A thief in the night abt-2 Read online

  A thief in the night

  ( Ancient blades trilogy - 2 )

  David Chandler

  David Chandler

  A thief in the night

  Prologue

  In a place of stone walls, attended by his acolytes and warriors, the Hieromagus knelt in the dawn rays of the red subterranean sun. Both sorcerer and priest, he wore a simple garment decorated with jangling bells. The sound of them was meant to draw him back to the real world, to the present, but for now he silenced them. For now, he needed to remember.

  The ancestors spoke to him. For those long lost, forgetting was a kind of death. They pulled desperately at him, trying to draw him into memories of ancient forests, of a time before the first humans came to this continent. Before his people were destroyed, driven away, forgotten. He saw their great battles, saw the works of magic they created. Saw the small, tender moments they shared and the guilt and shame they tried to put behind them. He saw kings, and queens, and simple folk in well-patched clothing. He saw Aethlinga, who had been a queen-the seventy-ninth of her dynasty-but who became something more. A seer. A diviner. Back then, in the depths of time, she had become the first Hieromagus. Just as he was to be the last.

  His body twitched, his eyelids in constant motion as if he were dreaming. A serving girl mopped his forehead with a piece of sponge. He tried to wave her away, but lost in reverie, he could only raise a few fingers a fraction of an inch.

  “I came as soon as I saw the sails. I knew you would want to see this with your own eyes,” the hunter said. Together the two of them climbed to the top of a forested ridge that overlooked the southern sea. One tree, an ancient rowan, stood taller than the rest. Aethlinga was old and frail but still she climbed the branches for a better look.

  Out at sea the ships stood motionless on the curling waves, their sails furled now, their railings thick with refugees. Less desperate than they might have been. They had reached their destination. Down on the shore, boats were landing, long, narrow wooden boats crammed with men. Hairy, unwashed, their lips cracked and cratered with scurvy. Their faces gaunt and grim after their long voyage.

  Iron weapons in their hands.

  “What are they?” the hunter asked. “They look a bit like ogres, but… what are they? What do they want?”

  The Hieromagus’s lips moved, eight hundred years further on. “They want land. A place to make a new start. What are they? They are our death.”

  It was very difficult to tell, inside the memory, where the Hieromagus ended and Aethlinga began. He had seen this particular vision so many times. Remembered it, for simply to recall was a sacred rite. This was the history of his people. The thing that could never be forgotten.

  Later, when the first skirmish was over and the men from the boats lay bleeding and cold on the sand-but others on the ships still stood out on the waves, watching-Aethlinga went to a private grove deep in the forest. A place where the ancestors wove through the tree branches, whispering always. She had her own sacred memories to recall.

  But now she turned her face to a pool of water, a simple looking glass. She looked into her own eyes. Formed her own memory. “I know you will see this,” she said, and she spoke a name.

  She spoke the true and secret name of the last Hieromagus. This memory was for him.

  “I need you to remember. Not the past this time, but the future. Look forward and find what is to come. I have glimpsed it as well, and you know I would not ask this, were it not utterly necessary.”

  The body of the Hieromagus, so far away now, convulsed and shook. The serving girl drew back in fear that he would lash out and destroy her. It had happened before.

  Some memories were less pleasant than others, and this was the worst of all.

  Except-this one was not a memory at all. Instead it was foresight. For one like the Hieromagus, who saw past and future all at once, the distinction had little meaning.

  Looking forward he saw the knight. He saw the painted woman. He saw the thief. As he had so many times before. Always before he could put their images out of his head. Tell himself it would be many years before they arrived.

  Now they crowded in on him as if they were shouting in his ears. He could no longer push them back, nor did he seek to. He only endeavored to separate them, to let them each speak in turn.

  “Some demons are smaller than others,” the woman said, and it was her, though the images were gone from her skin she was the same one, and then a twisted hand crashed across her cheek, knocking her to the ground.

  Her, the Hieromagus thought-her-it was the one he sought, but in the wrong time-she was cut loose from him still, but so close, so A man with the features of a priest, but the eyes of a murderer. This one only smiled, and did not speak. This one showed only the teeth of a predatory animal.

  He dared not look on that one too long, even in memory.

  Two knights with the same name, one dissembling, not a knight at all. He was something else entirely, something hated, and yet he was the key to liberation. A draft of burdock root, certain oils most precious, blisswine. An elfin queen throwing herself across a bed in the attitude of a whore.

  Closer now-closer, but fragmented. The Hieromagus beat feebly at the floor with his fists, trying to force the memories-the forebodings-into proper shape. Into an order he could understand. He must see the path. He must choose for his people.

  Three swords, deadly swords. Something worse, something far worse, a weapon of incredible potential. Two men pushing a barrel up an incline of stone.

  Yes. Yes, he had it A flash of light. A burst of energy, searing and brilliant. Molten stone flowing down a corridor.

  There, that was the future he sought. The one he’d glimpsed so many times, only to turn away in fear. The one he’d convinced himself was still a long way off.

  This time he must watch the images all the way through. See it all.

  “Malden!” the painted woman called out to her lover, desperate, watching him walk toward utter and certain death. The sword in his hand would be of no help.

  So close now. After so long. So many years of dreading what was to come. Of trying desperately to find a way to forestall it. When it could never be prevented.

  The human knight leaned down over them, his face warped by hatred. Spittle flew from his lips as he barked at the bronze-clad warriors. “You’re going to die. Every last one of you will die! It’s less than what you deserve for what you did to Cythera!”

  The hatred-the death that was coming-the tumult “He knew,” the painted woman said. Her voice thick with loss, with dread at the sacrifices that had been made. “The Hieromagus had seen the future. He saw this, all of this. He knew that what he’d seen could not be changed. That this was the only way for his people to survive.”

  The eyes of the Hieromagus opened like window shutters being thrown back.

  “No!” he screamed.

  No.

  He saw the dead laid out in heaps before him. He saw himself, the Hieromagus saw through his own eyes, crawling over a pile of bodies, his feet treading on the faces of the ones he loved.

  No… not like that. It couldn’t come to that, to so drastic a turn. And yet…

  It would. It must.

  The painted woman was correct. What was foreseen could not be changed. And there was only one way forward now. No turning, no detour was possible, though the way was choked with death and destruction.

  He opened his mouth to speak. It was hard, so very hard to get the words out. He felt so very far away.

  “They’re coming,” he said, and the warriors and acolytes stirred, traded terrified glances. Grasped hands in hope. “Very soon now, they will return for us.”

  Much muttering, m
uch grave discussion followed in that place where the underground sun burned red. Yet the Hieromagus heard none of it, for his memory was not yet done. There was more to see.

  Back in the sacred grove, Aethlinga watched the visions with him. Her face, so slender and beautiful, was deformed by fear and the sorrow for what was to come. For what was to come to him.

  “Be strong,” she said. “I know what we ask of you. There is no justice in it-but you were born to perform this task. This bitter cup is yours to sip alone. I am sorry.”

  Part I

  The Getaway

  Chapter One

  A thin crescent of moon lit up the rooftops of the Free City of Ness, glinting on the bells up high in the Spires, whitewashing the thatched roofs of the Stink. The furnaces of the blacksmiths in the Smoke roared all night, but the rest of the city was asleep-or at least tucked away in candlelit rooms with closed shutters.

  It was the time of night when even the gambling houses started to close down, when the brothels shut their doors. It was the time when honest men and women retreated to their beds, to get the sleep they needed for another long day of work on the morrow. Of all the city’s vast workforce, only a handful remained at their labors. The city’s watchmen, of course, patrolled the streets all night long.

  And, of course, there were thieves about.

  Malden moved quickly, running along the ridges of the rooftops, hurrying to make a clandestine appointment. He made as little noise as a squirrel dashing along, and he was careful not to let himself be seen from the street level. For all that, he made excellent time as he leapt from one rooftop to another, following routes he’d learned through years of practice, knowing without needing to look where he should put his feet and where a roof had grown too soft to take his weight. He danced among the Spires, swinging from stone carvings, launching himself across narrow alleys. His route led him around the broad open space of Market Square, then downhill across the tops of the mansions in the Golden Slope. He was very close to his destination when, through the sole of his leather shoe, he felt a shingle crack and start to fall away.

  Malden froze instantly in place, careful to keep his weight on the broken shingle as the rest of his body swayed with momentum. He checked himself, then bent low, his fingers grabbing at the broken shingle before it could fall into the street below and make a noise. Very carefully, he laid the pieces of the shingle in a downspout, then dashed forward again. It was very nearly midnight.

  He reached his destination and clung to a smoking chimney pot, his body low against the shingles to minimize his silhouette. He had arrived. His eyes, well adapted to the dark, scanned the sides of the houses around him, looking for any sign of movement. He spied a rat scuttering through an alley twenty feet below. He saw bats circling a church belfry two blocks away. And then he found what he was looking for.

  Across the street three men dressed in black were climbing a drainpipe on the side of a half-timbered mansion. When the one on top reached a mullioned window on the second floor, he wrapped his hand in a rag and then punched in the glass.

  It made enough noise to scare cats in the alley below. Malden winced in sympathy. Had he ever been that noisy? He knew, from long experience, what the three thieves must be feeling. The blood would be pounding in their veins. Their heartbeats would be the loudest sounds they could hear. The thing they were about to do could get them all hanged, following the barest formality of a trial.

  The one on top-the leader, he must be-reached inside the window and slipped open its catch. He opened the casements wide, then disappeared into the dark house. The other two followed close on his heels.

  Malden shifted his position carefully, to make sure his legs wouldn’t cramp while he waited. He had to give them time to do the job right. He watched as a light appeared in the next window over, then as it moved, bobbing and darting, through the house. The thieves took their time about their work, perhaps because they wanted to make sure to get everything.

  Grunting with impatience, Malden wished they would hurry up. Down in the street a man of the watch was coming this way. He wore a cloak woven with a pattern of eyes, and carried a lantern held high on the end of his polearm. The watchman barely glanced at the houses on either side of him, but if he should catch sight of that candle moving stealthily through an otherwise dark house, he might grow suspicious.

  Malden would have been smart enough to bring a dark lantern with a shield over its light, and shone its beam only when absolutely necessary. Of course, Malden would have been in and out of the house already. And he wouldn’t have required two accomplices to burgle a house that size.

  The thieves were lucky-the watchman saw nothing. He walked on past without so much as a glance at the mansion. When he was sure the man was out of earshot, Malden carefully stood up, then took a few steps backward to get a running start. With one quick bound he leapt across the alley and onto the roof of the darkened mansion.

  The thieves were on the ground floor. Most like, they heard nothing as he landed, as soft as a pigeon settling on the roof. He lowered himself over the edge and placed his feet carefully on the open windowsill, then slid inside, as easy as that.

  He took a moment to glance around him and study his new surroundings. He was in a bedroom, perhaps the chamber of the master of the house. The bed had a brocade canopy hung above it to keep insects from pestering its occupants. The floor was strewn with rushes scented with a faint perfume. Against one wall stood a pair of wooden chairs and a washbasin. Underneath the bed he found a dry chamber pot.

  Malden could hear the thieves moving about on the ground floor. How smart were they? he wondered. He needed to make a judgment. If they were at all clever they would leave the same way they came. Leave as little sign of forced entry as they could. If they were fools they would exit by the kitchen door on the ground floor. An easier method of escape, perhaps, but it would put them in full view of the windows of four other houses-and thus, potentially, any number of eyewitnesses.

  No, Malden thought. This bunch wouldn’t be that stupid. Cutbill-the master of the guild of thieves in Ness, and Malden’s own master-kept his eye open always for real talent in the criminal professions. Cutbill had singled these men out, of all the freelance thieves in the city, as his next assignment. And Cutbill never sent him on such a mission if he didn’t have good reason.

  So they would leave through the upstairs window. Which meant he had to wait a little longer. Malden swept his cloak back to uncover the bodkin in its sheath at his hip. Then he reached into a long wooden case he kept strapped to his thigh and drew out three slender darts. He was very, very careful not to touch their tips.

  “Make haste, make haste,” one of the thieves hissed from the stairs. Another grumbled out some profanity. There was the old familiar clink of metal objects bouncing in a sack. And then the first of them stepped into the bedroom, eyes peeled, watching the shadows just in case.

  He did not think to look down, and so he stepped right into the chamber pot, which Malden had placed before the doorway.

  “Son of a whore,” the thief howled as he tripped forward into the room and went sprawling past where Malden lay on the bed. The other two rushed into the room after their fellow. One held the candle high, while the other had a wicked long knife in his hand. All three of them held bulging sacks.

  “What is it?” the one with the candle demanded. His face was yellow in the guttering light and his eyes were very shiny. The one with the knife was quicker, and spied Malden even as he sat up in the bed.

  “We’re tumbled!” he cried, and rushed forward with the knife.

  Malden flicked his wrist and a dart went into the knifeman’s chest, just above his heart. As the candle holder turned to look, Malden pitched his second dart and caught him in the neck.

  The one who had stumbled on the chamber pot managed to get back to his feet just as Malden readied his third dart. The thief began to cry out in fear just as Malden made his cast. The dart hit him in the tongue and he we
nt silent.

  The three thieves turned to look at each other, knowing the jig was up. One by one their faces fell. And then they slumped to the floorboards with a treble thump.

  When he was sure they were all down, Malden stepped out of the bed and went to look in their sacks, to see what shiny presents they’d brought him.

  Chapter Two

  It was not more than an hour later when Malden heard the master of the house come home. He had been out at a gaming hall until closing time, as he was prone to do every night. Malden had done his research on the man, following him for the last three nights all the way from the Royal Ditch back to his home. Typically the man lost more than he won, and he would be followed all the way home by his long-suffering wife, who begged him every night to give up his expensive hobby. The man never said a word, merely took his drubbing as his due. The two of them would be accompanied by a bodyguard and a linkboy who lit his way through the dark streets. Malden closed his eyes and listened as the householder paid off the linkboy and then set his bodyguard to stand watch in the main room of the ground floor. The wife moved straightaway to her chamber, as she did every night, perhaps exhausted by the long journey through the night streets, perhaps simply desiring to get away from her wastrel mate. Malden heard her splash her face with water from the basin, then call for her handmaid, who would not be coming.

  The master of the house climbed the stairs ponderously, pausing now and again as if he were so drunk he could not walk a straight line. He came immediately to his strongroom, which served him both as office and sanctum. Before he opened the door, he called for his own servant, a valet, who was also conspicuously absent.

  “By the Bloodgod’s eight elbows,” the merchant swore, stumbling inside his strongroom. “Someone strike a light, anyway. Who’s here? I can hear you breathing in there. I promise you, Holger, if this is your idea of a jape at my expense-”