Then he looked down and saw the river Krait, flowing briskly by a hundred and fifty feet below him. He tilted his head back and laughed heartily. The men of the watch would be on him in seconds, with orders to slaughter him where he stood. There must be a full company of them coming at him-far more than enough to take him down, fancy swords or no.
Jumping into the river from this height was utter folly. If he didn’t hit the bottom hard enough to shatter his bones, there was a good chance he would drown. Of course, there was the slimmest of chances that he would survive.
He jumped, of course.
The air whistled past him as he fell, as fast as the proverbial stone. He could see nothing-it all flashed past him so quickly-and he could barely tell which direction was up. Somehow he managed to get his legs pointed downward with the toes extended so he hit the water like a knife blade.
Still, he hit it hard enough to jar every bone in his body. The shock of immersion in the cold river nearly stopped his heart. The breath exploded out of him in a torrent of silver bubbles. His brains reeled with the impact and his legs stung as if the skin had been flayed from them. Then he opened his mouth to inhale-he had no choice, his body was not accepting the commands of his will-and his lungs flooded with water. He flailed blindly, trying to swim up, unable to tell what direction he was facing, barely cognizant of the difference between right and left.
His head collided with something hard and wooden, adding injury to injury. His vision spun with blackness and he knew he was about to die. He nearly gave up then and there-if this was the time the Lady had appointed for his death, who was he to gainsay Her wish? Yet there was something in Croy that failed to stop even when lesser men could do naught but yield. He grasped at the wooden obstruction above him and pulled himself up and over it. His face hit the night air with a gasp and he sucked in breath-then turned his head sideways and coughed up a great gout of cold water. He shook his head to clear his eyes and finally looked at where he was and what he was holding onto. It was the rail of a tiny boat.
Sitting at its oars was Cythera.
The woman he’d risked all to find. The woman whose love he would defy even death to beseech.
Surely only one explanation could satisfy this great coincidence. The Lady had smiled on him. Far from choosing this night to bring him to Her bosom, She had let him live, so that he could see Cythera once more. He nearly let go of the boat, wanting to raise his hands to the heavens in thankful prayer.
“You’d better get in, as we’re going to be spotted any minute,” Cythera said. “Stop playing around and- Hold. You’re not Malden.”
She made no attempt to help him. She did not reach for him. But then, it would be his death if she embraced him. Her curse made it so. She peered over the gunwale, searching his face with wide eyes.
“Croy?” she asked, looking horrified.
He pulled himself over the rail and into the boat. For a while he could do nothing but lie there gasping, looking up at the sky. At the top of the wall tiny faces were peering down at him, tiny arms pointing with urgency at the little boat.
“Row, Cyth. Row away from here,” he panted. He couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m supposed to meet someone-”
A rock hit the river, not three feet from the boat, and sent up a great column of water that splashed them both.
“I don’t think they have boiling oil,” Croy told Cythera. “But I know they have plenty of archers.”
“Let us away, then,” she said, and bent to her oars.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As a child growing up in a brothel, Malden had possessed few friends his own age or sex. Yet whenever he chanced to find himself in the company of other boys, one of the favorite topics of conversation had concerned this very room-the torture chamber of the Burgrave. The boys would name and describe all the instruments of torture they could, and speculate wildly on their possible applications. One frequent debate was held over which device one would least like to be subjected to. It had all been in good fun, of course, a gruesome contest of oneupmanship. He had never considered the idea he would actually be in this room, or see its true inventory.
“O’er here, lad, and sharpish! I can’t take much more. Oh, oh, I’ll kiss the Bloodgod on the lips for this, when I meet him,” the prisoner announced.
As Malden headed through the arch to the torture chamber proper, he was more afraid than he had been facing down the demon above, or when he first climbed into Cutbill’s coffin. On every side were the nightmares of his youth. The boot, and also its cruel if prosaically named cousin, the instep borer-which drove a screw through the fleshy part of a man’s foot. The tramp chair, which didn’t look so bad until you realized you would be locked inside it, unable to stand. The heretic’s fork lay on an anvil where the torturer had been sharpening its prongs. Iron-rimmed breaking wheels lined the walls, while a selection of bone-breaking hammers hung by straps from the ceiling. Close by the arch, leaning up against one wall, was the scavenger’s daughter (sometimes called the reversed rack). In pride of place stood the dread crocodile shears, which were only ever used on the slayers of nobility, for that which they took away could not be seen. At least not while the victim wore breeches. There were at least three sets of branks, or witch’s bridles-specially designed headgear with an iron spur arranged in such a way that it projected into the mouth and placed a spike against the tongue. Any sorcerer who tried to speak a curse or cast a spell while wearing such a bridle would shred their tongue instead. A handy appliance to have, Malden thought, in a place like the Free City, where wizards vied with Burgraves and sent thieves to do their mischief.
“I heard yer voice, I know ye’re still there. Come on, boy!”
But of all the things that could be done to a human body, all the bits of iron that could be plunged into soft parts, all the different ways to stretch sinews and ligaments until they burst, one device was always rated the worst. None could really say why-it did not seem half so horrible as the choke pear. Yet generations of boys had passed down the sure and certain knowledge that the paragon of suffering-inducing machines had to be the strap.
The prisoner’s hands had been bound behind his back, then a hook inserted between his wrists. He had then been hauled up on a pulley until he dangled from the ceiling. His arms were twisted around behind him, and as a result his chest thrust forward at an awkward angle. To make this worse, a chain was wrapped around his feet, and from this chain depended a large, round stone. The weight pulled down on joints already strained by the strap that held the man aloft.
“Ah, and there ye are, ye clever son. There, over there-that knot!”
Malden stared with gaping mouth at the prisoner, and not only because of his state of distress. The man was naked, gaunt, and haggard of expression. He was also someone he recognized. It was the vagabond he’d seen in Cutbill’s lair, the one who’d claimed right of sanctuary.
“You’re the thief Kemper, are you not?” Malden asked.
“For the nonce. Sooner’n I’d like, I’ll go by a different name,” Kemper agreed.
“I’m… sorry?”
“They’ll be calling me ‘the late’ thief Kemper, if’n you don’t get me down.”
Malden recovered his wits with a start. “Of course, at once,” he said. He hurried to the wall where the other end of the strap was tied around an iron hook. He undid the knot with shaking fingers and lowered Kemper carefully to the floor.
For a while the vagabond merely rolled about on the flagstones, his face split by a piteous grin.
“Oh, I’ve never found such happiness at the bottom of a flagon, nor between a girl’s legs,” Kemper moaned. “Ye’ll never know such ecstasy, lad, and ye should be thankful for that.”
Malden had many questions for the man. “How did you come to be here? It was just this morning I saw you, at Cutbill’s. You were safe enough there-how were you taken so soon after?”
Kemper grimaced. “A man can only abide so much stale br
ead and water. Cutbill gave me sanctuary, to be sure, but his hospitality was a mite lacking, if you catch me. Of all things, water to drink, ye’d think I was a horse! If I wanted real victuals, I decided I must go abroad. I snuck forth just afore dawn, made right for the Smoke, where I knew I could catch a game.”
Kemper rolled over onto his side and moaned in pleasure. “Found it easy enough. Didn’t reckon one o’ the players was a cloak-of-eyes on his off-shift. The bastard recognized me just fine and tried to haul me out o’ there. Figured I was safe enough, as I’ve always been. Been caught more times’n you’ve kissed a girl, I figure, and always got free again before. Never thought they’d ken out me one weakness. Now, if ye please, me hands and ankles.”
Malden went to free the vagabond’s extremities and found they were bound by matching chains of bright metal, seemingly far too thin to hold up Kemper’s weight. They tinkled merrily when he pulled them free.
“Keep’m as souvenirs, if ye like,” Kemper told Malden, when he saw how the thief stared at the chains. “I’ve no desire to see’m again. Should be worth a mite, seein’ they’re solid silver.”
“Silver?” He could make no sense of it. He knew nobles could demand that they be hanged with a silken rope, rather than the hempen cord commoners received. But why in the world would a petty thief be strapped with silver? It made no sense.
“Good ’gainst curses,” Kemper said, as if that explained everything. “Mind, I’ll need a cut on what ye sell’m for.”
“But of course,” Malden said. He pulled the chains free and stared at them in his hands. Why bind a man with silver? What had Kemper meant about curses? He lifted his eyes to ask the man directly, but in vain. Without a sound, without so much as a fare-thee-well, Kemper had disappeared.
Chapter Thirty
Malden rushed back through the arches, thinking Kemper must have slipped up the stairs while he wasn’t looking. He sought only to warn his fellow thief that no good would come of heading that way. Yet as he reached the bottom of the stairs he thought better of chasing Kemper up the steps. No doubt the vagabond would be caught as soon as he made the surface. He would only be sacrificing his own freedom if he followed too close on the man’s heels.
He had freed the prisoner from his chains. Surely, that was enough of a good turn, and he could be forgiven for thinking of himself next. He had to escape, with the crown, if he didn’t want the night’s fiasco to be in vain. And he thought he knew a way.
Malden cast about him, looking for something on the floor. He found it back in the torture chamber-a round iron grate that came up easily when he lifted it. It had to be the drain that led out to the river, via the outlet pipe he’d seen when coming in.
The problem with having a dungeon cut into the bosom of a hill was that it would flood every time it rained. The drain was there to alleviate such a shortcoming. It would also make a fine way of disposing of any victims who didn’t survive their interrogations-or any parts of them they didn’t need anymore.
Putting aside such grisly thoughts as best he was able, Malden dropped down into the drain, then pulled the grating back over his head, cutting off some of the light. The drain proved to be a pipe lined with bricks furred white with niter, about three feet wide, leading down at a steep grade. There was no light in the tunnel, of course, but part of the way down its length he saw a glimmering and started crawling toward it. Compared to some of the things he’d been through since he started working for Cythera and Bikker, the drain was an easy traverse. The worst thing about it was the smell.
It was foul at first. It quickly rose to a level of unbearability. The fetor of the drain made his eyes water, and even when he covered his mouth and nose with the hood of his cloak he could barely breathe. His body fought for clean air but there was none to be had. The source of the stench was no great mystery, Malden thought. The garderobes of the palace must empty directly into this same pipe-a clever enough alternative to having the Burgrave’s ordure carted out every week. His guess as to the drain’s purpose was confirmed when he reached a patch of light in the tunnel. It was coming down from above, through a shaft much like the one that led to the dungeon-though this time there were no spikes at the bottom. Looking up, he could just make out a circular opening, high, high above him, lit by flickering candlelight. The smell here was much stronger than elsewhere, and the condition of the shaft walls is certainly best left undescribed.
The smell made him want to retch, and the yielding texture of the floor he crawled over made him wince with each foot he covered. Nothing but the promise of freedom and safety kept him moving forward. Still, he supposed it could be worse. There was a fortune in gold waiting for him once he was out of this-no matter how briefly it would remain in his possession. Malden pitied the servant who must come down here and clean this drain every time it filled up, and was probably paid only in room and board.
There were more shafts intersecting the drain as it headed down toward the river. One of them was even in use. He waited patiently until the user was finished, then continued on his way.
At last he came to a point where they could see the outflow pipe. Moonlight streamed in through its grate, though its lower half was clogged with filth and detritus. Malden rushed forward and grabbed the iron bars with his much-abused fingers. He rattled them but they held.
He looked out through the bars, hoping to signal Cythera. Perhaps she had a way of bending iron bars he lacked. But where in Sadu’s name was she? The boat should be waiting for him-it was his agreed upon method of egress. If she wasn’t there…
Then he would just have to swim for it, wouldn’t he?
With a sigh, Malden drew his bodkin and began to work at the bars, trying to loosen them enough that he could make good his escape.
Thief, the crown at his belt said when he was quiet awhile. Thief, go back.
Malden growled at the thing, never slowing in his work.
Part II
An Unquiet Crown
Interlude
Bikker made his own exit from Castle Hill, though in a less dramatic fashion than Croy or Malden. In the confusion following the death of the demon, he merely stepped into some shadows by the wall, then through a doorway into a well-lit room near the main gate. Inside, a servant was waiting for him. The withered old man offered to take his cloak-Bikker declined-then offered him a cup of hot mulled wine. This he took, draining the goblet in a single gulp. “Is he here?” Bikker asked.
The servant nodded without looking up. He was busy mending a torn tunic, pulling his bone needle through the old fabric then plunging it down again. The old man was the castle’s tailor, and he had a pile of clothes beside him, each item waiting his attention. “When things have calmed a bit, I’m to take you to the chapel. He’ll meet you there.”
Bikker eyed the tailor carefully. Was it possible this man was, in fact, his employer? He’d never seen the man who brought him into the cabal. It could be anyone in Ness, anyone with a compelling interest in bringing down the Burgrave. It wasn’t an ideal situation for one of Bikker’s talents, not knowing who he worked for. He was more accustomed to working for lords and merchants who insisted that he wear their personal livery. After all, what was the point in having a famous knight in your retinue if no one knew he was yours?
Still, Bikker supposed he could understand the need for secrecy. If anyone knew what the cabal was really meant to do, the jig would be up. The Burgrave would make short work of them all, probably hanging them in chains from the castle gates so everyone in Ness could see the wages of treason. Secrecy was paramount. Even Hazoth hadn’t been filled in on all the details, and Bikker was certain there were elements of the scheme he didn’t know about himself.
He shrugged and demanded another cup of wine. It didn’t matter to him what happened to the city. What mattered was that he be far away when it happened. Far enough away not to smell the blood or hear the screams.
When enough time had passed, the tailor handed him a cloak-of-eyes, the tradit
ional garb of the city watch. For the first time, Bikker realized why the castle’s tailor would be a useful pawn of the cabal-uniforms and regalia of every kind came through the old man’s hands. Any number of disguises would be at his disposal. Bikker threw the too-small cloak over his shoulders and let the tailor lead him through the dim corridors of the chancery, the unassuming building where the city’s administrative work was carried out. They came through a dark refectory and then down a short passage that led to a chapel. A gilded cornucopia, symbol of the Lady, hung there above a modest altar. There were no pews, just a scattering of straw-filled cushions on the floor where supplicants could kneel. This was not a chapel for the use of the Burgrave and his family, but for the clerks and scribes of Anselm Vry’s ministries-commoners, if well-paid commoners.
With a thin smile, the tailor bid Bikker to kneel. Perhaps he thought it would be amusing to see the knight in an attitude of prayer.
For Bikker it was anything but diverting. There had been a time when he stood vigil in far ruder churches. He’d been a sworn vassal of the king once. A champion of virtue. He took his place on his knees, the muscles of his back locking obediently into place. There was a certain method one learned to kneeling all night, a way of staying upright even when your body demanded sleep. He resisted the urge to place Acidtongue before him, his hands folded neatly on the pommel. He would not mock what he had once been, no matter what Croy might think of him now.
Croy. Croy was here. Bikker’s skin itched at the thought. The foolish knight could cause all kinds of problems if he chose to poke his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Croy still considered himself one of the noble order of the Ancient Blades-which meant that whenever he discovered wrongdoing or malfeasance, he was honor-bound to root it out, uncover the criminals, and bring them to punishment. If Croy even guessed at the work of the cabal… but Bikker knew he could handle Sir Croy, if it came to that. He had trained Croy-had taught the younger knight everything he knew about holding a sword. But he hadn’t taught Croy everything he knew himself. Bikker still had a few tricks up his sleeve that Croy had never seen.
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