Shadowspawn (Thieves' World Book 4)

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Oh.” After a moment, he said, “But how is it that you — ” He broke off.

  The calico cat Mignureal had held so long now stirred. She rose and turned to climb carefully up Mignue. Rainbow gazed long into her eyes, and then Hanse watched the cat press its small pink nose to Mignureal’s. He had accepted a great deal this night, because he must. Now he accepted this too, and understood: Not Rainbow, but Shurina had just told Mignureal that she was right, and had kissed her.

  Mignureal hugged the cat to her face. “All the things I’ve known tonight, and said. Hanse; they weren’t the S’danzo Seeing. Shurina has somehow…told me. I have merely been speaking for her.”

  After a long while of silence, Hanse said, “I think I’d better have some more beer.”

  “Uh, Hanse…would you pour me some too, please?”

  *

  “Notable is my friend,” Hanse said. He sat on the stool, mug in hand, staring at nothing in particular. He had the attention of Mignureal, and Rainbow-Shurina, and Notable-Nuris. “He has saved my life at least one and a half times. I can’t call Thuvarandis friend, but he’s no enemy. He cannot deserve what Corstic is doing to him; no one could deserve this. The man needs to be dead. Surely after all this time he deserves his death.”

  He looked up, then, and his eyes were black coals and yet seemed to bum. “Corstic needs to be dead, too!” He sighed. “I must break into his lair after all, Mignue.”

  “Oh, Hanse!”

  Shurina, however, spoke more eloquently than Mignureal. She hurried to Hanse and paced back and forth, rubbing his legs. Hanse let his hand trail along the calico’s back. Suddenly he turned to Notable.

  “Notable! Can you understand me? Do you know what I am saying?”

  Gazing at him, Notable twisted his head abruptly to bestow some strong licks on his coat. Then he sat down to look at Shurina rubbing Hanse, and at Hanse.

  “I think…I think Shurina understands,” Mignureal said. “Notable is a cat, I think; merely a house for Nuris’ ka. But Shurina is aware in there. She must be, darling. I know that she spoke, through me. It was different from the Seeing, Hanse; I heard the words. I knew what I was saying.” She considered for a moment, then tried something: “Rainbow?”

  The calico cat continued rubbing Hanse’s legs and arching to his hand, and yet surely the averting of its small head from Mignureal was no coincidence.

  Mignureal said, “Shurina?” and the cat looked at her at once. Hanse swallowed hard and audibly. Mignureal was nodding.

  “Yes. That is a woman named Shurina looking at me from those tilted green eyes, isn’t it! You do understand! You understand that I have to know, Shurina. You know how important it is to you. So — show me that you understand. Please go over to Notable.”

  Instantly the cat swerved and without a normal feline swing of her hindquarters for a last rub against the leg she left, paced over to Notable. At the side of the big red cat, she turned to look at Mignureal.

  “Damn,” Hanse murmured. He stared at the floor. “It’s sorcery, all right, but for the first time, I don’t hate it. Who could hate Rainbow? Who could hate Shurina?” He looked at the cat. “Is it only Mignureal, Shurina, or can you understand me, too?”

  Both cats gazed at him, tails moving lazily. Both looked attentive. Still, Hanse knew that such seeming alert attentiveness and motionlessness, except for moving tail, were typical feline behaviour. A cat could do that for minute after minute, even until a human looked away. On the other hand the cat might well become interested in an insect or an itch, a supposed sound or a butterfly, and ignore the human completely.

  “If you can understand me, too, Shurina, please walk to me and to Mignureal and back to Notable.”

  The glaring cat lashed her tail as if insulted. But then she paced rather stiffly to Hanse, only to veer off and approach Mignureal, and thence back to the other cat. Notable yawned, which was always one of the most hideous sights Hanse had to see. He always looked away when any cat yawned. He did not care to look at those ghastly fangs and that awful ability to distend the mouth so…accommodatingly. He did not care to think about the murderous ability of even a small cat, much less one such as Notable.

  Now he did not even feel silly as he said, “I’m sorry, Shurina. I had to know. You want me to go after Corstic, that’s clear.” He paused while the calico hurried back to rub his legs.

  “I guess I’ve done things just as dangerous, but here in Firaqa I don’t know enough. I need your help, Shurina. You see — uh.”

  The cat had broken off rubbing to rear sinuously and set both forepaws on his knee. It stood there gazing into his eyes as if…as if awaiting instructions.

  Hanse nodded and stroked the side of the animal’s face. Shurina or no, the response was a cat’s; she pressed her cheek to his fingers.

  “Shurina is…alive in there,” Mignureal said. “Nuris is…Notable. Notable is a cat.”

  “Going over the wall to Corstic’s without knowing more would be stupid. Probably suicide,” Hanse said, explaining to a small calico cat. “On the other hand, I also can’t hope to explore that estate and learn what I need to learn. I can take you and Notable there on a horse, though, and avoid the whole problem of the wall by setting you on a tree-branch. You two can explore, observe, and meet me afterward. Somewhere; I wouldn’t dare sit there on a horse close outside his wall. I’d be too noticeable, too obviously waiting for something. Will you do that? Can you do that? And can you, uh, sort of control Notable, Shurina? Communicate with him as a cat so he knows the danger and what he’s supposed to be doing?”

  “Hanse…” Mignureal began but broke off. With that sinuous slowness that bragged of feline musculature, the small cat dropped from Hanse’s knee and began pacing from the room. She speeded to a trot.

  Both humans exchanged a glance, and went to the doorway to look. The calico stood by the hall door, waiting to go out. When she made a small sound, Notable brushed between them in a beeline for the other cat.

  Hanse put a hand on Mignureal’s shoulder, and answered her. “What?”

  “Nothing, I suppose.” She sighed. “It’s going to happen, I know that. You’re going to do it. Except that by now it must be closer to dawn than midnight, darling, and this has got to wait. We have to rest.”

  “True,” Hanse said. “‘Morrow night, then. Hmm…I mean much later, today!”

  Two people rode up the main road of Town Hill, talking in the darkness, and neither noticed the big grey horse under the little roanberry grove over on their left. The black-clad man in the tree was not interested in berries, or in these two riders who were returning home from Firaqa at an unusually late hour. He watched their passage, and they never knew. He had no idea who they were; they had no idea he was there.

  If cleared, the little grove would have provided a hemispherical widening of the road. Just beyond the roanberry trees was a steep drop-off, which was why no estate had grown here, and none would. Someone probably owned the land, but Shadow-spawn didn’t care about that. The owner would not be Corstic. The lower curve of his wall was a half league up the road, and on the other side. Shadowspawn waited. He had been waiting a long while. The bad part was not nervousness or apprehension, but the itching of his inner thigh. He would not scratch because the itch emanated from Notable’s claw-wounds. The snugness of his leggings must have rubbed away that odd greenish stuff with which Mignureal had smeared his wounds. Just below, the Tejana grey cropped grass and occasionally sampled a few low-hanging leaves. Along with his master, the horse had been waiting here for over an hour. In the darkness, in the tree, Shadowspawn waited. And he pondered.

  How was it that he had seen no pale new wounds on the trees inside Corstic’s wall, where branches had been ripped away and hurled at him; hurled to impale Thuvarandis? Why, even upon dismounting and looking close, had he found no twigs, no sign of the leaves that should have been there, from branches he had heard dashing against the ground and against the road? He found nothing in the ditch
across the road, either, or on the bank above it. Why in the name of all gods not to mention the Flame had Corstic gone to such trouble to have the area cleaned up? Suppose he had; how had he restored the branches to the trees? Was any mage capable of such sorcery as mending trees by sticking their branches back on!

  Once again, waiting an hour later in the tree, Shadowspawn shook his head. Again the thought came: What sorcerous glue did he use, damn him? He found no answer. He had been waiting here for over an hour, and he could find no answer. Nor could he believe that even Firaqa’s master mage was capable of such miracles.

  He waited nearly another hour. By that time his mount stood motionless and silent just below his perch; the nameless horse was asleep.

  As silent as Shadowspawn and perhaps more silent, the cats arrived without his knowledge until they were almost directly below. From the branch Notable was invisible in the darkness; Rainbow was a small patch of white. She uttered a perfectly normal “meow” in her small voice, and Shadowspawn swung down from the low branch. Instantly awake, the horse jerked its head around.

  After squatting briefly to stroke the two cats, Hanse used the rope-loop he had slung from his saddle horn to get into the saddle. He patted the horse’s neck and muttered to him for a moment, before looking down at the cats. He made a tiny sound with pursed lips. The calico made the spring first, landing without seeming impact on the blanket behind his saddle. Then Notable streaked up, to alight with a burbly sound on Hanse’s thigh.

  “Ouch! Damn,” Shadowspawn muttered, and pulled the big red cat onto the saddle before him. He made the click sound in his cheek that he had learned persuaded the grey horse to move at a walk. He paced back down the hill to Firaqa, and Cochineal Street. Tip was snoozing in the stairwell, but was happy to be roused. He got to ride the fine big animal back to the stable behind the Green Goose!

  Mignureal was waiting. She sat on the floor to draw Rainbow-Shurina into her lap. She stroked and stroked the little calico all the while that Shurina, through Mignureal, told them what she and Notable had learned.

  *

  To begin with, that odd patch of grass Hanse had noted was a safe place, not a dangerous one!

  An incredulous Hanse bleated, “What?”

  But Mignureal was speaking on, for Shurina. According to the intelligence the spell-wise woman in the body of the cat had gained while roaming the grounds, there was only one way into Corstic’s manse. Hanse leaned forward eagerly, only to discover that he was being told what he must not do.

  Seek to climb the wall and he would be killed. Aye, he had rather suspected that. Step to the top of the wall from the horse’s back as he had considered, and he would die. There went that brilliant idea, he thought, and listened because that was all there was to do. He had sent the cats in for information. Surely what Mignureal was saying, as she sat stroking the calico, was from the woman who was the cat: from Shurina. She went on.

  Should he try to stand in the saddle and pounce over the wall from the horse’s back — as he had been practicing today, for hours — he would die horribly. Seek to gain entry by using one of the trees so temptingly close to the wall, she told him, and he would be taken just as Thuvarandis had been.

  Blast, Hanse thought, we’re running out of options!

  True, and worse. He had no options. He had one and only one way to enter the mansion of Corstic the mage: enter the grounds by the front gate and gallop right up to the broad portico and run right up to the main entry, the front door, and walk in!

  “What?!”

  Aye. He was to take the handle in his gloved hand, and turn it, and walk in.

  “But — but I’m a thief. How can I possibly go in the front way!”

  She merely repeated: “Turn the handle with your gloved hand, and walk in.”

  Then her voice changed, and the cat in her lap turned its head to stare up at her. Obviously those pricked ears were hearing words that had not come from Shurina. This time it was the Seeing, the true S’danzo ability rather than the strange mental link with the cat, for Mignureal’s eyes had gone blank and her voice had taken on that strange quality he had learned to recognize. Hanse smiled in happy anticipation, leaning forward. As she spoke she drew from around her neck the medallion that Strick had given her six weeks ago, in Maidenhead Wood.

  “Hanse,” she began, “wear this amulet”

  But then came the rest of it, and he listened in growing disbelief and disgust to injunctions that were less than inspiring. A few seconds later he sat glaring at her. His mouth was an open hole in his sagging jaw.

  That was it, he thought desolately. She’s lost it. It’s gone. If I do that, I’ll be dead, dead, dead!

  *

  Another day and part of a night had passed with nothing further from her. Hanse had questioned her about what he saw as lunacy, but she could not help him. As usual, she had no memory of what she had told him and indeed did not know she had said it. Now he and the cats had made their preparations and were preparing to go, and still Mignureal had nothing to add to Shurina’s warnings or her own Seeing for him. Her nervousness and worry for him were obvious, but she Saw nothing new. No renewed Seeing came upon her. That only added to his sharing her nervousness about this night’s venture.

  They clutched each other at the door. He felt her fingernails through his blacks.

  “By now Tip will be waiting downstairs, with the horse,” he reminded her. “Because I’ve twice gone out through the northward gate and the first time all that…activity took place up at Corstic’s, they could be suspicious. So I’m going out by the south gate, the way we came into Firaqa. I’ll ride all the way around the city, and then up Town Hill.”

  “I know, darling,” she murmured.

  Aye, he knew that she knew. He had told her three times. The point was that he kept hoping that a renewed Seeing would come upon her, and he didn’t want her chasing him down in the wrong direction! What she had told him was insanity. Surely her S’danzo talent was playing her false!

  But now it was time, and she had nothing to offer. He squeezed her hard, stepped back, and looked at her for a moment. Then he whirled and headed for the steps. The cats were right with him. When he glanced back, Mignureal looked very tiny, standing there in the doorway. Shadowspawn went down, accompanied by the thump, thump-thump, of cats descending stairs. Both front feet, and pause, and then both back feet, and both front, and…

  Tip was there with the horse, which was visibly excited even though this business of nocturnal uphill outings had become almost standard in its life. The boy went inside to wait in the building’s entry corridor. He would not be bored. Nothing bored Tip; there wasn’t enough brain in him. Cloak concealing his working clothes, Shadowspawn mounted. The cats joined him. When they were settled, he set off toward the south gate. He maintained a sedate pace by tensing his arm against the pull of old Iron-mouth. It wasn’t just that this was the law; tonight he wanted to make sure that Mignureal had plenty of time to catch up.

  He rode all the way to the gate expecting to hear her voice.

  He did not.

  And then he was at the gate, glancing back, and a sleepy-looking sentry was waving a hand limply, bidding him be careful.

  Oh sure, Shadowspawn thought. Be careful. Just clutch the medallion — and walk in the front door with my eyes shut! Sure!

  He rode into the night. All the way around Firaqa’s east side he expected her even while knowing in the inner keep of his mind that she was not coming. Having rounded most of Firaqa, the big grey horse started once again up Town Hill.

  She has said it and that’s that, Shadowspawn told himself. So now do I cease heeding warnings and advice that have always been unbelievably to the mark, or do we behave sensibly instead?

  Hanse?

  He did not know. He could not answer himself. Ole Iron-mouth was approaching Corstic’s walls, and his rider dared not try to step onto the wall from the saddle, or onto a branch. Nor dared he stand in the saddle and attempt to leap that
wall. What choice was left him? What option did he have?

  And now here was Corstic’s wall, with all those trees just on its other side.

  I will experiment!

  Reining close to the wall, he muttered words to the cats, sucked up a deep breath and steeled himself, and reached out with a black-gloved hand. He grasped a long branch.

  On the instant he heard a loud cracking sound and flopped as far backward as the saddle and his backbone allowed. The broken bough drove across in front of him, at velocity. Leaves brushed his face and twigs scraped across his chest. Had he not lunged back out of the way, he’d have been impaled. He heard the bough slap leafily against the road. He looked at it, a large tree-branch lying half across the road. And he heard another leafy sound, and another loud crack.

  At that moment Hanse heard in his mind her words of last night:

  “Hanse. Wear this. When the branches begin to snap and fly, clutch the amulet and close your eyes until you hear them no more.

  Hanse could only blurt and blither: “Close my eyes? But — amulet! But — ”

  He had thought: Madness! Was this all she had to offer? He was to clutch the piece of jewellery, the gold-edged triangle of varicoloured bits of tortoise shell, closing his eyes the while so as to be sure to be killed? He could only splutter and stare at Mignureal as if she were mad. He could find no words. Coherence turned its back on him in the face of such lunacy. Surely this time her S’danzo talent had played her false.

  Now his thoughts were different. Since she had known that branches would snap and fly, then…

  It was far and far from easy, but Shadowspawn sucked up a deep breath and steeled himself. Still gazing at the branch in the roadway, he closed his eyes. At the same time he clasped the medallion slung around his neck to hang onto his chest.