Among Thieves

by Hulick, Douglas

  “Take me under you,” he said in a rush. “Be my boss and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “Your boss?” I said. “I’m no Baldober. Hell, I don’t even have an organization!”

  “Then start one with me,” said Baldezar. “If you take me on, you have to protect me. You can’t dust me without cause, and I can’t betray you without knowing I’ll be killed in turn.”

  I almost laughed at his naïveté. “You don’t know much about how the Kin work, do you?”

  “I know you,” said Baldezar. “That’s enough.”

  I stared at him while Fowler danced from foot to foot. She was staring down the alley.

  “Drothe . . . ” she began.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said. Protection? My protection? I hadn’t even been able to protect Eppyris and his family, and now Baldezar wanted me to watch over him? With what? I didn’t have anything to offer.

  Then again, did any Kin? Given the nature of our business, our lives, who were we to pretend to any kind of certainty? At best, we were lucky to fend for ourselves. And yet, that hadn’t stopped me from staying secretly loyal to Kells for years, never mind invoking Nicco’s name as a shield against the people in his organization. I was a Long Nose—if anyone knew about being in deep without any real support, it was me. Still, I had to admit that having that partial sense of protection had helped, and that I missed it now.

  I reached my hand out, hesitated, and then finished the gesture. Baldezar took it in an awkward Clasp. And just like that, he was mine.

  “We can do the pretty words later,” I said. “Just talk.”

  “I don’t know precisely what’s in the book,” Baldezar said, “but I know part of it deals with magic.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Imperial magic.”

  “Know that, too.”

  Baldezar blinked in surprise. “So you know about the emperor, too?”

  I let go of his arm. “What about the emperor?”

  “From what I gathered, they plan on using the magic against him.”

  “Against him?” I said.

  “Him, or the empire,” said Baldezar. “It wasn’t clear, but I managed to piece it together from bits of conversation Ironius let slip.”

  “Angels fuck me,” muttered Fowler.

  I took a step toward Baldezar, half in shock. “What are they—”

  Fowler caught my arm. “There’s no time,” she hissed. “Listen!”

  I did. I could hear shouts and yelling in the distance. It was getting closer. Rags.

  “Damn,” I said. I leaned down and handed Baldezar a small packet from my herb wallet. “Deer berries,” I said. “They’ll numb the pain.”

  Baldezar looked at the packet dubiously, then at me. “I don’t think—” he began.

  “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” I snapped. “I’m not about to waste time poisoning you.”

  Baldezar looked at the packet again and nodded.

  “Very touching,” said Fowler as she grabbed my arm. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here before we all have a real reason to cry.”

  I let her hustle me down the street and around a corner. Behind us, I could hear Baldezar begin shouting for help. He was calling out to the approaching Rags, begging for someone to stop and help him.

  “Think they’ll let him live?” Fowler asked as we turned another corner.

  “He’s a scribe and a guild master,” I said. “They have no reason not to.”

  “What about us?” she said. I didn’t have to ask to know she was referring to the revelation about Ironius’s plans for the journal.

  “There’s no ‘us,’ ” I said. “You didn’t hear anything.”

  “Drothe . . .”

  “Get your ass back and watch the apothecary’s family until this is over,” I said.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m a Nose,” I said. “When I hear dangerous things I don’t like, I go see my boss.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Kells wasn’t at home. More specifically, he wasn’t in Silver Disc cordon, or any of his other territories. He was in Ten Ways, directing the war against Nicco—personally.

  “It’s that bad?” said Degan.

  “That’s what I hear,” I said. I had come looking for Degan after failing to see Kells, and had found the Arm playing two-man cabbat at Prospo’s with Jelem. Degan was, of course, losing.

  “And you need to see him right now?” said Degan.

  “I do.” Kells was the kind of Upright Man who worked best from the shadows, pulling strings and spinning plans; that he had taken to the streets, let alone the front lines, didn’t bode well for our side.

  Degan sighed and tossed his cards on the table. “Just when I was ready to make a comeback, too.”

  “Yes, of course you were,” said Jelem as he raked the small pile of coins from the center of the table toward himself. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Drothe for saving me from my imminent . . . defeat.”

  “Business comes first,” I said.

  “Funny how your ‘business’ keeps interfering with my profits,” observed Jelem, stacking his coins. “Especially since I’m still owed monies for working on a certain rope.”

  I stood up straighter. “I don’t recall a whole lot of return on that yet,” I said.

  “Ah, as to that . . .” Jelem moved his glittering stacks aside and set his elbows on the table. “Give me six strands of your hair.”

  “What?”

  Jelem snapped his fingers. “Just do it,” he said, “before anyone comes wandering by.”

  I reached up and began plucking.

  “Make sure they’re long,” said Jelem as he reached into the folds of his robe and came out with a length of knotted rope. Tamas’s rope—no, I realized, Task’s rope; there weren’t any burned knots on this one.

  “Watch for anyone who might notice us,” he said as he took the hairs from me and carefully draped them in his lap.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Keying the magic in this rope to you, of course.”

  “ ‘Keying’ it?” I said. “I haven’t used a lot of portable glimmer in the past, but what I have used has never been ‘keyed’ to anything.”

  “That’s because whatever you used was either harmless, or something you could physically control or avoid once it was activated. This is a rope. It bends and twists and wraps around things. The runes in it are activated when they strike someone. If you miss that someone, it’s entirely possible it could swing back around and hit you. Unless, of course, you’d rather run the risk of knocking yourself unconscious with your own glimmer?”

  “Keying it to me will be fine,” I said.

  I watched as Jelem plucked up a single hair and tied it around the first knot in an elaborate pattern. He began muttering to himself and making small pulling actions in the air.

  Degan and I took up positions on either side of the table, settling into the casual slouch that is second nature to Kin who are keeping an eye out for something. I waved Cecil off when he came to see if we needed new drinks, while Degan placed himself between the street and the table whenever anyone walked past.

  At last, the sounds stopped, and Jelem cleared his throat.

  I turned around to find him sitting back in his chair, the rope coiled in his lap.

  “It’s done?” I said.

  “It’s done,” said Jelem.

  Jelem and I stared at each other.

  “About the payment,” I said at last.

  “Yes?”

  Crap. I hated doing this. It was embarrassing. “Nicco’s cast me out, and all my hawks were . . .”

  “You’re broke,” said Jelem.

  “For the moment,” I admitted.

  Jelem nodded. “I expected as much. But fortunately for you, I’ve thought of a solution that doesn’t involve money.”

  “No money,” I echoed. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “A favor
,” he said, the word sounding both silky and dirty in his mouth. “Payable . . . later.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  Jelem raised his left shoulder a fraction of an inch. “If I knew that, it wouldn’t be a favor—it would be a payment.”

  I gritted my teeth and looked at the rope, then at Jelem. I glanced over at Degan.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Degan. “That kind of an arrangement makes perfect sense as far as I’m concerned.”

  I looked back at Jelem. He was sitting placidly, waiting, knowing he had me over a barrel. I needed any edge I could get right now, and that rope was one nice bit of edge.

  “Fine,” I said. “It’s not as if I don’t owe anyone else any favors, anyhow.”

  Degan coughed discreetly into his hand, hiding a smile.

  “Excellent,” said Jelem. He picked up the rope and tossed it at my head. “Here.”

  My eyes went wide. I tried to duck, but the rope uncoiled as it flew, and two of the knots hit my side.

  Nothing happened.

  “Well, that seems to have worked,” said Jelem as he picked up his deck of cards and began shuffling them. “Good.”

  “It seems to have worked?” I said as I gathered up the rope. “You mean you didn’t know if it would?”

  Jelem squared the cards in one hand and then rotated them with his fingers so they cut themselves and restacked into a neat pile in his palm. He smiled and said nothing.

  “Bastard,” I said as I coiled the rope and tucked it in behind my belt to hide it from casual view. Jelem was still smiling when Degan and I walked away.

  Kells had set up his operations base in the northeast corner of Ten Ways, in the remains of a small manor house. Like so many of the formerly fine buildings in the cordon, this one had been subdivided again and again by a succession of landlords and squatters, until it was little more than a maze of interconnected hovels and rooms, with new walls thrown up and old ones torn open, seemingly at random. Guessing by the traces of plaster and lumber I saw in the courtyard, he must have had his people tearing out some of the later additions to make it easier to move—and defend—inside.

  “Wait here,” said one of the Cutters who had escorted us in from the cordon. “I need to talk to somebody about you.”

  “You do that,” I said. Degan merely grunted and studied the space around us.

  It had been easier to get into Ten Ways than I had expected. There was open warfare in the streets now, with both Cutters and Rags running in larger packs. A couple of lone Kin were easy to miss, especially when everyone else was looking for bigger trouble.

  And there was trouble aplenty. We’d come across three open street fights—two between different factions of Kin, and one between a small cohort of Rags and a squad of Nicco’s men. Usually, I would have put the odds on the Rags, what with their being armed not only with blades but also with halberds and bucklers; but then, Nicco’s people didn’t usually go hunting with a Mouth in tow. A fistful of nails tossed in the air and a couple of spoken words were all it had taken to turn that battle. We’d found a group of Kells’s men shortly after that and surrendered our steel in exchange for an escort to the Upright Man’s headquarters.

  “Good place for a dusting pan,” said Degan after a few minutes.

  I nodded. Between the high walls of the courtyard and the even higher windows on the second and third floors, anyone trying to take the place would be walking into a death trap. And that was assuming they made it this far. The piazza beyond the walls was even now being cleared of anything larger than a man’s shoe, to remove any kind of cover or ammunition that could help an attacker.

  It wasn’t a good sign. It spoke of last measures and final stands. It spoke of Kells’s losing.

  Inside, the siege mentality was even more prevalent. Kin either hurried from place to place, readying themselves, or sat silently, waiting for the inevitable. There was none of the banter, none of the good-natured threats or bellicose bragging I was used to hearing from nervous Kin when a fight was brewing. There was only resignation.

  The Cutter everyone in the patrol had called “Jock” came strolling back from the building, twirling his cane in his hand. “You’re in,” he said, pointing at me with the stick. “You’re not,” he said to Degan.

  Degan shrugged, then went over and sat down against a wall. He was snoring before I was out of the courtyard.

  I was led up two flights of stairs that felt like four, then down a long hallway. We stopped in front of a charred door. Through the soot, I could still see hints of fine carvings—flowers and leaves and a couple of bird wings. Jock rapped twice with his stick, paused long enough to give me sour look, then turned and walked away. I listened to his boots thudding hollowly on the wooden floorboards as he disappeared into the gloom.

  I sighed and rubbed at the stubble on my face. How many days since Moriarty’s? Since Christiana’s? They were all blurring together, along with my thoughts. I blinked, slapped my face, and slipped two seeds. No help.

  “Come,” called Kells finally. I opened the door.

  The curtains were drawn, the room lit by a scattering of candles. Someone must have found a stash of glassware in the house, because every candle was set in its own wineglass, creating small tulips of light. They flickered in constellations around the room, casting a patchwork of light and shadow that rendered my night vision useless.

  Near the center of the place stood a massive desk that seemed more banquet table than workspace. A row of goblets had been placed along its front, each one slightly shorter than the last, forming a miniature stairway of light. Behind the candles, and almost hidden by the desk, sat Kells, the dark expression on his face made even more severe by the uneven light. His hands were before him, their thumbs tapping against each other slowly. Other than that, he didn’t move.

  I closed the door and was three paces into the room before I noticed the shadows behind Kells move. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, but then I saw them shift again of their own accord. I stopped, peered, and was just able to make out a tall, dark figure behind my boss, his form hidden by a long, gray-black cloak.

  My rapier was out of its scabbard in an instant.

  “Good to see you, too, Drothe,” said the familiar deep, smooth voice. The cloaked Kin stepped farther into the light, his face still hidden by the massive cowl.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” I demanded of Kells.

  “Drothe,” said Kells, “put your blade away.”

  “Do you know who that is?” I said.

  Kells arched an eyebrow. “Do you?”

  The cloaked man hadn’t moved.

  “I know not to trust him,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I know he led me to a pair of White Sashes who were more than ready to carve me into pieces, and I know he’s too well-informed about happenings in Ten Ways to be true. So, yes, I know him well enough.”

  The figure chuckled, and even Kells gave the hint of a rueful smile. Their amusement didn’t improve my mood.

  A disturbing thought occurred to me. I gestured with my rapier toward the man. “He’s yours, is he?” I said to Kells. “You put this walking bolt of cloth on my blinders to keep track of me, didn’t you?”

  “Hardly,” said Kells.

  “Then what the hell is he doing here?”

  “Have a seat,” said Kells, gesturing at one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “I’ll stand,” I said. I did move to stand beside the chairs, though.

  “Suit yourself.” Kells came around the desk and perched himself on the corner nearest me. He paused a moment to openly study Nestor’s hard-worn clothes, then shrugged.

  “So, what have you got for me?” said Kells.

  I looked at my boss for a long moment, then over at the man in the cloak. “I’m still waiting for an answer,” I said.

  “He’s here because I asked him to be here,” said Kells. “That should be enough.”

  “Not when he’s been toying with
me, it isn’t,” I said. “He’s been feeding me information and steering me in Ten Ways since the beginning of this mess.”

  “Was any of the information I gave you wrong?” said the cloaked figure.

  “That’s not the point,” I said.

  “It’s precisely the point,” said the figure. “You may not have liked the results, but you can’t say I didn’t take you where you wanted to go.”

  “You could have at least said something about the damn Sashes!” I said.

  “Would you have gone in if I had?”

  “You son of a bitch!” I snapped. “You had no right to send me in there.” I gestured at Kells with my free hand. “I work for him, not you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand here and tell tales in front of someone who nearly got me dusted.”

  “You’ll—” began the figure.

  “You’ll do what I tell you, Drothe,” cut in Kells. “And right now, I’m telling you to report.”

  I looked from Kells to the figure and back. What the hell was going on here? In all the years I had been reporting to him, Kells had always held our conversations in the strictest confidence. Even back when I’d been Nosing on the streets, before I became a Long Nose, he had stressed the importance of keeping our conversations private. Had my breaking my cover in Nicco’s organization changed things that much? I couldn’t imagine it; yet here he was telling me to spill in front of someone not in his organization.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Kells stepped in closer and stared me in the eye. “I told you to report,” he said. “Now do it.”

  And that was when I saw it—there, with Kells less than a foot from me, his breath in my face, his posture hard, his neck stiff, and his eyes . . . worried. They were wide and wavering and pleading. I watched as they flicked off to one side toward the cloaked figure now behind him, then over my shoulder.

  Kells wasn’t angry, I realized; he was scared. And he needed me to follow his lead.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  “Go to hell,” I said, stepping back and hoping I was playing it right.

  “What?” said Kells.

  “You heard me.” I glared from him to the cloaked man. “I’m done answering everyone else’s questions.”