Den of thieves abt-1

by David Chandler

  It did have one defining feature, however. Just to one side of the door, at the height of a man’s eyes, a very small hole had been drilled through the wall. Someone looking through that hole could see-and hear-anything that happened in Cutbill’s office.

  So this was a spy chamber. If Cutbill had sent him here, it was with good reason. Malden placed his eye against the hole and made himself silent.

  Back in the office, the bailiff and the guildmaster of thieves were already in close consultation.

  “If it was one of your thieves who stole the crown,” the bailiff said, “I will hang every one of your crew. You I’ll have drawn and dismembered, and your remains scattered across the kingdom. I’ll have this place torn down, and your organization-”

  “It was not one of mine. Of that I can assure you. Not one of my thieves would think the prize worth the effort. After all, how could they sell the crown once they had it? No fence in the Free City would accept it, much less pay for it. That means its value for us is nil. You must look elsewhere, milord Vry.”

  “Perhaps someone else commissioned the theft. Someone who would stand to gain by embarrassing the city.”

  “But why would one of my thieves take on such a job? Surely they would know how much trouble it would cause for my operation. I do not recruit dullards or fools.”

  In the closet, Malden winced.

  “Enough of this nonsense,” Vry fumed. “I can hardly trust you to speak the truth. You’ll say anything to save your neck, won’t you, Cutbill?”

  “I’ve spoken plainly with you, and told all the truth I know.”

  “Luckily I need not take you at your word.” Vry snapped his fingers and one of his watchmen hurried out of the room. He came back a moment later, leading a robed figure with a heavy wooden mask covering his face.

  Malden gasped. Luckily no one heard him.

  “A wizard, Vry? You’ll put me to the question by magery? Surely not,” Cutbill said as the magician was led over toward his lectern. “You’d never break one of your own precious laws.”

  Vry shrugged. “It’s true. No man may be condemned in the law courts by sortilege or divination. Yet this is no law court. As for the point of ethics involved, well… needs must when the Bloodgod drives.”

  Cutbill pursed his lips and put down his quill. “Very well. And how should it be done, hmm?”

  The magician brought something out from the folds of his robes. A slab of stone about the size and thickness of a book. One side of it had been ground and polished as smooth as glass. “It is a shewstone,” its owner said in a burbling, unnatural voice. “It sees what is hidden, what is placed out of sight. I must unveil to use it properly.”

  The watchmen stirred uneasily at the thought. Neither Cutbill nor Vry reacted at all. “Do it,” Vry said.

  The magician reached up and pushed his mask up on top of his head.

  Malden’s cry of horror was swallowed up in the general chorus.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Wizardry was not technically illegal in Skrae. It was not very widely practiced either. It could be highly lucrative. There were stringent laws about summoning demons, and the penalty for doing so was inalterable, swiftly meted out, and one hundred percent fatal. Yet other kinds of magic-divination, the infliction and relief of curses, the brewing of love potions and the like-were permitted, and there were plenty of customers for such a trade. The wealthy people of Ness were always looking for an edge, a way to maintain their station, and they would hardly turn their noses up at even the most disreputable worker of miracles. There were easily a thousand men at work in Ness that day who claimed to do magic, and of that number perhaps two or three dozen who could actually match their claims with results. They were all well compensated for the time they spent learning their art.

  Yet they were never so numerous as to form a guild. For every child in the Free City learned one fact about thaumaturgy while still very young, and it was enough to keep most of them from pursuing the occult arts. It was this: magic always has a price.

  Magicians drew their power from the pit and its infernal inhabitants. By making pacts with demons, they were able to work wonders and marvels beyond human reckoning. Yet in doing so they were exposed to the otherworldly energies of that place of torment, and it changed them.

  Vry’s diviner must have spent countless hours peering into his shewstone, looking for secrets. Whatever he found could not be worth what he’d paid for the knowledge. The skin of the left side of his face had thickened and callused until it resembled the bark of an oak, but it was as white as death. Even the bones of his skull must have changed, for his left eye had migrated downward until it stared, lidless, from where his cheekbone should have been. At his chin and along the left side of his neck, tendrils of pink flesh hung down like a ghastly beard. He could not close his mouth on that side-which explained his strange voice-and the teeth behind his altered lips were visible: they had become fused together in a pair of bony plates that didn’t quite meet.

  Had he been born like that, the magician would have been doomed to become a beggar, or perhaps a freak in a traveling fair. It was clear from the untouched right side of his face, however, that he had only come to this favor late in life. It must have happened gradually, over time. Malden wondered-when the man saw the first signs of what was to come, why had he not shattered his stone and given up magic altogether?

  Perhaps for some the appeal of secrets was too great. The draw of the mysterious and strange. For some, perhaps, the price was not too steep.

  When the watchmen stopped murmuring to one another and most had regained the color in their own faces, the magician looked to Vry with his good right eye. “Tell me what you wish to see. It will be revealed.”

  Cutbill left his pen lying on his lectern. Even he could not look away.

  Anselm Vry turned aside. “Look again, as you did this morning, and see if you can find the crown. It may be in this very room-perhaps if you are closer to it you can see it better.”

  The magician nodded and bent over his stone. From the spy hole, Malden had a good view of its polished surface, but he saw no change there. Yet the very air of the office seemed to change, to grow thick as heavy fog. There was a whispering of invisible voices in the room and the flames of the oil lamps were stifled as by bad air.

  The magician passed his hand over the stone a number of times, never quite touching the polished face, as if he were exhorting it to better seeing. Eventually, though, he shook his head and gave off. “All is as before. It exists, still, but its location is forbidden me. It is like trying to look for a coin at the bottom of a muddy lake. Occasionally a glimmer is perceived, but it wavers and is gone before I can grasp the image. Perhaps if I try again later in the day, when the etheric currents are less brisk and the stars take different stations in their wheels…”

  Vry grunted in frustration. “Never mind. Do something useful this time, and look into that man’s heart,” he said, jabbing one finger toward Cutbill. “Find the lies he has recently spoken, and find the truth behind them.”

  Cutbill’s lips compressed into a tight frown, but he did nothing to stop this.

  The magician bent over the stone again. He made one quick pass with his hand, then closed his eyes and began to chant. He spoke no words but only moved his lips as alien and ugly sounds came bubbling up from his throat. Then his eyes snapped open and he looked to Vry.

  “No lies,” he said.

  Vry thundered at the man, “What? He has never told a truth in his misbegotten life! Look again!”

  “There is no need,” the magician said. “I tell you, I saw his heart. He has been completely honest with you. He knows not where the crown is, or who might have it.”

  “Such a waste, to bend your principles for nothing,” Cutbill said. “You should have listened to me, Vry. I have no reason to lie to you, and nothing to gain from doing so.”

  The magician passed his hand across his stone again. One of the oil lamps guttered out and
left the room partly in shadow. “This also is the truth,” the magician burbled.

  Vry grabbed the stone out of the magician’s hands and stared into it himself. “I see nothing here! This man’s testimony is meaningless.” He threw the stone back at the magician, who caught it as he might a falling baby.

  “I say only what I see,” the magician insisted. “Not what you want me to see.”

  “Useless! Get out of here. Go back to the palace and read the Burgravine’s fortune for her. That’s the only reason I let you live, you mountebank.”

  The magician hurried out of the room without further protest. One watchman went with him as an escort. Once he was gone the lights came back up and the air began to flow in the room once more.

  “There,” Cutbill said. “As you see-I am wholly innocent.”

  Chapter Forty

  “I’m half of a mind to string you up anyway, just on principle. It might not get the crown back but it would make the city a better place.”

  Cutbill sighed and turned to the next page of his ledger. “That would be a foolish thing to do. I have long held a special arrangement with-”

  “With the Burgrave. Not with me!”

  “With the Burgrave,” Cutbill agreed. “Who always saw me as a necessary evil. I am allowed to operate for the most part unmolested. In exchange I keep a tight rein on the crime in this city. The wealthier citizens are under my protection and the better districts safe at night. If you remove me and my influence, you’ll have a hundred fat merchants to answer to.”

  Malden stifled a gasp. To think that the mastermind of crime was in league with the very authorities he flouted! Not for the first time, his admiration for Cutbill’s genius was enlarged.

  Cutbill entered a figure in his ledger. “The commonest kind of thief will run wild in the streets, and while you’ll catch them soon enough, there will always be more to take their place. The system works. You can’t afford to kill me.”

  Anselm Vry grabbed the quill out of Cutbill’s hand and snapped it in two. “You’ll pay attention when I speak to you. I will find the thief who took the crown. And when I trace him back to you, Cutbill, I will be well justified in turning this place into a charnel pit. If your organization is needed, you can still be replaced!”

  “Of course,” Cutbill said. He closed his ledger, though he kept one finger between the pages as a way to mark his place. “No man is truly indispensable. Yet it would take time to find someone with my particular gifts, and more time to place him properly where he could be effective. And at this very moment you require my services. In fact, without them all hope is lost.”

  “How so?” Anselm Vry demanded.

  “You need to find the crown. And soon. For the nonce you can say the Burgrave is ill, and that he cannot be seen in public. Yet in seven days he must appear. It will be Ladymas then, and he must lead the procession. His position as head of the church demands it. He must also be wearing his crown when he does so.”

  “A replica can be made. No one will know the difference.”

  Exactly, Malden thought. That was what Bikker had suggested.

  “Without being plain, which would be unwise just now as we are not alone,” Cutbill said, referring to the watchmen still in the room, “you and I both know that would not work.”

  Vry scowled but said nothing.

  In the spy hole, Malden pursed his lips. He wondered what that could possibly mean. A replica crown seemed a perfect solution-yet Cutbill and Vry both seemed to think it would not do. But why?

  “I’m sure you have your watch scouring the city already, searching for the crown high and low. But I guarantee they will not find it. Whoever committed this crime is clearly intelligent enough to keep it out of sight.”

  “They’ll go house-to-house then, looking for it.”

  “You don’t have enough watchmen to carry out even a cursory search in that time. Whereas I-”

  “Yes?” Vry demanded.

  “-have a network of informants and observers who see everything that happens in this city. If I investigate with the fullness of my powers, I can find the crown, and return it, safely, to the Burgrave.”

  The bailiff glared at Cutbill with pensive rage.

  Cutbill opened his ledger to the place he’d left off.

  Then he stood up from his lectern, crossed over to his desk and took up a fresh quill.

  With a sharp knife he trimmed the nib. Then he stirred it in his inkwell.

  He sat back down at his lectern.

  And began to make entries.

  Anselm Vry was still staring at him.

  Cutbill doesn’t make an offer unless he knows what the answer will be, Malden remembered.

  “No,” Vry said.

  Malden had not been expecting that.

  The guildmaster of thieves did not react visibly.

  “No. Too long, Cutbill, you have clutched this city like a hawk clutching a mouse in its talons. You have the temerity to think you are invulnerable. Well, I will show you better. I will find the crown myself, before Ladymas. I will find whoever is holding it, and I will torture them until they give me your name. And then I will return here, and I will finish you, and all your works. I will eradicate you.”

  Cutbill made another notation in his ledger.

  “Did you hear me, you glorified cutpurse?” Vry demanded. A vein stuck out from his forehead. Even in the dim light streaming through the spy hole, Malden could see it pulsing.

  “Quite clearly. It sounds as if our business is complete. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get this place cleaned up before the day’s receipts start coming in.” Cutbill bent over his ledger as if the bailiff had already gone.

  Vry fumed a while longer, but then signaled his men and they all trooped out of the office, out through the door to the common room.

  Chapter Forty-One

  And then Cutbill was alone. For quite a while he continued to make his notations. Then he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Malden,” he said in a clear voice, “the main problem with skulduggery and subterfuge is that all the involved parties must actually know how it is done. For instance, they should know when it is safe to emerge from hiding without being told. Will you come out of there now? I have something to say to you.”

  Malden’s heart fell inside his chest and crashed into his vitals. He opened the spy closet door and stepped out. Cutbill gestured for him to approach.

  “I imagine you heard all that,” Cutbill said, when Malden stood contrite and fidgety before him. “I imagine you followed most of it. Surely you grasped in just what desperate straits our esteemed bailiff finds himself. And you must have drawn the naturally following conclusion-that he will not be swept under the current alone. You understand, then, how much trouble has found its way to my doorstep.”

  “Yes,” Malden confirmed.

  “Someone, it seems, did a very rash thing. They stole the Burgrave’s crown out of his tower. I can, of course, understand how a thief would covet it. It must be one of the most valuable things in the city. Yet it has never been stolen before, not in the eight hundred years since it was made. Do you have any idea why?”

  “The… consequences that would follow from its theft.”

  “Indeed!” Cutbill said. He scratched another entry in his ledger. “It was my belief that you were a clever sort, and here I have proof. You follow me precisely. May I be certain, then, that you would never do something so foolish, so irretrievably stupid, as to bring down my entire organization? I’m afraid I can’t be certain of that at all. I think you’ve done just such a thing, Malden. I think you’ve made a very bad blunder.”

  “I thought-”

  “Here,” Cutbill said, and tapped at an entry in his ledger, “is receipt of your dues payment. One and a hundred gold royals, paid in full. And here,” he said, flipping forward a page, “is an expenditure of one groat.” Cutbill dug a halfpenny out of his tunic and handed it to Malden.

  “What’s this for?” Malden asked
in a small voice. He stared at the coin in his hand.

  “It is the traditional severance fee. When a thief leaves my operation he receives that price.”

  “I see.”

  Cutbill made another entry. “It is to be placed in the thief’s mouth. After his tongue has been cut out to make room. Then his throat is slit. Normally, Bellard does the honors, but he isn’t… available today. Would you be so kind as to perform the necessary operations yourself, with that rather silly dagger you carry?”

  Malden couldn’t breathe. He tried to speak but no words would come. Unable to bear his own weight, he sat down on the edge of Cutbill’s desk.

  “In your own time, of course,” Cutbill said without looking up.

  Malden drew his bodkin and held it before him.

  He could-he could kill Cutbill, now. He could strike the guildmaster down. There was no one in the common room to come to Cutbill’s defense. He could kill the man, and then run-and run-and And yet, he didn’t do it. Cutbill must have considered the possibility when he ordered him to self-slaughter. There must be good reason for Cutbill not to fear his blow. Perhaps… perhaps Cutbill had some defense that was not immediately apparent. A charm against blades. A spell up his sleeves. Or a cunningly hidden archer, ready to pierce him through with an arrow at the first sign of violence.

  Yes, that was exactly the sort of thing Cutbill would have.

  Malden lowered his weapon.

  “You,” Cutbill said, “have achieved something Vry could never do. You have single-handedly destroyed my organization. All by making one phenomenally poor choice. You chose not to tell me what you were going to steal.”

  “I–I didn’t wish to implicate you, or the guild,” Malden protested. “Already that has paid dividends-the shewstone found no lies in your heart. And now Vry has no proof I was working on your behest.”