Thieves' World: Turning Points

by Lynn Abbey

  The horseman stood on the step, still holding the rein of his mount. She looked up at him, in one swift glance noting the lines graven by patience and perhaps suppressed passion as well. His life had not been easy, but she thought he was younger than he at first appeared.

  "They say you have rooms. Clean, and not too expensive."

  His voice was very deep. A swiftly suppressed spurt of awareness identified it as the kind of voice she liked in a man. Her husband, Darios, had spoken thus, although the two men were unlike in all other ways. The stranger sounded as if he had come from Ranke, though the accent had been worn smooth by years of exile.

  "And stabling for my horse."

  "I've a room on the second floor," she said slowly, "though I don't know where I'll find a bed to fit you. The horse will be easier."

  She let her awareness extend towards him in the way Darios had taught her. The ability to "read" her guests had proved useful before now. This time, however, her probe met a blank wall. No one expected a widow who kept an inn to know any magecraft. Latilla had worked hard to keep it that way—it was not worth jeopardizing that concealment by probing further.

  "Give me a few padpols off the price and I'll sleep on a pallet on the floor…" he was saying, as if he had not noticed. Perhaps the shields were natural, then, and the man was no more than he seemed.

  Questions might be unwise, but speculation was another matter. The stranger's clothing was worn, but he wore it with an elegance that suggested there might have been a time when he slept in a bed built to match his inches. She would have to decide on the basis of that air of faded nobility, and the pain she had seen in his eyes.

  He looked a little taken aback, but he clasped her hand. She could feel the warmth within him, like a hidden fire. "You may call me Shamesh."

  Well, that was one way to let her know it was not really his name. But that was no concern of hers, Latilla told herself firmly, so long as he paid his rent on time. Now if Taran would only get home, the whole family would be accounted for, and as safe as anyone could be, in these times.

  Taran was, at that point, only a few backstreets away, reflecting on how much he hated mornings. He hated them even more when he saw them from the other side, with no sleep to soften the breaking day. A bleached, thinned quality always seemed to weaken the blue of the sky, as if some forgetful god had left a translucent veil to obscure the night. Taran tried not to dwell on such thoughts. They wakened childhood nightmares best left alone.

  On this particular morning his apprehensions were particularly acute.

  Mama's going to kill me if she finds out! he thought miserably,

  Latilla disapproved of the company Taran chose to keep, a mixed gang of youths who haunted the marketplace led by Griff, a boy two years Taran's senior. Griff had grown up in the Maze, and had a scar for every lesson he'd learned there. But Griff had humor in him too, which gave him a certain charm that drew Taran and others to him. It was that charisma that inspired them to go looking for trouble. Where many in Sanctuary simply sought to survive, Griff and his boys wanted to thrive.

  Damn you, Griff! thought Taran. What the hell were you thinking?

  A sharp yelp stopped him. Up ahead, a half-dozen boys had tied a mongrel dog to a stake they'd hammered into the ground. They were throwing rocks at it, and from the look of it they'd been at it for awhile. The soft scent of blood mixed with the city smells of urine and dirt.

  The dog was too tired even to defend itself, and staggered back and forth behind the inadequate cover of the stake. Occasionally a particularly sharp rock would gouge it and the dog would muster enough strength for another whimper. All this did was to make the ragged boys cheer whoever had made the shot and inspire the others to imitate him.

  Taran's eyes blurred, and for a moment he saw Griff surrounded by men with clubs. Up and down the clubs went, blood splattering behind them.

  Taran shuddered. He had not been able to help Griff. He could not help the dog now. He turned and dashed past the boys and their victim, trying to ignore the pity that welled within him. And the fear.

  Once Shamesh had arranged his scant luggage in his chamber, and every morning thereafter, he would leave the Phoenix and head towards the residences of the Rankan exiles at Lands' End, or in the other direction, towards the town. Taran, who had shown an unusual willingness to stay home lately and thus had been pressed into service as a guide, reported that the man's purpose was not commerce, for he took no goods with him, nor was he carrying anything in the evening when he came back again. Whatever his business was, it was not proving successful. With each day, Latilla could sense his frustration mounting.

  At the end of the week, when Shamesh came to her to pay his accounting, she could stand it no longer. "Will you be wanting the room for a week longer, or have you completed your business here?"

  "I have not even begun!"

  "Come—sit down. I have just made tea." Her smile invited confidence. When the house was new, her mother had hoped to hold feasts in the dining room. Large enough to hold all the guests for a communal meal, it was empty now. Morning sunlight filtered through the high windows and glowed on the frescoes, the only remnant of past splendor that had survived the hard times when anything that could bring in a few padpols had to be sold.

  "Nothing in this town is where I was told to seek it—even the Vulgar Unicorn has moved!" Shamesh exclaimed.

  "The past few years have been troubled," Latilla agreed. "Much has been destroyed, and many died." She waited a little, watching him. "Is it a person or a place that you are looking for?"

  "A person…" he said at last. "A noblewoman of Ranke who came with the household of Prince Kadakithis when he was sent here as governor."

  "The Prince left Sanctuary thirty years ago! The only Rankans remaining here are the old families—I suppose you have asked among them?"

  "Exhaustively. A few of the older folk remember her, but they believe she went with the Prince to the Bey sin isles…"

  Something about the way he said it alerted her. Clearly, Shamesh knew that Prince Kadakithis had returned to Ranke instead of sailing away with his Beysib queen. Was he dead, or was it he who had told this man about Sanctuary?

  "My older sister was one of the Beysa's ladies," Latilla said instead. "So I can tell you that there were only a few women from Sanctuary on those ships, and none of them was Rankene." Watching, she saw the light fade from his eyes, and repressed the impulse to reach out and comfort him. "She never arrived in the capital?"

  Shamesh shook his head. "Do you think I would have come all the way to this miserable hole if she had?"

  For a moment Latilla bristled. Then she sighed. It was, after all, true. Even her own father had left in the end, and though he had promised to be back in a year's time, he had never returned. She took a calming breath.

  "What was her name?"

  "Elisandra. She was the older sister of the lady who is now Empress of Ranke. I have been sent to look for her."

  Latilla sat back, understanding many things. Though Ranke no longer dared claim Sanctuary as a possession, rumor of events in the Empire still reached them. The throne had been seized by a northern general some years back, who appeared to be ruling well. To legitimize his reign he had married into a family which was, if not quite imperial, ancient enough to make him socially acceptable. Had Shamesh taken on this search for money, or was there some more pressing motive? She could not ask, but he had gained her sympathy.

  The sudden light in his face made it for a moment beautiful. La-tilla's breath caught, and she was abruptly conscious of him as a physical being, and at the same time remembered how long it had been since she had felt that kind of awareness of a man.

  He is at least a decade younger than I am, despite the silver threads in his hair, she told herself, and whatever beauty I might have had is long gone!

  "That's true!" he exclaimed. "But I would not know how to begin asking. Mistress Latilla, will you help me?"

  In the morning
it had rained, and the streets were still muddy. Latilla held up the skirts of her second best robe and picked her way along Pyrtanis Street with care, very conscious of the tall man at her side, who was glancing from side to side, his expression an uneasy mix of disgust and caution.

  "Who is this woman we're going to see?" Shamesh asked as they turned the corner to Camdelon Street. The buildings here were even shabbier, but the steps were swept and here and there a plant in a pot made a pathetic attempt at gentility. Like me—thought Latilla, remembering how Sula had stared at the unaccustomed finery. The girl is too filled with her own dreams to imagine that her mother might also cherish a few fantasies… She realized the subject of her current fantasy had spoken and forced a smile.

  "Her name is Mistress Patrin. In the old days, she was chief housekeeper at the Palace, and the terror of the servants there. When I was a little girl she certainly terrified me. She will probably inform you that her father was a Rankene lord, and it would be best to pretend to believe her. My mother always doubted that story, but at least while they could still get out and about, the two of them stayed on visiting terms. So I know the old bat survived the Troubles, though whether she's alive now I couldn't say."

  It had taken a week of patient inquiry to get this far. Most of the Palace servants she had thought of first were dead or disappeared, and even Taran's network of scruffy layabouts, motivated by the promise of Rankene coin, had run out of options by the time she remembered her mother's old friend.

  "And you think this Patrin can help us?"

  "Well, she knew everyone who was at court in those days—and all the gossip as well. She'll have known this Elisandra of yours."

  And Elisandra, if we find her, will be at least ten years older than I, thought Latilla with a grim satisfaction. She would be no rival, even in fantasy.

  A gaggle of yelling children shot out from an alley, gave Latilla and her companion a practiced once-over, and having decided they looked too alert to try a little purse snatching, pelted off down the road.

  Latilla, who had been counting the houses down from the corner, paused, eyeing the dwelling before her dubiously. The potted plant on the step had clearly died some time ago.

  Shamesh, less sensitive to nuances, took a step forward and banged on the door. They waited in the street for what seemed an endless moment, Latilla feeling more foolish as it extended. But Shamesh had only just lifted his hand to knock again when a crack widened at the edge of the door. Metal glinted—the chain was still on. Above it she glimpsed the glitter of an eye.

  The chain glittered and swung as the door was pulled open.

  "Who's this?" the old woman barked as she saw Shamesh. "Not your husband!" She looked him up and down in an appraisal which her age saved from being insulting.

  "A… friend, who volunteered to escort me through the town—" answered Latilla as they had agreed.

  "Please, good mistress, I am quite well behaved, I assure you!" said Shamesh, smiling.

  "A Rankan lord, by your accent! Did you think I would not know? I wonder what such a one is doing here?" She sniffed, but she pulled the door the rest of the way open.

  It was just as well they had brought their own food, thought Latilla, wrinkling her nose a little at the faint sour smell in the room. It was dusty, too. From the way Mistress Patrin moved, she guessed that the old woman's sight was failing. She must have recognized her by voice rather than vision.

  "And how does your mother?"

  "Her health is good," said Latilla, "but she cannot walk very well anymore."

  "Too fat!" Mistress Patrin exclaimed triumphantly. "I told her that her joints would give out one day! I flatter myself that I have kept my own figure tolerably well!" She added, smoothing shawls draped over a frame like a rack of bones. Her wig, pinned in a style that had been fashionable a generation ago, bore a spider web between two stiff curls.

  For a moment Shamesh caught Latilla's glance and she fought to keep her composure. Mistress Patrin's vague gaze slid towards the corner where she had told him to sit and she simpered.

  "And you, my lord, are from the great city? How I should love to see it! My father, you know was an exile, but he often used to speak of its splendors."

  Shamesh cleared his throat. "The recent wars have left their mark, but the new Emperor is rebuilding, and one day it will be more magnificent than before."

  Latilla blinked as she heard the rougher accent he had used give way to a drawling intonation that reminded her of court speech long ago. For the first time, she believed absolutely that the story of his quest was true.

  The old woman had recognized it too, and was reviving like a withered flower in the rain.

  "And why have you come to Sanctuary?" Her voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. Hope made the dim eyes gleam. "Are the Ran-kans returning? Will the Emperor send a Prince to govern us again?"

  Shamesh flinched from her intensity, then rallied, eyes glinting with amusement. "My lady," he said softly, "I am on a quest."

  Latilla stifled a smile. Mistress Patrin was leaning towards him, an unaccustomed excitement spotting her cheeks with color. Shamesh knew just how to appeal to the old woman's romantic yearnings.

  Feeling her own cheeks hot, Latilla forced her attention back to the conversation.

  "Her Serenity loved her sister," Shamesh was saying now, "and will grieve until she knows Elisandra's fate. And so I have come to Sanctuary to search for her."

  "Elisandra…" Mistress Patrin echoed, her vague gaze growing even more abstracted. "She was a slender girl, with fair hair?"

  "Her Serenity is a woman of queenly figure," Shamesh said carefully, "and her sister would no doubt by now be the same, but the family does tend towards fair hair."

  "I remember her. Sweet-natured, she was, not like some of them, but rather flighty… always fancying herself in love with someone, and wept like a watering pot when they disappointed her." There was another silence, and then Mistress Patrin's face changed.

  "What is it? What do you remember?" asked Shamesh, unable to bear the waiting.

  "It was in the last days before the Beysib left… There was a mage called Keyral who was promising all sorts of things—wealth, love, the usual. Your husband, Darios, knew him—" Her rheumy gaze fixed Latilla suddenly. "He was in the Guild. Most people were too concerned to save their skins to pay attention, but there were some who found his schemes a distraction. That girl Elisandra was one of the ones he dazzled, and he encouraged her. She had no money, but she added class to his entourage."

  "What happened to him?" Shamesh and Latilla spoke almost as one.

  The old woman shrugged. "No one knows. He had invited everyone to what he called a Great Demonstration of Magic, something to do with the transmutation of jewels. But it went wrong somehow, and the house was destroyed—that was the same day the Beysa left, so no one paid too much attention."

  "And Elisandra?"

  "I can't recall seeing her after the Prince left Sanctuary. I always thought she went with him. But if she did not reach Ranke…"

  Latilla sat back, trying to recapture her own memories of a time of more than ordinary confusion, even for Sanctuary. But since then so many more exotic traumas had shaken the city… It was Shamash who recalled her to the problem at hand.

  "If you do not know where this Keyral went, can you at least tell us where he was last seen?"

  Mistress Patrin's brows bent. "His place was on the corner of Fowlers Street and one of those lanes a block or two below the Governor's Walk down at the end, but only the gods know what remains of the place by now."

  "It's not a part of town I know," said Latilla. It was not a district any respectable woman should have been acquainted with. "But my son may be able to find it."

  Taran ran a hand through his dirty-reddish hair and cast an annoyed glance down first one and then the second of the streets that connected with the intersection in which they were standing. "Come now, boy," Shamesh growled, "which way?"

  Think
ing of Havish brought back memories of Griff and the beatings. Corvi, one of the lads in Griff's little circle of would-be toughs, had told Taran that Griff would heal—he might not get back the full use of his legs, or ever again be the mammoth figure who'd led them when they swaggered down the street from one tavern to the next—but he'd still be Griff. The question was, would he want to be?

  Taran hated it. Hated being afraid of Havish, and the way he and his boys had beat on Griff like a hammer on a nail, hated how his "friends" had stood by and watched. And most of all, he hated himself, because he had been so afraid he'd just stayed and watched with them.

  A muddled mind makes a muddled life, his mother would say if she were here, before giving him a friendly cuff to the head. Since that was all that seemed to be missing, Taran rapped himself twice on the back of his skull before pointing left.

  "This way," he stated with a smile, hoping his voice showed more confidence than he was feeling.

  In the old days, Keyral's house had stood three stories tall, with a garden in back where the wizard grew herbs and held parties now and again. Taran could almost see it. Almost.

  Now the building's bones barely remained. Much of the stonework had been salvaged—by now the stones were likely part of the city walls or one of those houses Grabar and Cauvin had been building for merchants as trade revived. The city consumes itself to rebuild itself, Taran thought morosely. The rest of it lay in rubble on the ground.

  Shamesh was staring at the ruins, looking as if he were sucking on one of those tart rock candies Taran got at holidays, except that he did seem to be enjoying the taste.

  "What now?" Taran asked.

  "I'm looking for an opening—a door to a cellar or basement…" Shamesh said at last. He picked his way through the rubble and began to heave rocks aside. Taran considered helping him, but the sun was warm and the rocks looked heavy. Aristocrats need their exercise, and young men need their rest, he told himself, stifling a yawn. It looked like a hopeless task anyway. In thirty years the rubble must surely have been picked clean. The overgrown remains of the garden looked far more inviting.