Velmont looked down at the knife in his hand.
“Sorry ’bout this, but it’s hard times,” he said.
Malden flattened himself against the wall. There was no escape.
Then Velmont took a step to the side—and slashed his knife across the throat of his boss. Blood flew from the wound and misted the far wall, as bright as the snail tracks there. The boss clutched at his neck but made no sound whatsoever as he collapsed. The other thieves drew back in terror, pressing themselves up against the far wall. They didn’t shout or make a peep of surprise or fear, though. These were men who’d seen murder before, men who knew when to keep silent. For a while the only noise in the cellar was the drumming of the boss’s wooden leg on the earthen floor. Eventually that, too, stopped.
Velmont turned to face his fellow thieves, gory knife still in hand. “He was a good boss, in ’is way, but he was gonna get us all killed. I’m sidin’ with the fella that wants to save our skins. Any man of you have a problem with that?” he demanded.
His question evoked more silence.
“Good.” He put his knife away. Then he bent down to offer Malden a hand up. “Now. Let’s talk about how I expect to get us all out o’ Helstrow, without marchin’ us through the front door.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The bridge across the river Strow began and ended within the walls of the outer bailey. No one crossed the river without the king’s approval—at least, not from above.
Underneath the bridge a complicated sparwork of stone beams held up the road surface. An agile man unafraid of heights could cross from one end to the other without having to climb up top.
Malden had both those qualities. It didn’t bother him in the slightest to hang from his hands by a stringcourse of granite, thirty feet above the foaming waters of the river. Velmont and his crew took their time about it, but managed to make the crossing without slipping. Yet when Cythera began to climb across, she made it a third of the way and then stopped, clinging hard to a stone pillar, her eyes clenched tightly shut.
Malden looked up. He could hear horses drawing heavy loads across the timber surface of the bridge. It creaked and rattled under the strain. He swung back over to where Cythera waited and put an arm around her back. Slowly, unwillingly, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
“This is your stock in trade, isn’t it?” she asked him, in a very small voice. “I thought I would be fine. I’ve been on rooftops before, climbed towers—”
“This is different. I understand,” Malden said, in a soothing voice. He looked across the underside of the bridge and saw Velmont staring back at him. The Helstrovian thief made a pushing motion with both hands.
Malden tried not to take offense at the notion. They were, in fact, pressed for time. Dawn was only an hour away and they needed to be outside the walls by then, outside and well clear of the eyes of Helstrow’s kingsmen.
“Take it slowly. Don’t look down,” Malden said.
“I can’t move my arms. They won’t let go,” Cythera told him.
Malden fought down the impatience and fear in his heart. He thought of what he should say. He couldn’t very well carry Cythera across. Perhaps he should coax her on like a stubborn mule, or a frightened child, or—
—no. This was Cythera. She was no blushing virgin, afraid of specters in the privy and spiders in the basin.
“You are the daughter of a sorcerer and a witch,” Malden said.
“I can’t magic my way over there!” Cythera shouted at him. Her voice was nearly lost, all the same, in the rushing of the water. She looked down. “If I fall from here, how far do you think my body will be carried before the current before I wash up on some distant bank, my lips blue, my eyes cloudy, my bones shattered by rocks?”
“You are the daughter of the witch Coruth,” Malden said again. He was sure he was on the right track. “You went willingly into the Vincularium. You fought demons and elves and undead things there. This,” he said, carefully, “is a very sturdy bridge. Stonemasons work tirelessly to keep it from falling down. Now. Come with me. I expect you to follow my every step.”
Then he turned away and jumped to a ledge of stone no more than three feet away. With one hand on a beam for support, he used the other to gesture for her to follow.
And she did.
Moving carefully, one step at a time, they swung across the beams, jumping where necessary, walking sideways on thin ledges, always moving forward so momentum helped carry them along.
Cythera did not fall.
At the far side, a thick pipe stuck out from under the bridge. It drained the dungeons and cellars of the keep into the river. An iron grate covered its end, but Velmont already had that unlocked and pulled back on its hinges. Inside they had to crawl a ways before coming to a wider space. It was so dark inside Malden felt the blackness pressing against his eyeballs. He reached back, and Cythera took his hand.
This was the perfect place for a betrayal. If Velmont wanted to kill him, it could be done with no trouble at all.
Instead the Helstrovian made fire and lit a torch. Malden saw that they had come to a junction of many pipes, some no wider than his fist, some high enough to walk through. “Smugglers use this route all the time,” Velmont explained, gesturing at one wall. Hundreds of marks and sigils decorated the bricks, names and columns of numbers scratched into the niter-thickened stone of the walls. It looked like whole generations of thieves had been through this way. “There’s an outflow pipe what fetches up at the base of the outermost wall, just o’er here.” He pointed down a broad pipe that led away into darkness. Malden started to lead Cythera toward its mouth, but just then Velmont grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
“Your Cutbill,” Velmont said, “had better come through for me and mine. I ain’t leavin’ behind e’erything I ever knew, just to end a beggar in some pisspot o’ a free city.”
Malden nodded, but said nothing.
It was not long after that they pushed open another iron grate and stepped out into moonlight. Above Malden’s head the wall of Helstrow stretched high. He was outside that wall, out in the country beyond the king’s fortress. Free.
Looking up he could make out lights among the battlements. There were guards up there, keeping watch. They’d crossed an important barrier, but this was no time for exultation. Not yet.
Velmont extinguished his torch and gestured for Malden to keep moving. The outflow pipe emptied in a narrow ditch that ran straight away from the fortress-town. Malden didn’t look back until they were a quarter mile away. Then he looked to see lights burning in the keep and palace. He looked to see the sealed gates of Helstrow, and the empty villages that stood outside each portal. No lights there—the people who lived in those villages had all been herded inside the walls—either for their own safety, or so they could be conscripted.
He saw Velmont looking back, too. He wondered if Velmont had ever in his life been beyond that wall before. It could be a terrifying experience, first setting foot in a countryside of which you knew nothing. Malden should know—until his recent adventure, he’d spent every day of his life in Ness, and the first time he’d left he’d felt like he’d been picked up by a great wind and thrown out into the middle of the sea. He’d never quite gotten used to country life. “In a few months,” Malden told the Helstrovian thief, “the war will be won. You’ll return richer than when you left—and you’ll like Helstrow all the more for the money you bring back.”
“Assumin’ your barbarians don’t stink my city up too much, after they turn it into one o’ their tent camps.” Velmont’s face contorted through a variety of emotions. “There’s a piece of me, not a big ’un, mind, but a piece—wishes I could stay to see what’s goin’ to happen.”
“You want to remain here and fight for your home?” Malden asked, a little surprised. Thieves as a rule were not known for their patriotic sentiment.
“Nah,” Velmont said, with a chuckle. “I kinda wanna stay and watch it burn.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
In the king’s own chapel in the keep at Helstrow, Croy knelt before the altar of the Lady, hands clasped in supplication. He did not see the burning censers set all around him by the acolytes, or smell the pungent incense they contained. He did not see the golden cornucopia that hung on the wall before him. He saw nothing but the Lady in his mind’s eye, a woman of supernal radiance clothed all in green and white. His ears heard nothing but the whispered prayers that came from his lips, faint rustlings barely recognizable as sounds after a night without wine or even milk to sustain him.
He did not hear the clank of Sir Hew’s armor as the Captain of the Guard entered the royal chapel, nor the polite clearing of Sir Hew’s throat. Nor even his own name, spoken in hushed tones, as Hew tried to get his attention.
It was not until Hew’s hand fell on his shoulder that his vigil was broken.
“It’s dawn, Croy,” Hew said, not unkindly. “You’ve been here long enough.”
Croy blinked and looked up. He saw everything, heard all. His senses felt tuned to an agonizing pitch.
Slowly he shifted on his knees. Brought one leg up and put his foot on the floor. His knee joint popped and clamored in pain. Every part of his body was stiff as he rose carefully to his feet.
There had been a time when he could kneel in vigil for days on end, and leap to his feet when he was done, without so much as a groan or an ache. There had also been a time when he could meditate on the Lady for just as long—and not see Cythera’s face when he looked into his goddess’ eyes.
“I’m getting old,” he said to Hew, with a weak smile.
The Captain of the Guard clapped him on the shoulders. “Knights so rarely do. Ancient blades even less often. Take it as the Lady’s blessing that she let you live this long.” Hew steered him toward the chapel’s door. “Don’t complain overmuch, man. We have a full day ahead of us, and I don’t want to catch you napping. Where’s your squire—what was his name, Malden?”
“He should be here attending me. Perhaps asleep in one of the pews,” Croy said, looking around as if he expected to see the thief at once. “That’s odd. I don’t see him here anywhere.”
Hew raised one eyebrow. “I knew that boy was no good. If he’s run off—with an Ancient Blade on his belt … I’ll have the guard look for him. Damn my eyes. He won’t get far.”
