Heden allowed himself to be led from the room. He did not take his eyes off the huge bulk of the man called Brick. Guildmaster of the Cold Hearth.
“You come in here,” Brick raged, “you think you can stand against us, because you’re a man, a righteous man.”
“This is the wrong fight,” Aimsley said to Heden.
“But nothing stands against us!”
Aimsley pulled the priest to the door.
“First you bend!” Brick was howling now. Snarling. Heden turned and walked out the back door, the polder behind him.
“And then you BREAK!”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Do you have any clue, I mean even the smallest fucking idea, what kind of shit you just stirred up?”
They stood alone in the long, thin alley that ran behind the back of the Mouse Trap. Aimsley paced. Heden stood and watched.
“I think I…”
“Shut up! I mean what kind of complete fucking hornets’ nest of colossal fucking shit you just created?”
“I do.”
“You don’t! You don’t and if you say you do one more time you’re on your own, do you get it? I don’t give a shit who you think your friends are, you fuck, because they’re all gone now!” The polder gestured up into the air like waving at a bird flying away. “You pissed off the count and now you pissed off the Brick and your own mother would run the fuck away rather than be caught between them and you,” the polder spat.
Heden kept his mouth shut and looked at the cobbles in the road, his brow furrowed. “Just the count,” he said. “You’ll keep the Brick off me.” His eyes darted to the thief, afraid to make eye contact. Afraid to be wrong.
The polder stopped pacing and stared at the priest. Waiting for an explanation.
“I thought,” Heden began. “I thought Brick sent you to my inn as a threat. Show you could get to me any time you wanted.”
“What!?” the little man squeaked, so absurd was Heden’s suggestion to him.
“I was wrong,” Heden said. “I realize that now. I’m sorry.”
The polder shook his head slowly in disgusted amazement.
“I swear by Saint Pallad you’re the stupidest son of a bitch I ever met. No idea how you’re still alive. None. Anyone ever say that to you before?”
“Yeah,” Heden said, eyes still cast down.
“Well…” the thief paused in his excoriation. “They were right, whoever they were.”
“Yeah,” Heden said, nodding.
The polder paced across the alley. Heden looked at him. Watched the conflict in the thief. Couldn’t put a name to it, but recognized it.
"Why did you help me? Why not let Brick and me go at it?"
Aimsley threw him a look. "Don’t be stupid. Then I lose either way."
Heden waited for an answer to his first question.
Aimsley stopped pacing, but didn't look at Heden.
"You were a campaigner."
"A ratcatcher," Heden agreed.
"Who were you with?"
For a moment, Heden didn't want to tell him. If the thief wanted to know, then the information was valuable, could be traded. But it wasn't a secret. Everyone knew. Stupid to try and hide it.
"The Sunbringers."
Aimsley nodded. "I'm looking for an alchemist," he said.
"Tam."
"Ok," the thief said, giving no indication this was the alchemist he was looking for.
"I haven't seen him in five years. No idea where I would even look."
"Shit," Aimsley said, shaking his head. "Really thought I was on to something there."
"Maybe you were."
Now Aimsley looked at him. Studied his face. Unspoken between them, the fact that Heden gave up what he knew for nothing. Aimsley took a chance.
“You know about the Ghoul at your inn?”
“Yeah,” Heden said. “But I don’t know what you have to do with it.”
Aimsley explained what he’d seen.
“The count can do that?” Heden asked, thinking about what it meant.
The small man nodded, his blonde curls bouncing. “And I think this Tam is behind it."
Heden sniffed. "Could be. Tam was good."
"Good enough to make these?" the thief asked. He pulled one of the small black marbles out of his vest and held it out.
Heden stepped forward and looked at it. Then reached out for it.
“Careful,” the polder warned.
Heden glanced at him, nodded, and took the black marble. It was as Vanora described.
“I don’t know,” Heden said. “Was Tam good enough to create Deathless?” Heden was skeptical. “I doubt it.”
Aimsley nodded. “So there’s another piece of the puzzle.”
Heden clenched the ball in his fist. “You’re sure Tam’s involved?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I have a reliable source outside the guild.” He absent-mindedly scratched his arm where the tiny glass beads had been imbedded.
Heden thought about what might have happened to Roderick Tam.
“He wouldn’t be doing it of his own accord,” Heden said.
Aimsley shrugged. “You haven’t seen him in five years. A lot can change in five years.”
“Not that much,” Heden said.
Aimsley was pacing again, he threw Heden a look, disgusted at the priest’s faith in his fellow man.
Heden went to give the black marble back.
“Keep it,” the polder said. “I’ve got more. See what your network can make of it.”
“I don’t really have a network,” Heden said lamely. Then thought of something.
"We should work together," he said.
"Ah," the polder said, pointing at Heden as he paced. Now it was the thief who wouldn’t look at Heden. "No we should not."
"Seems like we should. We both want the same thing.”
“Ah no we don’t,” the polder stopped and looked at Heden. Pointed at him as though he was dangerous. “I’m only after the night dust, you want to kill the count.”
Heden shook his head. “I don’t.”
“You do.”
“It’s not about killing the count, it’s about saving Vanora.”
“You just said the same thing twice,” Aimsley Pinwhistle said. “Except the second time, you sound like a complete fucking idiot who thinks he can…I don’t know, persuade the count to doing something? Anything? He wants the girl, he gets the girl. You have nothing to bargain with.”
Heden was looking at the cobbles at his feet. Thinking about what the polder said. He had a similar conversation with Gwiddon ten years ago. When he first learned Gwidd was a spy.
“Nothing to bargain with,” he said. Aimsley watched him.
He looked at the polder. “If we knew where the night dust came from, we’d have something to bargain with.”
“Stop saying ‘we,’ ok? Just stop it. I don’t work for you, I work for the Brick….”
“You’re the fixer. The fixer doesn’t work for anyone.”
“Don’t try to be clever,” the little man sneered. “You’re not good at it.”
“The night dust gives us the leverage we need….”
“No it doesn’t! You don’t get it! I’m not on your side! I’m not one of the good guys, I’m one of the bad guys! I don’t give a shit about the night dust or the count! It’s just the job. The Dust doesn’t matter!”
“The count’s going to use it to take over the city, to grind you down, how does it not matter?”
“It’s just a tool! The dust upsets the balance between the guilds. It’s my job to put things back the way they were. Maybe that means we get our own supply! Maybe we make a deal with the count! Who knows? It’s just business. The dust just becomes part of the deal.”
Heden frowned at this mercenary reasoning.
“So it’s me against the count,” Heden said. From the polder’s view, the priest was just staring off into space, thinking. He didn’t notice Heden was starting at the spire o
f the cathedral. Wouldn’t have thought it was significant if he had noticed.
“The girl’s not worth it,” the polder said.
Heden took a deep breath. “If you say that again,” the words came slowly, deliberately, “then we are enemies.”
The polder stared at him for a long time. Then blinked and looked away. Nodded.
Heden took this as confirmation of everything he suspected about the thief.
“You and me,” Heden said slowly, like he was sneaking up on a cat, “we can bring the count down.” And then, maybe…. Heden tried not to look at the cathedral again.
“And then what?!” the polder threw his hands up. “Are you really that stupid? The guild doesn’t work for the count, he works for the guild!”
Heden frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Aimsley sighed. There were better things he could be doing, why was he here talking to this priest? “There’s been a dozen Counts. There’ll be a dozen more. When this one goes, there’s another six guys I know, I personally know who will take his place in a heartbeat and will be just as bad. Worse. You can’t just stop his heart and hope the entire organization collapses. It’s not a cult.” Cults, they both knew, typically only thrived as long as their charismatic leader thrived. “And the first item on the next Count’s agenda? Guess!”
“You just told me I didn’t have a choice. That I had to kill him to stop him coming after Vanora.”
“No, I said you can’t kill him, so what the fuck are we standing here talking about?”
Desperate, Heden tried another tack.
“So you do what the Brick tells you.”
“As opposed to what? Do what you tell me to?”
“As opposed to doing what you want, what you think should be done. As opposed to doing what’s right!”
“I’m the fixer!” Aimsley said, his title a shield. “I serve the guild!”
“You’re outside the guild! You have to be or the king’s Magus puts you under the Eye and turns you inside out until he knows the name of every agent in the Hearth!”
“I fix the problems the Brick can’t handle. Right now, that’s the dust.”
“And what if it were the count?” Heden challenged.
“The Brick doesn’t care about the count!” Aimsley threw his hands up. “He’s happy with the count in his place! The Brick wants….”
“No, you! What do you want?!” Heden hurled Taethan’s words in the forest at the polder. The same words Sir Taethan had used to assault Heden with.
The polder grabbed his head with his hands, trying to drive the echo of Heden’s voice from out his head. “I want you to leave me the fuck alone! I want…,” he threw his hands down and looked around as though seeing the alley for the first time. “I want a drink is what I fucking want.”
Heden didn’t press the issue. They stood there, neither knowing what they were in the middle of, or if it could go anywhere. Neither of them looked at the other.
“I’ll keep the Brick off you, if I can,” Aimsley said.
“Thanks,” Heden said.
“No promises.”
“I understand. I owe you.”
Aimsley Pinwhistle gave no indication how he felt about this. He seemed reluctant to end the conversation.
“How’d things go in the forest?” the little man asked.
Heden found himself taking a deep breath. The reaction, the tightening of his skin, came on involuntarily.
“They’re dead,” he said. “The knights. All of them.”
Aimsley shrugged. Business. “Did you kill them?”
Heden bared his teeth at the idea.
“Sorry,” the polder said. “Well I figured something like that happened,” Aimsley said. “When no one asked me to follow up, figured the Order was neutralized.”
“Was that your instruction? Was that why you were following me?”
Aimsley waved a hand, dismissed Heden’s line of questioning.
“Brick was doing a favor for someone, I don’t know who. I don’t know why. He doesn’t tell me everything. Whatever it was, it’s over now.”
Heden turned finally to leave, took a few steps toward the mouth of the alley, and stopped. Confronted by the spire of the Cathedral looming over everything.
Heden looked at the Church. “Maybe not.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Heden looked at the stars.
“Gwiddon told me what happened,” the bishop said.
Heden said nothing. Watched the constellations he knew wheeling slowly overhead through the open roof of the atrium. The ox and plow, the river and maid. Thought only of what a colossal fool he’d been.
“Or rather, told me as much as he knew, which he admitted was very little.”
Heden looked down at his hand, turned it over slowly. Watched the bright, subtle interplay of starlight across the lines on his palm, the hairs on the back of his hand. Saw the sharp shadow his hand cast on the dirt below.
The starlight was bright enough to read by. Even though everything in the atrium was cast in violent white and black, to Heden’s eye it seemed vibrant beyond color. He remembered a girl, a squire, and a hunt for urq under these same skies. Seeing Aderyn’s face half in light, half in shadow. Wishing himself a younger man.
“Is this atrium enchanted?” he asked.
“You’ve never been here before?” The bishop asked.
Heden shook his head.
“No,” the bishop smiled. “No these sculptures require…special light,” he spoke lovingly over his creations, like someone nurturing a delicate flower.
There were something like a dozen glass life-sized sculptures sitting on the dirt of the atrium. Vines growing around their bases.
‘Sculpture’ was, Heden knew, not accurate. They were smooth columns of glass. Bright silver lines and points in each column glowed and caught the starlight creating powerfully lifelike images within. Unmoving, but seemingly possessed of motion. Men and women caught in an instant of action; talking, breathing, smiling, laughing.
Under normal light, torchlight, sunlight, moonlight, all one saw was transparent glass. Perhaps some smoke inside the glass. But under starlight, the glass disappeared and figures of sliver light sprang forth.
Heden looked up at the stars again. Wondered where the sun was.
It was just past noon by his reckoning.
And he thought he could walk in here and kill this man. This old man. This villain who’d given the order that destroyed the Green. Killed everyone at Ollgham Keep. This old man who’d blotted out the sun at midday just over this spot so he could work on his starlight images. Maybe the sun never shone here. Was he that powerful? To simply maintain such an alteration without any further effort?
The figures looked so real. Heden knew there was careful technique in crafting the starlight images, though he did not understand it. The man was an artist as well.
“Rector Ullwen,” Heden said, looking at one sculpture. The only one he knew. Ullwen’s sharp jaw and tiny point of a beard instantly recognizable. He’d met the man several times as a Sunbringer.
The bishop glanced over to the sculpture of Ullwen, and went back to his current work. Bent in close to the glass of an unfinished image. “Yes,” he said, caressing the glass in some arcane manner. A pinpoint of light flared and moved deep within the crystal. “I’m glad you recognize him.” The bishop’s voice was quiet and distracted. Heden wasn’t important. Only the image in the glass. “I paint them from memory, you see. Quite a tricky medium to work in, memory.”
He straightened, stretched his back, and looked at Heden. “One is never sure, once the work is done, whether one remembers the man or the image in the glass.”
“Mmm,” Heden said, trying to avoid the bishop’s gaze, for fear the older man would see something of the difference in Heden.
He’d come into the city determined to kill this man. A man who’d infiltrated the top of the country’s largest church. Now, after the fall of Aendrim, the most powerf
ul church in Vasloria. Was it all politics? He’d convinced himself of that on the way back, after leaving the forest. Convinced himself that this was just a normal man, schemed his way to the top, unable to command the power of a god.
“Do you…,” he ventured looking again at the stars, looking for the sun, “reveal the stars when you come here or is this…?”
“Oh no,” the bishop waved, dismissing the idea. “It’s always like this here.” He smiled, stepped forward, his tall, thin frame supporting his bishop’s robes like a wooden rack.
Gwiddon said it. The man did not serve Cavall. Where did his power come from? There were few options. Cyrvis and Nikros, the Black Brothers were the most likely. Where was Cavall? His greatest saint, Llewellyn whose church this was? Why did they allow this man to….
That way led madness, Heden knew. He’d long ago given up understanding the politics of the gods and saints. Well before he’d met Lynwen.
The bishop approached Heden and removed a small holly sprig from his robes. Extended it to Heden.
Heden knew what it was, even before the bishop removed his hand. Nine milky white berries. Dywel, Cadwyr, Idris, Perren, Nudd, Brys, Isobel…Kavalen. Taethan. All dead. A three thousand year old tradition smashed. Taethan.
Taethan…
He took the holly from the bishop’s hand, looked at it under the starlight.
“I’ll…understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” the bishop said. The bright white of the stars contrasted and conspired with the inky blackness to make the bishop’s face seem more angular, more aqualine than it was.
Was he trying to be compassionate? Or did he simply not care. Worse, most frightening, was he actually compassionate? Which would make him the greater villain? Did it matter?
Heden was prepared, in any event.
“There’s not much to talk about, your Grace,” he deflected. He was good at that.
A practiced liar, Sir Dywel, the weasel, had called him.
That was unfair, Heden thought.
“Many things went unspoken between Gwiddon and I,” The bishop said. “I know the man has long been your friend…,” Heden laughed inwardly at this. “And I feared asking him questions he would feel compelled to answer, thereby breaking confidence with you.”
Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) Page 14