A Thief in the Night Read online

  A Thief in the Night

  The Ancient Blades Trilogy: Book Two

  David Chandler

  Dedication

  For G.G. and D.A., on the outer planes

  Contents

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part II

  Interlude

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part III

  Interlude

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Part IV

  Interlude

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Part V

  Interlude

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Chapter Eighty-four

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  Chapter Eighty-eight

  Chapter Eighty-nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-one

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Chapter Ninety-three

  Chapter Ninety-four

  Chapter Ninety-five

  Chapter Ninety-six

  Chapter Ninety-seven

  Chapter Ninety-eight

  Chapter Ninety-nine

  Chapter One Hundred

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from Honor Among Thieves

  About the Author

  Books by David Chandler

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  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 H
ieromagus, 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, much 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.