Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  Downstairs, beneath the sound of the knocking, I could hear the squeals and shouts of two little girls at play—Renna and Sophia. I smiled at the noise as I slipped on yesterday’s shirt and picked up my sword belt, the rapier still in its scabbard.

  I put my eye to the peephole and looked into the hall. A clean-shaven face, framed by perfumed blond curls, sat atop a carefully embroidered jacket and half cloak. I recognized the livery badge on his chest and groaned.

  “My Lord Drothe?” asked the messenger to the peephole. He sounded unsure of the question, and I found myself wanting to lie. But there would only be another flunky like him at my door tomorrow if I did.

  I disarmed the spring trap, undid the double lock, and cracked the door open a finger’s width.

  “Yes to the Drothe part,” I said, “no to the ‘lord.’ I’m not noble, and I didn’t marry into the blood like your mistress.” He looked startled at that last part, no doubt surprised by my audacity. Well, let him be. His mistress might be the Baroness Christiana Sephada, Lady of Lythos, but she was also my sister. The fact that only a handful of people besides her and me knew about our relationship didn’t change how I dealt with “her ladyship.”

  I glanced past the messenger to the man who loomed behind him. His name was Ruggero, and he worked for me. He gave a brief nod, indicating he’d searched the messenger. I nodded back, and Ruggero retreated silently down the stairs. I looked back to the messenger.

  “You’re new, aren’t you?” I said. “She’s never sent you before.”

  “Yes, uh, no . . . I mean, I’ve never had the honor before, sir, no.”

  “It’s no honor, believe me,” I said. I opened the door and waved the young man in. “What’s your name?”

  “Tamas, my lord.” He remained in the hallway. I could tell by the look on his face he was unsure what to do next. I was probably violating every nicety of court protocol imaginable. While the poor kid had been trained to handle everything from sycophants to haughty nobles, it was clear no one had instructed him on the finer points of dealing with a thief who has just answered the door wearing nothing more than a shirt that barely reached his knees and a sword.

  “The family downstairs has children, Tamas,” I explained, tossing my sword belt and blade onto the bed to make him more at ease. “I don’t want their mother after me in case their eldest daughter happens by and catches a view up my shirt. Understand?”

  The messenger glanced over his shoulder at the stairwell as if I had prophetic powers, then stepped quickly into the room. I shut the door.

  “So, what does she want this time?” I asked as I pulled down a pair of paned slops from a wall peg and sniffed them. Definitely cleaner than the ones I had been wearing since taking after Athel. I put them on.

  “My lord?”

  “The baroness,” I said. “Christiana didn’t send you here to help me dress, did she?”

  “No!”

  I smiled as he caught himself.

  “Relax. Just answer the question.”

  Tamas’s smile faded. He nodded. His hand moved. He reached under his jacket.

  I dived.

  I went for the bed, where I had carelessly tossed my rapier moments ago. When I hit the mattress, the blade gave a small bounce and skipped off the other side. I heard it clatter on the floor. I was dead.

  Out of desperation, I continued after the sword. Maybe Tamas’s first thrust would be off center; maybe I could finish him and get to Eppyris downstairs before whatever poison the assassin used took effect; maybe an Angel would manifest itself right now and save my careless ass.

  Amazingly, I made it over the bed and got a hand on the sword. What the hell was this assassin doing, forging the weapon right here? No one took this long!

  Oh, hell. He was a Mouth. I was being spelled.

  Christiana must really be pissed if she was laying out that kind of money.

  Stupid, Drothe! Never let Christiana’s people in your place, no matter how well you’ve been getting along; no matter how many years it’s been since the last attempt.

  I didn’t bother to draw my rapier—either the blade would never clear the scabbard in time, or it was a moot point from the start. I simply rolled once along the floor and came up in a crouch, sheathed weapon held out in front of me like a staff, both hands grasping the scabbard.

  Tamas was where I had left him, eyes wide, mouth empty. In his hand was a folded piece of parchment. On the parchment were a seal and a ribbon.

  We stayed like that, staring at each other, for a good ten heartbeats. Tamas broke the standoff.

  “I—I’m—I’m to wait for a reply.”

  “No reply at present.”

  “Very good.” And he ran out the door and down the stairs. The parchment floated through the air to land where Tamas had stood.

  I don’t think I stopped laughing for five minutes.

  The first assassin ever to come after me was a tall fellow who smelled of fish and cheap wine. I was eighteen at the time and stabbed him more out of luck than skill as he tried to garrote me in an alley.

  The second Blade had a name: Gray Lark. She had mixed a measure of ground glass into one of my meals. Ironically, it was during a particularly low point in my life, when I was using the smoke. The drug had been more important than food that night, and I ended up giving my plate to another addict. I watched him scream and cough up blood for hours. The next day, I hunted down Gray Lark and force-fed her the same meal. It was the only good the smoke ever did me, and I haven’t touched it since.

  The third try was three years ago. His name was Hyrnos, and he tried to put a knife in my back in a dark alley—a traditionalist. The only thing that had saved me was my catching him out of the corner of my eye with my night vision. The running fight we carried out across the ice-slicked roofs of Ildrecca that winter’s eve nearly did us both in. In the end, I stayed on the roofs while he ended up on the street four stories down, but it had been a close thing.

  Three months after Hyrnos tried and failed, Alden came after me. It’s strange, having a knife fight in your bedroom with a woman you’ve known for years. I’d always known she was a professional, though, so I couldn’t really hold it against her, even if she was trying to dust me.

  Of the four Blades who have come after me, I know one was hired by my sister, and I suspect a second. Both times, I have taken the assassin’s weapons and left them in her bed. Needless to say, this has done nothing to make amends between us.

  The reasons behind both attempts were different, but the underlying motive was the same: fear. Christiana fears I will reveal myself and the favors I have done for her in the past and thus ruin her at court. That she is a former courtesan and the widow of a baron means nothing in that world—or rather, if anything, they help her. Status and political influence are measured differently in the Imperial Court, and I don’t pretend to understand the games involved in determining that pecking order. But I do know that, of the many things that can ruin you, bringing in outside influences, especially criminal ones, is tantamount to cutting your political throat. Assuming you get caught at it, of course. But if you do, and your brother is a member of the Kin as well?

  Well. . .

  The thing is, despite all our differences and history, I wouldn’t undercut her like that. Family is family. But Christiana can’t understand that, and so we’ve had our differences in the past, the worst being punctuated by my killing someone and delivering the weapons to her chambers.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t be so vindictive. After all, my first display only made her hire a better assassin the next time around. If I keep this up, she may finally find one good enough to finish the job.

  But I do so enjoy teasing my little sister.

  I sat on the stoop beside the entrance to the apothecary’s shop and sipped my tea. It was my third cup, and by then the brew had become lukewarm, dark, and bitter despite the honey I had added. It fit my mood.

  I set the tea down and took out the message Tamas had
brought me.

  The paper of Christiana’s letter was of good quality—dry and heavy to the touch. I knew I could sell it to Baldezar, who would happily scrape it down and reuse the sheet—could, but would not. This letter would be put away with all her others, both the pleasant and the vicious, in the hidden compartment at the bottom of my clothes chest.

  I read its contents again, then watched the paper as it shivered in the breeze.

  A meeting. This evening. She needed to talk to me. Important matters. Her safety at stake.

  The usual.

  In other words, she needed a favor from her brother, the former burglar. Either that, or she was getting impatient for the forgery I was having done for her.

  I ran my finger over the hard wax of the seal on the back of the letter and felt the raised image of her widow’s chop. Audacity there, to display her mark so openly, so proudly, after what she had done to get it. She called me dark, but at least I only killed when it was business. I had liked her husband, Nestor, too.

  A body shifted in the doorway behind me. I turned around, found Cosima looking down at me.

  “Bad news?” she asked. Then, more mischievously, “Lose your sweetheart?”

  I smiled up at the small woman even as I folded Christiana’s letter and slipped it up an unlaced sleeve.

  “Left me for a baron. What could he offer her that I can’t?”

  “Peace and quiet?” said the apothecary’s wife as she sat down beside me. “Emperor forgive me, I sometimes wish Eppyris would drug those two girls so I could have half a day to myself.”

  “I hardly notice them,” I said, just as Renna and Sophia came rushing around the corner and bolted into the house. Renna, the six-year-old, was laughing, but eight-year-old Sophia looked far less amused. The door slammed, followed by shrieks and the sound of feet thumping on wooden floors.

  “Liar,” said Cosima. She watched the door until the noises quieted; then she relaxed.

  Cosima, with her raven hair, her deep brown eyes, and a face that was a near-perfect mixture of clean planes and sculpted curves, must have been stunning when Eppyris had first married her. Even after two children and years of caring for them and her husband, she still drew looks from men on the street, me included. How Eppyris won her, I have no idea, but her presence in their home has earned the apothecary a fair measure of respect in my eyes. My respect for Cosima herself is without measure.

  Today, her hair was tied back, her face flushed, and the front of her apron damp—wash day, then.

  “So, was it bad news?” she asked, pointing at the sleeve where I had secreted the letter.

  “No more than usual.”

  “Who from?”

  I met her eyes, but kept silent.

  “Fine,” she said. “Be that way.”

  “I explained things to you and Eppyris when I moved in.”

  “And I didn’t like it then.”

  I smiled. This was an old battle between us. Cosima didn’t believe in secrets; I didn’t believe in not keeping them.

  “My building, my rules,” I said.

  “Humph.”

  I’d acquired the two-story brick and timber building a couple of years ago from a Kin named Clyther, along with the note to a loan he held on Eppyris. Clyther hadn’t exactly wanted to sell, but the property and arrangement appealed to me, and I had enough on Clyther to change his mind. Once in, I had forgiven the apothecary’s debt in exchange for a silent partnership in his business and had moved into the rooms upstairs. My plan had been to live here just long enough to ensure I was getting my fair cut of the profits, but, somewhere along the way, things had changed. The three rooms above the shop had become a haven from the street, and Eppyris and his family had become a welcome relief from my gritty nights. My smart investment had managed to become my home.

  So much for plans.

  Cosima changed tact. “Your washerwoman stopped by earlier with your clothes,” she said.

  “I saw them at the foot of the stairs. Thanks.”

  “The least you could do is let me bring them up, seeing how you refuse to let me wash them for you.”

  I had a brief image of Cosima lying just inside the door to my rooms, the traps having sprung, her blood and my laundry mingling on the floor.

  “No.”

  “You know I’m going to see that mysterious apartment of yours someday, Drothe.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “What are you hiding up there, anyhow?”

  “One of the emperor’s consorts. She’s pregnant, you know—doesn’t want her little royal bastard killed.” Any heir born to the emperor was killed outright. There could be no claimant to the imperial throne, save one of the three incarnations of the emperor himself.

  Cosima elbowed me in the ribs. “Don’t even joke about that. Next thing you know, we’ll have imperial guards tearing the place apart.”

  “They’re not allowed in my rooms, either.”

  Cosima gave a small laugh and pointed at my cup. “You want me to brew you up some fresh? I make it better than Eppyris. Angels, anyone makes it better than that man!” She laughed again. It was an exceptionally good laugh.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough.”

  “How about something more to eat? I saw that pear you had—not enough for a mouse.”

  “I manage.”

  “Well, maybe I could—”

  “Cosima,” I said, “I’m fine.”

  She paused, then took a small breath. “That bruise on your face says otherwise.”

  I reached up and gingerly felt the place where Nicco had struck me. “A reminder.”

  “Well, I certainly hope you don’t forget whatever it is next time.”

  “I won’t.”

  We sat in silence for a while, then; me watching the passing traffic on Echelon Way without seeing it, her running through conversations without saying them. Finally, Cosima leaned forward and wrung out the bottom of her skirt.

  “It’s not his fault, Drothe.”

  Ah, here it was. I’d been wondering.

  “I’m not mad at Eppyris,” I said.

  “Nor he at you.”

  “I know,” I lied.

  “It’s just that . . . he’s proud, Drothe. And it’s not as if you’ve demanded anything of us. A little medicine, some herbs now and then—what’s that? I keep telling him he’d be hobbling around on crutches, selling poultices in the street, if you hadn’t gotten Clyther to—”

  “Cosima,” I said, “leave it be.”

  She bit her lip, and looked wonderful doing it.

  “He’s not an angry man, Drothe. Just . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

  Just unhappy having a criminal as a landlord. And a neighbor. And a friend to his wife.

  I took a sip of my cold bitter tea. I was just beginning to frame a reply when I noticed a familiar figure coming down the street. I poured the rest of the liquid out on the cobbles and handed the empty cup to Cosima. “Sorry,” I said, my eyes tracking Degan as he approached. “I have to go.”

  Cosima looked from the cup to me, and then followed my gaze down Echelon Way. I saw her shoulders tense.

  “I have to see to the girls, anyway,” she said, standing.

  I laid my hand on her forearm. “It’s all right,” I said. “He’s a friend.”

  “For you, maybe.” Cosima summoned a feeble smile and shuddered. “I’m sorry,” she said, and turned back toward the shop. Even after all this time, any other Kin besides me made Cosima nervous—shades of Clyther.

  I stepped out into Echelon Way and waited for Degan. Behind me, I heard the door shut.

  “You busy?” I asked as he came up.

  “Hello to you, too. And, no,” said Degan.

  The question was a courtesy on my part. You could always tell when Bronze Degan was working—he vanished. One day here, the next day gone. A week, two weeks, sometimes a month. And then, just as suddenly, he would be back, laughing, gambling, and wasting time as if nothing had happened. I had
made some inquiries early on in our friendship, both of him and others, to find out where he disappeared to, what he was doing—and gotten nothing. I, the Nose, came up empty, and Degan had just smiled at my complaints.

  Damn his sense of humor, anyhow.

  “What did you have in mind?” asked Degan.

  “I need someone to watch my blinders tonight.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “This is a bit tougher,” I said. Degan raised an eyebrow, still smiling.

  “I need to go into Ten Ways.”

  The smile faltered. “Ah.” He considered a moment. “Death wish?”

  “Hardly.”

  Degan nodded. “Just checking.”

  Chapter Six

  “Looks the same,” said Degan. “Smells worse.”

  “This is rose hips and perfume compared to the summer,” I said, “and we’re not even inside yet.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  We stood at the edge of Ten Ways. Before us, the scarred archway that led into the cordon stood gaping, its doors long ago torn down and carted off. To either side, the walls of the cordon stretched off into the distance, separating Ten Ways from the city, or the city from Ten Ways, depending on your point of view.

  Ten Ways is an old cordon in an even older city. Ildrecca dates back more than a millennium, the center of kingdoms and empires long before the line of Dorminikos made it its own. It is a city of growing palaces and crumbling temples, worked stone and shattered ruins, where you can jump over a wall at street level and end up in a private sunken garden or on someone’s laundry-covered roof. Dig down and you find the broken fragments of history; look up, and you see the growing glory of the future.

  There are any number of stories about why Ten Ways is called Ten Ways: because on every block there are ten ways to die; because there are only ten safe ways out of the cordon; because every person in the cordon knows at least ten ways to rob you; and so on. The best one I’ve heard is that it was named after a whore who . . . Well, let’s just say she was imaginative when it came to keeping multiple clients pleased at the same time.