“Proof? Proof is for the rich. When a man of property must be taken to court, and tried by his peers, then proof is required.” Cutbill glanced up at Malden for the first time. “When the bailiff comes for me the next time, there will be no trial. He will have my name because he will torture enough people until one of them names me merely to make the pain stop. And then he will do as he promised.”
“He only has seven days, though. He won’t be able to find the crown in that time.”
“Everyone knows that perfectly well. That will not stop Vry from destroying me.”
“I know where it is,” Malden said. “Right now. Or at least, who has it.”
“That would be useful information. Too bad a dead man can’t provide it.”
“But you could simply tell Vry where it is, and-”
“That would change nothing. No.” Cutbill laid down his pen and tilted his head back as if his neck was tired from stooping over the lectern for so long. “That would only speed the process. The only chance, the only possibility of a chance of resolving this in my favor, is if I could somehow recover the crown myself. If I could bring it to the Burgrave before Ladymas. He and I already have an understanding. He could chain Vry like the dog he is. But of course, I can’t get the crown, now can I? It is in hands I dare not snatch at.”
Malden shook his head. He knew exactly where this was going. Cutbill wanted him to come to the conclusion on his own, however. He, Malden, would have to regain what he had already sold. It would be his only chance to save his life. “Let me do it. Let me go to Ha-”
Cutbill clucked his tongue.
“-to the man who has it,” Malden said, glancing at the corners of the room, knowing Cutbill did not wish to hear Hazoth’s name spoken aloud, but unsure who might be listening. “I’ll buy it back. Or trick him out of it.”
“Quite unlikely,” Cutbill said.
“Permit me to try,” Malden pleaded. What choice did he have?
“Very well,” Cutbill said. “Do what you can. Let us be clear, though. Should you fail, I will be killed.”
“I know that,” Malden said. “I heard-”
“I will be taken to the dungeon, and tortured, and then hanged. Perhaps drawn and quartered. That will take a few days. During that time, while I yet live, I will still be able to contact my remaining thieves. At least a few of them will remain loyal to me. They will ensure one thing: the moment I perish, your throat will be slit from ear to ear. If you fail, Malden, we will both die.”
“And if I succeed-you must grant me a reward,” Malden said.
“Oh? Must I? Tell me, what is your heart’s desire?” Cutbill rejoined.
Malden swallowed the lump in his throat. “My life, of course. And reinstatement in your books.”
“I suppose you can’t have one without the other. Go, Malden. You don’t have much time, so you’d better get started now.”
“I promise you I will-”
“Leave me,” Cutbill repeated.
Malden fled.
Chapter Forty-Two
Sir Croy had been raised to be a knight, to be a champion on the battlefield, a slayer of demons, a devout and pious man. He had been trained from birth to command companies of men-at-arms and ride fiery-tempered warhorses.
That night he was called upon for quite a different kind of duty. His patron, the rich merchant who was hiding him from the law, insisted that he attend a dinner party as a guest of honor. He was to be put on display for the merchant’s guests, a symbol to prove the merchant’s largesse and power.
It was the only thing the merchant had asked for in way of payment for his kindness. Croy could not say no. Had a legion of demons erupted from a crack in the world at that particular moment, however, he would never have been happier to smell brimstone on the air.
“They say the Burgrave has taken ill-did you hear that, Croy? Mayhap he was hurt when the tower came down.”
Croy turned to the woman on his left, who had addressed him. She wore a wimple and a ridiculous pointed hat, perhaps to draw attention away from the unfashionable roundness of her face. He could not remember her name. She was the wife of a rich merchant-a dealer in silks? Or maybe it was furs. He only knew that she had been trying to get his attention all night, and when she spoke to him she ran the toe of her slipper up his calf, under the table. Politeness demanded he ignore it. He saw that her cup was nearly empty and he refilled it from the flagon of good wine that sat before him on the table.
“I haven’t been much for the news, of late,” he apologized.
“The Burgrave didn’t appear at the courts of law today,” she went on, as if he’d said nothing. As a dish of roasted larks went past she speared one with her knife and dropped it on her plate. It was the seventh or eighth course-there were dozens more to come, small dishes brought out each as they finished cooking, as was the style at this sort of banquet. When the larks were offered to him next, Croy waved them away. He wasn’t hungry. “I was there. There was a very interesting case waiting to be heard-a man had killed his wife. He said she had been inconstant, which normally would have been the end of it, but the witnesses said she was pregnant, which complicates things. I like to go to the courts of law some days. I like to look at all the men in the dock, they’re so… desperate. So wild. I feel a little thrill whenever they gnash their teeth and demand their innocence.”
As she prattled on he nodded politely. He’d been trained in how to attend such meals, and knew which salt cellar to use, and when it was permitted to belch, and how to keep his fingers from getting too greasy. One couldn’t be a knight and not be versed in polite manners. He had never enjoyed any meal that took half the day, however, and his legs were falling asleep from sitting in one chair for so long.
And his thoughts, of course, were elsewhere. He kept seeing the face of that thief again, the one he’d followed from the Ladypark up into the Stink. Malden, his name was. Cythera had been waiting for him in her boat, Croy recalled, when he had jumped from the wall of Castle Hill. What possible business could that sort have with Cythera? He needed to find out.
“Sometimes I imagine I’m a magistrate, and as the condemned men kneel before me and ask for clemency, I- Oh. Oh, I do beg your pardon,” the merchant’s wife said. She had gone quite pale.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his attention dragged back to her at once.
“It’s just-here I am going on and on about that man they’re going to hang, and you… you were just on those gallows yourself. Even now you’re a wanted man, in hiding from the watch. Why, at any moment they could come and-and-it’s so exciting, I was quite overcome. But I’ve been tactless. You forgive me, don’t you? Please tell me you do.”
The doors at the far end of the chamber opened silently and a face peered through. Croy’s hand automatically started to reach for the swords at his back-though of course they were safely locked away up in his rooms. He was getting jumpy. Inaction and worry were making him a bundle of nerves.
“Of course,” he said. “Will you take some of this sauce?”
“Mmm, please,” she said, and stared deeply into his eyes. “You say you forgive me but I know I’ve been cruel. Perhaps there is some way to… earn your forgiveness?”
A footman in livery came into the room and scanned the table. Moving quietly so as not to disturb the banqueters, he moved around the table and over to where Croy sat. He hemmed and hawed for a while before bending down to whisper in Croy’s ear. “Sir Knight, there is-there is a situation.”
“Hmm?”
The footman licked his lips in apprehension. “Normally I shouldn’t like to interrupt your meal, but-but there is a situation. An uninvited guest, er, that is to say-someone came to the door just now, I would have turned her away, but-”
“Speak freely, man. You’re interrupting nothing of importance,” Croy told him, keeping his voice low so the merchant’s wife wouldn’t hear.
“A woman, not a lady, but-but in some state of distress, has come to the do
or, and begged of me that I find you, and bring you to her. Just say the word, sir, and I’ll give her a coin and send her on her way, but there was something about her look that made me think she was no beggar. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman with tattoos on her face before-”
Croy didn’t wait for the rest. He jumped up from the table and made a few perfunctory bows before hurrying through the door the footman had left open. He worried he was offending the merchant’s wife, and perhaps even his host, but hopefully they would simply think he needed to use the chamber pot.
Cythera waited for him in the receiving hall. He saw at once she had been crying. He rushed toward her and barely remembered in time not to grab her arms as he begged her to tell him what was wrong.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she told him. “I know this was a mistake, but-I couldn’t stay in that house a moment longer. I had to get out. I’ve endangered you, now. I’m sure he was watching me when I left-and now he’ll know where you are, Croy-I’m so sorry.”
“I can take care of myself,” he told her. “What happened?”
“I’ve been punished,” she said. She clenched her eyes closed and sagged toward him. She did not touch him, but moved her face quite close to his. “I failed him.”
“Hazoth?” Croy demanded.
She nodded.
Croy looked up at the gallery that overhung the hall but saw no eavesdroppers there. He pulled a chair away from the wall for her and she sank readily into it. Kneeling down next to her, he moved his hands over hers, wishing he could be of more comfort. “What do you mean, you failed him?” he asked.
She shook her head bitterly. “You’ll think me wicked,” she said. “Please… please don’t think me wicked. Last night-you met a thief in the darkened streets, did you not? He was doing some work for Hazoth. Foul business. I was to meet him, with Bikker, and receive the goods he’d stolen.”
“He seemed a good enough sort to me,” Croy said. A twinge of something ignoble went through his heart, but he couldn’t help himself. “A… friend of yours?”
Cythera shook her head. “Oh, he’s just a cutpurse. Someone Bikker found-we needed a thief, and-well, that’s a long tale. The point is this: Hazoth decided he must die. That he knew too many secrets, and that once we had our prize, we were to kill him. Bikker offered to do it, of course, but Hazoth seemed to find it more amusing if I was to be the instrument of destruction.”
“You told him you wouldn’t do it, of course.”
Cythera turned her face away from him. “Croy, I had no choice. I must obey him. So when the business was complete, I–I asked the thief to kiss me.”
Croy’s entire body stiffened, but he said nothing.
“You understand, don’t you? What that would do? Every curse I’ve stored up over the last five years would be released at once, into the poor thief’s body. He would have been slaughtered in an instant. But he refused me. Lucky for him, he knew your name, and knew the effect it would have on me. He’s really very clever for a pickpocket. And then he ran off, and I could not give chase. When I returned and told Hazoth that the thief had escaped, he was furious. He stormed about his library, making books jump off of their shelves, and his eyes glowed with magic. I thought he was going to turn on me and try to blast me with some spell. He has a terrible temper.”
“Did he hurt you? You said he punished you-what did he do? Cythera, tell me!” Croy wanted to grab up her hands or pull her into an embrace. He didn’t, of course. It would be his death.
“He cannot. His magic is no use against me. He can’t even have his guards beat me. And that just made him angrier. So he did the thing I’ve dreaded for so long. He turned on my mother instead.”
“The cur,” Croy swore.
“He has her in one of his rooms, trapped inside a magic circle. She has languished there for so long at his pleasure, but never before has he actually taken advantage of her imprisonment. I thought… I believed that when this time came, he would use magic against her. That he would wrack her with a curse, or perhaps attack her mind with his mind. But he didn’t.”
Cythera covered her face with her hands.
“He had her whipped,” she said. “With a plain leather bullwhip. Ten strokes across her back until the skin peeled away. And… he made me watch.” She lowered her hands and stared into his face. “He made me keep count.”
Croy stood up to his full height. “Wait here while I fetch my swords. I’ll kill him. I swear it, Cythera. I will slay him, and free you and your mother from his bonds, and then-”
“Croy,” she said, very softly, but it was enough to quiet him. “Croy, if you go there now, girded as for war, he will destroy you.”
“If I die for honor, for love, for fellow feeling-”
“You’ll still die. No matter how noble the principle, you can only die for it once. And then you’ll be no help to anyone. I do not wish you to get yourself killed for my mother’s sake, Croy.”
“You can’t ask me to listen to this story and do nothing,” he insisted.
“No,” she said. She straightened the hem of her dress. “No. That isn’t why I came here. There is something you can do. Some action you can take that might help me.”
“Finally,” Croy said, with a sigh. “Tell me all.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Malden needed a plan, desperately. He needed some stratagem that would see him inside Hazoth’s house, where he might find the crown and escape with it to safety. He needed to do a great deal of thinking and hone his wits to a razor’s edge.
First, though, he needed to get drunk.
He could tell himself that he was looking for creativity in a cup, that the best plans were based on the kind of daring folly that came to one only when the mind was befuddled and the tongue loosed.
Mostly, though, he just needed to drink until he wasn’t afraid.
“Ale,” he said, and the barkeep obliged. Malden slid a wedge-shaped farthing across the bar and it disappeared. He did not have many left. He had chosen a particularly filthy tavern in one of the worst parts of the Stink, not for the ambience, but because it was cheap and his funds were small. The place had a few grimy windows made of the bottoms of old glass bottles stuck in plaster. Only a few beams of blue and green and brown light made their way inside. There was a bar made of an old door up on trestles, and behind that a stack of barrels with leaking bungs. There were a few tables but most of the patrons stood and drank from leather tankards and wiped the foam from their beards with their sleeves. A brawl had just been dying down when Malden entered, and one poor fool still lay knocked out on the floor. The serving wench stepped high over him every time she had to pass.
“More,” Malden said when he was done with his cup. The barkeep waited until he took another farthing from his purse and laid it on the bar.
The fear of death was nothing new to Malden. At their first meeting Cutbill had threatened him casually enough, and he stood up to the promise of death without quaking in his boots. That had been different, however. The threat was meant as a spur, to make him take the action Cutbill desired. It was understood by all parties that he retained an option, that he had a chance to save himself. That had just been good faith negotiation. There were countless other times over the years he’d been in mortal danger, and every time he’d kept good cheer and found the way through. Even in the Burgrave’s palace, when he faced instant death from the traps and the demon, he had known there was a way through if he was clever enough to find it.
Stealing from Hazoth, though, was another matter.
Bikker would slay him the moment he walked through that gate. There was an enchantment over the entire house-he had watched the footpad lifted into the air and held there like a starling impaled on the claws of a cat. There were armed guards all over Hazoth’s estate, and no diversion to draw their attention.
Worst of all, should he succeed, and find some route into the sorcerer’s inner sanctum-he would then be prey to magic.
No man was wise who flaunted wizardry. Magic was unpredictable at the best of times. Students of the arcane were more liable to blow themselves up-or drawn down bodily into the pit by angry demons-than to live long enough to ply their trade. Those who did succeed in their studies, however, became powerful. They gained access to abilities normal men could scarce imagine. And Hazoth was one of the greatest sorcerers of history.
Malden had begun to believe all the stories he’d heard about the sorcerer. There was the tale of how Hazoth drove the elves away from southern Skrae by making every tree for a hundred miles wither and die in a single night. Old men sometimes spoke of the day Hazoth wiped out an entire barbarian army almost single-handed, how a simple wave of his hand rooted the painted berserkers to where they stood so they could do nothing but rave and curse as the knights of Skrae cut them down at leisure. The stories of what Hazoth had done to men who crossed him were too gruesome for Malden to want to remember.
The sorcerer might place some dread curse on him that would make the rest of his life a living hell. Hezoth might make his skin turn inside out. He might boil his stomach inside his body, so he died shitting out parts of himself over a course of days. Or he might simply flay the flesh from his bones with a word and a wave of his hand.
“Another,” Malden said, and slapped his money on the bar. He was starting to feel the liquor in his veins. It wasn’t helping.
For distraction, he turned and studied the low-lifes in the barroom. Most of the patrons were honest enough folk-laborers in leather aprons, covered in flour or candle wax or soot from some forge. They talked loudly to each other and laughed lustily and stamped their feet when they made some jest or swore an oath. In the back of the room, near the hearth, a card game was in progress. The players looked like the kind of desperate bravos who would cut each others’ throats over a mislaid wager. They were playing in earnest, though, and were almost silent as they took turns laying down their trumps. The game they were playing was unknown to Malden, so he wandered over to observe. One of the players, a mangy fellow with an unkempt beard and a smear of dirt on his forehead, looked up and growled, but the others insisted he play his hand, and he ignored Malden after that.
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