Wings of Omen - Thieves World 06 (30 page)

"Remind me to take that with me," he muttered, and hurried to the Ti-Beysa's crown. Notable said nothing, but only stared at the pouch while his tail imitated a nervous snake. Hanse shook another pillow out of its casing, choosing a dark one, and with a smile popped in the crown worth the ransom of a prince-or of a scurvy little town called Sanctuary. He tied that silken package, too, and made it very, very fast to his back.

"Notable," he said, gingerly picking up the pillow casing that housed a bag of boiled leather he kept reminding himself was hard and thick enough to turn a good dagger-blow, "we've got to go. I'm afraid you can't ride in the bag. This snake'll be of some value to Z-to Sanctuary. Got any ideas about your travel arrangements?"

Uncharacteristically, Notable gave him a nice little "mrow."

"That," Hanse said, "is a rotten dumb answer. Here." And he took the little flask from the pouch at his waist, and poured beer into a superbly wrought Rankan bowl that was not Beysib property. After that it was maddening, jittering there by the window while the damned cat lapped daintily as if it had all the time in the world not to mention a sore tongue.

After about a month of that. Notable finished and looked up with eyes like black marbles. He licked his mouth exaggeratedly, and started in on his whiskers.

"I'm impressed," Shadowspawn said. "I am also leaving." Notable said "mew" in a sickeningly sweet voice and sent his tongue all the way around his yawning mouth again. Hanse made a face, started to swing up into the window, remembered, and turned to toss the snake-carven staff onto the floor. It landed about a foot from Notable and rolled a foot. Notable pounced straight past Hanse to the windowsill and turned back to look.

"Look at you. Bravest cat in the world with the real thing, and afraid of a little st-"

The staff shimmered, its wriggly carving seeming to wriggle in reality. Then, while a few hundred ants played footrace up Hanse's back, the staff moved. It glided along the floor, and up onto the bed, and to the far end, and into a nice dark sheltering place: under the Beysa's figured silk bedspread.

"I've got to get out of this damned town," Hanse muttered in a voice wavery as the sand-viper, and went out the window. He had to drag himself back up that fulvistone wall on one silken rope so that he could go down another-all the way across the palace grounds and wall and the Processional to where Kama and company would have made the arrow-end of the line fast. Notable passed him on the way to the roof. Hanse gave him a glare, wishing he could go up walls that way. Maybe with the talons the Stare-Eyes slid onto their fmgers when they ate...

He was up and on his belly, pulling himself up between two merlons of that toothily crenelated defense-wall around the roof, when he heard the voice. The accent was neither Rankan nor Ilsigi.

"So. A rotten little thief tries to invade us, does he? Well, Ilsiger slime, this is your last climb!"

And Hanse heard the sound of the guard's sword clearing its scabbard on his back, doubtless to come down on Shadowspawn's neck. Or wrists, or forearms; it didn't matter. He was helpless and absolutely vulnerable, on his stomach and clutching with both hands while his legs dangled.

That was when he was startled so that he nearly let go and fell, for his ears were assaulted by the loudest and most terrible yowling screech he had ever heard in his life. Wincing, scrabbling desperately, Hanse twisted his neck to look up-He saw the Beysib guard all astagger, shocked by that ghastly sound; and he saw the red streak that was Notable on the pounce. The cat began eating holes in the Stare-Eye's arm and the poor worse-than-disconcerted idiot forgot what he was about and struck at the cat with his sword. That cost him not just the pain as he struck his own arm, but his balance. With only a grunt he went right over Hanse and through the crenelation and down a hundred feet and more to a messy splat of an end.

Mignureal did it again, Hanse thought, wriggling onto the roof in double-time. She knew, and Notable just saved my life. Twice, probably. But he also went down with the Stare-Eye... how'II I ever explain to Ahdio? Then he was on his feet, ready to seize the taut rope stretching down and out and down, and the cat on the nearer merlon said "mrowr?"

Hanse could not control his chuckle. "I like you, cat! Want to hop on and ride me down? Careful now-you sink a claw into my shoulder and I'll tell Ahdio you're soft on mice!"

They went down.

The snake from the Beysa's apartment would be useful-it and its venom and a few physicians working away in quest of an antitoxin. As for the Beysa, the sand viper in her bed had doubtless given her a lot of fun. As for the Ti-Beysa crown-the PFLS was made. Amid all the yammering chatter of PFLS voices, Hanse sort of faded into the shadows, fleeing all the praise and overblown encomiums. He was sure that there was no way the word was not going to get out. The theft and the blow against the invaders were enormous accomplishments. Someone would tell: Shadowspawn did it.

I've got to get out of this dam' town!

Mignureal went up the long, long hill with him, she leading the ass and he the horse.

"I've got to leave town," he had told her. "Maybe... maybe forever. You're coming with me, right?"

She stared at him for a long while, until at last she nodded. "Right." Up at Eaglebeak, they tethered the two animals to fallen chunks of fine building stone and Hanse went to the old well. If only I hadn't dropped all that coin down here, he thought. This is going to be a job among jobs. Gods, but I wish I had it out already!

Since by choice he remembered only that he was Hanse, son of a barely-known mother and the never-seen father who had been only her casual acquaintance, he knew nothing about previous wishes. He was mightily surprised when the two laden, leathern saddlebags came floating, noisily dripping, up to his waiting hands.

Zip and Jing and a lot of others were mightily surprised, a little over an hour later, when a big leather bag came flying down, seemingly from the sky. It struck the hard-packed earth of a Downwinder "street" with an enormous •

crashing jingling noise... followed by a lot of little jingles as a flashing clinking rolling skittering mass of good minted silver splashed out.

"For Sanctuary," a voice called from above, and it was not the voice of Ils or even Shalpa, but of a thief on a rooftop. Getting that bag up there had been a lot of work, but it was worth it for the effect: "Shadows can go anywhere, into palaces and even into the hallowed and guarded precincts of Zip!"

"Hanse! You've just been elected second-in-command and Master Tactician! Come down, man!"

They waited a long time.

Much, much later than that, an aide ushered a sentry into the tent of their leader.

"Your pardon. General. Go ahead, Pheres."

"Sir, there's a man and a woman, both mighty young out here. Wrigglies. I mean Ilsigi, sir. On a horse and an ass. With a lot of silver coin in an old cracked leather bag-a big one. Threw back his white robe and hood to show me he's dressed all in black. Said he's a friend of yours? From Sanctuary? Right out of the shadows, he says. Sir."

The general stared, then smiled and rose from his camp-table to stride past the two men and out of the tent. "Hanse!" Tempus called.

[i] Detailed in "Shadowspawn," in Thieves' World, 1979

[ii] For a detailed description of Hanse's entry into the upper precincts of the palace, see "The Vivisectionist" in the third Thieves' World volume. Shallows of Sanctuary. No better way in has been found, although having help is nice.

by Lynn Abbey

Illyra needed no special S'danzo power to read the young man's past. He had been, and still was, a sewer-snipe. His face was marred by neglect and disease. He watched her, and her scrying table, with the desperate intensity of one who had been beaten, betrayed, yet still hoped for victory. She stood beside her table to stare him out of her shop, when he tossed an ancient, filthy golden coin onto the gray baize beside her.

"I need to know. They said you would know, one way or the other." His surprisingly deep voice made the simple phrases into an accusation.

"Sometimes," she replied, listening to the steady pounding of Dubro's hammer, her fingers poised over the coin.

They came to her in greater numbers now that Moon-flower was dead and her daughter had run away with the thief, Shadowspawn. Illyra could not think of the immense woman who had defended her right to be S'danzo in Sanctuary without feeling a storm of grief as immense as the old woman herself. She wanted to tie a knot across her doorway, turn her back to the Sight, and give way to her grief, but they came with their coins and demanded and she did not know how to turn them away. Dubro helped, intimidating the ones he sensed danger in, but he had let this one through. Her forefinger brushed the gold. "If the answer can be known, sometimes I can know it." Gathering her skirts over one arm, she settled behind the table and gestured for him to sit on the stool. The gold was still on the baize and the silk was still tied around her cards when he began his story.

"I killed a pig last night. By the White Foal-for luck. I need lots of luck." Illyra felt the first lies drift between them. Sanctuary was swollen with Beysib stomachs and Ranke, tearing itself apart with wars and assassinations, was a fading presence in this comer of its once-great Empire. Even sewer-snipes should know enough to sell a pig for Beysib gold and use the gold to buy luck.

"I-I took the blood to a place, a special place. It's mine, and Vashanka's. I gave Him the blood."

She set the cards aside and suppressed a 'shiver. Unlike many S'danzo women sitting in their rooms throughout the Empire, Illyra did have the Sight. An un Sighted S'danzo woman survived by listening to her clients without laughing; she used the cards for mystery. Illyra used the cards for inspiration and guidance when the Sight came to her; she had no need for inspiration as this youth unburdened himself.

"It was like a wind. It was hot and cold; wet and dry all at once."

"Then it could not have been a wind," she told him, though she Saw the truth of his memories swirling around her. It was not like her Sight to be. out of her control this way; she sought to rein it in.

"It was a wind. And the blood-the blood was covered with sparks. She Saw the secret place in his mind: an altar abandoned to the marshes and discovered by the snipe who prayed there without knowing what it was or had been. Blood sacrifices made on its mossy stones-not pig's blood but men's blood: Beysib blood and bits of flesh he'd hacked from their corpses as offerings in his own private worship. Illyra felt the unholy wind whip around him while the rest of the marsh froze motionless and saw the blue-white flames dance on the blood. She heard the shrill giggle of a child's laughter as the congealed mess on the altar was absorbed into the flame; then the Sight was gone and there was only the ragged, scared youth-who called himself Zip and tried to hide his true name even from himself-staring at her.

"So, what do you see. Did the Stormgod hear me? Does Vashanka favor me? Can I bind Him to me? Sell me a potion to bind the Stormgod!" She meant to send him away. The S'danzo had no use for gods and were happiest when the gods had nothing to do with the S'danzo. It didn't matter that she could answer his questions. He had focused her Sight on the god and she wanted him, and all that was in his memories, gone before ('(noticed her. Yet she could still hear the laughter and didn't that mean, answer him or not, that the damage was already done?

The youth mistook her hesitation for imminent betrayal. "Don't give me suvesh talk." He reached across the table to grip her wrist.

"See the priests if you want to talk to the Stormgod," she replied icily, extracting herself with a swift, small movement he had never seen, or felt, before. But for the blacksmith, whose hammer rang in the sunlight beyond her shop, she'd have been a sewer-snipe herself. She knew his type of brazen pride and knew, as he did himself, that any whim of fate could squash him, without warning. He had stumbled into something vaster and more dangerous than he had ever imagined. As much as he lusted after the excitement and glory, he feared it.

"What do the priests know?" he said, as if any priest would have spoken to him.

"Nosing up to the snakes. They don't know anything about Vashanka."

"If you know so much more than the priests, you certainly know more than a S'danzo fortune-teller." She pushed the gold coin back to him.

"A half-S'danzo fortune-teller who knew when that damned fleet would arrive could talk to Vashanka if she dared." He ignored the coin and met her stare. Anything that survived in the gutter of Sanctuary was dangerous. Zip had already violated her home with his visions; would he be any more dangerous with the truth about his prayers, sacrifices, and altar-or any the less?

"Keep your gold and everything else. Vashanka is no more." He sat back as if she'd struck him. Surely he'd heard the rumors, lived through the storm that saw Vashanka's name struck from the pantheon archstones? Perhaps he hadn't quite believed that the Rankan Stormgod had been vanquished in the skies over Sanctuary, but he should have learned to contain his horror if he expected to survive.

"I give Him blood at my altar... and He takes it!"

"Fool! Leave the gods to the priests. You find a pile of rotting stones in the mud by the White Foal and you think you can lure Vashanka to your cause. Vashanka! The Storm-god of Ranke-and with the blood of a pig!"

"He hears me! I feel Him but I can't hear Him! He's telling me something and I can't hear him!"

"You don't want to know what hears you. Could Ranke have built a temple to Vashanka, lost it to the White Foal, and all Sanctuary forgotten it was there except for you?" She was standing, leaning over her table, screaming in his face and unmindful of everything except the laughter he'd left in her mind. She couldn't See what he had raised yet, but it was getting clearer the longer he sat there with his sacrifices and memories battering against her.