Den of thieves abt-1

by David Chandler

  Protests had been minimal. There were already plenty of martyrs with their heads on pikes up by Castle Hill, and even the most devout were loath to join their coreligionists there. Besides, the houses the Burgrave tore down had mostly been destroyed by the fire already. Yet the Burgrave’s intention was clear-he had demonstrated that the faith of the Bloodgod was no longer an accepted religion in the city. If he allowed it to be practiced at all it was strictly at his pleasure, and he could clamp down on it whenever he saw fit. He needed a monument to that intention, and the cleared ground would be the place for it.

  A stone wall ten feet high had been constructed around the six acres thus reduced. There were no gates in that wall, nor any way to enter the ground inside once it was completed. All sign of human habitation was removed from what came to be known as the Ladypark. Plants and wild animals were allowed to flourish there unchecked. Rumors persisted-and were reinforced by the roars and howls that plagued the district by night-that the Burgrave had introduced some large predatory creatures to the preserve before sealing it up. It was well known that anyone who climbed over that wall, perhaps looking to steal fruit from the many trees inside the park or to poach some of the holy game, would never climb back out in one piece.

  It was a dangerous place, and a sacred one. Which meant that the watch never bothered to guard it. Perfect for Malden’s needs.

  The top of the wall surrounding the park made a narrow avenue winding through half of the Stink and all the way down to the common of Parkwall. Malden ran along its top, where an endless row of wrought-iron spearheads stuck up from the capstones. One slip and he’d be impaled, but Malden never slipped.

  When he reached the end of the wall he squatted down and peered through the darkness. A sliver of moon lit the scene, while vapors of mist curled on the grass of the common where a few stray sheep slept on their feet. Beyond the Ladypark’s south wall a hundred yards of open ground surrounded a grand villa. Parkwall was known for its enclosed houses, which belonged to those citizens rich enough to afford mansions yet willing to live so far away from the crowded merchant neighborhood of the Golden Slope. This house was the largest of them all: a massive three story pile of white stone, busy with gables and flying buttresses. Its walls were pierced in a hundred places by broad windows of clear, smooth glass-expensive-and in the front by a twenty-foot-wide rose window of stained glass, worked with cabalistic symbols-ruinously expensive. It would look very much like a cathedral, Malden thought, had it possessed any spires.

  Smaller outbuildings clustered the forecourt, while in back of the house was a broad and meticulously tended garden of topiary and fountains. The whole was surrounded not by a wall, but by a simple fence of iron bars, pointed at the top to discourage anyone from climbing over. The fence looked imposing, but Malden might have laughed at the security it provided (had he not been trying to stay quiet as a mouse). A boy, or even just a very thin man, could slip between those bars by turning sideways.

  He was not a fool, of course. He knew whose house this was, and that the fence would be the least of its defenses. It belonged to Hazoth, the only sorcerer of real power in the Free City of Ness. Malden knew of the man by reputation. Growing up in the city, unruly children were often threatened with a visit from the sorcerer, and even some adults used his name as an oath. Though Hazoth was accepted as a leading citizen (the only prerequisite of that status being gold), he was a reclusive figure who only came out of his home for grand public occasions. Such a character naturally attracted his share of attention and superstition-a reputation that was worth a dozen walls and moats and palisades. Whether Hazoth was truly as powerful as the legends made him out to be, no thief with natural survival instincts would risk drawing the man’s attention.

  Trespassing on the grounds of a sorcerer was reckoned a kind of self-slaughter. There was no telling what dread curse Hazoth might levy on a trespasser. He might turn your guts to water or make your eyes burst in their sockets with a simple wave of his hand. No doctor could heal that kind of injury, nor would any touch you for fear of suffering a like fate.

  No, only a fool would bother Hazoth in his own home.

  Even without the threat of magic, Malden had eyes in his head to see that there were armed guards patrolling the garden behind the house. They went with shining lanterns around the corners of the stables and the kitchens, looking for anyone who dared to slip through that fence.

  Malden would never have approached the place in a hundred years-had he not had legitimate business there. His investigations told him this was where Bikker was to be found, and likely Cythera as well.

  So he assumed that Hazoth had to be his ultimate employer. It must have been Hazoth’s orders that sent Cythera and Bikker after the crown. What in the Bloodgod’s name could a sorcerer want with it, though? Clearly it was enchanted-normal crowns didn’t talk to people. Perhaps, Malden thought, the wizard merely wanted to study the magics imbued in the simple coronet of gold. Most likely he would never know the true answer. The motivations of Hazoth’s kind would always be mysterious to the uninitiated.

  The main result of Malden’s discovery was to make him all the more eager to be quit of the thing. Hand it over, collect his pay, never think of it again. It seemed the only proper course.

  Of course, it would have to be done with care. Hazoth had sought to escape scrutiny, hiding his complicity in the crown’s theft behind a double layer of employees. He would not take kindly to even his own hired thief walking up to his gate with the crown in hand, not now.

  Malden made his way along the wall until he was directly over the darkest part of the common. As he had expected, it was not completely deserted. A boy in a dark-colored cloak was crouched in some bushes just below the wall. He had a cudgel on the ground next to his right hand and a sloshing jug clutched close to his chest. He also had a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face, which was a bit of a giveaway.

  Malden drew his bodkin, then stepped carefully over a spearpoint until he was directly above the boy’s head. The young footpad didn’t even look up. He was too busy watching the common, looking for any poor shepherd who might have come late to collect his sheep. The take would be piss-poor, but for a certain class of desperate criminal no score was beneath plucking. Even shepherds had clothing, and there were places in the city where you could sell clothes in the middle of the night where no questions would be asked.

  Without a sound Malden dropped down onto the footpad’s back. The robber struggled and started to cry out, but he placed the point of his bodkin in the join between the boy’s jaw and neck.

  “If I wanted to slit your throat, I’d have done it already,” Malden said. “Now, will you be quiet? I want a word.”

  The boy started to nod-and stopped when he realized that doing so would impale him on Malden’s weapon. “Certainly, milord,” he sputtered out. The alcohol on his breath was enough to make Malden’s head spin. He supposed that lying-in-wait was thirsty work.

  “You’ve a chance to earn some coppers tonight, lad,” Malden said, and moved his knife a fraction of an inch away from the boy’s jugular vein. “But first you must answer me a question true. Who do you work for?”

  “My own self! That’s all! I swear, your honor, I’m a good fellow, I say my prayers as often as I remember, and I’ve never done anything like this before, I-”

  “You don’t report back to Cutbill? He doesn’t take a share?”

  The boy squirmed violently. Perhaps the lad thought he’d been sent by Cutbill to kill him for unauthorized thieving.

  “That answer’s good enough,” Malden said, easing up a little more. “Now let us converse like gentlemen of fortune.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The boy’s face was freckled and his chin weak, when the scarf was removed. Malden held onto his cudgel and his jug while he conveyed the message. Walking like a man on the way to the headsman’s block, the boy crossed the common and went right up to Hazoth’s gate. He gave one last look over his s
houlder-even though he couldn’t possibly see Malden so far away in the dark-and then stepped inside the open gate.

  The effect was immediate, and startling.

  A crackling sound rustled through the grass, and then the boy lifted into the air, as if he’d been snatched up by some invisible hand. Inside the sorcerer’s laughable fence all was suddenly action. Guards rushed out to see who the intruder was, and Malden heard dogs barking in their kennels and horses stamping in their stalls.

  Slowly the boy sank back down to earth. There was a sudden flash, not of light but of darkness-like the pulsing of shadows after lightning strikes. Malden’s eyes narrowed. He was glad he’d sent the boy in his place. Apparently the iron fence was only a symbol for a quite different kind of protection.

  The guards circled the boy and drove him to his knees. The boy lifted his hands above his head as a spear was jabbed into the small of his back. Malden could hear him wailing out his message, the one Malden had made him rehearse several times to get every word right.

  You never told me it could talk, the message ran. Let us three meet at midnight, at the Godstone.

  It was a risk, sending this message. Someone might be listening-someone who belonged to the city watch or some other enemy. If they were, he had given them the time and place where they could seize him with ease. Hopefully the words were obscure enough to confuse anyone who didn’t know all the particulars of what had happened.

  The boy was released unharmed. The guards held him a bit roughly, perhaps, but they didn’t break his bones for his impudence. Once he was beyond the gate again, the boy ran off toward the Stink, not even bothering to return to Malden for payment. Perhaps in his fear he had forgotten the thruppence promised him. Malden dug in the soft soil underneath the bush where he’d found the boy concealing himself. There, he buried the cudgel, the jug, and three pennies, wrapped up in the filthy scarf. If the boy was brave enough or bright enough to return for his things, he well deserved the money.

  Then Malden fled back into the night, running the way he’d come, along the top of the Ladypark’s enclosing wall. There was much to prepare.

  The fact that his secret employer was a master of the arcane sciences worried him greatly, but not near so much as Bikker did. The big swordsman had killed two men just to create a diversion, and Malden had no doubt that Bikker would be willing to kill him as well. Either the swordsman would want to keep the gold for himself-or more likely, would want to keep him quiet, in the most expedient way possible. When he’d taken this job, Malden believed it was little more than a prank. The crown would be replaced with a duplicate, and no one would ever be the wiser-the Burgrave wouldn’t even publicly acknowledge the theft, out of fear of embarrassment.

  Now things had changed. The crown was enchanted, and thus far more important than just some well-wrought lump of gold. The Burgrave would want it back, and stop at little to secure its return. Bikker and his master would want to maintain total secrecy, and the only way they could assure that was to slit his throat and dump his body in the river.

  Malden sighed as he ran atop the wall. No one had ever said his new life as a daring burglar was going to be easy. He came to a corner of the wall and slipped down to the street below, a shadowed lane running toward a row of houses in the Stink. The houses there closed in quickly, filling the available space around the common like a miser jealously throwing his arm around a pile of pennies. It felt good to be back on cobblestones, back in a district he knew well. He’d spent his life on these streets, and though he knew all too well their dangers, he knew how to manage them as well. He felt almost safe as he headed uphill, toward the eastern section of the Stink.

  Not completely safe, of course. But he felt like he was the master of his destiny again. He felt like he could pull this off. If he was careful. There were still ways he could get his gold and keep his life, but it would take much planning and “Hold, if you please.”

  Malden’s heart stopped beating, but only for a moment. He’d seen no one following him, had thought it impossible. Who could this be?

  Whoever it was, he did not wish to meet him now.

  He leapt back toward the wall of a half-timbered house. Its eaves cast a deep rich shadow on the street below that would hide him. He made no answer to the call. He did not so much as breathe. He considered closing his eyes so they would not glint in any stray beam of starlight. But no, he needed to see what was coming for him.

  “It is not my design to hurt you,” the voice said.

  Light burst all around him. The other must have had a dark lantern and suddenly drawn back its shade. For a moment Malden could see nothing, and his eyes, adapted as they were to the darkness, burned with pain. Throwing his cloak across his face, he dashed to his left, intent on getting away from the spearing light — and near impaled himself on the point of a sword. He dropped his cloak just in time and drew up short as the tapering point bobbed in the air just inches from his throat. It was no blunt iron weapon either, but good, bright steel of the kind only a dwarf could forge. It would have run him through like a skewer through a sausage.

  Squinting, Malden glanced over at the lantern. He could see now that it was sitting unattended on the cobblestones. If he had run toward it and kicked it over, he would be away into the shadows by now and free of this danger.

  For the first time he looked down the blade of the sword at the man who held it. He was no watchman, at least. He was a blond man perhaps half again Malden’s age, wearing a jerkin studded with iron and a fine samite cape. A man of some wealth, then, though his boots were muddy. He was smiling, but with warmth-not with the predatory grin of a cat pinning a starling with its claws.

  It took a moment for Malden to recognize his accoster. When he did, he was only more confused than before.

  “You’re the fellow they were going to hang in Market Square,” he whispered. “The knight. Sir-Sir-Sir Something. Well, it seems you have me at your service, Sir-”

  “Croy.”

  Malden lifted a hand in salute. The knight knocked the hand away with the flat of his sword.

  “I apologize for this rude meeting, but I saw no other way to gain your attention,” Croy told him. Stranger by the minute, Malden thought. He was not used to armed men treating him with civility. “I wish to ask you but a single question. Will you answer?”

  “Under the circumstances, I can hardly refuse,” Malden replied.

  “I saw you send a message to the villa of Hazoth. And I know someone fitting your description was on Castle Hill the night the tower fell. The night a certain boat was waiting in the river below.”

  Malden was especially glad then that this knight was no watchman. If Anselm Vry’s men had put things together as neatly as this fellow, his neck would already be in a noose. “If you say so, milord.”

  “You don’t deny it. The boat was there to collect you, wasn’t it? Cythera’s boat. I can see in your eyes it was so. So now I’ll ask you-what business have you with Cythera?”

  Malden’s brow furrowed as he tried to understand what was happening. Was he about to be killed for reasons he would never know? Or would this fool let him go if he answered true?

  For some reason, Malden thought he just might.

  “I did some work for her, that’s all. I’m arranging to receive my payment.”

  “In the middle of the night? Strange hours to take wages.”

  “I suppose,” Malden said, “that depends on the labor.”

  Croy’s face changed. The smile faded a bit and his eyes widened. “Tell me true, now. What job was it?”

  Malden considered his reply carefully. “Sir Croy, I think your interest in milady Cythera is not of an, ah, adversarial nature. To be plain, I think you are her friend.”

  “More than that, I hope,” Croy said.

  Malden’s heart sagged in his chest. Something he hadn’t dared to actually hope for suddenly seemed out of his reach. But more than his feelings were bound to be hurt if he didn’t speak quickly. “I wi
ll admit to caring for her myself. If this sentiment is one we share, then surely you will understand it would put her at risk if I answered that question? Especially out here, where someone might overhear?”

  “I see,” Croy said. He lowered his sword so it was no longer pointing at any vital part of Malden’s body. “You’re right, it’s too dangerous to have this talk in public. In that case, let us-”

  But Malden didn’t hear the rest. He’d found the opening he had sought. As soon as the sword’s point dipped, he twisted sideways and bolted for the dark, jogging to one side only far enough to kick the lantern as he went.

  Sir Croy called hold again and gave chase, but not for long. Malden had a head start on him, and in the night that was all the advantage the thief required.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Knightly interruptions notwithstanding, Malden’s preparations were finished long before midnight. He scouted out Godstone Square-a modest plaza deep in the Stink, where the residents were unlikely to open their windows at night-and found the proper spot to lie in wait, then gathered together the tools he needed. This largely amounted to stealing some poor citizen’s clothesline and digging an old but still sound basket out of a rubbish pile in an alley. Not the most sophisticated tools, but the simplicity of Malden’s plan was its strength.