Proper Thieves
Page 31
“Under there,” Tolem said, pointing to the nadir of the ship’s underside. The moon-cast shadows were nearly impenetrable there. “At least it’ll be dark.”
“Yeah,” Danel said, squinting. “Great. How am I supposed to steer this thing close enough?”
“Here, kid. Let me.” Tolem closed his eyes and held his hands out, moving them gently like a puppeteer with an invisible marionette. Phaedra watched as Danel seemed to struggle for a moment; then, as he gradually understood what was happening, the young man relaxed. His hands began moving in the exact same patterns as Tolem’s. Gradually, the ship slowed and began to hover in place about fifty feet below the hull of the ship.
She looked over at Tolem. Tolem opened his eyes and nodded.
Phaedra bit her lip.
Directly above them, the ancient stone of The Palace blasted away in a cloud of dust and fire and crumbling debris. A small metal plate covering the roof of the pilot’s area shielded them from the big hunks of masonry that struck the airship floor, but tiny shrapnel pellets pelted the three of them just the same. The thick metal blasting hood, charred and smoking, hit the deck first.
And then, down came the gold.
A beautiful, shimmering waterfall, it twinkled faintly in what little light came up to them from the city. Thousands and thousands of coins pounded down into the bed of their ship with a deafening metallic roar, quickly forming a towering mound of treasure. The hole in the ship wasn’t large, so it took time for the mountain to drain out, but in a minute or two, even the pilot’s cabin was filled to Danel’s chest with loot.
“So, hey…” Danel said distantly, his mind still deeply under Tolem’s influence. “...do you guys need a regular driver?”
The coins finally stopped raining down. Phaedra watched the hole for any signs of movement. And then, with little warning…
Vertus plummeted out of the hole, landed flat on his back on the peak of the golden mountain, and rolled down one side. A small avalanche of coins followed him down, then covered his body almost entirely. “Ohh…” he moaned, lying perfectly still. “Ohh Krist...my fucking back…my fucking…” He went to brush some coins off his face, and his hand caught the light. “Oh no...I…” He looked over at Phaedra. “I lost another one.”
Phaedra squinted at what Vertus was looking at. Sure enough, he’d lost another finger.
For a moment, vile, stinking Vertus’ face curled up. He looked like he was about to cry. “Help me find it?”
Instead, Phaedra made an annoyed noise deep in her throat. She reached down and grabbed him by the robes, hauling his thin, emaciated body out of the pile. “Tolem,” she said over her shoulder, “let’s get out of—”
Her last word vanished in the sound of another huge explosion...only this one came from directly below them. The ship jumped beneath their feet, and as Phaedra regained her bearings a heartbeat later, she realized the floor was gone, and most of the gold along with it.
“Fuuuuuuck!” Vertus screamed, his arms pinwheeling, his feet scrambling to find purchase on the edge of a very big hole. Phaedra’s grip on his cloak was the only thing keeping him from toppling backwards into space.
Tolem pulled the both of them back into the pilot’s cabin, and they landed in a heap on the floor beside Danel. Phaedra peeled herself off of Vertus and scrambled on trembling hands and knees back to the edge of the hole. “What in the…” she gasped. “What just…”
Below them, silhouetted against the sprawling city streets of Kauleth, was another airship. Part of the roof had been pried back and refashioned into a large but crude metal funnel. Slowly, the mound of gold—or as much as the other ship could catch, at least—was draining through the funnel and down into the hold of the vessel.
When the last of it fell through, Phaedra could see down into the ship’s cabin. A familiar face was looking back at her. “Is that...Nalan?” she asked, squinting. She watched as Nalan jumped back into the pilot’s seat and pushed his hands forward. The ship leapt off like a shot, soaring out over the darkened city. “Since when can Nalan fly an airship?”
“What’s going on?” Danel asked, shaking off the effects of having his mind influenced.
“Go!” Tolem roared, stabbing a finger toward the other airship. “Go!”
Torg
“Well done!” Breigh grunted. One of the thugs had just landed a solid kick to her back, behind her broken rib, and Torg could see from her eyes that the pain had nearly caused her to black out. “Well...well done. Next time, square your stance, though. Follow through. You’ll get the hang of it.” Neither of the pretty thugs were fighters, but between them they landed more than a few lucky blows as Breigh focused on Torg and his flashing knives.
Blearily, Breigh shook her head, trying to get her eyes to refocus. She was bleeding again, from new wounds and old, and her three assailants were advancing on her. She backed up a step and nearly tripped over the lantern, which the guard she’d come in with had left in the middle of the hall. She stumbled, catching herself against the wall with her good arm.
Torg held up a hand and the others stopped. “Breigh, it’s time to stop,” he said.
“Finally,” she said, trying and failing to mask how hard she needed to breathe. “It’s a wise man who knows when it’s time to surrender. You two.” She pointed at Torg’s replacement guards. “Take turns beheading each other.”
The two looked at each other in mute confusion.
“And you...” she pointed at Torg. “I don’t think my new sword is quite sharp enough to cut through that thick neck of yours. I’ll just have to pull your head off with my bare hands.”
Torg snorted. “Torg has seen the deaths of many proud fighters,” he said. “In the end, it is always the same. Boasting, bragging, bleeding...dying. The minute a warrior starts talking, he starts dying.”
“You and your rituals,” Breigh grunted, one arm limp at her side. “Do they keep you warm at night? You and your city-born scum?”
“You’re finished, Breigh,” Torg said with a vicious grin. “Let’s make a clean end of this. You never had a chance.”
Breigh laughed at that. “Never had a chance?” she bellowed, incredulously. “Tell that to your beard!”
For a brief moment, the two guards forgot about the ever-present threat of Torg’s violent retaliation and burst out laughing. Torg turned to shoot one of them a look, and as he did, Torgsbane sailed end over end down the hallway and sank deep into the pretty thug’s pretty face.
“How’s that end?” Breigh cried. “Clean enough for you?” She reared back with a foot and kicked the lantern squarely into the chest of Torg’s other replacement guard. The lantern burst, covering the man with burning oil. He screamed and ran past her down the hallway. “And perhaps that can keep him warm at night!”
The burning man disappeared around the corner, taking the light with him. As darkness gathered around the two remaining warriors—one unarmed, one wielding a pair of knives—Torg could hear Breigh’s tortured breath echoing off the cold stone walls.
“Well,” Torg growled, feeling the edge of one of his blades with his thumb. “That just leaves us.”
“You. And me.” Breigh smiled as the light finally died. “And my bare hands.”
Tolem
The gaslight streets blurred to bright ribbons in the dark city below. Slowly but surely, the gulf between the two airships widened.
Tolem looked over his shoulder, past the great hole in the floor where his gold should have been, and out the great window in the back wall. There was already a Palace security skiff inspecting the hole they’d blaste
d in the underside of the hull. They were mobilizing faster than he’d planned for.
One thing at a time, he cautioned himself. Nalan’s ship was definitely looking smaller as he pulled farther and farther away.
Tolem gripped the back of the driver’s chair. “If this is you being inconspicuous again, kid…”
“I’m going as fast as this thing will let me,” Danel countered.
“They’re the same goddamn ship,” Tolem shouted, smacking the kid on the side of the face with the back of his hand. “Only this one’s lighter and the other one’s not even being driven by a mage.”
Danel clutched his cheek. “Okay, one? Weight doesn’t matter. The enchantments on this thing…”
Weight doesn’t matter. Tolem’s eyebrows shot up. From twenty years past, Instructor Gautlieb’s voice echoed in his head. It had been one of the old man’s lectures on the laws of the physical universe. “Wind resistance,” Tolem said to himself. “The wind’s passing over Nalan’s roof, but…” Tolem looked up at the open roof and followed the path of the air flow back toward the glass half of the back wall of the craft.
In one fluid motion, Tolem snatched Danel’s bag off the floor and hurled it as hard as he could, smashing out the back window of the ship. “What the hey, guy?” Danel whined, eyes still fixed on the back of Nalan’s vessel. “My money was in there! You know, the money you paid me to fly this piece-of-crap ship?”
Tolem lay down on the floor next to Danel’s seat. “Close your eyes,” he said, moments before kicking the windshield out.
Danel screeched as shattered glass blew into his face on a hundred-mile-an-hour torrent of air. He threw an arm over his face, but gashes both huge and tiny appeared all over the boy’s face. Phaedra and Vertus were screaming too. At least they were able to duck down behind the seat to get out of the path of the flying shrapnel.
“Krist and Kroham!” Danel shouted. His face sparkled as the moonlight caught the tiny bits of glass sticking out.
“You fucking lunatic!” Vertus chimed in. “What was that supposed to accomplish?”
Tolem pointed out at Nalan’s ship. It was no longer getting smaller. In fact, it was starting to get bigger.
“I’m a teacher,” he said, casting a dismissive look at his lesion-pocked business partner. “I know things.” He crossed his fingers and opened the link.
There was no answer on the line.
Tolem shot a look back at Vertus.
Samus ignored him.
His eyes stern, Tolem looked over at Phaedra.
“What are you looking at me for?” she asked with a shrug. “You know what you’re supposed to do.”
Tolem turned away from the others in the ship.
Samus
Allister marched Samus through the door to the back room of the kitchen. It swung shut behind them. “Sit down over there in front of that pole,” Allister said, producing a small length of rope from his pocket. “Put your hands behind your back so I can get to them.”
Samus just stood there, looking around the storeroom like it was his personal suite. “Tying me up…” he said. “It just doesn’t seem very...magical...does it?”
Allister cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, apart from setting my home on fire, you’ve done very little by way of magecraft since we’ve begun our little time together. And I didn’t even see how you did that.”
Allister bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t want to alert the Palace mages.”
“You want to know what I think?” Samus said, taking a step toward him.
“No,” Allister said, raising a hand and putting it between himself and Samus.
“I don’t think I have anything to worry about from that hand of yours.”
Samus noticed Allister’s hand was shaking. “What...what makes you say that?”
Samus just smiled. He’d been told he had the kind of smile that made other people smile less, because it gave them bad associations with smiling.
“Here’s my theory,” he said at last. “I think you’re too distracted to conjure. I think my old mentalist friend Zella is borrowing your talents to help your friend Nalan fly an airship. And…” Samus took another step closer to Allister. “...I think you can put your hand down now.”
Allister shoved his hand right in Samus’s smug face. The boy squared his jaw. “Here’s the interesting thing about theories,” he said. “You have to test them.”
Samus looked down. His smile faded somewhat. He put up his hands. “Fine,” he said, backing away. He turned and sat on the floor in front of the post. “Here, you say?”
For a moment, Allister just watched him at a distance. He nodded. He put his hand down.
Gingerly, Samus reached back with both hands, placing them on either side of the pole. Allister circled around him and crouched down, grabbing one hand by the wrist. But as he did, Samus grabbed his wrist too.
Samus swung his free arm around, twisting his squat torso around to face Allister. There was a flash of metal and the boy howled. He pushed away hard from Samus, but the fat man was stronger than he looked; he held his grip on Allister’s wrist like a vice.
Samus pulled his thin little dagger free of Allister’s side, and the boy cried out again. Ruby red droplets hit the white tile floor.
Allister’s eyes were wide. His mouth gaped but no other sounds came out. As his face contorted, it began to change right in front of Samus’ eyes. The boy’s red hair darkened to brown. His thin, angular features became more broad and ruddy.
Samus’ eyebrows went up. “Nalan?”
Nalan took advantage of the moment, sticking a hand in Samus’ face. Samus twisted and tugged, pulling the younger man’s head hard into the pole that ran between them. With Nalan dazed, Samus drew the blade up for another strike. Nalan’s free hand caught his arm by the bicep, his fingers digging into the soft meat there and finding very little solid to push against. The older man pulled the edge of the dagger across Nalan’s forearm, slashing again and again, drawing thin hashmarks on the boy’s skin th
at he knew must burn like fire.
“Stop,” came the boy’s pleading voice. “Please. Stop.”
Samus pushed with his legs, toppling Nalan onto his back. He leaned into him with all his considerable weight.
“This is...a real shame,” Samus hissed, straining against Nalan’s grip. “I was actually...looking forward...to knifing Allister. Killing...the only one of you with any common sense...just feels...like a crime.”
Vertus
Their airship slammed into the back of Nalan’s, and Vertus giggled.
“Hit him again,” Tolem said. He took no delight in it, Vertus could tell. Vertus would just have to delight enough for both of them.
Danel struck the rear of Nalan’s ship again. The passengers grabbed for whatever handholds they could to keep from being tossed forward.
Phaedra nodded. “We need to get him out of the city,” Phaedra pointed out, clinging to Tolem’s arm.
“It’ll be easier to get what we want out in the country,” Tolem said. His eyes were fixed on the rear of the other vessel. “But now that we know what we’re dealing with, we’ll take him wherever we can get him.”
“Again?” Danel asked.
“Again,” Tolem confirmed.
The ship lunged forward, but as everyone aboard braced for impact, Allister’s craft dropped out of the sky in front of them, diving straight down toward the rooftops below.