“The more I get, the more you get. And if I fail, they pretty much get my soul anyway, correct?”
She gave me a long, stony stare. “That depends greatly on which one ‘gets’ you,” she finally said.
“Well, better you than them, I’m hoping. And even if it isn’t, at least those bitches won’t get the satisfaction.”
She stared at me some more. What with the blood on her chin and the glint in her stony eyes, it wasn’t making me feel good about my choices.
“You must be truly fucking desperate.”
“Hey. You don’t have to rub it in.”
She stood abruptly. “Very well, an offer has been presented to me. Honored dead, rise now and bear witness.”
The honored dead rose. They climbed from their coffins and materialized from their ashes. They poked their decomposing or wholly bony heads out of mausoleums. They crowded round, some looking curious, most just looking... not alive. I tried to find Corbin, but couldn’t pick him out in the crowd.
“The living mortal Amra Thetys stands before us,” the Guardian announced to the assembled host. Her voice was like a trumpet; a gravelly, unpleasant one. “She offers her eternal soul to me, in exchange for my aid in defeating the remaining Blades of the Eightfold Goddess.”
She gave the dead a moment to digest that. Some whispered to their neighbors. One skeleton at the front of the crowd crossed its arm bones and shook its skull. I gave the bony fucker the fingers.
“Hear now my answer to her offer,” said the Guardian, “and mark it well.”
She leaned forward, looming over me, her face the very epitome of avarice.
“Go – and I want to be utterly clear about this – fuck yourself.”
NINE
I WAS PERFECTLY CAPABLE of seeing myself out of the Necropolis. Nevertheless, the Guardian helped me along with a shrieking wind that herded me straight to the gate, and then blew the gate thunderously closed behind me.
“Well that was completely unnecessary!” I shouted into the silence that followed. Then I started picking debris out of my hair.
I wasn’t having much luck recruiting allies, and time was running out. I tried not to think about it, but honestly, I was starting to get a little worried. Without Bath or the Guardian, the plan was starting to look a little creaky. I sighed, brushed down my now thoroughly filthy coat and pants, and then started looking for a hack.
There was never much in the way of traffic by the Necropolis after dark, so when I saw that there was a hack rolling up the street towards me, I thought I’d finally caught a small break. I whistled and waved, and the burly driver reined in. It was a nicer hack, with a fresh coat of paint and dark curtains covering the small but real glass windows.
“The Hill,” I told the driver, and opened the door.
A fist flew out of the dark interior, flattening my nose and sending me sprawling. I landed hard on my back. Through the stars I saw a harsh-faced woman jump out of the carriage, followed by another man. I scrambled for a knife, but she was on top of me before I could clear the sheath, the tip of a stiletto at the thumping artery in my neck.
“Nah,” she said, and I was forced to agree. I took my hand off the hilt.
“Mister Hope said I had a day.” I figured it couldn’t hurt to mention it.
“Shut your hole.” I did. She quickly relieved me of all my cutlery, which made me feel more violated than the sucker punch.
“Roll over nice and slow now,” she said, getting off my chest. The other fellow had a crossbow aimed at my eyeball, so I complied. She put a bag over my head, not gently, and bound my hands with an efficiency that spoke of experience.
“I’m starting to not like you,” I informed her. She slammed something hard against the back of my head by way of expressing her regret. Then they dragged me off the pavement by my upper arms and stuffed me in the carriage, face down on the floor.
“Fuck if I’m paying the fare for this ride,” I told them.
“She thinks she’s funny,” said the woman. “Tell her your joke, Vin.”
Vin’s joke was the butt of his crossbow’s stock to the back of my head. Honestly, I didn’t get it. What I did get was unconscious.
WHEN YOU GET SMASHED in the head so hard you black out, waking up – while not much fun – means you got lucky.
The head’s a funny thing. I’d seen a fellow stand back up from what should have been an immediate life-ender – courtesy of a mallet – and keep battering away, only to die six hours after the blow, in agony. There was just no telling. I try not to get my head beaten in on general principles, but at this point in my life it seemed like a hopeless cause.
When I came to, the first thing I did was vomit out absolutely everything there was to get rid of. I was vaguely aware that I was sitting in a chair, hands still tied behind me, and that my nose was probably broken and definitely thoroughly blocked by the drying blood. But for a long time, my world was taken up with trying to move absolutely everything inside me to the outside as quickly and forcefully as possible, via my mouth.
My only suit of clothes, I noted absently, was now completely fucked.
I started to look around once the dry heaves were mostly done. The view did not inspire. I was in a room that smelled like my vomit and the Ose. That I could smell it without my nose working told me just how bad it was. Great chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling and the walls, exposing the wooden slats and brickwork behind. What hadn’t fallen was mostly being devoured by black mold. Somewhere in the distance I could hear rushing water and the slow breath of what sounded like an asthmatic dragon, punctuated at slow heartbeat intervals by a deep metallic boom.
My abductors were arrayed in front of me, in a semicircle. All of them were seated. One had a crossbow propped against his chair, business end to the floor. It wasn’t cranked. There was a lantern off in a corner, cruelly illuminating my situation.
“Well this place is an absolute shithole,” I croaked.
“Fucking slum lord” the woman said. “Doesn’t even recognize her own property.”
Ah. Now I knew where I was. A moldering, tumbledown house I’d bought on Unkind Street. I vaguely recognized the stairs up, to my right, and the stairs down to the boathouse behind my abductors. Off to the left would be the ruins of the kitchen. The rushing water sound was the giant water wheel of the Sanvage Metalworks a couple of lots downriver, and the heavy breathing was the bellows of its blast furnace. The boom was its steam-powered drop hammer.
They’d taken me to my own property to torture me. That was just needlessly insulting, that was.
“Slum lord? Do you see any gods-damned tenants, you nasty cack-hammer? It’s an investment.”
She got up from the chair she was sitting in and popped me one in the mouth. Then wiped her vomit-smeared knuckles on a relatively clean portion of my sleeve.
“At some point in the future,” I told her, “I’m going to pull out your teeth one by one, via your asshole.”
She cocked her arm back for another go, but froze when another voice piped up.
“Gorm’s sake, Mar, leave off already.”
There were four of them, three men and the woman. Two of the men I recognized from before. At a glance, they all looked hard, but the new one was simply massive, even seated. He was the one who’d called on dear old dead Gorm.
“You can relax, slightly,” he continued. “We’re not here to kill you.”
“Well it’s nice to know Mister Hope sticks to the letter of his word, if not the spirit.”
The mountain shook his head. “We have an employer. He is not called Hope.” He shrugged, which was an impressive display. “It sounds as if you have multiple problems, Amra Thetys.”
“Then who the fuck are you lot?”
The one who’d put my lights out laughed. I saw now that he, too, had some prominent facial scars that chewed up one side of his face. His made his right eyebrow into more of a suggestion than anything else. The scars didn’t keep him from grinni
ng like a self-satisfied bastard when he said, “We’re the gentlemen from Coroune, darling.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, fuck.”
“Precisely,” replied the mountain.
TEN
LIVING IN LUCERNIS, it was easy to forget that Lord Morno was not, in fact, the ultimate authority - that he answered to the king in far off, somewhat drowsy Coroune. Having lived as a thief in Lucernis, Morno’s predilection for hanging career criminals had always been a much more practical concern for me than what kind of power the king himself could wield, when he chose. But power and reach the king had; and one of the tools rumor said he used to express his will were the gentlemen.
It was said they carried the king’s writ, and that writ said they could do any damned thing they wanted, to anyone, at any time, in order to preserve the king’s peace.
It was said that their members were made up of the hardest, smartest, most talented and dangerous men and women in the country. Looking at them, I gave the notion some credit.
They all wore sharply tailored clothes, but the cuts were not Lucernis fashion – too sober. Muted browns and grays, less lace and more silk, and their collars were too short and stiff. Full length trousers; not a stocking in sight. Brutally clipped hair under hats whose brims were barely more than a suggestion.
Fashion, from what I knew, had its origin in one of two places – on the street or in the court. These people were not wearing anything I’d seen on the street. They weren’t courtiers, though, that was certain. They were too fucking hard to have lived the sort of life the gentry led. Between them, they had nearly as many visible scars as I did.
Yes, I believed they were who they said they were. Mostly. But I still wanted proof.
“If you’re the gentlemen, let me see your writ.”
The one with the hacked-up eyebrow chuckled. “You want to see the writ. ‘Ey Balthaz, she wants to see the writ.”
The mountain in the dagwool vest shrugged. “So show her the writ.”
Eyebrow – Vin, if I remembered correctly - stood and shook off his coat, folded it neatly and lay it across the back of his chair. Unbuttoned his waistcoat. Loosened his cravat. Started unbuttoning his shirt.
“I’ve got a man,” I told him.
“So do I, as it happens,” he replied. “You wanted to see the writ. Feast your eyes.” He pulled open his shirt, exposing pale skin and lots of impressive muscles – and a tattoo. Black, flowing script ran across and down his left pectoral muscle:
Whatsoever this man does
He does in my name, and
Any who dare hinder or
Oppose him will know my
Wrath.
There was no signature. Instead, the flesh below the word ‘Wrath’ was pierced. Dangling from the piercing was a small gold medallion bearing the royal seal, gleaming and buttery in the lamplight.
“That looks uncomfortable,” I said.
“You get used to it. Besides, I like a little pain. Is one enough, or would you like us all to disrobe?” Eyebrow asked, re-buttoning his shirt.
“Fuck that,” said the woman with cropped hair.
“You’re not my type,” I told her.
“Small fucking favors,” she replied.
“I’m not attracted to assholes, you see.”
“You’ve got a big fucking mouth for somebody as fucked as you are right now. They said you were smart. Personally, I don’t see it.”
“This is all very witty, this banter,” I said, “but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. What the hells do you pricks want?”
Balthaz the mountain finally stirred himself. He stood up, and his chair groaned in relief. He put his ham fists on his massive hips.
“The reasons we might be interested in you, Amra Thetys, are long,” he said in a voice as deep as the Dragonsea. “The larcenies you have committed have not been petty.”
“Alleged larcenies, thank you very much.”
He gave that all the consideration he thought it deserved, which apparently was none at all. “Then there is the matter of the assassination of the Syndic of Bellaria, along with one of the Three, and the Telemarch.”
“No witnesses, no case, am I right?”
His thick brows kind of contracted over his deep-set eyes. “That is a grievous misapprehension. But as it happens, we don’t care about any of that. Fortunately for you.”
“So what do you care about?”
“Holgren Angrado.”
“What about Holgren Angrado?”
He leaned over me. “Holgren Angrado got a piece of a god lodged in his eye socket. If we don’t get it out, very bad things are going to happen, first to him, and then to everybody else. You, Amra Thetys, are going to help us remove the divine mote from your lover’s eye.”
I blinked at him. “Huh?”
The woman with the cropped hair made a disgusted noise. “Your lover went and stuck Lagna’s eye in his empty socket,” she said. “Do you know how deeply stupid that was?”
“No. No I don’t. How the fuck should I? Maybe in your world people go shoving god bits into themselves regularly. I don’t know what you get up to in Coroune. But where I come from, it’s not really a thing that happens much, so excuse me if I’m not aware of the perils.”
“Well then let me make this simple for you to understand,” she replied. “Think of it like an infection. Your lover went and infected himself with a god. Eventually that god will completely overwhelm him. When that happens, there will be no more Holgren Angrado. Instead, a resurrected Lagna will be wearing your lover’s flesh. And Lagna, by most accounts, was a vain prick who got very peeved when mortals didn’t behave the way he thought they should. Like burn people to ash peeved. Unsurprisingly, the king doesn’t fucking want that walking around free in his fucking kingdom. Now, did I use words small enough for you to understand?”
“Yes, I got it, thanks. Also, you’re not very nice.”
“She’s got you pegged, Mar,” Eyebrow said to the woman, who sneered at him in reply.
Balthaz went back to his chair and turned it around. He sat facing me, resting his ham hock arms on the back of the chair. “The magus is a threat to the kingdom, though he does not know it. If it were up to me, we would simply eliminate that threat in the most expeditious fashion available. The king, however, has instructed us to try to deal with the danger without ending the magus’s life.”
“Wait. Wait. How do you even know any of this?”
“We’re the fucking gentlemen, poppet,” said Eyebrow. “It’s our job. You don’t need to know the ins and outs.”
“You call me poppet again and you’ll get what Mar is getting.” I turned back to Balthaz. “You seem to be the brains. Why should I believe what you say?”
“It’s my understanding the magus is exceptionally strong-willed,” Balthaz replied. “Still, by now there will almost certainly have been some changes in his personality. If I had to guess, they would manifest as flashes of arrogance, or fits of temper or impatience. He probably isn’t the most patient of souls when his will is balked, now. If he hasn’t yet become violent, I’d wager it won’t be long.”
I started laughing. It began as a chuckle, but because of my nose, it quickly became more of a breathless wheeze. They were describing Holgren’s resting state, when it came to assholes at least.
“You find it amusing?”
“You – you people are so f- full of shit I can smell it. Over my own sick. With a broken nose.” I was gasping. It hurt to laugh that hard.
Balthaz took it for a while, but eventually said “Mar.”
She popped me another one. And then another. When she went for a third, I spat the blood that had been building up in my mouth right in her face.
After that, she waded in with her boots. It ended with both me and the chair sidewise on the floor.
I didn’t doubt they were who they said they were; or not much anyway. But I’d been around shady folks for most of my life, and I could smell a con when it was shove
d under my nose. You shake the mark out of his comfort zone, turn up to down, get him confused and doubting everything, even his own name if you could. Then you give him something he knows to be true, preferably something there’s no way you could know unless you were who you said you were.
From there, they almost always took you at your word, if you were careful about it.
Well I didn’t trust these shady fuckers further than I could piss. So what if they knew about Lagna’s eye? But I decided to play along, because what choice did I have?
Balthaz righted the chair, and then set me back in it.
“Mistress Thetys, we’re well aware that you are made of stern stuff. If it makes it easier for you to agree to help us, we can pound on you all night. But in the end, you will agree.”
“What exactly is it you’re expecting me to do?” I mumbled.
“We do not know where the magus is. You do. We need you to lure him to a particular place at a particular time. Keep his guard down so we can deal with Lagna’s eye without any unpleasantness. Failing that, we need to know his location. From there, we will handle the matter in our own way. If you care for the magus, you will prefer the first option.”
“Doesn’t matter what I prefer. I don’t fucking know where Holgren is. You can ride me like the beggars do Mar’s mother all night, but it won’t change the fact.”
She smiled. Then she took out my best fucking knife from her pocket and stabbed me in the thigh with it. And then the bitch left it there.
I managed to turn the scream into a growl at the last instant. Eventually I got control of my mouth. I wasn’t angry anymore. I was murderously furious, but it was a cold fury. Even through the pain and the fury I could see that the other gentlemen had been taken aback by what Mar had done; their faces were too blank. Fuck them, too.
“You and I really aren’t going to be friends, are we?” I eventually asked her.
“No, we really aren’t. But believe it or not, we aren’t enemies. Yet.” The look on her face said she didn’t mind if things went that way. The joke was on her, though, because I was going to do awful things to her no matter what.
The Thief Who Went to War Page 6