I felt exactly the same.
Chapter Twelve
Theiner’s garret was at the top of a set of sturdy, wooden stairs in the house’s attic. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, holding up the lamp I’d taken from my uncle’s kitchen. I fit the key in the lock but stopped before I turned it.
Here I was, at the end of my search. I could just leave it here, turn around and walk back down the stairs. Keep walking, down to the docks. Take ship. I’d come to Bellarius to find out what Theiner was up to. What he was up to was lying down and not ever getting up again. He didn’t need my help with that.
I stood there for a long time, hand on the key. Finally, with a muttered curse, I turned it and pushed open the door.
It was a small room with a single window next to the door, a sloped ceiling with exposed beams. It was a little musty now that no one was inhabiting it. On one side stood a narrow, wooden bed with a thin mattress and an even thinner pillow covered by an old, soft-looking quilt. On the other side was a narrow table and a rickety, wooden chair. At the far end was a tiny wardrobe with a tiny, steel mirror nailed to the door and a tiny table holding a pitcher and a basin. And that was it.
Except I knew that wasn’t it. There would be more. Theiner would have a hidey-hole here somewhere.
I checked the bed, the table and wardrobe, and found nothing more than a few changes of clothes, a knife, fork and spoon and, under the bed, a pair of boots that had seen much better days. They were caked in grime and smelled like a particularly vile strain of cheese.
I checked the basin, the pitcher, the tiny little wash stand. I checked behind the mirror. I checked the floorboards and the ceiling and the beams. I checked the walls for hidden cavities.
Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything was painfully neat, tidy, clean—
Everything except the boots.
“Disgusting but clever, my friend,” I said to the air and, breathing through my mouth, stuck my hand into one and then the other of the boots.
Crammed into the toe of the second was what I was looking for. I fished it out, a many-times folded sheet of paper.
I dropped the boot and unfolded the paper. I couldn’t read what was written there; the room was too dark and the writing almost unbelievably small. I brought it and the lantern over to the table and sat down to try to decipher the incredibly close, cramped writing.
It was a list of names with annotations. The names meant nothing to me, but Theiner’s notes meant something more:
Adok Frees, Blacksleeve, Murdered three in front of witnesses. Deceased.
Garl Lenst, Former Blacksleeve, Now Justicar Lenst. Murdered two. 12 Coln Street.
Almost three dozen names in all. Borold’s wasn’t among them. More than half were still alive. A long list of child killers. I suppose I should have felt more, felt something. Anything. But I didn’t, really, until I got to the end of the list. The one at the end of the list stood out because of the note that Theiner had underlined.
Affonse Yarrow. Blacksleeve Commander. Retired. Murdered dozens. Address unknown.
He knows the mage’s name.
I stuffed the list into a pocket of my new silk waistcoat, grabbed the lamp, and walked out. My hands were sweaty. After years of believing without proof, here at last was confirmation that there really had been a mage finding street rats for the Blacksleeve death squads, that it really hadn’t mattered where we’d hid.
We’d never had a chance, any of us.
If I hadn’t left, I’d almost certainly be dead.
I locked up and went back downstairs.
Uncle Ives was still sitting at the table, this time with a mug in front of him.
“Did you find anything?”
“I did. Maybe why Theiner was killed. Do you want to know?”
He thought about that for a while. “Yes. But no. What will you do?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I need to think. To decide.”
“I understand.”
“Thank you,” I told him. “For…thank you.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stay here?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m also into things right now that you’re safer being away from and knowing nothing about.”
“All right,” he said, but I don’t think he believed me.
“I’ll come back again once I’ve taken care of my business.”
“I hope you do, Amra. Niece.”
I forced myself to give him a brief hug, which made both of us uncomfortable. Me more than him, probably, since as soon as we touched, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Uncle Ives, if that’s who he really was, was a mage.
I kept my face neutral as we parted. “Goodbye, uncle,” I managed. Then, I was out the door.
Chapter Thirteen
I brooded on it all night. Ansen’s note. Meeting my uncle. Finding Theiner’s list then discovering Uncle Ives, if that was really who he was, was a mage.
It stank like week-old fish. It stank from so many directions I didn’t even know which one stank the worst. I have a very suspicious, pessimistic, and fertile imagination. The ways that the situation could be rotten were almost limitless, and I didn’t have enough information to make any sort of reasonable guess as to what exactly was really going on. But someone, somewhere was trying to play me, to make me believe… What, exactly?
That I had an uncle. That said uncle knew Theiner. That Theiner had been on a one-man crusade to right the wrongs of the Purge.
A mage had helped track down gutter kids. The man who said he was my uncle was a mage. It would be very, very easy to stick those to bits of knowledge together and make an assumption. Too easy, maybe.
I spent a good hour pacing my rooms, staring at the locket my supposed uncle had given me.
It was her. Of that, there was no doubt. The miniature portrait in the locket was of my mother. And if it wasn’t a Gesher, it was the best forgery I’d ever seen. I’d had the opportunity to see a full-sized Gesher up close. Yes, it was for a job. No, I’m not going to talk about it. But there was a reason Hurin Gesher was the greatest living portraitist on the Dragonsea, and when you’d seen one of his works, you wouldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s. At least I wouldn’t.
The thought crossed my mind that the locket could be spelled, that I should get rid of it. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I finally slipped it into my pocket, where it kept company with Holgren’s necklace.
Sometime after midnight, Keel came back, forcing me out of my brooding. He flopped down on the couch. It was an awkward flop, him being effectively one-armed.
“I forgive you,” he announced.
“That’s nice. For what, exactly?”
“For being a negative, suspicious hope-killer.”
“Oh, that. You haven’t even seen the tip of the knife on that, I’m afraid.”
He snorted.
“Do you know what your buddy Ansen’s note said?” I asked him.
“No idea.”
“You didn’t sneak a peek before you gave it to me?”
He snorted again. “I can’t read. Well, I can read my own name, but that’s about it. So unless it said ‘Keel Fenworth’ a bunch of times, his message was safe with me.”
I wasn’t surprised. You could probably count the number of people in Hardside who could read on one hand.
“What kind of a name is Keel anyway?”
“An awe-inspiring one.”
“As in ‘keel over and die?’”
“Ha ha.”
“As in ‘well I’ll be keel-hauled?’”
“What kind of a name is Amra? Sounds like something you take when you’ve got the runs.”
“Better than being named after a ship’s bottom.”
“My ma said my da named me Keel because without its keel, a ship could never make it where it wanted to go,” he said, serious now. “Without its keel, a ship will always be pushed off
course by wind and tide. He wanted to make sure I always had a way to get where I was going.”
“That’s actually sensible. Your da knew a thing or two.”
“Yes. He did.” It was the first time I’d seen the kid serious and sad. Obviously, he’d lost his father, and just as obviously, it had been a loss. Unlike mine.
He shook himself out of it fairly quickly. “So? What kind of a name is Amra?”
“The kind of name you get when your father wants a boy and gets a girl,” I replied.
“It’s not a Bellarian name. Not even a boy’s name.”
“No. I don’t know where my father got it. The only other Amra I’ve heard of was a pirate king from Nine Cities a long time ago.” I shrugged. “My father was unpredictable.” By which I meant irrational, which was a nice way of saying half-crazy. Among other things. I didn’t want to talk, or think, about him, so I changed the subject.
“What does he look like, this Ansen?”
“Huh? I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on, Keel. Aren’t we past that sort of thing by now?”
“Really, I don’t know. I’ve only been in the same room with him a few times. His face is always covered. The Blacksleeves are looking for him, you know.”
“How many people listen to this guy?”
“I’m not really sure. A lot of people, I think, but any time he talks, it’s only to a few people at a time. He says we have to be cautious for now.”
“How do you know how to contact him?”
He sat up and shook his head. “I can’t talk about that. Please don’t ask.”
“All right.” It was important, but not important enough to torture it out of him, which was likely what I would have had to do. As long as Keel could make contact, and I had a hold on Keel, it would suffice. “Listen, Keel, you know I’m looking for someone. The letter Ansen had you deliver to me told me where he lives. Lived. I’d like to know how Ansen knew I was looking for Theiner in the first place, how he knew Theiner, and why he bothered to give me the information that he did.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I know you don’t, and if you did, you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about it. I respect that. But you can pass on the message for me.”
“Sure, I can do that. You want to write a letter?”
“I’d rather not. Just mention it if you get the chance.”
“I will. But I don’t know when.” He yawned.
“Fine. Meanwhile, I need to pay a visit to Daymer’s Ropewalk. Any idea where that might be?”
“Wharfside. I’ll take you.”
“I doubt they’re open at the moment.”
He rolled his eyes then rolled over on the couch. “I didn’t mean now,” he mumbled into the cushion.
I sat there until I heard his muffled snores. It didn’t take long. When you’re young, you can stay up for days. You can also fall asleep at the drop of a hat.
I went to bed but not to sleep, not for a long time. I missed Holgren’s arm around my waist, his forehead against the nape of my neck, his long legs tangling with mine.
The rain came and went all night.
#
When we got to South Gate, I steeled myself and went through the gate, waiting to feel some malicious magic wake and try to kill me.
Nothing.
Happily disappointed, I continued on, following Keel. We fetched up at Daymer’s ropewalk a few minutes later.
A ropewalk is just a Kerf-damned long building where they turn almost-rope into rope used for ships. To be fair, the rope they make in such places is thicker than my arm and damned long, which I suppose is impressive in its own way, but it didn’t really excite my interest. To me, it just looked like a lot of sweaty men pulling on rope. Holgren, on the other hand, would have been fascinated by the process. But Holgren wasn’t here.
I wasn’t in much of a mood to dance about trying to get information about Theiner. I just wanted to confirm that he had indeed worked there. I wasn’t taking much of what “Uncle Ives” had told me on faith, and Theiner’s day job seemed the easiest thing to verify.
I asked around for the foreman and was pointed to a man who was as big as a house with his shoulder muscles bulging up damned near to a level with his earlobes. I lay a gold mark in his rough hand.
“You had a man named Theiner who worked here. I need to know anything you can tell me about him.”
He put the mark back in my hand.
“I don’t know anything about anything. Good day to ye.”
I grabbed his paw and shoved the mark back in it along with an equally shiny friend of the same denomination.
“Just tell me what you know about Theiner, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
He got an annoyed look on his face, took my hand, pressed the marks firmly back into it once more, and curled my fingers around them.
“No.”
“Why the hells not?” I asked, exasperated. I wasn’t paying three gold for a simple bit of information.
“Because I don’t know you or why you want to know what you want to know and because you’re a rude little chit.”
Behind me, Keel stifled a laugh.
I sighed and stuck out my hand, this time without any gold in it. “I’m Amra Thetys. What’s your name?”
“Kubo,” he replied, “Kubo Daymer.” His hand engulfed mine. He shook it. When I got it back, it wasn’t too badly mangled.
“Master Daymer, I’m trying to find my friend Theiner. I think he might be in trouble. Any assistance you could give me in finding him would be greatly appreciated.”
“That’s better. Money don’t serve for manners ‘round here. This ain’t the Girdle. As to Theiner being in trouble, I couldn’t say.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it’s the same Theiner who worked for me, he quit years ago.”
#
I described Theiner, and Kubo allowed as to how that certainly sounded like the fellow he’d employed. If memory served him correctly, Theiner had had trouble showing up for work on time due to unspecified nightly activities. Finally, he’d told Daymer he wouldn’t be working there any more. That was all the ropewalk owner remembered after more than five years.
We left. I bought us bowls of stew from a streetside vendor, and we washed it down with small beer. I wasn’t feeling particularly talkative, and Keel seemed to sense that even if he didn’t know what was going on. When we’d finished, I told him to get lost for the day. Then, I set out for Ink Street.
I was passing an old, badly dilapidated warehouse when I saw another rune marked on the swollen, mold-eaten door. I knew that one too. Hardic only has about a hundred runes total. It was a good, easy written language for illiterate thieves to pick up, if rather limited when trying to get across complex concepts. The rune scrawled on the door ahead of me was simple enough to understand.
Murder.
I kept walking.
Got a dozen steps away.
Turned back.
“You’re an idiot,” I told myself. But I had to know.
I made short work of the lock. The whole mechanism just fell out of the rotted wood with a judicious application of force. But the door itself was swollen into its frame. After a considerable amount of grunting and shoving, I got it open enough to slip inside. I got a knife out and stepped to the side so that I wouldn't be silhouetted by the light from outside and stood perfectly still, letting my ears inform me while my eyes adjusted to the gloom.
The place was empty and had been for a long, long time. The flagstone floor was now an algae-slick pond. I could hear a steady drip drip from the leaking roof and nothing else. Until I did hear something else. The slightest whisper of sound from the far side of the building. I might have imagined it.
I pulled out the other knife and walked slowly across the empty space toward the sound.
At the far end, there was just the foreman’s windowl
ess cubby, a small room maybe eight feet deep by a dozen across. The flimsy door was torn off its leather hinges and lay on the floor quite some distance away from the frame, like it had been thrown there.
Knives out in the defensive posture that Theiner had taught me so long ago, I entered the dank cubby.
There was a desk, furry with moss, and a broken chair. I couldn’t see anything else in the deep gloom. Except—
Something under the desk. Something whitish.
I took a step closer, squatted down.
The white I’d seen was a skull. There was a skeleton to go along with it, dressed in rotting clothes.
I held still. Listened very carefully. Nothing. And in this small room at least, nowhere for any potential enemy to be hiding.
I eased myself around so that I would be facing anything that decided to enter the foreman’s cubby and looked over the remains a little closer.
It was a kid. I don’t know how old; I’m no expert on that sort of thing. Maybe ten years old? Not a toddler, not an adult; that’s all I could tell for sure.
Something had caved in the left side of the skull.
The body had been stuffed into the space under the desk. Even as small as it was, it had been a tight fit. I knew in my gut this had been a street rat, futilely trying to hide from the Blacksleeves. Another victim of the Purge.
I didn’t hear anything. There was no noise, but I caught the slightest flicker of motion in the doorway. I sprang up, knives out. Maybe I saw something, a darkness moving against a dark background. Then, it was gone.
Maybe I imagined it.
I scanned the warehouse, but it was empty. There was nowhere for anyone to hide. After a couple of minutes, I gave up, telling myself it was just nerves, not really believing it. Then, I went out, bought a few yards of linen, came back and wrapped up the bones and then took them to the temple of the departed.
#
I stayed at the small, badly maintained temple until the votive candle I’d bought guttered out. The bones made a depressingly small bundle in my lap. The bench was uncomfortable and cutting off the circulation in my legs. I lived with it.
Thief Who Knocked on Sorrow's Gate Page 9