off and de Loungville a step behind. He turned and signaled for Erik and Jadow to hold the bottom of the stairs. He then turned back to see Roo reach the top of the stairs. Roo hesitated, motioned for de Loungville to kick the door, then ducked low.

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  De Loungville kicked the door and Roo was through in a crouch, his sword at the ready. He needn’t have bothered. Lying in bed was Sam Tannerson, his vacant eyes staring upward at the ceiling as blood dripped from a gash across his throat.

  “What?” said de Loungville as he saw the tableau before him.

  Roo hurried to the open window and looked nut.

  Someone had exited the room minutes before they had arrived, from the look of things. Roo turned and started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Erik as he reached the top of the stairs and looked in.

  Roo pointed to the corpse on the bed. “Some whore killed Tannerson, and I bet it was so she could steal my gold.”

  De Loungville poked around in the man’s garments and said, “No purse or coins.”

  Roo said, “Damn! So now some whore has all my gold.” De Loungville looked at the corpse. “Maybe.

  But we had better leave and talk about this somewhere else.”

  Roo nodded once, put up his sword, and followed de Loungville out of the room.

  The girl watched as across the street the men who had attempted to capture Tannerson left the inn, dragging out those men who had been playing pokiir downstairs. Other men prowling the streets nearby were checking to see if they were being observed.

  She was certain they hadn’t seen her leave Tannerson’s room. She glanced at her hands, half expecting to see them shake, but instead they were firm upon the eaves of the roof where she crouched, prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:37 AM Page 139

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  sheltered in the darkness from the sight of those below. She had never killed before, but no one had murdered her sister before either. The cold rage that had fueled this revenge had not diminished with Tannerson’s death, as she thought it would. There was no sense of closure, no sense of putting paid to the account. She still seethed inside and nothing would bring her sister back to her.

  Curiosity pushed aside other concerns and she wondered who those men had been. She had been less than five minutes out of the bedroom when she had heard the voices raised in anger across the street.

  She had left her work clothes secreted in a bag behind a chimney on the roof of the house opposite the whorehouse Tannerson used as a headquarters, against her need to get out of bloody clothing after the job was done. When
she had decided to avenge Betsy, she had vowed that either Tannerson or she would lie dead on the floor of that bedroom tonight.

  Getting into Sabella’s hadn’t proven difficult; bribing the whore to tell Tannerson someone special waited for him in the room had been easy enough, as well. The girl’s native stupidity had not caused her to think any farther than her full purse of gold without Sabella taking a cut. Now she’d keep quiet out of fear.

  For the first few moments of her flight, fear had nearly overwhelmed the girl. For the first five minutes after reaching the roof, she had just sat, too numb to move. Tannerson’s blood had covered her from chin to waist, and she had finally gotten her fouled clothing off. Then she had heard the movement of men down the streets below and fear kept her from attempting to leave. As she waited, fatigue prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:37 AM Page 140

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  pushed in on her, and she half dozed—for a minute or an hour, she wasn’t clear—and then the raid had brought her alert. Now fatigue was pushed aside by fear; if those men who had entered Sabella’s had been sent by the Nightmaster, she could have been seen or identified. Being hunted by the Prince’s police was one thing; being hunted by the Mockers was another. Her only hope in the second instance would be to flee the city and get as far away as possible, up to LaMut or down into the Empire of Kesh.

  She crept along the roof until she came to where she had left her rope. Tossing aside the small bag that had contained her regular trousers, shirt, vest, dagger, and boots—and now contained a bloody knife and a blood-snaked shirt and trousers—she glanced over the eaves.

  Two men of the rear guard hurried past in the darkness below and she moved to another corner of the roof, where she saw others moving in the same general direction as those who had just left the whorehouse. The girl sat back on her heels, considering. None of the men she had glimpsed looked remotely familiar to her, and she should have recognized at least one of them if they were Mockers.

  Whoever had come into Sabella’s were the Prince’s men, no doubt, for no one else in the city would be able to mount such a raid, especially not with men who seemed to appear and disappear out of the darkness like the best in the Guild of Thieves. It had to be the Duke of Krondor’s special agents, his secret police.

  But what had they wanted with Tannerson and his band of thugs? wondered the girl. She was not worldly, but she was clever, intelligent, and curious. She prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:37 AM Page 141

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  gauged her distance to the next roof, backed up, and made a nimble leap to the roof opposite and continued along the “Thieves’ Highway” after the men below. After a block she was falling behind and quickly found a drainpipe she could clamber down.

  At this hour the streets were dark and nearly empty, so she had to keep to the shadows, lest she attract attention. Twice she spied rear sentries who were placed to prevent anyone’s following, so she waited and slipped after them when they at last moved out.

  It was an hour before dawn when she lost sight of the last man she had trailed, but she was near certain where the raiders had been bound: the Prince’s palace.

  They had used a circuitous route and they had taken pains to avoid being followed, but she had kept her wits and hadn’t rushed, and now she could see they were moving directly for the palace.

  She paused and looked around. The streets were completely deserted as far as she could tell, but there was an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach that made her suddenly wish she hadn’t been so curious.

  Fatigue was again threatening to overwhelm her, and she was due to report to the Daymaster in less than two hours. She feared going to sleep, for if she did she was certain she wouldn’t awake in time. Missing one day’s picking pockets in the market wouldn’t usually earn her more than a harsh word or a cuffing around, but not the morning after Tannerson’s murder. She must do nothing to call undue attention to herself.

  Tannerson had been a brute and a man of few friends, but he’d had many allies and had established prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:37 AM Page 142

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  himself as something of a minor power among that faction of the Mockers known as bashers, those given to strong-arm tactics—armed robbery, extortion, and protection, as opposed to the beggars and those who used more subtle forms of larceny. The Sagacious Man and his lieutenants, the Daymaster and the Nightmaster, had been reluctant to curb Tannerson and others like him who produced, and say what you might about the swine, he had produced. His small-scale reign of terror over the merchants near the docks and Poor Quarter had more than doubled the protection money coming into the guild over the previous year.

  But if she could show up with an account of men moving through the streets to the palace, she might divert any suspicion from herself and ensure that the Sagacious Man was more concerned with the actions of the Prince’s secret police than with those of a single girl pickpocket. She might even plant the idea that it was the Prince’s men who had cut Tannerson’s throat.

  The girl’s reverie, half from exhaustion, half from emotions spent in killing her sister’s murderer, had dulled her wits. She was barely aware someone else was nearby when she turned and tried to flee.

  A man’s hand seized her wrist and held her in a grip like iron as she drew her dagger to defend herself. Another hand froze her movement as she looked up into the man’s blue eyes. He was the strongest man she had ever encountered, for no matter how she squirmed she was unable to free herself. And he was quick; when she tried to kick him in the groin, he turned enough that her kicks fell harmlessly on thighs that were as hard as oaks.

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  Other men approached, and in the early morning gloom the girl could make out a ring of dangerous-looking men closing around her. A short, unattractive man with a balding head looked her up and down and said, “What do we have here?” He pried the dagger from her immobile hand.

  Another man, whose features she couldn’t make out, said, “This is the one who was following us.”

  Robert de Loungville said, “Who are you, girl?”

  The large man who held her said, “I think there’s blood on her hands.”

  A shuttered lantern was uncovered and suddenly the girl could make out the faces of the men who surrounded her. The one who held her was little more than a boy himself, roughly the same age as she. He might have arms on him as big as her thighs, but his face was still soft and boyish, though there was something in his eyes that made her wary.

  The short man, who seemed to be in charge, looked down and said, “Sharp eyes, Erik. She tried to wipe them off, but didn’t have water to bathe.”

  Turning to a man in the outer rank of those who surrounded her, he said, “Return to Sabella’s and check the rooftops and alleys around there; I think you’ll find the weapon and whatever she was wearing when she killed Tannerson. She couldn’t have dumped them into the harbor and had time to catch up with us.”

  Another man, even shorter than the leader, young like the powerful youth but thin, even scrawny, pushed forward and thrust his face an inch from the girl’s.

  “What have you done with my gold!” demanded Roo.

  The girl spit in his face for an answer, and de prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:37 AM Page 144

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  Loungville had to hold him back from striking her in reply. “It’s getting light and this is too public a place,” said the sergeant, his voice held to a harsh whisper. “Bring her along to the palace, Erik. We’ll question her there.”

  The girl decided it was time to cease being passive and screamed at the top of her lungs, hoping to startle the powerful youth into releasing his grip enough so she could yank free. All that happened was a meaty hand clamped down over her mouth and the short leader said, “Open your yap again, girl, and I’ll have him c
lub you to silence. I have no need to be tender with you.”

  She knew he was not making an idle threat. But as a shutter opened in a room above and as two street boys peeked out of a nearby alley, the girl knew she had achieved her goal. Before she reached the palace, word would reach the Daymaster that the thief called Kitty had been picked up by agents of the Prince, and at least she would have an acceptable excuse for not reporting to muster at Mother’s this morning. She’d have a most reasonable excuse for the Daymaster when she got back to Mother’s.

  As the young man called Erik half carried, half led her through the predawn streets, the girl amended her last thought: if she ever got back to Mother’s to explain.

  When they reached the palace, the mood among the men who escorted the prisoner lightened, except for Roo, who had demanded to know about his gold.

  He fumed and kept a suspicious eye upon the girl.

  They entered the palace through a small gate, moving past two alert guards who said nothing.

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  Down a long hallway, illuminated by torches in sconces, they continued in silence until they reached a large stairway leading down into the lower portion of the palace. Several of the men moved away, leaving the girl in the custody of de Loungville, Erik, Roo, Duncan, and Jadow.

  Half pushing, half throwing her, Erik released the girl’s arm as they entered an interrogation cell.

  Shackles hung from the wall, and if the girl had taken the time to inspect them she would have seen them rusty from disuse. But she turned like a trapped animal and crouched, as if awaiting an attack.

  “Tough one, isn’t she?” asked de Loungville.

  “What about my gold?” demanded Roo.

  “What gold?” said the girl.

  De Loungville stepped forward. “Enough!”

  Looking at the girl thief, he asked, “What do we call you?”

  “Anything you want,” she snapped. “What’s the difference?”

  De Loungville said, “You’ve caused us a great deal of difficulty, girl.” He motioned and Jadow brought over a small wooden stool, upon which de Loungville sat. “I’m tired. This has been a very long night and there are things about it I don’t like much.