He did not think to look down, and so he stepped right into the chamber pot, which Malden had placed before the doorway.
“Son of a whore,” the thief howled, as he tripped forward into the room and went sprawling past Malden where he lay on the bed. The other two rushed into the room after their fellow. One held the candle high, while the other had a wicked long knife in his hand. All three of them held bulging sacks.
“What is it?” the one with the candle demanded. His face was yellow in the guttering light and his eyes were very shiny. The one with the knife was quicker, and spied Malden even as he sat up in the bed.
“We’re tumbled!” he cried, and rushed forward with the knife.
Malden flicked his wrist and a dart went into the knifesman’s chest, just above his heart. As the candle holder turned to look, Malden pitched his second dart and caught him in the neck.
The one who had stumbled on the chamber pot managed to get back to his feet just as Malden readied his third dart. The thief began to cry out in fear just as Malden made his cast. The dart hit him in the tongue and he went silent.
The three thieves turned to look at each other, knowing the jig was up. One by one their faces fell. And then they slumped to the floorboards with a treble thump.
When he was sure they were all down, Malden stepped out of the bed and went to look in their sacks, to see what shiny presents they’d brought him.
CHAPTER TWO
It was not more than an hour later when Malden heard the master of the house come home. He had been out at a gaming hall until closing time, as he was prone to do every night. Malden had done his research on the man, following him for the last three nights all the way from the Royal Ditch back to his home. Typically the man lost more than he won, and he would be followed all the way home by his long-suffering wife, who begged him every night to give up his expensive hobby. The man never said a word, merely took his drubbing as his due. The two of them would be accompanied by a bodyguard and a linkboy who lit his way through the dark streets. Malden closed his eyes and listened as the householder paid off the linkboy and then set his bodyguard to stand watch in the main room of the ground floor. The wife moved straightaway to her chamber, as she did every night, perhaps exhausted by the long journey through the night streets, perhaps simply desiring to get away from her wastrel mate. Malden heard her splash her face with water from the basin, then call for her handmaid, who would not be coming.
The master of the house climbed the stairs ponderously, pausing now and again as if he were so drunk he could not walk a straight line. He came immediately to his strongroom, which served him both as office and sanctum. Before he opened the door, he called for his own servant, a valet, who was also conspicuously absent.
“By the Bloodgod’s eight elbows,” the merchant swore, stumbling inside his strongroom. “Someone strike a light, anyway. Who’s here? I can hear you breathing in there. I promise you, Holger, if this is your idea of a jape at my expense—”
The light from the open door spilled across a glittering treasure, gathered and neatly sorted on the rich carpet of the strongroom. Silver plate and cutlery had been stacked beside bags of coin and fine porcelain. Good clothing, the lady of the house’s jewelry, and even the more expensive sort of cooking spices had been laid out there. The master of the house inhaled deeply to see all his worldly goods of value arrayed so.
Malden struck flint and lighted a taper on the table before him, the table that normally served as the merchant’s desk. “Close the door,” he said.
The merchant’s name was Doral Knackerson. He was not the wealthiest man in the Free City, but he was far from the poorest, either. He owned three tanneries down in the Smoke. Malden had walked by those workshops often enough to know the particular gruesome stench of rendered animal carcasses. Strange, he did not detect even a whiff of that unforgettable smell on Doral’s person. It was as if the merchant were unwilling to visit his own property.
The man was middle aged, with silver wisps of hair around his temples, and none up top. He dressed well, but in the specific shabby-looking finery that rich men wore when they went abroad into the less reputable parts of town. He had a stack of coins in his hands—it seemed for once he’d left the gaming table richer than he’d arrived. The silver spilled from his fingers and rolled across the floor as he stared at Malden.
“Thief,” he whispered, then opened his mouth to shout it.
Malden forestalled him by stabbing his bodkin into the surface of the merchant’s desk. The knife was no longer than Malden’s hand, from the tips of his fingers to the heel of his thumb. It had no edge at all, but only a very sharp point that dug easily into the soft wood of the desk.
It was not a particularly effective or very deadly weapon. But it was good for sending a certain kind of message, one which Doral Knackerson must have received loud and clear. He closed his mouth again without so much as calling for his bodyguard.
“Close the door,” Malden said again, very softly.
Doral did as he was told. Malden had made extensive inquiries regarding Knackerson before he came here, and of all the people he had asked, none had described Doral as a fool. Good. That would make this much easier.
“You’ll hang for this, thief. Cut my throat, take my belongings—what will you, but you’ll hang for it. Or you may leave right now, empty-handed, and I’ll say nothing of this intrusion to my close personal friend, the Burgrave.”
Malden smiled. “I’m not here to rob you,” he said. “Not tonight, anyway. In fact, my purpose here is quite the opposite. I happened to be strolling past this fine home tonight when I discovered these,” he said. He glanced to one side.
The bodies of the three thieves he’d surprised lay sprawled on the floor there, face down.
Doral’s face went white.
“They were busy at amassing this collection of your goods,” Malden said, and gestured at the valuables piled on the carpet. “I stopped them before they could make good their escape.”
The merchant stared hard at Malden with shrewd, half-closed eyes. “You’re no watchman. None of them would lie in wait for me like this.”
Malden chuckled. “Oh, no. Just a citizen looking after his neighbor. By way of profession, I am the agent of one of your fellow burghers. A man of some influence in the City, though he rarely appears at the moothall. You’ll know his name, if you think for it.”
Doral pursed his lips. He did not require much prompting. “Cutbill. The guildmaster of thieves.”
“You make his name sound like a curse. When the man in question is about to become your fondest friend.” Malden shrugged. “These three were none of his. They were private operators, of a kind he despises. They were smart enough to make note of your movements, and even to bribe your servants to sleep elsewhere tonight. They were not clever enough to evade me.”
The merchant shook his head. “Say what you want. What your master wants, rather. I like not this feigned civility from a man who threatens me with a knife.”
Malden shrugged off the man’s brusqueness. “My master wants nothing. He wishes to give you something you clearly need. Protection. Cutbill can make sure you are never bothered with this unpleasantness again. You see how easily unprincipled rascals made entry to your house. You see how close a thing it was, that you were robbed tonight. Why, if I hadn’t been here, you’d only now be realizing how much you had lost. There must be … let me see … fifty gold royals worth of plate and jewels here, and the clothing would fetch some good silver coins if sold to the right consigners. Why risk losing so much, when Cutbill can insure the safety of your belongings for so little?”
“How much?”
Malden pulled his bodkin out of the desk’s top. “One part in fifty of everything you earn. To be paid monthly, in silver. A trifle.”
“That’s just robbery by another name,” Doral spat. “I won’t pay it.”
“Ah, no man would submit to such blandishment, be he a creature of honor. I told Cutbill you were too high-minded to accept his offer. Alas, he bid me make it anyway. Very good. I’ll take my leave now, with compliments to you and your lovely wife.” Malden stood up from behind the desk and sketched a graceful bow.
“If I see you again—”
“Oh, you shan’t,” Malden told the merchant, as he strode toward the door. “When next I come, you won’t see me at all.”
He walked directly past the merchant and reached for the latch of the door.
He didn’t make it that far.
“Wait,” Doral said. “We can negotiate something, surely.”
“I listen attentively,” Malden said, and leaned up against the wall.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a long ride from the Golden Slope to the Ashes. Malden had a small wagon and an old, spavined horse to drive down the steep hill that took him from the houses of the wealthy through the district of workshops and manufactories called the Smoke. There he entered a maze of narrow streets that led further downhill into the Stink, where the poor had their homes. It was just as he entered that zone of wattle-and-daub houses, where the streets and the alleys between them were hard to tell apart, that he heard the first groan from behind him.
The wagon appeared to be full of hay. If he were stopped, Malden could claim to be making a delivery to the stables of an inn nearby—it was close enough to dawn to make sense for such traffic—but if a watchman heard the hay moaning in pain, he might ask questions that Malden would find uncomfortable to answer. So he pulled his team into a very dark, very deserted byway, and leaned back over his cargo. He thumped the side of the wagon very hard with the pommel of his bodkin and waited until he heard another grunt. “I know you can hear me,” he said to the hay. The three men underneath it, the thieves from Doral’s house, were just now waking from their drugged stupor. They would be unable to use their limbs for a while yet, but their ears would be fully recovered. The drug Malden had used on his darts was measured out quite carefully, and he knew its effects well—he’d even tested it on himself, to be sure of its efficacy. He knew how groggy and listless it would leave them, and how unable to defend themselves.
Still the hay rustled as they tried to rouse themselves and escape. Malden sighed and said, “If I tell you to be quiet, I expect you will try to shout. It’s what I would do in your situation. Allow me to point out one thing, however. If I wished to kill you, I could have done so quite easily, hours ago. Instead I did you a very great favor: I saved you from the hangman’s noose. I’d like to do you another favor, but it depends on my getting to my destination without incident. You may therefore remain silent, and keep your groans to yourself. Or I can stop your breath right now, while you’re still too weak to fend me off. Do we have a deal? Cry once for yes, or twice if you wish to die.”
“Oooh,” one of them moaned.
“Pluh-pluh-pluz,” the second begged.
“Gah,” the third one muttered. That must be the one he’d struck in the tongue.
“Very good. Lie still, then, and you’ll live, for now.” Malden got his horse under way again and headed for the Ashes.
