Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel

by Bell, Hilari

  It was so crazy it might just work. No one who hadn’t seen that hushed room, read the papers it contained, would ever believe it. I actually gave the rebellion a fifty-fifty chance of success. Though the High Liege would not be happy to see Tallowsport, and enough land to feed it, slip out of his tax base.

  On the other hand, no Liege had demanded the old, feudal levy of men and arms for over a century. How would hard-headed, independent barons, like Michael’s father, react to a sudden command to produce a large number of men at arms and their officers. Not to mention horses, and food, and tents, and cooks… And if the Rose should win his freedom from the Liege’s laws and taxes, how many of them would start to think; “If Atherton Roseman can do it, why not me?”

  What’s the difference between a traitor and a bandit? The bandit never pretended to be on your side.

  Any possibility that the Rose might let Michael and me live, and go on working for him if he won, was irrelevant. Because as soon as he knew what was really going on, Michael would do whatever he had to in order to prevent it. Even if he got us both killed, trying.

  So I’d better come up with a way to stop it before Michael did.

  The core of the answer was simple—evidence of the real plot must be sent to the High Liege before the Rose was ready to start his war. When would he be ready? I had no idea. In fact, I had no idea how to go about executing most of this “simple” plan, and the odds of my success ranged somewhere between impossible and are-you-kidding-me?

  I had no desire to climb down that pipe, even if it wasn’t for the soldier-guards lurking in the garden below. As for leaving the pipe to slide along that ledge, trying to cling to smooth stucco with my fingertips…no.

  Instead I crawled along the wide ledge, trying and mostly failing not to look down, till I came to an attic window. It was already unlatched, and the hinges didn’t squeak, but I guess the mad don’t sleep soundly.

  “Come to pay me a visit, have you? Tea and crumpets? Jammy tarts?”

  The jeweler sat up in bed, his rumpled hair flattened on one side. His amiable expression combined with the wild roving gaze in an effect that went well with the hair.

  “I’ve been meaning to come talk with you for some time.” I swung my legs over the sill and stepped into the room. “I’d have brought refreshments, but I don’t know what you like.”

  “Ravens in a clear sky, and fish that bite.” A part of me kept thinking of him as an old man, though he wasn’t. “Hearts and flowers, beating hearts, fluttering in my hands… I don’t get visitors, not unless they want something.”

  I could see why.

  “I must admit, I was wondering if you could figure out some way to change the spell on my gem. So it would keep glowing even if I took the collar off.”

  His face sagged, his lower lip pouting like a toddler’s, and I added swiftly, “It’s not that we don’t like them. But I’d like to take it off, just sometimes, and those gems are so beautiful it would be a shame if they went out.”

  Petulance vanished in a cackle of laughter.

  “I knew it was that, of course I knew. They all come to me, curses and wishes both. But I won’t do it. Why should I?”

  “You could do it to get back at Tony Rose,” I suggested. “How long has he been keeping you prisoner? Wouldn’t you like to tick him off?”

  Even if he’d been sane, I wouldn’t have dared to say, “get free of him.”

  “Me? Hurt the Rose?” Surprise rang in his voice. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because he uses your magic, and you get nothing in return. He keeps you locked up here.”

  “He keeps me safe! Safe from those who want my magic, digging it out with their dirty fingernails. Poking, poking through the bars of my cage, drinking my blood to try to steal it.”

  He was so agitated that he got out of bed and started to pace, his nightshirt’s hem ragged around his knobby knees. I’d have liked to think this was the rambling of madness, but remembering what Lady Ceciel had been willing to do, to risk, to give humans magic…

  “Someone else held you prisoner?” I asked gently. “Did they make you drink potions?” It might have been Ceciel who’d held him, though she lived on the other side of the Realm. If it was her, I wasn’t going to tell Michael. He was sufficiently alarmed by his abilities as it was.

  “Drink something? They drank me! I was the source, the origin, a garment they wanted to wear. Like a clock, tick tock, get the screwdriver, get it open, look at its guts how they spin.”

  His expression made the words even worse.

  “They studied you.”

  “Master Rose took me from them, keeps me here with the other little rats, keeps me safe, feeds me. All he wants in return is a little magic. Doesn’t even beat me when I can’t perform.”

  I nodded understanding, wondering who’d held him and why they’d treated him so cruelly.

  “I see why you don’t want to tick off the Rose. I won’t ask again. Sorry to have troubled you. Oh, one more thing…how do you feel about Master Wiederman?”

  “Sticks and snakes and one wall-eye. Can’t stand the man.”

  I let myself out the trap door and climbed down the ladder, leaving him pacing and muttering. If even half his tale was true—and I’d no reason to doubt it—that man would be genuinely loyal to his master. But at least he wasn’t likely to report me to Wiederman, and might well have forgotten my presence by the time his master returned.

  What would become of him when Roseman was gone? Because, whatever careless kindness he’d shown his pet madman, the Rose had to go down.

  Before he set the whole eastern part of the Realm on fire.

  I went first to my own room, but there were no guards waiting to slaughter me, so despite my desire to leap into bed and pull the covers over my head I went back to the Rose’s office. And this time, I took a thick blanket from my bed, to make sure no light would show.

  I tapped softly on the door, to make sure no guards had been posted inside. The outer door’s lock took longer than it had the first time, because my hands wanted to tremble.

  Wiederman had clearly dismissed the guard’s report tonight—but who knew what precautions he might decide to take in the morning? It had to be tonight.

  I hung my blanket over the window, making certain there were no cracks around it before I relit the candle—but I had to have light to find the files I needed and write clean copies. One file might be explained as some odd kind of business deal, six, seven, eight of them were damning.

  Knowing what the Liege’s judicars would want most, I wasted twenty minutes looking for a master list of all those who’d promised the Rose their allegiance, but I didn’t find it. Judging by the map, it might have taken too long to copy anyway.

  There was probably a full hour of darkness left when I decided I had enough evidence, and I took the time to set everything in both offices back where I’d found it, refiling all the papers carefully in place.

  Inner door, securely locked. Outer door, unlocked but closed. You’d think I’d have been numb to terror by then, but my heart was still pounding as I crept back to my bedroom and tucked my copied files in among the stacks of ship’s papers.

  Tomorrow I’d take them with me, and have one of the captains hide them—so they wouldn’t be found by some housemaid and get me killed.

  I did not sleep well.

  * * *

  The next morning at breakfast, Wiederman eyed me suspiciously.

  “I’m sending an extra guard with you today, Master Fisk. And I think I’ll put a guard on your door as well.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “You don’t look like you slept well.”

  “And that’s a reason to put guards on me?”

  Wiederman said nothing, but his eyes were sharp enough to cut glass.

  “Fine, have it your way. If you want to have someone following me out to the jakes, that’s up to you. But it’s a waste of a guard.”

  I ate the rest of m
y breakfast as if nothing else was happening, and then went back to my room to change into accountant clothes. Eventually my hands stopped shaking enough to let me shave.

  I’d already concealed the copies I’d made among my ship notes—and since they were all in my writing, anyone who wanted to search for them would have to read through the whole thick stack to pick them out. If Wiederman was going to do that, he’d have done it already.

  I had the evidence to convince the High Liege’s commander in Gollford to send enough troops to take the Rose down. I had a messenger, in the captain—and I’d give him those damning copies this very day. I’d even figured out that he could leave a letter with the chandler in Hinksville, asking him to send me a message when the Liege’s troops passed through that town, which should give us half a day’s warning before they got here.

  Because the moment those troops arrived, the Rose would know that Michael and I were behind them. Whichever of us was in his reach at that moment would die—followed shortly by the other.

  I even had some idea how to create enough confusion, that if the Rose was out of the way the others might not kill us. Not without their boss’s orders, anyway.

  But Tony Rose would give those orders in an instant…unless he was dead or incapacitated when the troops arrived.

  And I had no idea how to accomplish that.

  * * *

  That afternoon, safe in the chart room of one of my conspirators, I wrote several long, incriminating letters.

  I thought Roseman would leave immediately after the race, but he spent several more days in the country settling his racing debts. His losses were larger than I’d expected. Although he put on a face of rueful amusement, jesting with his friends about jockeys who rode with the flu, his eyes were so bleak that the men he paid exited his office with the quiet tread of men sneaking past a sleeping wolf.

  ’Twas the morning he planned to return to Tallowsport, and I was seating myself at the breakfast table when Roseman looked up from his plate and said, “Sevenson, you’re coming with us. There’s an…entertainment back in town I want you to see.”

  “I haven’t packed.” Anything Roseman called “entertainment” in that tone of voice was something I wanted no part of, but I kept my voice level and a flicker of reluctant respect crossed his face.

  “You’re still coming.”

  That settled that and I began to eat, more hastily than I’d have preferred.

  Lianna looked nervously between us, clearly understanding that something was going on—and she must have decided that she wanted in on whatever it might be.

  At first she said nothing, but she looked brighter and more eager every time Roseman spoke of leaving. After a time, he had to notice it.

  “So, Mistress Dalton. Are you going to miss your friend here?”

  “Not at all!” she said, far too swift and emphatic. “Well, of course I will, but I like the country.”

  ’Twas enough to make a duller man than Roseman suspicious, and a frown gathered on his brow.

  “I couldn’t see my husband in the city, anyway,” Lianna babbled on. “So there’s no reason for me to go. At all. Is there?”

  Lianna never babbled. Roseman stared at her thoughtfully. The disastrous race had made him more paranoid than usual, and he must have suspected she was playing him. But if she was, was it safer to leave her behind or keep her under his eye?

  “All right,” he said finally. “You’ll come too. You won’t like it. You’ll stay at the inn with my men, locked in your room. Your husband won’t even know you’re there.”

  Lianna looked down, concealing her expression from all of us. But when Roseman added, “You’ll travel in my carriage,” her eyes flew up, with so much dismay in them that he nodded in satisfaction and returned to his meal.

  Lianna and I had to leave the table early so we could pack, but we reached the courtyard before the guards came to fetch us.

  To my considerable relief I was given a horse and allowed to ride with the escort, instead of accompanying the master in his carriage. Seven hours in cramped quarters with an angry Atherton Roseman was something no one should have to endure—but Lianna had made her choice. And if she was willing to endure traveling into town with him, she’d earned the right to be in on the finish.

  I soon came to regret my inadequate breakfast. Roseman had brought a hamper to eat in his carriage, and the riders had brought dried beef and fruit to eat as they rode, but no one had warned me we wouldn’t be stopping at mid-day. By the time we reached town, I was so hungry I was thinking less about Roseman’s “entertainment” than about getting a luncheon—or an early dinner!

  ’Tis unworthy for a knight errant to be so concerned about missing a meal, but starving me was such a petty revenge for the Rose to take that I was almost reassured—mayhap his “entertainment” would be equally petty.

  Several of the guardsmen closed in around me as we drew near the city, but I paid that little heed. I assumed that we’d be lodged at an inn once more, to keep Fisk and me apart. Had I known I’d be coming back to town, I would have schemed to meet with him—which was likely why Roseman had given me so little warning, for they must know we would try to escape given the slightest chance.

  ’Twas not until the coach turned east toward the docks, instead of west toward The Rise, that I realized the promised entertainment was at hand.

  I asked the men who rode beside me where we were going. We hadn’t spoken often during that long ride, but some ordinary words about weather and the road had passed between us. ’Twas alarming when they shot me grim looks, and said nothing.

  I had realized what our destination must be long before we reached the orphan’s warehouse. But ’twas not till I saw the bundles of wood piled around its walls, and the empty kegs of oil and pitch, that I kicked my horse to run. The beast managed mayhap one stride before the men around me grabbed my reins and dragged him to a stop.

  Shouting for the children to escape, I flung myself from the saddle, but several guards had already dismounted and I ran only a few yards before they seized me. I probably shouldn’t have tried to fight.

  I was on my knees, my hands pulled up behind my back, my head still ringing from a blow that had sent hot blood spilling down one side of my face and silenced my warning cries. Roseman emerged from his carriage and strolled over to me. I can’t remember ever feeling more helpless than I did then.

  “I can’t prove that you helped those brats drug my jockey.” His voice was conversational, almost light. “Jack Markham’s certain of it, but even he can’t figure out how you could have made it happen. And I won’t condemn a man without proof. But I thought you might find it…instructive to see what happens to people who cross me.”

  “They won’t be there.” I had warned Jig, told him specifically that Roseman knew about this warehouse. Surely the children had moved out days ago. Long before the guards, before the carts of wood and pitch arrived.

  “They might not,” Roseman admitted. “My men surrounded the place, covering that alley exit of theirs as well as the front and side doors, before they went in and extracted the most valuable goods. They didn’t see a sign of the brats. But it’s not easy to watch your home burn, even if you’re not in it. And if they don’t have this bolt hole to retreat to, maybe they’ll be easier to catch.”

  I thought any children in that warehouse could easily have hidden from Roseman’s guards. And if they were in there, they’d not be able to hide from the flames.

  The fire brigade was standing by, I noticed, and the walls of the nearby buildings looked damp. But I remembered the contents of that warehouse. Not much of it had been all that valuable, but taken altogether…

  “You’re about to burn up a small fortune.”

  “A medium-sized fortune, for most people,” Roseman said. “I’m not most people. You should remember that.”

  I cared even less about the money than he did. “There might still be children in that building.”

  “I hope t
here are. It should make the rest of them less annoying.”

  The chill that traveled down my nerves at his words was nothing to the horror that swamped me when he picked up the torch.

  They finally shoved me flat against the pavement, and bound my wrists and ankles to stop my struggles. They did nothing to stop my shouted warnings, as Roseman walked around the building applying flame to all that piled kindling.

  If any children had come running out, into the arms of Roseman’s waiting guards, they’d have achieved nothing but a cleaner, kinder death. But I went on shouting, even when the Rose came back to the front of the building and flung open the loading doors.

  His guardsmen stood ready to catch anyone who emerged, but no one did. I allowed myself a cautious flicker of hope, even as flames started climbing the wooden walls and smoke billowed out in acrid, eye-stinging gusts. If anyone was in there, they’d have no choice but to run out at any moment…any moment…

  And they didn’t. They’d heeded my warning and moved out, before the Rose’s men had turned up to surround the place. I should have known they would. My clever, cautious orphans hadn’t survived the Rose’s enmity this long by taking careless risks.

  Roseman had realized the truth as well. Angry disappointment turned down the corners of his mouth as he approached me once more, turning his back on the roaring inferno that had once been both a working business and a home.

  “I bought all the goods in that warehouse,” he said. “And the building, and the land it sits on…just for this.”

  A raging vortex swirled behind him, making his point quite eloquently.

  “I’m loyal to men who are loyal to me. This is what happens to my enemies. So when I tell you to find those brats, and then give their location to my men, you know what will happen to you and your friend if you don’t.”