Honor Among Thieves (5 page)

Evasion or rescue: In Fox’s opinion, no one should
have to make that choice.

Inspiration struck, and with it the realization that
perhaps he wouldn’t have to choose.

There was, after all, more than one way to create an
illusion.

“Head straight for them,” he told the dwarf. “Can you
get the girl?”

Delgar sent him a cocky grin. “Don’t I always?”

They ran toward the embattled woman. Fox skidded to a
stop a few paces away, but the dwarf dipped one shoulder, scooped
up the woman, and kept going without missing a step.

The thugs howled curses and gave pursuit. Before
they’d taken two steps, Fox crossed his arms, reached into his
opposite sleeves, and came up with a throwing knife in each
hand.

Two quick flicks sent the knives spinning toward the
thugs. Steel found flesh, the first knife slicing across the tall
man’s calf, the second burying itself hilt-deep in the shorter
man’s left buttock.

Fox flashed past them at an easy loping pace. The
sounds of battle in the alley behind him brought a grim smile to
his face.

Rhendish’s clockwork marvels could do many things,
but apparently they couldn’t distinguish between the two sets of
criminals.

He quickened his pace and caught up to Delgar. “It
worked. You can let her down now.”

The dwarf slowed to a stop, a broad grin on his face.
He gestured to the woman slung over his shoulder. “Are you sure?
Because I could carry this little thing for—
eeeeeOW!
”

Before Delgar’s surprised yelp died away, the woman
launched herself forward, rolled, and came up onto her feet.

Fox caught her wrist before she could flee. She tried
to jerk away. The sharp movement tossed back the dark hood of her
cloak.

For many moments, the world swam and spun as Fox
stared into a face that was grim, beautiful, and hauntingly
familiar.

“She bit me!” Delgar clapped one hand to his
backside.

She responded with a string of lilting sounds that
gave Fox the impression of summer winds and liquid gold.

Delgar rumbled something curt and angry. The elf—for
an elf she undoubtedly was—responded with a sweet comment that
brought a flush of rage to the Carmot’s face.

The brief interlude gave Fox time to gather his wits.
“I know you,” he said.

The elf shrugged and started to shake her head.
Something flickered in her eyes. She reached out to touch his
hair.

“Fox pelt,” she said.

A smile burst over the thief’s face like sunrise. “It
is
you! I wasn’t sure at first. Your hair and eyes are a
different color. Of course, it was summer then.” He frowned as the
obvious occurred to him. “Wait a minute—it’s summer now.”

“I was wounded in midwinter. Now that I am well and
can walk in the sun again, the Greening will come.”

Fox nodded and spun toward Delgar. “I grew up on the
mainland, on the edge of the forest. I wandered off when I was
about nine. I spent the night in a tree, which seemed like a good
idea until I fell out of the tree and into the river. This elf
pulled me out of the water, brought me home. She saved my
life.”

“And now you’ve returned the favor,” Delgar said. “It
all evens out, everyone can go home.”

The elf slipped her wrist out of Fox’s unresisting
hand. “What he says is true,” she said. “Any debt between us is
paid. I have no right to ask for your help.”

It was on the tip of Fox’s tongue to offer it anyway,
but the scowl on Delgar’s face stopped him.

“We should get off the street. There’s a safe place
nearby where we can talk.”

“It’s safe,” the dwarf said, “because very few people
know how to find it. An enviable state of affairs, and one I would
like to preserve.”

Fox shot him a dirty look and offered his arm to the
elf. She pulled up her hood and shook her head. “I do not want to
cause discord among friends. It’s only . . .”

“What?”

Her shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “I know
and trust no other human.”

“To do what?” the dwarf asked.

“A priceless elven artifact was stolen: a rose of
pale crystal that opens each morning with the dawn and closes at
sunset.”

Delgar folded his arms. “So? Any garden rose can do
as much.”

“This is more than a pretty toy,” she said. “This is
ancient and powerful magic. Such magic in human hands could bring
catastrophic destruction.”

“Vague, yet ominous,” Delgar said. “I’ve known
two-penny fortune tellers who were more generous with
detail.”
The elf studied him for a moment. “You are a Carmot dwarf. You can
stoneshift?”

“He’s very good,” Fox said.

Delgar didn’t’ acknowledge the compliment. In fact,
neither elf nor dwarf seemed to notice that Fox had spoken.

“You can do this because there are traces of carmite
in your blood and bone,” she said. “Imagine enough carmite to
fashion a rose, then place that rose within a dagger of amplifying
crystal. When you have that image firmly in mind, imagine what that
rose could do when fed a drop of a traitor’s blood.”

All color drained from Delgar’s face. His normal pale
gray tone faded almost to while.

“The Thorn,” he murmured.

The elf nodded.

Delgar passed a hand over his face and turned to Fox.
“I opened a new portal last moondark, under the back stairs of the
tavern in Halfpenny Wynd. We can be in the Fox Den within the
hour.”

***

The Fox Den was hardly what Honor expected.

She’d supposed a young thief might have a cellar room
in some rough part of the city, or perhaps a hidden chamber in the
manor of some wealthy patron. But this network of pristine stone
passages and ever-shifting hidden doors throughout the city was
beyond impressive.

Strange carvings marked many of the tunnels, and the
large and somehow airy chamber in which they now gathered was
distinguished by elaborate carvings and a mirror that reflected not
what was in the room, but other places and, Honor suspected, other
times.

For a while she watched as one scene after another
swam into focus, lingered for a few breaths, and faded. It was
oddly soothing.

Even more surprising were the thieves themselves.

While a fairy—
a fairy
!—regaled the others with
the story of Delgar’s rescue, Honor gathered her thoughts.

Rhendish had told her the thief would not refuse her.
He had not told her why.

It seemed incredible, but apparently Rhendish knew
she’d crossed paths with this human. How had he come by this
information? And what was this young man to Rhendish that the adept
would go to such extreme lengths to get him in hand?

And what use would he make of these others?

The fairy’s presence astonished Honor. Didn’t Fox and
his companions know what sort of crime resulted in banishment to
the mortal realm? Or didn’t that sort of thing matter to a band of
admitted thieves?

Vishni was, admittedly, a fetching little thing, slim
as a pixie with big dark eyes and a short mop of dark curls. She
laughed often, but there was a flash in her eyes and a petulant
twist to her rosebud lips that warned of storms lurking behind the
sunshine.

Honor suspected that might be part of her appeal.

Delgar she understood a little better. Young dwarves
often travelled abroad to seek adventure or knowledge. Delgar’s
presence in Sevrin suggested he was more ambitious than most.

Long before the seas rose and turned Sevrin into a
city of islands, in a time far beyond the reach of human memory, an
ancient dwarven culture had thrived beneath the current sea. Much
of it had been destroyed when the long-dead volcano last stirred.
This much was known to all of the old races, but as history ancient
even by the measure of their kind.

The stone chambers of the “Fox Den” gave Honor
insight into Delgar’s quest: searching out the old passages,
opening and restoring them.

She wondered what drove the dwarf. Was he a treasure
hunter hoping to plunder the tombs of his ancestors? A scholar
seeking to uncover ancient glories? Or something far more?

A Carmot settlement beneath Sevrin could be a
powerful check on the growing power of the adepts. If Delgar had
ambitions along those lines, he presented Rhendish with a
legitimate concern.

But if that was the case, why would Rhendish permit
Delgar’s escape?

The man they called Avidan was also complicated. He
was not, Honor thought, a native of Sevrin. His aquiline features
and swarthy skin suggested southern lands, and he spoke with the
deliberation of someone translating his thoughts from a more
familiar tongue. He followed the fashion of the city, though,
wearing his dark hair long and tied back and dressing in the simple
trousers and tunic of a master alchemist. But unlike Rhendish, he
wore the soft green of early spring.

Honor wondered whether the others knew why.

Humans who lived near the forest knew better than to
wear pale green, or to sing certain songs in the dark of the moon.
Sound and color had a profound effect on the fey. Perhaps Fox had
once known that wearing light green drew the attention of the fairy
court, but years of city life had imposed a new set of survival
rules.

Still, how was it that none of them noticed the fey
wildness lurking in Avidan’s eyes, the distinctive dance of his
skittering thoughts? The man had dwelt in Faerie. Of that Honor was
certain. The experience had broken him into tiny shards and rebuilt
the pieces into patterns few mortals could understand.

And if the color of his clothing signified what she
thought it did, Avidan longed to return to the fairy realm.

Vishni had to know this.

The fairy turned to Honor, as if she’d heard her
unspoken name. “And now it is time for our guest to tell her tale,”
she said gaily, laying a hand on Honor’s arm.

A sound like swift-melting ice filled the stone
chamber. Vishni hissed and snatched her hand away.

She regarded her palm for a long moment before
lifting it for the others to see. Blisters rose on her slim
fingers.

“Cold iron,” she said in a flat voice.

Every eye turned to Honor. She pushed up the sleeve
of her tunic to display the etched metal bracer covering her
forearm, a “gift” from Rhendish.

“I did not expect to find fairies beneath the
city.”

“No one does,” Fox said. His dismissive tone brought
a scowl to Vishni’s face that no one but Honor seemed to observe.
“Tell us about the rose dagger. Do you have any idea where it might
be?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I know who has it. Do you know
of a man named Muldonny?”

Silence settled over the group like morning fog.

The fairy’s pout eased and lifted into a slow,
speculative smile. “This,” she said, “is going to be a lot more fun
than I’d expected.”

Honor watched as four dwarves, short sturdy men as
solid and gray as the stone beneath Muldonny’s lair, tapped
steadily at a solid rock wall. Chips of rock tumbled to the tunnel
floor, but the pickaxes made no more sound than elven boots on a
forest path.

One of the dwarves, a broad-shouldered fellow whose
head barely reached Honor’s shoulder, stepped back from his work
and swiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

“It’s a mite too hot hereabouts for an old cistern,”
he said. “I’m not one to be telling you your business, Delgar, but
you’re sure where we’re headed?”

The young dwarf glanced at Honor. She returned his
gaze steadily, letting him see the warning in her eyes.

“Not entirely,” he said.

His crew exchanged glances. “Then you know what we
could be walking into.”

Stories echoed in the silence, tales they’d all heard
of how the adepts wrested Sevrin from the sorcerer who’d ruled it
longer than any living human could remember. Muldonny had played no
small part in that victory. His art was fashioning liquids with
terrible properties: Fire that could not be quenched, fumes that
killed anyone within twenty paces, and solvents that ate through
metal armor.

Muldonny kept stores of these liquids beneath his
manor and in armories scattered around Stormwall Island. Cutting
through the wrong wall could result in a deluge of flesh-dissolving
sludge, or send liquid fire speeding along the tunnel.

“Let me study on it,” Delgar said. “We’ll break off
now and come back at it tomorrow.”

The dwarves eyed him for a moment before responding
with curt nods. They gathered up their tools and disappeared into a
narrow side tunnel.

Among elves, such behavior would be seen as beyond
rudeness and well into the realm of mutiny, but Honor knew the
Stone Folk’s ways well enough to recognize the deference they paid
the young dwarf.

The Carmot dwarves, like most of the other Old Races,
put great store in their ancestry, but dwarves of common birth and
exceptional talent were known to attract fame and followers.

Honor had no idea what Delgar’s lineage might be, but
he possessed gifts that could inspire other dwarves to take up
tools, and perhaps weapons, at his direction. That made him useful,
but it also made him dangerous.

She watched as Delgar moved into the tunnel opening
and placed one hand on either wall. He closed his eyes and began to
sing.

The song started out as a pleasant bass chant, but
the melody descended until the notes sank beyond the reach of
Honor’s hearing. She could still feel them, though. Deep vibrations
hummed through the stone and echoed in her bones.

A thin, irregularly shaped layer of stone peeled away
from the wall near the tunnel. Delgar caught it as it started to
fall forward and moved it over the tunnel opening. It fit as snugly
as a peel fits an apple.

Honor ran her fingers over the place where the tunnel
door once stood. The rock wall was seamless. If she hadn’t seen
Delgar hide the tunnel, she would never suspect it was there. The
young dwarf’s skill at stoneshifting was nothing short of
astonishing.