King Pinch

by David Cook

  “Seize the thief!” roared the voice again, echoing through the vast empty chamber of the temple’s great nave.

  In Pinch’s blinking gaze, a small hunched blur darted across the broad marble floor. Close behind was a pack of clanking men lit by the brilliant flare of a priest’s wand of light. The old rogue heaved back out of the hole, suddenly fearful he’d been seen and breathless with surprise.

  The rope, previously slack, jerked and snapped as a weighty little body grabbed it and scrambled up the line. “Pinch!” wheezed Sprite-Heels through lungfuls of air. “Pinch, haul me up!”

  The man seized the rope and heaved. “For the gods’ piss, be silent!” he hissed through clenched teeth, too softly for anyone to hear. It was bad enough Sprite-Heels had blown the job, but he had to drag Pinch’s name into it, too.

  Straddling the hole, Pinch suppressed the urge to drop the blundering halfling to his well-deserved fate. Do that and there was no doubt the little knave would sing hymns for the catchpoles. So he had no choice but to pull, heedless of the strain, until he drew up great arm-lengths of rope and the halfling was hurtling toward the temple’s painted ceiling.

  “To the roof! Alarms! Blow the alarms!” came the muffled bellow from below.

  “OWWW!” came the more immediate cry as the rope suddenly came to jarring halt. “ ’inch, lay aw a liddle! Yer bregging by dose!”

  A foot of line slid through the rogue’s fingers and the weight on the other end bounced with a jolt. A small hand thrust through the hole and flailed until it gripped the edge. “Up—but slowly!” wailed Sprite-Heels from below.

  Pinch cast his gaze over the windswept rooftop, trying to guess how long they had. “Did you get it—the pelfry?”

  “ ’Course I did!” came the indignant reply. The halfling’s arm struggled and heaved until his curly head popped into view. “Pinch, help me out of here! They’re getting archers!”

  “Pass me the garbage—all of it!”

  Sprite-Heels looked at Pinch’s out-thrust hand. “A pox on that!” he spat out as he lunged forward and caught the rogue’s wrist in his tiny grip. “You’ll not drop me twice!”

  Pinch didn’t resist, but heaved his small companion through the hole. “I should take it, for the way you’ve bungled this job!” he snarled.

  “Bungled! You’re the one who—”

  CR-RACK! A burst of splintered tile slashed across Pinch’s arm. Wheeling, Pinch saw the silhouette of two guardsmen, one twirling his arm over his head.

  “Slingers! Down!” The man shoved the halfling as he dropped toward the rooftop. There was a whirring buzz just over his head and then his feet slipped out from beneath him. Unbraced on the pitched slope, Pinch skidded and rattled several feet down the tile roof before he was able to arrest his slide. The darkness beyond the third-story eave loomed ominously below.

  Pinch scrambled for purchase, his feet skittering across the tiles. Sprite-Heels was facing him, back pressed against the brick pile of the chimney. The only advantage gained in his fall was that the stack screened his attackers, but not seeing them hardly made them go away. Over the fits of the wind, Pinch and the halfling could hear the heavy-footed clunk of the temple sentinels as they picked their way across the angled tiles.

  A throng of voices rose up from the courtyard below as the alarm leapt like an elemental spark through the temple compound. Pinch twisted around just in time for the brilliant glare of a spotter’s lantern to sweep over the eaves. The wash of light swung their way, not quite on them but close enough to highlight the fear in Sprite-Heels’s countenance.

  The rogue’s sharp whistle jerked the wavering halfling back to action. A snap of the head and a sharp gesture were all that Pinch had to do before his small partner nodded in agreement. The knowing eye and the sure hand were the language of all thieves.

  As if on a spoken signal, the pair sprang into motion. They barreled around the chimney, one to each side, and straight into the faces of the two guardsmen who’d been trying to creep forward with ox-footed stealth. “Clubs!” bellowed Pinch, letting loose the time-honored battling cry of Elturel’s apprentices. The astonished guardsman flailed madly with his sword, the blade slashing the air over Pinch’s gray-curled head. The thief didn’t stop to fence but swung his balled fist in an uppercut beneath the other’s guard. Knuckles slammed into hardened jerkin right below the breastbone. The guard sucked air like a drowning man; Pinch cursed like a sailor. The sword hit the tiles with a sharp crash and skittered over the eaves like a living thing while the guard took a floundering step back. All at once, he tipped precipitously as one foot found the burglars’ hole and disappeared from sight.

  At the rim of his attention, Pinch saw Sprite-Heels was no less quick. As the halfling easily dodged beneath the tall guard’s lunge, there was a flash of metal and a bewildered scream. Like a rag doll, the guard tumbled against the chimney, hands clutching the back of his leg below his armored coat.

  Ignoring all else, Pinch scrambled up the wavering slope of tile and lunged over the ridge. Momentum skidded him halfway down and then he was up and running with short, acrobatic steps. He clambered over a gable and then swung precariously around the edge of a conic tower before he came to the dark and shadowed alley they had started from. Moving with greater care, he searched for their rope to the alley below. Just then Sprite-Heels tumbled over the ridgeline, coming from a different direction.

  “Anyone following?” Pinch demanded.

  Sprite-Heels grinned while he caught his breath. “Not a one … of the patrico’s men … not even a rat,” he gasped.

  “And the pelfry?”

  The halfling reached inside his vest and pulled out a crudely forged amulet embossed with a stylized half-sun symbol. Pinch snatched the booty and pulled the startled halfling to his feet.

  “Right, then. To the rope.”

  As they neared the line, Pinch instantly knew there was trouble. A noise carried over the wind that others, less keen, might miss. It was a steady creak, the sawing to and fro of a line. He signaled Pinch to silence and crept forward over the terra-cotta terrain.

  Sure enough, there was someone on the rope. It jerked from side to side as someone pulled himself up. Signaling Sprite-Heels to stand watch, Pinch carefully peered over the edge of the roof.

  Halfway below was the dim shape of a climber. From the bulky shape and the oversized helmet, there was no mistaking it was one of the temple’s men. In the middle of the alley was a pool of light where the climber’s partner stood holding a lantern.

  “Pinch, they’re coming!” Sprite-Heels hissed. As if to prove his warning there was a thunderous clatter of boots across tile.

  The pursuit was hard on, and their escape route was blocked. In a few more moments the climber would reach the roof, putting the two thieves between enemy swords. There was no forward and there was no back.

  With barely the touch of thought, a small knife seemed to materialize in Pinch’s hand. The blade flashed in the lantern light as he reached over the eaves. A yelp of alarm burst from below. With a single swipe, the razor-sharp edge severed the thin silken line. The yelp became a squeal until it ended in a solid whump of flesh and steel.

  “At the back!” roared a voice from the top of the ridgepole. The vanguard of their pursuers was silhouetted against the shivering night, the wind furiously whipping their plumed helmets as they blundered forward.

  Fear making their thoughts fleet, Pinch and Sprite-Heels frantically cast about for an escape, now that their rope was gone. Suddenly Pinch saw dark, moving branches in the void of the alley between the somber temple walls and the garish lanterns of the festhalls. A plan formed in his mind; he knew it was a bad plan, but it was the only choice he had.

  “With me!” Pinch shouted to encourage himself. And then, even though he wasn’t a strong man, the rogue scooped up the halfling around the waist. With three all-out strides and before Sprite-Heels could even squeak, Pinch leapt into the darkness, his partner tucked under one arm.
With his other arm he reached out as far as he could and with his eyes closed, Pinch prayed.

  “PINCH! ARE YOU—”

  All at once the pair hit the top branches of the only tree in Sweetsweat Lane. Flailing for something to grip, the master thief dropped Sprite-Heels, who was squirming and howling enough already. The branches tore at Pinch’s face, shredded his fine doublet, and hammered him in the ribs. Still he crashed through them, seeming to go no slower as momentum carried him in a sweeping arc toward the ground.

  Pinch was almost ready to welcome the impact with the earth when his whole body, led by his neck, jerked to a stop. His fine cloak that had been billowing out behind him had snagged on a broken branch. A cheaper cloak with a clasp of lesser strength would have torn right then or its clasp would have come undone, but Pinch didn’t dress in cheap clothes. Instead the cloak tried to hang him, saving the patrico of the Morninglord the job.

  There was a brief second when Pinch thought his neck might snap, and then he realized he was still plunging downward—though not as fast. The one tree in Sweetsweat Lane was little more than a sapling, and under Pinch’s weight the trunk bent with the springiness of a fishing pole. He felt as if he were floating, perhaps because he couldn’t breathe, but there was no doubt the fall was slowing.

  And then, through a shroud of pain that narrowed his vision, Pinch saw salvation. It was as if Mask, god of thieves, had reached down and parted the branches to reveal the brightly lit patio of the Charmed Maiden just below him.

  Gurgling and kicking, Pinch fumbled his bung-knife from its wrist sheath and slashed at the cloth above him. The pop of threads breaking turned into a rip, and suddenly he was plunging as the branches whipped past him. With a loud crash, he bounced off a table, hurling trays of candied fruits and pitchers of warm wine into the air, and ricocheted into the warm and amply padded embrace of an enchanting lass of the Charmed Maiden. Not far away from him landed his smaller half, but with no less solid a thump.

  “MAD!” Sprite-Heels howled over the shrieks of the Charmed Maiden’s consorts and the outraged sputters of their clientele. “MAD, MAD, MAD! You tried to kill us! You suicidal son of a cheating apple-squire!” Sprite-Heels paid no attention to the panicked rush of the ladies or the bristling posturing of their gentlemen friends. They’d undoubtedly come out to see the commotion and were now getting more than their share.

  “Stow it!” Pinch snarled as he reluctantly freed himself from the young lady’s arms. “It’s our necks on the leafless tree if the Hellriders take us.” Though battered and hobbling, Pinch nonetheless seized the halfling by the nape of the neck and half-dragged him into the back passages of the festhall.

  The pair staggered through the scented hallways, their haste increasing with each step. They passed locked doors where only soft giggles where heard, passed salons where dells awaiting the night’s suitors adjusted their gowns. They hustled down the back stairs. As they neared the bottom, a chorus of shrieks and indignant cries filled the floor below. Over it all, Pinch heard the discordant clang of hand bells.

  “Hellriders!” The rogue thrust his little partner back up the stairs. “Second floor—end of the hall!” he barked.

  Sprite-Heels knew better than to argue. The chorus of hand bells was enough to say the watch was at the front door. The halfling could only trust the rogue’s orders; gods knew the man had been here enough times.

  At the top of the landing, Pinch forced his way through the sweaty couples who surged from the richly draped rooms, dodging elbows as women struggled into their gowns and the hard slap of steel as men buckled their swords to their belts. Behind them the bells and the shouts of “Hold fast!” and “Seize him!” grew stronger along with the furious pound of boots as the Hellrider patrol mounted the stairs. Forced like rats to flee rising water, the host of entertainers and clients crammed the staircase upward, so that it was mere moments before Pinch broke free into the near-empty hall. The rogue assumed his partner would follow; the halfling was able enough to care for himself. Pinch sprinted down the hall and painfully skidded around the corner.

  “It’s a blank wall!” wailed the voice right behind him, and indeed the words were true. The hallway ended in a solid wall, albeit one pleasingly decorated to imitate a garden seat. The small niche with a marble bench, all draped in false vines of silk and taffeta, was charming enough, but completely without a door.

  “There’s a way through here, Sprite. Maeve told me about it,” Pinch assured. Even as he spoke, his long-fingered hands were swiftly probing the panels in search of some hidden catch or spring.

  The halfling snorted. “Maeve? Our dear sweet drunken Maeve—here?”

  “She was young once and not always a wizard. Now cut your whids and get to searching.” From the commotion behind them, the Hellriders had reached the landing.

  The halfling ignored the command. “So that’s how you met her. Maeve, a—” he jibed.

  “Stow it,” Pinch snapped, though not out of sentimentality. He needed to concentrate and focus—and press just-so the spring-plate his fingers suddenly found.

  A small panel over the garden bench swung out, opening to reveal a well of darkness. An exhalation of dust and cobwebs swept from the gap.

  Pinch pulled the panel back and nodded to the halfling. “It’s jiggered; in you go.”

  The halfling looked at it with a suspicious eye until the clomp of boots in the hall overcame his objections. With a lithe spring he was up and through the door.

  Pinch wasted no time in following, surprised that he could wriggle through the small opening so quickly after all the battering he’d taken. Grabbing the inside handle, he pulled the door shut and plunged them into darkness. With one hand on Sprite-Heels’s shoulder, Pinch followed as the halfling descended steps the human could not see.

  They padded downward as the thumping and thunder of the ’riders behind them faded, and then snaked through passages that wove beneath the city. In places Sprite led them through water that splashed up to Pinch’s ankles and smelled so bad that he was thankful not to see what he walked through.

  Their escape was so hurried that neither had a light. Several times Sprite stopped and described a branch in the sewer tunnels. Each time Pinch did his best to remember the path, though his confidence grew less and less the farther they went. He was an “upright man” now, the master of his own cohort of rogues—years away from his beginnings as a sewer rat.

  At last they reached a landmark Pinch knew well from his underground days, a jagged gap in the brick casing of the sewer wall. From Sprite’s description, Pinch could see it almost unchanged in his mind—the ragged curve of the opening, the broken tumble of bricks that spilled into the muck—from the day he and Algaroz broke through the wall to complete their bolt hole from the alehouse above.

  “Through there,” Pinch ordered with silent relief. Up till now he had only hoped that Algaroz, who now owned the Dwarf’s Pot, kept the bolt hole open. Pinch knew it wasn’t out of sentimentality. Algaroz had good reasons for keeping a quick escape route handy.

  The dirt-floored passage ended in a planked door, tightly fitted into a wall. Designed to be hard to find from the other side, it took only a few moments of probing to release the catches and swing the hidden door slowly open. Muddy, smelly, and blinking, the two thieves stepped into the soft light of the alehouse’s cellar.

  It was several hours, almost near dawn, before a man of average height and average looks finally found his way to a table at the back of the common room. Still, he commanded attention. His clothes and manner stood him apart from all the rest. The man wore the costume of an aspiring courtier—a red velvet doublet generously trimmed in gold braid, cross-gaitered woolen hose without a tear, and a fur-lined mantle draped casually across his shoulders. The tangled curls of his graying hair were neatly brushed out and his thick mustache trimmed. Most wondrous of all, he was clean and bathed, which was far more than any other customer in the smoky ordinary. A few hours before he’d been crawlin
g on a roof, but now gone were the dark and sludge-stained clothes from the night’s escapade.

  The Dwarf’s Pot, or the Piss Pot as some called it, was not noted for its fine clientele. Infamy more than fame brought a man here. Most of the lot were foists and nips who swilled down cheap sack and haggled with their brokers over the day’s pickings. In one shadowed corner a dwarf pushed a few pieces across the table for a pittance of coin, while at another table a wrinkled old dame, a curber by trade, showed a wig and cloak she’d hooked from a window left carelessly open. Boozing hard near the entrance was a whole tableful of counterfeit cranks, those beggars who specialized in sporting their appalling deformities and maimed limbs to the sympathetic citizens of Elturel. Here in the commons, they looked remarkably hale and whole, no doubt due to the restorative powers of the cheap ale they swilled. Mingled among the crowd were the doxies and dells finally returned from their evening’s labors.

  “Greetings, Pinch dearie,” said the sole woman at the table Pinch joined. Though far past her prime, she still dressed like she once might have been—pretty and alluring—but years and drink had long stolen that from her. Her long brown hair was thin and graying, her skin wrinkled and blotched. It was her eyes, weak and rheumy, that revealed her fondness for drink.

  “Well met to you, Maeve,” Pinch answered as he pulled up a chair and joined the three already there.

  Across from Maeve, Sprite-Heels sprawled on a bench like a child bored with the temple service. He thrust a hairy halfling foot into the air and waggled his oversize toes. “You took your time. Find a distraction upstairs?” the little being mocked while at the same time breaking into a yawn he could not stifle.

  The fourth at the table, a big overmuscled man with farmboy good looks, snorted his ale at Sprite’s tweak. He broke into a fit of coughing, the scarf around his neck slipping to reveal a thick scar underneath. “Pinch don’t got no time for women. ’Sides, he’s got Maeve.” He snickered at his own great wit.