Den of Thieves

by David Chandler

  Exiting his erstwhile lair, he crawled out on one of the supports of the bridge and then clambered up and over its rail. A drover with a load of dressed stone bound for the palace gazed at him askance, but Malden had never yet been hurt by a nasty look. He fell in with the crowd of people heading down into the Golden Slope—servants and tradesmen and carters of sweetmeats and fuel, honest men up early to get to their work and earn another day’s wage.

  Malden did not sneer at them, for he pitied them some. They would slave and toil for decades until their backs gave out and their beards grew long, and it would profit them little. They would die as they had lived, beholden to masters who cared not a jot for their welfare. Whereas he himself, who had been spurned by their society as not good enough—well, he had only to drop off his earned fortune, to pour it out dramatically across Cutbill’s desk—and then, and then!

  And then he would be a full member of the guild. He would be a thief in good standing, with protection from arrest and a dwarf to make his tools for him. He would be, in certain circles, a gentleman of stature. He could begin to make money, real money, for himself. He would buy a fine new cloak, he thought, and rent better rooms. He would drink good wine from now on, instead of weak ale, and eat meat at least one meal a day. His standard of living—and concomitantly, his life expectancy—would improve by great measure, and all manner of things would improve.

  And best of all—most important of all—he would be truly free. A man with money could not be made a slave. He could travel where he liked and count himself safe. He could escape the tawdry past and make his own fortune. His own future.

  What a fine and clever fellow am I. What a wise and cunning scoundrel. My mother would be proud indeed.

  Such feelings put a bounce in his step and he made good time as he wended his way downhill, through the Smoke and the Stink, down to the Ashes. In the charred embers down by Westwall he even began to whistle a jaunty tune.

  He saw no sign of the urchin army that guarded Cutbill’s hiding hole. All to the good—they must recognize him now, he considered, and kept back out of respect. As well they should! Journeyman thief! Man of station!

  He came around the corner of the ruined inn and merrily hailed the three old veteran thieves where they sat on their coffin . . . except they weren’t there.

  Odd.

  Lockjaw, ’Levenfingers, and Loophole never budged from that spot, in his experience. Still, he supposed they must sleep sometime. And it was, by the standards of the larcenous crew, still very early. The sun wasn’t even over Castle Hill as yet. Malden shrugged and found the trapdoor that led down into Cutbill’s headquarters.

  “Bellard? Anyone? It’s Malden, and I’m coming down,” he said in a forced whisper. He knew from previous visits the strange acoustics of the stairwell leading down, which widened as it descended and thus amplified all sounds that issued from its top. Malden thought it wise to announce his entry into that place, if the old trio could not do it for him.

  Yet at the bottom no one waited for him, nor was he challenged by any sentry. The common room was, in fact, empty. Slag had deserted his workbench. No whores were sleeping it off on the divan, and for the very first time no gamblers were throwing dice upon the wall.

  It took a moment for Malden to notice what else was different. First off he saw this: the divan was shoved out of its place, its legs having scuffed the stone floor. A booted foot stuck out from behind it. As Malden approached, with dread in his heart, he saw that it was Bellard back there. And Bellard was not down for drink, or white snuff, or even just a late night.

  Blood frothed on the bravo’s lips. His eyes stared at nothing at all.

  “Bellard,” Malden said, bending over the body. “Bellard, who did this?” He saw that Bellard was clutching at his stomach, and lifted the dead man’s hand away. The wound beneath was a deep gouge that pierced his vitals. Clotted blood lay thick around the injury. It looked like someone had taken an axe to Bellard’s middle.

  Malden heard something—a door being drawn back, perhaps. A foot scraping on stone. He whirled about and saw, secondly, this: the ancient and historied lock that had always warded Cutbill’s door was broken in pieces and lay scattered on the floor. And Cutbill’s impregnable door stood slightly ajar.

  Malden tried to run. He did not get far. The door slammed open and men with halberds wearing cloaks-of-eyes came boiling out. “Seize him,” someone said, “whoever he is.” And then a dozen hands were on him and they dragged him inside, into what had been Cutbill’s private sanctum.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The rough hands that dragged Malden inside the door threw him down to land on hands and knees. The butt of a halberd struck him in the back, and someone put a boot on his neck and pushed him down to the floor. His bodkin was wrenched from its sheath and his purse dragged out of his belt. A man of the watch found the sack of gold at his back and tore at it until it burst open and coins bounced and rolled across the rushes that strewed the floor.

  “Lady’s kneecaps, there’s a treasure,” someone swore. Malden could see little from where he lay save for boots and the bottom of Cutbill’s desk. He could hear the voices of half a dozen men, however, and knew he was hopelessly outnumbered.

  “Stolen, do you think?”

  “Of course—where are we, but the citadel of crime?”

  “Ought to seize it for the city coffers.”

  “Make an accounting of it, so we can split it later and—”

  “Count it. All of it. And then place it here.” When this last voice spoke, the watchmen around Malden all came to attention. “Let him up, so I may speak with him,” the voice said. The boot on Malden’s neck moved away and he scrambled backward to get to his feet. Finally he was able to see what was happening in the office.

  The watch lined the walls of the room, the points of their halberds almost scraping the ceiling. In the center of the room Cutbill sat at his ledger, quill pen in his hand—just as Malden remembered him from their last meeting.

  Standing next to him was Anselm Vry.

  Malden recognized the bailiff of the Free City, as would any citizen of Ness. After the Burgrave, Vry was the human face of the city. As bailiff he not only led the watch but also saw to every administrative detail of city life—enforcing the Burgrave’s edicts, seeing that weights and measures were kept scrupulously exact, overseeing the moots of the trade guilds. He was the second most powerful man in the city, and if he were here personally, it could mean only one thing. He knew the crown had been stolen, and he wanted to find it at any cost.

  Malden had already seen the price that Bellard had paid.

  “Is he one of yours?” Vry asked, staring at Malden.

  The question was directed, however, at Cutbill. “One of my thieves? No, of course not,” Cutbill answered. He made a notation in his ledger. “Look at the state of his clothing. My fellows can afford to dress themselves.”

  “And this money? This gold?” Vry demanded.

  Cutbill did look up then. He glanced at the stacks of gold coins a watchman was placing on his desk. Then he turned his gaze on Malden and lifted one eyebrow. He was sending Malden a message, which was this: be circumspect and do not gainsay me. Malden was wise enough not to acknowledge that he had received the instructions.

  Cutbill gestured dismissively with his pen. “The money is mine, yes. This boy is merely here to deliver it. Perhaps before we say anything else, he should be sent on his way.”

  Vry studied Malden with concentrated disdain. “Very well. Give him his knife back—he’s no danger to anyone with that pig-cutter.”

  “Boy,” Cutbill said, “if you leave by the door to my left, you’ll find yourself well on your way back to the Stink.”

  Malden nodded and accepted his bodkin from the watchman holding it. He did not ask why Cutbill was sending him out through the door on the left, when it was the door directly behind Cutbill’s desk that led back to the surface. He pushed back the tapestry that hid the specified d
oor and stepped through. Beyond was a tiny room with no other exits—a closet, really, empty of furnishings or ornament.

  It did have one defining feature, however. Just to one side of the door, at the height of a man’s eyes, a very small hole had been drilled through the wall. Someone looking through that hole could see—and hear—anything that happened in Cutbill’s office.

  So this was a spy chamber. If Cutbill had sent him here, it was with good reason. Malden placed his eye against the hole and made himself silent.

  Back in the office, the bailiff and the guildmaster of thieves were already in close consultation.

  “If it was one of your thieves who stole the crown,” the bailiff said, “I will hang every one of your crew. You I’ll have drawn and dismembered, and your remains scattered across the kingdom. I’ll have this place torn down, and your organization—”

  “It was not one of mine. Of that I can assure you. Not one of my thieves would think the prize worth the effort. After all, how could they sell the crown once they had it? No fence in the Free City would accept it, much less pay for it. That means its value for us is nil. You must look elsewhere, milord Vry.”

  “Perhaps someone else commissioned the theft. Someone who would stand to gain by embarrassing the city.”

  “But why would one of my thieves take on such a job? Surely they would know how much trouble it would cause for my operation. I do not recruit dullards or fools.”

  In the closet, Malden winced.

  “Enough of this nonsense,” Vry fumed. “I can hardly trust you to speak the truth. You’ll say anything to save your neck, won’t you, Cutbill?”

  “I’ve spoken plainly with you, and told all the truth I know.”

  “Luckily I need not take you at your word.” Vry snapped his fingers and one of his watchmen hurried out of the room. He came back a moment later, leading a robed figure with a heavy wooden mask covering his face.

  Malden gasped. Luckily no one heard him.

  “A wizard, Vry? You’ll put me to the question by magery? Surely not,” Cutbill said as the magician was led over toward his lectern. “You’d never break one of your own precious laws.”

  Vry shrugged. “It’s true. No man may be condemned in the law courts by sortilege or divination. Yet this is no law court. As for the point of ethics involved, well . . . needs must when the Bloodgod drives.”

  Cutbill pursed his lips and put down his quill. “Very well. And how should it be done, hmm?”

  The magician brought something out from the folds of his robes. A slab of stone about the size and thickness of a book. One side of it had been ground and polished as smooth as glass. “It is a shewstone,” its owner said in a burbling, unnatural voice. “It sees what is hidden, what is placed out of sight. I must unveil to use it properly.”

  The watchmen stirred uneasily at the thought. Neither Cutbill nor Vry reacted at all. “Do it,” Vry said.

  The magician reached up and pushed his mask up on top of his head.

  Malden’s cry of horror was swallowed up in the general chorus.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Wizardry was not technically illegal in Skrae. It was not very widely practiced either. It could be highly lucrative. There were stringent laws about summoning demons, and the penalty for doing so was inalterable, swiftly meted out, and one hundred percent fatal. Yet other kinds of magic—divination, the infliction and relief of curses, the brewing of love potions and the like—were permitted, and there were plenty of customers for such a trade. The wealthy people of Ness were always looking for an edge, a way to maintain their station, and they would hardly turn their noses up at even the most disreputable worker of miracles. There were easily a thousand men at work in Ness that day who claimed to do magic, and of that number perhaps two or three dozen who could actually match their claims with results. They were all well compensated for the time they spent learning their art.

  Yet they were never so numerous as to form a guild. For every child in the Free City learned one fact about thaumaturgy while still very young, and it was enough to keep most of them from pursuing the occult arts. It was this: magic always has a price.

  Magicians drew their power from the pit and its infernal inhabitants. By making pacts with demons, they were able to work wonders and marvels beyond human reckoning. Yet in doing so they were exposed to the otherworldly energies of that place of torment, and it changed them.

  Vry’s diviner must have spent countless hours peering into his shewstone, looking for secrets. Whatever he found could not be worth what he’d paid for the knowledge. The skin of the left side of his face had thickened and callused until it resembled the bark of an oak, but it was as white as death. Even the bones of his skull must have changed, for his left eye had migrated downward until it stared, lidless, from where his cheekbone should have been. At his chin and along the left side of his neck, tendrils of pink flesh hung down like a ghastly beard. He could not close his mouth on that side—which explained his strange voice—and the teeth behind his altered lips were visible: they had become fused together in a pair of bony plates that didn’t quite meet.

  Had he been born like that, the magician would have been doomed to become a beggar, or perhaps a freak in a traveling fair. It was clear from the untouched right side of his face, however, that he had only come to this favor late in life. It must have happened gradually, over time. Malden wondered—when the man saw the first signs of what was to come, why had he not shattered his stone and given up magic altogether?

  Perhaps for some the appeal of secrets was too great. The draw of the mysterious and strange. For some, perhaps, the price was not too steep.

  When the watchmen stopped murmuring to one another and most had regained the color in their own faces, the magician looked to Vry with his good right eye. “Tell me what you wish to see. It will be revealed.”

  Cutbill left his pen lying on his lectern. Even he could not look away.

  Anselm Vry turned aside. “Look again, as you did this morning, and see if you can find the crown. It may be in this very room—perhaps if you are closer to it you can see it better.”

  The magician nodded and bent over his stone. From the spy hole, Malden had a good view of its polished surface, but he saw no change there. Yet the very air of the office seemed to change, to grow thick as heavy fog. There was a whispering of invisible voices in the room and the flames of the oil lamps were stifled as by bad air.

  The magician passed his hand over the stone a number of times, never quite touching the polished face, as if he were exhorting it to better seeing. Eventually, though, he shook his head and gave off. “All is as before. It exists, still, but its location is forbidden me. It is like trying to look for a coin at the bottom of a muddy lake. Occasionally a glimmer is perceived, but it wavers and is gone before I can grasp the image. Perhaps if I try again later in the day, when the etheric currents are less brisk and the stars take different stations in their wheels . . .”

  Vry grunted in frustration. “Never mind. Do something useful this time, and look into that man’s heart,” he said, jabbing one finger toward Cutbill. “Find the lies he has recently spoken, and find the truth behind them.”

  Cutbill’s lips compressed into a tight frown, but he did nothing to stop this.

  The magician bent over the stone again. He made one quick pass with his hand, then closed his eyes and began to chant. He spoke no words but only moved his lips as alien and ugly sounds came bubbling up from his throat. Then his eyes snapped open and he looked to Vry.

  “No lies,” he said.

  Vry thundered at the man, “What? He has never told a truth in his misbegotten life! Look again!”

  “There is no need,” the magician said. “I tell you, I saw his heart. He has been completely honest with you. He knows not where the crown is, or who might have it.”

  “Such a waste, to bend your principles for nothing,” Cutbill said. “You should have listened to me, Vry. I have no reason to lie to you, an
d nothing to gain from doing so.”

  The magician passed his hand across his stone again. One of the oil lamps guttered out and left the room partly in shadow. “This also is the truth,” the magician burbled.

  Vry grabbed the stone out of the magician’s hands and stared into it himself. “I see nothing here! This man’s testimony is meaningless.” He threw the stone back at the magician, who caught it as he might a falling baby.

  “I say only what I see,” the magician insisted. “Not what you want me to see.”

  “Useless! Get out of here. Go back to the palace and read the Burgravine’s fortune for her. That’s the only reason I let you live, you mountebank.”

  The magician hurried out of the room without further protest. One watchman went with him as an escort. Once he was gone the lights came back up and the air began to flow in the room once more.

  “There,” Cutbill said. “As you see—I am wholly innocent.”

  Chapter Forty

  “I’m half of a mind to string you up anyway, just on principle. It might not get the crown back but it would make the city a better place.”

  Cutbill sighed and turned to the next page of his ledger. “That would be a foolish thing to do. I have long held a special arrangement with—”

  “With the Burgrave. Not with me!”

  “With the Burgrave,” Cutbill agreed. “Who always saw me as a necessary evil. I am allowed to operate for the most part unmolested. In exchange I keep a tight rein on the crime in this city. The wealthier citizens are under my protection and the better districts safe at night. If you remove me and my influence, you’ll have a hundred fat merchants to answer to.”