Peter & Max

by Bill Willingham

  “I fear our beloved Bishop Hugo the Charitable has been a little too generous in his charity giving,” Erwin said, once he’d gotten Peter away from the chance of prying ears. “I fear he’s given all of us away, into the hands of the enemy, in return for his personal freedom and getting his power back. He’s sold us down the river, you and me, and everyone else for a hundred leagues in every direction.”

  “True enough, I suppose,” Peter said. “But what can we do?”

  “He can’t complete the dirty deed unless he presides over this ceremony in a few days’ time. So what do you say we put a stop to it?”

  “How?”

  “You’re my Master of the Touch now. So you’ll sneak into the old bastard’s house, the night before the big to-do, and lift his signet ring. That’s the absolute symbol of his authority. Without it he can’t appear in public, or do anything official.”

  “I don’t know,” Peter said. “This is awful short notice. A touch like this takes time and preparation. You taught me that. The Bishop’s residence in the cathedral is like a fortress, with all of the protections that implies.”

  “I’ve already had a chat with Lukas, our Master Caser, and Carl, our Master of Bribes. All of our top brothers are working on this one — you included.”

  Carl the Arrow, King Erwin’s brother-in-law, and Peter’s closest friend in the Brotherhood, had been first in line to become the Master of the Touch, the most prestigious honor and exalted office among thieves, short of being the king himself. But an unlucky ax cut three years past, on a job gone horribly wrong in both planning and execution, had left Carl crippled for life, with a limp that would never fully heal. An unhindered ability to move silently and lithely through the shadows, over walls and along rooftops, was essential to anyone who hoped to excel in the art of the touch. With Carl’s blessing, Peter moved up to take his place, while Carl went on to distinguish himself in the tricky business of bribery, a talent for which it turned out he had a heretofore unrecognized gift.

  “This is a huge score,” Erwin continued, as Peter persisted in looking dubious. “Three thousand marks, of which you get the lion’s share.”

  “Who’s the client?” Peter said.

  “I guess that would be me,” Erwin said. “But don’t you never tell nobody. Everyone would think I’d gone soft.”

  ON THE NIGHT BEFORE the memorial ceremony, Peter crouched on the high-peaked roof of Dempter House, a four-story mansion that had once belonged to the richest merchant in Hamelin, but which now served as the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters for the most senior members of the Empire’s Twenty-Third Horde. It was located directly across Market Street from the cathedral and afforded Peter an unobstructed view past the high churchyard walls, into the cathedral’s grounds. The deep shadows cast by Dempter House’s street-side crenellated façade insured that Peter could lurk there all night without fear of being observed.

  The cathedral proper occupied the northernmost section of the grounds, but it was one of the other buildings that commanded Peter’s interest. Directly south of the cathedral, attached to it by a covered stone walkway, was the Bishop’s personal residence, a many-gabled stone structure called, humbly enough, the High Holy House. Peter crouched motionless and watched for hours, until he’d recognized and memorized the pattern of the elite Cathedral Guards as they made their rounds. He wanted nothing to do with them. Though they dressed themselves in effeminate-looking liveries of fine silk and linen, their brightly polished, jewel-encrusted weapons weren’t just parade ground showpieces, and they had a reputation as fierce and fanatical warriors. Peter’s only weapons were two daggers secreted within the folds of his clothing — one for throwing and one for stabbing. But in ten years in the trade, he’d never had to resort to using them. As in every other touch he’d made in his long career, tonight he planned to avoid dangers rather than confront them.

  Of course, as always, he had Frost strung in its case across his back. True to his long-ago promise, he kept Frost with him always. When Peter was inducted into the Brotherhood of Thieves, Hagan of the Lowenbrucke, who was then the Master of the Touch, and therefore second in rank among all thieves, argued that a portion of Peter’s flute should be shared among the brothers, just as any other take from a job — just as Peter had already surrendered a portion of his stolen bacon and market produce.

  “How can we divide pieces of a flute into proper shares?” the king had asked.

  “Break it apart,” Hagan said.

  “But then we’ll have no more sweet music from it,” the queen said.

  “Unfortunate, perhaps,” Hagan replied, “but there’s a principle at stake.”

  “I think dour Hagan is jealous of Peter’s talent,” Carl said. That made Hagan color with anger, which only increased when he heard many a snigger and titter of laughter throughout the chamber.

  The argument went round and round, until Peter, almost afraid to speak in his own defense, pointed out that Frost wasn’t part of the take from any act of thievery. “It was given to me by my own father as an inheritance,” he said.

  “That settles it then,” Carl spoke up, loud and confident, in contrast to Peter’s mumbled entreaty. “What was never stolen, but is privately owned by one of us, isn’t subject to division, either for the king’s rightful tithe, or the share that’s given out among the brothers. That’s our law!”

  “But how do we know he’s telling the truth of it?” Hagan said.

  “Dastard!” Carl said. “An accusation against a brother requires either undeniable evidence or blood! Since you’ve none of one, I’ll take a full measure of the other!” Carl drew his dagger against Hagan, a bold act that surprised everyone in the room, since Carl was still a child, while Hagan was a man grown and as deadly a man with a dagger as ever there was.

  “This child hasn’t been a brother for all but a few seconds,” Hagan said, and eagerly drew his own knife. He stepped out into the center of the room, and began to circle around Carl, a hungry, wolfish look in his eyes. The rest of the company assembled there, moved back, to give the fighters room.

  “Put down!” the king cried. “Put down, I say! I’ll decide when there’s blood to be spilled! No matter how recently it was done, young Peter is one of us now, and deserves every advantage of our laws and traditions. His flute belongs to him alone, and that’s my say in the matter. Anyone who disputes it further will taste my knife today.” He looked at Hagan as he said this.

  With obvious reluctance on both sides, Hagan and Carl put away their blades. But from that day forward, it was clear to anyone with eyes to see it that each hated the other. A year later the matter between them was put to rest when Hagan was caught by a lucky arrow between his shoulder blades while making his getaway with a sack of jewels formerly belonging to a renowned cavalry officer’s mistress. It was said that Carl visited poor Hagan’s head every day, at its resting place on a spike atop the western wall, to put fresh daisies behind each ear. But, though the daily flowers were always there, no one ever actually saw Carl do it.

  NOW, TEN YEARS INTO HIS CAREER, and widely recognized (among those in the know) as the boldest thief in the city, Peter crouched in the shadows and felt Frost’s reassuring weight across his back. At exactly the stroke of three in the morning, precisely as it had been arranged, he spied a door come open in the side of the Bishop’s residence. A man in guard’s livery stepped out of the building, looked once to the left and once to the right, and then went back inside, but leaving the door cracked open just a sliver. It was the signal Peter had been waiting for.

  Quick as a wealthy man’s prayer, he made his way down from his high perch and across the street, keeping to the deepest shadows at all times. Over the wall he went, confident from his earlier observations that there’d be no guards on the other side to greet him. Then he crept forward to find the side door open, unlocked and unguarded. Our ever-reliable Master of Bribes did his duty again, Peter thought, happy that his dear friend Carl was an important part of this job.
Silently, he closed and locked the door behind him. Then, moving out of the lighted hallway, into the shadows of a recessed alcove, he reached inside his vest for a small bottle that had been provided to him by a potion maker well known to the Brotherhood. It was an expensive potion he carried, and usually only used in the most dire of emergencies, but the king had agreed that this time, owing to the hasty planning of tonight’s touch, its expenditure was well justified.

  When he opened the bottle, the liquid inside would blossom from it in the form of a mist that would spread out into every nook and cranny of the building, quickly putting all within it into a deep and dreamless sleep. Peter would be immune, having already sipped the antidote up on the rooftop across the way. But then, just as he was about to pull the stopper, something stayed his hand. The air already smelled of sticky, burned cloves, mixed with an underlying odor of rancid meat, which is exactly the odor his potion would cause.

  Someone had already released a sleeping mist, he realized. And it was done only seconds ago, or else the smell would have dissipated by now.

  Doubly on his guard, already half-determined to abandon the job as too risky, Peter crept down the hallway, letting the smaller of his two daggers fall silently into his hand as he went. He quickly found the guard who’d unlocked the door for him. The man was fast asleep in the mansion’s small mage-room, having extinguished, as he’d promised to do, the night’s spell-candle, which insured there would be no active security or warding spells to interfere with Peter’s work.

  Having been thoroughly briefed by the Brotherhood’s Master Caser, who’d uncovered detailed designs for its construction in the city archives, Peter knew his way around the building, as if he’d lived here all his life. He could have closed his eyes and found his way to the Bishop’s luxurious second floor bedroom. But for all their careful preparation, no one anticipated having to deal with a second intruder — one who seemed as schooled in the Brotherhood’s methods as Peter was.

  As he proceeded through the house, Peter encountered one sleeping guard after another, as he’d planned all along. But he’d never suspected someone might do the job for him. He went upstairs, using the smaller servants’ stairway in the back of the house. As he turned the corner, where the narrow flight of stairs doubled back on itself midway through the ascent, he thought he saw a shadow flit out of the doorway above. He hurried faster, as fast as he could move and still remain relatively silent. He emerged onto the second floor hallway just in time to see a vaguely human shape duck into the very bedroom he was headed for. He rushed down to the open doorway, but paused at its threshold. The bedroom was dark, too dark for Peter’s faded night vision to penetrate, which had been spoiled by even the soft light in the hallways. If he entered blind into the darkened room, there was a very reasonable chance he’d stumble right onto a knife blade held by whoever was already in there. Peter was certain that the other intruder was standing just inside the doorway, pressed against the other side of the same wall he was facing, ready to ambush him, because that’s what he’d do in the same situation.

  He waited where he was, barely daring to breathe. At the same time he imagined that he could almost hear the other man’s breathing on the opposite side of the wall. Peter had no idea what to do. None of his training or past experience had prepared him for such a situation as this. Was it possible there was a second thieves brotherhood operating in Hamelin, which until now was completely unknown to us? No, that’s not possible. So then, what could the answer be? Lacking a better idea, Peter finally decided the best solution to the mystery might simply be to ask his questions aloud.

  “I suppose we can both stand here all night,” he said, in a low murmur, “waiting for the other one to do something. If your sleeping mist is as effective as the one I carry, we don’t need to worry about anyone waking up for hours at least.”

  For the longest time there was no answer, but then he heard, “It’s good enough. No one will wake, even if we screamed at the top of our voices.” The other intruder had answered Peter in a similar whisper, but there was something odd about his voice, as if it were muffled through a thick cloth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we purchased our potions from the same vendor.”

  “Possibly so,” Peter said. “Old man Konstantin couldn’t live as richly as he does, strictly on the trade that we give him.”

  “That’s his name,” the other voice said. “So what are we going to do? Though the magical sleep may last, the morning’s sun won’t tarry an extra minute. I need to finish my business and be on my way, while it’s still dark out.”

  “And what business would that be? I dearly hope you’re not also here to rob our slumbering Bishop. My Brotherhood doesn’t allow competition within the city, and I’d be expected to do something permanent about it. But I’d really like to avoid sticking a knife into anyone tonight. My heart’s never been into such things.”

  “Well, you can turn around and go home in peace,” the other man said. “I’ve no intention of robbing tonight. My contract is to kill the Bishop.”

  “In truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re an actual killer for pay? Before now I’d never have believed we had a nest of assassins in Hamelin. I’d think we’d have run across one of you long ago, if that were the case.”

  “My society isn’t based in Hamelin, or any other town. We find it more suitable to live in a place far removed from outsiders.”

  “Sensible enough,” Peter said. “Of course, being thieves, my people are pretty much required to live where the people are. How do clients find you then?”

  “You’ll have to ask one of my superiors.”

  “But someone definitely hired you to come here and kill poor Bishop Hugo?”

  “Yes, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to be about it. He needs to go tonight, before he can make his speeches tomorrow.”

  “Ah, well, see? You and I have the same mission, except that my people have worked out a much less bloody way to accomplish it. I’m simply going to steal his ring and then he can make any sort of speech he wants, but it won’t matter. There won’t be any authority behind it. Doesn’t that seem a more elegant solution? No blood spilled. No fancy bed sheets ruined. So why don’t you be on your way and leave the job to me?”

  “I can’t do that. I have to either kill the Bishop tonight, or kill myself. There’s no other alternative, once I’ve accepted a mission. We’ve a strict code about such things.”

  “Well, then we have a problem,” Peter said, “because I can’t let you kill the Bishop tonight, or anyone else in his household. If the word got out that I needed to butcher my target, just to get a ring off his finger, my reputation would be ruined among my peers. I’ve never so much as had to scratch a man in order to make the touch on his valuables, much less kill him. And no one would ever believe that the murder was actually done by a mysterious assassin who just happened to be in the same house on the same night.”

  “By the same token, I can’t let you rob him. An adept of my society who stooped to rob his victim would be considered nothing more than a cheap thug. I’d be slain by my own masters if I let that happen, and rightly so.”

  “Then it looks like we’ve reached an impasse. I don’t know how to resolve it.”

  “You’ll just have to think of something, Peter. You always did consider yourself most clever.”

  “Peter?”

  “Yes, you’re Peter.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “I recognized you the first moment you spoke, and it’s breaking my heart that you haven’t recognized me.”

  “But I — I don’t —”

  “It’s me, Peter. It’s Bo Peep.”

  PETER AND BO TALKED in the Bishop’s bedroom, sitting on the edge of his huge bed, while he slumbered away, snoring quietly, somewhere in its vast middle. In the ten years since he’d last seen her, Bo had grown into a beautiful woman. Like a vision in a dream, her features slowly revealed themselves out of the shadows, as Peter�
�s eyes adjusted to the dark. He held her hand tightly as they talked, afraid that she might fade away into the insubstantial vapor of dreamstuff that he still worried she might be.

  “What happened to you,” Peter said, “after that night with the wolf?”

  “I got hopelessly lost,” she said. “I wandered for three or four days, and then a terrible man found me. He kept talking about all of the things he might do to me, if I wasn’t good enough to pass muster with the Rowan House.”

  “What’s that?”

  “One of the names by which we’re known to outsiders. He sold me to them, which was a blessing, considering some of the alternatives he’d described, and they raised me to be what I am now.”

  “A killer.”

  “Yes, just like everything else in this terrible world, except that I finally resigned myself to becoming good at it, perhaps so that I’d have a decent chance not to be the victim of the next monstrous thing that found me.”

  “So what do we do now, Bo?”

  “About the Bishop?”

  “No — well, yes, about him too, but also about the rest of our lives. We can’t just resolve our business here and then go on our separate ways again. I’ve found you at last — or maybe you found me, but I’m not about to let you go again, after all these years.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to,” she said, her voice breaking with insistent emotion that refused to be entirely suppressed. “I’ve sworn binding oaths. I can’t leave the Rowan House, and you can’t come back there with me. Outsiders simply aren’t allowed to learn our secrets and live.”

  “I’ve had to swear a binding oath or two myself.”

  “Then it seems we’re both stuck.”

  “No, I can’t accept that. There has to be a way. Let’s start with the determination that somehow, some way, we’re both going to stay together from now on, and work our way backwards from there.”