Thief Who Knocked on Sorrow's Gate

by Michael McClung

  They finished up and started muttering to each other, and then the leathersmith silently took the measure of my waist and chest, showing no embarrassment whatsoever and pointedly ignoring the fact that the tailors had just done it before him. Then, he measured out Holgren’s gift knives. Then, he asked me when I’d be wanting my sheaths and harness.

  “As soon as possible,” I replied.

  He grunted. “Cheap, fast, or good. Choose only two.”

  “The last two. But nothing fancy required.”

  “I’ll be back at dinner time then,” he grumbled and stalked out.

  The tailors left soon after with a long sheet of scribbled notes and a hefty deposit, which left me short of hard currency, as I’d known it would. The next person in was a gem merchant, a wizened old Pinghul gentleman shadowed by a very large, very hard-eyed guard. I showed him three of the smaller jewels I’d brought with me. He inspected them with his loupe and a spelled talisman then quoted me a ridiculously low price. I laughed, countered with a ridiculously high price, and we set to bargaining. Ten minutes later, we’d exchanged gems for coins, and he’d bowed his way out, a small smile on his face. He’d gotten the better of me but not by much.

  I had lunch in my rooms, and then, there was nothing more to do until my new clothes arrived, since what I’d been wearing had been whisked away to be laundered and mended. Or possibly burned, considering the innkeeper’s personality.

  Now, with suddenly enforced idleness pressing down on me, my conversation with the God of Sparrows came unbidden to my mind. I very much wanted to ignore it, to forget it. It was ridiculous.

  It is rarely wise to ignore messages from gods, said the voice in my head.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I muttered. Maybe He wasn’t deranged. But doing what He wanted me to certainly would be.

  Assuming He wasn’t crazy as a box of frogs, what was I going to do? Was I going to high-tail it out of Bellarius, leaving everyone to be blown to bits? Or was I going to go on a suicide mission to assassinate the Telemarch, on the say-so of a blood god who had been turned into a tree by his fellow gods for, presumably, being a not-nice fellow?

  There was a knock on my door.

  “Take that, ridiculous decisions,” I muttered and sat on the couch, put one knife on the table in front of me and another down in the cushions at my back.

  “Come in,” I called.

  The door opened, and Keel popped his head in. “You’re not naked or anything?” he said, staring at me in my robe as only a teenage boy can do.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, Keel.”

  “I told him what you said about meeting him,” the kid replied, coming into the room and putting his eyes on the curtains rather than my legs.

  “Ansen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He’s, uh, not coming,” Keel replied, sitting down on one of the overstuffed chairs.

  “Color me surprised.”

  “But he gave me this to give to you.” Keel took out a crumpled letter from inside his waistcoat and handed it to me. This one I took. But I didn’t open it.

  “Why do you believe in this guy, Keel? What makes you believe this man is a three-hundred-year-old hero returned from the dead?”

  His face sobered. He looked me in the eye. “Maybe he isn’t. Maybe it really is impossible. I know you don’t believe it, and you obviously know a lot of things about a lot of things. But if he isn’t Ansen, the real Ansen, he might as well be. There’s nobody else out there fighting for what’s right.”

  “Are you sure that’s what he’s doing? What makes you think this whole Ansen persona isn’t just some elaborate scam?”

  “Con men and grifters don’t feed the poor. They don’t kill bent Blacksleeves. They don’t start rebellions.”

  “Small time grifters don’t, no. But maybe this guy is playing the big game.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So he’s not out fleecing the poor for what little they have. That doesn’t mean he’s not using them all the same.”

  “For what?”

  “For a power base. If this Ansen character is starting a rebellion, he needs, you know, rebels, now doesn’t he?”

  “You’re wrong,” he said flatly. “He doesn’t use people.”

  “Maybe I am wrong. For your sake, I hope I am. But if your rebellion is successful, and that’s a staggeringly large ‘if’ considering the fact that the Syndic has the Telemarch to stomp all over pitchfork-wielding rabble, we’ll see who ends up sitting in the Riail, passing laws and collecting taxes. If it’s your Ansen, try not to feel too used and bitter about it.”

  Keel gave me a look that was both hurt and disgusted at the same time. “I don’t like you very much right now,” he said, getting up and walking out.

  “Sometimes, I don’t like myself very much either,” I said quietly to the closing door.

  After a moment, I remembered the letter in my hand and opened it.

  Amra Thetys, Greetings –

  My apologies for not being able to meet with you personally. Circumstances make such a meeting inadvisable. I beg your understanding.

  Keel informs me that my first message to you was lost during the incident on the dock (and I thank you for looking after my young associate). Its essence was this: the man you are seeking lodges at Number 7, Ink Street

  – A.

  “Well,” I said to the empty room, “I guess I know what I’m doing tonight.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Kerf’s hairy warts,” I whispered to myself when I found No. 7 Ink Street.

  It wasn’t all that big a building, but it was the finest one on a street full of scribes, copyists, chandlers, and accountants. People and businesses that, by and large, made decent money. Fully half the first floor was taken up with leaded, glass windows. I could see a couple of people moving around inside and dimly make out clerk’s desks lit by oil lamps.

  The sign hanging from the eaves read:

  SWAINPOLE & SON

  FACTORS—CHANDLERS

  I’d never seen the building before; in fact, I’d never set foot on Ink Street in my life. But I knew who lived in that house. I’d heard my father shout it at my mother more than once.

  Why don’t you go back to Ink Street, Cherise fucking Swainpole? That’s right; they won’t fucking have you any more! What followed next was usually a slap.

  I was standing in front of my maternal grandfather’s house. The man who’d refused to let her marry my father, not that I’d have disagreed with him if I’d been around. The man who’d disinherited my mother when she’d gotten pregnant with me.

  That, I had a problem with. Ultimately, it meant she’d stayed with my father because she’d had nowhere else to go. Ultimately, it meant him beating her to death. Ultimately, it meant years on the street for me, fighting for food and being hunted like an animal.

  Yes, I had a problem with that and those who lived in the house that stood in front of me. Enough of a problem that I found myself considering burning the house down to the ground. Arson seemed fitting, somehow, for a house I had never been allowed to set foot in.

  What, by all the dead gods, had Theiner been doing living there?

  Abruptly, I decided I didn’t want to know. It wasn’t worth it.

  “Just let it go, Amra,” I whispered to myself. “Just walk away.” But I couldn’t take my eyes off the place.

  Coward, whispered a voice in my head. I’m pretty sure that one was my own.

  There was a face in the window now, a man’s face looking out into the street. Looking at me. I turned on my heel and started walking away. I heard the door open, the bell ring.

  “Amra?”

  I kept walking.

  “It is you, isn’t it?”

  I kept walking.

  “I’m your uncle. Ives. Your grandfather’s dead.”

  I stopped. Turned around. Looked at him. He had the same eyes a
s my mother. As me.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  He smiled, a little sadly. “You look very, very much like your mother. Except—”

  “Except for the scars,” I finished.

  We stood that way for a while. Then, he said, “So why don’t you come inside for a while?”

  “Too many reasons to count,” I replied.

  He nodded. “All right. I understand. But just stay there for a moment, will you? I’ve got something to give you.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want or need it.”

  “I think you will want it. It was your mother’s.”

  He had me.

  I still really didn’t want to. Which probably meant that I should.

  “All right,” I finally said. “I’ll come in.”

  #

  He led me past the front office, where two silent clerks sat at desks writing lots of numbers in big ledger books, down a short hallway, and into a cheery, brightly lit kitchen. There he sat down at a sturdy, scarred table and gestured me to sit as well. I slid onto the bench opposite him.

  “What do you want to give me?”

  He reached under his broad, linen collar and pulled from around his neck a silver locket on a chain. He put it on the table between us and leaned back.

  “You could have given this to me on the street.”

  “I did offer,” he replied. “But the light is better here.”

  I picked it up and pressed the catch. The locket popped open.

  My mother, no older than sixteen, smiled up at me from the palm of my hand. Fresh, happy, beautiful.

  Unbroken. Like I’d never seen her while I was alive.

  “Gesher painted that before he got too famous to do miniatures. When your mother left, she gave it to me and asked me not to forget her.”

  I snapped the locket closed.

  “But you did.”

  He shook his head. “I did not. But I was four years her junior, and our father was a hard man. When he disinherited her, I was only twelve. There was nothing I could do.” he shifted on his bench. “I tried to sneak out once, to bring her money. He found me before I even got outside the Girdle and beat me bloody. I couldn’t leave my bed for a week.”

  “Sure, I can understand a boy of twelve being cowed. But my mother died ten years later. In all that time, she—we—never heard from you once. Were you still so afraid of your father when you were fifteen? Seventeen? Twenty?”

  He looked down. His hands were clasped together. White-knuckled.

  “Yes,” he finally said.

  I stared at him. Contempt bubbled up from my gut and choked me.

  “My father was a monster, a drunk, and, let’s face it, a murderer,” I said. “But at least he wasn’t a coward.”

  “You’re right; I should have found a way to help your mother and you. But do you know what your grandfather said to me as he kicked me in the ribs until several of them broke?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He said, ‘If you ever try to help that whore that was your sister again, I’ll have her and her whelp killed, and by all the dead gods, I’ll make you watch. And you will know, boy, as she screams her life out, that it’s all your fault.’”

  He looked up at me. “My father was a monster too. Never doubt it.”

  I looked down again at the locket in my hand. I nodded. I heard the truth in his voice. “So I have monsters on both sides of my heritage.”

  He leaned forward and placed a finger on the locket. “But you also had her.”

  “Not for long enough,” I forced out.

  He looked away while I cried.

  I don’t cry. But for my mother, I did. I don’t really want to talk about it. When it was over, I put the locket around my neck, safe under my shirt.

  “Do you need money? A place to stay?” he asked.

  “I do not.”

  “Is there anything that I can do for you?”

  I thought about that. Thought about my mother. Thought about my time on the streets. Shook my head.

  “The time for doing is long past, Uncle. Your offer comes years too late.”

  He seemed to slump inward. He nodded. “I understand,” he replied.

  “There is one thing I want,” I told him.

  “Anything.”

  “A man lives here named Theiner. I’d like to know what he’s doing here and how you met him.”

  “Theiner did live here, yes. But he died last week. I’m sorry, Amra. I know he was your friend.”

  I was taken aback. I didn’t know how to respond. Or even what to feel.

  “How?” I finally asked. “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t go to work one day. Daymer sent a lad around to check on him since Theiner hadn’t missed a day’s work in years. We knocked, but there was no answer. I unlocked the door, and we found him sprawled on the floor, dead. There wasn’t a mark on him, and his room was as neat as it ever was.” He leaned back, blew out a breath of air. “It could have been a natural death.”

  “But you don’t think so,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t, and I can’t tell you why. He was young, younger than me at any rate, and far healthier. Sure, fit fellows drop dead sometimes. It happens. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Theiner worked at Daymer’s ropewalk during the day. But in his free time, he did something else. Something dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  “Maybe you should tell me everything from the beginning. Like how you met him in the first place.”

  He smiled a little. “I met Theiner after your grandfather died. When I went looking for you.”

  “You looked for me?”

  “I did, near ten years ago. By then, you were long gone across the Dragonsea and disappeared. I was relieved that you’d at least escaped the Purge even if I could find no trace of you. By then, Theiner was a young man, and when he found out who I was, he punched me in the face.” He smiled and shook his head ruefully. “It took him a while to believe I wanted to help you. Over the course of a few weeks, we became friends. He told me about you, what you were like, what you had been through, and how he admired you.”

  “He admired me?” I laughed.

  “He did. He said you were the most relentless person he’d ever met and that he wished he had half your will.” He grew serious, then, and looked me in the eye.

  “It was about that time he decided he was going to make an accounting for the purge. He decided he was going to do what he could to make those responsible pay for their actions.”

  “Madness. You talked him out of it, right?”

  “Wrong. I financed him.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I am not.” He spread his arms wide, looked around. “This business your grandfather left me is very profitable. I have no wife, no children, no family at all except you, and you were lost, I thought, for good. Theiner became almost a younger brother to me, and he had a good cause that lacked funding. You knew him. He was as honest and earnest as the day is long. I considered it money well spent, and in truth, it wasn’t all that much money. He refused to work for me or live off the funds I gave him. Every copper I gave him went to uncovering those who had a hand in planning or executing the Purge.”

  “And just how far did he get in this one-man quest for justice?”

  “I don’t really know. I could show you where he spent the money and what for. He kept meticulous records for me though I told him time and again it wasn’t necessary. But results? I don’t know. We decided almost at the outset that it would be safer if I didn’t know any of the names he unearthed.”

  “I guess it wasn’t safe enough for him,” I said.

  “Considering what he was doing, he was making enemies of some dangerous and potentially powerful people.”

  “Precisely. The only thing that I can’t work out is why they would bother to make it look natural. They
could have had him knifed him in the street just as easily. Or even just made him disappear.”

  “Maybe they were afraid someone wouldn’t leave it alone in that case.”

  “Maybe. There’s just no telling.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I put him to rest up in Jaby.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know if Theiner would appreciate rubbing elbows with the Gentry, even in death.” Jaby was a cemetery within spitting distance of the houses of the Gentry.

  My uncle smiled. “I rather think he would have approved. He had a quirky sense of humor, did our friend Theiner.”

  “Did he? He must have grown it after I left.”

  “When you knew him, there probably wasn’t much to joke about.”

  “True enough.” The picture my uncle was painting of Theiner was a strange one. Theiner as some sort of vigilante, yes, I could see that to a degree. But I still wasn’t seeing Theiner as a man who would be lopping heads off, stuffing them in boxes, and sending them across the Dragonsea. But there was no one else who knew what Borold had done to me, damn it. Which left me with the rune on Borold’s forehead as the only clue, and magic as the only answer. Which was no answer at all.

  I made a decision, knowing as I did so that I would almost surely regret it. “I need to have a look at anything that was Theiner’s. You haven’t thrown his belongings out yet, have you?”

  “No, his room hasn’t been touched. It’s all just as he left it. There wasn’t anyone to give his things to, not that he had much; nor is there anyone who needs the room.” He sorted through a ring of keys at his belt and pulled one off. He handed it to me, holding just the tip. As if he were afraid our fingers might touch. I took it and nodded.

  “He had his own entrance, in the back. The stairs are right outside the door there,” he said, indicating a door on the far side of the kitchen that led outside.

  “Thanks. I’ll find my way.”

  He jerked his head in assent and sat down again at the table, putting his chin in his hand. His eyes traveled over the dining room but in an abstract, unfocused way. As if he wasn’t sure just what to make of the day’s events.