The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids (7 page)

I gave the big woman a brief hug, then left. Maybe ten, twelve years ago I could have taken her up on her offer. When I was cutting purses and stealing bread to survive. Now? It was far too late for me to think of taking up any other trade, living any other life. What would I do? Marry Owin, maybe, have children, tend to the kitchen and the washing and the finances?

No, Myra. Thank you, but no. It was a good, safe, honest life you offered. But it wasn’t the life for me. Not anymore. Not for a long, long time. But as I slipped out of Alain’s work yard and into the night, I remembered the laughter and the amused squabbling that floated up from the kitchen table as I’d come down the stairs. And I realized there was a hole in my life, a place where a family was supposed to fit. Like a missing tooth. Or a severed limb.

Chapter Eleven

The next couple of days were spent recuperating. I didn’t go home, or anywhere near my usual haunts. Instead I stayed in one of my bolt holes, a third floor garret way the hells and gone across the river in Markgie’s Rest, not even in Lucernis proper. It was a sleepy little community of fishermen and caraveners perched on the north shore of the Bay. People minded their own business, and were used to comings and goings at odd hours. And it got a breeze off the ocean most of the day.

The first day was pleasant enough. I was just too sore to want to move. By the end of the second, I was bored out of my skull. So I went down to the neighborhood pub to have a drink and be alone, in company. It was pleasant in the late afternoon, sunlight pouring in through real glass windows, surrounded by dark polished wood and red and green painted tables. I’d been there once or twice before. The few customers were mostly old men, telling amusing lies about fish and women.

I’d been there maybe half an hour when the door opened and three men walked in, bringing a Kerf-damned lot of trouble with them.

Two were your typical toughs; hard men, armed with short swords and dirks. Their clothes were clean and of good quality, and they were both clean shaven. Hard eyes scanned the crowd, and their hands never strayed too far from weapon hilts. Maybe a cut above the typical tough. Armsmen. Hired blades.

The third man was something else altogether. Slightly hunchbacked, with long, greasy black hair and a sparse beard, he wore cloth of expensive cut, but there were old stains and new on his velvet tunic. One foot was twisted in, and every step looked like it pained and exhausted him. And it looked as though he’d been walking all day. In one hand he carried a fine knife; black handled and silver pommeled, the bright blade about a hand span long and three fingers wide. A knife I knew very well. I’d commissioned it, after all. It was the knife I’d lost at the Elamner’s villa.

I’d sat at a bench in the corner, back against the wall. Now I was trapped. 

Hunchback slapped the knife flat onto an empty table and stared at it. The two toughs gripped the hilts of their swords. I slipped knives into both hands and quietly pushed myself back from the table.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then the knife began to tremble. Slowly it began to turn, to spin, until the tip pointed directly at me like a Kerf-damned compass pointing north. Hunchback looked me in the eye and smiled a nasty, yellow-toothed smile that spoke volumes, all of it to do with eminent harm coming my way.

I threw both blades simultaneously, one at each bully-boy, vaulted onto the table, and threw myself through the glass of the window, arm across my face. Before I hit, I heard one of the men yelp in pain. Then I was rolling on the cobbles outside. I heard a horse neigh shrilly, looked up as a shod hoof came down towards my face. I rolled aside just in time. I’d come crashing out just as a hack was passing.

There were two more sell-swords waiting outside, but it took them a second to react. I wasted no time. I was on my feet and down the street. I didn’t bother to look back. I could hear the heavy slap of boot leather on cobbles behind me.

Maybe I could have outrun them. Probably I could have. But to what point? They’d follow me wherever I went. My knife would point them the way. My three knives, now. Damned magic. For once the phrase ‘you can run but you can’t hide’ actually had some meaning. So I turned three right corners in quick succession, making a square, and came back at a sprint to the tavern. My abused muscles complained bitterly, but Hunchback was right where I’d figured he would be, lagging far behind. And far away from his toughs. Sometimes I’m so smart I amaze myself.

I came up behind him in a quiet rush and put my blade across his windpipe. He stiffened. I plucked my other knife out of his hand and said, “Where are the other two?”

“Right here. In my belt.” So they were. I relieved him of those as well. I heard running footsteps rounding the corner. I spun him around to face the toughs. “Quick now, tell them to put down their swords. He hesitated, and I slid the sharp end of my blade across his stubbled neck, just enough to sting.

“Stay back! Put down your swords!” He had a cultured voice. It sounded odd coming from his twisted, dissolute body. When they hesitated, he shouted “Do as I say!” They did, breathing hard, murder in the eyes of the one I’d stuck.

“Good boy,” I murmured in his ear. “Now tell ‘em to go inside the tavern and count to a hundred. Not too fast. I’ll be counting too, and I’m not so good at it. Sometimes I lose my place and have to start again. If they come out before I’m done counting I’ll cut your throat.” He did as he was told, and they did what he told them, and I said “good boy” again as I dragged him down the street, and into the mouth of the nearest alley. Four pairs of eyes followed our progress from tavern door and window.

“You must be Bosch.” I said as we went.

He hesitated, then nodded. Carefully.

“Out of curiosity, where’d you find my knife?”

“In a planter in the garden.”

“The one place I didn’t think to look. Tell the Elamner he’d better back off if he doesn’t want the toad melted down.” I thought it best not to mention the corpse I’d seen. I still hadn’t figured out what the hells it signified.

“You have the statue?”

“No, I just assumed your boss would want a golden toad. Doesn’t everybody?”

“We can do business, then.”

“Yes,” I said. “We can deal.”

“How shall we contact you?”

I yanked out a handful of his hair and pushed him into the gutter. I tucked the hair into the top of a boot.

“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” And then I turned and tried to make myself scarce. I was sure Holgren would know just what to do with Bosch’s greasy locks.

It wasn’t Bosch’s men that got me. It was the Watch. Markgie’s Rest wasn’t the Rookery, or Silk Street. When taverns got busted up and blood got spilled, and people started running around in the street with bared blades, they came. In large numbers. Quickly.

There was just nowhere for me to go. Three appeared ahead of me, and two more behind, blocking off the alley. Black, varnished billys thunked into meaty palms. One old codger with a mean eye had a crossbow and looked like he knew how to use it. Blank walls rose on either side.

“Kerf’s shrivelled balls,” I spat, and dropped my knife, and put out my hands.

They beat me unconscious anyway.

Chapter Twelve

When I came back to the world, I wished I hadn’t.

The smell was awful. Piss and vomit and shit and fear. The stench of bodies that had forgotten what clean water was, much less soap. To draw breath was to gag. I couldn’t see anything. The darkness was absolute. I felt rough straw and filth-slick stone under my cheek, heard distant screams echoing along stone corridors. Somewhere not far away a hoarse, gravelly voice kept moaning ‘Mother? Mother?’ in such a monotonous way that I could hear the madness behind it.

I groaned and began the slow, torturous process of levering myself up off the floor. Everything hurt. When I put my hand out to work myself into a sitting position, I planted it squarely into a pile of cold, runny feces.

“Welcome to Havelock Prison,” I whispered to myself. “Mind the turds.”

~ ~ ~

In the darkness it was impossible to gauge the passing of time. My cell was three paces by four, and the ceiling higher than I could reach with outstretched arms. The door was oak banded in iron, and had been gouged futilely by unknown numbers of former occupants. All the stonework was tight; there were no chinks that I could find by fingertip, though someone at some time had made a concerted if futile effort to loosen a stone in the back right corner. The stones around it were gouged and rough. A thin layer of fouled, louse-ridden straw lined the floor. I kicked it all into a corner. After a time, I stopped noticing the stench, and started noticing the lice.

All my knives were gone, of course. In the darkness I felt carefully in my boot, and came up with a single strand of Bosch’s hair. I didn’t see how it would do me any good now, but I wound it carefully around the back of a button on my shirt, just in case.

~ ~ ~

After an unknowable time, I noticed a creeping light coming from under the door. I heard muffled orders repeated at regular intervals, and sometimes blows and shouts of pain. By the time they arrived at my door, I knew the drill.

“Face against the back wall, hands on your head, eyes shut. You have until five. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” Then a bar was lifted and the door swung open. Even turned away with my eyes closed, the flickering torchlight was dazzling.

From the sounds, there were at least two, possibly three. Probably three. One to hold the torch, one to serve the food, and one to stand ready with the billy. I didn’t make any trouble. I’d had enough beatings for a while. The light retreated, the door closed, the bar slammed home.

My first meal in Havelock was gruel; stale, poorly ground rye bread; and water that, from the taste and smell of it, had most likely been drawn straight from the Ose.

To this day, just a whiff of rye bread is enough to make my stomach turn.

~ ~ ~

Mother-man, as I came to think of him, was never truly quiet. Even in his sleep he would moan for her. I assume he was sleeping. And when he woke, he’d scream “Mother! I’m blind! Moooother!” On and on until they came to beat him quiet. Then, at most a few hours later, he’d start again with that monotonous call for maternal comfort.

Eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore. I screamed at him, “Your whore of a mother is dead, shit brain. Shut it!” It only made him go on louder. Which made me invent ever more gruesome ends for her. Run over by a carriage. Gored by bulls, made into meat pies. Drowned in a cesspit. Gnawed to death by rats, face first. Dead of syphilis. It only made him carry on the louder, which made the guards come. They beat us both.

I found myself hoping they’d come to hang either him or me soon. I started not to care which.

~ ~ ~

My second meal was the same as the first, and my third. That was how I measured time, though I honestly couldn’t have said at the time if we were fed every day or every other or at random intervals. Hunger warred with nausea, and time had no meaning.

I thought a lot. Not much else to do. I went over the entire situation, and realized they might just be holding me until the killers arrived from Courune. They’d probably want to question me before they took me to Harad’s Square for my short drop into oblivion. I didn’t think they would be gentle about the questions, either.

I also thought about the situation as a whole. I went over everything I knew, and everything I thought I knew. I didn’t reach any new conclusions. I still thought the Elamner must have had Corbin killed, for the statue. There were thirteen, Corbin had said. Heirus or Bosch had gotten twelve, and still wanted the last, the toad, so the others must not have been terribly important to him. Not what he was looking for, perhaps. Which suggested he knew when he commissioned Corbin that the one he was looking for was in that temple, but he didn’t know which one it was. Or maybe he just needed all of them.

As for the dead man in the villa, well, that reeked of magic. By its nature, magic makes no sense. It was possible Bosch had killed his boss and was running the whole show. It was equally possible that the dead man wasn’t the Elamner at all. I just didn’t have enough to go on to make any kind of conclusion. Didn’t matter. If I ever got out, I just needed to hunt down Bosch and make him talk. Then I’d see who needed to be killed.

The thing that had tried to break into my apartment and left me alive at the Elamner’s was also a cipher. Was it working for Heirus, or Bosch? Or was it something completely Other? No idea. I’d ask Bosch about that, too, next time I saw him.

After a time it all became a muddle in my mind, and I tried not to think at all. And then they finally came for me, and all I could think of was how I didn’t want to die.

They put the manacles on, and the shackles, and I shuffled out of my hole with a billy in my back down a stone corridor, eyes watering at the light from the torch behind me and the smoky corridor. We went up a set of stairs, and down another corridor. This one was lit, and the cell doors had barred windows. Pale, emaciated faces stared out at us, but they were just blurs in the increased light. There was nothing wrong with my ears, though. And these prisoners hadn’t seen a woman in a long time.

“Bring ‘er in ‘ere for five minutes before she swings! All right, three! Three minutes!”

“Just keep walking,” said one of the guards behind me. I gritted my teeth and kept shuffling along.

“She shouldn’t go to the gallows unsatisfied!”

“Let me impale her before you hang her!”

I kept walking, until somebody threw a handful of runny shit that hit me in the face. Then I lunged at the bastard. The guard slammed me in the kidney with his billy and I crumpled to the floor.

“Told you to keep walking.” He looked down at me and sighed. His partner put his torch in an empty bracket.

“Yeah,” I gasped. “I forgot.”

“You won’t forget again?”

“Not a chance.”

“Well, everybody forgets every now and then, I suppose. You stay right there for a while.”

“Not going anywhere.”

He looked at his partner, who nodded.

“Gerard, I told you last time. You start throwing shit, and I’m going to make you eat it.”

“No boss. I forgot, boss.”

“That’s what you said the last time, Gerard.” And he lifted the bar to Gerard’s door.

“No boss! She forgot! Everybody forgets, you said so!”

“I’m just going to help your memory along, Gerard.”

They opened the shit-flinger’s door and beat him senseless. And yes, by the end of it he had shit in his mouth. I won’t say I liked them for it. But I certainly didn't feel bad for Gerard. In prison, I discovered, the only pity to be had was self-pity.