Kluge’s words came back to me. First they’d hacked off his fingers, then they’d let him run. Then they’d killed him, just for the sport of it.
Tonight was as good a night as any, and better for being sooner rather than later.
I trailed the roving guard at a safe distance back toward my entry point, then made my way carefully toward the Elamner’s villa through the dense undergrowth that had been the front garden. I reached the sagging wall and took a look.
Between the two walls lay about ten yards of open ground that ran all the way to the cliffs. Someone kept the vegetation trimmed there; nothing grew more than ankle high. I couldn’t see anyone on the wall across the open space, but I would have bet gold someone was set to watch that open space. I could see a small wooden door set into the side wall of the Elamner’s villa, and about ten feet from my position, a gap in the wooden wall of the abandoned one. Where the guards passed back and forth, no doubt. Where the watcher would be stationed. No doubt the roaming guard would give the ‘all’s well’ every time he passed.
All right, time to take a little risk.
I made my way carefully, quietly along the sagging vine-covered wall that ran parallel to the Elamner’s villa, back towards the cliffs. When I reached the corner of the old house, I vaulted the low wall, to keep it between me and the watchmen stationed in the abandoned villa. Then I crawled through the shadow at the foot of the wall the rest of the way to the cliffs.
I stopped and pulled the bag of resin out of my pack, anointed both hands, and stowed it away. Took a few deep breaths. Then, offering up a brief prayer to Vosto, the god of fools and drunks, I lowered myself feet-first down the cliff face.
I descended far enough that I would be invisible to anyone not standing directly at the cliff’s edge. The cliff was granite, and offered good hand and footholds. But my pack put my center of balance too far out over the water, and the rock was slick. I did not look down. If I fell, I was dead. The fall itself probably wouldn’t kill me, unless I hit one of the jagged rocks down there. But there were things in the water that would finish the job. Phecklas. Grey urdu. They don’t call it the Dragonsea for nothing. And anyway, I can’t swim.
Slowly, carefully, ignoring the sudden sweat in my eyes, I crabbed sidewise across the cliff. I keep myself fit; I have to. But in five minutes my inner thighs were trembling and the muscles of my upper arms burned with the effort. The surf pounded and growled, an empty stomach waiting for a morsel to fall on the teeth of the rocks below.
When I judged I had gone far enough, I slowly, carefully rose up and took a look. I’d gone about three feet past the corner. Here, thankfully, there was no thorny, poisonous adder tongue to contend with. There was about two feet of rocky ground between the cliff’s edge and the wall, and it was in deep shadow. It wouldn’t get any better. I dragged myself up and lay on my stomach, panting. I thought I had kept myself in shape, but obviously I’d been drinking too much wine and not exercising enough. When I’d got my breath back I carefully wriggled out of the pack straps and dug out all I thought I’d need. It wasn’t much, really. The small grapnel with the silk cord. Lock picks. Small flask of oil. Resin bag. A pair of heavy gloves to deal with the glass atop the wall. Weapons were already secreted on my person, more than I should ever have to use in one night.
Some thieves prefer to carry tools varied and complex. I’ve always preferred to travel light, unless I know I’m not going to be disturbed, or there is a need to bring something along for a specific task. This was reconnaissance work, and maybe blood work, not theft. I’d kill the Elamner if I could, but I didn’t count on getting that lucky. There was just no telling what my chances were until I was inside. I slipped the vizard over my face and took up the grapnel.
The trickiest part about grapnel work is the noise. Steel on stone is a distinctive sound, in the dead of night. Which is why I wrap mine in cotton cloth. The tines will bite through the cloth if you’ve got a good catch, and if you don’t, then you won’t have to worry about steel dragging along stone when you pull it back for another cast. Not that I had to worry about any of that with the surf pounding. A bat would have been hard-pressed to hear anything.
I put my back against the wall and, silk cord coiled in one hand, lobbed the three-pronged grapnel up and over. It cleared the top of the wall, and I started reeling in line. It caught, and I tugged harder, finally putting all my weight into it. It held. First cast lucky. I worried about the glass sawing into the line. Nothing I could do about it.
The gloves were so thick they were a hindrance, but I went up the rope quickly enough, and after scanning the gloom inside for any movement, carefully and quietly cleared a wide space of the inset glass shards. Then I lay on the top of the wall on my stomach, and turned the grapnel around and dropped the line into the villa grounds.
There was a chance that the line would be noticed, but there was a greater chance that I would need a quick exit when it was time to leave, and having to recast the grapnel while people were trying to kill me wasn’t something I wanted to do. You figure the odds and you take your chances. I straddled the wall, slid myself down, hung by my fingertips for a moment, and dropped down quietly into the shadows at the base of the wall.
I made my way as quietly as I could over to a darkened, shuttered window. I used a knife to slip the latch on the shutter, and then I probed gently beyond with its tip. No glass, no parchment window. Just a shuttered casement, starting at waist height.
I listened, took a peek in the crack between the shutters. Darkness and silence on the other side; a stillness that betokened an empty, lifeless room. I threw the dice and decided to slip into the room.
Opening the shutters a bare necessary amount still flooded the room with moonlight. I froze.
I was almost right about the room. It was lifeless, but it wasn’t quite empty.
Sprawled on the floor with a dagger in his heart was the corpse of a man. Judging by his raw silk robes, his dark skin and his oiled, ringleted hair, he was an Elamner. Someone had chalked a protective circle around him on the parquetry. There was no blood. There was, however a crazy grin on the corpse’s face. A palpable sense of unwelcome poured out of that room, a... malevolence. As if the very air inside it wished me ill. Bad, bad magic that I’d probably be stupid to test.
Another tiger moth fluttered past my shoulder into the room, and instantly fell to the floor, lifeless.
Shit.
Something struck me then, once, twice, with blinding speed. I felt a flare of agony in my shoulder and cruel blow to the side of my head, and as I dove down into the black pit of unconsciousness, I felt once more the bile of unreasoning hate boiling up in the back of my throat.
Chapter Ten
I don’t know how long I was out. Not very long. The moon hadn’t moved across the sky perceptibly. I sat up, trembling and dazed. My shoulder was on fire. I was amazed to be alive. What had hit me?
The creature that had tried to break into my place. That insane, all-consuming instant hatred was not something I was likely to forget, or mistake.
I’ve no idea why it didn’t kill me. I would certainly have killed it, given the chance. With the feeling that welled up in me when it was near, I would have crawled through fire to slit its throat.
I shrugged. Now was not the time to be gathering wool. I did a once-over on myself and discovered a knot on the side of my head and a bloody shoulder.
And a missing dagger. I searched all around me in the dark beneath the window, thinking I had dropped it. It was gone. I shrugged, and sighed. Another knife lost to the creature, I assumed.
“All right,” I breathed, “that’s enough for one night, Amra.” I closed the shutter and made my way back to the wall.
Climbing the wall was agony. I tossed the pack into the sea. There was nothing in it I couldn’t replace, and I wasn’t going to try and negotiate the cliff face with it. After a moment, I threw the sweat-soaked vizard after the pack. At this point, if somebody saw my face I was d
ead anyway.
Even without the extra burden, that twenty feet of cliff would have been torture. I doubted very much that I’d be able to go back the way I came. If I tried, I’d end up in the Dragonsea, and the scent of fresh blood would make sure I wouldn’t last long. So I flattened myself down on the ground and crawled along the edge of the cliff, waiting for a crossbow bolt to find my back. I knew where it would hit. Just between the shoulder blades. A spot there the size of a gold mark burned and itched, waiting for the bolt to punch through.
When I finally made it into the slice of shadow cast by the wooden fence of the other villa, I retched, as quietly as I could. Nerves. The sour taste of bile filled my mouth again, and I quietly spat it out. At least I was breathing.
Making my way across the overgrown garden was payment for all my sins. I hadn’t realized I’d committed so many. I took it slowly, everything in me just wanting to get somewhere safe, to stop moving, to still the waves of pain from my shoulder and head. At one point I started trembling uncontrollably and I was forced to lay there until it subsided, praying the roving guard wouldn’t be attracted by the sound of the rattling brush.
Eventually I made it to the ditch. About halfway to the copse where I’d hidden Kram, I passed out again. I must have lain there for a long time, because when I came to, my clothes were damp with dew. I looked up at the sky. A couple of hours before dawn. I had to hurry. I pushed myself hard, and made it into the copse and to the waiting horse. He looked at me with liquid eyes that seemed to say that all life was suffering.
“Shove it,” I whispered, and untied him and climbed into the saddle.
The ride back was its own brand of suffering. Every plodding footfall sent a jolt of pain through shoulder and head.
By the time I got back to Alain’s, grey-fingered dawn was creeping up on the horizon. I half-fell off the horse and banged on the gate to the work yard attached to his house. After a few moments I could hear the bar being lifted, and then Alain’s son Owin poked his head out. He looked at me and his mouth gaped.
“What, you’ve never seen blood before?”
“No. I mean yes, but not that much. Not on anybody alive.”
“Are you gonna let me in?”
He opened the gate and I led Kram into the yard. Owin was exaggerating, but my shirt was ruined. If I went back out into the increasing morning traffic I would be noticed. I hate to be noticed.
“I’m going to need a change of clothes, Owin. Is there anything around that will fit?” Alain’s entire family was large. I am not.
“Uh. I’ll ask Mum. Just let me get Kram into the stable. Maybe you should sit down?”
“I might not get back up.”
He took the horse into the narrow stable on one side of the yard, and then led me to the kitchen door of the house. I could smell bacon frying. I realized I was ravenous.
Myra, Alain’s wife, was a huge woman. She had one of those handsome faces that seemed almost incongruous compared with her bulk. Huge wide eyes and perfect brows and full lips. Lustrous brown hair. She took one look at me and pulled the pan off the fire.
“What in Isin’s name happened to you?”
I shrugged, which wasn’t a great idea.
“Sit down. Looks like your shoulder’s been torn to ribbons. And that smell! We’ll have to burn those clothes. Strip out of that shirt.”
Normally I would have bristled at anyone ordering me about. Not with Myra. As soon tell the rain to stop falling. Myra was Myra, an unstoppable force.
Five knives went onto the table. Myra made no comment. I had a hard time getting the tunic and undershirt off by myself. Caked blood glued them to the wound, and my abused muscles shrieked pain in protest when I raised my arms over my head. Tried to raise them. Myra helped, clucking her tongue and muttering all the while. She glanced at her son, still standing at the kitchen door.
“Owin, don’t you have something to do? Whatever it is, it’s not in here.”
He blinked and blushed. “Ah. Yes.” And he disappeared, ruddy cheeks and all. For all that he was only a few years younger than me, there was much that was still boyish about Owin.
A minute or so later I heard Alain’s heavy tread come down the stairs, and put an arm across my breasts. I was in no mood or condition to be ogled by both father and son.
“Forget your modesty, Amra. There’s not enough of you for me. I like my women with a little meat on their bones. And I like ‘em tender, not tenderized.”
I glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Great Gorm, but something got hold of you. You’ve got bruises on your bruises. Is that a claw mark?”
“No, it’s a pimple.”
Myra glanced up at her husband. “Make yourself useful and put water on to boil. Then bring me the tincture your cousin gave us, the one for unclean cuts, and that horse liniment you’re always going on about. Then get me one of Owin’s old shirts, in the cupboard at the top of the stairs. And then go take care of the custom.”
“All right. But what about breakfast?” He cast an eye at the half-cooked bacon.
“Chew your beard, old man.”
Alain did as he was told while Myra cleaned the wound, and then lumbered off to the morning’s work. He paused at the door and cast one last glance in my direction.
“Will trouble be following you, do you think?”
“I don’t think so, but it’s possible.”
He nodded and pulled down a gnarled cudgel from the wall, where it hung by a leather thong on a hook. He tucked it into his wide belt and went outside.
Once all the blood was off and the wound cleaned, Myra poured a liberal amount of some cloudy, innocuous looking tincture into each of the furrows in my shoulder. Gods, it burned. When I complained, she said “Talk to me about pain after you’ve birthed a child. Honestly, Amra Thetys, you sound like a man, whining about a little discomfort.”
There is mercy and then there is mercy, I suppose. But her hands were deft and gentle as she rubbed the liniment on. That burned too, but in a strangely cold way that wasn’t entirely painful.
She helped me into Owin’s old, oft-mended shirt. I swam in it. Then she demanded my trousers.
“There’s no need, Myra. Nobody will notice stained trousers. The shirt is enough. I’ll be on my way and out of your hair. Thank you.” I made to rise, and a meaty hand pushed me back down.
“You’re on your way up to Owin’s room, and nowhere else. Now out of those bloody pants, Amra.”
“The longer I stay here, the more likely it is I put you and your men in danger.”
“And you were in no danger at all when you pulled Alain out of that rookery where they’d drugged his ale and robbed him, and were about to cut his throat. I’ve waited near four years to pay that bill. Now off with your pants, or I warn you, I’ll have them off myself.”
“Myra, my mother died twenty years ago!”
“Isin love her soul. But at least she can’t see you acting the fool now.”
One more knife joined the five on the table. She clucked her tongue, but otherwise made no comment. It turned out that I needed her help to get my boots off. I couldn’t bend down that far.
~ ~ ~
I slept like the dead. Through the day, and into the night. I think the only reason I woke was because I was so hungry. I was disoriented for a moment, surrounded by Owin’s things, in Owin’s bed. I reached for a knife that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It was a spare looking room, lit only by moonlight. A cloak hung on a peg. There was a pitcher and a bowl on a rickety stand, and a razor with a leather strop. There was a solid-looking wardrobe. There was a low table by the window, with little carvings resting on it. Creakily, I picked one up and studied it in the moonlight. It was a horse. It was beautiful. It wasn’t something Owin would have bought, I didn’t think. I suspected he had carved it himself. He had a master’s eye, if I was right. He’d carved it in such a way that the grain of the wood flowed and accented the mane, the powerful haunches. I
picked up another, a kestrel perched on a branch. It was just as lovely. He’d caught the air of regal, predatory menace in its eyes perfectly. I wondered if he even knew he was wasting a rare talent on building and repairing wagons. Or if he cared. I’d have traded the damned golden toad for one of his carvings in a trice.
The stairs were a challenge. I kept one hand on the wall and the other on my ribs. The sounds of laughter and good-natured bickering floated up from the kitchen, but they trailed off as I descended.
Owin was studiously not looking at my bare legs. Alain leaned back in his chair, mirth still lingering in his eyes. Myra glanced at me and said “Good, you’re up. I was going to wake you soon, just to get some food down your throat.” And she busied herself readying me a plate. I wasn’t going to argue. Myra could cook. Of course, I would have eaten boot leather had it been presented to me just then.
I sat down and a plate was put in front of me. If anyone was expecting conversation out of me just then, they were sorely disappointed. Beans, capon, black bread, boiled cloudroot with a rich mushroom gravy. I made it all disappear. I looked up. Myra was smiling, Owin stared, mouth agape, and Alain just shook his head.
“What? You’ve never seen anyone eat?”
“Is that what you call it?” asked Alain. “No one was going to take it away from you, you know. Did you have time to taste anything?”
“Leave her alone,” said Myra. “She’s complimented the cook in her way.”
Alain snorted, but laid off me. He changed the subject.
“Someone’s been asking after you around town.”
I froze, spoon halfway to my mouth. “Violent type?”
The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids Page 6