Shadowspawn (Thieves' World Book 4)

by Andrew J Offutt

  Cusharlain smiled. “And if it can’t be done? Roaching the palace, I mean.”

  “Why then Sanctuary will be minus one more cockroach/thief, and no one’ll miss him.” Gelicia’s shrug invested her vast bosom with a quake of seismic proportions.

  Cusharlain had gone his carefully questioning way, then, and by and by Shadowspawn had indeed broken into the royal palace of Sanctuary, and stolen away the Rankan Empire overlord’s Savankh, his very wand of power. For a time he had even become a sort of intim6 of that same youthful Prince-Governor from Imperial Ranke. Hanse had gone from being a tool of the concubine and her treacherous Hell-Hound to aiding the Prince-Governor in stopping them, their plot, and their lives.

  *

  Half the Savankh’s ransom, in silver coin, jingled just beautifully in the good-sized saddlebag Hanse removed from a grateful Cutie/Dumb-ass. The other half he had left behind in Sanctuary, to aid the rebels against the new overlords. That was the same night he broke into the palace for the third time, and came away again with the wand of power of the new overlord — or overlady, or over-thing; the Beysa. It was also the same evening on which he had wisely deemed it expedient to betake himself from the city of his birth.

  With him on a moment’s decision had come the bereaved Mignureal: S’danzo, burgeoning Seer, carefully preserved and sheltered virgin recently robbed of her mother, and sometime tool of gods; benign gods.

  She watched him now, watched the rise of his tunic onto the tiny cheeks of his tight backside, as he stretched to quaff just a bit more beer. And she, alone among all others including himself for all his airs and pretences, loved him. She and a certain goddess.

  She noted with pleasure the little breeze that wafted up from the south, the direction of their coming. She did not notice that all three of their animals lifted their heads in response to some scent freighting that lazy current of air, tipped forward their ears and stared in that direction, into darkness. Hanse noticed. He frowned and tightened his lips, and set aside the beer in manner decisive. Without at all alarming Mignureal because he was well practiced at being secretive, he set about checking the several knives he wore.

  When nature called, he merely wandered over on the other side of the horses, opened his leggings, let go, and watered the sand. He had no thought at all of Mignureal’s convenience problem until her fidgeting elicited a comment from him. She looked away. He spoke her name, in a questioning voice. Then she told him her problem.

  “Damn! I’m sorry; I’m not used to thinking about women! Just go over there past the horses, just a little way. There’s a great big convenience out there.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking ridiculously embarrassed and adding to it by trying not to look so. She started to move past him, skirts rustling.

  “Mignue — don’t get out of sight, now.”

  She spun about. “What!”

  “Uh, sorry. I’m sorry. I mean, uh, don’t go too far, all right?”

  “Of course. I’m not a child, Hanse. You don’t have to tell me that. This is Mignue, remember? Your woman.”

  “Of course. Right. Yes. I’m sorry, Mignue.”

  “And don’t you dare look!”

  Hanse turned away so she wouldn’t see him rolling his eyes toward the abode of the gods.

  *

  They ate dates and bread and dried, salty fish, sitting cross-legged on the ground and talking the while, and they kissed several times, while Hanse with great difficulty and admirable resolve curbed himself from fondling. He also drank no beer and, with care not to alarm Mignureal, sat in such a wise that he faced the south and could also see the onager and both horses.

  He was not interested in more of the beer. He was on watch. Besides, Hanse and alcohol were only nodding acquaintances. Except for that night when he had slain a Beysib Stare-eye on his way to meet Zip at Sly’s Place; he had put away several mugs that night, and fast. Even his elation and the beer, however, had not enabled Zip to convince him to join the Cause to liberate Sanctuary from the Stare-eyes. It had taken Moonflower’s death at Beysib hands to do that, and to change Hanse and his life forever. Never mind the time when he had rescued Tempus from the vivisecting monster Kurd; after that night of ghastliness Hanse had stayed drunk for a week or more. And after that he hadn’t touched a drop for a long, long time.

  *

  An hour and more passed and neither he nor the animals heard anything untoward.

  More significantly, the animals smelled nothing that alarmed or even interested them, and were at repose. With all three standing over there asleep, a relaxing Hanse responded to Mignureal’s request that he tell her once again how it came about that they had the sack of silver coins, and were wealthy.

  He told her, pleasantly at rest with his back against one of the unreasonable facsimiles of a tree, and with three of his knives removed. His lean legs were straight out on the ground, ankles crossed. His arm was around her and her hand lay on his tunic-clad chest, where her head was. He had been careful to get her on his right, so that his left hand was free.

  Naturally he embellished a bit and omitted a few thises and thats. He was truthful about having had help getting into the palace, that first time.

  More simply put than Hanse told it, he had found and taken the Savankh, escaped, and negotiated the ransom: a few coins of gold and lots of silver. The exchange was to take place near a well in the ruins of Eaglenest, an abandoned manse on a hill outside Sanctuary. It did, but with complications. The two heavy saddlebags full of shining chiming coin were borne by a Hell-Hound named Bourne, who had ideas of his own concerning the ultimate owner of the ransom and the immediate and long-term future of the thief. Fortunately he failed to carry out that plan, which involved his sword and Hanse’s head:

  “I threw the saddlebags down the old well and sort of dived in after them,” Hanse told Mignureal, pausing to direct a stare at one of his own legs. As if it weren’t even part of him, the fool thing twitched as a saddle-strained muscle let go with something approaching a bowstring twang. He re-crossed his ankles.

  He had also just lied, though surely understandably.

  He had in fact fallen into the well, totally by accident. He’d spent considerable comfortless time down there in the wet dark too, before being “rescued” by the governor himself, Prince Kadakithis. A wet and sorrily bedraggled Hanse emerged, leaving his treasure behind, and shortly gained firsthand knowledge of the meaning or the word “torture.” At that he fared better than Bourne, who paid the supreme penalty.

  “It’s really true then,” Mignureal said, snuggling. “You have met Prince Kitty Cat.”

  Hanse nodded against the top of her head. “Aye. More than met. He and I’ve talked, three times. Privately. We — ”

  “Oh, Hanse!”

  “Ouch. Be still, will you? The hard part was learning that I couldn’t hate him anymore. I think enough of Prince Kadakithis not to call him ‘Kitty Cat,’ and you won’t either.”

  “I’ll try to remember, Hanse,” she said, her voice still full of excitement. “It’s just that I can just hardly believe it! You and Kit — him! Talking! Whatever about, darling?”

  “As a matter of fact the second time we talked it was because he summoned me. He needed my help.”

  “What?!”

  He squeezed her far shoulder, hard. “Every time I say something and you make an excited noise you jerk so that you jar me all over, did you know that? This tree behind me’s not as wide as my back, and I swear, it bites!”

  At that she kissed his chest or rather his tunic, and he paused to kiss the top of her head, or rather her hair.

  “Anyhow, that time I sneaked into the palace, because I didn’t want anyone to see me being let in; who in Downwind or the Maze would’ve trusted me after that? Helping him that time got me into a lot of trouble, too — again. But that’s another story altogether. The first time — once I was out of the dungeon and the hands of that horse-sized smith acting as torturemaster — he signed a full pardon for
everything I’d done up till then. Kadakithis, I mean, not the torturing blacksmith or that big swine Zalbar. You know that; you’ve seen the pardon with his name and seal on it! I took it straight to your mother — ”

  “Oh, I remember. That was years ago; I was just a girl, then. You brought it to m-mother-r…because she could read and you wanted to be sure it really was a pardon.” Her voice had quavered, but she managed to fight back the sobs that wanted to begin anew.

  “Uhmm,” Hanse said, suddenly wondering whether Moon-flower had taught her daughter to read. He certainly hoped so. If they were going to be a family, it would be helpful — indeed, wonderful — if one of them knew letters and could read.

  He said, “Kadakithis also agreed to forget about the saddlebags, although getting ’em was up to me. He didn’t care; he’s rich Rankan royalty and it was only money. Besides, he was just so pleased and proud of having killed that night. A man, I mean. His first. That was the time I told him my business was thievin’, and that killin’s the business of soldiers and princes and the like.”

  “Oh Hanse! That didn’t make him angry?”

  “No. He laughed! I’ve told you — I’m not going to pretend that he and I are friends, Mignue, but we couldn’t help sort of liking each other. We’re about the same age, I think, and he was really aware of that. I remember thinking that he was clever enough to be a thief!”

  “Hanse! You didn’t say that!”

  He chuckled. “Right. That, I didn’t say to him.”

  “It’s all just so exciting, darling!” she said, and sort of crawled up him to kiss him.

  After a while, she asked, all low-voiced, if he had killed. “Yes,” he said just as quietly, and felt her tighten while his stomach did. “I never intended to. Killing was never what I wanted to do. I wanted people to think I could, and would. Cudget told me, ‘Wear weapons openly and try to look mean, boy. People see the weapons and believe the look and you don’t have to use them.’”

  “Oh, that was good advice,” she said, understanding him a little more; why he wore all those knives, for instance, and always wore black at night, or had back in Sanctuary. And why he went about scowling so much.

  “It was, and I took it. I didn’t want to kill anybody. I didn’t know whether I could or not, and really wasn’t interested in finding out. All I wanted was to be Shadowspawn, climbing and lurking, sneaking in and out of places no one else can, enjoying the thrill of roaching: taking things and never being caught or even seen. And never having to use these weapons.” Her interruption was a sort of blurted question that surprised them both: “Hanse? Why’s it called roaching? Why Shadow-spawn the roach?”

  “Hmp! What comes out at night and moves better in the dark than in the light?”

  “Oh! I — don’t like that much.”

  His response was instantaneous and fervent: “I don’t either.”

  “Do you like being known as Shadowspawn?”

  “I don’t mind,” he said, but his voice told her that it was more than that; the name pleased him.

  She smiled against his chest. She was beginning to feel older. It was part of being a woman. Men had more boy in them than women had girl; Mignureal had heard her mother say that a dozen times.

  “It does get silly when someone thinks it’s part of my name-name and calls me both: ‘Hanse Shadowspawn.’ That’s silly.”

  After a while of snuggling to him in silence she said, “And, but — oh. I remember; you said you killed the very first Beysib you saw right after…right after mother…” She broke off for almost a minute, getting her voice back together while he squeezed her and nuzzled her hair with his chin.

  “And that you thought it was the one who had k — I hope it was, too. Well, um, Hanse…before that?”

  Hanse stared ahead, thinking. He decided not to tell her about the other Beysib. That had been senseless. The arrogant creature had simply confronted him, and demanded, and Hanse had tried to go on his way, and the Stare-eye refused to allow that, and Hanse blurted a marvellous insult. The Beysib, rather than flying into a rage, seemed to show delight that it had an excuse to kill him. It started pulling out the long sword sheathed on its back, staring at him with unblinking eyes and clear intent. And the throwing knife from Hanse’s right upper arm was in its eye and brain in an instant.

  He had retrieved it, too, before he went on to his meeting in Sly’s Place. It hadn’t occurred to him that Zip and the dive’s proprietor, Ahdio, would treat him as a hero for having done death on one of the occupying force of invaders.

  He told her instead about the first time, a matter of years ago, now.

  “I was…on the roofs one night, and heard things. I went to look. I had just met Tempus, and didn’t know whether I liked him or not. Still don’t. Anyhow, he was being attacked, and by several. That was before I knew that he’s — he’s unnatural, Mignue. I guess he can’t be killed. His wounds heal and leave no scars, and Kurd actually cut off…parts of him.” He swallowed, hard, and Mignureal squeezed and pressed close. “They grew back.”

  “Oh!” A shudder rippled through her. Believing in no gods, the S’danzo were short on exclamations and swearbys and even such simple ejaculations as “Gods!”

  “Anyhow, that night, I didn’t think or anything. I saw Tempus under attack and I moved. I had to. I think I killed two of them; I wasn’t even sure, afterward. It was all a flurry and a blur, just moving fast and doing what had to be done to help him. We were pretty much friends after that, and he still vows that he owes me. I can’t see why. I saved him from Kurd all right, and I wanted to kill Kurd! But that night in the alley…could those assassins have killed Tempus? I-don’t know. Maybe they’d have left him dead, in pieces, and next day he’d be up and off to hide someplace, to let things grow back? I don’t know. I still can’t get over that business at Kurd’s though, and after. When Tempus grew back fingers and toes and t…tongue.” He shook his head. “Ils’ Eyes, how I hate sorcery!”

  Another shudder went through her, and she squeezed him hard enough to hurt. Then she was moving up his chest again, to his mouth.

  “Whether he’d have come back or not is beside the point,” she murmured, with her lips close to his. “What you did was noble, and that was reason for killing.”

  Then her lips were all over his and pressing hard. Her mouth was very warm and soon so was Hanse.

  The kiss lengthened and matters commenced to become involved. Many who knew or had known him would not have believed it, but it was Hanse who stopped it. True, that was neither to his nor Mignureal’s delight. He was, however, determined not to let pleasant dallying progress to lovemaking, and he was only so strong when the juices started flowing and biology started making demands.

  “If we keep this up, I’ll just have to have you and — ”

  “Me too!”

  “But it is not going to be out here in the open, Mignue, not on the desert. It just is not. There’s a proper bed up ahead somewhere for you, and then I want you naked and — ”

  She stopped his mouth with her hand, nodding, and mentioned that they really should be curling up to sleep anyhow. Better get the white robes to use as coverlets, too.

  “I mean it’s safe to snuggle in our clothes, isn’t it, Noble Hanse?”

  She hadn’t seen him look nervous or chuckle nervously before, and it was nice.

  *

  He had lied again. The excuse for an explanation he had given her was not just no explanation: it was not quite the truth.

  There were other reasons. The main one was that he was still nervous about the possibility of someone’s or something’s being out there, following, and he was not about to be helpless in embrace. That, he did not want to tell her: he was on watch. Yet there was more.

  To begin with, he was no longer the Shadowspawn or even the Hanse his friends and acquaintances — of which there were rather more than the former — knew or thought they had known. He had changed greatly once, during a time not long ago. Nonetheless it was a
time he could not now remember. Both gods and his own wish were involved in that forgetting; he had wished to forget it, to gods’ disappointment.

  It was the gods of his people who had granted him the power of wish, for excellent service rendered. Hanse had indulged himself mightily for ten days. All he had to do was wish, and it was so. It was incredible and it was wonderful. For a while.

  Naturally his wishes, most of them made on whim or the jerk of a knee in an instant, involved females, and beds. Wondering what they remembered, he decided to make a test.

  He wished that when he reached home, his room above a tavern, Mignureal would be there waiting for him, in his bed.

  His intent was an experiment: to enjoy her, then use the wish to make her forget, and next day see what she and her mother knew or thought they knew about her activities. Where would they think she had been? He had hurried home, and there she was, in his bed, both visibly and vocally anxious to make love. Because he had wished it.

  And that was the problem. She was there because he had wished it, not because she had. Or so he thought.

  That led him to discovery of a level to which he could not stoop, and Hanse was shocked: he had not known there were any. He simply could not go through with it, not that way. Mignureal was not those other women and girls. Mignureal was…different. Moonflower’s daughter should not be behaving as she had been that night. He had wished Mignureal back in her own home, in her own bed, and for her to remember her visit to his room only as a dream.

  Later he had wished to remember it the same way, so that the two of them shared only a dream, not memories of what had been reality, however doubly incredible. Had someone told him that he had made a moral decision, he would have protested angrily, feigning even more anger.

  After that the power of the wish had not been fun anymore, and he had parted with it willingly.