Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  KALI HAD SEEN more than enough death in recent days and had no desire to be reminded of it – but in approaching Andon she had little choice.

  It was here that Killiam Slowhand had killed John Garrison, but he had been only one warrior amongst thousands, and the fields around the city still bore the scars of the pivotal battle they had fought. Andon had been besieged for almost two years while Pontaine’s army had grown strong enough to repel the enemy, driving them back across the land that had become known as the Killing Ground. Such protracted and bloody engagements were not erased easily from a landscape, and the Killing Ground was littered still with half-buried skeletons uncovered by driving rain, the remains of defensive and offensive trench systems, and rotting and ruined engines of war. It was a ghastly and ghostly place, made all the more haunting by banks of slowly drifting fog that alternately concealed and revealed the horrors that remained.

  It was before dawn, and Andon’s gates were closed to traffic as Kali and the bamfcat appeared in the fog near its defensive walls, suddenly, in a blur. Even at this quiet hour guards patrolled vigilantly, on constant alert as many in the city believed it was only a matter of time before the forces of Vos attacked again, using as their base the forts they had constructed in the once-neutral Anclas Territories, only a few leagues away. Arriving seemingly out of nowhere as she had, some strange phantasm clad still in Slowhand’s striped tights and Blossom’s mangy furs, Kali had likely spooked the guards, and having no wish to feel the sudden thud of a crossbow bolt in her chest needed to make her business in the city known. She couldn’t tell them the whole truth, of course, but a generalisation might do.

  Kali got their attention by sticking her fingers in her mouth and whistling. Then she shouted: “Excuse me! I’m trying to save the world. Can I come in, please?”

  It was an honest and bafflingly pre-emptive ploy that seemed to work. The guards studied her for a few seconds, shrugged and gave the order for the gates to be opened.

  “’Yup, Horse,” Kali said.

  That she had referred to the bamfcat as Horse was no slip of the tongue. She wasn’t sure when, or quite how, the beast had gained her affections but certainly it had started when she’d found it waiting for her on her descent from the ogur’s cave – its welcoming and strangely familiar headbutts a display of companionship she’d needed badly when everything else seemed to have gone away. Their bond had grown during the journey to Andon and, after a while, she’d realised she really couldn’t go on calling the beast good boygirl because it was just plain daft. Of course, she’d had some hesitation naming it Horse – Horse Too, to be precise – but the bamfcat was hardly a creature that would suit a name like Fluffy or Rex, and in an odd way it was a reminder of the old boy himself.

  Horse, however, could not go everywhere, and inside the city it soon became clear that its narrow environs wouldn’t take the bamfcat and he’d need to be stabled for the duration. Kali dismounted and walked him into one of a number of stableyards lining the outskirts, manoeuvring his oversized bulk into two stable enclosures, the beast straddling their low, dividing fence.

  The stableman appeared and his jaw dropped open. But he did not let surprise interfere with business.

  “Two silver tenths,” he said.

  “I thought the standard rate was one.”

  “That thing takes up two stables so it’s two silver tenths.”

  Kali was in no mood. “Horse?” she said.

  The bamfcat ate the fence and spat a mouthful of splinters at the stableman.

  “One silver tenth,” Kali said.

  “Done,” the stableman said, swallowing. “That’s one hells of a mount, lady.”

  Kali patted the bamfcat, smiled. “He sure is. One word of advice – don’t feed him anything that hasn’t got a face.”

  “Face?”

  “He likes worgles.”

  “Worgles?”

  “Worgles.” She pointed across the yard, where one of the furballs could be seen rolling into an overturned bucket. “Just shake ’em out and he’ll handle the rest.”

  Horse’s lizardine tongue whiplashed out and back again, as if to explain. The stableman did a little dance backwards.

  “Yew, that’s disgusting.”

  “Yep, that’s what I thought, too.”

  Horse stabled, Kali made her way into Andon proper, working her way through the labyrinth of shadowed streets, alleyways and passages crammed inside its imposing walls. The walls were soon lost to view in the crowded conurbation, and it would have been easy to become disorientated, but as Kali made her way towards the centre of the city she could not have wished for a more obvious guiding beacon. Visible through gaps in the roofline, looming ever larger and more imposing, the beacon had actually been visible from outside the city walls – was visible, in fact, from some leagues away – but it was only now as she grew nearer that the sheer impossible scale of the largest building in Andon – indeed, anywhere on the peninsula – truly made its presence felt. The Three Towers made Scholten Cathedral look like a village church.

  The twisting, semi-organic looking headquarters of the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige rose above the city fully forty storeys high, a structure that would have confounded the skills of the finest engineers in Pontaine – perhaps even the finest engineers of the Old Races – and its construction had only been made possible with the aid of the more powerful wizards who now studied within. Its rather incongruous presence in the otherwise somewhat seedy city was due to the fact that at one time, on a lesser scale, it had simply been the home of Andon’s Magical Guild, housing parlour magicians and entertainers in the service of Pontaine’s wealthiest families, but, since the Great War, it had gradually transformed itself into something much darker and now housed an organisation dedicated to the study of the effects of powerful sorceries on armies, and to the practice of war itself. Dark secrets were held within its half-built, half-grown heights – within the minds of those who moved there and within the manuscripts, tomes and artefacts that were said to fill its archives – and somewhere amongst those secrets was the information Kali needed to know.

  The Three Towers was not a place, however, where one could walk up to the front door and knock. Even the Final Faith did not wield sufficient influence to enter there.

  To get inside, Kali needed help. And she knew exactly where she was going to find it.

  She continued on, breaking at last from the warren of small streets and out into the centre of Andon, a thronged circular marketplace filled with stalls, vendor carts and street performers surrounding the towers in a hub. Already gearing up for the day’s trade, it was where the true hubbub of Andon was to be found and, as a consequence, where those who fed upon that hubbub could also be found. The largest and most successful thieves guild in Andon – the Grey Brigade – were based somewhere here, and it was no small measure of their presence and influence in the area that their playful nickname for it had been adopted by the city’s inhabitants, thereafter referring to the place as the Andon Heart.

  Kali weaved her way through the milling crowds with no particular destination, at least none she yet knew. Her attention fixed seemingly on the endless array of gaudy stalls and goods, in actuality she had her senses trained on every subtle movement around her. She felt herself accidentally jostled or pushed once, twice, three times, and on each occasion felt hands slide gracefully into the pockets of her furs or vest, each of which she had filled with some coin. She had to admit that the dippers working this patch were very good, but when someone knew what to expect – in fact, hoped for it to happen – they had to be very, very good indeed if they wanted to go unnoticed.

  Kali let the plunder continue until the fifth dipper made his move, and then she made hers. The boy’s hand was sliding towards her side when her own lashed out and grabbed it tightly by the wrist.

  “That’s ten full silver your people have taken from me,” she said, smiling. “Even accounting for your sha
re, that’s enough to buy me an audience with your boss, don’t you think?”

  “B-boss, Missus?” the boy said, struggling against her grip. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jengo,” Kali said. “I’m here to see Jengo.”

  “Jengo?”

  “Jengo Pim.”

  The boy smiled slyly. “So, you knows his name, eh? That counts for something, I suppose. But who’s to say you ain’t bringin’ him some business old Jengo might not be inclined to undertake?”

  “Who says I’m here on business? I’m his sister.”

  The boy guffawed. “Jengo ain’t got no sister. Everyone knows he ain’t got no kin and was dumped on the streets like the bastard he is.”

  Kali leaned closer, looming down on the boy, and tightened her grip. “Then I guess that makes me a bitch.”

  The boy swallowed. “A–all right, Missus – ah’ll take you to him. But I tells you, it ain’t no worry of mine if he slits you from ear to ear.”

  “From where to where?” Kali said, smiling.

  “Eh? Oh, never mind. Just follow me.”

  Kali did, finding that the entrance to the Grey Brigade’s den was hidden almost in plain sight, yards from where she stood. Nevertheless, it would have been impossible to take advantage of without her escort. She was led between two market stalls, the owners of which were obviously guild stationed as sentries, and then along a tight alleyway that jinked away behind them. Kali looked up as she walked, saw that she was being watched from a number of windows above. Clearly, no one who wasn’t welcome could approach the guild unseen, and Kali suspected that for any particularly unwelcome visitor those who stared at her now, casually crunching fruit, might simply substitute the fruit for a loaded needlereed and the unwanted visitor would be incapacitated before they could take two steps. She guessed the resultant body – unconscious or otherwise – would be spirited away into one of the apparently sealed doorways she passed, there to be stripped, dumped in the river and never seen again.

  She reached the end of the alleyway safely, however, and after the boy gave three irregular raps on the solid wooden door that terminated it, found herself inside the den of the Grey Brigade.

  Impressive, she thought, as she was led through its busy interior, not only in the number of guild members she passed but also in the facilities provided for them. Everything the Andon thief could desire was provided here, from equipment and training areas to common lounges, dormitories and bar, all of them converted to their present use from the rooms of what looked to have been at one time a large hotel, an enterprise she imagined had been starved of business during the siege.

  Grandly enough, Jengo Pim had chosen what had once been the hotel’s ballroom for his court, and it was obvious which of those gathered within was he. The thieves guild leader was draped in an ornate, red upholstered chair in the middle of the room, swigging from a bulb of wine and gnawing meat he skewered on a dagger from a serving table beside him. As Kali was brought in, the appropriately roguish-looking man was conferring with two of his lieutenants, but as she approached he dismissed them and turned his attention to her. He jabbed the dagger into the table and wiped his mouth before speaking.

  “So – I’m told I have a sister I never knew about,” he said, blatantly looking her up and down. “Seems you got the genes I didn’t. Nice. Very nice.”

  “Thanks. But I hear incest makes your bits shrivel and die, so I’d keep your hands off if I were you. The name’s Kali Hooper. I’m here on business.”

  Pim sucked his teeth and spat a piece of gristle across the room. “Figured you might be. But as I have no shortage of business of my own, why should I have an interest in yours? What, in fact, stops me having you killed right here, right now?”

  “Because you run a thieves guild, not an assassins guild. You’d need a good reason to bump me off and so far I haven’t given you one.”

  “No,” Pim said, lecherously, “more’s the pity.” He waved a hand at her striped tights and furs. “I could, of course, consider your current outfit a capital crime.”

  “Yes, well, that’s a long story.” Without being invited, Kali grabbed Pim’s knife, stabbed a piece of meat and bit it off the blade. “Come on, Pim – aren’t you just a little bit curious why I risked coming here?”

  Pim took a swig of his wine, studied her, smiled. “Let’s stick with mildly stimulated. Very well, you have a minute. How can the Grey Brigade be of service to you?”

  “I need your help. To break in somewhere.”

  Pim pulled a face. “Oh, Miss Hooper, after so much promise you disappoint me. Pretty lass like you, what is it? Heard you can recruit some of my people to do an ex-lover’s house? Perhaps empty his strongbox of compromising documents?”

  “Actually, no, I need to do the job myself. And it’s the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige.”

  Pim spluttered on the wine he’d just consumed, stared at her incredulously. “The League?” he repeated. He laughed out loud, and then with a bouncing of his palms invited the others in the room to join him in his jollity, which they duly did. “Bubbling pits of Kerberos, woman, that’s impossible.”

  “Nonetheless –”

  “Nonetheless, nothing. It’s bloody suicide. Have you any idea what kind of traps are in there? Those sorcerous psychopaths have wired the place with every kind of thread threat you can imagine, and more. There are things that’ll fry you, things that’ll crush you, things that’ll drown you, things that’ll make your heart go boom.” Pim slumped into his chair and swigged from his wine again. “Listen to me – only three men in the entire history of our guild have tried the towers. The first we found flapping around with his bones gone, the second was last seen ascending to Kerberos before he died, and the third came back in a bottle no bigger than this one.” Pim shook the wine bulb he held. “No chance. Go home, girl. Go home.”

  Kali stayed where she was and folded her arms. “Actually, it isn’t just the towers I need to gain access to, it’s the Forbidden Archive itself.”

  This time Pim did not splutter. But he did stare and then quaff a mouthful of wine so hard that Kali heard him gulp and swallow it down.

  “The Forbidden Archive,” he repeated slowly. He turned to one of his lieutenants. “Kris Jayhinch, please give the lady a razor to slash her throat with – save herself some time.”

  “What’s the matter, Pim? Too much of a challenge for you? Maybe I should take my request down to the Skeleton Quays, tell the guilds there you were too lily-livered to handle it.”

  The thieves guild leader’s eyes flared darkly for a second. The mention of the Grey Brigade’s rival guilds had the effect Kali desired, Pim knowing full well that a loss of reputation was what no guild could afford.

  “They would likely tell you the same as I,” he said, contemplatively, “but then they are desperate enough to take your business.” He rubbed his chin, considering. “I must be mad,” he sighed before sucking in a deep breath. “Miss Hooper, do you have any experience of our noble art?”

  “If by noble art you mean taking other people’s property without their permission, I guess I do, but not in the way you mean.”

  Pim rose, handing Kali the bulb of wine. “I’ll tell you what – there’s a little test I have devised for new recruits, and I want you to take it. If you pass, you’ll have my help. If you fail, well... I’ll think of something appropriate.”

  Kali took a swig of the wine. “Mister Pim, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  The mention of the test sparked the interest of everyone in the room and, as the thieves guild leader guided Kali through to another chamber, the pair acquired a small entourage of eager spectators. The room into which she was led was larger even than the ballroom – what looked to have been the hotel’s reception area – but it had been converted from its original use to function as some kind of obstacle course-cum-training area for the guild. Various vaulthorses, gymnast rings, nets and other paraphernalia had been secured about its
edges along with a number of racks containing exotic thieves’ tools, but what drew Kali’s attention was a small iron cage suspended from the centre of the ceiling, high above the floor. Hanging from a single chain, there was nothing near it and no obvious means to reach it – but Kali guessed that was exactly what Pim’s test would require her to do.

  “I see you’re ahead of me,” Pim said, staring up as she did. “The positioning of the cage is an approximation of the high-security containment for Bojangle’s Baleful Bells, currently on display in the museum of Scholten. I have stolen them twice, returning them each time so that I might try again – what I like to consider a professional challenge. Said bells are not, of course, present here, merely a personal souvenir of sentimental value, but you should consider it a treasure of equal scarcity. Retrieve it for me and we will talk.”

  Kali nodded and walked forwards until she stood directly beneath the cage, craning her neck to look up.

  “I have to inform you,” Pim continued, “that to date not one of my would-be apprentices has managed this feat. Luckily for you, it is not success or failure that I will judge – only the originality of the methods employed in the attempt.”

  “A-ha,” Kali said, not really listening.

  “Please feel free to utilise any of the equipment in this room, and consider any of our tools to be at your disposal. There is a fine selection of gripgloves, pinshoes or spidersocks over here. Some even prefer the jumping jacks...”

  “Okay,” Kali said. Pim would have regretted turning his back to point out the selection because at that moment she was pulling off her tights.

  “There is even a slight possibility of success with the...”

  Tights off, Kali crammed the wine bubble she still carried into the toe of one leg, crouched, took in a few huffing breaths and then leapt, straight up. One arm outstretched above her, teeth gritted, she rose two and a half times her height, straight as an arrow, and then flicked the weighted end of the tights through the bars of the cage, grabbing it as it came out and dropped down the other side. Allowing the elasticity of the tights to drop her back down to the floor, she bounced with them, once, twice, three times, then sailed upwards to grab the base of the cage with a grunt. Swinging her legs up, she flipped herself over so that she was sitting on top of the cage, slid her arm in through the bars to retrieve the souvenir, then dropped it towards the floor. That done, she quickly wrapped the tights about herself, rolled down inside them like some carnival gymnast, flipping herself with a neat twist as she neared the floor, and then settled as lightly as a feather right in front of Pim.