“We don’t wish to punish you,” Cythera said. “We wish to hire a skilled thief for … well, our purposes must remain unspoken, of course. We wish to hire a master thief for a certain job.”
More where it came from, Malden thought. More silver. Enough the brute didn’t even bother keeping hold of the pittance he’d had with him. More. “Are you?” he said. “Well, luck is with you, for I—”
“Can you recommend anyone like that?” Cythera asked.
“I—I can indeed,” Malden said, and raised himself up to his full height. “I know a thief with no equal in the Free City. One more than up to whatever task you set him.” He gave her his most dashing look.
“Yes?” she said patiently.
“Milady, I am at your service.”
She frowned. “No, I mean, what is his name, this paragon of thieves?”
“It’s—well, me.”
Bikker laughed so hard he spilled his ale. Cythera’s face didn’t change, but her icy blue eyes looked Malden up and down and then flicked away.
“We don’t want a pickpocket, boy! We want a thief. A … a burglar, a … second story man, a—”
“And I tell you, you’ve found him.” Malden brushed past Cythera—she gave a short gasp as he nearly touched her—and over to stand before Bikker. He had to look up to meet the swordsman’s gaze but he held it. “Why, just the other day, Cutbill, the master of thieves, expressed his deep admiration for my skills. He listened to the story of how I stole plate and silver from Guthrun Whiteclay’s house and said he’d never heard of a finer scheme enacted so skillfully. And he should know.”
“Cutbill.” Bikker glanced across at Cythera. “You’re one of his crew?”
“Indeed,” Malden said.
“Only—we need this to stay between us. It can’t get back to him, or the world will know our business. At least, it will if it has the coppers to buy the information.”
“Discretion is my watchword. Though it does cost extra.”
Bikker shook his head and quaffed more ale.
“You’ve seen how quick I am,” Malden insisted.
“We did, at that,” Cythera agreed. “He would have gotten away from you, Bikker, if I hadn’t been there to distract him. And the man we need will have to know how to climb. He showed us that as well.”
The swordsman hunched his shoulders. He was half convinced, Malden knew, and he already had Cythera on his side. Time to close the deal, before Bikker could reconsider.
“For this job I will require the sum of one hundred and one gold royals,” Malden announced.
Bikker smiled. “You haven’t yet heard what it entails. We might be getting a bargain for that price.”
A bargain at one hundred and one royals? More silver where that came from, Bikker had said. How much more? “Of course, that does not include incidentals, the fees of the dwarf who makes my gear, bribe money, hazard bonuses, surcharges for quick resolution, gratuities—”
Bikker leaned back against the bar. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Malden.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The sorcerer Aelbron Hazoth lived in an imposing four story edifice where the Lady’s sacred parklands abutted the city wall, most of the way downhill from the palace, in the district called Parkwall.
It was not the safest district in town, though it had its recommending features. Like the Ashes, it had originally been a residential district for the poor until it burned down in the Seven Day Fire. Unlike that wasteland, Parkwall had been laboriously cleared, the remains of the old houses scraped away and the land allowed to go to seed. Now Parkwall was a zone of lush grass, a green common kept cropped by the sheep and goats of the people of the Stink, a spacious greensward in a city that had very little green space. The tall crowded houses of the Stink drew away on either side to let in the air. It was rumored to be the healthiest place in town—the plagues that swept through Ness every few winters often skipped Parkwall entirely—but its openness and lack of well-lighted streets had drawn footpads and thieves, and it was counted terribly dangerous by night. A few fine houses had been built in Parkwall to take advantage of the pleasantly rustic environs, but these were all surrounded by their own walls and wrought-iron fences to keep out the uninvited.
Such as Sir Croy, for instance.
The knight had found lodging at a nearby villa. After escaping from the gibbet, he thought he would be a hunted man, that no place would be safe for him, but in fact it did not take long before he had a place of refuge. He did not lack for friends in the Free City, some of whom were stalwart enough to hide him from the watch. A rich merchant had found him wandering in the Golden Slope and begged to bring him home. Croy accepted, though he had no money to pay the man. The merchant insisted none was required, and Croy had praised his good heart in all the words he knew. The merchant assured him that Croy would bring him great fame and social status, but Croy knew the man was just being kind. He gave Croy a suite of rooms all to himself and ordered his servants to see to his every wish.
This night he was laying spread out on a bench in a roof garden, pretending to take his ease. It was a likely enough occupation. This close to Ladymas and the hottest time of year, anyone with sense was up on a rooftop or in a garden, trying to catch a breeze. Anyone who saw him might think him yet another pampered noble attempting to stay cool. In truth, he had come up to the roof garden to watch Hazoth’s house. Croy was a man of action, but this evening he had spent almost motionless on the bench, taking only a little wine and some nuts for sustenance. One thing only would bid him tarry so. For hours he had kept an eye on the place, watching who came and who went, hoping to spy a glimpse of Cythera.
After midnight he got his chance. She and Bikker came traipsing over the grassy common. The place had a reputation for being full of footpads after dark, but the two seemed to pay no special heed to their surroundings. Instead they were deep in conversation. Croy even got the sense they might be arguing.
He placed a salted almond between his lips and bit down hard. He longed—oh, how he desired it!—to call out, to wave, to get her attention somehow. He longed to jump down from his perch and run to her side, to catch her up in his strong arms (even knowing what a mistake that would be) and carry her off to his castle. Failing that, he would have been glad even for a moment’s soft conversation, for a renewed exchange of promises and honeyed words.
But it would not happen tonight. Tonight he could only watch.
The guards at Hazoth’s door challenged the pair, but Bikker reached for his sword’s hilt and the armored sentries fell back. The two of them stopped just inside the sorcerer’s gate, however, and waited for something Croy could not see. When it came, he felt it instead. There was a sudden change in air pressure, or perhaps merely the crickets in the grass all fell silent at once. It was like the night itself held its breath.
It lasted a bare moment. Then it was over, and Cythera and Bikker entered the villa’s grounds and went their separate ways. He, toward a low shed at the side of the house that Croy knew served as barracks for the sorcerer’s guards. She, into the house through the stables—like a common servant.
How he felt the need to rush down there and follow her, to reach—quite gently, of course—for her hand in the shadows, to breathe her name and see recognition in her eyes. But not tonight.
Not while the house was shielded so patently by some spell—a spell even she must wait to pass.
Not tonight. Not until he could get his weapons back.
It was time to find out what friends, if any, he had left in the palace.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next day Malden spent in preparation.
It was mad even to consider going through with this. The job he’d been hired for was, if not impossible, distinctly ill-advised. It was going to make of him a pigeon in the midst of a pack of dogs. If the plan failed in the slightest particular, it would mean a quick but nasty death, a spear through his lights, or an axe through his skull. Cutbill’s influence could not protect him from that.
Yet if it worked—it couldn’t, of course, it was the worst kind of folly, but—if it worked, he would be clear of his debt to the guildmaster of thieves before the sun rose tomorrow morning. He would be a full member of the guild, with all the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining. He would be a free man again. Better, by far, because he would be on his way to wealth. On his way to being a man of means.
In the Free City of Ness, that was the only thing that counted.
He made his way to the Ashes early, just as the sun was rising over the city’s wall. The gang of children that guarded Cutbill’s headquarters did not show themselves—they already knew he belonged there. Loophole, Lockjaw, and ’Levenfingers were inside the ruin already, though. As far as he knew, they were there all day, every day, sitting on the empty coffin. The old men greeted him warmly and asked him what schemes he had planned for the day. They asked every time he visited. “A little of the same,” he told them. “Though to be honest, my heart’s not in it.”
“Be of good cheer, lad,” Loophole told him. “Money comes to them that keep their eyes open.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Malden would gladly have spoken with the old men, for he’d learned they were a sure font of wisdom. If any of them knew how this job could be done, this fantastically impossible job, surely it was one of them. Yet he knew that anything he said to them—even to Lockjaw—would be reported to Cutbill at once. In addition, Bikker and Cythera were quite clear that his fee included a hefty sum to make sure Cutbill never learned of the plan. So he kept his peace and headed inside.
He had learned on his second visit, some days ago, that it was not necessary to travel by coffin every time you visited Cutbill’s burrow. That was just for new arrivals, a kind of object lesson to remind them their lives were forfeit if they crossed Cutbill in any way. Actual employees had their own entrance through a trapdoor hidden in the debris of the fallen house. It led to a door below, hidden behind a curtain. There were many doors in Cutbill’s domain, and all of them were hidden. Malden was certain he’d seen only a fraction of the guildhall in his visits.
In the main room, Bellard was throwing darts at a target on one wall. The permanent dice game was going on in the corner, but only two players had risen so early. There were others there, thieves like himself, pimps come to pay their tithe to the master, procurers dividing up their stash, and one fellow dressed in dusty traveling clothes that Malden did not recognize. There was something odd about the man, but in the dim light he couldn’t get a good look.
The traveler was sleeping on the divan when Malden came in, but before he could take two steps into the room, the man bolted upright and reached inside his tunic, probably for a knife. His beady eyes twinkled in the candlelight as he shot them back and forth, and his lips pulled back in a sneer as if he expected Malden to attack him.
“Be at ease,” Bellard said. The dust-covered man nodded, lay back down and immediately returned to sleep.
