Thieves' World: Turning Points

by Lynn Abbey

  Bezul flinched. Short of tying Perrez to the bedpost, there was no way to keep him completely out of trouble and, by the thousand eyes of Father Ils, there was no convincing Gedozia that her most precious son drank and gambled his way into one tight corner after another.

  Bezul had dreaded this night—had seen it coming for years. His heart was cold as he spun the cord between his fingers. Several moments passed before he noticed the sheen on his fingertips. Holding the cord to his nose, Bezul inhaled deeply. Fish oil… salt… wrack… the Swamp of Night Secrets on the far side of the White Foal River. He raised his eyes to meet his wife's.

  They'd married young, in the depths of the Dyareelan Troubles, and waited fifteen years to start a family of their own. That had given them the time to learn each other's ways. Bezul didn't have to say a word, nor did Chersey. She kissed Lesimar lightly on the forehead, took the lamp, and disappeared into the warrens. The geese honked and flapped as she passed.

  "What was that about?" Gedozia demanded when she was alone with her elder son.

  "Good chance you're right about Perrez. Did he happen to tell you where he'd be last night?"

  Gedozia pursed her lips tight and shook her head. By those gestures, Bezul recognized a lie. He could badger the truth out of her, but Chersey was already returning.

  "No sign of him among the manuscripts," she admitted, "and the latch to his room is drawn from the inside."

  Meaning Perrez had left the changing house through his private entrance and had expected to return the same way. Even Gedozia could grasp the implications of that. Her lips worked silently. The bond between his mother and her lastborn child was nothing Bezul could understand; its strength brought out the worst in both of them.

  By training and temperament, Jopze and Ammen were soldiers. Imperial soldiers. They said they'd served their terms in the unsettled northern reaches of the crumbling Rankan Empire and that, five years ago, they'd decided to retire in Sanctuary because it was a quieter place these days. Bezul imagined there was more to the story; he didn't press for details. The pair could have joined the city guard, maybe commanded it, but between them they'd had six children when they arrived and at least a dozen children now. They did better swapping time for shoes, cloaks, and other household goods at the changing house than they'd have in the barracks.

  Without comment, Chersey lowered her eyes. She lifted the children off the counter and herded them toward the kitchen where geese and Gedozia were forbidden. Bezul locked stares with his mother, fairly defying her to wish him well or warn him to be careful.

  "It's not his fault," Gedozia said instead. "This isn't what your father meant for him…" She caught herself—"For either of you—" but the correction, as always, came too late.

  "You've done him no favors, Mother, reminding him every day."

  Bezul was angry to the bone, but what good was anger in a family that the Hand had broken? Someday Bezul feared he might lose control and ask how his father had truly died. And where would he be if his mother told him the truth? No closer to his father, that much was sure.

  The eastern sky had taken a sunrise glow when Bezul strode onto Wriggle Way. He was dressed as befitted his station in life: plainer than the best of Sanctuary, but better than most in homespun breeches, loosely fitted boots, a linen shirt and a bit of Chersey's fancy work on his half-sleeve coat. He'd left his cloak behind. It had been a warm winter thus far—no appreciable snow and very little ice—and though the air was chillier this morning than it had been for a month, Bezul believed in the sun. He believed in the short-bladed knife sheathed at his waist, too, and another, longer knife tucked into a boot top. The latter was a weapon, not a tool, and he'd made good use of it once or twice, though no one would mistake Bezul the changer for a fighting man.

  There were signs of life all around—Wriggle Way was a workman's street and workers rose before the sun in winter—but no strangers. Bezul dug the cord, the stone, and the cloth out of his scrip. He held them out for anyone to see. People hailed him left and right—the master of the changing house was known to nearly everyone in the Shambles—but no one noticed the cord, not in the quarter, nor on the Wideway where the wharves were empty, the tide was out, and the air smelled like the cord dangling from his left hand.

  From the Wideway, Bezul headed northwest, toward the bazaar and past streets that would have him quickly back to the changing house, had he been returning home. Toward the raw, knocked-together tournament stands as well. Perrez, that epicure of rumor, claimed that both Ranke and Ilsig had put up the gold and silver to host a first-blood tournament—short of the old gladiator matches the Vigeles clan used to run in the Hill, when it was still the estate quarter. If Bezul believed Perrez, Sanctuary's importance in the minds of kings and emperors was growing daily. If Bezul were ever fool enough to believe his brother.

  Bezul reminded himself he needed to visit the palace soon to do some changing himself: a sack of their valuable, but slow-moving, jewels in exchange for a chest or two of Sanctuary's near-worthless shaboozh for cutting into padpols.

  He came to the footbridge below the bazaar that connected the Shambles with the fishermen's quarter where knotted, oiled nets hung by the armful over every fence and wall. The bridge-keeper held out his hand for a padpol. Bezul dug the smallest, blackest bit of pot-metal from his scrip and crossed the footbridge, holding his breath against the stench rising from the midden ditch beneath.

  The men and women who crewed Sanctuary's fishing fleet lived by the tides, not the sun. Their boats were out aad had left their moorings long before the stone thumped against the changing house door. But there were other ways to harvest a living from Sanctuary's waters. Across the White Foal River, the Swamp of Night Secrets sprawled as far as the eye could see.

  Night Secrets Swamp was larger than it been when Bezul was a boy. He could just about remember how this part of Sanctuary had looked before the Great Flood rechanneled the White Foal River. The slum-quarter his father had called Downwind had stood—or slouched—where thickets of swamp-scrub now grew. "Good riddance," Bezul's father had said when he'd brought him to see the damage. Of course, Sanctuary wasn't truly rid of Downwind. The Hill quarter—every bit as treacherous and squalid—had sprung up before the flood waters receded and the swamp wasn't exactly empty.

  A hardy breed they called the Nightmen eked their livings from the shifty waters. They were trappers, mostly, and not particular about what they snared: fish and crabs, plume-y birds, soft-furred predators, or the occasional man. When the Hand couldn't find better targets or victims for their madness, they'd combed the swamp; and the people of Sanctuary—Bezul included—had heaved guilty, but relieved, sighs: Better the Nightmen, than kith or kin.

  For their part, the Nightmen did nothing to improve the impression they left behind. They stood out in any crowd—if only by the tang of their unwashed flesh. The Irrune shaman, Zarzakhan, in all his fur-clad, mud-caked glory, looked no more unkempt than the average Nighter. And as much as the Imperials complained about the guttural belching of the Wrigglie dialect or the Wrigglies complained about high-pitched Imperial chatter, both agreed that it was impossible to converse intelligently with anyone reared in the swamp.

  Still, Nightmen—their women almost never crossed the river—in their reeking leathers were regular visitors at the changing house. They found things in the mud—old coins or bits of jewelry—that weren't useful until traded away. Bezul gave them what they wanted, Chersey gave them a little more, but the changing house showed a profit either way. Fact was, a good many thieves had lost their hoards when the White Foal flooded and there were rumors—undying rumors—of riches hidden in the Swamp of Night Secrets: the beggar king's hoard, the slaver's mansion, the treasure troves of a half-dozen immortal mages, to name only a few. Perrez—Father Ils have mercy on his greedy heart—believed every rumor and Gedozia encouraged him. She wouldn't forget that the family had once been jewelers—goldsmiths and gem-cutters—on the Path of Money. They'd never been as w
ealthy as their clients, but they'd lived very comfortably, indeed, when she was young and beautiful. Bezul kept food on the hearth and their heads above water, but a changing house on Wriggle Way could never salve Ge-dozia's wounded pride.

  Bezul stopped short of cursing them both as he trod carefully down the planks to the White Foal ferry—a rickety raft festooned with cleats and ropes. A blanketed figure of no discernable age or sex slouched against the mooring post, the shadow of the summoning bell across its head. The figure stiffened as Bezul approached and he glimpsed the face beneath the shadow: beardless, wide-eyed… young.

  Bezul loosed his silent curse: When his luck went bad, it went very bad. There were no rules in the Swamp of Night Secrets— except the ones experience taught. An honest man could negotiate with a practiced criminal if he knew what he wanted; but a raw youth with no sense of the possible—? Bezul drew the cloth through his fingers.

  "You the changer?" the blankets asked with a voice that was surprisingly deep. He nodded. "And you're the man who threw a stone at my door this morning?" Flattery soothed the Nighter who shed the blanket and rose. He was a fine specimen of his breed: dark,

  dirty, scrawny, and, above all else, surly, with his head cocked over his left shoulder and all his weight on the same leg.

  "Got the red lucky?" At least, those were the words Bezul thought he'd heard. Between the dialect slur and the snarl, he couldn't be certain. "The red lucky?"

  The youth grunted. "Perrez. He said, see the changer. Said you'd have it."

  Bezul's imagination swirled with countless unpleasant possibilities. "Take me to Perrez first," he demanded.

  "Can't," the youth replied after a fretful glance toward the swamp.

  "Nothing happens until I know my brother's safe," Bezul adopted a softer, conspiratorial tone.

  Another swampward glance, more furtive than the first. Bezul guessed he was merely a messenger and already over his head.

  "Who gave you the cloth?"

  "Him."

  "Who? Not Perrez?"

  A unexpected nod. "Him. Perrez."

  "Why?" Bezul asked, bracing himself for another of his brother's bollixed schemes.

  "We swapped," the youth replied. "For the lucky, the red lucky. We was to swap back when we met up again last night. He said it was earnest. After the other night, when the moon went red an' there was fire in the swamp."

  The youth hesitated, then nodded. "He swore. Come midnight, he'd be right here. I waited 'til it weren't midnight no more then I come to the changin' house. Perrez said, aught went wrong, the changer'd have the lucky." He stuck out his hand.

  There'd be hell to pay when Bezul caught up with his brother who, as Father Ils judged all men, had never intended to meet the Nighter but, first things first: "You've been—"

  Before Bezul could finish his explanation, the youth lunged for his throat. It was a foolish move, not because Bezul was prepared— he most certainly wasn't—but because the youth was more crippled than surly. His right leg betrayed him and he'd have tumbled on his face, if Bezul hadn't caught him. The youth fought free, snarling threats and lashing out with his fists. Bezul countered with a forearm thrust that unbalanced the young man. He went down with a groan that owed nothing to Bezul's strength.

  "Whatever your dealings with Perrez," Bezul said sternly, "he didn't share them with me. I don't know what's become of your 'lucky.' "

  "No," the youth insisted, his chin tucked against his chest. From the way he shook, Bezul guessed there were tears dripping onto the mud. "I gotta get the lucky." He swiped his face with a leather sleeve. "Got to." Then the youth hugged himself tight. "Shite," he muttered and repeated the oath as he swayed from side to side.

  Bezul had seen misery too many times in his life not to recognize it in a heartbeat. Knowing that his own brother was the cause didn't make it easier to bear.

  "Stand up," he urged the youth. "Tell me your name and tell me about this 'lucky.' What does it look like?" There was, after all, a chance that the changing house had an identical "lucky" or two stashed in its warrens.

  "It's red."

  "Your name or the 'lucky'?"

  "Name's Dace. Lucky's red. Reddest red."

  "And it belongs to someone else?"

  Dace raised his head. "Not Perrez!" he snarled.

  "No, not Perrez, and not you, either, by the look of things. But you gave it to Perrez—as earnest. Why? What was Perrez planning to do with it before midnight?" And what had either to do with last week's moon eclipse or perhaps the first-blood tournament? Frog all—he should have been paying more attention to his brother's activities, should have known Perrez would find a way to get in trouble.

  The Nighter shrugged, recapturing Bezul's attention. "Said he'd find out if'n it was true lucky. Told him it was. We been usin' it for years."

  "For what?"

  "Baitin' crabs."

  Dace clambered to his feet. He framed his fingers around a nut-sized hole. "This big, drop-shaped, and shiny. And smooth. Hard-smooth and cool in your hand."

  Glass, Bezul decided. Heated once for clarity, then cooled into a solid bulb and stored for a future use that never came. There weren't many glassblowers left in Sanctuary and most of what they blew was milky yellow, but years ago it had been different. Years ago, master craftsmen had blown their glass clear as sunlight or colored like rainbows, glass brilliant enough to earn a goldsmith's respect.

  Perrez knew where they kept their father's storage chest of jewel-colored bulbs, so why had he swindled a Nighter out of his precious "lucky"… ?

  Bezul shook the question out of his thoughts. "Come along," he told Dace, "we'll find you a 'lucky,' " and when that was settled, by all the gods, he'd have choice words with his brother.

  Dace followed Bezul from the ferry. The Nighter threw himself into every stride, swaying precariously on his weak leg. Bezul wondered why the young man didn't use a crutch—until he imagined a crutch sinking into a swamp's endless mud. He offered to pay their way across the footbridge, but Dace wanted nothing of charity—or the narrow bridge. They took the long way, instead, shouldering their way through the crowds at the tournament, then hiking uphill, upstream through the bazaar. Dace was gasping when they reached the palace wall, but much too proud to call a halt, so Bezul called one for himself at the top of Stink Street.

  "What do you get out this, Dace?" Bezul asked. "Why loan your 'lucky' to a stranger?" He'd tried, and failed, to keep the critical tone out of his voice.

  Dace stared long and hard at his grimy sabots before answering: "No stranger," he admitted between deep breaths. "I been workin' for him all winter. Showin' him places in the swamp, old places, like the one where my uncle found the lucky. I told him how the lucky's the best bait ever. Ever'thing comes to it, even birds and snakes, but crabs is the best, even in winter—specially this winter when nothin's froze. Put the lucky in a crab-trap at sunset and it's full-up with a mess o'crabs come morning. Eat 'em or sell 'em, nothing better than crabs. Perrez, he wanted to bait a trap over here. Said it was dangerous, but if the lucky caught what he was lookin' for, then him and me would be partners and I could live over here with him." The Nighter met Bezul's eyes. "You being the changer, you've got to help me. Perrez said. If I go home without the lucky—" Dace drew a fingertip across his throat.

  Bezul wasn't a violent man, but words might not be enough when he came face-to-face with Perrez. Dace was a Nighter: crippled, wild, and utterly unsuited for life anywhere but the swamp where he'd been born. Telling him otherwise—giving him hope—passed beyond swindling greed to cruelty. And leaving Bezul to sort it out, that would be the last—the absolute last—in a long string of insults a younger brother had heaped on his elder. He started down Stink Street with Dace lurching along beside him.

  Nighters with their furs and leathers, not to mention their swampy aroma, attracted attention at the best of times. A gimpy Nighter trailing after a respectably dressed merchant attracted extra attention. Someone, seeing them and recognizin
g Bezul, had run ahead to the changing house. Jopze had left his comfortable post inside the changing house and taken up position beneath the baker's awning a few doors up Wriggle Way. A barrel stave leaned in easy reach against the wall.

  Bezul caught Jopze's eye and shook his head twice, assuring the old soldier that, however strange it looked, he wasn't in need of protection. Jopze picked up the stave and followed them to the changing house where Ammen, their other guard, had remained with the family and customers.

  Before he could finish, Chersey ran from behind the heavy wooden counter. She was all smiles and clearly hadn't noticed Dace.

  "It was all for nothing," she told him. "Your brother showed up not long after you left—shirt and all. I told him what had happened—how frightened we were and how you'd gone after him. He laughed, like it was nothing at all, and said it had to be the laundress; he was missing a shirt…" Chersey's voice trailed. She'd gotten an eyeful of Dace. "What—? Who—?"

  "Meet my brother's laundress," Bezul said bitterly and began his own version of the morning's events.

  He was cautious at first, expecting Gedozia or Perrez himself to challenge him from the shadows, but Chersey had said—when Bezul paused for breath—that Gedozia and the children hadn't returned from the farmers' market—held this week, on account of the tournament, in the cemetery outside the walls—and Perrez had stayed at the changing house only long enough to "borrow" three shaboozh.

  "He said he had work to do," Chersey explained. "Something big—isn't it always? He was meeting a man. I couldn't tell whether he was buying or selling—but it wasn't anything to do with the tournament. Your brother was beside himself, Bez. All bright-eyed and high-colored, as though he'd been drinking. I didn't know what to make of him so I gave him one shaboozh and told him to come back later, when you'd gotten back, if he needed more."

  One shaboozh was two more than Perrez deserved.