Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  I needn’t have bothered. The Sash was still lying where he had rolled. My knife was sticking out of his right thigh, where the leg met the hip. A few inches higher, I realized, and my blade would have skidded off steel instead of penetrating flesh.

  He was propped up on an elbow, staring at the blade, a confused look on his face. I could almost guess what he was thinking: This is hardly anything; the arm wound is worse. So why the hell can’t I move my legs? Why can’t I breathe?

  I set my hands on the floor, gathered my right leg beneath me, and got to my feet as best I could. My left leg had to get in on the act near the end, and I felt myself go light-headed for a moment. No mixed-up visions of the past appeared before me, though.

  By the time I was standing, the Sash had fallen back onto the floor. His lips were turning blue, and he was beginning to go through the first set of convulsions. It would get worse shortly.

  I bent down and put my hand over the wound in my own thigh. My left pant leg was already soaked red, and there were smears where I had rolled across the floor. I needed stitching. I looked up to see how Degan was coming with his own battle.

  They were still at it, but neither Degan nor the other Sash was smiling anymore. Degan had lost his hat somewhere along the way and had what looked like a small gash on one side of his forehead. He kept raising his free hand to wipe at the blood running toward his eyes. The other Sash was no better off. He was holding his left hand close to his chest, blood dripping from the closed fist. When he parried one of Degan’s cuts, the Sash’s hand moved away from his body, and I could see he was now missing a finger.

  I hesitated. I didn’t know if stepping in would help or hurt Degan, especially in my present condition. I might distract the Sash, but I might end up distracting Degan, too. Hell, I might just plain get in the way and get stabbed by accident.

  I took a firmer grip on my rapier. Enough excuses—this was a White Sash, a man supposedly blessed by the emperor and a favorite of the Angels. Killing a White Sash was like defecating on an imperial shrine, only the shrine’s buddies didn’t get together and hunt you down afterward. It was too late to turn back. If that Sash got out alive, he’d report to the palace, and Degan and I would end up dead within the week—or less.

  I limped toward Degan and the Sash as fast as my leg would allow. The Sash saw me coming almost immediately, saw his friend lying behind me on the floor. He wasn’t stupid; he began to retreat, circling back toward the door, away from us both. Degan followed.

  I changed course, hustling as best I could to block off his escape. My leg burned with every step.

  I reached the doorway just as the Sash broke into a full-out run and charged at me. The move caught Degan off guard—he was a full four paces behind the Sash now, trying to catch up. It was obvious he wouldn’t make it in time.

  I stepped back and felt the curtain brush against me. I was squarely in the Sash’s path now—there was no easy way around me. I shifted my weight back on my right leg, bracing myself even as I tried to ease the pressure on my left. Not the most solid of stances, especially against a rushing opponent, but it would have to do. As Degan liked to say, you fight the fight you get, not the fight you want. I raised my rapier, took it in both hands, and extended it before me at shoulder level. Then I angled the point across my body and settled.

  I had no illusions about the Sash throwing himself on my blade—my luck hadn’t been running that way for a long time. But I did hope I could slow him down long enough for Degan to catch up.

  No such luck.

  Instead, the Sash raised his sword and came on faster. I steadied my rapier, wondering belatedly if it would punch through his breastplate or shatter into pieces on impact. Too late to worry about it now. I let out my breath and readied myself for his blade to come crashing down on mine.

  Which was exactly what he wanted. At the last possible instant, the Sash dropped his body low and came in beneath my blade, his own steel thrusting up.

  I danced backward frantically, my own sword arcing down in a wild parry. I could feel the tattered curtain dragging at me as I backed into it, slowing my retreat and pulling me off balance. I sensed more than saw my sword intercept his, felt the catch of the blades followed by the finger-rattling crash of our two guards slamming into each other.

  His body rose up, colliding with mine. He was trying to lift and force me out of the way. I let myself fold over him, becoming deadweight. Well, not quite dead—I managed to drive my right knee up and forward as he shifted me back. I felt it hit something hard. The Sash grunted beneath me but kept coming. A fist hit me in the ribs. I drove the pommel of my rapier into his back, trying to hit a kidney.

  I felt myself going over backward. My left hand reached out, grabbing—for the Sash, for the door, for anything that could keep him from getting away. A ripping sound came to me, followed by a fall of dirty red darkness. The curtain . . . I heard the Sash cursing, felt him struggling against the fabric even as it enveloped us. Then he shuddered beside me, moved, shuddered again, and was still.

  “You all right?” said Degan from beyond the darkness.

  “Fine,” I gasped. “You?”

  “Feeling a bit inadequate, but otherwise fine.” Degan pulled the curtain away from my face in a cloud of dust. I sneezed, started to push myself up, then sneezed again.

  The Sash was beside and astride me, lying across my left knee and right foot. His head and shoulders were still wound in the curtain. Blood was seeping from two holes in the fabric.

  Degan knelt down to check the Sash. Then he saw my leg. “What happened?” he said.

  “What do you think happened?” I said. “I fought a White Sash!”

  “It’s more traditional to use a sword against them,” said Degan. He rolled the dead Sash away and bent over my leg. I started to shift my weight to get up. Degan put a hand against my chest and shook his head.

  “You need to stay put,” he said. “This needs to be bound.”

  “Later,” I said. “First we need to make sure Larrios is alive and in shape to talk.”

  Degan glanced back into the room at the heap that was Larrios. “He’s not going anywhere,” said Degan. He peeled away a blood-soaked portion of pants near the wound, ignoring my gasp of pain, and frowned. “Do you have anything in that traveling apothecary’s shop of yours besides painkillers and ahrami?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a needle and thread? Or something to help pack the wound?”

  I rummaged through the pouch while Degan busied himself over the Sash. The sound of ripping fabric came to my ears. I managed to find some dried wing moss and a packet of boiled lint. I also popped three seeds into my mouth, just to be safe.

  “Here,” I said as Degan turned back around. He had several pieces of the Sash’s sash in his hands. Well, what’s a little symbolic desecration when you’ve already killed one of the emperor’s favorites?

  Degan cleaned the wound as best he could with no water and poor light, packed the moss and lint into the cut, and bound a makeshift pad to it with the rest of the sash. I held still as best I could and watched him. He was quick and efficient, with no wasted motions.

  “You’ll need sewing up,” said Degan, “but that’ll have to wait.” He wiped his hands on one last piece of sash, then stood. He helped me to my feet and over to Larrios. My leg held me better than I expected, as long as I went slow.

  Larrios was still lying where the Sashes had left him. He was on his side, partially curled up, facing away from us. I resisted the urge to kick him, since it would have hurt me more than him at this point.

  “Larrios,” I said. Nothing. “Larrios, you remember me?” I cooed. “I’m the Nose from Fedim’s shop—the one you lied to; the one you ducked out on.” I put an edge in my voice. “And the one who’s going to make you wish the Sashes were still alive if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

  Larrios lifted his head and rolled over onto his back. “They’re dead?” he said. His upper li
p was split, the lower one was swollen, and his right eye was already starting to puff shut. He’d been kicked and battered and bruised, but none of it looked old. Degan and I must have arrived just after the Sashes—they’d barely started to soften him up.

  “Don’t get too excited,” I said. “You might be next. I took a sword in the leg to talk to you: I’m not in a generous mood.”

  Larrios smiled as best he could through his broken mouth. “You took a sword for me? Really?”

  I turned to Degan. “Kick him for me.”

  Degan cocked his leg.

  “Wait!” cried Larrios. “Wait—I’m serious! I owe you—those bastards were going to dust me whether I talked or not.”

  “Then talk to me instead,” I said. “Where’s the book?”

  “The what?” said Larrios.

  I glanced at Degan. He kicked Larrios in the side hard enough to move him two feet across the floor. I limped closer.

  “I told you, I’m not in a generous mood,” I said. “Now, where’s the book?”

  Larrios had his eyes squeezed shut. He was gasping for breath, arms wrapped around his ribs. He groaned.

  I sighed. “Look, no one’s walking out of here until I hear what I need to hear. So you can roll around and groan and bleed all you want, but we’ll keep beating the crap out of you until you talk.”

  Larrios cracked his left eye open—the right was completely swollen shut by now. I shuddered at the image, remembering what Athel had looked like at the end, and kept my face impassive. I didn’t want it to come to that again.

  “I need to get out of the city,” Larrios said. “There’re too many people after me—I need out.”

  “Too many people?” I said, exchanging a glance with Degan. He didn’t look reassured. “What kind of people?”

  Larrios coughed and spit out a bloody gob. He levered himself slowly into a sitting position. I watched, letting the pain of his efforts do the work for me.

  “Them, for one,” he said, gesturing at the dead Sashes on the floor. “Then there’s you; that fucking big Arm, Ironius; his Ten Ways allies; Kells; the—”

  “Wait,” I said, standing up straighter. “Kells is after you?”

  Larrios nodded. “As of two days ago. He was nicer than most. He put word out that he’d pay a third of what the book’s probably worth. Most people have just gone straight to the knife.” Larrios shook his head. “I should have taken the offer. Fuck.”

  I let out my breath. My first thought had been that Larrios had somehow linked Kells and me, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Still, why was Kells after the book all of a sudden? I’d only mentioned it in passing before. . . .

  “Then there’re all the loose Kin,” continued Larrios. He looked darkly at me. “I have you to thank for that—they wouldn’t be hunting me if you hadn’t put a price on my ass.”

  I blinked. The room had started to lose its focus all of a sudden. Blood loss? Fatigue? I put my hand to the wall and slowly lowered myself to the floor.

  “Duck out on a Nose,” I said as I leaned back against the wall, “and that’s what you get.” The room began to steady itself.

  “Hey,” said Larrios, peering at me in the dim light. “You look like shit, too. What happened?”

  “The book,” I said, refusing to get distracted.

  “I told you, I need to get out of town.”

  “And I told you, no bargains.”

  “Then you might as well dust me right now,” he said, “because I’m dead either way.”

  I looked up at Degan. “You heard the man.”

  Degan had just begun his downswing when Larrios yelled out that he’d take us to the book. The sword buried its tip in the wall three inches to the right of Larrios’s ear. Degan smiled, and we all left.

  I sat inside the ruined warehouse’s doorway and stared out into the rain. Larrios sat behind me, hands bound, legs shanked together with a length of sash long enough to let him walk, but not run. His remaining good eye was almost completely swollen shut now, too, but I still didn’t trust him not to run, even half blind and bound.

  I watched as Degan came walking back through the rain. He was alone—no cloaked and hooded Kin on his trail; no guide back out of the Barren. Degan shook his head as he stepped through the door, his hat scattering drops of water in the process.

  “The bastard set us up,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Degan, not sounding convinced. “He might have heard the yells and decided to rabbit. Or . . .”

  I waited. Degan remained silent and continued to stare out into the rainy night. “Or?” I said.

  “Or the other White Sash got him.”

  I started at that. “The other White Sash?”

  “Probably,” said Degan. “They usually travel in groups of three. Or six, or nine—always a number divisible by three. It’s their way of paying tribute to the three endless incarnations of the emperor.”

  “So why didn’t the third one come and help the other two?” I said.

  Degan shook his head. “I don’t know—and that’s what concerns me.”

  I peered back out into the night but saw nothing. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. Degan helped me to my feet. If possible, I was suddenly feeling more nervous.

  The rain was worse than before, the drops having become the large, heavy sort that immediately soaked through whatever they hit. They were colder now, too; that, or I was colder. Either way, it wasn’t pleasant to be out. Enough water had come down to churn up the alleys, making every step a slippery, slogging challenge. The only positive thing was that most of the stench had been washed out of the air for the moment.

  The storm made the streets a distorted maze to my night vision. The shadows and shapes I usually knew so well took turns melting around the edges and springing back into focus as I limped along at Degan’s side. I found myself watching my feet more and more often, hoping to banish the headache the rainy night was causing. That didn’t stop the ache, but it kept it from getting worse.

  We stopped often, both to rest my leg, and to let Larrios get his bearings.

  “Here,” I said to Larrios at one point. We were leaning up against a building, barely out of the rain beneath a narrow overhang. Degan was off scouting out the next few blocks.

  I had a seed in my palm. Larrios peered at it as best he could.

  “Ahrami?” he asked after a moment.

  “It’ll help you stay sharp,” I said.

  “No, thanks.”

  I returned the seed to the pouch around my neck. I had been taking them at regular intervals since the fight with the Sashes, and now it was close to empty. So much for this supply lasting a week.

  “What do the White Sashes want with the book?” I said.

  I caught the shadow of a shrug. “Same as you, I suppose.”

  “I doubt that.” Somehow I didn’t see the Sashes using the book as leverage against Ironius and his Gray Prince. As far as they were concerned, the more dead Kin, the better. No, they had been sent after the book for a different reason—I expected they wanted the book for whatever was in it, not for what it could do for them.

  “You’ve seen the book,” I said. “What’s in it that’s so damn important?”

  “How should I know?” said Larrios. “I can barely read. Besides, it’s not in any language I’ve ever seen.” He reached up to wipe the rain from his eyes and winced when his hand brushed across the torn and swollen skin. “I should’ve taken Kells’s money.”

  “How much did he offer you?”

  Larrios showed me a broken grin. “Why? You thinking of selling it to him?”

  “Wouldn’t that be something?” I said, chuckling at the thought. Then I heard a sharp whistle. I looked up to see Degan halfway down the block, waving us forward.

  Larrios guided us as best he could, but, with his damaged eyes and the rain, it was slow going. We had to backtrack twice, but eventually we arrived in front of the burned-out husk of a building. Only the back and the right side
walls were still standing—the other two walls, as well as the roof, had collapsed long ago. The floor was gone, too, leaving a sodden pit that had once been a basement.

  We were in the heart of the Barren.

  “You hid a book in there?” I said, pointing at the morass before us.

  “What?” said Larrios. “It’s not like anyone’s going to look for it there.”

  “It’s a book,” I said incredulously. “The weather, the rats . . . Do you know what they could do to something like that?”

  “I was in a hurry,” said Larrios as he walked up to the edge of the basement and looked down. “I didn’t have time to be picky.”

  I limped up beside Larrios and squinted into the pit. It was tempting to push him in, just on principle, but I restrained myself.

  The water looked to be knee deep. Tangles of blackened beams and broken stone formed islands in the dirty pond. There were weeds everywhere. A small sapling grew out of the rubble off to our right. I had a momentary sensation of dizziness and quickly moved back from the edge, nearly falling over Degan in the process.

  Degan gave me a quizzical look as he helped steady me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. His look said he didn’t believe me. Well, hell, neither did I, for that matter. I felt like shit and could barely make out the real garbage around me from the things my mind and night vision were starting to invent.

  I took another seed for good measure, even though my heart was already racing.

  “Where’s the book?” I asked.

  Larrios was at the edge of the pit, staring. “At the back.”

  Of course. We moved left, toward a section of the basement wall that had collapsed and formed a steep ramp down. Degan was practically carrying me by now. He set me down on a pile of bricks a little ways from the edge of the pit, and I gasped as he did so. Even though my head felt as thin as a piece of fine silk, I was still sharply aware of the throbbing in my leg. I closed my eyes and rested my face in my hands. Neither the seeds nor Eppyris’s drugs were working.

  I thought back to the fight with the Sashes. I could still see the blade, could still feel it twisting and pulling at the flesh of my thigh. Still see it . . .