Rising, he went on his way. Along the perimeter of the palace along the flagged walkway betwixt dome and toothy wall.
Moving with a cat suppleness that would have been scary to an observer, he reached his second marker. Nicely framed between two merlons, he could see it, away off in the distance. The purple-black shape of Julavain’s Hill. Again he smiled, tight of lip.
A merlon became a winch, aided by the two wooden cylinders brought for the purpose. They would pay out the silken cord and prevent the stone from slicing it. Its other end he secured to his ankles. And froze, waiting while the sentry clumped by. He was not importantly thumping his pike’s butt, now. He no longer cared to keep himself awake. The thief gritted his teeth against the ghastly noise of the hardest of wood grating over harder flagstones. The porker was dragging his pike!
Then silence was thick enough to cut with a knife, of which the thief owned an abundance. He waited. And waited.
At last he stepped, still crouching, into the crenel. Turning, he carefully winched himself, backwards, down the wall. Down and down, until he came to a particular window. It was cut in the shape of a diamond. That decision had involved more than aesthetics; the damned thing was harder to enter.
Most carefully indeed, he turned. He paid out the cord with his hands until he was quite upside down outside that window. Blood flowed into his head while he strained muscles and vision until he was assured that the chamber was uninhabited.
Then, grinning, Hanse the thief flipped down and dropped lightly into the bedchamber of H.R.H. Kadakithis, Prince-Governor of Sanctuary.
He had done it again! And this time all on his own and without aid. He had breached the wall, eluded the guards, broken into the palace, and was in the very privatemost chamber of the Prince-Governor himself!
Well, lord Prince, you wanted to see Shadowspawn—here he is, awaiting you! Thus he thought while he freed his ankles of expensive silken line and removed his gloves. At least this time no bedmate waited here for her youthful lord.
It was all Hanse could do to keep from laughing aloud in sheerest prideful delight.
“A nice-looking girl left this here for you, Hanse,” Moonflower the Seer had told him. “She got it from another—along with a coin for her trouble—who got it from still another.”
Hanse raised his dark, dark brows and hooked a thumb in the shagreen belt he wore over a screamingly red sash. From one side of the belt was slung a dagger. An Ilbarsi knife, long as his whole arm, hung down his other leg.
“This you … Saw, Passionflower?”
She smiled, a hugely fat and grossly misnamed woman who overflowed two cushions atop a low stool. She saw him as a boyish boy and had ever let him turn her head with his charm, which she was almost alone in seeing.
“Oh no,” Moonflower said almost archly, “I needed to go to no such trouble. I know things, you know.”
“Oh, I know you know things, you clever darling,” he told that gross dumpling in her several skirts, each of more than one unrepeated colour. “And this time you’re going to let me know how you know, I know.”
She nodded at the wax-sealed walnut shell he was idly tossing in his left hand. “You know me too well, don’t you, you naughty scamp! Smell it.”
Up went his close-snuggling brows again, and he brought the shell to his nose. He rolled his eyes. “Aha! Perfume. A good one. Times are good for the only true mage of Sanctuary, then.”
“You know that is not my perfume,” she said, not without a sideward turn of her blue-tressed head to give him an arch look.
“Now I know that,” Shadowspawn said, jocular and easygoing and almost cute in the sunlight, “because you tell me so. The walnut was given you by a well-off girl wearing good perfume, then. Betwixt her breasts, I’ll bet, where she bore this charming charm.”
She lifted a dimpled finger. “Ah! But that is the point. The scent on that charm is not mine, and the girl who gave it me wore none at all.”
“Oh Moonflower, pride of the S’danzo and of Sanctuary! By Ils if the P-G knew of your genius, he’d not have that ugly old charlatan at court, but you, only you! So. By the perfume you know that there was a third woman, who gave this and a coin to another to give to you to give to me.” He wagged his head. “What a game of roundabout! But what makes you think this thing was given her by still another, to begin with?”
“I saw the coin,” Moonflower said, all kittenish inside a body to block a door or bring groans to a good steed.
“It bore still another scent?”
Moonflower laughed. “Ah Hanse, Hanse. I know that. Soon you will know too, surely, once you open the walnut shell. Surely it contains a message from someone who wanted no one to know he sent it to you.”
“He?”
“Do you care to make a wager?”
He who was called Shadowspawn clutched the walnut to him in mock terror. With his other hand he clutched his purse theatrically. “Wager with you about your wisdom? Never! No one has accused me of being stupid.” Well, almost no one, he mentally added, thinking of that burly stranger, Tempus the Hell Hound … Tempus the … what?
“Be off with you and open it privily then. You’re standing between me and paying clients!”
There were none present, Hanse assured himself before he said, “In a moment,” and thumb-nailed the brownish wax along the lip-like closure of the walnut shell. He knew Moonflower was frowning, believing that he should be more secretive, but he also knew what he wanted to do. A gesture, merely a gesture. The scrap of extra fine leaf-paper he took out and poked, still folded, into his sash. Pressing the shell closed and thumbing the wax into a semblance of seal, he proffered it to the S’danzo seer who consistently proved that she was no charlatan.
“For Mignureal,” he said, pretending shyness. “To scent her… her clothing, or something?”
For a moment the flicker of a frown appeared on Moonflower’s doughy face, for her big-eyed daughter was quite taken with this dangerous youth from Downwind, whose means of income was no secret. Then she smiled and accepted the scented shell. It swiftly vanished into the vast cleavage of what she called her treasure chest, under her shawl.
“You’re such a nice boy, Hanse. I’ll give it to her. Now you git, and inspect your message. Maybe some highborn lady wants a bit of dalliance with your handsome self!”
The rangy young man called Shadowspawn had left her then. Smile and even pleasant expression left his face and he swaggered like a Mrsevadan gamecock. Face and walk were part of his image, which none would dare say might stem from insecurity. Still, Moonflower’s words would not have made him smile anyhow. He was not handsome and knew it, as he knew that his height was no more than average. The biggest thing about him was his ego—although his lips, which some thought were sensuous, were to him too full. His nickname others had given him. He did not dislike it; his mentor Cudget Swearoath had told him a nickname was good to have—even such a one as “Swearoath”. Hanse was just a name; Shadowspawn was dramatic, with a romantic and rather sinister sound that appealed to the youth.
He left Moonflower remembering how he had indeed dallied with a beauty of means. Highborn she was not, though she had been from the palace, and richly garbed. Hanse had been touched both in his ego and in his greed, by her attentions. Only later had he discovered that it was not truly he she was interested in. She and a fellow plotter were in the employ of someone back in Ranke—the Emperor himself, perhaps envious or wary of Kadakithis’s good looks?—who wanted to discredit and destroy the new Prince-Governor, him they called Kitty-K-at. They had elected to use Hanse in their plot; Hanse had been their dupe!—for a while.
But that was done with, and on this later day he left Moonflower and swaggered along the streets. His eyes were hooded and the weapons all too obvious on him. Some stepped off the narrow planking of the sidewalk for him, and (quietly) cursed themselves for it. Still, they would do it again. In appearance, all tucked in behind his eyes and abristle with sharp blades, he was “about as plea
sant as gout or dropsy”, as a certain merchant had once described him.
Well, he was alive. Both the lovely plotter and her traitorous Hell Hound co-conspirator were not. Further, Kadakithis was grateful. And now, as Hanse discovered to his astonishment back in his quarters, the Prince-Governor had actually sent him a note!
Hanse recognized the seal and the scrawl at the bottom from other documents. Since Prince Kadakithis knew that Hanse could not read, the bit of fine paper contained not writing, but clever drawings. The Governor’s seal, with a hand extending from it, beckoning to a dark splotch. It was man-shaped—a shadow. Under that was an untidy jumble of (turnip slices?) with straight lines raying up from them. Shadowspawn’s frown was a momentary thing. Then he was nodding in comprehension—he hoped.
“The P-G wants me to come calling on him, and here’s a promise of reward: shiny coins. He sealed up the message in the walnut shell and gave it to one of his harem, with instructions. No one should see Hanse the thief receive a message from the Prince-Governor, else Hanse’s name become Plague and he be avoided the same. So that girl found another, and passed on the walnut and a coin, with her lord’s instructions: “Take this to Moonflower for Hanse.”
And she had actually done it, without prying open the shell in an attempt to gain greater treasure than one coin! Well, miracles had happened before, Hanse mused, gazing pensively at the strange message. Had she opened the shell, she’d likely have discarded the note.
Or nervously pressed it back into the shell to scuttle to Moonflower with it. Maybe someone does know that Hanse received a message that shows a beckoning hand from the Rankan seal, and a pile of coin. I hope she’s the quiet sort! If I knew who she is, I’d scare her into silence. But then maybe she didn’t open it at all…
The point is, I hate to walk into the palace, day or night. How would that look? Me!
Besides, someone inside probably spies for someone out here, and the word would be passed. Hanse just walked right up and in, and he was passed, too! Better watch him; maybe he’s a spy for that golden-haired Rankan boy in the palace!
And so Hanse had thought on that, and begun to grin, and then to plan, and out he went to reconnoitre and plan, and now he had broken in, all unseen and unknown, to await his summoner in the latter’s own privy apartment!
And now, sitting there waiting, Hanse reflected and contemplated the more, and his face clouded. The prickling in his arms started slowly, and grew.
Unwittingly the tool of that pretty Lirain who had so cleverly seduced or “seduced” him (with no trouble at all!), he had gained this apartment before, also by night and secretly. That time he had stolen the very symbol of Rankan power, that wand called the Savankh. Eventually all that had turned out, and governor and thief reached an understanding. By way of reward, Hanse was granted pardon for all he might have done—once he had assured the royal youth that he had never slain. (He had, since. It afforded him little enjoyment or pride.) Hanse also came out of that painful adventure with a nice little fortune. Unfortunately it was in two saddlebags currently reposing at the bottom of a well. He hoped those saddlebags were of good leather.
Now he had broken in here twice. This time he had proven that he could enter this apartment without help from inside or out. What then, when Kadakithis gave thought to that?
Hanse had respect for the youthful Rankan’s mind. It even possessed a devious quality. Hanse had seen and felt proof of that, when as Kadakithis’s unwilling agent he had participated in the ruin of the two plotters, Bourne and Lirain.
Suppose, the frowning Hanse mused, that Kadakithis pondered and kept thinking.
There existed in Sanctuary one who could gain his chambers and thus his royal and gubernatorial self, at will. At any time, and never mind guards and sentries! Suppose that one chose to come again, as thief?—or was hired to do, as assassin? Would such a possibility not tend to prey on Kadakithis’s good mind? Might he not decide that he was less than wise to trust him called Shadow spawn, a thief and ruthless besides? Might he not go even further in his thinking, and decide—wisely, as he would see it—that all things considered, Hanse was more dangerous than valuable?
In that case, the Prince-Governor might very well conclude, he and thus Sanctuary and thus Ranke were better off without such worries, such a possibility. In that event, it might occur to him that the world were better off without Hanse’s continued presence in it. Nor would the world take heed of the timely demise of a cocky young thief.
Hanse swallowed, blinked. Sitting stiffly on a divan in the luxurious apartment, he put it all through his mind again and chased its tail. He came to his own conclusion.
I have been a fool. I did all this for my pride, to be such a clever fellow. I am a clever thief, but a stupid fellow! Being here thus when he comes in could gain me another signature on another document from him—this time my death order! Oh damn plague and pox, what have I done!?
Nothing, he thought as he rose with a great sigh, that could not be undone… he hoped. All he had to do was betake himself from here so that neither Kadakithis nor anyone else would ever know he had broken in. He glanced around and swallowed hard. It certainly was hard and against the grain not to steal something!
And so Shadowspawn went to the window, and wearily began the process of breaking out of the Governor’s Palace and its grounds.
Chapter 2
“IT DEVELOPS THAT I need help,” Prince-Governor Kadakithis said, “and I cannot see a way to threaten it out of anyone.”
“Including me?”
“Including you, Hanse. Furthermore, if you won’t help, I can’t see how I can punish you either.”
“I’m glad to hear it. But I didn’t know there were things a governor couldn’t do, much less a prince.”
“Well, Shadowspawn, now you know. Even Kitty-Kat isn’t all powerful.”
“You need help and the Hell Hounds can’t provide it?”
“That is close, Hanse. The Imperial Elite Guardsmen cannot help me with this. Or so I perceive it.”
“I sure do wish you would sit down. Highness, so I can.”
Kadakithis walked across the rich carpet of his privatemost chamber and sat on the edge of the peacock spread of his bed. He gestured. “Do take that divan, Hanse, or those cushions as it pleases you.”
Hanse nodded his thanks. He sank among the cushions, curbing a grin at their luxury. Last night he had sat on the divan, and only he knew it. This day he chose the luxury of the jumble of stuffed Aurveshan silk. (Quag the Hell Hound had been on duty at the gate. He had recognized the hooded blind beggar, who winked at him. Having been secretly apprised that Hanse was invited. Quag conducted the blind beggar to His Highness. The hooded robe lay on the bed beside the prince now, who had congratulated Hanse on the cleverness of his entry. Hanse forbore to tell him how much more clever he had been last night.)
Now he decided that he could afford a modicum of daring: “Either I’m hearing sideways or you just told me you need me for something the Hell Hounds, I mean Imperial Elites, can’t do. Or that your Highness can’t trust them with? Or that you don’t want them to know about.” Revelation: “Or … something illegal?”
“I will not affirm or deny anything that you have said.” That said, the prince merely gazed at him. The boy did a good job of looking enigmatic, Hanse mused, overlooking the fact that they were about the same age.
“If the prince will forgive me saying it… his Chief of Security is surely not one to balk at such a … mission.”
The prince continued to stare. One pale eyebrow rose slightly under that disgustingly handsome shock of yellow hair. And then Hanse was staring.
Tempus! It’s about Tempus, isn’t it. I haven’t seen him for weeks.”
“Kadakithis turned his gaze on an ornate Yenizedish tapestry. “Hanse: neither have I.”
“He is not on a mission for your Highness?”
“Just use the pronoun for me, Hanse, and we can save whole days of our lives. No. He is not. He i
s missing. Who might wish him to be missing?”
Hanse was wary of being used as informant, but saw no reason not to answer that one. “Oh, half the people in town. Maybe more. About the same number that would wish the governor to be missing. Your pardon of course, Governor. Or the Emperor. Or Ranke.”
“Hmm. Well, Empire is built on conquest, not love, however often they are the same. But I have striven to be decent here. Fair.”
Hanse considered. “It is possible that you have been fairer than we might have expected.”
“Nicely put. Carefully chosen words. You may well become a diplomat yet, Shadowspawn. And the Hell Hounds! What of them?”
Hanse smiled briefly at the slim noble’s calling his elite guards by the people’s name for them; indeed, even the Hell Hounds called themselves Hell Hounds these days. It was a dramatic name with a romantic and rather sinister sound that appealed to their sort.
“Shall I answer that, to one from Ranke, with all the power there is? What power have I?”
“You have influence with the Prince-Governor, Hanse, and with his Chief of Security. You uncovered the plot against me and helped break it up. You regained that awful fear-rod, and it cost you. Recently you helped Tempus in a matter, too. Now we are even in one area at least, aren’t we?”
“Even? I? Me? Hanse of Sanctuary and the Emperor’s brother?”
“Stepbrother,” the prince corrected, and fixed Hanse with a wide-eyed gaze, all blue. It reminded Hanse of his own ingenuous pose. “Yes. Now we have both killed. I, Bourne. You… the night Tempus lost his horse.”
“The Prince-Governor is not without knowledge,” Hanse observed.
“Another careful, diplomat’s phrasing! Now: Tempus set himself to destroying the minions of that Jubal fellow. Do you know why?”
“Maybe Tempus is a racist,” Hanse said, trying to look wide-eyed and ingenuous.
It didn’t appear to be working. Damn. This golden-locked boy was smarter than Moonflower, despite her extra-human ability. Hanse sighed. “You know. Jubal is a slaver and those weird-masked employees of his are feared. He has respect, and power. Tempus works for you, for Ranke’s power.”
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