Thief Who Knocked on Sorrow's Gate

by Michael McClung

  Keel surprised me. Broken-armed and obviously scared spitless, he still stood up straighter and said, “No.”

  “Ah, fuck,” said the big one. “It was already bad, kid. Now, it gets much worse.” And he and his partner started forward through the muddy excuse for a street.

  So I pulled out Holgren’s gift knives, held them low and away from my body, points down.

  “He said no.”

  They were still maybe ten feet away. Both of them pulled up at the sight of steel. The little one brought out a chopper of his own, pure marsh-blade, meant for chopping through undergrowth and stubborn roots. It would do a person’s limbs or neck just as well. He smiled his black, crumble-toothed smile. The big one frowned.

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but if you want to go knocking on sorrow’s gate, don’t fucking cry if it opens.”

  I smiled. “You say ‘fuck’ too much. You should expand your vocabulary.”

  The littler one jumped forward, chopper raised high. So I threw the left knife. You don’t hesitate in Hardside.

  It got him in the neck, in the hollow at the base of the throat, and he went down, choking on blood and Lucernan steel. I felt nothing, and some part of me that belonged in Lucernis, not Hardside, worried about that in a distant, abstract sort of way.

  The bruiser was already wading in as well, unconcerned about his partner, betting I wouldn’t cast my other knife, betting I didn’t have another somewhere I could get to before he got to me. He was right.

  If he could get hold of me, it would be over quick. He was probably triple my weight, and he had on the velvets—gutter gauntlets, thick, leather gloves with iron plates sewn in all over, good for bashing faces in and blocking and grabbing blades. He looked like he knew how to use them.

  So I rushed into him, diving at the last instant below a surprisingly quick attempt at a grapple. And once I was down in the muck between his legs, I shoved the other knife up into his crotch.

  You don’t hesitate in Hardside, and you don’t ever fight anything but dirty.

  A slab of meat like him, he probably would have shrugged off a knife in the arm or leg. One in the chest would have disabled him if I planted it right, but he wouldn’t have held still long enough for me to make certain, and even if I hit something vital, it might not have taken the fight out of him quick enough. So I drove the knife into his crotch and ripped it out the back, feeling the blade scrape along something bony and pelvic along the way. And he screamed and fell to the ground and screamed some more, all the while writhing and clutching his privates.

  I felt something then. My nerves were buzzing, my whole body trembling in reaction to the sudden violence, and I wanted to vomit.

  He wasn’t going to live through that kind of wound. So I made myself do the right thing though all I wanted to do right then was run off somewhere and puke my guts out then squat and hug my knees till the trembling stopped. But the kid was standing there, watching me with big, round eyes in a pale face. So I made myself get up and cut the man’s throat with a shaking hand. His writhing didn’t make it any easier. Then, I went and removed my knife from the corpse of the other one, wiped the blood off of both on his stench-laden cloak, and put them in my belt. Carefully. I really needed to have sheaths made.

  Less than a minute had passed.

  Welcome home, Amra, said a voice in my head that I assumed at the time was my own.

  I shrugged it away and said, “Let’s go,” to Keel. My voice came out colorless and harsh, even to my own ears.

  “Wh-where?” He was just standing there, staring at the bodies.

  “We still need to see the Hag, don’t we?” I walked over and grabbed his good arm. He shook me off.

  “After that?” His face was the picture of incredulousness.

  I squinted at him. “What should we do, boy? Go light candles for them at the temple of the departed?” But I knew how he felt. When I’d seen Holgren turn Bosch into a bloody mist just by snapping his fingers, I’d had a similar reaction though I hadn’t voiced it at the time. Sudden, ferocious violence should be something that takes us aback. Seeing two men turned into corpses in less time than it takes to lace up a boot isn’t something a healthy-minded person should be able to dismiss with a shrug. But honestly, there was nothing to be done about it after the fact. The doing had already happened.

  “Well?” I prompted him. “What do you think we should do now, Keel? Go up to the Girdle, find a bench in Jaby cemetery and contemplate the fragility of life?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what we should do.”

  “Well, I do. We have business to attend to. We’re going to attend to it.”

  “No offense. Really, no offense. But your business isn’t my business. And I don’t want it to be.”

  I gave him a flat stare. “I just killed two members of your crew—”

  “Former crew.”

  “They disagreed, but never mind. My point is, your business just became my business. And that means my business is now yours as well.”

  “Um, that doesn’t really make logical—”

  “I’ve got the knives, Keel, and I’ve got the will and ability to use them. If I say my business is your business, then that’s the Kerf-damned way it damned well is. Is that logical enough for you?”

  He nodded. He was not wearing a happy face.

  “Here’s some more logic for you: If you think the only ones who just saw this were us and the sparrows, you’re dreaming. Someone in one of these shit-shacks saw what happened and will run to your ‘former’ crew boss and tell the tale for the reward they’re sure to get. Your crew boss will find out about it sooner rather than later. Which means we both just went to war with—Moc Mien, was it?”

  He nodded.

  “Now, would you rather go to war broken-armed and friendless or with me?”

  He thought about that, but not for long. “With you,” he said.

  “Good. Now, let’s get away from this cooling meat. The Hag isn’t getting any younger.”

  I started walking, and he followed after a few seconds as I knew he would.

  As we walked, he kept shooting me furtive looks when he thought I wasn’t looking. But there isn’t a damned thing wrong with my peripheral vision. It finally got annoying enough that I said, “What?”

  “No offense, but you don’t look like much. Not like Mouse.”

  “Mouse?”

  The big one you, uh…”

  “The second man I killed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “How did you get so hard?”

  “I’m exactly as hard as Hardside made me.”

  “I grew up in Hardside. I’m not like you.”

  I could have told him that Hardside, that Bellarius fifteen years before, had been hell on earth for ones like me. I could have explained about the numbness that seeps into you when your every waking moment is a struggle not to wind up dead and how I felt that chill stealing back into my soul with every breath I drew of Bellarian air.

  I could have explained to him that outside of Hardside I was just a semi-retired thief, not a stone killer. I could have told him that I would probably be having nightmares about what I’d just done for weeks, that the shock of my knife against the bone in Mouse had felt almost exactly the same as when I’d stabbed my father and the knife had grated along a rib.

  He wouldn’t have understood any of it. And that was a good thing.

  “You’re right, kid,” I said. “You aren’t like me. Be thankful for that.”

  He kept staring at me with that look that said he had more questions.

  “What?” I said exasperatedly.

  “Did Hardside make you quick like that too?”

  “Huh?”

  “I never saw anybody move that fast. Nobody. Ever.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m just quick. It makes up for being small, some.” />
  He looked at me like I was telling a joke at his expense. “Nobody is that quick.”

  “You never met Red Hand.”

  “The king of assassins. You’re saying you did?”

  “As a matter of fact.” I didn’t mention the fact that Red Hand had beaten me in a knife duel so easily it had bored him, that he’d actually made fun of me.

  “Now I know you’re just fucking with me.”

  “Language, Keel. Language.”

  As we walked away from the two bodies in the street, all the sparrows suddenly rose up in a storm of tiny wings and flew off in a ragged cloud toward the Girdle.

  Chapter Five

  I could have quizzed the kid while we walked about his letter and the supposed Ansen who’d had him deliver it, but I was in no mood for talking. I was still shaken by the aftereffects of the slaughter I’d just committed. I figured there was time. He was smart enough to stick with me while Moc Mien wanted his hide. And if he did get a sudden case of stupid and disappeared on me, well. Somebody had sent me one letter. They could send me another.

  Hardside doesn’t really have a beach. It’s mostly mud flats or rocky tidal pools until you get to the water. Except for the Wreck.

  On the rare occasions that a storm blows from just the wrong direction, there are, inevitably, fishing boats and even the occasional ship blown up and broken on the rocky jumble called the Wreck, where they are immediately scavenged by all and sundry. But that’s not why that little spit of jagged rock is called the Wreck or at least not the only reason.

  The Wreck is where madmen and lepers, and some say the Hag’s enemies, end up, camping out and scratching a meager existence, catching what was to be caught in the jagged margin between land and sea. Mostly clams and crabs, I’d imagine. I’d never had cause to investigate.

  At the furthest extent of the Wreck, there is something very, very different. It’s a galley, a fifty-oared penteconter, unlike anything that plies the waters of the Dragonsea today. Or, possibly, since the Cataclysm. At any rate, it’s ancient.

  And made completely of stone.

  The hull, except where a great rent lets in the sea? Stone. The oars, those that are not sheared off? Stone, as well. The rowers, or let’s be honest here, the galley slaves, some dead at their benches, others forever pulling, mouths open in a silent rictus of strain or pain are also stone though they’re difficult to see since they are mostly submerged.

  And that is what the Wreck gets its name from.

  I’ve no idea what happened. But that ship is no sculpture. Even after however many hundreds of years since whatever doom it was befell that ship, it still stinks of magic. Somehow, unimaginably long ago, that galley broke itself upon the rocks and then immediately became a part of them.

  That was where the Hag lived, in the tiller’s shed of a doomed stone ship with the sea sloshing in the unfenced oarsman’s pit beneath her and madmen and lepers outside her door.

  She didn’t get many visitors.

  Neither the madmen nor the lepers gave us any trouble. They seemed to want nothing to do with us and scurried away from us as soon as we appeared, some glaring, most just hiding in the jumble of rocks, waiting for us to pass. Their camp was pitiful. A single driftwood fire, a few moldering, greasy blankets, a pile of clam shells, another pile of gull bones and feathers. And a stench. We passed by quickly and were at the galley within a few minutes despite the hard going through the rocks and Keel’s difficulty climbing. Then, it was just a short drop down onto a narrow margin of stone deck. A wooden plank crossed the oarsman’s pit, obviously installed in recent memory, and fetched up against a raised platform and the tiller’s shed. The doorway was covered by a heavy, moldering tarp that barely shifted in the breeze.

  Everybody knew where the Hag lived, and nobody went there unless they were desperate.

  I wasn’t desperate exactly, but I wanted to find Theiner as quickly as I could and get the hells out of Bellarius as soon as possible. The Hag knew things, and what she didn’t know, she could find out quickly for all that she never left her boat. The question was, what would she ask for payment? The rumors growing up had been rife and horrific. Had they been based on anything even close to the truth?

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  “Find out what?” Keel asked. I’d forgotten he was there.

  “Nothing. Let’s go.”

  “I’d rather stay here.” He looked like he was going to wet his pants.

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I replied, and made my way across the plank to the canvas that served as the Hag’s door.

  “Enter, Amra Thetys,” said a low, melodious voice before I could call out.

  So I did.

  #

  The small space smelled unpleasant. Not foul, but like the room of a very old person unaware of their own smell. There was a little light from the curtained doorway and a little more from the hole through which the great stone tiller plunged into the sea below. There was nothing else in the room but the Hag and the chair she sat in.

  She was sitting in a cane-backed, wooden chair. Her hair was iron-gray and straight, and it fell to the floor. She wore an old-fashioned linen dress, yellowed with age but clean. Her hands were in her lap. Every finger had a ring, and her nails were very long but well-maintained.

  Her face was lined and pale, and her eyes were milky orbs that shimmered faintly in the gloom.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t any place for you to sit, Doma Thetys,” she said, and I was struck by her voice. It wasn’t old or weak in the slightest. She could have been a singer.

  “That’s all right. I don’t imagine I’ll be staying long. What’s a ‘doma’ if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Just an ancient form of address. The meaning is akin to ‘mistress.’”

  “I see. Just call me Amra.”

  “Very well. And you may call me Lyta.”

  “I’ll do that.” I cleared my throat.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you aren’t the most patient of women, Amra. So down to business.”

  “If you don't mind.”

  “I don’t,” she replied. “You want to know where your friend Theiner might be.”

  “You’re pretty good, Lyta, I’ll give you that. How do you know my name or what I want?”

  “I know many, many things,” she said with a small smile.

  “Are you a bloodwitch?”

  She laughed. “No, my word, no. I’m something much more powerful than that.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her just what she was, but then I realized I probably didn’t actually want to know. Idle curiosity rarely payed in any coin but trouble, and I had enough of that.

  “All right,” I said instead. “You know what I want. What do you want from me in return?”

  She sighed, and her hands twitched in her lap.

  “I want your memories,” she said.

  I blinked.

  “Oh, not to keep. Just share them with me. You won’t be harmed in the slightest, and you won’t forget a thing. You’ll just be giving me a copy, as it were.”

  I blinked again. “I can think of a half-dozen different reasons why that would be a bad idea without even half-trying.”

  My profession, however retired I might be at the moment, required secrecy. People don’t like it when you steal very valuable things from them and tend to go to great lengths to find out who took their shinies. Everyone I knew and even half-cared about would also be at risk from some very bad, very powerful people if my name ever got out in connection with some of the jobs I’d done. Daruvner, Holgren, perhaps a dozen others.

  Not to mention the fact that just because she said I wouldn’t lose any memories didn’t mean I wouldn’t. I mean, how would I know? How could I ever be sure?

  “That’s just not an option, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, that is a pity.”

  “I could pay you in a more standard fashion.
Money is very popular nowadays, you know.”

  “Do I look like someone who has use for coin, Amra?”

  “You might appreciate a more comfortable chair.”

  She smiled. “You don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t even know you. And most days, I barely trust even myself. No offense, Lyta, but I’m not going to let you root around in my memories. I had a godling do that once. Never again.”

  She leaned forward, suddenly intent. “What godling, may I ask?”

  “A question for a question?” I replied, and she smiled again. There was no emotion in her smiles, I’d realized, any more than there is in a facial tic.

  “The answers to some questions are worth more than others.”

  “You know my question. What payment will you take other than my memories?”

  “None, I’m afraid.”

  “There’s nothing you want? Really?”

  She sighed. “Nothing you could buy, beg, borrow or steal, Amra Thetys.”

  “Are you certain of that? You know my name. You know I’m not one for idle pleasantries. You should also know that if there’s something you want, there’s a very good chance I can get it for you if it’s physical and portable.”

  She laughed, but it was tinged with bitterness. I knew she wasn’t laughing at me.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “I do desire something. And it is indeed physical. Portable, however, would be stretching the definition.”

  “Just tell me,” I said, leaning against the wall.

  “It is a stone, brilliant white, oblong, inscribed with arcane symbols, and layered in puissant sorceries; it stands half a man tall and three wide…”

  It was my turn to laugh. “You want the Founder’s Stone.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “The Syndic wouldn’t like that. That’s where he puts his comfortable chair.” In the Great Chamber of the Riail, the Syndic’s palace. The throne room.

  “Nevertheless. That is all I desire, Amra Thetys, and all I will take in payment for the information you seek besides your memories.”

  “You want to rule Bellarius?”