That ancient district of the Free City of Ness was named for a calamity that happened well before Malden was born, the Seven Day Fire that claimed half the City. There was very little evidence of the conflagration left in Ness, save for a small zone of houses that had been so decrepit before the fire—and their owners so desperately poor—that they had never been rebuilt. The Ashes had become a section of the city so desolate no one ever wanted to live there again. It was a grim place of streets that verged on nothing but charred ruin, all of it hid during the day by the shadow of the City’s towering wall. It was a place decent folk—and thus the City Watch—never ventured.
Malden had come to know it well. He could find his way through the labyrinth of vacant lots and piles of rubble, through the lanes where weeds grew up through the soot-stained cobbles and moonlight soaked everything a sodden gray. He knew just where to turn, and, more importantly, just where to stop.
He stood his horse in the middle of a street and leaned forward on the reins. The horse snorted in the cold air, mist making twin plumes from its nostrils.
He did not wait long. Glancing over at a collapsed house to his left, he saw a flicker of motion, and then a boy no more than seven years old stepped out into the street. The boy lingered in a doorframe that was warped out of true by fire and time. He wore a tunic made of patched-together rags, and his face was filthy with ash. In his hand he held a stick, no longer than his diminutive forearm, with a twopenny nail driven through its end. A poor urchin’s eye-gouger, that weapon. Malden had no doubt the boy was well drilled in its use. The boy, one of a small army of orphaned children with nowhere else to go, worked for Malden’s master. The children made sure no one entered the Ashes without being seen, and, if they were unwelcome, made sure they didn’t leave again.
Malden nodded at the boy, then made a complicated gesture with his fingers. The boy nodded in return, then stepped back into the darkness and was gone.
The entire interchange took five heartbeats to complete, but it spoke in an elaborate and eloquent vocabulary. The message was plain: Malden had three new recruits with him. He had not been followed. He needed to speak with the boss. The boy had understood, and would see to everything.
Malden jumped down from the seat of his wagon and walked around to the back. He shoved the straw away and let the three men sit up. As they rubbed at their numb faces and shook out their deadened legs, he studied them carefully. They were scrawny, shortish men dressed in dirty clothing. They didn’t look like much at all. Malden knew their type all too well. Men broken down by poverty until they were willing to take the risk of being hanged rather than go another day without coin. Men who labored at menial jobs when they could, or relied on their families for a few coppers to keep them from starving to death when no work was available. Men who had spent every day looking at the houses of rich merchants and wondering why fate had denied them such luxury and comfort. One of them, Malden knew, was a cousin of Doral Knackerson’s valet. It had been his brilliant idea to buy off the servants and burgle the rich man’s house. It must have seemed like such a foolproof plan.
“I’ve taken your weapons, and the few coins you had on you,” he told them. “The drug I gave you has no lasting effect, but it will leave you weak for tonight. I really don’t recommend making a fuss now. You’ve been given a second chance and I hope you will all take it. The job you did tonight was a clumsy affair, poorly planned out and executed with only a modicum of skill. It was enough, however, to gain the notice of my employer.”
The three of them stared at him. One of them mouthed “Cutbill”, but was smart enough not to breathe the name aloud.
Malden nodded. “You may know that he runs all the crime in this town. You three thought you could go into business for yourselves. That shows initiative, but also stupidity. No one steals a copper farthing in the Free City of Ness without attracting his attention. You made a choice to try anyway, and now you are under his most exacting scrutiny. You have another choice to make, right now. You can get up, and walk into that building over there.” Malden pointed at the ruin of a feed store across the street. It had no roof, but three of its walls still stood. Only darkness lay within. “A little girl will take you from there to a place where you can sign on with my crew. Your other option is to walk back up that hill,” and here he pointed behind him, “and look for honest work, and foreswear ever taking up thieving again.”
“Do you know how hard it is to get a decent position just now?” one of the thieves demanded. “The trade guilds say who may work, and who must starve. And you have to pay them just to get on a list of men waiting for a chance.”
Malden felt little pity for the men. He himself was the son of a whore. He’d never known who his father was, had never had any family to fall back on. He’d been far more desperate once than these men would ever get. Yet he was going to offer them the same hope he’d clutched to himself.
“My guild,” Malden said, “is willing to welcome you in, tonight.”
The thieves fell to communing with each other, in the mode of desperate looks and shrugs and shaking of heads. The one with the hurt tongue—the valet’s cousin—seemed to be their leader, since the others turned to him as if begging him to make a decision. He ended this silent conversation with a grudging nod.
“You’ll not regret this, good sir,” one of the others said. He jumped down from the back of the wagon and ran toward the ruined feed store.
Another laughed out loud. “When I saw you on that bed, I thought I was dead as an elf,” he announced, and followed his accomplice.
That just left the leader, whose tongue was still swollen in his mouth. He stared at Malden for a very long time. He was making it clear he didn’t think Malden had done him any favors. But eventually he, too, took what was offered.
CHAPTER FOUR
Malden grabbed a sack of coins from the wagon—Doral’s first payment, made in advance—and walked away from the horse and its burden, knowing they would be taken care of by the children. The urchins who lived in the Ashes, orphans all, were desperate, violent little sprites but they worked hard for the pittance Cutbill gave them. It was their only way of getting food other than catching the district’s vast number of feral cats and roasting them over open fires.
Malden turned a corner and walked into the ruin of an old inn. Three old men waited for him there, ancient grey-beards who nodded and smiled as he approached. They were sitting on a coffin in the middle of an abandoned building, just as they did every night. The old grand masters of the guild of thieves.
“Well met, Malden,” Loophole said, raising a hand in welcome. Malden took it warmly and smiled. “More grist for the mill?”
“The wheel of the gods grinds slowly, but it grinds the barleycorn exceeding fine,” Malden said, making sure to use the night’s password. He bowed and started to walk past the old men, when ’Levenfingers stopped him with a discrete clearing of the throat.
“Someone’s been asking for you.”
Malden stopped where he was and turned to look at the oldsters. It was Lockjaw, he who rarely spoke at all, who gave Malden the news.
“It’s nothin’. Just some fool, poking around where he don’t belong.”
“What kind of fool?” Malden asked. “The heavily armed kind?”
’Levenfingers sighed. “The children spotted him, an hour hence, just on the edge of the Ashes. Little fellow in very plain clothes. Not a watchman, nor a bravo with a grudge. Looked more like a priest.”
“Perhaps he came to save my soul,” Malden suggested.
“He got naught from the bairns, save a nasty look,” Loophole told him. “He was smart enough to clear off after that.”
“It’s nothin’,” Lockjaw said, and waved one hand in dismissal.
“I appreciate the warning, all the same,” Malden said, feeling distinctly uneasy. Cutbill kept his headquarters in such a forlorn place specifically so that approaching strangers would be conspicuous solely by their presence. Anyone asking for Malden who knew where he worked should be considered potentially dangerous, no matter how holy their intentions.
Nor could Malden afford to be reckless. Collecting protection money for Cutbill might seem like an easy job, but it actually held far more danger than straight thievery. When you robbed someone, if you did it correctly, they never knew who had done it. Doral, though, knew Malden’s face now. If he cared enough to spend some money, it would not be difficult for the merchant to learn Malden’s name. Malden was making enemies these days, enemies who knew where to find him.
Brooding on this, Malden passed the old men and opened a trap door hidden in the debris of the fallen inn. He headed down a short flight of stairs and pushed aside a tapestry to step into a room full of warmth and light. The din of the place overwhelmed him as he walked inside, right into the middle of a dice game in full swing. The gamblers gathered up their money and moved backwards to let him through, some of them touching their hoods in salute. Malden was greeted warmly by the guildmaster’s new bodyguard, a swordsman in red leather named Tyburn, and the pair of working girls who were keeping him company. Malden, who had grown up in a brothel, knew the girls well and bowed as deeply to them as he might a pair of fine ladies. They giggled and batted their eyelashes at him.
Slag the dwarf was hard at work, as always, at his chaotic workshop in one corner of the room. It looked like he was making a grappling hook, bending rods of iron in a vise. His mop of ragged black hair was greasy with sweat and he swore liberally as he twisted the metal.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude,” Malden said. “Those darts you made me worked a trick.”
“They ought to. I sighted them in myself.” The dwarf glared up at Malden with wild eyes. “And you owe me nothing, you bothersome bastard. You paid for them, didn’t you?”
“I suppose I did,” Malden admitted, with a laugh.
“Then leave me be, so I can get back to my own business,” the dwarf finished, and turned away without another word.
Malden shrugged and made his way over to the massive door in the far wall that led to Cutbill’s office. He knocked the requisite number of times before opening it. Stepping inside, he felt an edge of cold iron kiss his throat.
He never had gotten used to that sensation, though it was hardly the first time he’d experienced it. He held still until the owner of the knife withdrew the weapon and stepped back behind a hanging tapestry before Malden could see his face.
Sighing, Malden stepped into the office. It was grandly appointed, with a massive wooden desk and a cheerily glowing brazier giving heat. The walls were covered with rich tapestries, woven with gold thread that caught the light.
Cutbill, however, sat on a stool in the coldest corner of the room, facing a lectern on which was propped a massive leather-bound ledger book. He was making notations in its pages with a quill pen. The guildmaster of thieves didn’t look like much to see, not at first glance. He was a small man, thin, with little hair and a pair of dark, beady eyes behind his long nose. He did not look up as Malden entered.
Malden placed the sack of coins on the unused desk and then leaned his hip against its solidity. It had been a long night and he longed to be abed, but he had to make his report first. Cutbill was a stickler for detail, and liked everything done in a precise way. His exactitude had bothered Malden once, but in the time he’d worked for Cutbill he’d learned just how necessary the details were. Cutbill’s operation was vast and one man alone could barely keep all the figures straight, even a man with Cutbill’s great talent for order. One slip-up could see the entire organization hanged. So Malden had learned to accept, and even appreciate, Cutbill’s niceties. Even when he was so tired he was seeing spots before his eyes.
“You were successful, I see,” Cutbill said. He made another notation in his ledger, then turned back several pages and consulted a figure.
Malden didn’t question how Cutbill could know that before he’d even given his report. Cutbill had a way of always being three steps ahead of anyone he spoke to. “A new customer, and three new recruits.”
“Hmm.” Cutbill sounded vaguely amused. It was hard to tell—the guildmaster never smiled, and certainly had never laughed in Malden’s presence. But Malden was beginning to learn his moods all the same. “That makes ten new clients you’ve recruited in two weeks,” Cutbill went on. “I wonder what will happen if you keep operating at this pace. By way of a hypothetical, what would Ness look like, if the entire population of the Stink were on my payroll at the same time, while every citizen in the Golden Slope was receiving my protection? Would we completely eliminate thievery in one fell swoop?”
“Perish the thought,” Malden said. He scowled into the middle distance. “I can’t imagine a more boring possibility.”
“Hmm.” It was as good as a belly laugh, coming from Cutbill. It seemed the man was pleased with Malden’s work. Well, that was something.
Once upon a time Malden had hated Cutbill with a passion. The old man had blackmailed him into coming into the guild, just as Malden had browbeaten the three thieves that night. But rather than just welcoming him in with open arms, Cutbill had exacted a ridiculous payment for the right to work as a thief in Ness. A hundred and one gold royals—a vast fortune—to be paid before Malden could earn a single copper for himself. He’d made that payment, though Malden had nearly died in the process. Other people had died, though no one the world would miss. Once the price was paid Malden had believed he would go on hating Cutbill for what he’d been put through. He’d been convinced he would spend the rest of his life looking for a way to put the man in his place.
And yet over the months that followed, something strange had happened. He had actually come to respect the guildmaster of thieves. He would never go so far as to say he liked the man. Yet as he had watched Cutbill plot from his tiny office in the Ashes (as far as Malden knew, Cutbill never left the room), he had begun to see something of the man’s brilliance. The way he played the various factions of the city off one another. The way he kept his people out of harms way, and his thieves’ necks out of the noose. Cutbill could be a vicious schemer, and he was not above having people killed if they got in his way. Malden imagined the man had not a single moral compulsion in his slender skull. Yet by operating in such a ruthless fashion, Cutbill managed to save lives, to put money in pockets that had been empty, and to ameliorate some small portion of the city’s misery. It was almost enough to make Malden think the guildmaster had a heart after all.
