Sunbright shook his head. “It’s not outward appearances, it’s inner. Greenwillow had courage, not only to face terrible odds, but to face herself too. To force herself into battle, or the dark, or the unknown. As you do. I so admire your spirit. I can face polar bears and ice storms and ice worms and starvation and cold, yet I was raised by my tribe and taught these things slowly, and coddled when I made a mistake. How you managed to survive, abandoned and alone in the underworld of Karsus, I can’t imagine. You must have a core of steel, and an undying heart to boot. Greenwillow was the same way.”
Knucklebones glowed under the compliments, wondered. Maybe Sunbright loved her not as a pale imitation of the elf maiden, but because she had mastered a dangerous environment. For the first time, the thief felt sympathy and interest in this elven warrior she’d never met, but she’d still prefer he concentrate on a live lover. But so did people pine for things they couldn’t have.
Like a tribe. And a home. Or any clue where to go—
“Behold. The geese and the enclaves fly south for the winter.”
“Hunh?” Knucklebones craned her head around, scanned the sky where Sunbright pointed. High overhead drifted an inverted mountain studded with buildings, a floating city. Enclaves drifted north in summer and south in winter. “Oh. That’s Ioulaum,” she said. “It’s easy to recognize.” In three hundred years it hadn’t changed much.
“And in three hundred and fifty-five years,” Sunbright added, “it’ll fall and shatter, scattering buildings and people like an anthill kicked apart.”
Thief and shaman watched the city drift. It went slower than the wind, for the massive mythallar, the dweomer engine, could drive it in any direction decreed by the archwizards and city council.
The pair watched the city-mountain float, and Sunbright mused, “Too bad we can’t get up there. Perhaps we could see the whole world, look down and see my people waving. Or at least shooting arrows at it.” He joked because memories of floating a mile high in the air in Castle Delia, and then Karsus Enclave, set his stomach churning. He’d never been comfortable in the air.
Knucklebones gazed wistfully on the city, for sometimes she found Sunbright’s “groundling” world too wide. She often longed for the cozy confines of the city, its varied buildings and parks and houses, the tangled caves and tunnels and warrens that honeycombed the former mountain.
As Sunbright’s jest penetrated, the woman mused, “That’s not such a foolish notion …”
“What?” Sunbright frowned. “Looking down from the city to see my tribe is impossible. And the guards would never let us board an airboat.”
“But you can see the world from up there,” Knucklebones insisted. “Not directly, but some ways, and getting up is no problem. Every door has a key. Trust a sewer rat.”
“No! No, I say!”
But it was too late, Sunbright saw the floating enclave reflected in Knucklebones’s one eye. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
Chapter 5
“I can’t get my head out!”
“Let me help.”
With small, strong hands, Knucklebones grabbed Sunbright’s chin and forelock, and jerked. The barbarian yelped as his ears scraped between stacks of grain bags.
“Aggh! Lady of Silver, I could have done that!” Gingerly he felt his ears, testing for blood. “Cheap bribe, bad ride,” she told him flatly. “Now hush up.”
“I can’t hear you. My ears are shredded. How do we get out of here?”
Knucklebones pointed to a tiny sunlit window high up in the deserted warehouse. “Scale the wall,” she said, “slip through, and hope there’s something soft to jump on outside.”
“Pandem’s Pain, what fun. Go ahead.”
Sniffing, Knucklebones led the way. She felt cocky and happy now that they’d made it onto a floating enclave. Home, for her. Asking in Quagmire, she’d found a tavern, then a boatmaster with a shipment of grain bound for Ioulaum. There were many shipments as the city stocked up for winter before drifting south. The tipsy boatmaster had agreed, after haggling over the “fare,” to pack them in a hollow behind sacks of rye. Sunbright had clamped down on his stomach as the airboat lifted into the night sky, drifted, tacked, dropped and lurched in capricious air pockets, and finally docked, a mile in the air, at the spidery airdocks of Ioulaum. After his boat was towed into a warehouse, the boatmaster wandered off—after finishing the requisite paperwork—leaving the boat temporarily “deserted.”
The thief scaled the wooden wall with fingers and toes, chuckling at how easy and familiar it felt, slid out the window, and circled to open a door so Sunbright could walk through. “Sissy!” she teased.
“Sewer rat!”
“Hush up! I smell guards.”
Then she was flitting down damp, dark alleys like a moth while Sunbright splashed and stamped and huffed to keep up. As she listened at a corner, he asked, “You’ve never been here before, correct? So how do you know your way around?”
“There are maps of all the enclaves in the libraries. When things got hot we studied them, trying to decide if moving was practical.”
“But where are we bound?”
“Thieves’ Quarter.”
“How do you know there is one?”
She laughed, low and melodious. For all the aggravation, Sunbright was glad to hear her happy. It had been a long time since she’d laughed. Regrettably, that was his fault. He’d have to make up for the grief he’d caused her. For now, he plodded along without complaining.
It was dodgy, though, to stay calm. He was a creature of the earth, a groundling, and being a mile in the air unnerved him. Too, he couldn’t banish the picture of Ioulaum shattering to fist-sized chunks from his mind’s eye. True, the island wouldn’t be destroyed for over three centuries, but still he felt it hung by a thread.
Through the warehouse district they tripped, avoiding city guards and night crews and dogs, sometimes skirting so close to the city’s edge that Sunbright felt the yawning gap kiss his quaking knees. But finally they turned inward where lights and roistering marked taverns and food shops where workers wended after hours. Knucklebones told Sunbright to sit tight while she scouted. The barbarian propped his rump in a niche, folded his arms, but left his ears awake, and napped.
Cat-quiet, Knucklebones faded through shadows, circling buildings, and hunting the darker spots. Her part-elven night vision was sharper than a human’s, and since mostly humans inhabited the enclaves, she had an advantage. Sure enough, she spied prime targets, two sailors drunk and lurching. They passed an alley perfect for ambush and, as she expected, were hooked into the shadows like dazed trout. Scanning for onlookers, Knucklebones skittered along a building front, down the side and around, to catch the assailants in the rear.
The thieves were good, she noted. They’d dumped the sailors in the alley, smacked them with sacks of wet sand just hard enough to stun them—killings roused the city guard—rifled their purses and boots in seconds, then charged down the alley, quick to flee before anyone sought missing comrades.
Knucklebones would have been plowed under if she hadn’t hissed from the dark, “Heads up, fasthands!”
“Eh? Split, Littledark.” The thieves, a husband-and-wife team, plastered themselves against the walls lest this was a trap and crossbow bolts came flying. They rattled Thieves’ Cant so fast Knucklebones could barely grasp it.
“Just hatched, turtles,” Knucklebones whispered. “Where pillow?”
The thieves exchanged the lowest murmur, then decided to entrust Knucklebones—whose cant was correct—with the location of a den, but warned her not to follow. “Toe to Elkan’s, hooks and hods, Blue Cobbles, west, two, one, two, Kibbe. Fog.”
“Misted.”
And like fog, Knucklebones faded away in the dark, stamping unnaturally loud so they heard her leave.
Sunbright jerked awake at her touch. “Whoa!” he grumbled. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Piffle. If I were noisy, I’d have died at two. Come, I kno
w where to go. Elkan’s, hooks and hods, Blue Cobbles, west, two, one, two, Kibbe.”
“Those are directions?”
“Elkan’s must be an ironmongery, selling pothooks and bricklayer’s hods, in the Street of Blue Cobbles on the west side. Knock twice, then once, then twice, and say Kibbe sent you.”
Sunbright scratched his sore ear and asked her, “How do we know we won’t drop through a hole in the earth? Or as a joke we’re sent to knock on the city guard’s barracks?”
“We don’t,” she said casually. “That’s what makes thieving so exciting.”
Sunbright straightened his tackle and followed her tiny, dark form through more alleys. They traveled light in summer, with Knucklebones in her laced leather vest and breeches and no shoes, her black elven blade at her waist, and only a thin blanket roll with her comb and such tucked inside. Sunbright wore a long yellow shirt and iron-bound boots of moosehide, his back scabbard holding Harvester and a longbow and four arrows beside, a blanket roll and canteen and haversack of rations. Ever since returning the dwarfs warhammer, he’d had no other weapon except a long knife on his wide belt.
He opined, “Spearing killer whales through the ice before they can burst through and eat you is exciting too.”
“Belt up, country mouse,” she whispered over her shoulder.
“Yes, milady.”
Flitting through dark streets, Knucklebones occasionally touched a wall, setting it aglow with her cold light cantra—everyone born to the empire knew some magic—to study how paint had faded on public buildings. From this information, she figured out which was the western side of the city.
Sunbright objected, “But if the city engineers rotate the island, how can there be a west side?”
“Silly. They rotate it at varying speeds. The Netherese consider it lucky to view the dawn, so nobles favor the eastern side to build their homes. So the western side is less prosperous, and houses are smaller. The paint fades at a different angle and rate. There are signs in a city, same as a forest.”
“I’d need another lifetime to learn them.”
“No need” she said. “You have me.” From the dark, she squeezed his craggy, calloused hand with her small, cool one.
Knucklebones found the ironmongery by the smell of rust, lampblack, and grease. Crouching along the foundation and sniffing, she whiffed sweat and wine and moist earth. “A deep cellar.”
Hunting found the entrance, a building away at the end of an alley. Sunbright had to crouch to negotiate a wet-walled passage that Knucklebones said was guarded; lined with murder holes with cocked crossbows behind. At the end she knocked twice, once, twice, and whispered, “Kibbe!”
A greased door yawned open, cool air hinted of wine. A doorman closed the portal, pointed to a turning, downward-sloping passage, twinkling with light. The fearless Knucklebones tripped on. Sunbright had to stoop because Harvester’s pommel scraped on stone overhead. He groused, “Why not take an hour and raise the ceilings?”
“If guards come raiding, they have to bend over. Slows them down.”
Or maybe all thieves were short, Sunbright supposed. Living in caves must stunt them. The big barbarian didn’t know what to expect, but was surprised to arrive at a table with a clerk behind it. Knucklebones had already warned him to keep mum, so he listened to a conversation of gibberish.
By candlelight, the clerk was old and gray, and his palsied hands shook. A retired thief employed by the guild. He nodded at Sunbright and said, “Purse?”
“Blood,” Knucklebones replied. “Fisted or palmed?”
“Palmed. Ferrets sent some flying home. Half up front, half after. Cutty?”
“Latch booster, mostly. Peeler with bigarm here.”
“Bones’re clean, but suit,” the old man said. “Clink.”
Knucklebones demanded of Sunbright, “Give me your purses. All of them.”
“I only have the one.”
“Shut up and give!”
Meekly he handed over his lean purse: Knucklebones usually carried their money anyway. The thief produced three purses from her leather vest and breeches, and dumped out a meager pile of coins. Methodically, the old clerk sorted them, weighed some on a small scale, bit others, then returned exactly half. Asking for names, Knucklebones gave “Butterfly and Ten Pound.”
The clerk jotted glyphs in a small book, and finished with, “Keep your stone honed.” Knucklebones nodded and circled the table, then spiraled down toward the torchlight.
“What is this hole?” asked Sunbright. “Why does it loop?”
“Don’t know. Enclaves are mostly hollow, to save weight so the mythallar doesn’t have to work so hard. When they build one, they drill all sorts of tunnels in odd shapes. Some have uses right away, like sewers or grain storage or water pipes. Others are for future expansion, or just a whim.”
“What did he call me back there? A purse?”
“A victim, someone with a purse to steal. I said you were a blood, a blood brother. I can’t pass you off as an assassin because you don’t move like one. I asked if the guild were fisted or palmed: closed to new members or open. It’s open because the ferrets have killed some folk lately. Am I a pursecutter? No, a burglar—a latch-breaker—mostly. And a scavenger looting warehouses with your muscle. The guild fee is half what you carry to join, then half what you make after. Keep your stone honed means keep your knife sharp for good luck. If your blade snags while you’re cutting purse strings, the pigeon might notice and object.”
Brain reeling, Sunbright thought of a dozen questions. Why a ferret, which was a brown weasel, for instance? “What happens if you don’t join the guild?” he asked.
“And go about thieving? The guild saws off your hands and feet. While you watch.”
“Hunh. Why give your name as Butterfly?”
“Would you have me give Knucklebones?”
“Why am I Ten Pound?”
“You carry a ten pound tool, don’t you?”
“No. Harvester weighs—oh. A joke.” Sunbright huffed as they clumped down and around the spiral ramp. “Why all this obscure cant? Why not just talk?”
“Cant is quicker in an emergency. And it confuses guards if you’re in their clutches.”
“Are thieves captured often?”
“And robbed by the guards, yes. Usually they’re forced into labor gangs on the ground. Unless you hurt or kill a guard. Then they fly you home.”
“Home where?”
“Earthmother. They pitch you off the island to ‘fly’ to earth.”
Sunbright’s stomach lurched. “But why does the city tolerate thieves at all?” he asked. “Why not make one big purge and wipe them out?”
A shrug of narrow shoulders, and Knucklebones said, “Catching thieves gives the guards work. What would you have them do, arrest mages? Besides, many rogues are only part-time. Otherwise they toil at the docks, or black boots, or dig graves. Which lets them pilfer leather, cut purses, and loot the dead. Besides, when I pay half my ‘winnings’ to the guild, the guild pays half to the authorities.”
“What?” Noise from below had increased, so Sunbright no longer whispered, “You mean the city takes bribes from the thieves’ guild?”
“You’re learning, country mouse, but they’re not bribes. They’re taxes, gifts. It costs to be a citizen.”
Sunbright sighed. “None of this makes sense.”
“Neither does spearing killer whales through the ice.”
“Hunh? That’s easy.”
“Uh, hunh.”
The spiraling ramp finally ended, and Sunbright was amazed by a virtual village at the bottom. In a catacomb bored from stone ran tunnels and passageways and balconies filled with smoky taverns, shops, a smith, a washroom with hot and cold water, niches with beds, and a common room where three dozen roisterers cheered a wrestling match among two women and a man. The air reeked of sweat and ale and smoke and ham and soap and drain water, and rang to the sound of hammers, laughter, jokes, creaking bellows, laundry s
lapping, and children splashing one another.
“Are these all thieves?” asked the tundra man.
“Oh, no.” Knucklebones grinned, her usual aplomb giving way to joy at finally being home. “Those with the gloves in their belts are stevedores. The aprons mark housekeepers. And those blokes in the tight pants are prostitutes. And see there? Rich snots seeking thrills—you met some like them in Karsus. Isn’t it grand?”
“It’s not very secret.”
“Don’t fret. Hungry?”
Knucklebones laughed to see Sunbright salivate. She handed him coins and told him, “Order something at the bar while I check bolt holes.” She faded away, leaving Sunbright as awkward and out of place as a polar bear amidst these ribald strangers. He bought bowls of mutton stew, mugs of frothy harvest ale, and black bread at the bar, found a not-so grimy table, and plunked down. He’d eaten all his before Knucklebones returned.
“Found the exits,” she said. “There are seven, but five one-way only. That’s good.”
Sunbright watched her eat hungrily, so she gave him more coins for a refill. The wrestling done, a man with a lute sang a long, sad romance. Finally the warrior patted his belly and said, “What next?”
“Already done. A mage named Bly can scry what we need. She lives in the Street of the Faithful Protector on the east side. What does that tell us?”
Sunbright thought. “If she lives on the east side,” he said, “she must be prosperous? Good at her work?”
“Excellent!” Knucklebones said, licking gravy from her lip. Her one green eye shone with happiness at being home. “But she’ll be expensive. We’ll need money, or else must strike a bargain. I don’t know what to offer, but mages are always arse-deep in intrigue, so—”
“RAID!”
Knucklebones didn’t even look around. Grabbing Sunbright’s wrist, she hurled the table aside and yanked him out of the chair. He stumbled to one knee. She shrilled, “Come on, sluefoot!”
Men and women hollered, shouts rebounded and echoed from stone walls. Children scurried underfoot like rats and dived through doorways and down chutes and up ladders. In the tavern, bartenders doused torches in dishwater. In darkness, the cat-eyed thief slid past panicked people, upset furniture, and spilled flagons and plates. Towed by one hand, Sunbright banged every item with knees, shins, and toes.
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