Swan's Braid and Other Tales of Terizan

Swan's Braid and Other Tales of Terizan Page 2

by Tanya Huff

  Terizan bowed, conscious only of how exhausted she was. "I'd like to apply to the Guild," she said and stepped forward pulling out the last two items in her pack. "I took this dagger from the Captain of the City Guard, you may have heard it was missing, and this is Hyrantaz's earring – I took it this afternoon."

  "From his head?" The man leaned towards her, his bulk suggesting he no longer actively indulged in the Guild's business. "You took it from his head in the Crescent?"

  Terizan shrugged. There'd been so many people crowding around it had been embarrassingly easy – but if they didn't know that, she wasn't going to mention it.

  As the fat man started to laugh, the woman looked speculatively up at the trap door.

  "You brought the rat in with you," the third person said all at once, as though they'd come to a sudden illuminating realization. "It distracted the dog long enough for you to get away and then convinced the dog's handler that he was only after the rat. That's brilliant! But what would you have done if there'd been two dogs?"

  Terizan shrugged again. "Gone looking for another rat?"

  The fat man now laughed so hard tears ran down his cheeks. "Took it from his head," he kept repeating.

  The woman sighed audibly and came around the table. "I think it's safe to assume the Guild is interested in admitting you. Your arrival here was very... impressive."

  "I thought I was supposed to make my way to the sanctum."

  The older woman nodded. "You were. But no one's ever done it before."

  "No one?"

  "We'd previously considered it a major accomplishment if someone got safely into the lower levels of the building." As Terizan glanced up at the trap door and the net, she added, "Of course, a good thief is prepared for every possibility."

  Terizan heard the silent warning that she not get cocky about her accomplishment, and so merely said, "I agree..." and then had no idea of how to refer to any of the other three people in the room.

  "You may call me Tribune One." The woman half turned, waving a hand at first the androgyne and then the fat man. "These are Two and Three. You realize you must still complete an assignment of our choosing?" At Terizan's nod she turned her towards the door on the left, opened it, and pushed her gently through. "Balzador, get our candidate here some nourishment."

  The thieves playing cards in the antechamber looked up in astonishment and Balzador leapt to his feet with such energy that a Queen of Destiny fell from his sleeve and fluttered to the table. "Candidate?" he squeaked.

  The tribune smiled. "Yes. She's just dropped in and as we'd like to discuss her... test, I leave her in your capable hands."

  As the door to the sanctum closed, Terizan heard Tribune One murmur, "You've got to admit, she's very clever." Then the latch clicked and the iron-bound oak planks cut off Three's reply.

  The card players continued to stare. "Just dropped in?" Balzador said at last.

  ***

  "All things considered," One murmured over her steepled fingers, "there's really no need for you to prove yourself to us. However, formalities must be observed."

  Terizan, who'd been fed, feted, and won six monkeys in a quick game of caravan, bowed slightly.

  "We have, therefore," One continued, "decided to make your test showy but not especially difficult. You have five days to bring us Swan's braid."

  It might have been only because of the blood roaring in her ears but the acoustics in the room suddenly changed. "Swan's what?" Terizan managed to stammer.

  "Braid. In five days, bring us Swan's life-braid."

  ***

  By thieves' standards, The Lion was not in what could be termed a profitable part of the city. Three story, sandstone tenements surrounded it, some with tiny shops on the first floor, the rest divided into small suites or single rooms. Almost all had external stairs, a few had roof gardens. Terizan lived in nearly an identical neighbourhood – although closer to the center of Old Oreen – and knew exactly what the area had that would be worth stealing. Nothing much.

  Except that Swan was at The Lion.

  "In five days bring us Swan's life-braid."

  She'd been too astounded to protest and had submitted without comment to being blindfolded and lead by Balzador up to a concealed door in an alley near the Guild house. "When you come back," he'd told her. "Come here. Someone will meet you and guide you down."

  When she came back. With Swan's braid.

  She couldn't do it. Couldn't offer that kind of an insult to the most beautiful, desirable woman she'd ever seen. Face it, Terizan, she sighed to herself as she watched The Lion from the shadows across the street, if you got close enough to actually touch the braid, your heavy breathing would give you away.

  The large louvered panels in the inn's front wall had been folded back and the celebration in the common room had spilled out onto the small terrace. A number of those celebrating wore the red swan on their tunics, but Swan herself remained inside.

  Wondering just what exactly she thought she was doing, Terizan crossed the street and entered the inn. No one noticed her, but not being noticed was one of the things she did best. With a mug of ale in her hand, she became just another of the townsfolk who wanted to get close to the heroes of the day.

  Swan, holding court in the center of the common room, had been drinking. Her eyes were bright – Like jewels, Terizan thought. – and her cheeks were flushed. In one hand she cradled an immense flagon and in the other a slender young woman who, as Terizan watched, leaned forward so that ebony curls fell over her face and whispered something in the mercenary captain's ear.

  "You think so?" The flagon emptied, Swan stood, kicked her chair back out of her way, and tightened her grip around the young woman's waist. Red-gold brows waggled suggestively. "Prove it."

  "Here?"

  The Wing roared with laughter at the matter-of-fact tone and a couple began clearing bottles and tankards off the table.

  Swan cuffed the nearest one on the back of the head and then turned the motion into a courtly gesture towards the stairs. "I think not," she declared. "This lot has a hard enough time keeping up to me without my setting yet another impossibly high standard."

  As the two women made for the stairs, amidst renewed laughter and advice, Terizan slipped back into the shadows.

  The next night, she watched a nearly identical scene. Nearly identical in that while the young woman was again dark and slender, it was a different young woman. By the time Swan elbowed open the door to her room – both her hands being occupied – Terizan was on the tiny balcony of the building next door. By the time Swan began testing the strength of the bed, she was outside the window.

  She'd spent the day thinking about the Guild. Without intending to, she'd found herself outside the building she'd fallen from, picking a bit of plaster off the ground. It couldn't have fallen when she had, but it could easily have been from the same disintegrating carving. She'd turned it over and over and finally crushed it, wiping the grey powder off on the edge of someone else's tunic.

  Dying didn't frighten her as much as an injury that would put her out on the street to starve.

  The Guild took care of their own.

  When Swan and the girl were finished, and the sweat-slicked bodies lay tangled and sleeping, Terizan measured the distance from the window to the bed, judged the risk, and decided it was twice as high as it needed to be. After all, Swan had a preference for slender, dark-haired women.

  "...a good thief is prepared for every possibility."

  Including, it seemed, the possibility of stealing Swan's braid.

  ***

  "Poli, I need you to make me noticeable."

  One delicately plucked brow rose as Poli turned from his mirror to face her. "I beg your pardon?"

  "I've decided to take your advice."

  "Which bit of advice, sweetling?"

  Terizan felt her cheeks grow hot and wished he wouldn't look at her like he was looking inside her. "Your advice about Swan," she growled.

&

nbsp; "Did I give you advice about Swan?" He absently stroked cosmetic into his neck. "I don't remember, but then you've never taken my advice before so I admit I'm at a loss."

  "You said that since I knew where she was staying I should wander in and... and..." Unable to finish as memories of Swan and the dark-haired young woman got in the way of her voice, she waved her hands and assumed Poli would understand.

  His smile seemed to indicate he did. "How noticeable?"

  ***

  "Do I really look like this?" Staring into Poli's mirror, Terizan found it difficult to recognize the person staring back at her.

  "No, dear, I created this out of whole cloth." When she went to brush a feathering of hair off her face, Poli gently caught her hand. "Don't touch. That's not for you to mess up." He twitched at the silk tunic he'd insisted she borrow and smiled proudly at her reflection. "I merely emphasized features you usually keep hidden," he told her, touching her temples lightly with scent. "And if we add my small contribution to your natural grace – try not to move quite so much like a cat on the hunt, sweetling – you should be impossible for our mercenary captain to resist."

  Her heart beginning to race, Terizan managed a strangled, "Thank you."

  ***

  She felt Swan's eyes on her when she walked into The Lion and only the thought of lying in that alley with broken bones kept her moving forward. Tossing her hair back out of her eyes – why Poli thought being half blind was attractive she had no idea – she hooked a stool out from under the end of a trestle table and sat down. When a server appeared she ordered a flagon of the house white, mostly because she'd heard the landlord watered it. While she had to drink, she couldn't risk slowing her reflexes.

  After a couple of long swallows, she looked up, met Swan's eyes, and allowed her lips to curve into the barest beginning of a smile. Then she looked down again and tried to stop her hands from shaking.

  "Move."

  "Ah, come on, Captain..."

  "Zaydor, how would you like to stand fourth watch all the way to the coast?"

  Terizan heard the man beside her laugh, obviously not taking the threat at all seriously. "Wouldn't like it at all, Captain."

  Swan sighed. "How would you like me to buy you another pitcher of beer?"

  "Like that a lot, Captain."

  "How would you like to drink it on the other side of the room?"

  Zaydor laughed again and Terizan heard his stool scrape back. He murmured something as he stood, but all Terizan could hear was the sudden roar of her pulse in her ears. When Swan sat beside her, knee brushing hers under the table, she had to remind herself to breathe.

  Although even Poli had long since given up trying to teach her to flirt, Terizan found her inability was no handicap as the mercenary captain needed little encouragement. She listened, she nodded, and she let her completely besotted admiration show. That was more than enough.

  "Shall we?"

  It took a moment before she realized that Swan was standing and holding out her hand. I don't have to decide about the braid now, she thought, allowing the other woman to draw her to her feet. Desire weakened her knees but she made it to the stairs. I can wait until after.

  ***

  After, Terizan stroked one finger down the narrow, red-gold braid lying across the pillow and tried to force herself to think. It wasn't easy as her brains appeared to have melted during the last couple of heated hours and dribbled out her ears.

  Swan sighed in her sleep and shifted slightly, brushing damp curls against Terizan's hip.

  If I'm going to do it, I should do it now. Do it and get it before she wakes. As she tensed to slip from the bed, she realized that she'd decided, at some point, to take the braid. It may have been when a particularly energetic bit of sex had pulled at joints still bruised from the fall; she didn't know and it didn't matter.

  She dressed quickly, quietly, slipping her sandals under her borrowed sash – there'd be climbing when she left the inn. Picking up Swan's dagger, she bent over the bed and lifted the braid.

  A hand slapped around her wrist like an iron shackle and she found herself flat on her back, Swan crouched on her chest, and Swan's dagger back in Swan's hand.

  "And with my own dagger." Gone was the cheerful lechery of the common room, gone, too, the surprisingly considerate lover – this was the mercenary captain who'd delivered Hyrantaz's head to the council. "Were you planning on making it look like a suicide?"

  Terizan swallowed and managed to squeak out, "Suicide?"

  "Or perhaps," Swan continued, her thoughtful tones in direct and frightening contrast to her expression, "you'd planned on making it look like an accident. Was I to have become entangled with my blade at the height of passion? I doubt you could make that sound believable but then, I'd be dead so I wouldn't have to be convinced."

  "Dead?" Incredulity gave her voice some force. "I had no intention of killing you!"

  "Which is why I caught you with a knife at my throat?"

  "It wasn't at your throat," Terizan snapped, temper beginning to overcome fear. "If you must know, I was going to steal your braid!"

  "My braid?" Frowning, Swan sat back. Her weight continued to pin Terizan to the bed, but the dagger was no longer an immediate threat. One hand rose to stroke the narrow, red-gold plait hanging forward over a bare shoulder. "Why?"

  "To prove that I could."

  Swan stared down at her in confusion. "That's all?"

  "Of course..."

  "...I suppose we should make an attempt to mollify him."

  Her eyes widened as she suddenly realized who the Guild had decided to mollify. Councilor Saladaz had hired the Guild, had not been entirely satisfied, and Councilor Saladaz was a powerful man who could be a powerful enemy. If Swan's braid was stolen the mercenary captain would be humiliated and apparently that would make the councilor happy. The thief sighed as deeply as she was able considering that the larger woman still sat on her chest. The thought of Swan's humiliation didn't make her happy at all – although she supposed she should've thought of that before she tried to steal the braid.

  Terizan stared up at the mercenary captain and weighed her loyalties. Adding the knowledge that she was at Swan's mercy to the scale – and ignoring the spreading heat that realization brought – she came to a decision. "I'm pretty sure the Thieves' Guild sent me to steal your braid in order to humiliate you."

  "What?"

  "They're sucking up to Councilor Saladaz. He wasn't entirely happy with something they had done for him."

  Swan's eyes narrowed. "Why would Saladaz hire a thief?"

  "To steal something?" Terizan bit her lip. Oh great. Now on top of everything else she'll think I'm an idiot.

  To her surprise, Swan repeated, "To steal something," as though it were a brilliant observation. "Could a thief," she demanded, "be sent to steal through a mercenary troop and warn a bandit leader of an attack?"

  "Someone warned Hyrantaz that the Wing was coming?"

  "Someone, yes. One of my pickets said he thought he saw a slender, dark-haired woman slip through our lines. Moved like a thief in the night, he said. We found no trace of her and we've had trouble with dryads before but Hyrantaz was warned and now you tell me that Councilor Saladaz..." The name came off her lips like a curse. "...has been dealing with the Thieves' Guild." She leaned forward and laid her blade back under Terizan's ear. "Could Saladaz have hired a thief to warn Hyrantaz?"

  Terizan sifted through every commission that she'd ever heard the Guild was willing to perform. "Yes. It's possible."

  "It wasn't you, was it?"

  Her mouth gone completely dry, Terizan had never heard so deadly a threat spoken so quietly. Mutely, she shook her head.

  Swan nodded. "Good." Then in a movement almost too fast to follow, she was off the bed and reaching for her clothes.

  Terizan drew her legs up under her, ready to spring for the window but unable to leave. "You've been waiting for the dark-haired woman haven't you? That's why you've been..."