City of the Uncommon Thief

by Lynne Bertrand

  “Why didn’t you stay on the roofs? You are nothing but one runner against a whole city.” Errol felt himself drool. He tried to wipe his mouth but missed. “You’ve got what Utlag wants. And the regnat. And the abbot.”

  “They have my city. And I want it.”

  Pollux charged at him again, and this time Errol took the force straight on, then watched his fingers twitch as his body folded up and sank to the dirt.

  Unready

  THE ABBOT PAUSED THIS TIME, before he stepped into the pantry, and went for a lamp. The lamp flickered, spat, and went dark.

  “I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t haunt my borders with that question, like this.”

  “I’m not here to ask the question,” the voice said.

  The abbot reached for a cup. “All these years and we’re finally going to change the subject. Should we discuss politics, do you think? Or matters of the soul?” He reached for a chair he couldn’t see and sat down on it.

  “An adversary is coming for you,” said the voice.

  The abbot ran the flat of his hand across the table and wiped a crumb away. “Politics, then. Who is it this time?”

  “A worthy adversary.”

  “I see. Well, I have wondered about that fleet commander. He has always thought the gold was brighter on my side of the wall.”

  “If you think I am speaking of the fleet commander, you and I have a different definition of ‘worthy.’ Why do you hoard all that gold, anyway? You and the regnat.”

  “I have the world’s attention. I’m what they refer to as a player.”

  “That is not a good reason.”

  “Yes. Well. You wouldn’t know how it is.” The other was silent. “So, who is this adversary?” The abbot’s voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. “It isn’t Rome, is it?”

  “You jest. Does it not occur to you that this opponent could mean your end? That I am here to warn you?”

  “Others have tried to do me in. Remember Rip Thebes. You used to say he was worthy.”

  “I haven’t changed that opinion.”

  “I won’t end, and you know it. I am forced alive by desire. I live for ships, for the promise of war, for the surprises my Banhus-theof brings.”

  “We’ve seen more surprises than we should have, on this bit of earth. Abominable surprises. That creature Utlag, for example.”

  The abbot toyed with his spoon. “Yes. Well. I was curious to see what would happen if I let the needles have their way with my ribs. I had hoped for something more. One of those great dragons would have been nice. Bit of a mistake, Utlag was. I had hoped I was more than that.”

  “He is not your original fylgia and you know it. A parasite.”

  The abbot slumped in his chair, a rare breach of posture. “What was I, before he infiltrated? A lion, I imagine.”

  “You’ll never know. You shouldn’t play—”

  “I will play with the sawols of men, if I so choose. Even my own.”

  The kitchen grew colder.

  “If,” said the other, “if you had spent any time at all in those ancient texts in any of those languages you destroyed on your shelves, you would know the difference between the thing you call a sawol and the espiritu your needles dig from rib cages. The spirit.”

  “They’re dull books,” the abbot said.

  “The adversary coming your way understands the beasts who inhabit the bone houses.”

  “Oh, good. I could use his advice. For example, how to get the vipers not to attack their keepers for the duration of a ship’s journey? Logistics. One bear is worth twenty dogs, so we feed the twenty to the one. One bear in chains and terrified is worth eighty dogs, so we set all those beasts together in the pit and anything standing at the end will make me a sack of gold. More gold if it is a man who can handle a weapon.”

  “A foul system.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care at all. I am a merchant tired at the end of the day and unwilling to consider whether business is worth doing. Unready, as you may have guessed, to leave my city just because of some book-learned snot of a foot soldier coming my way.”

  “Very well. Fiat justitia ruat caelum.” Try as he may, the abbot could not get the lamp to light without calling for Nyree.

  More Poetry

  ON THE FLOOR OF A SHAFT, Rip lay. A day had been lost. The cover above his head scraped open.

  “Did you bring the iron spikes?” Rip called.

  “Spikes are gone. Runner stole them. We don’t have time for that now. Nigh time to set you in the pit. Are you weak?”

  “You tell me.” Rip stood in Null’s lamplight.

  “You’re half gone, but we already knew that,” Null said.

  Iron scraped on iron again and the cell went dark.

  “How long do I have to wait?” Rip yelled. He lowered himself to the floor again. The tunnel above his pit was silent. Rip gave up any thought that the ending was going to come easily. He gave up the hope of seeing his brothers—the younger one who aggravated him and the older one who came to him every night begging to have his teeth filed, who haunted the mines of gaol and slept somewhere deep in the earth, who brought him broken things he had found in the streets in some tender, useless gesture.

  “The wild animal wants to come home now,” Rip said, his face swollen with dry tears. “Oth ure feldhus. Oth ure banhus. Oth min heofon. Infaer ic.”

  To your tent. To your ribs. To heaven. Let me come home.

  Null was still there. He scraped an old piece of skin from the mine floor with his fingernail. “There, now.” He tasted it and put it in his mouth. “Nobody cares.” He was accustomed to the habits of caged things, their tendency to commit poetry near the end.

  Suspicions

  THE ABBOT WAS RELIEVED to hear Nyree coming down the hall. He did not wish to be alone, although he was suspicious of her. He had seen her near the vault, and she shouldn’t have been there.

  “A test of your knowledge,” he said. “Fiat justitia ruat caelum. What is the meaning?”

  She lit the lamp he held out to her, and bowed. “Its specific interpretation is ‘Do justice. Let the sky fall.’ But in practice, it means something more like ‘In order for justice to prevail, all hell will have to break loose.’” The abbot shifted uncomfortably. “It is an unsettling phrase, found in the ancient texts,” she said. “Has the abbot been reading?”

  Lugius said, as offhandedly as he could, “Yes. As usual.” He paused and added, “I read that in Sophocles.”

  “But Sophocles did not—” Nyree began, and then thought the better of it. “I mean to say, Sophocles is tumultuous for this time of day.”

  “I am aware of that. This stove needs cleaning. Send up a housekeeper.”

  Nyree left in a bow, for she did not want the abbot to see her face. An abbot in a scriptorium should know the difference between the language of Sophocles and the language of Virgil.

  Cold Questions

  ERROL THOUGHT AT FIRST that he was blind. He lay on his back. He could feel his eyelids open, but there was nothing to see. He felt cold water along his spine and stone chafing his shoulder blades. Water soaked the backs of his leggings and the hair on the back of his head. A drop of it fell on his face and his hand jerked up involuntarily, but he could not reach his face, for the bedrock in which he lay could fit no more than a body.

  “Steady,” he said to himself.

  Beyond his feet, there came the sound of iron grating on iron, and Errol saw lantern light playing off a pair of eyes in the barred window of the door to this chamber.

  “I thought the climax of the story always came in a high place.”

  “Shouldn’t you be hibernating, Utlag?”

  “You let yourself be caught. And yet you haven’t got the iron spikes. A crypt of sorts seemed convenient. Less of a disposal issue, at the end.” Errol lay silent. “A
last request is traditional.”

  Errol tried to remember his plan. But he was thrown. For one thing, he was wounded, yet again. For another, he had not expected to be in a crypt. A shaft, yes. Or the arena. But not a tomb. “I want to speak with the regnat. Alone.”

  “The regnat? Curiosity!” said Utlag, holding the lamp up to the vent. “Why?”

  “I want to know about gaol and the pit. He knows everything.”

  “I know everything.”

  “I doubt it—”

  “Ask your questions!”

  “I’m merely curious to know how the foundlings in gaol’s prison cells, those shafts, are turned into beasts of war.”

  “Why?”

  Errol shrugged. “I’m a guilder’s son. I’m interested in how things are made.”

  “I am not permitted to say—”

  “See? I thought as much. As I said, I will need to speak with the regnat.”

  Utlag hissed. “We pry the foundling from his herd, his flock, his pack. Drop him in a pit.”

  Errol’s head throbbed in the cold water but he made as if to yawn of boredom. “And then?”

  “Introduce him to his nightmares.” Utlag threw open his mouth, which unhinged at the jaw with a sick sucking sound. A series of long teeth unfolded from the roof of his mouth. Errol rammed himself so hard away from the door that he hit his head against the back of the crypt. “Like that,” said Utlag.

  “Is that all?”

  “All? No. I wake the foundling in the night. Even the sound of my fingernails on his door will drive him insane. I take away everything he has carried in with him, even his clothes. I wound whatever lives in the cell next to his and let him hear it begging for its life. Clever. He will do anything I ask after only five minutes of that.”

  Errol gritted his teeth. “That’s what you were doing to Jago, when you were threatening to drown Rip. You were trying to make a monster of him.”

  “I don’t try.”

  “What comes next, after that?”

  “The foundling will be unsettled in a day. So frantic not to be alone that he will beg even for my company, which is”—Utlag clicked—“ironic. He will either be submissive or wild with rage. In either case he is ready to meet the iron spikes. We throw them in the pit. The beast extracted from his chest will be the same species it would have been—a jackal is a jackal—but the fear will have made it mad. In the best cases it will tear the flesh from a creature four times its size. I’m sure you know the regnat and the abbot have found a market for such beasts.”

  “And you? What is your market?”

  “I have higher purposes. An object of desire—”

  Errol interrupted, “Would the jackal have attacked the very man from which it came?”

  Errol heard that clicking sound. “I see what this is all about,” said Utlag. “You’re afraid that stag will attack you. No. Certain predators will do that. Spiders. Jackals. Not a stag.”

  “A relief.” Errol feigned sighing. He had known his stag would not hurt him.

  “Have you seen a jackal?” Utlag said.

  “Not yet. I imagine you’ll make that happen, sooner or later.”

  “You see? I hadn’t even thought of that. Imagination works better than reality in tearing a man apart,” said Utlag. He clucked and went silent, waiting. “I know more.”

  “Mm,” Errol said. “I don’t imagine you know what evil is happening in the guilds, on the roofs.”

  “Insulted!” Utlag hissed. “Ask me anything.”

  “Is the regnat aware the guild work is burning?” Errol said.

  “He orders it,” Utlag said.

  “And that guild foundlings are being dropped at night?”

  “By the hundreds, at his command. They come through the tower Fremantle.”

  “Why foundlings? Why not runners or guilders?”

  “Exasperation! If we took runners or guilders, the towers would come out in force. Do you see? No one will ever fight for a foundling.”

  “Why don’t the streets rise up and fight? The streets are full of foundlings.”

  “Actually the uprisings are many. The abbot rounds up the mutineers. Also their friends, their families, their beasts. It doesn’t go well for them.”

  Errol swallowed hard. “How hard is it for you to climb the towers?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Utlag licked the air. “Look.” He put his fingers through the bar of the cell. “Touch them,” he said.

  “I can’t reach—”

  “Touch them!”

  Errol twisted his body in the tomb. Utlag’s palms were covered with tiny, stiff hairs. “I go anywhere I like. I also have skills with locks.” Errol yanked his hand away.

  “Is that why the regnat mocks you? Because you’re”—Errol let Utlag wait—“extraordinary?”

  “He hates me. I took what he could not have.”

  “He has a whole city.”

  “I took the bound-wife he wanted. I fathered the sons.”

  “How the hel—I mean, what are you, exactly?”

  “Alone.”

  “That must be terrible,” said Errol. He was surprised that he meant the sympathy in his voice.

  “It’s impossible,” whispered Utlag.

  “And the sons?” said Errol. “Was it impossible for them, too?”

  “No one cares. Rip is a disappointment, as you saw. Fenn is frightening even to me.”

  “Is? You mean was,” said Errol.

  “How do you know Fenn?”

  “I am from Thebes. Have you forgotten? And was there not a third son?”

  “No! No third son. Not of mine. But the bound-wife was unfaithful to me.” Utlag’s mouth constricted on the words bound-wife so that they sounded like a belch. “She cast me out. I returned the favor. Haunted that third son, threw him off the tower.”

  Errol cringed. “Why wound a kelp?”

  “Why? So she would pay attention. You should have heard the kelp screaming—‘But I am the guildmaster’s son!’ As if that would save him.”

  Errol’s stomach heaved. Poor Feo. “I see. I suppose it’s only fair that the kelp should suffer for what his mam had done.” Errol felt sure anyone could tell he was lying.

  “There. See? You understand.”

  “Who was the father of that third son?” said Errol, wishing as he said it that he had not.

  Again it came as a belch. “That regnat.”

  Errol blurted, “No!” He pressed his fingernails into his palms, determined not to lose control of himself. “The regnat is foul.”

  Utlag showed his face again. “We are in agreement. You’ll be glad to know I spend my time frightening him.” Utlag leaned against the cell door now, like a man coming to visit a convalescing friend. “Without the iron spikes, the abbot can’t make his fylgias, and the ships leave empty. So I keep them, to get his attention. It makes it difficult. He hates me. Meanwhile the regnat mocks me. So I must terrorize him. I leave the spikes where he doesn’t expect to see them. In his bog. In the bedchamber. He cannot lock his doors sufficiently or move high enough in that tower to escape me.”

  “He fears the pain of the spikes,” said Errol.

  “It’s not that,” Utlag hissed. “He doesn’t want to meet his beast.”

  “I thought a man’s beast was his companion. His friend.”

  “There are exceptions.” Utlag’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you mind your beast trailing you everywhere?”

  “I love it. I love the stag.”

  “Yes. Yes. That’s what it should be.” Utlag put his forehead on the bars.

  “So all those lights of Fremantle are kept lit so the spikes cannot work on the regnat.”

  “He is a coward,” said Utlag.

  “Will
every beast you frighten become a raging thing, driven by fear? Are your methods reliable?”

  “In every way,” Utlag said. “And yet? No. For we find bits of nobility or courage here and there among the beasts.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “We feed the noble ones to the others.”

  Errol kept silent again for a long time.

  “What about your ideas? The kardunns, the bonnacons, the rossignols?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “How many have you found so far? Centicores? Or yales?”

  “Not one,” Utlag said. “Yet. But I have many foundlings waiting in the cells and I’m sure one of those will be rare. You will be interested to know there was one guilder in Thebes who could see a man’s beast.”

  “Slyngel Thebes,” said Errol. Then, quickly, “He died.”

  “He didn’t die. I ended him. He wouldn’t help me. It was easy to find a poison for a thirsty guilder.” Utlag wiped a thin black line of drool from his chin.

  Errol wasn’t sure he could keep going. But he had to. “Still, like you, I am irritated that no rare beasts exist yet in this city.”

  “Irritated?” said Utlag.

  “Of course. Is this city deficient?”

  “Exactly! I feel the same! I wish I could read the signs as Slyngel Thebes did.”

  “I wish I could help you. There are foundlings I suspect are rare.” Utlag was watching him closely. Suspicious! “So many of them are sheep, you know? Or houseflies. But a very few have a way of moving or some uncommon skill. I’m sure they’re rare.”

  “Yes. Yes! That’s what I mean.”

  “I assume you keep records in the vault. We could go over them together—”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Oh, but you don’t have access to the vault.”

  “Oh yes. No. Confusion. I can open it without the abbot’s key but he threatens that—” Utlag paused. “So he is the only one. I will ask him—”

  “I would be honored.”

  “You’re lying to me. You wish me dead. You are tricking me.”

  Errol paused. “My stag is waiting for me at Bluebird’s. You can check if you don’t believe me. I trust you with that information.”