Thief Who Knocked on Sorrow's Gate

by Michael McClung

  “Hurry the hells up,” I muttered. I wanted to shout it, but I didn’t dare break his concentration. I was under no illusion that we’d dealt with every guard in the Riail.

  Greytooth’s incomprehensible words grew louder, and with what sounded very much like a command, he suddenly threw his arms forward. The Stone flew out into the night like an arrow.

  I glanced over at my uncle, and he smiled at me.

  “We did it,” he said.

  Then an arrow suddenly sprouted from his chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I whirled around to face the room once more, cursing myself bitterly for being distracted watching Greytooth.

  Dozens more Council guards poured into the room, some with bows, some with crossbows, at least three with arquebuses.

  Greytooth cried out in pain. From the corner of my eye, I saw the quarrel sticking out of his shoulder. He staggered back. Hit the railing. Tumbled over it and down.

  “Drop your knives,” said one of the guards. One with gilded armor.

  I looked at my uncle. He was on the floor now, shuddering and spitting up blood. And then he wasn’t. His face went slack, his body still.

  Gone.

  “Drop the knives now.”

  “Go to hells,” I replied.

  “Never mind, Captain,” said a new, tired-sounding voice from behind all the men in armor. “I’ll speak to her as she is. Have your men put their weapons away. Bows down.” The guards parted for a heavy, bejeweled man. They did what he said. They didn’t look happy about it, but they didn’t argue.

  The Syndic.

  I threw a knife at him on general principle. It bounced off an invisible, magical shield maybe a foot from him, clattered to the floor.

  “Got that out of your system, now, have you?”

  “You killed my uncle.”

  “I didn’t kill him. And he broke into my house. Besides that, he’d already been tried in absentia for treason and fomenting rebellion and sentenced to death. A much worse death than he, in fact, received.”

  “You knew he was Ansen.”

  “Indeed. Just as I know that you are Amra Thetys.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “What’s the use of being a despot if you can’t even get information when it is required? Informants abound in the City of the Mount.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know why Aither wants so badly for you to die, among other things.”

  “Ask one of your informants.”

  “Sadly, informants do not abound in the Citadel. Those I send generally come back to me in chunks. Aither can be crude.”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself then?”

  “The Telemarch and I aren’t on speaking terms. We find mutual feigned ignorance of each other’s existence, on most days, to be mutually beneficial. Tell me why he so very badly wants you to die, Mistress Thetys, and I will let you go free.”

  I smiled. “Even if I believed that, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Why, pray tell?”

  “Because you’re a leech, sucking this city dry. But mostly because you killed my uncle. If you want something, it’s my new purpose in life to make sure you don’t get it.”

  He sighed. Stuck a fat finger in his ear, wiggled it around a little. Wiped the finger on his gold-embroidered velvet vest. Charming.

  “I’ll try once more. Tell my why Aither so badly wants you dead, why he ordered me—me—to have the city turned inside out until you were found. Tell me why he fears you so.”

  “Why the hells should I tell you, assuming I know the answer? And please don’t bother to lie about setting me free.”

  “Oh, it isn’t a lie. If Aither fears you, you must be a real danger to him. I’ve been saddled with that mad bastard for nearly two decades. If there is a palpable chance that you can lay him low, I will set you on your way and wish you well. But I must know why he fears you. Should you fail to end him, I want avenues of approach to try on my own.”

  I made a decision. If the Syndic wanted to know why the Telemarch was afraid of me, I’d do more than tell him. I’d show him.

  “I’ll give you your answer,” I told him, reaching down to the rift, questing for that vast, seductive power at the heart of the Mount.

  It was there, and it rushed into me, warming every particle of my body but not touching the chill in my soul.

  “Pay attention now,” I told the Syndic. “I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”

  I concentrated, felt the power straining to be let loose. I flicked my fingers just as I had done at the mad mage, willing the Syndic to just disintegrate. I was focusing on him alone, but I didn’t particularly care if the guards behind him caught any excess. I felt the power release and strike him, unerringly.

  Nothing happened.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did you think the Syndic of Bellaria went about unprotected from magic?” he asked me. “Come now.”

  “That’s a fair point,” I allowed and tried something new.

  Pure, undiluted possibility at my fingertips, suffusing my body.

  Uncle Ives had wanted to bring down the Syndic, the Council and the Riail. He’d given me a list of murderers and a locket with my mother’s portrait.

  I gave him a gift in return.

  “You’re protected from magic. You’re also proof against knives.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What about hunger? Or thirst?”

  He gave me a quizzical look.

  “I like the idea of you buried under tons of rubble, slowly dying of thirst. Let’s do that.”

  I pulled down the Riail on top of the Syndic.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was easy. Frighteningly easy. I wanted the building to come tumbling down, and it did.

  Cracks ran up the pillars and the walls like lightning, and chunks of stone began raining down. Then, the entire ceiling began to collapse, bringing all the upper floors crashing down.

  I ran for the balcony. A chunk of marble column clipped me in the shoulder. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t let it slow me. Behind me, I heard screams. I hoped they were from the Syndic but didn’t stop to check.

  The floor began to open up as well. I ran faster. The noise was tremendous.

  I made it to the rope and started down. Too late. The stone railing of the balcony shattered, and I fell. It occurred to me just as I was about to hit the cobbles that I hadn’t really thought out my attack all that well.

  Rather than the cobbled street, I hit something relatively soft. But I hit it hard, flat on my back. The wind was thoroughly knocked out of me. Dumbly, I was still holding onto the rope, the end of which was still tied to a chunk of the stone railing and falling rapidly right at my face. I ducked my head at the last instant, and the chunk shattered against the street, spraying me with sharp-edged chips of stone.

  When the lacerations stopped, I opened my eyes.

  The Riail was gone. Just gone. All that was left was clouds of dust billowing up in the night sky and the lower wall that I’d scaled. And that wasn’t looking too good. In some places, it was just cracked; in others, the pressure of all the rubble had broken through the wall and spilled out down the Mount, little avalanches of the remains of the Syndic’s palace.

  As tombs went, it was a pretty good one for my uncle. I think he’d have appreciated it. I pushed my thoughts away from that. It wasn’t hard. When you can’t force your lungs to draw breath, it sort of consumes your attention.

  After a while, I got my breath back. Everything was quiet. When I could think again, I began to wonder why I wasn’t a broken pile on the road. I wheezed my way off of what I’d landed on.

  What I’d landed on was Greytooth.

  He really wasn’t looking good. Unconscious, quarrel in his shoulder, one leg twisted at a gruesome angle. But he was still breathing.

  I got up on shaking legs. Grabbed his wrists. Started pulling. There w
as no way I could support his weight, so dragging was the best he was going to get. His house wasn’t that far away but far enough to make me groan just thinking about how far I was going to have to drag him.

  At least it was all downhill.

  I hadn’t got him far when alarm bells started pealing throughout the Girdle.

  #

  I got him to his house. He never woke despite all the punishment he had gotten along the way. That probably wasn’t a good sign. I didn’t dare pull the quarrel or even do much in the way of setting his leg. He needed a professional. Luckily, the bone-setter who’d taken care of Keel was on the way to the Wreck. I had to make sure Greytooth had gotten the Stone where it needed to go before he’d dived off the balcony of the Riail. If he hadn’t, then there was a lot of work to be done getting it there and not a lot of time.

  I hoped he’d managed it. I hoped he’d survive and be able to finish the job if he hadn’t managed to get the stone to the Wreck. Maybe that was cold, hoping he’d recover just so I could get the Stone to Lyta. At that point, I didn’t much care considering what I had to do soon enough.

  I also hoped Hurvus, the chirurgeon who’d taken care of Keel, was sober. I was just full of hope.

  I’d rather have been full of expectation.

  I left Greytooth on his ugly, expensive couch, unconscious and dripping blood. I wasn’t feeling exactly spry myself, but I’d learned to deal with pain over the years. I couldn’t ignore it, but I could push it into the background. When I left, I didn’t bother locking up; Keel might have been able to pick the lock, but Hurvus surely wouldn’t be able to.

  The inn was along the way. I decided to stop off and change out of my torn, bloody clothes. I didn’t need to attract attention, especially not from any curious Blacksleeves, who’d certainly be worked up by the Riail’s collapse.

  It turned out that I needn’t have worried about that, but caution is rarely wasted.

  Keel was pacing the parlor when I got back.

  “Where the hells have you been all day? What the hells happened to you? What the hells happened to your ear?”

  “It’s not important. I need to change clothes and get down to Hardside.” I walked into the bedroom, closed the door, stripped off my ruined, expensive new clothes.

  “Amra, what’s going on?” Keel asked through the door. “The whole city’s going crazy.”

  “Probably because the Riail just collapsed,” I shouted back.

  He pulled the door open. “Are you shitting me?” he said, face flushed. Then, he noticed I was naked, and his face flushed some more.

  “Keel, I’m about to cut parts off of you that you’ll really miss.”

  “Sorry, sorry!” he said. He didn’t sound sorry. But he closed the door again quickly enough.

  I dressed hurriedly and, holding one of the inn’s towels to my still bleeding ear, went back out to the parlor. The innkeeper would likely have a fit about his bloodstained towel. Which almost made up for having a ripped ear.

  “The Riail is really gone?” he asked, bouncing around as only a youngster can do.

  “The Riail is really gone.”

  “And the Syndic?”

  “He’s under the rubble somewhere. If he’s still alive, then he’s indestructible. But I’m pretty sure dehydration and starvation will do the trick.”

  “Yes!” Keel shouted. “This is Ansen’s chance!”

  I took a deep breath. “About Ansen. I’ve got some bad news for you, I’m afraid.”

  “What? Don’t give me any more crap about him being a huckster, all right?”

  “It’s not that. He isn’t. Wasn’t. He really was a just man, if not the Just Man.” He was also my uncle, but Keel didn’t need to know that. Nobody did.

  Keels face sort of scrunched up. “What do you mean, ‘was?’”

  “Ansen died in the Riail tonight.”

  Just like that, the kid’s spirits went from high to low. All that boyish energy just left him. He sat down heavily in a chair and stared at the floor.

  “Wait,” he said. “How do you know all this? How can you be sure Ansen’s dead?”

  “I was there, Keel. So was Greytooth.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got to go. I need to get a physicker up to Greytooth. He’s badly injured. Hurvus is competent. I’ll need you to lead him if he’s too soused though. And then I need to get down to the Wreck.”

  “All right.”

  Thunder rumbled up the Mount. Or I took it for thunder at first, but then it happened again. And again, regular as a heartbeat if a little slower. I quickly realized it was far too regular to be anything natural. What now?

  “What the hells is that?” Keel said, echoing my thought.

  I felt a weird slithering in my inner pocket, the one where I kept Holgren’s necklace and my mother’s locket. I felt a moment of panic, sure that the locket had indeed been spelled and that I was about to die some horrible, magical death. Had I been right to be suspicious of my uncle after all? I stuck my hand into the pocket and whipped out the contents, flinging them across the room.

  The locket and its chain bounced across the carpet and fetched up against the door.

  Holgren’s necklace refused to leave my hand. It was writhing like a snake, and its bloodstone pendant shone with a deep, red light. The light pulsed like a heartbeat in time with the thunder.

  “What the hells is that?” Keel asked again, looking at the pendant as it pulsed and gyrated in my hand.

  “That, my young friend, is reinforcements.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I ran to the balcony, Keel right on my heels, gabbling questions I didn’t really hear.

  Out there in the Bay, someone was making a furious effort to break through the wall of death put in place by the spirits of the murdered street rats. Brilliant, actinic light flared against the barrier, steady as a heartbeat, forceful as a battering ram and louder than thunder. I was much too far away to see any details, but I knew who it was.

  Holgren was knocking, and one way or another, he would find a way in. Determined didn’t even begin to describe Holgren when he set his mind to something.

  I realized I was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You’re early,” I whispered, “and just in time. Thank the gods.”

  “Huh?” Keel replied.

  “Better stop ogling me when I’m naked, kid,” I told him. “That’s my lover down there. He’s not really the jealous type, but he can turn you into a toad.”

  “Really?”

  “No. But he can turn you into a red stain on the cobbles with a flick of his fingers, so behave when he gets here.”

  “If he gets here,” Keel replied.

  “Oh, he will, kid. He will. He always comes through. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To meet him.”

  As we left, I scooped up the locket and put it back safe in its pocket. I slipped Holgren’s pendant back on over my head and tucked it in underneath my shirt. I figured he would get the message.

  #

  The streets were a madhouse.

  We had to skirt two separate riots. The mobs were hurling cobbles torn from the streets at armored lines of Blacksleeves, whose naked blades shone orange in the torchlight and red with blood. I’ve no idea what exactly they were rioting about. I doubt they did either. There were too many excesses, to many brutalities endured over the course of too many years to point at one and say, “That’s why this is happening.” It was just a breakdown of order, a kind of pent-up madness that was finally being let loose. The inciting event, if there even was one, was immaterial. The Riail was a pile of rubble for all the city to see. It was enough.

  The riots were easy enough to avoid. The looters were less so. They seemed to be everywhere the Blacksleeves weren’t. Shutters were being torn off windows, and glass shattered everywhere, it seemed. Figures, both male and female, young and old, were scrambling in and out of shop
s with all manner of goods in hand. Some wore makeshift masks. Most hadn’t bothered.

  Keel looked scared out of his wits.

  “Just don’t pay them any attention, and they’ll do you the same favor,” I told him. But I kept my knife bared as a precaution and a warning.

  Once, I saw something that definitely wasn’t human cross the darkened street in front of us, climb a wall with what looked like four arms, and disappear onto the roofs above us. An overpowering smell of burned cloves and spoiled milk lingered in its wake.

  The seals on the Telemarch’s reservoir of power really were failing.

  We made it wharfside without incident, which seemed almost a miracle. I led Keel to Aloc pier, where Holgren was trying to batter his way in. With every strike of his magic, the barrier put in place by the spirits of the murdered street rats shed coruscating sparks of whitish-green light that fell and faded before they reached the bleached boards of the pier and resounded like a gate being struck by a battering ram. From that distance, I could see him making passes with his hands. Each time his hands stilled, the barrier was struck by his magic. And then, he would begin again.

  He saw me before I’d taken three steps onto the pier, but he didn’t pause in his assault.

  When I made it to the end of the pier, I said, “Hello, lover.”

  He was standing in a little dory that bobbed on the waves but otherwise didn’t move from its position. There was no anchor other than his will. His face and hair were sweat-soaked despite the cold.

  “Amra my dear,” he said. “We need to talk about your ideas on gardening.” He gestured again in that arcane fashion. Sparks flew. The barrier boomed.

  “Why’s that?”

  “They are disturbing.” Gesture, sparks, boom. “You do know that burying a head—” gesture, sparks, boom “—won’t actually sprout a new person, don’t you?”

  “Ah. You found Borold.”

  “Was that his name?” Gesture, sparks, boom. “I’d just been thinking of him as ‘the screaming head fellow.’” Gesture, sparks, boom.