Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune

by Lynn Abbey

  And to remember him. To become a great artist and create … just a small statue of his prince, so others would remember him as Grandfather had known him.

  Grandfather had tried to follow his prince’s parting orders, but the gods had deserted him—Kadithe didn’t know which gods and cast the blame pretty much equally.

  Grandfather’s wife had died in the summer of seventysix—taken away by swamp fever. His son had lived to manhood, fathered his own son (Kadithe sighed and bit his lip) only to have the plague take son and daughter-in-law, leaving him with the howling, ill-tempered infant.

  Well, Grandfather had never accused him of such uncivilized behavior, but he’d seen squalling brats enough in his fourteen years to know he must have been a sore trial to an aging, widowed metal-smith, in a city where Dyareela’s Hands of Chaos … appropriated … anything moving that was left unattended.

  “Kadithe, dear boy.” Grandfather’s cane nudged his knee and with a blink, he was back in their tiny home. Squatters, they were, in a rotting wreck of a building no one had yet stepped forward to claim, but “home” it was and “home” it would be for Kadithe Mur, as long as Grandfather filled it with his warmth. “The worst of the storm has passed.” And indeed, something that might pass for actual sunlight filtered through the cracks in the wall and roof. “If we’re to eat tonight, you’d best stir yourself.”

  Kadithe. Always Kadithe. Never anything but Kadithe. It was a good name, as names went, but sure as he lived and breathed, he knew his real name was Kadakithis, that his grandfather had named him after his beloved prince, then called him otherwise, for safety’s sake.

  Not that his grandfather had ever admitted as much, but his hair had been golden once, and curly. Time had turned it to muddy brown waves and prudence kept it unwashed and so darker and straighter still, but once, he’d been his grandfather’s little prince.

  “It’s Halakday. What do you say to some of Mardelith’s cheese? The Gods’ Gold would taste mighty fine with a bit of flatbread, don’t you think?”

  Now … he swallowed a sigh and pulled himself to feet gone tingly … now he was his grandfather’s only hope for survival.

  He clasped the arthritic hand extended toward him, pressed it, and kissed the forehead above those eyes whose sight had been burned out five years ago with slag from his own kiln. Payment, so the owners of the red hands had claimed, for his part in the downfall of their bloody goddess.

  Better they’d killed him outright, flayed him inch by inch as they had their other victims. But no, they’d let him live—without his soul, his talented hands broken and twisted beyond creation.

  “The Gold it is, Grandfather,” he said in the low croak of a voice that was all he’d had since that day. “If I have to bed her to get it.”

  Grandfather laughed. It was an old joke, at least to Grandfather. It was what he had always said when Kadithe made a special request for dinner. What Grandfather didn’t know, and what he’d die before he told him, was that one day, perhaps all too soon, it might well cease to be a jest.

  But not today. Today, he had something Mardelith might want far more than his own skinny, as yet extremely untried loins. Not today, and perhaps—he closed his eyes, thinking of that strange meeting with Bezul—perhaps never.

  A quiver hit his belly, and for once, the feeling wasn’t hunger. It took a moment, but eventually he identified that strange sensation: hope. Two warm blankets (one for each trip), an iron skillet to cook their flatbread (he’d been using a large rock), a fork for turning the bread … a worn velvet pillow for him to sit on by the fire … .

  He still suspected the changer and his wife of charity, but … he thought of that precious roll of glittering wire, the bright ruby he’d been guiltily hoarding for five years … damned if he wouldn’t make it worth their trust.

  In the meantime, he and Grandfather still had to eat.

  He padded his way through the narrow beams of sunlight to the heap of rubble in the corner of the room, rubble scavenged from the ruins throughout the Maze, rubble that was mostly firewood for the small fire he had to keep going for Grandfather’s sake, but which also served as camouflage for the far more precious tools. Grandfather’s tools. Tools for modeling clay, mallets of all sizes and weights for pounding copper into ornate trinkets … everything from the old shop but his kiln and forge.

  And, of course, the raw materials: Those had been the first to go.

  Copper, bronze, gold … statuary to jewelry—even iron and weapons, early on in the prince’s employ. If it was metal, Grandfather had worked it; if it was beautiful, Grandfather had made it.

  Lifting the loose floorboard, he pulled up a charred, but still-sound box. One day, this salvage might end up in the fire, but for now, it held his own creations: a small handful of jewelry, punched copper lamp shields … all made from scraps of salvaged metal. He pulled out the newest shield, tooled with an intricate punch-pattern of his own design, and sand polished until it gleamed in a beam of light coming through a half-rotted plank.

  Pride filled him as he remembered the way Chersey had looked at his necklace. Grandfather’s eyes were gone, but not his knowledge, and maybe, just maybe, not all of his magic, true magic, that born of hands and clay and bronze and fire, not gods and incantations. Grandfather had had no formal assistants, no apprentices. For fear of the Hand, Grandfather had never let anyone else into that back room where he performed his metal-working magic—and where Kadithe lived.

  To the world outside the shop, there’d been no Kadithe. The plague had taken him along with his parents, or so Grandfather told the Hand-plagued world. As an infant, Kadithe lay, drugged to silence, beneath the floorboards. As a child, he’d been the assistant Grandfather had never dared to hire, the apprentice he’d never dared take on. Grandfather had been parent, teacher, and mentor in one. He knew the history of the Empire and Sanctuary, spoke both Ilsigi and Rankene and could judge the temperature of a mold to a nicety and pour a perfect bronze casting by the time he was seven.

  But he’d never been outside the shop, never even met one of its infrequent customers, though he’d watched from his bolthole in their home above the shop. He knew Sanctuary’s streets, its buildings and gates, but only as maps and drawings. His feet had never been cold or muddy, and he’d known the sun only as shafts of light through cracked shutters.

  Grandfather and the shop had been his life, and that had been all he’d needed … until, years after Molin Torchholder and the Irrune chieftain had supposedly banished them, the Hands came back.

  After the Hands had taken Grandfather’s eyes, the shop and all its contents—save those tools, many of them unique to Grandfather and so irreplaceable—had gone to pay the priests and healers who had saved Grandfather’s life. What was left had kept the two of them alive for the better part of four years.

  After Grandfather had recovered, Kadithe had gone outside the shop for the first time, as Grandfather’s eyes and banker. He’d learned the real value of money, had learned how to talk to people and even to bargain, after a fashion. Mostly, he’d learned not to bolt to the nearest shadow at the first hint of bell, footstep, or a voice other than Grandfather’s.

  In silence lay safety. If the Hand couldn’t see you, hear you, and didn’t know to look for you, they couldn’t take you.

  Anonymity and silence remained their allies. They’d become just another set of ragged inhabitants of a city slowly recovering from as black an era as ever it had suffered. But money had been finite and as their small hoard dwindled, they’d had to move into the Maze, where overnight the tangle of streets and alleyways could change. Now it was Grandfather who stayed at home, while Kadithe dealt with the outside world. Alone.

  He didn’t know what he’d have done these last months without Bezul’s repair jobs. It was Grandfather who had suggested he try Bezul earlier that year, after he turned fourteen, old enough, so Grandfather said, for an employer to take him seriously. He had to wonder now if Grandfather hadn’t anticipated t
hat turn of fortune. Curious that there’d been no word of remonstrance for his betrayal of their anonymity. In fact, Grandfather had simply smiled and asked to feel the new blanket.

  Bezul had given him a whole new perspective on the value of his little creations. He had a few coins still, possibly even enough for Grandfather’s cheese for a single dinner. On the other hand … he rolled the shield in his hands, watching the light sparkle across its surface, then wrapped it in a scrap of cloth, which in turn he tucked into a ragged drawstring bag … .

  With luck—and always he needed luck when it came to bargaining—he would be able to get enough of Grandfather’s favorite cheese to last a week or more.

  Rather less than a week, but it was all Mardelith had left by the time he got to the farmers’ market But he got his pick of her castoff vegetables, and a promise for another half-round of the cheese next week.

  It was, he thought, dipping his head in thanks, more than generous. He should object, but he’d left pride behind years ago. Instead he thanked Mardelith, tucked his new treasure into the drawstring bag, and headed through the market, the bag slung over his shoulder. The southern sky promised another round of noise and mud-renewal, but not for a time yet. For now, the sun was warm, the ground still wet, and the light … perfect.

  For now, the lure of the smells from the neighboring stalls was nothing to the lure of the Prince’s Gate. He slipped through the crowds—all of Sanctuary seemed to be taking frenetic advantage of the momentary lull in the storm—and darted through the Gate, barely avoiding an empty cart, the farmer more bent on getting home before the next squall than in avoiding barefooted obstacles.

  But his spot behind the guard station was dry and out of the wind. Grulandi, the on-duty guard, greeted him with an indulgent smile, as he checked the departing farmer off his list.

  His stash was safe … but then who was likely to steal a handful of sticks hidden in a box and buried beneath a rock? It wasn’t for fear of theft but rather to salvage every precious moment in this place that he kept the sticks.

  Settling crosslegged, his right shoulder to the station wall, he smoothed the damp sand, letting the calm of this place flow up through his fingertips.

  Today was the day. He’d put it off too long, wasting his time with textures and perspectives and strangers who passed this busy place. Above the gate was a plaque, a stone carving, two men in profile, facing one another, two crossed swords over a spear … there was an inscription, a dedication Grandfather had said, but he had eyes only for the profile on the left.

  Kadakithis.

  It was not, according to Grandfather, a particularly good likeness, but he had dim memories of the time before the Hand, of clay busts Grandfather had made, multiple trials to try to catch the prince’s elusive vitality. It was time he began his own search, to set those features in his mind while he still had Grandfather to confirm his vision.

  He had a lump of clay in the pile at home, carefully protected by oilcloth, regularly dampened. When the time came, when he tried his hand, Grandfather would be able to tell just by touch, if he’d gotten it right.

  His (currently) favorite stick, grown dry with time, shattered on the first stroke. Refusing to accept that accident as some sort of ill omen, he smoothed the area and selected (and tested) a second stick. First the profile, then, assuming the nose was thus, the eyes thus and thus … slowly he began to rotate the head, to make a three-quarter view, then full—

  “Not very good, are you?”

  The stick jammed into the sand and broke, gouging out Prince Kadakithis’ left eye. He winced, lifted shaking hands to his face and told himself, for the thousandth time, it was all ephemeral. It was the practice that counted. Training the hand to be ready for when the time came and he could actually commit his dreams to parchment, or clay, or …

  He turned slowly toward the owner of the rather shrill, young voice. A dark-haired boy with eyes a touch too limpid stared down his small nose at the drawings in the sand.

  “Wha’s wrong wid ’m?” he asked, in his outside voice.

  “Froggin’ shite, doesn’t look at all like the froggin’ portrait, now does it?”

  He smothered a grin. The foul language sat oddly on the boy’s tongue and not just because of his youth—he’d heard far worse from much younger Maze-rats. It was the refined Ilsigi wrappings of the filth that called its verisimilitude into question.

  “Froggin’ carvin’ don’t look like no froggin’ prince, neither,” he replied, in his lowest Maze speech, making his own tongue match his clothing as he’d learned to do years ago. “That-there rock-chipper, he made ol’ KittyKat’s face th’ way ’e seed ‘im, I makes ’im th’ way I sees ’im.”

  “You never! He’s long gone. Went to live with the fish, he did. Easy life. Left us all to the Hand and the raiders.”

  “He did not!” Defense of his hero made Kadithe careless—of his opinions as well as his vowels—and the boy was quick. Suspicion fairly oozed from him, sitting oddly on that heretofore open countenance. Suspicion and (worse) curiosity.

  The boy hunkered down beside him, and asked softly, almost … conspiratorially: “If he didn’t go to live with the fish, where is he?”

  The unchildlike tone, the sharp-eyed look, made him uneasy. Made him wonder if he was dealing with a boy at all. Some said there were people who could change the way they looked, for real, or just make a person think they looked different. That would be mighty useful for a spy.

  Kadithe bit his lip on his desire to defend the long-gone prince, loathe, now, to reveal his stance on that matter, and discovered, to his utter disgust, that he couldn’t hold that suddenly keen gaze, and retreated to his drawing, smoothing the damage and restoring the eye.

  Grandfather knew this gate well, he’d complained at length and in specific detail about the differences between that image and the real thing.

  “I never saw him, of course,” he said quietly, dropping the pretense of gutter-speak, but returning to the first, far safer, question. “But I … knew someone who did He’s described the man he knew. The stonecarver carved the man he knew, with the tools and in the substance he knew. I’m …” How to put Grandfather’s teaching into words this child could hope to understand? “I try to imagine how that stonecarver’s eyes saw the world as opposed to how I see it, then adjust for the difference, using the first man’s verbal description.”

  “That’s … dumb.”

  So much for explanations …

  “He’s dead, you know,” that childishly ingenuous, nonchildishly low voice continued, confident, and rather bloodthirsty. “Drowned. Just like Chenaya.”

  And so much for avoiding question of Kadakithis’ disappearance. The boy had backed off his initial slander, that most popular theory regarding the Disappearance, had shifted to something far more possible, considering the truth he knew. Still … dead? like Chenaya?

  He refused to believe it.

  “How d’you—” He pressed his lips on the angry challenge, which could only bring unwanted attention to him, worse, questions about his own belief, and kept drawing, stabbing the sand viciously, there in the hair, where finesse made little difference.

  “’Cuz I knew someone who knew him, too. Knew him real well.”

  Kadithe couldn’t prevent his involuntary twitch.

  “Name’s Bec. Becvar.” A small, ink-stained hand appeared in front of his nose.

  He ignored it. Even if this Bec wasn’t a shape-changing spy, friends, especially small friends several years his junior and (from his clothing) worlds beyond his current station, were not a part of his life. He had two kinds of peers: those who had been rounded up by the Hands and those who had escaped them. This boy, who must have been born after Arizak took the palace, was neither.

  Those he’d met who’d survived the pit kept to themselves, convinced those who’d escaped that life couldn’t begin to understand their nightmares. Those who had escaped capture spent a great deal of time and energy trying to match mise
ry for misery; some, the gods only knew why, even pretended they were themselves survivors.

  Not that he could remember much about those years. He’d been four when his grandfather had opened this same gate to let in Molin Torchholder, his life to that point little more than darkness, tucked away while Grandfather worked. With the steady tap of a mallet for a lullaby, he’d learned, as Grandfather put it, to hold his peace long before he’d learned to hold his piss.

  The ink-stained hand disappeared.

  “You got a name?”

  Persistent brat. He ignored him, this Bec.

  No, it hadn’t been the reign that had instilled the instincts of the hunted in him, that made him turn to shadows in which to hide rather than extend gestures of greeting. Grandfather had never believed the Hand was gone, had always known a child of his would be a special target, if ever they discovered his part in the so-called liberation. Grandfather had taught him to go up into the bolthole the moment anyone came to the door, to watch and wait until it was safe to come down.

  He’d been nine when the Hands took their revenge. He’d watched from the upper floor, through the hole in the wood as they held Grandfather’s eyes open with his own tongs and slowly, slowly dripped the slag in, a tiny drop at a time.

  His grandfather had never made a sound, not in pain, not in betrayal. He’d refused even to cry for help, knowing his neighbors were no match for those animals. And Kadithe? Brave Kadithe? He’d crouched there, barely breathing, as those red hands had smashed every clay model and mold, had seen every wince as his still-conscious grandfather had heard his legacy destroyed around him.

  A shadow fell across his sand drawing.

  “Why don’t you just go away?” he muttered, and thrust himself to his feet.

  The neighbors hadn’t known about him, but the screams he couldn’t contain had been the cock’s crow for all of Sanctuary that morning. They’d brought help—and left his voice permanently scarred.