The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids (3 page)

I tried very hard to make him think I was telling him the whole truth, by telling him part of it in great detail. I described the shape Corbin was in when he came to see me. I told him what we drank, tried to remember word for word some of the things he’d said. I did my best to seem both reluctant to be telling the law anything, and eager that once I’d said my piece, I’d be forgotten. And of course I didn’t say anything that might implicate me in anything. I gave the slight impression that Corbin and I had a now and again relationship of an intimate nature.

I kept the statuette out of it, and any mention of the Elamner Heirus and his flunky Bosch. I wanted them for myself. If the constabulary went barging in, the bastard would disappear if he hadn’t already. And so would the other statuettes. I didn’t think he was going anywhere, though. Not without the toad. Not if he was willing to kill for it.

Maybe Kluge thought I was holding out, maybe not. His face was unreadable. He presented an air of weary competence, an honest man doing his best in a job that didn’t pay enough. He was going to do a kindness to someone caught on the periphery of something ugly.

Right.

I had no doubt he’d toss me straight into Havelock prison if he thought it would get him farther along. A dirty little street knifing had turned into the death of a noble, albeit a disgraced one, and people with enough clout to bury Kluge in an unmarked grave—literally—were going to be second guessing his every move soon enough. He was going to cast me back, just to see where I might lead him. I was going to have to look over my shoulder every damn where I went.

When he finally waved me away with the admonishment to make sure I was available for further questioning, he’d managed to give me sweaty palms. He got up and walked me to the door, hand politely at my back. When he stuck out a hand to shake, I took it.

As soon as his hand touched mine, the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up and a chill ran down my spine. I walked outside, pretending I hadn’t noticed a thing. I swore silently.

The son of a bitch had just used magic on me. Odds were he didn’t need to detail men to tail me. He’d know exactly where I was, wherever I went. I hoped that was all he’d done. I tried not to think about all the nasty little things it was possible to do with just a handshake.

Corbin’s body had been removed while I was inside, and the blood mostly washed away. The smell still lingered, though, and Bone set up a half-hearted howl. I collected my knives from Jarvis, who no doubt was hoping I’d forget them. Fat chance of that. They were perfectly weighted for me, and had cost me dear.

The damned dog didn’t stop his howling until we were blocks away. I dragged him along by his collar. I was going to have to get some rope. He was giving me another headache. “Kerf’s withered testicles,” I spat, shocking a sweet faced granny passing by.

Heirus the Elamner was going to have to wait. Hells, I couldn’t even risk going back home until I’d done something about Kluge’s leave-taking present. It had become necessary to get some magic of my own.

I set off for the charnel grounds. It was time to see Holgren.

Chapter Five

Holgren Angrado lived way the hells and gone on the other side of the River Ose, on the edge of the charnel grounds. And of course I had to walk it. No hack was going to pick me up while I was dragging eighty pounds of scarred, slobbering dog along. It was a two hour walk from Silk Street up to Daughter’s Bridge, on what had to be the hottest day of the year. By the time we got there the rest of the morning had fled, and my temper was vile. At least Bone had stopped howling.

Lucernans are much like anyone else, except when it comes to death. I was born in Bellarius, myself, so I don’t really understand their odd fixation with forms and observances and their peculiar ideas about the afterlife, but it seems to work for them.

There is only one true graveyard in Lucernis: the City of the Dead. It’s a huge necropolis that butts up against the south bank of the Ose. Its gargantuan hexagonal wall is ten man-heights of alabaster stretching on and on. People visit, send letters to the dearly departed, have midsummer feasts there. Like any city, it has its rich districts and its poor. And like any city, if you don’t pay your rent, you get the boot. Thus, the charnel grounds.

Those whose families would not or could not pay the annual mortuary tax were disinterred, and their bodies dumped with a distinct lack of ceremony in the city’s charnel grounds. Which, I understand, is a bit like being taken from a civilized limbo and being cast into one of the less pleasant pits in the eleven hells. I could almost believe it, given the smell. Myself, I think dead is dead, and whatever happens to your body makes no nevermind, but like I said, I’m not from here.

Holgren was the only mage I knew well enough not to run screaming from. Why he chose to live next door to a field full of bodies in various states of rot I’ll never understand. But I never asked him. I was afraid he might tell me.

I dragged Bone along dusty roads and past the occasional shack that was all there was of Lucernis northwest of the Ose. Holgren’s house was low and long and dark, roofed in grey slate. It looked like it was poised to tumble in on itself. I made my way to the front door of his hovel, past the broken statuary and dead grass that made up his front garden, and banged the ancient brass knocker. And waited. And waited.

I was about to knock again when the door creaked open, revealing only gloom. There was no one on the other side.

“Holgren?” I called. “It’s Amra.” No answer. I shrugged, and Bone and I crossed the threshold.

My eyes adjusted. It was like any other sitting room, I suppose. More or less. A couch, dusty and torn. Delicate little tables covered with yellowing lace doilies. A porcelain teapot decorated with buttercups and morning glories. Dried flowers in a chipped vase. Threadbare rug. Less usual were the skulls and anatomical charts, the framed map of the eleven hells, the withered, claw-like Glory Hand casting feeble blue light from under a bell jar, the jars of preserved things that had no business twitching and sloshing in the corner of my eye. And the room was far cooler than it had any right to be.

I liked Holgren. I even trusted him, to a degree. But he was still a mage, and being around a mage was like being around a ‘tame’ lion. You could never fully let down your guard. They were just too powerful, and too unpredictable. Their motivations were too obscure.

“Holgren?”

“Be with you in a moment,” came a muffled reply from behind a door marked with sigils that writhed and twisted when I looked at them. I shuddered and took a seat on the couch. Bone put his rock-like skull in my lap. Almost instantly my pants were soaked in slobber. I sighed, and scratched behind his scored ears. There was a lump where Jarvis had bashed him, but other than that, he seemed fine.

A short time later the creepy door opened and Holgren sauntered into the parlor. He must have startled Bone, because the bruiser whipped around with a rolling, rumbling growl in his throat. Holgren stopped where he was, and his hawk-like eyes locked with Bone’s. They stood like that for maybe half a dozen heartbeats, and then Bone shut up and dipped his head and his tail.

“You’ve acquired a loyal friend since we last met, Amra. Would you like some tea?”

“No thanks.” I patted Bone. “Inherited, more like.”

Holgren cocked an eyebrow. He was a tall, almost gangly man, with predatory eyes, a sharp nose, a generous mouth. His black hair was shoulder length and bound up in a ponytail. He was wearing black. He always wore black. Not much for fashion, this one.

“Listen,” I said, “I might have brought some trouble to your door. I ran into a mage. He tagged me with some sort of spell.”

Holgren pulled up a chair that had seen better centuries. Touched the teapot. The smell of chamomile suddenly wafted. He poured himself a cup.

“So tell me about it,” he said.

~ ~ ~

I told him about Corbin, his commission, the favor he’d asked of me. I told him about Corbin’s death and Inspector Kluge.  He asked a few questions, but not many. He knew how to be circumspect, and didn’t ask the questions that he knew I would be reluctant to answer.

Holgren lived on the same shadowy side of the law as me. He took commissions. That’s how I’d met him. He’d subcontracted one of them to me, on the advice of Daruvner, our mutual fixer. He was a good mage, but I was a much better thief. Our skills actually complemented each other quite well, and we’d done three jobs together in quick succession. Then he’d stopped taking contracts. I found out later from Daruvner that Holgren Angrado worked only when he had to. He’d make a pile of coin, then go into semi-retirement until it ran out.

Holgren sat, legs crossed and hand to lips, digesting what I’d told him. He shook his head. “Corbin told you he’d set up the meet in a safe place. Any idea where?”

“Not really. Obviously someplace not as safe as he thought.”

“He could have been betrayed.”

I shrugged. Probably. There was just no telling.

“This Kluge, what did he look like?”

I described him. Holgren shook his head.

“I don’t know him. I don’t know what sort of power he wields. I might assume that, since he takes a civil servant’s pay, he is not terribly talented, but I don’t like to assume.” He tapped his full lower lip with one long forefinger. He was staring at me, through me. Long enough that I started getting the creeps. “Well,” he finally said, shaking himself. “Nothing for it but to see what we can see. Come sit here.”  He vacated the chair.

I took a deep breath, then shifted from the couch to the chair. He stood behind me, which made me more than a little nervous. He put his fine-boned hands on my shoulders. He smelled of lavender, and under that, something acrid. As though he’d been working with chemicals. He didn’t smell bad, just strange. Bone looked on from where he was stretched out next to the couch, a thin rope of drool slowly stretching to the floor from his black lips. I felt a little laugh bubble up at that, but choked it down.

The hairs on the back of my neck stirred faintly. Holgren shifted his hands to the sides of my neck, then cool fingers touched corners of my jaw, then my temples. My skin tingled and I repressed a shudder. It’s not that it was unpleasant. It wasn’t. It’s just that it was… intimate. More intimate than I was comfortable with. And the feel of his magic had a different quality to it than Kluge’s. More confident, somehow. More knowledgeable. Self-assured. The difference between a grope and a caress. I found myself blushing, and was glad Holgren couldn’t see my face.

“You can sense me,” he remarked, a faint note of surprise in his voice. I nodded slightly, and the feel of whatever he was doing changed, somehow. Became more business-like. More formal. Almost remote. I found myself at once relieved and vaguely disappointed.

Finally he took his hands away. He sprawled out on the couch, and one hand dropped down. He rubbed between Bone’s eyes with a casual knuckle, and the dog stretched out and presented his chest. Holgren scratched dutifully.

“Well?”

“Well, you were right. This Kluge marked you with a location spell. A basic working, really, but sometimes the basic ones are the most reliable. At some point during your conversation he must have collected something particular to you. Most likely a hair. Then he made physical contact with you, a simple handshake being quite sufficient.”

I remembered his hand on my back, in all probability plucking a fallen hair. “That sneaky—and then?”

“And then he most probably winds that hair around something, perhaps a pin, and places the pin on a specially prepared map.”

I frowned. “And then he watches the pin shift along the map as I go hither and yon.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“So what do I do?”

“Nothing. Right now that pin is rolling around like a sailor four hours into shore leave. He’ll know you’ve gone to see a mage, of course, but he would have known that if I’d simply severed the connection. Better he wonder who you might know who could tie his spell in knots.”

“What? Why? You’re putting yourself in line for unnecessary scrutiny, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “When you came here you assured a knock on my door from the inspector, I think. I’d rather he come wary and respectful. When mages meet, there is a tendency towards discovering who has the greater talent. Occupational hazard, I suppose. Sometimes making the discovery can be hard on the furniture. Now he knows that, whoever I am, I am most likely his master in the Art. It will help head off any possible unpleasantness.”

“If you say so. Still, I’m sorry to have gotten you involved. I owe you.”

He waved it away. “I am sorry about your friend. And interested in these statuettes, to tell you the truth. If you care to, you can come by again and I’ll take a look at the one you have. If it is pre-Diaspora, I might be interested in purchasing it from you. I’d give you more than a hundred marks for it, and it will never see the open market.”

“I’ll think about it. I have a feeling it might be useful to me in the near future.” As a lure, or a threat. “I’ll stop by tomorrow if I can.”

“What will you do next?”

“Get some sleep. Find out what there is to know about this Elamner that Corbin contracted with. Decide how best to approach him.” How to get in, knife him, and get out with a whole hide.

“What about this one?”

“Bone? I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to do, and looking after that slob will be a pain.” I looked at the dog. He’d fallen asleep on his back under Holgren’s scratching, scarred ears splayed out like little wings, tongue lolling.

“You could leave him here, for now. Until you make other arrangements. I could use the company. And he will make a nice pretence for your visit here when the inspector comes calling.”

I glanced around at the various bits of bodies under glass. “You aren’t in need of dog parts, are you?”

His expression was one of pained indignation.

“Hey, I was going to make you an offer. Cheap.”

~ ~ ~

I managed to catch a hack just south of Daughter’s Bridge. On the ride back I mulled over my options, tried to figure out what my next move was. Corbin’s death had stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Kluge and company would be scrambling to find someone to pin his death on, before Corbin’s family came to town with blood on their mind. Heirus, I could safely assume, would still be looking for what he’d been willing to kill for. And of course some cold-eyed killers would be arriving in the next few days, come to collect their pound of flesh for Corbin’s old man. From every perspective, all roads could at some point lead to me. It was too late for me to back out, even if I wanted to. I didn’t want to.

There would be interesting days ahead.