King Pinch n-1

by David Cook

  "I can make that by farcing your suite."

  "I can give you over to the Dawn Priests."

  It was the rogue's turn to scowl.

  "Seventy."

  "Thirty"

  "Sixty."

  "Forty."

  "Fifty even, then."

  Cleedis's smile was that of a diplomat who hears the other side propose his terms for him. "Fifty it will be- but only when the job's done."

  "Transportable, but not script," Pinch added. He didn't want to be hampered by a wagonload of coins, and he didn't trust any note of credit the chamberlain might draw up. It wasn't one hundred thousand, but it was a fair take for a single job. Of course, he doubted Cleedis had any intention of paying it. Pinch would just have to convince him otherwise.

  The chamberlain cast a glance to the westering sun. Already shadows filled the alleys between the crypts. "Time to march on," the chamberlain ordered as if the rogue were a squadron of knights. He assumed the order was being followed and hurried ahead with renewed vigor.

  The musical fountain was closer to the necropolis gate than Pinch remembered, since it took them only a few more twists and turns before they saw the cones of the clerical watchtowers over the rooftops. Shortly after, the small gatehouse came into view. The priests huddled at the iron grill, any arrival providing something to break their boredom. The chamberlain's bodyguard and their horses were not in sight, presumably warmly waiting at a neighborhood tavern. A few beggars were clustered outside the gate, probably drawing their trade from the masons and hired mourners who worked inside the dead city's walls.

  Pinch cast a look behind, entertaining the thought that he might spot Cleedis's accomplice, the voice of Manferic, scurrying along behind. As far as he knew, this was the only exit.

  "Ho there! Stand aside Lord Cleedis! Our argument is not with you."

  Pinch spun around and came face-to-face with three swordsmen stepping from the shadows. He recognized them from this morning: Throdus's three clowns. Now each stood poised with a naked rapier, and they didn't look so clownlike.

  "Knights of Ankhapur," Cleedis blustered, "stand aside yourselves. I order you as regent of all the realm!" The aged warrior-lord tremblingly swept his cane as if it would clear his path.

  The flaxen-haired leader of the three, the one Pinch remembered as Treeve, batted the cane aside with a quick swipe of his sword. "Prince Throdus is our lord, not you. We will not fight you, old man, but do not prevent us from ridding the city of this cancer."

  "I'll hang you for this!"

  "We're protected by Prince Throdus. You'll do no such thing."

  The regent sputtered. "Mutiny! If you were in my command, I'd have you all flayed!"

  "Kurkulatain, keep him out of the way."

  The slightest of the three grinned and flicked his sword tip under the chamberlain's chin, only to have the old man bat it away. The swordsman's smile went cross as he tried to find a way to subdue the irascible lord.

  Keep them preoccupied, Cleedis, Pinch silently urged. He already had one hand on his sword and just needed a moment of diversion to act. So far, Cleedis held them in indecision, but they were still too watchful for the rogue to strike.

  "GUARDS!" Cleedis bellowed!

  The three bravos sprang toward the lord in surprise, desperate to shut him up.

  It was just the distraction Pinch needed. Ignoring the one whose blade was on Cleedis, Pinch struck at the other two. With a single sweep he produced a dagger in his off hand and struck, driving the blade like a nail into the sword hand of the third attacker, Faranoch.

  The man shrieked as the blade plunged through tendons, scraped off bone, and thrust out through his palm. The rapier clattered from his grasp. Pinch gave the skene a vicious twist and let go, leaving the bravo to gape at the bloody memento the rogue left behind.

  The leader, realizing he'd cornered the sheep while the wolf still prowled, flailed around in a desperate attempt to correct his error. Pinch was unarmed; there'd been no chance to draw his sword. He stepped aside from the courtier's frantic lunge, but instead of using the man's recovery to draw his own sword, Pinch seized the other's wrist and stepped forward, bringing his foot up in a sweeping kick between the man's legs. Pinch connected just below the waist, and the ringleader shrieked falsetto as all the air inside him blew out in one massive gust. Treeve writhed on the ground while Pinch's first target stumbled back onto a bench where he sat clutching his transfixed hand.

  "Hold where you are!" shrilled the last ambusher as he held Cleedis by the throat, sword point pressed into the sagging folds beneath the man's chin. "Make a move and I'll kill him!"

  Pinch stepped away from his whimpering victim, shrugged, and finally drew his sword. "So what? Kill him."

  The little man swallowed in terror.

  "You expect me to fight fair. You expect me to care." The regulator walked forward, leveling his sword at the man. "I don't care if you kill him. I just want to kill you."

  "Janol…" Cleedis gurgled.

  "Shut up, old fool. Do you think I'll risk my life for you? You haven't earned it."

  From the distance came the rattling clank of the gate being opened. Voices carried over the silent rooftops.

  The man wanted to see who else was coming but was too terrified to take his eyes from his nemesis. Unintimidated, Pinch continued to close. At last the man's nerve broke, and he flung his hostage forward while bolting into the mazed warrens of the necropolis.

  Pinch dodged to the side as the chamberlain gasped and stumbled to freedom. For a moment he thought about chasing the man but easily decided against it. Instead, he turned his attention to the fellow on the ground. Remarkably, perhaps driven by fear, the man had regained his sword with every intention of using it, once he caught his breath.

  Pinch didn't wait for that. With a quick thrust he brought an end to this comedy. The body fell hard on the muddy lane.

  The last survivor threw up his blood-covered hands to surrender, and the hue and cry of the arriving bodyguard forestalled the need for any action on Pinch's part.

  "Seize him!" Cleedis commanded as his bodyguards sprinted to the scene. The armored men fell upon the courtier and savagely pinioned him on the ground. The man's expression was a wrenched mass of pain and terror.

  "My lord chamberlain, what shall we do with him?" queried the captain of the bodyguard. A coarse-shaven man adept at killing and following orders, he looked over the rogue's handiwork with no small amount of approval.

  "Keep the priests away," the chamberlain ordered. The captain nodded and ran off.

  Cleedis walked over and placed the tip of his cane on the man's bloodied hand. "What's your name, fool?"

  Perhaps he was too dazed to understand; perhaps he was too stubborn, but the man didn't answer.

  Cleedis leaned forward. The prisoner screamed.

  When the screaming stopped, Cleedis tried again.

  "Sir Kurkulatain," was the burbled answer. Sweat and tears shined the man's face. "Vassal of Prince Throdus."

  "Did the prince send you?"

  "No, my lord!"

  "Too easy." Cleedis leaned on his cane again. "Who sent you? Tell me and things will be easier."

  The man could barely whisper. "Treeve. Word was Throdus offered us titles."

  "This is the result of ambition," Cleedis admonished Pinch who'd been patiently sitting on the bloodstained bench until the questioning was done.

  "It's the result of ill planning."

  "Whatever," Cleedis shrugged. He turned to the captain of the guard, who'd returned from his mission. "This man"-Cleedis pointed at the prisoner-"is a traitor who has attacked the rightful regent of Ankhapur. Execute him."

  "Shall there be a trial, my lord chamberlain?"

  The chamberlain looked to Pinch with a cold vulture's eye. "I see no need for a trial. Do you?"

  The rogue shook his head and got to his feet. "No, none at all."

  "Rejoin us, en route to the palace," the chamberlain ordered, and
the two took their leave. "I doubt there'll be any more attacks today."

  "Lord Cleedis, have mercy!" shrieked the prisoner. His screams rang through the silent company he was about to join, until his echoes were one with the choir of silent ghosts pleading for their own justice.

  10

  Thief Hunting

  The pair passed through the gate, leaving the captain and his men to clean up the untidy details. The priests, drawn by the screams, thronged on the other side but their entrance was blocked by a pair of soldiers who stood casually in the way. No one was going to antagonize a man who wore the golden serpent of the royal household.

  Unless, of course, they weren't from Ankhapur.

  There was a tussle in the midst of the holy men as Lissa struggled to break through the line. She was held back by another, Pinch could see, a pumpkin-bellied servant of Gond. She fought with the conviction of moral purity, but the pragmatism of girth was on his side. She was stuck fast.

  It was interesting to watch the reaction of the rest of the small band, so seldom did such a diverse collection of faiths cluster together. The loyal servant of Gond, the pragmatic Wonderbringer, was saying "Such is the result of treachery," as he held Lissa off. Torm's man, the defender of justice, all but drowned him out by shouting-no, demanding-to know the proof of the assassin's crimes. The Oghmaites and the Deneirians quietly observed; watching and noting was what their lords demanded of them. The priests of the god of song seized upon the moment to begin a golden-toned dirge. In the back, the armored priest of Tempus watched with dour approval, satisfied that victory and defeat had been properly rewarded.

  Pinch could imagine the clergy of the darker gods- the fallen Cyric, the grinding Talos, and the cold Loviatar-smiling to themselves in the corners where shadows became walls. Unwelcome among the necropolis guardians, nonetheless they were still there. The hidden temples of Ankhapur were always close at hand.

  Cleedis gave the priests the backhand of his attention. The bodyguard formed an aisle, their swords a blued-steel fence. Given the determined disregard the chamberlain showed, the priests let their curiosity and outrage quickly fade. They made a great show of falling back into their daily habits. How fitting of man's noblest sentiments, the thief sarcastically noted. Only Lissa remained undaunted.

  "Lord Cleedis, I take your leave," the regulator said. "I've some contriving to do, now that the job's clear."

  Deep beneath the regal finery, the paunchy wrinkles, and the white-frosted pate, Cleedis still had the soul of a barracks-room trooper. He saw how Lissa had caught Pinch's eye and got it completely wrong. He leaned over to whisper, "She's not the kind to have you, or any man, you poxy rascal. I'll hazard my finest firewine you can't charm her."

  Pinch met the suggestion with a jump of one eyebrow. It could have been an acceptance of the challenge or it might have been a gambler's tic, the sort that betrays a man's astonishment before he's even sensed it fully.

  "I'll be happy to drink good wine," the rogue drawled encouragingly. He didn't correct the lord; indeed, he wanted the old man to go on dreaming of Pinch's peccadilloes. It would keep his mind from the thief's real motives.

  "And what will you pledge?"

  Pinch shrugged. "What little I wear is barely more than I came with, but perhaps a purse or two of your choosing."

  "Fair on. My wine against your fingers."

  Pinch raised his hand and waved the aforementioned fingers in farewell. "I'll make my own way back."

  When the troop rounded the corner, he sought out Lissa. The man found her gathering her holy scrip. Pinch gave a weather eye to the sky. The long shadows had pushed out from the narrow lanes and were thickening in the broad lane to the gate.

  "Going somewhere?" Pinch nodded toward the gate.

  "What you did in there, executing-"

  "I didn't execute anyone."

  "You walked away while they killed one," she protested.

  "What was I supposed to do? Interfere with the direct orders of the royal chamberlain?"

  Lissa pressed her fingers to her eyes, confused. "You could have argued against it-"

  "Asked for leniency? Those men came to kill me."

  Lissa's eyes locked with his. There was the jagged hardness of rock in her glare, something Pinch hadn't expected from a priestess of the Morninglord.

  "You're a bastard, you know that?"

  "Dyed through and through," Pinch answered gleefully. The priestess opened her mouth to say something, but Pinch did not stop and rocketed through a litany of infamy. "I'm also a fiend, rakehell, wastrel, and ne'er-do-well as well as a shirker, cock-lorel, swigman, swadler, and wild rogue, but not a palliard or a counterfeit crank." He stopped to gasp in a huge breath. "My clothes are too good for that," He explained as an aside before launching in again with a hurried, earnest whisper favored by theatrical conspirators. "If I were you, I'd count my rings and silver and lock up my treasures when that Janol's around. I'd change the locks to the wine cellar and cast new wards on the royal treasury. I'd even make sure all the ladies-in-waiting were ugly and well out of sight."

  The rogue tapped his nose with a wink and a grin, like a child's favorite old uncle. " 'Struth. I haven't seen one since I got here."

  Lissa had stopped her packing, quite taken aback by Pinch's sardonic good spirits. "You're teasing me. No one's that bad."

  "That bad? What about Core the Cuckolder or Fine-Cloth Durram? Now, they were that bad, I assure you. I once heard how Durram drank the best of a lord's wine cellar in one night and then came back for the goblets on the next!" Pinch kept the banter flowing while casually steering her away from the necropolis gate. He didn't want the priestess brooding on what had just happened. He needed her to like him, if not trust him.

  "Let me escort you to safer streets," he said casually, offering her his arm. His gaze swept over the mud-spattered street. Save for the boulevard they were on, the neighborhood was a tangle of narrow, crooked stews and warrens of ill intent. The little garretted town houses rammed up against each other piecemeal, in places so furiously trying to steal the sunlight from their neighbors that no light reached the streets and alleys at their base. Throughout this tangle, the gardens of the festhalls provided touches of color, tenderness, and sweet fragrance that the cheap stews disdained, but only for a price. They were streets full of the unsavory, the unstable, and the immorally ambitious. They were the streets of Pinch's youth.

  "Why, I could be that bad, I'm sure," he continued. "No doubt every father and mother in town would live in fear of seeing my pepper-haired pate come knocking at their door, because, you see, they'd know I had no morals, few scruples, and far too many dark habits to be safe around their daughters. Nay, if I were a proper priestess like you, I'd not spend time with that Janol, or your superiors would think you're no more than a bawdy basket."

  He grinned the cat's grin and gave her a sweeping bow to cap his whole speech.

  Lissa reddened and tried to wear a scowling smile but only succeeded in twisting up her face and betraying every one of her emotions: suspicion, belief, skepticism, and amusement. "Enough already. You're telling me tales."

  "Of course, nothing but." Pinch made sure that his answer was too eager, like a man in the trial box denying a truth-which he was, of course.

  She looked at him in just the way he hoped she would.

  People who are too innocent become eventually distrusted, tripped up by some trivial character flaw; the obviously guilty never gain trust to start with. The best course was to be neither and both-believably unbelievable. Done right, the priestess would vacillate between suspicion and trust until guilt made her blind to his faults.

  "How goes your hunt?" he asked, sliding the conversation into a topic she could not resist.

  Now it was her turn to be evasive. "Slow progress."

  Pinch nodded. "That poorly, eh?" He could see in her eyes he'd cut to the quick of her lie.

  She kept her counsel on that matter, instead focusing on the cobblestones of t
he street.

  "Well, perhaps I have news."

  "You do?"

  "I cannot be sure-you remember I warned you of Cleedis?"

  She nodded.

  "Things have happened that make me wonder."

  "Things?"

  "It's hard to say. What are the powers of this thing you seek?"

  "Powers? It has no powers."

  Pinch shook his head. "Never try dissembling with an Ankhapurian. They-we're masters of the art. I learned how to spot a lie a long time ago, a lesson from my royal cousins.

  "Your temple has hunted this thing enough for me to know it has special powers. It's not just sentiment that makes them search so hard; otherwise they would have given up long ago."

  "It's a relic of the great Dawnbreaker. Isn't that enough?"

  Pinch searched through his royal tutor's lessons for what he might know about a Dawnbreaker. There was nothing.

  "Depends. Who or what is the Dawnbreaker?"

  Lissa slid naturally into the role of patient missionary. With so many gods, so many martyrs, every priest became accustomed to explaining the myths and icons of his faith.

  "The Dawnbreaker was a great prophet who served the Morninglord."

  "Of course." They were all great prophets-or profits. Temples without prophets or seers tended to be poor, miserly things. This Pinch knew from experience.

  "He was. He predicted the Wintry Summer and the razing of the Unshadowed Palace of the Night Queen."

  "Never heard of it."

  "It's very ancient history. The gospel is that when the Dawnbreaker died, the Morninglord burned away the impurity of his flesh and commanded an amulet be made from the bones of his skull."

  Pinch arched an eyebrow at this.

  "So this bauble is really a skull? Is that what I'm looking for? 'Struth why my examinations have failed. I was looking for a mere trinket, not some old prophet's pate!"

  "No, it's only a piece of his bone bound inside an amulet of rare metals."

  Pinch nodded and pursed his lips as though he were imagining the relic, though that was hardly necessary since he wore the thing beneath his shirt. He hesitantly asked, as if shy at intruding into the secrets of her sect, "It wouldn't have any special powers, would it? Things that might reveal its presence?"