by Allan Cole
Garla shook his head. “Not at all, Pip,” he said in surprisingly cultured tones. “I was only admiring the display. I consider myself a master at tugging heart strings. But that...” He looked at me, sardonic grin growing wider... “was truly the work of genius. I wept a tear myself and I don’t mind saying so, Lady Antero.”
“She don’t like bein’ called Lady,” Pip snapped. “It’s Cap’n Antero.”
Garla dipped his head in a slight bow to me. “Captain, is it?” he said. “How... equal of you.”
Pip started to get angry but I waved him down.
“Speak your mind,” I said. “No one will harm you.”
Garla shrugged. “Oh, I believe you, Captain Rali Antero. Who could deny what they just saw? Coupled, most importantly, with Pip’s claim. Which I never doubted from the beginning. No, I’m a strong supporter of the King Of Thieves. Who, after all, has seen enough and done enough for a dozen lifetimes. And is definitely no one’s fool. You’re Captain Antero, all right. Miracle though it may seem.”
“Then why the sneer, my friend?” I asked. “Why the hostility toward me?”
“Not to you in particular, Captain Antero,” he said. “But what you represent.” He made an elegant gesture of disdain. “All the lords and ladies who were so quick to desert their fellow Orissans to keep their comforts and win a greater share besides.”
He indicated the rest of the group. “We’re all thieves here. We make no pretense we’re anything else. But how is it that it’s Orissan castoffs who stand for her now, when all else have bowed down or fled?”
“I can’t answer that,” I said. “And I must admit it amazed me.”
“What will happen, Captain Antero,” Garla continued, “if we win this fight?
“Who will rule when this lot is gone. The noble families again? A different group, perhaps, but of similar breeding, mind you.”
“What do you want to happen?” I asked.
Garla raised an eyebrow, surprised at this. Then he nodded and said, “Why, if I were given the choice the new leaders would be common folk with uncommon experience and strength.” He gestured at Pip. “The King Of Thieves would be one such man.”
“If that’s what you want,” I said, “work to accomplish it when this fight is done.
“I have no future in Orissa after this. Make your own. Just make it fair for all and you’ll have no quarrel from me.”
“That was honestly spoken, Captain Antero,” Garla said. “And I’m your man. On your say so now. Not just Pip’s.”
He looked around at the others. “Do we all agree?” he asked.
The ragged chorus of agreement was quite loud.
In the days that followed Orissa was struck by the greatest wave of knavery in its history. No lord, lady or merchant baron could walk a public street with purse or person intact. These were the true knaves, as Garla pointed out. And we punished them severely.
We pilfered their carriages, looted their shops and when they retreated into their homes Pip sent his ratboys through the privy entrances and held them hostage while we stole all their worldly goods, carrying the loot away in their own carriages.
The assault was so furious and unprecedented that the nobles and merchants descended on Kato, gnashing their teeth. They demanded soldiers be deployed, our spies said. And Director Kato was hard-pressed explaining why he didn’t have those soldiers to spare.
This was a particularly sore point with the rich families who’d betrayed Orissa’s citizens. The expense for keeping the populace down and maintaining the siege at Galana was entirely theirs. They chafed first at the high cost and second that even with that too dear a cost they weren’t getting their money’s worth if they weren’t safe in their own homes.
Kato promised to do something but was so vague, our spies said, that the nobles went away grumbling and dissatisfied.
But harassing those rich traitors, satisfying though it might have been, was not my sole purpose. Not by half it wasn’t.
Until I’d arrived the pot of discontent had been simmering over a low flame, barely kept alive by Pip and his thieves.
I soon learned the barracks attack had made more noise than damage. I viewed the area the next day. There was a big smoking crater in the front of the building and the doors had been blown off the entrance. But that was all. It also turned out that not only had no one been injured but few soldiers had even been present.
Somehow word had filtered out the building was a target and it’d been empty, except for a few men who so drunk I doubt if they’d have been harmed if the full blast had hit them.
What Kato lacked in troops Novari made up for with an elaborate web of spies, or peeries as the Cheapside villains called them. They noted every suspicious act or word, endangering every plan Pip had worked out. The barracks explosion was only the latest in a string of attacks hobbled by the sharp-eyed peeries.
I had to tangle that spy network into knots if any plan was to succeed.
The series of raids on the rich was a good start on the job. The peeries were pulled from their normal spidery tasks and hurled into the breech to stem the criminal assault.
At the same time we created our own network of spies. The beggars and barrow boys and purse cutters were our key to the streets. The jewel thieves and rat boys our snoops in their homes. And as the tension among the rich mounted it spewed out in their vices. The harlots and gamesmen kept us busy listening to their reports from the dark side.
Those initial gains came as much from the new breed of sorcery as from the fervor of Pip’s rogues.
I created spells for the pickpockets to make their game easier. Usually they worked in teams. A woman such as Palmer who looked like an great-eyed innocent waif. And a man such as Lammer who was fleet of foot. I gave the women charms that would make them seem even more appealing, innocently alluring. And I gave the men amulets that would cloud their victim’s mind with greater confusion.
“All I do is gives ‘em a bump,” Palmer giggled to me. “I falls to the street wi’ me best maidenly shriek. But makin’ sure, yer knows, that I flashes more’n a maiden oughter. An’ when they help me up, I makes sure they gets a good grab of me tit.”
She winked at me. “It’s a fact,” she said, “that men got less brains’n women. Let ‘em get a holt of a tit and they lose half of that. ”
Lammer groaned in mock protest. He’d heard this before.
“If I didn’t get his purse when I bumped him,” Palmer went on, ignoring him, “I gets it fer sure, then. What with that spell you give us, they melts in their toes, they do. Dust me off. Feel me up. Try to buy me a little grog to make up fer the accident.”
“Whilst she’s plyin’ her womanly wiles,” Lammer broke in. “I rubs the amulet you give us. Say the verse, which I don’t understand, but it works so good who cares? ‘N they go goggle-glimmed ‘n almost’ ferget their names. Palmer hikes me the purse ‘n I’m off lickity-split wi’ no one the wiser.”
Palmer slipped a small hand inside her bodice, which was cut just low enough to weaken her prey but high enough to retain her waif-maiden pose. She drew out two sheets of folded paper.
“Somone’ll be missin’ these real bad about now,” she said as she handed them over. “Got ‘em off a squint not two hours ago. Bumped into him wi’out really lookin’ at his face first. Careless of me, but tha’ spell you give me’s made things so easy I’m formin’ bad habits.” She snorted is disgust with herself. She had a reputation to maintain.
“Anywise, I got his purse like I always do and the squint’s got his glims down me dress an’ his hands are comin’ up the other way, dustin’ me off.
“Soon as I saw who he was I got away ‘mos as quick as Lammer.”
“It was Calin, it was,” Lammer broke in. “Chief peery of the Central Market. Makes him the biggest peery in Orissa. Had those inky bits in his purse.”
I hastened to open the papers. These were the documents of the central market’s master spy.
The
first was a list of names in a small cribbed hand. There were numbers beside the names - money amounts.
“That’s a list of all’a peeries in central market,” Palmer said, teeth glittering. “‘N their pay. That’s what old Calin was doin’. Handing out their money and collectin’ the news.”
“From the fat purse we took off’a him,” Lammer said, “he didn’t get too far today.”
I opened the next. It was in an official hand and bore the seal of the Lyre Bird. The document swore that the holder was in the employ of the Goddess Novari and was not to be detained from her business in any way.”
“Tha’s a pass for the peeries,” Palmer said. “Show it to a soldier ‘n they let ‘em go.”
“Now that was a good day’s work,” I said. “And you can be sure just the right person will get each one.”
I gave the list of names to Queenie. And within two days all the spies in the central market were gone. Her thugs did such a clean job of it there wasn’t a speck of blood or blurted cry to alarm anyone. Vanishing without a trace.
The second item I used in a duplication spell, creating scores of documents for Pip to hand out to his men and women. And by and by our own peeries were passing through the enemy’s defenses like whey through cheesecloth.
I also made potions for the harlots, which they used to spice the wine they gave their marks to put them at ease. The potion made them randy as goats and babbling fools glad to burble secrets into the harlot’s perfumed ears. It almost made them permanent customers, because one side effect is that they became impotent except in the arms of their favorite whore.
“We’ve got every whore’s rocker in Cheapside bouncin’ on its springs all night long,” the beauteous Pearl said one day as she pouring a sack of jewels and coins into an already overflowing oak chest.
She shook the pouch to loosen a few small stubborn gems. Her lush body jiggled under the sheer wrap, a sensuous reminder of why she was Mistress of her guild.
“Got all this from jus’ one Panter,” she said. “Las’ one of the night, thank the gods.” She groaned and rubbed her back. “Bumped me ‘til near dawn ‘n was beggin’ for more when I threw him outter the carriage.
“The Panter said he loves on’y me and give me this.” She indicated the pouch. Then laughed. “Threw it back in his face and cursed him for bein’ so tight-fisted wi’ the woman he loves. But with that potion in him he was whoreified through and through. Begged me to take it back and said he’d bring twice that tonight to make up for it.”
Then she sat, crossing her fine long legs. “But I got more’n that Panter’s balls in my fist wi’ that potion,” she said. “He’s one’a Director Kato’s diplomats. Likes to brag on how important he is whilst he’s bumpin’ my poor arse into the carriage seat.
“He told me a lot last night about the latest doin’s wi’ King Solaros.”
I jolted in my seat. “The King of Tyrenia?”
“That’s what the Panter said,” Pearl replied. “Seems old Solaros is gettin’ real irate about what’s goin’ on here. Although from what the Panter said, Solaros don’t know the half of it. All he knows is Kato and Novari are keepin’ all the stuff your brother and Janela Greycloak discovered to themselves.
“Solaros says Orissa is violatin’ the agreement he made with Amalric Antero. Which was that Orissa would share ever’thin’ with all the kingdoms in this part of the world, whilst he did the same where he is. From what Panter said Solaros is gettin’ suspicious that Kato and Novari are makin’ some kind’a grab. That they’ll take over ever’body near Orissa. Then maybe be so swell-noggined they’d try Tyrenia on for size.”
I turned to Pip who was listening to all this closely. “That’s not only a possibility,” I said, “but I have no doubt this is ultimately Novari’s plan. She’ll want the whole thing. Not just half of it.”
Pip smiled. “I likes what I hears, I does,” he said. “Maybe we’ll gets some help from King Solaros. He’s got a good honest heart ‘n he won’t like what’s been done. Especially to you Anteros.”
“He’s too far away, Pip,” I gently reminded him. “It’d take him more than a year to march and sail any kind of force from the Kingdoms Of The Night to Orissa. And it’ll not only be too late for us. But probably for him.
“The Lyre Bird will be so powerful by then he won’t have a chance no matter how many soldiers he brings with him.”
Pip sighed. “That’s true enough,” he said. “But it makes old Pip feel better just the same. I’d a been sore diserappointed if King Solaros turned his back on us wi’out even tryin’.
I felt the same way. And although help from afar was impossible I was comforted by the knowledge that my brother’s friend was thinking of us.
I bolstered the wave of knavery with a series of fires aimed at the places the wealthy frequented, such as the fine costume and gem shops near the riverfront and the bath houses and perfumeries near the Evocator’s Palace. I used Queenies’ thugs for this, supplying them with little balls of ordinary cotton wrapped about not so ordinary embers. All they had to do was put the cotton ball in a likely spot, find a hiding place - no more than twenty feet away, which was the tricky part - and chant a little spell I’d made them all memorize. The magical ember would burst into a ball of flame which would burn for hours no matter how much water or sand was thrown it.
Some days they hit so many targets the whole city was filled with columns of smoke and the sound of soldiers fighting the fires.
While all this was going on I kept waiting for Novari to show herself. If she did and by some wild chance I could get close to her I might gamble all and strike at her openly.
But she must have sensed something was awry because she even failed to appear at the annual End Of Harvest festival. As the self-proclaimed new Goddess Of Orissa it was a very odd thing for the Lyre Bird to miss.
It was just as well for her sake that she did, because Pip and I made that festival a bonus day for larceny and violence. We struck all over the city. Setting fires, raiding homes and generally creating a brief reign of terror in the wealthy neighborhoods. Kato was forced to cancel the ceremonies at the Amphitheater and rush soldiers into the neighborhoods. But we’d long disappeared into the warrens of the sewers by then.
Several times I cast spells to seek her. I sent my spirit out in different forms to try to slip up on her unaware. Although her spoor was all about I couldn’t find her through the many layers of confusion she’d piled up to protect herself from just such a search. Each layer contained an alarm spell which I got past easily enough. But it would’ve taken weeks to make it through the whole maze without any assurance that in the end she’d actually be there. For the time being I gave it up.
The massive center of the confusion, I noted, was outside of Orissa towards Amalric’s old villa. I’d already been told she’d made her headquarters there so that was nothing new.
I did learn something from the attempts. The confusion shield was not Novari’s work alone. I’d sniffed the spoor of at least a score of Evocators who must have worked on it with her. I thought it was interesting she’d tie up so many wizards she could’ve used against Palmeras for such a comparatively small purpose.
It made me think of all the other sorcery being used. All the shields and spells and spell sniffers required to keep Orissa under her thumb. All the Evocators required to guard the highways and waterways from smugglers of sorcerous contraband.
It seemed to me the Lyre Bird’s magical forces were badly stretched even before I arrived.
And I was pleased to know that since that time I’d made her stretch her powers as tight as a sail in a gale-force wind.
Very good. I had her going at breakneck speed.
Now I needed to change her course. I had in mind a nice set of reefs.
Finally the day came when I could no longer delay pushing forward with the second and most important part of my plan.
I asked Pip to gather his lieutenants and once they were settled in hi
s chamber - crammed even deeper with looted treasures - I rose to speak.
I praised them for their efforts, taking care to address each woman or man and point up a particularly fine deed they’d done. And then when they were all full of good feeling I said:
“We’ve hit Novari and Kato hard, there’s no doubt about it. And as you all know this is just the beginning of the arse kicking we’ve got planned for them.”
This produced loud cheers and many minutes of boasting about deeds yet to be accomplished. The thieves’ cant was so thick I could barely decipher it and what I could was so crude it made me hesitate to translate further.
When I thought they’d gone on long enough I raised my golden hand and there was a hush.
“Unfortunately,” I said, “I can’t stay here with you and see it out.”