by Paul Kidd
Escalla pulled on her leathers as quickly as she could.
“You mean the thieves are coming to this room? Why? Isn’t our boy staying inthe suite next door?”
“I hung a sign from our door saying, ‘Tinkby’s TavernCongratulates Our Big Winner’.”
“Humorous, yet pointed. That ought to do it.” The faeriecracked her knuckles and rose up out of a perfectly good, warm bed. “So what dowe do?”
“I’ve seen you do lightning bolts, and I’ve seen you throwfireballs. Do you do any immobilizing spells?”
The girl rubbed at her eyes as she collected her thoughts.
“Well I can charm, I can freeze ’em in place-oldie but agoodie. Oh, and I’ve got a web-spell-thingie! Will that work?”
“It’s fine.” The Justicar clipped Cinders into place abouthis neck, the hell hound’s eyes shining a faint, sinister red. “Just sit abovethe doorjamb, slip behind them, and stop them from making an escape.”
The room descended into silence. After a moment, Escalla’swhisper drifted down from above the door.
“Hey, Jus!”
“What?”
“Why are we doing this?”
From his place behind the door, her partner gave a growl. “Because thieves know a lot about illegal doings. I want to catch some thievesand ask some questions.”
“Right. Now that’s a plan.”
They sat in silence, their own breathing echoing strangely loud until suddenly the tiniest of scrapes sounded in the door’s iron lock. Welloiled and cared for, it gave only the barest click as the lock was picked open from the outside. A thin strip of birchwood appeared, wiggling softly through the crack of the door. The birch strip lifted up the door latch with the barest little metallic click. The ring-shaped handle carefully turned, and the door slowly swung wide.
Two dark shapes crept into the room. A sense of presence made it feel that there was perhaps another visitor standing silently on the balcony beyond.
The two shapes stalked silently into the bedroom, moving to flank the bed. A knife gleamed in the dark as the intruders approached. Moving with careful precision, the Justicar swept down his sword and prodded the blade against an intruder’s lower spine.
“Freeze!”
A brilliant flash instantly lit the room as the thief triggered a spell. Blinded, the Justicar staggered and felt a blast of heat crack out from the hell hound’s maw.
“Cinders! Damn it!”
Someone screamed in pain, and another figure raced past the Justicar toward the door. The whole rear end of the room was in flames with a thief dead and burning in the middle of the floor. The hell hound’s manic gringlowed in the firelight as his red eyes shone with glee.
Burn! Burn! Die-die-die!
“For the gods’ sake!” The Justicar’s vision was a mad blur ofdancing lights. He rescued his backpack and ran out onto the gallery above the tavern’s common room. “Escalla!”
“I’ve got ’em!” Dazed, the girl had fallen against a railingand was blindly blinking her eyes. “I got ’em! I got ’em!”
The pixie called out a sharp syllable, and a mass of rope-thick spiderwebs shot from her hands. Still dazed by the flash, she managed to target the wrong figures. Half the sleepers in the common room were suddenly tangled in the sticky nets, while two black-clad shapes safely dived for the drain at the center of the room.
The Justicar snatched Escalla up by the scruff of her bodice as he pounded heavily past. A one-handed cut of his sword cleared a path through the magical webs, and he leaned over the big square drain. The metal grating had been levered aside, and the resulting hole was more than large enough for a man to clamber through.
“Cinders, do it!”
The hell hound blasted flames down the open drain, and a screech of pain revealed that the thieves had been waiting in ambush for their pursuers. The Justicar immediately jumped down through the hole, his sword and backpack trailing behind him. He landed in a wet tunnel still lit by sizzling fires.
“Cinders?”
Two men running-this way!
The hell hound could hear them, smell them, even see their heat. The Justicar threw a spell, surrounding himself with clean, white, magic light and then jogged down the sewer tunnels in pursuit.
A thoroughly annoyed Escalla passed overhead. Snarling, the faerie sped down the tunnel and threw a charm at a retreating shape, only to see the magic ricochet from her target and spatter uselessly across the walls. She braked madly to take a sudden ninety-degree turn and caught sight of her quarry silhouetted in the tunnel a dozen yards ahead.
One dark figure whirled, lifted a hand surrounded by a crackle of light, and shot a blast of lightning straight at the pixie’s eyes.Already lunging back around the corner, Escalla gave a squawk of fright as the lightning bolt missed her by a wing’s breadth, struck the tunnel wall, andbounded back the exact way it had come. The whole sewer lit up with a brilliant blue flash, stones crashing from the walls and ceiling as wet mortar blew apart in a flash of superheated steam.
Still moving at a lumbering run, the Justicar passed Escalla and charged around the corner before the tunnel could cave in. The faerie followed dizzily in his wake, ploughing through a haze of dust to see the human looming like a demon above two blackened, fallen men. He whipped his sword back for a killing thrust, the black blade gleaming and sulphur steam hissing from the hell hounds head cresting his helm.
One of the two men was already quite dead, but the other screamed in terror and tried to cram himself away from the quivering blade.
“No! No! No!” The injured thief tried to hide himself behindhis arms. “Don’t take my soul!”
Backlit by his light spell, the vast, sinister shape of the Justicar loomed above his victims like a shadow of doom.
“Thieves…” He let the word drip like bile from hismouth. “Unworthy souls.”
“Not the blade! Not the blade!” Scorched and blastedby the ricocheting spell, the thief shrank backward over the smoking body of his companion, shrieking with mindless fright. “We can betray the last of the guildto you! We’ll turn! We’ll follow the White Lady!” The thief reversed into a pileof stones, gibbering in terror as the black blade hovered an inch from his throat. “All the guilds will be yours!”
Letting his voice growl in threat, the Justicar took his best possible chance to wrench information from the thief. “I want theblack-and-white-faced man.”
The thief quailed and tried to press his shoulder back through the fallen stones.
“I… There is no such man!”
“The black-and-white-faced man.” The Justicar moved his swordfractionally backward, his muscles bunching as though about to drive his sword into his prey. “Where is he?”
Suddenly the thief ripped a short sword from his belt. With a screech of fear, he turned, rammed the blade over his own heart, and leaped upon it Recoiling away from the expected attack, the Justicar could only stare at the dead thief in a daze.
There was a long, pained silence as faerie and human both gazed blankly down at the corpse. Finally, the Justicar’s sword tip clinked asit sank and struck the floor. The noise echoing down the tunnel made the two companions stir.
The Justicar kept his eyes riveted on the body and slowly shook his head. “What the hell was that about?”
Appalled, Escalla kept herself well away from the cadaver.
“That guy was terrified. He killed himself to save his soul.”The faerie blinked, then looked at the Justicar’s black sword. “Is thereanything about that sword we both should know?”
“It’s enchanted enough to be damned useful, and I keep itvery, very sharp.” The Justicar lifted one hand and his illuminationspell shone more brightly. “It sounds like a soul-eating sword is being used inTrigol. I am not pleased.”
“And by the competing thieves’ guild from the sound of it.”Escalla wiped her hands, and showed not the slightest inclination to search the corpses for loose change. “That makes for a guild war with a difference.�
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A soul-eater. In all the catalog of foul deeds, there were few things the Justicar could measure as more cowardly. It sucked out the very essence of a victim’s soul-a vampire that existed only by sending othercreatures to oblivion. It was lethal, and it was loose inside Trigol’sunderworld.
Shaking his head, the Justicar bent over the corpses. He helped Cinders lower his nose and sniff for magic, then pulled a golden ring free from a dead man’s hand.
“Here you go. Magic ring.” The Justicar tossed it to thefaerie. “Resistance against charm spells, I imagine. That’s why your spellmisfired.”
Escalla blinked, a little taken aback by the man’sgenerosity. She slipped the ring over her finger and saw it flash and mold itself to her size.
“Resist charm!” It was a rather useful tool. “Don’t you wantone?”
“Already got one.” The Justicar pulled off one of his glovesto show a plain bone ring upon one finger. “Had it all along.”
Escalla stared at the ring, looked at the man, and felt herself fluffing up in indignation.
“On the barge! You lying twonk! You never saw faerie dust inyour damned life!”
“Nope.” The human prodded his companion on the rump. “Damnedstupid story. Don’t know why you fell for it.”
The sewer tunnel leading back to the tavern had largely collapsed-and no bad thing considering the repair bill they probably owed forthe scorched room. The Justicar levered a few stones out of his way and squinted down the tunnel that lead off to who-knew-where.
“That thief was terrified. He wouldn’t have lied in the faceof that sword.”
Escalla raised one brow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that whoever your two-toned man is, the thieves hadnever heard of him.” The ranger slowly sheathed his blade. “So it’s not him thatowns the soul-eating sword. But if he wants power, then he’s going to want tocontrol it.”
The faerie could hardly conceal her delight at being expected to chase a soul-eating sword.
“Ooh, I can just feel those gears turning inside your big,misshapen skull. You want to locate a soul-eating sword then hang around in hiding until our guy comes to steal it.” Escalla gazed drolly over at theJusticar. “Let us just come to terms with the fact that this is not a workableplan.”
“It’s a lead.”
“Get out of the sewer, Jus, or I’ll bite you.”
Her wings whirring, the faerie led the way off down the sewer toward a manhole far beyond. Growling in annoyance, the Justicar took a last glance at the dead thieves and then followed his companion up into the dawn.
She awaited the dawn upon the dockside roofs, her white wingsfolded to cloak her in their warmth. Tall and magnificent, Saala the erinyes let the wind stir through her long auburn hair and let her mind drift upon the pleasures of the day.
Slowly and steadily, like a wasp larva gnawing on its host, the erinyes had made herself a home. The Black Claw Thieves’ Guild was nowutterly beneath her domination, and with the sword Blackrazor, they had liquidated all resistance in Trigol’s underworld. With the underworld held inher grasp, Saala could begin to make the city entirely her own. She looked out across the rooftops as they were lit by a golden dawn and gave a quiet, predatory smile.
Trigol held two treasures, two keys that could be used to unlock a civil war. Here in the early morning by the river, the erinyes planned to seize those keys and let the violence flow.
Beside her, a dozen of the Black Claw thieves lay watching in the shadows. The guild leader had been placed utterly under Saala’s magicaldomination. It took concentration, but the thief now acted as Saala’s puppet,behaving only as his mistress saw fit.
He made an admirable tool. Fast and skilled, he was capable of wielding Blackrazor, which the erinyes was not. Made by an enemy race, the sword would burn her if she held it, but the guildmaster was the perfect species and temperament to use the weapon. Without glancing at the man, the erinyes stood and opened her pure white wings.
“You will remain here for one hour, until I have created adiversion. Let the riot draw the guards away. When their magic weapons are taken from their vaults, slip inside. No one will guard an empty vault.” Saala waspleased with the elegant simplicity of her plan. “We shall steal their treasuresfrom the inside out. When the weapons are returned to the vaults, take them and run.”
Senior thieves gathered at her side. Saala laid down a map for the leaders of her two groups and pointed to the maze of sewer openings and tunnels that laced their way beneath Trigol’s streets.
“First group, enter the temple of the river god Geshtai. Yourescape gate is beneath the water, ten feet from the docks. It is marked by the red and yellow buoy. Swim upward into sewer branch nine.” The woman’s hands wereperfect-long, slim, and flawless as she pointed to her maps.
“Second group, slip into the temple of the craft god Bleredd.Your escape is behind the chimney of the bakeries, a secret entrance leading to sewer line twenty-one.”
She rolled away the map and handed it to her attendant, the guildmaster. At the man’s side, Blackrazor gibbered in its scabbard as ithungered for fresh souls.
“This vantage point overlooks both escape routes. Blackrazorremains here to cover your escapes. We will meet back at the guild hall.” Theerinyes flicked a look of cold, professional evaluation across the faces of the two dozen assembled thieves.
The men had all dressed as priests of the two temples down below. Those who were to raid the Geshtai temple were dressed as the rival priests of Bleredd. Those who raided Bleredd were likewise dressed as priests of Geshtai.
“You will not loot bodies. You will not touch any othertreasures. Each temple has a single item on which they place great value: their gods’ weapons. Geshtai’s priesthood has a magic trident named Wave. Bleredd hasa magic hammer called Whelm. Do not touch the metal. Do not attempt to wield the weapons. Steal them, leave behind a holy symbol of the opposing temple, and get out. Leave none of your own party behind, dead or alive.”
The trick was a sure way to start a most promising little war.
Over the past few years, the two temples had grown at a fantastic rate under the patronage of wealthy refugees. Their private armies, their unruly worshipers, and their arrogance had kept Trigol shaking with street brawls and occasional murders for the best part of a year.
With their precious relics stolen, the two temples would begin an outright civil war. The thieves guilds could stir the pot, and Saala would reap the rewards of a city in chaos. Blackrazor would let them tip the balance and become makers of kings. Saala would pull the strings of a new puppet, and the city would be hers.
All in all, it promised to be a beautiful day.
8
For Escalla, Cinders, and the Justicar, the morning hadmellowed into the beginnings of a lovely golden day. The sorcerers’ supply shopshad yielded no information, so the investigation hovered at a dead end. Making the best of their circumstances, they made their way down to the riverside markets and organized some breakfast. Sprawled out in a warm beam of sun, Cinders sucked upon a coal and made satisfied little noises. With fried fish wrapped in warm bread, Jus and Escalla sat in a quiet niche beside a jetty. Fully visible, Escalla lounged against the Justicar and enjoyed the morning sun.
“Did you find any clues at that supply shop?”
“No. They say they have a professional code. They won’t passon information about their customers.” The ranger watched a river skiff driftingslowly down the stream. “If worse comes to worst, we can hide you inside a shopto watch for the guy.”
“Wizards have a habit of seeing through my invisibility.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Jus scratched his stubbled head and laidhis worries aside. Breakfast was good, and the sun was warm. To Escalla’s eyes,he actually looked relaxed.
Cinders-now recovered from the trauma of his bath the nightbefore-soaked up the sun. He happily flopped his tail from side to side as Jusbrushed his pelt to a shine. Escalla watched the Justicar as he p
etted Cinders’grinning skull. The sight seemed so ludicrously homey that she smiled.
Escalla stretched and looked up at the Justicar. “So, Jus,where did Cinders come from, anyway?”
“Found him during the war.” Big and mellow, Jus proffered atub of garlic sauce to the faerie girl. “Got him off a paladin.”
“A paladin?” Escalla stood and leaned upon theJusticar’s shoulder. “Aren’t they usually good guys?”
“This one thought that tanning a hell hound and keeping himas a tormentable trophy was a good joke.” Jus warmly scratched Cindersunderneath the jaw. “He thought wrong.”
Escalla blinked. “So what happened?”
“I killed him.”
The faerie raised her brows in surprise. “You killed apaladin?”
The Justicar quietly stroked his hell hound’s ear. “I don’tcare if they claim to be good or evil. You pick on something helpless, and one day you might just have to explain yourself to me.”
With a little laugh, the faerie looked fondly at her companion. “Oh, man, you are 50 harsh!”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The morning sun was warm, and the river proved to be a remarkably relaxing view. Escalla lay flat on her back upon Cinders’ fur,spread her wings, and watched the clouds drift past in a bright blue sky.
“Oooh, I’m comatose. Gimme a jug of wine and just bury mehere!”
“Too much work to do.” Jus drew a few inches of his swordfrom its sheath, contemplated honing the already razor-sharp blade, then decided to leave it until evening. “You seem too clever to be a thief. Tell me, whatmade you take up crime?”
Escalla gave a sigh. She watched the clouds and quite suddenly looked a little sad. “I was living in the bilges of a big, leaky barge.I sold three really dumb bits of information to some guy I scarcely knew and blew my amassed fortune on wine, faerie cakes, and tangerines.”
“Why were you living on the barge?”