Among Thieves: A Tale of the Kin

by Douglas Hulick

  “How dare you think me so simple, so naive, so . . . unskilled as to have an assassin come after you in my own livery?”

  “I’ve already apologized,” I said. “Now, will you stop yelling?”

  “I’ll yell all I want!”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose with one hand even as I wrapped the fingers of my other around the chair arm to keep from throttling my little sister. All of a sudden, not killing her seemed like the wrong choice.

  I was in the high-backed chair again. After disarming me and piling my weapons on the bed, the guards—excuse me, “footmen,” as my sister preferred to call them—had all but thrown me into the seat. Christiana had then dismissed them. She didn’t want the hired help hearing what came next.

  Josef, knowing about Christiana’s and my relationship, was allowed to stay. He had listened attentively to my explanation until I came to the part about Christiana’s letter; after that, he took himself and the letter off to one side. Now he sat at my sister’s writing desk, his prodigious nose bent over the piece of paper.

  Christiana herself was pacing back and forth in front of the bed. Her skirts whispered and snapped as she turned at the end of each circuit. She was not pleased with my explanation.

  “The Blade wasn’t wearing your livery when he tried to dust me,” I said, “only when he arrived with the letter.”

  Christiana paused midstep, raising her chin in that haughty way she’s always had. “And you naturally assumed I was behind it.” She actually had the audacity to sound indignant.

  I lowered my hand and looked her in the eye. “You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “The livery, the letter, the setup—what would you think? It’s not as if I don’t have history to fall back on here.”

  “We reached an agreement about that, Drothe. I gave you my word!”

  I snorted. “I know the worth of your word,” I said. “Don’t forget, I’ve paid visits to people you’ve given your ‘word’ to in the past—all at your request. I know better than to trust your word, Ana.”

  Christiana waved a dismissive hand. “That was just blackmail and politics. This is different.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s me. It’s personal. Even less reason to trust you.”

  “So then, why didn’t you kill me? You had your chance.”

  I almost told her it was because I hadn’t liked the odds of getting out alive, that I had better things to do. Instead, I told the truth.

  “Like you said,” I told her, leaning back into the chair and slipping a seed into my mouth, “it was too straightforward. The messenger to the letter to the assassin to you—you’d never leave a trail that broad for me to follow. If I hadn’t been so tired, so angry, I might have even realized that first. As it was . . .” I shrugged.

  Christiana raised an eyebrow. “Why Drothe, that’s almost a compliment. You do appreciate me.”

  “What I’d appreciate,” I said, “is getting some answers. Stroke your ego on your own time, Ana. I have other things to worry about.”

  Christiana pursed her lips. “Ooh, poor Drothepholous. With me out of the picture, you don’t know whom to kill now, do you?”

  “I can always make an exception,” I said pointedly.

  She dismissed my threat with a sniff. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who might want you dead—besides me after tonight, that is?”

  “No.” I had already been considering the question myself. The number of people I had crossed recently was small; the number who could afford a Blade of Tamas’s ability, even smaller; and the number who were powerful, or desperate, enough to use magic made it, well . . . zero. Except someone had hired the Blade, given him a piece of glimmer, and sent him after me.

  I slumped down farther in the chair. One of the bruises Tamas had given me found a hard edge somewhere and began protesting. I grimaced, then shifted slightly—no good.

  “Drothe . . . ” said Christiana.

  “Ana,” I said, “if you warn me about dirtying the upholstery one more time . . .”

  “I don’t give a damn about the chair, Drothe.” There was iron in her tone. I stopped shifting around and looked up.

  “How did the assassin know to wear my livery?” she said. “Mine. To get to you?”

  I blinked at her implication. If they knew to put Tamas in her livery, they knew about our relationship and knew to send me a letter under her name.

  I began mentally kicking myself. That I had missed this was bad enough; that Christiana had had to point it out was even worse. Now I’d never hear the end of it.

  “Who knows about us, Drothe?”

  “I . . . No one.” I shook my head, thinking. “The two of us, Degan, Josef. Maybe someone who remembers when we first got to Ildrecca, but I doubt it. It’s been too long—they would have acted on it before this.”

  “So, whoever hired the assassin just got lucky and guessed I’m your sister? With no help from you?”

  I sat up straighter, not liking what she was implying. “I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the ex-courtesan. You know more about people getting lucky than I do.”

  It was a cheap shot and we both knew it. I deserved the kick she launched at my shin. That still didn’t mean I let her land it, though.

  “You bastard!” she yelled. “You know I don’t talk about family. I was a courtesan, not a whore like you’re used to. I catered to my patrons’ minds as well as their bodies, and as hard as it might be for you to believe, talking about my brother the criminal was never a part of that. Do you honestly think I’d risk what I have here and at court just to talk about you?”

  I was opening my mouth to make things worse when Josef cleared his throat.

  “Ah, if I may . . . ” he said.

  “Yes?” said Christiana as she and I continued to glare at each other.

  “You’re both assuming whoever is behind this knows about your . . . relationship,” he said. He tapped the letter I had handed him earlier. “This doesn’t mention that at all. If anything, it reads more formally than most of the baroness’s correspondence with you, sir. More of a summons than a letter, if you will.”

  “There’s a difference between the two when it comes to my sister?” I said.

  Josef coughed discreetly.

  “So they may not know anything about our blood,” said Christiana.

  “Just our business,” I concluded.

  “Which is bad enough for me, but still more manageable.”

  “Oh, thank the Angels for that!” I said caustically as I got out of the chair and walked across the room. I rested a hand on the back of Josef’s chair and looked over his shoulder. Christiana glided over to his other side.

  “What else can you tell me about that letter?” I said.

  Josef had three pieces of paper before him on the desk: my letter and two other crisp, clean documents.

  “I’m no expert, to be sure,” said Josef, pointing to the letter Tamas had delivered, “but it seems to me that someone went to a good deal of effort to produce this forgery.”

  “So it is a forgery?” I said.

  “Drothe!” said Christiana. “How many times do I have to tell you I didn’t write that letter?”

  “You haven’t denied it until now,” I pointed out. “Besides, it’s easy enough to ambush a messenger, then alter the letter.” I stared down at the letter, then at the other two documents. The hand looked identical on each page.

  “How can you tell?” I asked Josef.

  “It’s small things,” he said. “Most of it is very well-done, but you can see errors in the characters for distinction and address. Here, in iro and mneios, and, let’s see . . . Oh, and there, in phai—far too light a hand. The style is close, but the calligraphy is from a different school than madam’s or my own.”

  I looked where he indicated. I thought I saw a difference but couldn’t be sure. I nodded knowingly, nonetheless.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Well, the chop is flawed; or rather, it’s not flaw
ed.” Josef flipped my letter and one of the adjacent documents over. Each had a red blob of sealing wax impressed with a copy of Christiana’s baronial widow’s chop.

  “The chop on your letter is false,” said Josef. “The baroness’s has a chip missing in the lower-right corner. There is no such flaw in the other seal.”

  “A flaw in my sister’s seal?” I said, bending closer to see it. “I’m surprised you haven’t been flogged, Josef.”

  “It was done on purpose,” said Christiana. “To prevent problems like this.”

  I gave a slight bow of my head—leave it to Christiana to think of something like that.

  “And then there’s the paper,” said Josef. “It’s, well, too fine.” He said it almost apologetically.

  “Too fine?” said Christiana and I, almost in unison. Her voice was incredulous, while mine was full of amusement.

  “For this type of missive,” said Josef quickly. “It’s too good for . . . That is to say, the paper is not what . . .”

  Christiana’s eyes narrowed. “Ye-es?”

  Josef took a deep breath and started over. “This isn’t the type of paper a person would use for simple correspondence. Its texture and weight are too good. This is the kind of paper used for fine volumes, or maybe imperial documents. It’s far too valuable to be, uh, well, wasted on a simple invitation.”

  I reached down and felt one of the clean sheets of paper, then my own. It was hard to tell because of all the wear and tear, but the stuff of my letter did seem weightier. Christiana did the same, nodding her agreement with Josef’s conclusion.

  I straightened up, taking my letter and refolding it. I put it back in my sleeve.

  Christiana was studying me. “You know who did this?”

  “No. But I know where to start.” Baldezar—damn that arrogant scribe, anyhow.

  “I want them dead, Drothe. All of them.”

  “Of course you do,” I said. Whoever was behind this knew about Christiana and me, at least on some level. Any threat to her reputation was a threat to her status, and I was one of the bigger threats her reputation faced. “But it’s not that easy.”

  Christiana crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow at me. “Really? And why not?”

  “Because whoever sent Tamas—the assassin—gave him glimmer. Magic. That means money and connections. That means they’re willing to risk the empire sniffing around if their man gets caught.” I shook my head. “Frankly, I’m not worth that kind of risk.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “Notice I’m not arguing. But my point is, the person I have in mind doesn’t have the resources or clout to hire someone of Tamas’s caliber, let alone hand him a piece of glimmer.”

  Christiana shrugged, her shoulders rising and falling in the curtain of her hair. “So just hold the forger’s feet in a. . . .” She stopped, and I could almost hear the pieces clicking together in her head. “It’s that scribe of yours, isn’t it? The one you’ve had doing the documents for me. Damn it, Drothe! I told you to find someone you could trust.”

  I had to laugh at that. “You expected me to find a trustworthy forger? Ana, listen to yourself. I found someone who’s reliable and good at what he does; that’s as good as you’re going to get with a Jarkman. And because he’s reliable, he’s going to be hard to crack. He doesn’t give up his clients easily.”

  “He didn’t seem to have a problem giving you up.”

  I nodded. “I know, which is what is going to make this interesting.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The sun was tinting the east with purple and pink when Baldezar arrived at his shop. Some of his younger apprentices had been there for an hour already, grinding pigments, sorting papers, and gathering glair from the egg whites they had wrung through sponges the night before. I had waited across the street beneath a bookbinder’s eaves. I’d nearly nodded off twice, and had only managed to stay awake by chewing a handful of ahrami. Now, though, just the sight of the scribe was enough to quicken my heart.

  I stepped across the street and slipped up behind Baldezar as he opened the door to his shop.

  “Bene lightmans, Jarkman,” I said as I put a hand between his shoulders and shoved. He stumbled across the threshold and fell to his knees. I stepped in behind him and shut the door. Throughout the shop, the apprentices froze, their eyes wide.

  Baldezar spun around on the floor. His face was already turning red, both from anger and embarrassment. His mouth was a dark scowl.

  “How dare you!” he said as he began to gather his feet beneath him. “What do—”

  I stepped forward and kicked out, catching him just inside the left shoulder with my foot. I held back on purpose, not wanting to break anything at this point. Right now, I was just setting the tone.

  Baldezar went over backward. I heard his head strike the floor with a hollow thunk. He relaxed but didn’t go entirely limp. Dazed but not unconscious—good.

  I reached behind me and locked the door to the street. “The shop is closed,” I said to the apprentices. “No one comes or goes until I’m finished. Is that clear?” They all nodded. I pointed to a corner. “Sit there. Don’t move.” They didn’t quite fall over themselves getting to the corner, but it was close.

  I bent down and pulled Baldezar to his feet. “We need to have a talk,” I told him as he shook his head, trying to clear it. “Upstairs.”

  Baldezar turned and walked unsteadily toward the steps. I followed behind, a hand on his back to steady him as much as to reinforce the threat.

  He fumbled briefly with the latch before opening the door to his office. Baldezar settled in heavily behind his reading table, rubbing at the back of his head. I stood, hand on the back of the chair that faced him. One of the apprentices had opened the shutters earlier in preparation for their master’s arrival. The room was a strange mixture of gentle morning light and leftover shadows.

  “This had better be good,” he said, managing to summon a sliver of his normally imperious tone.

  “Yes,” I said, taking the forged letter out of my sleeve. I unfolded it and set it on the table in front of him. “It had better be.”

  He stared down at it for a long moment. Finally, he picked up the paper, holding it gently between his thumbs and forefingers.

  “I take it,” he said dourly, “you think I did this.”

  “The thought had occurred, yes.”

  “Then the thought would be wrong.”

  I leaned on the chair. It creaked under my weight. “I’m not in the mood for hints and vagaries, Jarkman.”

  Baldezar touched the back of his head gently. “I’d gathered as much.” He wet his lips, then set the letter back down. “Since I don’t know the context of this forgery, I can only guess it was used to get you somewhere for some reason. The text is clear on that much. But the reason you’re here is because whoever wrote the letter used the name, writing, and chop of a certain noblewoman with whom we both know you do business.”

  “Which puts the person behind the letter into a very small circle of someones.”

  Baldezar nodded. “Yes. And my having done work for both you and her in the past, and having access to her writing through you”—he shook his head—“a very neat line, I admit.”

  “But?” I said.

  “But I’m not stupid. That’s the key.” Baldezar eased gently back in his chair. “I’ve been forging documents for decades, Drothe. Bills of lading, imperial trade waivers, letters of passage, contracts, tax stamps, diplomatic negotiations . . . More documents than I can name, and most of them far more dangerous than a simple letter of summons. If I’ve been able to keep nobles, ambassadors, tax masters, and imperial ministers from tracing things back to me, do you really think I would make it this easy for you? Forgers die if they give people easy trails to follow.”

  “Normally, yes,” I said. “Except when they expect the recipient of the forgery to end up dead.”

  “Murder? Is that it?” Baldezar shook his head. “I’m surpri
sed you settled for knocking me down. The more traditional response would have been to run me through, would it not?”

  “Dusting people is easy,” I said. “Getting answers is a bit more tricky. Corpses make it even harder.”

  “Very pragmatic,” observed Baldezar. “But I’m pragmatic as well. By all accounts, you’re a hard man to kill, Drothe. How many attempts now—two, three?”

  “More,” I said.

  Baldezar nodded. “Precisely. And I’m to think I will be the exception? I would have to consider the possibility you might live, and that you might get your hands on this letter. That’s too clear a road back to me.”

  “Unless you were in a hurry. People make mistakes when they’re rushed.”

  “True, but what’s the hurry? Why would I even want to kill you in the first place?”

  “It wouldn’t have to be you,” I said. I pointed at my sister’s forged signature. “You do this kind of thing for hire.”

  “Yes. And I like to be able to spend the money I get for it, too. Besides,” he said, flicking at the paper, “this is substandard workmanship. I wouldn’t turn out something this poorly done, no matter whether my life were on the line or no.”

  I thought back to what Josef had said about the letter. “The flaws were minor at best,” I said, “and damn hard to find.”

  “But you found them,” said Baldezar. “A good forgery should be able to withstand an amateur’s scrutiny. This did not.” He pointed at various spots on the page. “Improper forms here, here, and here. Inconsistent pen strokes on the third and fifth lines. And at least two scraped and redone stylistic errors I can see at a glance. This is beginner’s work. Forging is as much art as it is duplication; whoever did this was a copyist, not an artist.”

  “Whoever it was had access to Baroness Sephada’s letters,” I pointed out. “And he knew about our business arrangement. That still points to you.”

  Baldezar nodded. “Yes, and that’s what troubles me. It means someone either gained access to my office, or someone in my shop is involved. Either way, I’m not pleased. But I have no reason to want you dead.”