Thief Who Knocked on Sorrow's Gate

by Michael McClung

  “How long do you think this is going to take, Holgren?”

  “Hours.”

  “We don’t have hours,” I said. I put my hand against the barrier.

  I’m pretty sure you can hear me, I told the spirits. They didn’t respond, but I thought I felt their attention.

  The man who ordered the Purge, I don’t know if you know, was the Telemarch. I’m going to go and kill him. Or at least try. I’ll have a much better chance of success if you let this fellow who’s knocking come in.

  They had nothing to say to that.

  Please let him in.

  I felt them reach a decision. He can come in, they told me, but he will not be allowed to leave. Do you understand?

  “I do,” I whispered and hoped to hells I hadn’t just gotten Holgren killed.

  The barrier between Holgren and the pier sort of peeled back, and Holgren jumped up from his bobbing boat, graceful as a cat. I was hugging him before he’d even straightened up.

  “You’re early,” I said, my arms around him and my face pressed against his coat. “I didn’t expect you for a few more days.” Which would have been far, far too late.

  “You buried a screaming head in our back garden. The birds kept landing and then immediately flying away. Eventually, I went to investigate. Also, I got bored and a little lonely without you.” He stroked my hair with those long, fine-boned fingers of his.

  I squeezed him tighter then let him go.

  “Well, Bellarius is anything but boring just at the moment,” I said.

  “So I noticed on my way in. Care to catch me up?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. Mad archmage about to destroy the city, one of the Eightfold Bitch’s Blades at the center of things, mysterious and powerful beings meddling in the affairs of mortals. Total breakdown of order in the city, as you can tell.”

  He glanced past me, toward the Girdle, where the sound of rioting and the smoke and glare of several fires were obvious. “I see. Is there a particular reason for that anarchy, or is it just an excess of high spirits?”

  “I might have had something to do with that,” I admitted.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. What did you do, Amra?”

  “I sort of killed the Syndic by pulling down his palace on top of him.”

  He rubbed his face with his hands.

  “He deserved it.”

  “No doubt. And the friend you came here to help?”

  “He’s fine. He’ll be trying to kill me any time now, but he’s fine.”

  “Well then. What’s next on the agenda?”

  “Well, first, we need to release the human avatar of a dead goddess from her thousand-year prison, and then send a physicker to a Philosopher who’s got a quarrel in his chest and a broken leg. After that, we’re going to take a walk up the Mount to the Citadel and assassinate the Telemarch. Pretty full list of chores, actually. Could use a hand if you’re free.”

  “Amra?”

  “Yes?”

  “How do I put this delicately? You are very much a grown woman, but I’m not sure you should be let out of the house on your own any more.”

  I snorted. “Given all the things that have happened in the last few days, I’d be very content to become a shut-in. If I somehow manage to survive the night.”

  “Can I ask why we’re about to kill the most powerful mage on the Dragonsea?”

  “Sure. If we don’t, the whole city will explode come morning.

  “Given the state it’s in right now, I’m not sure how you could tell the difference.”

  “Easy. Right now, there’s a mountain. In the morning, there’ll only be a smoking hole in the ground.”

  “Ah. And who’s the young man standing behind you, looking rather twitchy?”

  “That’s Keel. He’s sort of a stray I decided to keep.”

  “All right. But you’re cleaning up after him. Anything else I should know?”

  “Tons. But there just isn’t time. Except for one thing. It seems I have access to magic. Sort of.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Very quick version is this: the Telemarch used the Knife that Parts the Night to cut open a hole in reality and bring magic back into the world. People who know better than me say it’s unrefined magic, chaos, and pure possibility. That’s what’s set to blow the city apart. It also seems that I have access to the reservoir of it that the Telemarch created, maybe because of my connection to Abanon’s Blade. Anyway, the Telemarch isn’t keen on sharing power, which is why he’s been trying to kill me. I’ve tapped it twice. The first time, it saved my life. The second time—the second time, I accidentally destroyed some buildings with it. And the people inside those buildings.”

  “She was saving my life at the time,” Keel chimed in.

  Holgren studied my face. If there was anyone in the world that I would talk to about how killing loads of innocent people made me feel, it would be Holgren. And maybe I would talk to him about it someday. But not then, not there, not even if we had the time, which we didn’t. He seemed to intuit that.

  “All right,” Holgren said again after a few seconds.

  We started walking down the pier. “Where to first?” Holgren asked.

  “Better send help to Greytooth. He’s tough, incredibly tough actually, but he looked bad when I left him. Then the Hag.”

  “The Hag?”

  “She’s the living avatar of the dead goddess I mentioned. Been trapped on a ship since around the Cataclysm.”

  “She’s scary,” Keel added.

  “More than you know, actually. But we need her.”

  “I really need to visit the jakes,” Keel said to nobody in particular.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hurvus was moderately sober but unwilling to leave his house. I shoved a handful of marks into his palm, described Greytooth’s injuries, and told him if the patient died, I’d replicate the same injuries on him. He packed a bag and set out for Greytooth’s lair, grumbling all the while. But hurrying. I sent Keel along with him, both to help if it was needed and to make sure Hurvus didn’t make a detour into some tavern. I didn’t think he would, but with Hurvus in possession of a pocket full of marks and a drunkard’s thirst, thinking wasn’t enough. Keel was insurance.

  Also, Keel would be useless in the rest of what was to come. Worse. A distraction. Better he was out of the way.

  For his part, Keel was happy not to have anything to do with the Hag. Can’t say I blamed him really.

  Holgren and I set out for the Wreck.

  I really, really hoped Greytooth had managed to get the Stone onto Lyta’s penteconter. If he’d missed, it could be anywhere. Knowing my luck, “anywhere” would probably mean in the Bay. In which case, we were all dead.

  “Now that we have some privacy,” said Holgren, “is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Um. I love you?”

  “I love you too. That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “Everything is coming apart at the seams here. In my experience, that doesn’t just happen by chance. What are we really facing?”

  “One of the Eightfold’s Blades. Kalara’s, the Knife that Parts the Night. It’s toying with me, Holgren. I can’t prove anything, but…”

  “But?”

  “There’s something of a chance that when I destroyed Abanon’s Blade, I became her avatar. There might well be a connection between that and this. I think we aren’t going to make it out of this one if I’m being honest.”

  He was silent.

  “Say something.”

  “I noticed you’ve only got one of the knives I gave you.”

  “I lost the other in the Riail, sorry. What’s that got to do with what I just said?”

  He smiled. “You really are hard on knives.” He stopped walking, put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes. Smiled. “If I was Kalara’s Knife, Amra Thet
ys, I’d be very, very worried.”

  It’s good to have one person who believes in you. Especially when you’re having a hard time believing in yourself.

  “Knowing you, I brought you a replacement.” He dug into a pocket of his black longcoat and came up with something that looked like a newborn arquebus.

  “That’s not a knife.”

  “I didn’t say I brought you a replacement knife, just a replacement. I made it myself.”

  “It’s not even a quarter the size of an arquebus, and an arquebus isn’t much more than a toy.”

  “It’s not an arquebus. It’s a pistol. A flintlock pistol, to be precise, not that that means anything to you, I know.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Well, first, keep it from getting wet, or it’s no better than a club. You cock it by pulling this hammer back, then you point it at the person you want to perforate and pull this trigger. There’ll be a loud bang, a cloud of evil-smelling smoke, and hopefully a fresh corpse. The closer you are, the better your odds.”

  “How many shots?”

  “One.”

  “One?”

  “Do we have time for me to go through reloading?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then one shot. If I know you, it will be enough.”

  “If you say so, Holgren.”

  “I do.”

  I stuck it in an outer pocket after giving it one last dubious look-over. It’s not that I doubted Holgren or his weapon, it was just that I was a creature of habit. I knew knives. I trusted knives.

  “Thanks, I guess. Now, let’s go save the city.”

  #

  I explained the situation with the spirits of the dead and with Lyta and the Founder’s Stone on the way. Holgren was intrigued, but he kept his comments to a single, “I wish there was time to speak to her about the world before the Cataclysm.” Endlessly curious was my Holgren.

  I didn’t get into Lyta’s belief that I was now somehow Abanon’s avatar. If we survived the night, there would be time enough to pick it over and decide if she was lying. If we didn’t, well, the problem would solve itself, now wouldn’t it?

  The Founder’s Stone had indeed made it onto Lyta’s galley if just barely. One corner was roughly a foot from the tarp that served as her doorway. The other end of it stuck out over the sea, resting on the low railing of the penteconter. It was in no danger of tipping out into the bay, thank Kerf. Could have been worse.

  Other than the Stone, nothing seemed to have changed on the ship. With Holgren behind me, I pushed open the tarp.

  Lyta was still inside the tiller’s shed, still sitting in her chair.

  “Lyta,” I said.

  “Amra,” she replied. Then after a moment, she nodded to Holgren. “Magister.”

  He bowed briefly in return and murmured, “Doma.”

  I cut him a glance. “How do you know—forget it. No time.” Holgren raise an eyebrow and smiled.

  I turned back to Lyta. “There’s your Stone.”

  “Indeed.”

  I waited a second. She didn’t seem to have anything more to say.

  “Did you need an invitation?”

  “I need the Stone to break the plane between this room and the outside world. My prison is this room, not the entire ship.”

  “Kerf’s lice-ridden beard! You might have mentioned that earlier!”

  She shrugged. “I did not think you would succeed in removing the Stone from the Riail.”

  “Is this some sort of joke to you?”

  “It is not.” She sighed. “A millennium in durance may have made me…hesitant.”

  “Hesitant about what?”

  “Freedom. Responsibility. Re-entering a world changed beyond recognition.”

  “Too gods-damned bad,” I spat at her. Then I turned to Holgren. “Hold that damned tarp open, would you? Better yet, tear it down.”

  He got busy with that without a single question. I walked over to Lyta, stood behind her chair.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Checking to make sure Holgren was out of the way, I said, “Giving you the swift kick back into reality that you apparently need.” And then I did just that, lashing out sideways with one foot, sending her chair and her skittering across the short distance between her and the Stone. The two front legs of the chair pitched up against the low sill of the doorway, and she tipped forward, screaming as she broke the plane between the tiller’s shed and the outside world.

  She landed heavily on the Stone. She lay there, unmoving. For its part, the chair crumbled to dust. For a few seconds after that, nothing happened, nothing at all. A sudden, sickening thought occurred to me: What if leaving the tiller’s shed had killed her?

  Shit, shit. Hells and shit.

  Then, I saw the change begin.

  Spreading slowly out from wherever the Stone touched, the penteconter was changing. The stone deck and rail were transforming back into their original wood.

  I glanced over at Lyta. She was not moving, but that ancient, brittle, dingy-white hair was shifting to lustrous black, the color creeping down from the roots to the tips.

  “Amra,” Holgren said.

  “Yes?”

  “I think it would be prudent to get off this ship before the transformation is complete.”

  “I want to make sure she follows through on her end of the bargain and takes down the barrier.”

  “If she chooses not to, I don’t think you’ll be able to force her. Not now that she’s been reunited with the Stone.”

  “If you say so.”

  Careful not to touch the Stone, we crossed the plank and clambered onto the rocks. Watched the ship transform back into a vessel of wood and rope and canvas. Watched the oarsmen become flesh and blood once again, clamber up out of the flooded galley pit and cling to the rails, confused, gabbling to each other in a language that had not been spoken for hundreds of years.

  When the ship was, once again, a ship, albeit a holed one, Lyta stirred, staggered to her feet.

  She was a beauty. Black hair, pale skin, gray eyes. But thin, on the edge of emaciation.

  She stared at me. Her face was cold. Her crew called out to her; she ignored them.

  “Your turn,” I shouted to her. “I held up my end of the bargain.”

  She nodded once, sharply, then put one hand down on the Stone and the other up in the air.

  The dome of death that enclosed the city flared, greenish-white. The stars dimmed and disappeared, and a keening filled the air.

  The dome fractured. The keening rose in pitch and volume. I clapped my hands over my ears. It didn’t help. All at once, the dome disintegrated, reverted back into the hundreds of corpselights I had seen shoot into the sky just two nights before. They swirled in the sky, shining points being sucked down into a gyre whose eye was the palm of Lyta’s hand.

  They did not go willingly. But they went. Slowly at first, one by one, then in an ever-increasing stream, they rushed down, spinning faster than my eye could follow, a whirlwind blur of light.

  And then suddenly, they were gone, and it was silent once more save for the beating of the surf and the slap of thousand-year-old canvas, the creak of millennium-old wood.

  “Catch,” Lyta called out to me and threw me something.

  I caught it. It was a little, round, clear green stone no bigger than my thumbnail. It looked like glass. It wasn’t.

  “What do I do with this?” I asked her.

  “That is entirely up to you. Partings, Doma Thetys. I will not say farewell.” Then, she turned away from me and, with a gesture, repaired the rent in her ship’s hull. She spoke to her crew. They began to bail. She did not look at me again. After a moment, I put the bead of souls down into the pocket that held the locket with my mother’s portrait and the Sparrow God’s leaf.

  “I think we’ve been dismissed,” Holgren said.

  “Suits me,” I
replied.

  “She called you Doma.”

  “So?”

  “Do you know what Doma means?”

  “Yeah. Similar to mistress. So what?”

  “It’s not similar to mistress. It doesn’t translate all that well into Lucernan, but basically she just called you a Power.”

  “Not sure what that means, and just at the moment, I don’t care. I’m glad to part ways with her. I didn’t really enjoy her company.” But I liked the next person we were calling on much less.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When we entered South Gate, Holgren staggered and went to one knee. Vomited.

  “Holgren,” I shouted, convinced the Telemarch was attacking again. But Holgren put up a hand.

  “This place,” he said, getting to his feet. “It’s very, very wrong.”

  “It must be the rift,” I said. “It’s breaking down its containment faster now.”

  “Worse,” he replied. “It’s poisoning my well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean my own power is being affected by what’s happening, and not in a good way. I think it’s best if I don’t cast any magic until I absolutely have to.”

  “All right. No worries,” I said, but what I meant was, “Oh, hells.” If Holgren couldn’t count on using his own power, our chances of surviving the night had just gone from extremely unlikely to “Ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha.”

  Well. I had never really expected to survive my appointment with the Telemarch anyway. But I’d been more or less resigned to that when it had just been me going down. Now, it was Holgren as well, and I couldn’t stand the idea. But I knew better than to tell him to leave me. He wouldn’t any more than I would leave him.

  “Let’s continue on, shall we?” he asked, starting to walk up Southgate Street, which had still not been repaired.

  “The barrier is down now,” I said as we walked. “We could just collect Keel, and Greytooth and Hurvus I suppose, and leave.” And leave a little girl with my mother’s name alone and imprisoned in the Citadel until it exploded.

  “We could,” he replied, “but I know how you hate to leave things half-finished. Makes you twitchy and grumpy. Impossible to be around, actually.”