Fraud’s wasn’t just the best and most expensive eatery in Lucernis; it was the place that people who had a true appreciation for food went to worship. Only the contents of each plate and bowl and cup could excuse the barely veiled hostility and not-at-all veiled indifference of those who served it. You’d put up with a lot to eat there, because Fraud’s issued bans to disagreeable customers, and enforced them.
I was given a small, two-seat table in the back by a dead-eyed older gentleman, who dropped a hand-written menu in front of me and slouched away without a word. I didn’t bother to peruse it.
My seat was in a corner, beside a rain-streaked window, which I stared out. I ordered the special of the day when he wandered back a few minutes later, not knowing what it was – it wouldn’t matter – and a glass of Imrian white. Silently, he took this knowledge back to where the magic was made. I stared out the window and listened with half an ear to the sounds of cutlery and conversation at the tables around me.
There was a very real possibility I’d never get to eat at Fraud’s again, even if I survived what was coming, and that made me a little sad. Assuming the plan worked, and we eliminated the Blade That Binds and Blinds, we’d still be burning some fairly important bridges in the process. Holgren sure as hells wasn’t going to become Morno’s pet mage before all the Eightfold’s little monsters had been dealt with, and that might take years.
Morno wasn’t the kind of person to just accept being told he’d have to wait indefinitely.
I looked out at the blurry, rain-smeared street, feeling melancholy, realizing in all likelihood I’d have to say goodbye to Lucernis for good. If I lived.
For most of my life I’d equated money with power and security – the more you had of one, the more you had of the others. It’s an easy conceit to believe when, if you wanted to eat, you had to steal your meal. Slowly I had come to understand that wealth had its limits. I could be as rich as Borkin Breaves, but I would never be gentry, or noble. Heredity and title offered protections and powers the baseborn could never buy into, in most places. Perhaps the Nine Cities, where everyone important was at most two generations removed from pirate, or brigand.
But a better pedigree wouldn’t save me from the problems I faced. Even if I’d been born the king’s favorite niece, I wouldn’t be protected from the attentions of a goddess. There was always a bigger fish. I was in a secret war with an enemy that, if I was brutally honest with myself, I had no sane chance of defeating. It wouldn’t stop me from trying, of course. I’m not the kind of person that just lies down and takes what’s coming. But stubborn doesn’t necessarily mean stupid, and only the very stupid indeed can go through life with a smile permanently affixed.
Then my meal came, and for a brief few minutes I knew peace and happiness.
I was halfway through a roast chicken dish when a short, positively dapper man invited himself to sit at my table, just as I was forking gravy-covered cloudroot into my mouth. He was dressed smartly, in silver-gray silk with flawless white hose. A little white rosebud peaked out of a buttonhole. His black, wavy hair was pulled back into a tail, and secured with a gray ribbon. He was a little wet from the rain, and dabbed at his dark face with a silk kerchief.
He smiled. I didn’t. I swallowed and said “Who the fuck are you?”
His brown eyes searched my face. What he was looking for, or whether he found it, I’ve no idea.
“I am the man that gets summoned when it is determined there’s still a chance to resolve issues amicably.” His voice was soft. You might even call it soothing, if you didn’t know better. “You can call me Mister Hope.”
“I don’t recall inviting you to sit, Mister Hope.”
“The invitation was issued, as it were, by Fengal Daruvner. I believe you know him.”
Ah.
“Mister Daruvner thinks very highly of you, and of the magus Holgren Angrado. The parties I represent think highly of Mister Daruvner. Therefore I am here, sitting with you over a pleasant lunch, instead of... someone else, somewhere else, in far darker circumstances.”
“Wow. You talk good. Big words and all that.”
“Please, mistress. I’m aware you grew up on the street, but spare me the act.”
“What do you want to talk about then?” If Fengal arranged this, then I was obliged to play nice. Or at least not nasty.
“You know of course that your partner entered into agreement with the governor of our fair city this spring. Naturally, this is of some concern to the people that I speak for. Magus Angrado knows certain names and certain faces that, well, don’t wish to become known to the Crown or its representatives, for understandable reasons.”
“This is Lucernis. You just described roughly eighty percent of the population.”
“I’m not concerned with the citizenry at large, Amra – if I may call you that.”
I shrugged. “It’s my name, for better or worse. Mostly worse.”
“Lovely. I am concerned, Amra, with the tiny fraction of Lucernans that Holgren Angrado can tell tales about. The tiny fraction that can do something definite, and dreadfully final, about their concern.”
I could’ve danced around all day with him, but there wasn’t much point. I tossed my napkin on top of my plate. My appetite had flown.
“Why don’t you just lay out the demands, Mister Hope?”
“The terms are simple. Holgren Angrado has twenty-four hours to submit to a geas, or to the erasure of certain memories. The geas will prohibit him in any way whatsoever from communicating to anyone any information regarding the parties I represent. The memory erasures are self-explanatory. He must also submit to a truth spell to ensure that he has not already passed on any sensitive information to the authorities. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
“Sounds reasonable.” And it did, actually, for that lot. “There’s one big problem, though. Holgren’s not around.”
“Well, that is unfortunate.” His face did a thing that said he thought it was very unfortunate indeed.
“Tell you what, Mister Hope. When Holgren gets back in town, I’ll tell him what you said. Hells, I’ll even let Daruvner know when Holgren pops up, immediately, so that you can start your countdown properly. How does that sound?”
He went still, and his jaw went tight, and those kind eyes sort of glassed over. He looked suddenly like what he almost certainly was – a stone killer. The change was disturbing.
“‘How does that sound?’ Honestly? It sounds as if you are trying to fuck with me, Amra. It sounds as if you’re trying to pass me a piping hot hatful of shit, while telling me it’s a bundt cake. I assure you, that is a very bad fucking idea.”
I leaned back in my chair. “You know what? I’m not above pissing on your hosiery and telling you it’s raining, Mister Hope. I’ll freely admit that. But here’s the thing: as much as I’d normally be tempted to tell you whatever I thought would get you out of my face the fastest, I’m not. And the reason I’m not is because Fengal Daruvner sent you my way. Respect goes both ways, or it’s not respect.” I took out a knife, casually, and laid it on the table next to my half-eaten meal. “So. We can go at it in the street if you like, or right fucking here. But when I gut you, just be clear that it’s because I don’t fucking like you, and not because I’m lying to protect Holgren.” Despite the heat in our words, neither of us had raised our voices. You didn’t, in Fraud’s.
He continued to give me the death stare for a long, lingering moment, and then just like that, his face went back to kindly and sorrowful. I began to suspect that both were just convenient masks. I wondered if Mister Hope had any real emotions at all.
“As I said, Magus Angrado’s absence is unfortunate. If he hasn’t made contact by this time tomorrow, he should cancel any plans he has for returning to Lucernis. Ever.” He stood. “And you, Amra, should book passage by then as well.”
“So, no extensions, then.”
He shook his head. “You’re already getting all the patience there is to be had.”
“Noted. Hey, totally unrelated question. You wouldn’t happen to know who burned down my house, would you?” I was thinking maybe his employers had done it, to send a message.
He raised an eyebrow. “It would seem to me that that is the least of your worries. Good day, mistress.” He walked off towards the door.
“So is that a yes or a no?” I called after him.
EIGHT
THE NEXT THING ON MY not getting killed list was also the most dangerous, but if I’d held my temper with Bath, I might not have had to do it in the first place.
Whatever. I preferred to get the possibly life-ending stuff out of the way early. Sadly, all of it seemed to be sliding into that category.
That’s not to say I was looking forward to meeting the Guardian again, because who wants to meet a crazy, murderous, powerful being with no reason to like you? She’d badly wanted the Blade That Whispers Hate, and I’d snatched it from her grasp. She wasn’t the kind of creature that forgave or forgot. Honestly, even trying to get her on my side reeked of desperation on my part. What can I say? If I reeked of desperation, it was because I was desperate. Desperate sure as hells wasn’t the same thing as eager, though.
But getting it over with was preferable to having it hanging over my head. Anyway, it was my own fault. If I’d managed to keep my cool with Bath, I might not have had to visit the Necropolis at all. I certainly wouldn’t have had to go to three different butchers to collect a dozen pig hearts.
On the bright side, if the Guardian did turn me into a damp spot in the grass, I wouldn’t have to worry about the Blades anymore, or the criminal element of Lucernis. Or being homeless. And people call me a pessimist.
There was no point in going to the Necropolis until just before it closed. During the day, it was for the living, and the Guardian kept herself to herself behind those high, smooth, pristine white walls. But half a glass before sunset the living left and the gate closed, and then she became the sole, undisputed sovereign of the City of the Dead. Her word was law. Hells, her word was reality itself. A mortal absolute monarch would drool over the power she commanded within her domain.
With closing time approaching I was in the hack again, carrying my pig hearts in a lidded bucket. It left me with one hand free. I wanted to fill it with a bottle, but forced myself to not be an idiot.
The hack dropped me right outside the Necropolis’s gate.
“’S closing soon,” the coachman observed, scratching at his stubble. It was the only thing he’d said to me the whole day, which I wholly approved of.
“Yep,” I replied, and passed him the day’s fare. He’d only agreed to stay on call until nightfall.
He shrugged, pocketed my coin, and moved on with his life. I clutched my bucket of hearts, took a deep breath and walked through the gate.
Inside was the same as it ever was – manicured greenery and manic funerary architecture. Statues, mausoleums grander than most anything I’d ever set foot in, simple headstones, alabaster doll houses containing the ashes of little ones who’d passed on...
Long shadows, colder than they had any right to be in Lucernis, in any season.
I had one friend and a couple of acquaintances whose final resting place was here. The way Holgren explained it, I had been recognized by them, and so had every right to visit the Necropolis.
In the day.
But there was a reason the gate closed half a glass before sunset, and that reason was that night was the Guardian’s time. She ruled the Necropolis absolutely once the sun disappeared, and her nocturnal title was Queen of Souls.
I knew another dead person in the Necropolis, a former colleague named Tolum Handy. He’d tried his hand at a little grave robbing. He was now a decoration on the mausoleum he’d tried to break into.
Behind me, I heard the gate slam shut. Hells, half of Lucernis probably heard it.
I looked up toward the rise where the big, crude, ugly Weeping Mother statue was usually located. It wasn’t there.
“Amra Thetys. I have a bone to pick with you, yes I do.”
Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, nails on a headstone.
“Yeah, well, you’re not my favorite person either. But that’s no reason to be uncivil.” I lifted the bucket and said, “I brought a peace offering.”
“It isn’t your head, since that is clearly still attached.”
“It’s a snack. Oh, sorry, an offering. Holgren said you were partial to it.”
“The mage survived his journey to the Black Library? That seems improbable.” Suddenly she stood before me, more than twice my height and homely as ever. There was a glint in her stony eyes, and something vaguely related to a smirk twisted her lips. The carved folds in her robe twitched in a breeze I wasn’t feeling. Her massive hands just twitched.
I shrugged. “He’s good at doing improbable things, is Holgren.” I put the bucket down between us on the grass. “He made peace with you, for example.”
“Quite. But you are not he. You were a fool to come here.”
“Well I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t important, believe me.”
“You took the Blade That Whispers Hate from me, girl.”
“First, I haven’t been a girl for a long time. Second, The Blade was never yours in any sense, so I couldn’t have taken it from you.”
“Ah, yes, the splitter of hairs. I hope your verbal acrobatics offer you some comfort as I peel your skin away, layer by layer.”
Funny. I’d been dreading facing her since I’d mouthed off to Bath and made it unavoidable. But now that she was in front of me, threatening me, I just felt annoyed.
“Holgren said you’d be pissy about the Blade. Well, he used the word ‘sensitive’ but we both know you’re acting like a spoiled brat. I got to the Blade before you, that’s all. Kerf knows I didn’t want the nasty thing. And anyway, I’ve been paying for it ever since. So, we can make nice and you can have your bloody hearts, or you can keep being petty and small. Fuck me if I care anymore.”
It was a mistake, to talk to her that way.
Faster than I would have given her credit for, her stony hand shot out and took me by the throat. She lifted me up and squeezed hard enough to cut off my air, but not so hard as to crumble my neck bones.
“I don’t recall coming uninvited to your house and shitting on your carpet, as it were. Tell me, little thief, did I ever do such a thing?”
I shook my head as vigorously as the situation allowed.
“I thought not. Until the day I do, you will show me the same courtesy. Or your corpse will feed the worms and your soul will stay here with me, doing whatever the fuck I want it to, for a very long time.”
Not waiting for a response, she dropped me onto the grass and turned her attention to the bucket. She plucked off the lid with surprisingly nimble fingers while I hacked and gasped.
“No human hearts? I told that mageling specifically.” She dug into her treats with a disappointed shrug.
“And Holgren said you weren’t so bad,” I wheezed.
She glared at me. “The mageling understands respect. You, on the other hand....” She made a disgusted sound and returned her attention to the contents of the bucket. “You’re impertinent. Which is one thing. But you’re also clueless, which is altogether something else.”
“I’m working on it,” I croaked. “The second one anyway.” She grunted.
There was silence then, for a little while. Or rather no talking. She was a loud eater.
“Abanon isn’t the only Blade you’ve encountered,” she eventually said between bites.
“How do you know?” I rasped.
“I’m the Queen of Souls. Do you think I can’t see what’s latched on to yours?” She paused. “Silly question. You do well to think at all.”
I bit down on a witty retort. Who says I can’t learn from my mistakes?
“They’ll never leave you alone, now. You should have let me have Abanon’s Blade in the first place. Idiot.” She popped another he
art into her very wide gob and smacked it, loudly, open-mouthed. I wasn’t going to chide her about her table manners. I also wasn’t going to point out that the dead in the Necropolis had practically screamed at me to make sure she didn’t get the Blade That Whispers Hate. I’m no snitch.
“They’re already after me. Or so I’ve been told. That’s why I’m here.”
She paused in her chewing. Looked at me. “What exactly do you expect me to do about it?”
“Um. Help?”
“Witless sow. Look around you. Does it look like I have any interest in keeping mortals alive?”
“It absolutely does not, no. But you do have an interest in souls.”
“And?”
“And if I pledge my soul to you upon my death, I’m guessing you’ll get its stowaways, as well.”
It wasn’t a deal I wanted to make, and it definitely had the potential to backfire spectacularly if, say, the Guardian got the powers of the Blades along with their souls. But the beauty of the plan was that, if it all went to shit and she went on some berserk, Blade-fuelled rampage, I’d already be dead and thus beyond the giving of fucks. But I hadn’t gained any powers from the Blades I had defeated, so I was reasonably sure she wouldn’t either.
Reasonably sure. Pretty sure.
Fairly hopeful.
All right, so I shouldn’t have called Bath a shitloaf.
“You volunteer to place your eternal soul under my dominion?” She was staring at me like I’d just told her I was agreeing to be her slave for all eternity. Oh, wait.
I plucked a blade of grass. Twirled it between thumb and forefinger. “I mean, I’m not really doing anything with it. No fixed plans. It’s not my first choice, mind.”
“And in return you ask for help defeating the remaining Blades.”
The Thief Who Went to War Page 5
