The white gryphon

by Mercedes Lackey

  The young thief had been good—and careful. He neither over- nor under-estimated his own abilities, and he always brought back the goods he'd been paid to take.

  Now Kanshin had all the things he had dreamed of; a house, slaves, fine foods to eat and wines to drink. The food was as good as that from the King's table, and the wines were often better.

  The house was a grand affair, like the dream of a palace on the inside—granted, the house was in the heart of the Dakola District, but no one was stupid enough to try to rob Kanshin. The last fool who'd tried was still serving out his punishment, chained to a wall in Kanshin's basement, digging a new cesspit. That was a far more effective deterrent than simply killing or maiming interlopers. After all, most of them, like Kanshin himself, had become thieves to avoid hard labor. When they found themselves little better than slaves, forced to wield shovels and scrub dirty dishes, they never tried to rob him a second time.

  He listened very carefully, and smiled when he heard the faint scrape of a shovel on dirt. Now there was one unhappy thief who would not be making a second visit to Kanshin.

  The house itself looked like every other filthy, rundown heap in the district—outside. Inside, it was crammed with every luxury that Kanshin could buy or steal. Perhaps service was a little slower than in the homes of the nobles—the slaves were hobbled with chains to hinder their escape—but Kanshin didn't mind. In fact, he rather enjoyed seeing people who could probably boast higher birth than he, weighted down with iron and forced to obey his every whim. Slavery was not legal in this kingdom, but none of these people would dare to complain of their lot.

  Not all of this was due entirely to his own work, but it was due to his own cleverness.

  He set the ball aside, and began to run the same exercises using a coin. It was clever to find this perfect partner. It was clever to see his cleverness. Some eight or nine years ago, right after that strange winter when the priests all seemed to vanish for a time and there were rumors all over the city of magic gone horribly wrong, a young and comely stranger began walking the streets of the Dakola District. He claimed to be a mage, which all men knew to be impossible, since no mage—by definition a Law-Keeper—would ever frequent the haunts of the Law-Slayers. So all men laughed him to scorn when he told them this, and that he was looking for a thief to partner him in certain enterprises.

  No one believed him. They should have known that a story so preposterous had to be true.

  All men laughed at him but one—Kanshin, who bethought him that if a ditchdigger could slip through the Law to become a master-thief, could not a renegade mage slip through the Law as well to retain his magic? So he sought out this man, and discovered that what no one else would believe was nothing more nor less than the barest, leanest truth.

  He—the man called himself "Noyoki," which meant "No one"—was a mage. And he had, by sheerest accident, slipped through the hands of the priests. At seventeen he had been discovered in some unsavory doing by the priests, his teachers—what, Kanshin never bothered to find out for true, although Noyoki said it had been because he used his powers to cheat at games of chance.

  That seems unlikely... but then again, these priests find cheating to be a sin only second to murder. I suppose it never occurs to them that they are the real cheats. They had, of course, decreed that he should have his powers removed, as always. No child caught misusing his powers could be allowed to retain them. For that matter, it was rumored that adult mages had been stripped of their powers for misuse.

  A useful rumor to circulate I suppose, if you are intent on preserving the illusion of the integrity of your adult mages.

  It was the mad magic that had saved Noyoki, that first wave of mad magic ten years ago that had lit up the night skies, created abortive and mismade creatures, muddled everything and turned the world of the mages upside-down. The priest that should have burned the magic out of his head had been struck down unconscious and died the following week without ever waking again, but Noyoki had the wit to feign the sickness that came when such a deed had been done. And with magic gone quite unpredictable, no one of the priests could tell that it had not been done.

  So he was sent back to his family in disgrace—powers intact, and lacking only a few months of training to be a full mage.

  They were told he should never be trusted, never given power, a high office, or any responsibility. Kanshin smiled at that. Another challenge to the nonexistent gods; if they had never given this boy magic, he would never have turned against the world and cultivated Kanshin. If he had never met Kanshin, there were things stolen and deaths recorded that would never have happened.

  So much for the gods.

  It was a lofty house, for Noyoki had quarters of his own within the Palace itself. Noyoki had waited until they ceased to put eyes on him wherever he went, and left him in scorn to seek whatever excesses might soonest bring his cycle to the earliest end. That was what he was supposed to do. No one dreamed he had any ambitions at all; they should have been burned out with his magic.

  Then, once no one bothered to watch him anymore, he went down into the quarter of the thieves, to seek a thief as a partner.

  Kanshin and Noyoki were successful beyond Kanshin's original dreams of avarice—though Noyoki never seemed to want the gems and artifacts, the drugs and the rare essences that Kanshin stole with his help. No, Noyoki was most interested in paper, documents—

  Well, that was fine with Kanshin. Let Noyoki have the documents; Kanshin knew better than to try to take them to use himself. That required subtlety which Kanshin had, but it also required knowledge of their owners and the enemies of their owners which he did not have. He was smart enough to know that he could and would never learn these things in time to make proper use of the stolen papers.

  Noyoki also had another power—rarely used and hard on him—that allowed him to place Kanshin within a locked and barred room and extract him again. At first he had not been able to do this more than once a year or so, but lately, he had been able to accomplish it much oftener. For a thief, such a talent was beyond price, and Kanshin treasured his partnership, suffering insults and slights from Noyoki he would never have suffered from another living being.

  Things have been going well. Kanshin frowned. So why has Noyoki suddenly gotten greater ambitions?

  Everything had gone according to the plan Kanshin had worked out for his life—when the unexpected happened. Kanshin had wealth, power, a certain amount of fame, and needed only to work when he chose. But one day not long ago, Noyoki had brought the madman now in Kanshin's guest chamber to Kanshin's home and bade him care for the pale-skinned creature.

  Hadanelith was the madman's name, a man with the white skin of a leper, the pale-blue eyes of a lemur, and hair like bleached straw. Kanshin would have thought that this "Hadanelith" was some kind of misbegotten sport, created from a normal man by the mad magic, if he had not once seen the Emperor's kestra'chern, The Silver Veil, with his own eyes. She had skin as pale, eyes as washed-out, and hair of an even stranger silver color. So the madman was not a misbegotten thing, but only a man from another land.

  I do not understand this creature. Hadanelith found humor in things not even Kanshin found amusing; he made slaves of the slaves, manipulating their minds in such a way that Kanshin could remove their chains at any time and never fear their escaping. Of course, once Hadanelith had done with them, they were useless to anyone but him. Kanshin was just glad he had not given the man access to more than three, of which only two were female. Hadanelith had no use for males. Kanshin refused to allow himself to be intimidated by the man, but his strange behavior unnerved him.

  On the other hand, he is frighteningly intelligent. He had learned their language so quickly that Kanshin wondered now and again if the man had plucked it from their minds. But no—he had only learned by listening, and when he finally spoke, it was with no real accent. He might giggle like an hysterical girl with pleasure in the work he had done for them, but it was competent wo
rk, and within the limits he and Noyoki set, Hadanelith worked well.

  One of the slaves—one that Hadanelith had not spoiled—came to the door of Kanshin's work room, a chamber filled with the tools of his trade and the instruments he used to keep his body as supple as that of the young thief he had once been. "Master," said the man, his head lowered submissively, "Noyoki awaits your pleasure in the reception chamber."

  "Good." Kanshin placed the coin back in the holder beside the ball, and rose from his chair. "Tell him I will be with him shortly."

  With a faint clinking of chain, the slave bowed and shuffled out. Kanshin smiled at his back.

  Then he surveyed himself in the full-length mirror to be certain there was nothing lacking in his appearance. He suspected Noyoki to be of extraordinarily high birth, and he had tried, since the beginning, to look as outwardly respectable as someone of high caste could. Noyoki himself cultivated a rapscallion appearance, wearing untidy robes of odd cut, his hair woven into braids like a working man, but that did not mean he was not influenced without his realizing it by the appearance of respectability. Every trick that came to hand was necessary when dealing with Noyoki.

  There was nothing to mark Kanshin as a person of anything less than the caste of bankers and professionals.

  He smoothed his robes with a proprietary hand and went in search of his partner.

  Noyoki sprawled casually on one of the couches in the reception chamber, his hair beaded as well as braided, his bright cotton robe made of patchwork material, like that of a mountebank or street-entertainer. He was examining a piece of carving that Hadanelith had left on one of the tables, looking it over with intense scrutiny, a frown of concentration on his handsome, chiseled features.

  "What do you make of this?" he asked as Kanshin entered, followed by the slave with a tray of fruit ices for their refreshment. He held it up; there was no mistaking what it was meant for, but the shape was odd. It was carved to resemble a rabbit, with long ears pressed tightly together, and a misshapen, bulbous body. The expression on the rabbit's stupid face was that of sheer terror. Not the sort of expression one would expect to find on a toy of that nature. It was not unheard of for these toys to be shaped like animals, but the animals always looked as if they were cheerfully enjoying themselves.

  "It is one of your friend's toys," Kanshin replied easily. "And I suspect it would give us a great deal of insight into his way of thinking if we knew why he had carved it that way. He presented me with it this afternoon. There was blood on it."

  "Charming." Noyoki did not put it down immediately, as Kanshin had thought he might. Then again, given that he had turned to blood-magic, perhaps the thing held some arcane significance for him. "He performed well this afternoon."

  "You would be the one to know, not I, by the results of your working." Kanshin raised his eyebrows in inquiry; Noyoki only smiled, and ran his fingers along the smooth wood of the carving, caressing the toy with his touch.

  "If that is a question, yes, the blood-power came through strong and clear. It more than tripled the reserves I expended to put him in place and take him out again." Noyoki had told Kanshin that only the power that came through pain and spilled blood was strong enough to allow him to work magics in the old way, before magery had run wild. What he was doing, Kanshin did not ask. He really did not want to know. The less I know of his doings, the safer I am. He knew very well that Noyoki would not hesitate to be rid of him if the mage thought he knew too much.

  Whatever magics the man worked now, it was something to put Noyoki back in a position of power, though whether overt or covert, Kanshin would not even guess. He knew that the victims Noyoki had chosen for his "pet" to slay were all rivals or former rivals; perhaps he was ridding himself of his male rivals by using the deaths of their females to undermine them.

  "It is a pity that we cannot persuade the man to broaden his—ah—interests," he said carefully.

  Noyoki frowned. "If I could find a way to coerce him to take men—well, perhaps coercion would be a bad idea. He is an artist in his way, and when one coerces an artist, the work is always flawed."

  Kanshin nodded, although the turn of Noyoki's phrase surprised him. Had the mage spoken from past experience?

  Their dual role in this was to use Hadanelith to simulate murder by magic. Kanshin would find a way to insert Hadanelith into the victim's chambers and get him out again; if there was no other way in, Noyoki would spirit him in and out by that odd talent of his when he was done, using the excess of the power released from the victim's suffering and death. In between, Hadanelith had free rein to work whatever atrocities on the victim that he chose, up until the moment he received the signal to kill.

  A clever plan, which required a minimum of magic to carry out. At the moment, Kanshin's payment was coming through Noyoki, and both maintained the polite fiction that Noyoki was working for someone else, some great noble who wanted obstacles removed from his path, but in such a way that these dangerous new pale-skinned allies were also placed under suspicion.

  It is easier to discredit foreigners anyway. It is just a good thing that their arrival coincided with the beginning of our plan. Kanshin had not told Hadanelith any more than was strictly necessary to carry out the work, but he wondered if the man had guessed who was taking the blame for the murders. If so, he did not seem at all displeased by the idea of what might be his own countrymen being falsely accused.

  Perhaps he simply doesn't care. Or perhaps these people drove him out of their ranks.... That was an interesting thought. If Hadanelith had tortured and killed before, it would account for his peculiar competence in that area.

  He was a good, if flawed, tool. He followed his instructions to the letter, as long as he knew why he was supposed to be doing something. When the signal to kill came, he never balked.

  The trouble is, we cannot be certain how much longer he will remain tractable.

  As Kanshin understood it, for Noyoki's blood-magic to work, the power he received had to be incredibly strong, which meant the murders must be committed with a diabolical, rabid brutality. Despite the fact that the Emperor was trying to keep the news suppressed, rumors of the murders were already in the lower districts of Khimbata, and hardened criminals spoke of the scenes and the victims with troubled awe, as if even they could not imagine doing such things.

  "How much longer do you think we can keep a leash on our dog?" Noyoki asked, as if he was aware of Kanshin's doubts.

  Kanshin shrugged. "How much longer do you need him? He seems stable enough for now. I think as long as he knows that we are the only route to what he wants, he will obey. But he is not sane, Noyoki. He could suddenly change, and we would have no warning of it."

  Noyoki nodded, face solemn, the beads on the ends of his braids clicking with the movement of his head. "His carving might give us a clue."

  "True." Hadanelith had a mania for carving; he always had a knife in his hands and a piece of wood, and there were more of his twisted little sculptures all over the house. Kanshin didn't mind the mess and the shavings at all; while Hadanelith carved, he was not getting into other mischief.

  "I think he knows about the visitors taking the blame for the murders," Noyoki said, suddenly switching topics. "I think it pleases him. Perhaps these people were his enemies."

  "Perhaps they were his jailers!" Kanshin retorted sharply. "Never forget what this man does, Noyoki! Never forget that Hadanelith is mad, and he could decide he wants to do it to you! We may turn the tiger upon the tracks of our foes, but the tiger can decide to turn back again and seek us instead!"

  "Yes," Noyoki replied with an odd and disquieting smile. "And that is what makes the game all the more interesting, is it not?"

  Madness must be contagious, for he surely is mad! Kanshin thought with astonishment.

  "I am not mad, Kanshin," Noyoki said, in another uncanny answer to words left unspoken. "I am simply interested in a challenge, and Hadanelith presents such a challenge. If it is possible, I should li
ke to tame him to my hand as I have tamed the lion and the pard."

  Kanshin shrugged. "On your head be it," he replied. "I am interested only in getting rid of him once our tasks for him have been completed. If you choose to take him into your own household, I simply ask that you take him as far away from me as possible."

  "Perhaps I will," Noyoki observed, stretching like a well-fed and very lazy cat. "And with that, I shall take my leave of you; I will bring you the information on the next of Hadanelith's playfellows tomorrow."

  Kanshin bowed him out to the street and stood in the doorframe, watching his back as he disappeared into the swirling crowds. He is not a fool, but he is foolhardy, the thief thought as he closed the door and retreated into the perfumed safety of his own home and away from the noisome babble and stenches of the streets. Too foolhardy for me. Once this set of jobs is over, I am retiring, far away from here. He had just the place in mind too; a lake big enough to be considered an inland sea. Such recklessness is like teasing a lion; you never get a second chance to learn how much is too much.

  He retreated deeply into the depths of his home, past rooms that only opened when he had picked a complicated lock, and which relocked themselves when the door closed. He took himself to the farthest of those rooms, a place where Hadanelith did not go and where, hopefully, he could not go.

  The trouble was, the madman learned at a terrible speed. There was no reason why he could not learn to master all those locks, as he had already mastered the language and the thief's tricks that Kanshin had taught him.

  Kanshin flung himself down on a couch, and laid his right arm across his eyes. How long would the madman remain "safe?" That was a good question.

  He only wished he had an answer.

  Skandranon was making some decisions as he marched toward the Audience Chamber under armed guard for the third time in a week. For one thing, he was getting damned tired of taking the blame for someone else's murders! Especially when the law-keepers didn't seem to him to be making much of an effort to find the real culprit!