Probably both. But it might have been stoats. I don’t know, I’m city folk.
The second and third things I noticed, simultaneously, were the terrible, terrible thirst and that my head had apparently been crushed by a mattock at some point, without me noticing.
The fourth thing dawned upon me slowly; the overwhelming urge to die.
I opened one gummy lid, stared blearily around at my surroundings, discovered that I was in Fengal’s back room. Technically it was his office, I guess. There was a desk anyway, as well as shelves filled with I don’t know what. But I’d never seen him use it for business. I was shrivelled up on the cot in the corner. The last person I’d seen on that cot was Bollund, Corbin’s fixer’s muscle. He’d had a hole in his torso you could play peek-a-boo through. He’d karked it in the end. It gave me hope.
I was pretty sure if I just lay still long enough, death would come and take me. The question was how long was long enough. I desperately needed water, so I crawled off the cot and crept my way to the door. It opened before I reached it, and Fengal himself stood in it, too big to go around.
“You’re alive,” he observed.
“You,” I said, hand going to a knife. “The fuck did you pour me?”
He handed me a jug of water. By all the gods, it was chilled. I snatched it from him and started guzzling. A lot of it went down my shirt instead of my throat, but I was beyond caring.
“Mother Harm. A distillation of wormwood and the venom of the blue scorpion. You looked to be starting a days-long bender, and I thought it best to head that off. If it’s any balm to your pride, you finished the bottle, which I have never seen anyone manage, and then kept upright and mean for a good two hours after. It was a performance equal parts legendary and pathetic.”
Oh.
Oh, that wasn’t good. A drunk I could do, but a blackout drunk – that was beyond dangerous. Believe it or not, I’d never got blackout drunk before. Pass-out drunk was another thing. I finished the water and thrust the jug back at him.
“More,” I croaked.
“Come on, then.” He turned and walked through the kitchen to the dining area, and I shambled after, cursing the banging of pots and pans and the smell of greasy pork and dried fish. We sat down at his table and another sweating jug appeared before me. By the look of the sky through the windows and the sparse crowd, it was midmorning.
“Hungry?” he asked, and by his expression, enjoyed watching me retch at the thought of food.
“So, what did I talk about after the poison you gave me?” I finally asked.
“You said many hurtful things, Amra, that Kettle and I both agreed to forget – considering your condition and our part in causing it.”
“There’s a reason I drink alone,” I muttered.
“Yes, well, towards the end it was mostly grunting and hissing anyway.”
Kettle arrived then with a pot of kef, which he’d obviously been sent out for. I could have kissed him. He set the pot in front of me along with a little cup. He was frowning.
“You said hurtful things last night, mistress.”
“Yeah, well, I’m suffering for my sins now.”
“Now Kettle, we agreed to leave all that in the past,” said Fengal. “She didn’t mean any of it.”
“I don’t remember any of it.” I poured out a cup of the black medicine with trembling hands, then slid it across the table to Kettle as a peace offering. “Sorry, kid. Drunk me likes to start shit and pick fights. Pretty sure it’s hereditary. I didn’t expect to be in decent company last night.”
He kept frowning for a bit, then smiled a little and winked. “Drink your medicine, mistress,” he said, pushing the cup back to me. I sipped at it – it was too hot to guzzle. But I was tempted. Even with the kef, and the water before it, existing was agony. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was broiling my eyes even though I was faced away from it, and the sound of the fellow chewing the next table over was like knitting needles in my eardrums.
“Are you able to have a conversation, yet?” Fengal eventually asked me.
I shrugged and sipped. “Nothing better to do while I wait for death’s release.”
“Good. Why are you back, Amra?”
I gave him a quizzical look. “Because I live here? What kind of question is that?”
“Don’t take it the wrong way. We’ll get to it. First though, the last I heard you’d gone missing, and Holgren was struggling mightily to find you. It seems he did.”
I nodded. “You know Holgren. Ain’t shit stands in his way once he’s set on something.”
Fengal nodded. “And you seem none the worse for wear. Generally speaking.”
I grunted. I’d known Fengal for a long, long time, and trusted him as I trusted few people. But I was not getting into all the business with the Telemarch and Kalara, the Knife That Parts the Night, any more than I had to.
“So how is Holgren?”
“Well enough.” For a man who was walking around with a dead god’s eye in his head, and a demon seed in his hand.
‘That’s good,” he said, and I gave a grunt in agreement.
“And where is Holgren?” Fengal asked, when it became obvious I’d grunted all I was going to grunt.
“Taking care of business. Why?”
“Because there are parties that have been nosing around, asking after his whereabouts.”
“Like Kluge? That horse-faced fucker braced me yesterday.”
“Kluge, yes. It seems our dear mage made some sort of a deal with the governor. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
I put down the cup and stared at Fengal. “What are you getting at?”
“Amra, I trust Holgren. I’ve known him nearly as long as I’ve known you, and I feel certain I have his measure. I don’t believe for a moment that he would say or do anything that would... betray previous confidences. But I am one man, with only a little say or sway in the shadowy corners of the city. I’m not the only fixer Holgren ever worked with, and you are not the only crew he ever contracted with. There is a deep and growing concern on the street. Important people want to know just what sort of relationship Holgren now has with Morno.”
“He’s not even in the city.” I didn’t want to admit even that much, not even to Fengal, but I had to say something.
“But you are. Without him. That’s why I asked why you’re here. Where you go, Holgren is sure to follow. This is what you might call general knowledge. I know you both well enough to know that means you’re up to something, but others don’t, and wouldn’t care if they did. There are unpleasant people who want answers and assurances, and if they can’t get them from your partner, I’m concerned they’ll try to get them from you. More than concerned. That’s why I thought it best to clip your drunk before it grew black, leathery wings.”
This was a complication I very much did not need. Sure, I had half a dozen shards of a mad goddess to contend with, but having Lucernis’s underworld after me wasn’t exactly an improvement. Those fuckers were all about the business. Morno had weeded out virtually all the idiots and maniacs over the years by means of short drops and sharp stops at Traitor’s Gate, leaving only the true, careful professionals to operate – and prosper – in the shadows.
They would be proactive about potential threats, sure enough.
“Fucking hells,” I concluded.
“That’s not all,” Fengal said, and I put my face in my hands.
“There’s somebody else out there also looking for your partner, a Bellarian by some accounts, or at least somebody who speaks with the same burr that clings to your tongue, but worse.”
“’S not a Bellarian accent, then. Not a proper one. It’s Hardside.”
He shrugged. “I’m no expert. But wherever they’re from, it looks like they’ve got some kind of magic. No two people can agree on what they look like. Can’t even agree if it’s a man or a woman – just that they talk funny, and they walk like it pains them.”
“Lovely. Any other dire news?”
He scratched at his ample belly. Shrugged. “I hear tell somebody burned down your house.”
“That’s low, Fengal.”
FOUR
WE TALKED A LITTLE more. Well, he talked and I grunted. He asked me once more what I was up to, and I denied being up to anything. I wasn’t getting him involved in anything to do with the Blades if I could help it. He let it go and filled me in on the goings-on in Lucernis during my absence, and I studiously avoided telling him anything of consequence. I couldn’t risk it. I used my dire hangover as an excuse to stay as close to monosyllabic as I could get away with.
I didn’t have to pretend all that much, honestly.
For all our planning, Neither Holgren nor I had imagined word of his deal with Morno would get out onto the street. Honestly, it shouldn’t have. Slowly, through the curdling wine fumes, it dawned on me that someone must have leaked it on purpose, to cause him grief. And from what Holgren had told me of his encounters with Kluge, I had a pretty good idea who.
That shitstain.
Fengal had sent Keel, my teenage lackey, off to Gol-Shen at Holgren’s request, where hopefully he was getting educated and staying out of trouble. There had been one badly-spelt letter to confirm his arrival. The rest of his news was of people I didn’t care much about doing things I didn’t approve of.
Eventually, after promising to return when I was fit company, I crept out of Fengal’s eatery into the harsh light of day, still feeling like a withered husk. Once on the street, I was confronted with where I was going. I’d had sort of a bleary plan to go to ground in the Foreigners’ Quarter, but with all the folks who now wanted to have a chat with me about Holgren’s whereabouts, that seemed like a bad idea. I’m not saying the Foreigners’ Quarter is where all the criminals hang their hats, but there are a lot of hats there.
So I decided to go the opposite route, and lay out some coin. Eventually I was able to flag down a hack.
“Where to?” he asked around a mouthful of dried beef.
“The Hill.”
“Which part?”
“Eh. The Oak will do.”
NORTH OF THE RIVER Ose, from east to west, were the docks and warehouses, and then the grubby, working-class area where Fengal was set up. That neighborhood gradually gained in tone the further west you went until you came to the well-to-do area more or less across the river from the Governor’s Manse, the area known as the Hill. On the Promenade all the manses were squeezed in next to each other, but on the Hill, the estates were built as if seeing your neighbor’s house was an unforgivable sin.
If you kept going west, you’d end up at the charnel grounds, of course, where property prices plunged rather abruptly.
The Oak was the biggest, most expensive inn on the Hill. Maybe all of Lucernis. It was a truly monstrous edifice that half looked like a castle, and half like someone’s idea of the Emperor of Chagul’s harem house. It was full of the kinds of people I’d made it my business to take things from.
They didn’t rent rooms; they rented suites. More importantly, they kept a small army of servants and armsmen on the payroll, to make sure the great and good never got bothered by the unwashed masses. I was neither great nor good, but I had coin, which is always an acceptable substitute.
I was dangling myself as bait. That was the plan. I’d shown my face about town, and whoever had an interest knew or would soon know I was back – especially and most importantly, the one we were hunting. But being bait didn’t mean I had to sleep in the gutter. It also didn’t mean I had to go out of my way to make it easy to get to me, especially since the list of interested and unpleasant parties had now tripled, with the addition of Kluge and Lucernis’s underworld. Knowing my luck, the list would only grow.
Eventually the hack rolled through the gates and up the white gravel road to the grand entrance of the Oak. I passed the driver a silver through the connecting window as a footman opened the carriage door and put out an arm. Normally I would have ignored it, but since I felt like a warmed-over corpse, I took it and let him help me down.
I slouched my way into the great hall, which was all dark, polished wood and dark, polished granite and brightly clothed people with too much money. There I was greeted by a well-dressed, handsome older man who rode the line between obsequious and dismissive with aplomb. He gave me the once-over and obviously saw that the cut and cloth of my attire was expensive. He obviously also saw that it had been slept in, and smelled of at least a few of the substances that had been spilled on it. On the other hand, the many scars on my face didn’t even rate a second glance.
“Welcome to the Oak, mistress. Do you have a reservation?”
“Nope.”
He frowned. “Does the mistress have any luggage?
“Also nope. Let me just answer your next question. Yes, I have funds.” I pawed at my pockets until I found my purse, and then poured out a handful of gold marks. I was in no fit state to count or haggle. I dumped them in his hands.
“Let me know when that runs out. I’ll take the smallest, quietest suite you have, preferably on the third floor. I’m gonna need a hot bath, vast quantities of chilled water, and a bottle of your meekest wine. Also food. Anything bland, but for the love of Isin, no rye bread.”
“As mistress says. Does mistress have a name?” he asked, going to the desk and depositing my money somewhere out of sight.
“Amra Thetys.” I couldn’t be bothered to think up an alias. I couldn’t be bothered to think of thinking up an alias.
He turned and called out “Ned.” A gangly teenager appeared, dressed in the livery of the Oak. He was the kind of gangly that meant even though his clothes fit, they looked like they didn’t.
“The Dowager Suite,” he told Ned, and handed the kid a big, gold-brushed key. Ned bowed awkwardly and led me up the grand staircase and down a long, lushly appointed hallway. He came to a door at the end of the hall, unlocked it, and held it open for me. Then he followed me in and went to open the curtains.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Ned.”
He left off with a start and handed me the key, and I gave him a silver mark for not uttering a peep, and to get lost.
I started to strip, laying out my few possessions on the mantle of the fireplace – knives, of course, and the leather rig that held them. Most of them. My coin purse. Also the necklace Holgren had given me, with the bloodstone pendant that let him find me wherever I might be, if I used it right. I hadn’t been. I hadn’t put that back on since I’d taken it off in Bellarius. We didn’t need it anymore, and I hated necklaces anyway, ever since Thagoth. But I kept it because you don’t just toss gifts. I don’t, anyway. It’s not like I’d gotten all that many in my life.
My most prized possession, the locket with my mother’s portrait inside, I’d left with Holgren for safekeeping. Whatever was going to happen over the next few days wouldn’t qualify as safe, and I couldn’t bear to lose that last link to her. And to my uncle, who’d given it to me. I hadn’t known him long, and I’d been an asshole to him much of that time.
I had regrets.
So, yeah, I’d left the locket in Holgren’s safekeeping. But I’d kept a little velvet bag with me. A little gray velvet bag, that held a little green glowing marble, that held the souls of hundreds of murdered children. Mour’s avatar had given it to me, the bitch. I still wasn’t sure if it was in payment for freeing her, or as a punishment for unspecified crimes.
There were regrets there of a different sort in there. There was nothing I could have done differently, nothing I could have done to save them. Hells, I’d almost been one of them, many times. My face was testament to that. But in the end, I had survived and they hadn’t, and they blamed me at least in part for their fate. And I couldn’t fault them for their views.
I still didn’t know what to do about it. About them. I only knew I couldn’t put it on a shelf somewhere and just... forget.
Hangovers always did make me a little maudlin.
/>
A knock on the door pulled me out of my maunderings. It presaged a train of servants carrying buckets of hot water for my bath, and assorted sustenance.
HALF AN HOUR LATER I was soaking in a steaming copper tub, sipping from a bottle of pale Imrian white, and starting to feel a little less like a moldy corpse. The steam seemed to be slowly knitting my skull back together, at least.
I drink, but I don’t often go on drunks. The reasons for not doing so are virtually limitless, from the fact that it doesn’t solve anything to the fact that, especially as I get older, the physical bill at the end of a tear is ruinous. There’s also the fact that I become an increasingly enormous asshole the deeper I get into my cups.
Also, it’s just plain stupid. Belligerent I may be while ripped, but no drunkard is able to effectively back up their threats. Or even see harm coming, most times. This time I’d had someone watching out for me, though.
I dropped the washcloth over my face and sank deeper into the tub, until the water was up to my chin.
“Never again,” I muttered, because if you can’t lie to yourself in the privacy of a bath, then when can you?
It bothered me a little that Fengal suspected I was back in Lucernis for some reason other than, you know, living. Holgren, Greytooth and I had agreed that it was probably best that I act as if I had no ulterior motives, that I was in no way aware that the Blade That Binds and Blinds was in the city and after me. There were a couple of reasons for that, the first being we wanted her to move in as predictable a fashion as possible. If she was aware that we were hunting her, she might change her tactics. We did not want her to change her tactics. She already had a frightening ability to be unpredictable.
Eventually the water became tepid, then cold, so I dragged myself out and threw on the robe that had been provided.
I crawled onto the bed, not bothering with covers, and sprawled out on my stomach, still wrapped in the robe. I put a heavy goose-down pillow over my head, in the vain hope that I could somehow smother the final remnants of my headache. If I accidentally suffocated myself, well, that was also a way to deal with the problem.
The Thief Who Went to War Page 3