Thieves' War

by Clayton Snyder

  “Do we have to shop?” I whined.

  We passed down a boulevard from the central round, neat buildings to either side with wide panes of glass set up with every fashion known to man, and a few catering to Harrowers. The message boxes we’d spotted coming into the city stood on every corner, groups of three or more gathered around them. Cord held up a hand and led us to one.

  The men and women gathered around them held small glass boxes, the contents bloodied and pale. Each bore scars and small patches of flesh missing from arms and legs, and in one case, cheeks and lips. I watched as they reached into the box and slipped a piece of cut flesh into the receptacle below. A chattering came from the machine, and it spat out a piece of paper. The man waiting read it.

  “Can you believe the Hestians are getting ready to enact a kingdom-wide ban on trousers longer than the ankle? This is oppression! They’re ignoring three-hundred years of brutality at the hands of the Culotte Regime!”

  Another user slipped what looked suspiciously like a nipple into the box, waiting patiently for her paper. When it popped out, she threw it down in disgust.

  “Ugh! They’re saying Princess Justen should be with the Crystle Queen! Everyone knows that Duchess Angle would be a better match.”

  She wandered away, muttering, “Mmm, lesbian necromancers.”

  Cord shook his head and we walked away as more clamored to use the things.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked.

  “Distraction,” he said. “Is there any reason a country would accept perpetual war?”

  “Fascism?” I guessed.

  “Well, that too. But in this case, sublimation. Keep the water warm and no one will complain. It’s the boiling frog principal.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Put a frog in room-temperature water, and slowly raise the heat. It never notices, and eventually the heat kills it. Boils it alive.”

  “That’s morbid.”

  “The world’s morbid, Nenn. I’ll never understand people who think it’s a silk sheet. The world is a cock wrapped in barbed wire, and it will try to assfuck you the first chance it gets.”

  We fell into silence.

  “Why aren’t Rek and Lux helping?” I asked.

  “Preparations. They don’t have to look pretty.”

  “You think I’m pretty?”

  “I think you’re not ugly.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Potato, overbite. Ah, here we are.”

  The shop in question displayed its wares in the window like the others, with a decidedly darker motif. A white backdrop hid the store proper, black branches and thorns spread about the floor as decoration. Headless mannequins stood in the space, dressed in the latest Harrower fashions. I made a face.

  “What?” Cord asked.

  “I am not going to a fetish party,” I said.

  “It’ll be fine. Everybody’s somebody’s fetish.”

  “Have I ever told you that you’re annoyingly optimistic?”

  “No, but thanks.”

  “Sorry, I meant stupid.”

  “Hurtful,” Cord said, and opened the door.

  The inside was cool and dimly-lit. The walls displayed dresses and leather outfits, the floor dominated by a short pedestal and a wall of mirrors. A thin woman, wizened to the point of rivaling a raisin, came from the back of the store. Her fingers were thin and wrinkled. She looked us over for a moment, then disappeared into the back.

  “Bit weird,” I said.

  “Shh, you Neanderthal. This is a classy joint.”

  I eyed a pair of leather pants on the wall, the crotch and ass missing, then raised an eyebrow. “I’m buying you a dictionary,” I said.

  The woman came back out, bearing a set of clothing on each arm. She handed one to Cord, and one to myself, then stared. When I didn’t move, she made a shooing gesture toward the back of the store.

  “Oh! Okay,” I said.

  I changed in the back. The dress was surprisingly not freakish. The skirts were soft and supple, dyed black, with silver highlights that sparkled in the lamplight. The top was a bit… more, stiff in the back and under the breasts, and it pushed me up far more than I was used to. Still, it fit well. I left the room and stood on the pedestal in front of the mirrors, turning slightly to each side, admiring the fit.

  “Oh dear,” Cord said from behind me. “You’ve got your big girl breasts.”

  I turned and gave him a look that could have withered a much larger man’s dick and stepped down from the pedestal. He stepped up. He didn’t clean up bad. The suit was black, the shirt under white, the vest a balanced gray. He’d even swept his hair into a passable mane.

  “Huh. And you don’t look like a complete asshole,” I said.

  He shot me a grin. “No one’s ever complete, my dear.”

  He turned to the seamstress. “Excellent work as always, Marn. Have them sent to our hotel.”

  He passed her a small bag of coins, and we changed out of the finery, and made our way outside. Something occurred to me on the way out.

  “How did she know my measurements? Did… did you measure me while I slept?”

  Cord shook his head. “Snydemancer. It’s intuitive.”

  “Snyde1…”

  “It’s Rutch for ‘tailor’.”

  “Huh.”

  He led us down the street and around a corner, the shops giving way to bakeries and grilles, pubs and wineries. The air filled with the smells of baked bread, spices, roast meat, and the thick musk of beer. My stomach rumbled. Ahead, Rek and Lux had sat themselves at a table. My heart skipped a beat at seeing her, followed by sadness, like a crow chasing a butterfly. I wanted to puzzle out her recent aloofness. I knew I didn’t have time.

  Movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned my head, then froze. Between the buildings a set of iron bars stuck up from the cobbles like stunted, ugly saplings. All manner of people were attached to them by manacles. No one creed had been spared: black and white and blue, skinny and fat, young and old. I swiveled my head to Cord, and swore I heard the tendons creak.

  “Easy now,” Cord said.

  He held my eyes, and moved closer, ushering me into the alley in slow steps, until we’d breached the crowd and stood in the shadows.

  “What the fuck is this?” I asked.

  “Slaves,” Cord said.

  He knelt to inspect the manacles. After a moment, he gave a grunt and reached into his vest, coming out with a small leather case. His picks. He slipped a couple thin slivers of steel out and got to work unlocking the bracelets, pausing only to look up at me.

  “Keep an eye out. Not gonna do anyone any good if they catch us.”

  I leaned as casually as I could against the alley wall to block the public’s view, hands near my daggers. I listened for the telltale clicks of locks giving up their fight and chewed the inside of my cheek. After the orphanage, but before the alleys and the mill… I pushed the memory away and rubbed my wrists, where the ghosts of scars still circled them.

  “Almost done?” I asked.

  I heard another click and glanced back. The slaves remained silent while Cord worked. One reached out and embraced him, tears flowing from the man’s eyes. Cord patted his back and pushed him gently away.

  “You know where to go?” he asked.

  The man nodded, the woman beside him adding her own. They glanced down at the children, and rage flared in my stomach again.

  “Wait for the signal,” Cord said.

  The woman set her jaw and looked to me. What she saw there must have encouraged her, and I gave a little nod. We crept from the alley as quietly as possible and rejoined the throngs in the food court. Cord sat us at a table kitty-corner from Rek and Lux. They pretended not to notice us. Realization dawned on me.

  “You planned this,” I hissed as the waiter set sweetbread and meat in front of us.

  Cord shrugged. "Hoxteth the Planner," he said.

  "Sorry, what? Why?"
I asked.

  "His penchant for organization. Later changed to Hoxteth the Cursed, when a bog witch saddled him with an endless meeting."

  "What happened to him?"

  Cord lost his train of thought as an honest-to-gods ghost walked up to him. I blinked. I’d expected a lot of weird shit traveling with Cord. Got used to it, even. But this was something new. If not for the faint blue shimmer, and the fact it was transparent, I would’ve thought it a live goose. It honked twice at him.

  “Ah, fuck,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, I killed this goose about a year ago. Accidentally, of course.”

  “Naturally.”

  The goose honked.

  “Yes, I'm getting to that part,” Cord replied. “Anyway, it haunts me now.”

  The goose honked twice again.

  “No, I don't have any bread,” Cord said.

  Once more, the goose honked, as if in reproach.

  “No, fuck you, Casper,” Cord said.

  The goose vanished then, leaving Cord with an annoyed expression. “Anyway. Where was I2?”

  “We’re not going to talk about the fact you just argued with a dead goose?”

  “Absolutely not. I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

  “Okaaay. Anyway, Hoxteth.”

  "Right, Hoxteth. He became a philosopher. Then died."

  "You have a point?"

  "Yeah. Hoxteth had a saying: 'Meetings are like assholes. Everyone is full of shit and it never stops'."

  "That's..."

  "Yeah, he was a terrible philosopher."

  "How'd he die?"

  "Stabbed himself 42 times in the back."

  "Neat trick."

  "He was also an awful boss."

  “Back to my original point…”

  “Yeah, I planned this. It’s easy to not see things when they’re out of sight.”

  “So, you wanted to piss me off?”

  “At the right people, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Cord sighed. “If I’ve taught you anything, it should be this, Nenn: The world is fucked. You gotta fuck it back. Oh, and Rek is a beast.”

  At that, Lux stood and slapped Rek, splashing her water in his face. She stalked away in fake outrage. Rek jumped up, slamming his fists into the table. It shattered, sending bread, meat, and wine onto a passing guard. The guard reached for his truncheon, but too late. Rek picked him up and tossed him through one of the shops’ wide windows. The glass shattered with a sound like crystal chimes. A cry went up immediately, and more guards burst around the corner. Rek grunted and took off at a sprint, disappearing into the warrens and alleys, the guard on his trail.

  Cord picked up a piece of bread and took a bite.

  “I love bread,” he said.

  I stared at him.

  “Whaf?” he asked around the mouthful.

  He took his time chewing, then dropped a few coins on the table, leading us away at a nonchalant pace. I thought I heard the jangling of chains, but Cord nudged me forward, herding us toward the crowd.

  “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” he said at the bewildered look on my face.

  We slipped into the masses, and the chaos died down behind us. Cord slowed his pace further, blending us in seamlessly. I flashed the occasional glance behind us, but no one had followed. The teeming masses of the city had swallowed and subsumed the melee in the same way a fish swallows a hook.

  We stepped deeper into the city, over narrow sparkling canals and bridges of white stone. The streets broadened, making way for wide buildings and open plazas. A riot of noise and color greeted us, knots of people standing in front of hopeful buskers on each of the cardinal directions. Each had their own talent, from juggling to music-making to painting to simple glamours—hedge wizardry to entertain the masses.

  An orator on one corner, a sheet of paper in his hand, raised an arm. He stood on an apple box, and shouted at passers-by.

  “Hear me, oh citizens of Gentia! Your poets and authors have ceased to produce things that entertain me! A sure sign of the decline of art! What say you3?”

  He pointed at a man in a group nearby, dressed in similar fashion to the orator. The man hooted and grunted, jumping up and down, feces falling from his robe.

  “You see? My friends agree! Do not be fooled by the subpar efforts of amateur artists! They are only pretenders to the throne? What say you, friend?”

  He pointed to another of his cronies, who sat on the flagstones of the plaza and began to scoot across them like a dog with an itch.

  “So say we all!”

  This, followed by more hoots. One man coughed violently as he choked on his own spit.

  We moved on, to the area marked off for wizards. Bright robes and lights occupied the space, while others put on recreations of historical events. One such wizard had marked out a long square before him. Miniature phantom soldiers limned in blue marched up and down the area to the delight of a group of wide-eyed children, who exclaimed upon the detail of the armor or the recognition of a face from history. We stopped to watch as more soldiers rose from the other end of the demarced area, brown and blue and tan and olive hues to their skin. The blue-limned soldiers, white to almost a man, caught sight, and standards bearing Gentia’s sigils went up, raising a tinny cry as they charged the newcomers.

  In moments, the tableau was a bloody rout, the wizard’s army making sure to hack and defile the other side’s men to pieces. One tiny general sawed the head from another and placed it on a pike, while soldiers forced the survivors into chains and led them away, fading from the field. The children gave a cheer, and Cord grunted and led us away.

  “What the actual fuck was that?” I asked. “That can’t be okay for kids.”

  “They call it Manifest Destiny. The Gentians believe this land was gifted to them by the gods, to claim and subjugate.”

  “Sounds like horseshit to me.”

  “Give an imperialist a sword, and he’s gonna stab someone. Provided they look different enough. Or believe different enough. Or eat different enough.”

  “Eat?”

  “The Maccas. Pale as snow. The Gentians murdered them because they thought meat belonged between two slices of bread and cheese.”

  “Okay, but what about the ones they don’t kill?”

  “Oh, they subjugate those too. They just call it diplomacy.”

  “But… why?”

  “The Gentians have a philosophy called peace through overwhelming force. They view anything else as less than manly. As if ruling from the pointy end of a sword is. In my experience, men who wave around swords in a threatening manner are just looking for somewhere to sheathe it. If you know what I mean.”

  “You know, I’m never quite sure what you mean, to be honest.”

  “They wanna fuck each other. But they’re frightened of showing what they perceive as weakness, so instead they kill one another and think that’s strength.”

  “It’s not?”

  He shook his head. “Not the way you’re thinking. To overpower a man, to take his life, is an easy thing. A simple thing. To show compassion, to love no matter what anyone might think—that takes real courage. Real fortitude. This thing they do—it makes them appear outwardly strong, but inside, they’re festering. Like a ham left in the sun. Fear fucks every one of us up, Nenn.”

  “Then what’re you afraid of?”

  “Mostly spiders. And that stuff that collects in your belly button.”

  “But not love?”

  He paused, halting us in the middle of a plaza, and looked at me for a long moment. I wondered what he was thinking. Finally, he looked back to the path ahead, and moved again. “What’s there to fear in love? Hurt? Anger? Betrayal? All those things exist outside love too. But at least inside, when they happen, you still have love. You have a way to heal.”

  “You’re profound today.”

  “I am exceedingly intoxicated. Ah, here we are.”

  We stopped in fro
nt of a large building with a peaked roof. Frescoes capered along the edge of the overhang, and carved columns held up a wide porch. Bunting hung from the columns, and wide steps led to an entrance from which strains of conversation and orchestral tuning escaped.

  “Where is here?” I asked.

  “The Orphidium,” Cord said. “Greatest theater in Vignon.”

  “You’re taking me to a play?”

  “A little culture is not to be feared, Nenn.”

  “It is when I think you’re up to something.”

  He grinned and raised his hands. “Just a play.”

  We stepped inside. The interior was spacious, seats arranged in rows under a vaulted ceiling. Cleverly hidden lights illuminated a stage at the far end. The audience had already found their places, and we took ours at the back. The curtains, thick folds of velvet hung with a system of ropes and pulleys, rose with the swell of the orchestra, revealing a skinny old man standing center stage.

  “Can you believe the gall of those who are not us?” he shouted to the rafters, raising a thin fist and shaking it. “Who dares question our great and awesome plan?”

  Pulleys squeaked, and a shadowy group slid into the stage behind him, arrayed like a rioting crowd. Three tall figures strode onto the stage and sang notes of baritone harmony. The shadows fell with a crash, and the tall figures exited.

  “Surely the gods bless Gentia! Surely, we cannot tolerate these rabble-rousers, those who believe freedom is unearned, who beg for levies upon those who have through no fault of their own amassed great wealth so the unworthy may fill the mouths of their slovenly, lazy spawn with our riches!”

  The audience grumbled in reply, and the old man shuffled forward and turned. He hoisted up his robes and squatted at the edge of the stage, bare ass hanging out.

  “Now who will take the benediction?” he called.

  Men and women lined up, and as each passed under him, he gave a mighty grunt, and with a thunderous fart, ejected oily discharge onto their heads. With each, the supplicant shouted “This is fair! This is balanced!” and left the theater.

  Cord and I snuck out during the ceremonies. Once clear, I looked at him.

  “Just a play, huh? We didn’t pay for that, right?” I asked.