The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (80 page)

Once again a living shadow and an alert yet purring cat came ghosting into the dark-hailed home that had been Lastel's and was now Marype/

Markmor's. This time they paced the dim corridors, soft-soled buskins as silent on good carpet as the cat's pads, without pausing to peer beyond the closed doors they passed. Seeing no one, hearing no sound and mak ing none, man and cat went directly to that room containing a worktable and things that made the hair twitch on Hanse's nape. Nor was Notable happy to approach the tall door-Once again of many times the walking shadow could not avoid the thought of how despicable sorcery was to him.

And this time . . . this time the people-peddling slime is here/

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Reason enough to be more than cautious. Shadowspawn moved close to the big paneled door and pressed against the wall beside it. He listened He heard sounds, right enough, within the chamber of Marype's sor ceries. 0 Father Us and all gods, how I hate sorcery and those who practice it! And: He's home, all right. Now should I just—

His heart leaped and adrenaline surged when something bumped his leg. He released his breath and concentrated on careful breathing: he had felt Notable, of course. Hanse moved his leg slowly in a return caress/

scent-sharing.

Why am I doing this? Why don't we just forget this? he mused. We could go do something fun and less dangerous, like climbing to the top of the governor's palace and jumping off, or lying down for a nap in the stall of an unbroken horse, or—

The handle clacked and an instant later the door opened. Light burst into the corridor. For once Shadowspawn was not happy to have Notable as company; Hanse might well have stood as he was and let the mage pass. That was not the way of a startled cat. Notable hissed and spat. Just as startled, the emerging Marype reacted automatically with a curse and a kick. His boot made a whump noise in the furry side of a large target
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and the cat sailed several feet down the corridor with tail all abristle and legs flailing—twisting in air to land on all four feet.

Standing beside Shadowspawn without seeing him, a no longer silver haired Marype cursed again, stared at the cat, gestured at him, started to mumble . . .

Shadowspawn hit him hard in the stomach, backhand in passing, and pounced three feet backward to spin and come down in a crouch facing the sorcerer. Soft, silent buskins alit almost on Notable. The cat made his spit-sputtery sound again and leaped away; the human was silent and went motionless save that one hand snapped back past his ear. The mage gasped, doubled partway, hands to his middle. He straightened and his mouth snapped wide open to yell. That created a target that was a large one, for Shadowspawn. His arm rushed forward, a long swing with long fellow-through, and the dagger streaked. It streaked into the target: the open hole between Marype's nose and chin. The silver-chased blade pinned Marype's tongue to the back of his mouth. He made a gargly sound and both hands rushed to his mouth. Meanwhile he staggered back into his sorcerous den.

"Wait!" Shadowspawn called, but Notable was barreling past him after the man who had dared kick him and, in a far more important offense, embarrassed him by taking him by surprise.

"Notable!" Shadowspawn charged after the cat.
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Inside the chamber a hideous feline yowling mingled with the hideous gargling sounds Marype made around a mouthful of knife and blood. Hanse rushed in to see the cat looking even bigger because he was all abristle. Yet he was moveless, held in frozen motion by some gesture and gargly mumble of the mage, Notable's stiff, extended tail resembling a steel-spined red brush.

"Here, sorcerer, have another knife!"

The wounded, horrified Marype should not have been able to move as fast as he did; fast enough to dodge the rushing blade. Yet in hurling himself aside he hit the edge of his big table, which teetered with a screech of its legs on the floor. Its litter rattled and toppled. Marype stumbled away, and in desperation now he was able to commit the horri ble act he had been trying to gain nerve to accomplish; he dragged the knife back through his tongue and out of his mouth. Meanwhile various

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tools and uglinesses of his trade went scattering onto the floor from the rocked table.

That included a very pretty cage containing a small furry animal. The cage hit the floor with a rattly bang that dented and bent the bars of soft
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metal. It rolled noisily. In terror the small furry animal squeezed out and bolted. A large furry animal, no longer held by the sorcerer's spell, be came pure cat and pounced. A moment later he was crunching. His mouth trailed the stubby little tail of a vole.

And Marype who was Markmor screamed, a high-pitched wail that diminished rapidly—as he did. Marype was gone, dead; Markmor occu pied that body while his own soul reposed in the body of the vole. The vole was eaten. Marype's body was neither occupied nor alive. It began to deteriorate, hurrying to catch up to several weeks' delayed putrescence.

The sight was ugly, horripilating; the stench was beyond horrible.

"Gahh!" Shadowspawn grabbed his nose with thumb and curled fore finger hard enough to hurt. "Notable! Out of here! Gahh!"

And he fled, a huge red demonic thing racing after him as if in chase, trailing a straight-out tail like a red bristle-brush. They raced through the house and down to the concealed entry to the old tunnel and along it, and neither stopped running until they were re-entering the Lily Garden.

While he was freeing Amoli of gag, blindfold, and bonds Hanse told her of the horror he and Notable had just fled. "Marype just . . . just . . ."

"That was not Marype," she managed to say, having worked up a little
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moisture in her dry, dry mouth and licked her lips many times. "Marype is dead. He was stupid enough to bring back Markmor, and Markmor rewarded him by murdering him. Your cat killed Markmor and you watched what happens to a dead man weeks after he died. And I'll tell you, Hanse, Shadowspawn, thief and mage-killer and probably hero too

—you've done me a favor tonight. I've got a hundred imperials and my life and I am very, very glad to get out of this town!"

And she went.

Next day Hanse, undisguised, visited Strick to advise that he had found the perfect disguise and a fine business venture for Taya. Strick did what he could and sent her to Ahdio for a more permanent spell. She emerged still shapely and still attractive, but no longer Taya, former prince's playmate. She was Altaya, proprietor and Strick's partner in ownership of the Lily Garden.

That afternoon two men in Strick blue delivered to the palace the jingly contents of Amoli's and Markmor/Marype's chest, to be used in the continuing reconstruction of the city. "To make it Sanctuary's work

for Sanctuary," the message signed by Strick and by Hanse read, "inde pendent of Ranke."
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Hanse was meanwhile presenting the father of Mignureal and Jileel with a bag containing fine and far too valuable pearls which he had not stolen. He strongly suggested that Teretaff cause the pearls to be made into ear-drops for his several daughters, and "bury the rest under the floor or someplace."

He left without TeretafTs knowing of the sack of gold pieces Hanse had secreted in his shop-home, for safekeeping.

A few hours later in the Vulgar Unicorn, Hanse slipped a lot of golden imperials to the serving girl Silky, and bought drinks for the house until the Vulg grew so boisterously noisy he couldn't stand it, after which he ambled around to Sly's Place. There he bought drinks for the house, but left when the place grew so noisy he couldn't stand it. He went home with a large bucket of beer and enjoyed watching Notable get thoroughly drunk. Watching a cat stagger was more fun than Hanse could remem ber.

A week later he traded with Cholly the gluemaker for a dagger he recognized: a handsome affair. True, its hilt was marred, but who could resist that nice silver-inlaid blade?

Jon DeCles

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"I don't care if he is the new Emperor's cousin!" cried Feltheryn the Thespian, brandishing a paper broadside that he had just ripped off a wall before its glue could dry. "If Emperor Theron liked him he wouldn't be in Sanctuary!"

"My darling," said Glisselrand, her fingers flying amidst many-colored yams, "there is a difference between not liking one's relatives and wish ing them harm. Remember that Emperor Abakithis sent our darling Kitty-Kat here to Sanctuary, presumably because he thought him a threat. Nobody has any doubt that Abakithis wanted Kitty-Kat out of the way, but neither does anybody doubt that he would have dealt se verely with anyone who spilled the royal blood."

"I wasn't suggesting that we murder Vomistritus," said Feltheryn, frustrated by his lady's calmness.

Glisselrand laughed.

"If not, my pet, then he is the first critic ever to escape that suggestion after giving you that kind of review!"

(Yes, it was true! The very vilest villain of all had slunk into Sanctuary,
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a creature so reprehensible as to make all previous contenders—with the possible exception of Roxane—pale. It had been written—long before the fall of Ranke, long before the fall of Ilsig, long before the first settlers had put down roots at the confluence of the Red Foal and the White Foal rivers—that the appearance of criticism portended the first sign of matu rity in an art form. But for his part, Feltheryn rather thought that the

appearance of critics was the first signal of total social decay, a sign that people had lost control of their own minds and tastes and had therefore to resort to the opinions of others.)

"And rightly so!" Feltheryn growled. He then waxed pedantic: "A critic is one who espouses the idea that one must divorce one's self from emotional involvement in a work of art in order to apply unchanging standards to all such works and thus render a judgment on the individual work based on a reasoned measurement made against those standards. Yet a work of art, by definition, is a thing which directly engages the emotions, carrying feeling through what is only, really, a cold construct: a channel by which the heart of a perhaps long-dead artist may touch the heart of a living perceptor!"

Glisselrand looked up at him from her knitting, today a series of small orange, purple, and red squares which would later be assembled into a folksy quilt that would even later give someone a headache. She raised
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one elegant eyebrow in question, prompting him to continue (There had been a point, perhaps thirty years earlier in their romance, when he wondered if, at such times, she really understood what he was saying, really cared; or if she was just humoring him. It no longer mat tered to him, for the essence of the situation was that she wanted him to continue, and he wanted to continue, and, after all, it wasn't going to change anything.)

He took a deep breath and delivered his conclusion: "That of course means that a critic is someone who is congenitaHy incapable of appreciat ing art!"

Glisselrand stopped knitting for a moment and considered his thesis. Then she smiled and her fingers once again flew, gnarled but fast.

"Now that you mention it," she said, "it did seem that way in Ranke. They spoke a great deal about form and structure and style, but I am not sure I ever met a single critic who I felt really understood what he was talking about. Flash without fire, as the poet says. But looking back at our years in Ranke, I do believe we can be grateful that Sanctuary has only one critic, even if he is an especially bad one, and even if he is the Emperor's cousin."

Feitheryn growled again and Glisselrand wondered if perhaps he was
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thinking of producing The Cowslip Flower, a play in which he was magi cally transformed into a camel.

"With all the faults this town has," Feltheryn continued, "with all the horrors it has endured, yet the old adage about Sanctuary has proved untrue. It was not. after all, the one place you could find the worst of anything. Stinking Sanctuary could still hold high its head on that one

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point, and I think it could have got along just fine without ever having acquired a damned critic of its own!"

"Well, my dear," said Glisselrand, "I quite agree with that. I just wonder that the people of Sanctuary have fallen for it."

"It's the economics of the thing, of course!" Feltheryn continued to rave. "It's not cheap to come to the theater, because producing theater costs so much, even with the generous patronage we've got here. That's all the opening a vulture like Vomistritus needs' A little clever writing, a wicked turn of phrase, he hires a couple of scribes who can copy neatly if not well, pastes these broadsides all over town to gain an audience, and then the people will spend a copper to read what he has to say before they spend their soldats to come see the play. And the most insidious thing
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