Den of Thieves (45 page)

Chapter Ninety-Eight

E
arlier—just at dawn—Gurrh the ogre had brought the leaden coffer to Swampwall, his home for so many years. He laid it down in the soft soil and then started bashing at it with his massive, hairy fists.

Eventually it came open. The true crown was inside, just as expected.

Malden had been there to see it emerge. Coruth the witch flew him through the air so he would not be late. He thanked Gurrh, who bowed deeply and then returned to his pipe. Then Malden approached the crown, his hands shaking it a little. He lifted it carefully and heard its voice begin to command him. Before he could be overcome, before it could make him put it on his own head, he shoved it into a burlap sack and slung it over his shoulder. Still, it continued to speak to him, made imprecations and promises and outright threats—until Malden explained to it what he had planned. Then at last, thankfully, the crown became quiet.

Later, when Malden drew the false crown to the dome of the chapel with Slag's fishing pole, it was a simple matter to switch it with the true crown—the crown he had lowered once more onto Ommen's head.

The transformation in the Burgrave was instantaneous. Juring Tarness resumed his control of his imbecilic descendant, and heard everything that was said within the chapel.

“You would depose me, Anselm?” Juring asked then. He looked down at the bailiff. Standing straight, he was many inches taller than his servant. “You would go to such lengths to take what is mine?”

“Milord,” Vry said, bowing low. “This was a tale, only, a fabrication spun to appease the thief when—”

“No more lies,” the Burgrave shouted. The priests and watchmen around him all drew back. Juring drew a jeweled dagger from his belt. It was one of his symbols of office, mostly for ornament's sake. The blade was kept sharp, though, to represent the keen insight the Burgrave brought to his office. “Kneel,” he said.

Vry turned to face his watchmen. “The Burgrave is ensorcelled!” he cried. “Seize him—we must perform an exorcism at once. You, high priest, fetch the appropriate vestments and the holy thurible and—”

“I said, kneel,” the Burgrave said again. Neither watchmen nor priests moved from where they stood.

Vry tried to run. The Burgrave grabbed the back of his cloak and pushed him to the ground. Then he grabbed the bailiff's hair and pulled his head back. “No more lies,” he said again. Then he pried the man's jaw open and cut out his tongue.

Anselm Vry gasped and choked on his own blood. The noises he made were horrible. Even Malden flinched.

“Now,” Juring Tarness said when it was done, “someone bring me a rag. I don't want this traitor's blood on my hands when I lead the joyous procession of Ladymas. You, watchman—take this fool away. Lock him in my dungeon. We'll give him a trial and see how well he speaks in his defense now. Then we'll find some way to execute him more horrible than any we've tried before. Maybe we'll force him to eat his own entrails. To swallow his own excrement, as it were.”

The captain of the watchmen did as he was told, with a bow, a salute, and no words at all. The priests cleaned the Burgrave's hands and wiped off his dagger. While it was done, the Burgrave looked up into the dome.

“As for you, thief. Go and tell your master Cutbill that I would speak with him. Eventually. I have a long day ahead of me.”

Malden supposed that it was too much to expect thanks. He climbed back out the window in the dome and hurried away across the rooftops of the Spires.

Chapter Ninety-Nine

C
oruth, her own arm fully healed now, muttered to herself as she mixed herbs together in a stone mortar, then ground them together with a copper pestle. She sang a little song as she painted the resulting foul concoction across Croy's broken ribs and the acid wounds on his arms. Whenever he tried to speak, she shushed him severely. Throughout it all, Cythera sat by his side, smiling, her face unbesmirched by sorcery. Her eyes glittered with mischief to see him almost naked in the bed, only his nethers hidden by a cloth.

If you had to lie abed for weeks and heal what should have been mortal injuries, Malden supposed you could pick few finer places to do it. Croy had been moved just across the Ladypark Common to the house of his friend, the rich merchant. There was no secrecy about the move, and had the Burgrave wished to seize Croy (for violating the terms of his banishment, if nothing else), little resistance would have been offered. Yet in the six days since Ladymas, no one showed up at the door with a writ of arrest.

It was possible that the Burgrave was only afraid this would displease Coruth. With Hazoth gone, the witch was now the most powerful user of magic in the Free City. Already old clients and new were showing up daily to ask if they might consult with her, but she refused all comers. She had much to do, she said, and once Croy was healed, there would be quite a reckoning of accounts. More than one powerful personage in the city had begun making discreet inquiries, looking to hire any magicians capable of deflecting curses.

When the witch finished her ministrations for the day, she went to the window and flew off as a flock of blackbirds again. No one knew where she went, and there was no way to follow her. Even Cythera could only shrug when asked. “Perhaps she goes to fetch medicinal herbs. Or maybe to spy on the city, and learn how it has changed in her absence. She has never kept counsel with me, even before Hazoth imprisoned her.”

“Milady,” Malden said, “you'll forgive me if I say you have a strange family.”

Cythera smiled knowingly. “We can't all come from noble lineages full of great heroes and comely ladies,” she said, glancing at Croy.

The knight was too busy to notice what she said. He was scrawling something on a parchment with a quill pen. “Here, Malden. Your prize. As promised.”

The thief took the paper he offered and studied it. When Croy had first come to him, looking for his help in freeing Cythera and Coruth, Malden's first instinct had been to sweat the knight for gold. Then it occurred to him that Croy had something else in his possession, something of infinitely more use to him. The scrap of paper in his hand was what he had asked for in lieu of money. It was a grant of land, in the amount of one eighth part of an acre, in the northern part of the kingdom near the fortress of Helstrow. A very small piece of Croy's ancestral lands. It named Malden as its new owner.

“Is it a pleasant spot?” Malden asked now.

“A rocky field, completely useless for cultivation. It overlooks a dismal bog, and in the summer it is swarmed with flies. May you find much happiness there.”

Malden laughed out loud, long and heartily. “Maybe I'll never see it. It matters not. Croy, for this—for everything. I thank you.”

Cythera looked confused. “What would a thief want with a desolate patch of ground, not even large enough to put a house on?”

“Freedom,” Malden said. “With this parchment, I am a man of property. It makes me a landowner—with the full rights thereunto pertaining. I can go anywhere now. I can leave the city walls and not be enslaved. Here in Ness I can go to the moothall whenever I choose, and stand before the masters of all the guilds, and demand my right to speak. I could even go to Helstrow and request an audience with the king.”

“Do you want to do any of those things?”

“No!” Malden laughed. “None of them. But the power to do them—the right to do them—means I am no more a prisoner in the place where I was born. It means I'm free! I imagine you can appreciate that.”

“Oh, yes,” Cythera said, her eyes far away.

Malden kissed the paper. “My heart's desire. One of them, anyway.”

Cythera favored him with a warning smile. Then she looked down at Croy's scarred leg. “You should rest,” she told the knight. “Mother says if you don't sleep twice as much as normal, the treatments will be inefficacious.”

“You are my lady, and I obey your command,” the knight said. He closed his eyes and in moments began to snore.

Malden shook his head. “Like an infant, he sleeps.”

“He believes that he has done a man's work,” Cythera whispered. “He sleeps like the just. Come with me, Malden. I wish to speak with you.”

The two of them headed out onto the room's balcony. It looked out over the remains of Hazoth's villa. There wasn't much left but a pile of ashes and a few scraps of useless lumber—the people of Ness had taken away everything of value, and their definition of value was quite broad.

“Tell me,” Cythera said when they were alone, “what reward has Kemper claimed?”

“I had Slag make him a new deck of cards,” Malden said.

She frowned. “But with his curse—the only way he could even hold the old deck was because it was so immured with his own essence. He had possessed those cards so long they had become parcel with his being.”

Malden nodded. “Aye. So the new deck had to be special. They're made out of pure silver, beaten thin and etched with vitriol for the pips. They're probably worth more than most of the stakes he plays for, but he can hold them easily, and even slip them up his sleeves or down his tunic.”

Cythera smiled. “And Gurrh, the ogre? What price did he charge you?”

“None at all. He wished only to serve the Burgrave. If every man had the nobility of that ogre in his heart, we would all live in Croy's world.”

Cythera leaned out over the balcony. “Then it seems we all have been repaid for our trouble, and each of us came out of this nightmare better than when we began, and all unscathed.”

“All but one,” Malden said, his brow furrowing. “I did something, Cythera, that I am not proud of. I took away a man's freedom. It's the greatest sin I know.”

“You mean Ommen Tarness?” she asked. “He was a simpleton. And anyway—you saved his life. Had he appeared before the procession in his natural state, Vry would have had him killed afterward.”

“I know,” Malden said. That wasn't the point, though. In the last moments before the crown was returned, Ommen had said something that struck Malden to the core. He was getting smarter, he claimed. The imbecility was wearing off. He had not been born mindless—only the crown stole his wits, and without it he was becoming himself again. And he had stopped that process before it could properly begin.

But that was his burden to bear. He decided not to share it with Cythera.

After all, there was one other thing to discuss.

“Come away with me,” he said without warning.

She turned around very fast as he put an arm around her waist. He leaned forward and kissed her. Hard.

“I don't have to stay here anymore,” he said. “I can travel the world. Come with me, and be my wife.”

Cythera glanced into the room, toward where Croy lay in bed.

“Forget him. You broke off your betrothal already.”

“Not in so many words.”

Malden grimaced. “I was the one who freed your mother. Not him.”

“And you think that means I must marry you now?” she asked. “That's how the stories end, isn't it? The hero slays the dragon, and the damsel throws herself into his embrace. Who lives in old stories now, Malden? Isn't that something you always despised about Croy? This is the real world.”

“And here, now, I love you,” he told her.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and for a moment he thought she would say it in return. Then she leaned her head against his chest. “Malden, you're a thief. A man of property now, but still—a thief. You must understand—you have to understand—that people in the real world do what they must to survive. To make their lives better.”

“And that means you will stay with him,” Malden said.

“You have a strip of land unfit for human habitation. He has a castle. Servants and retainers. A title. My children will have all those things, too. Do you understand why that matters? Look at my life. Look what my parents gave me. Can you accept that I would do anything not to pass on that inheritance?”

Malden let her go. He strode to the far end of the balcony and looked uphill, toward the palace. All around him the city lay in its unalterable tiers, with the poorest people at the bottom and the rich up top. So it would ever be.

She started to go back inside, to the sickroom. He stopped her by calling her name.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“What a silly question,” she said, and then went inside.

Chapter One Hundred

C
utbill made a single notation in his ledger, then crossed out two lines. “There,” he said. “You are now a journeyman in the guild, with all rights and privileges of that rank.” He glanced over the edge of his book at Malden. “There is, of course, the question of the money you owe Slag. And I expect you to start earning right away, to keep my good favor.”

And that was it. No thanks, no reward. Fair enough, Malden thought. He'd expected nothing more from Cutbill. He had caused a great deal of trouble for the man, but now he'd repaired the damage. They were even.

And he was in the guild. Croy's deed had made him a man of property, and now he was a man of profession. He could start earning money for himself, having ransomed his place in Cutbill's organization. He was beholden to no one, his own master. He was truly free.

“You may go,” Cutbill said. Then he held up one hand, rescinding that. He looked to one corner of the room, where a tapestry was shimmying as if blown by a wind Malden did not feel. “Wait. Use that door, over there.”

Malden looked at the indicated door and frowned a question, but Cutbill offered no explanation. Malden stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Beyond lay the spy room, where one could observe what happened inside Cutbill's office without being seen.

Malden bent his eye to the spy hole and watched as a tall man wrapped in a plain brown cloak walked over to Cutbill's desk. The newcomer sat down behind the desk as if he owned the place, then pulled back his hood.

It was the Burgrave. He wore his golden crown and his eyes were very sharp. What was he doing there, unaccompanied?

“Milord,” Cutbill said.

The Burgrave was silent for a while. Then he said, “It seems I am once again in your debt. I don't like owing you things, thief.”

“Then allow me to say that the debt is all mine,” Cutbill responded. “You permit me to exist, and to carry out my operations. If those operations are occasionally to your benefit, I consider it my honor to serve so great a man.”

“Honeyed words never sound right in your mouth.” The Burgrave got up from the desk and stormed around the room. “I never doubted Anselm Vry. I always thought he was a clerk, and nothing more. Someone gifted with moving numbers around on a page, but wholly incapable of treachery.”

“You make him sound like me, milord,” Cutbill suggested. He continued to work at his notations.

“Hardly. You—I've never trusted you. But you saved me from a rather unpleasant fate, and you'll have a reward.”

“Many thanks. Tell me, milord, have you decided what to do with the two heroes of the day? I speak of Sir Croy and of Malden.”

The Burgrave shrugged. “Croy proved his loyalty well enough. I don't suppose I'll make an issue of him. I'll leave his banishment intact but not enforce it. That way, if he crosses me again I'll have legal standing to hang him. Who is Malden?”

In the spy room, Malden cringed. He rather wished Cutbill hadn't used his name at all—it could only lead to trouble.

“The thief who stole the crown. And returned it. One of mine, though he was not acting under my orders in the first instance.”

“Oh,” the Burgrave said. “Well, he'll have to be killed, of course.”

Malden nearly cried out.

“He knows my secret. I can't have that.”

“Indeed.” Cutbill made another notation. “Understandable. Though . . .”

“What is it?”

Cutbill looked up from his ledger. “You said you would grant me a reward.”

“Yes, yes. Gold, jewels, what will you have? It can't be anything official, of course. Nothing on paper.”

“Malden's life. Spare it.”

Malden's jaw fell open.

“Oh, come now! What do you care about one thief? You have dozens. Many more circumspect ones, at that. This one nearly got you killed.”

“But he didn't. He proved far cleverer than he should have been.”

The Burgrave let out a curt laugh. “Enough reason I'd think you'd want him dead. Don't tell me you're getting sentimental, Cutbill. I admit, I'd like to let him live myself, but reality is often unfair. You know that all too well.”

“Do not mistake me. I don't ask out of a sense of justice. I have none. I ask because he could be an excellent earner, if I keep him under my thumb. He could make me quite a bit of money in the long run.”

The Burgrave studied Cutbill shrewdly. “You'll keep him quiet?”

“I'll sew his mouth shut if he threatens to speak out of turn.”

“Very well, then.” Then the Burgrave left the room, shaking his head in disbelief. He headed through the door that led back up to the Stink.

When he was gone, Malden stepped out of the spy room.

“I don't know what to say,” he said, staring at Cutbill in gratitude.

“Say only that I won't regret this,” Cutbill told him. “Now. You may go. Don't come back until you have some money for me.”

Malden nodded and headed out, into the city that was his home.