06 - Rule of Thieves Read online

  “It wasn’t much of an escape,” I said. “I spent a lot of the time traversing deserts and dueling dragons. There was also an assassin who trailed me from home and made more than one attempt on my life.”

  I watched her closely for some reaction. But if she had heard rumors of the assassin, she gave nothing away.

  I tried again. “The assassin’s name was Martyn. Before his death, he told me he was sent to dispose of me by someone here in Selbius, someone close to the Praetor. But he died before he could give the name.”

  Before she could respond, we arrived at the top of the stairs to find a door blocking our way. Undeterred by the obstacle, Lady Morwena swept her fingers along the top of the doorframe, expertly retrieving a key from its hiding place. Clearly, this wasn’t her first time to use it.

  Inserting the key in the lock, she twisted and shoved. The door swung open with a deep groan, affording a view of the dark interior of a small chamber. Morwena stepped confidently into the room, holding her candle aloft to pierce the gloom. With less enthusiasm, I followed her inside and took in the contents of the room.

  An oak table stood in the center of the space. Rough floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, crowded with ancient-looking books and scrolls, pots of dying herbs, and jars of mushrooms and other things. I thought I recognized the deadly wormroot, as well as the healing earthleaf herb among those jars.

  The fireplace was cold and dark, an empty kettle suspended over the charred remains of the last fire. A red curtain partially concealed a corner alcove where clay pots and, more startlingly, a human skull filled niches in the walls. A circular pattern was painted across the floor of the chamber, and at the heart of it was a vaguely familiar design. A star chart?

  Something about this room felt wrong. Bad.

  I shivered at the cold draft filtering through a loosely shuttered window. “What is this place?”

  Morwena stepped nearer and whispered dramatically, “We stand in a mage’s lair.”

  She watched me closely and appeared to relish my look of amazement. But she wasn’t finished yet. “This is where my cousin comes to practice the dark arts he cannot use openly. Hidden away here, he mixes his potions and concocts his spells and believes no one guesses what he does. But I know.”

  My surprise was not at the Praetor’s magery but that this woman had discovered it. To conceal my thoughts, I walked to the table and examined the objects cluttering it. An hourglass, a collection of crystal shards spread across a strip of velvet, and an opaque sphere about the size of my hand, resting in an open box.

  “How do you know the purpose of this chamber?” I asked Morwena. “It might be used for anything.”

  I picked up the glass sphere from the box and handled it gingerly, staring into its cloudy depths.

  “I think that is a seers’ showing stone in your hand,” Morwena said. “I once spied on my cousin and saw him gazing into it.”

  I put the ball down quickly, as though it had grown suddenly hot.

  Morwena continued, “I have flipped through the books on the shelves and found them filled with nonsensical words. What else could they be but magical spells?”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. “They might be ordinary books, written in another language. Old Writ, maybe.”

  She did not seem to hear me. Her face shone with excitement. “Just think. For all these years, my cousin has outlawed magickery and destroyed its practicers, while secretly possessing it himself.”

  I could have educated her on the fact that natural magickery and magery were two very different talents. A person was born with the former and could not deny it even if they wished. But the art of magery was chosen, pursued by those who craved the power that came with it. Natural magic came easily, while magery was a forcing of magic through incantation and other learned skills. Or so Hadrian had taught me.

  But I kept silent, unwilling to betray that I knew more on the subject than the average person.

  Morwena asked in a cunning tone, “Why do you suppose the Praetor would outlaw a practice he himself followed? Perhaps he wanted to be the only one?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I shoved down the bitter memory of my parent’s deaths, the penalty for my mother’s magical abilities.

  “Do you suppose this power runs in our family?”

  I started, feeling as though she had read my thoughts. But then I realized she was speaking of herself and the Praetor. As far as she knew, I was not any part of ‘our family.’

  I could not explain that my magic came from my mother, a natural like me, while the Praetor’s art was not inherited. So I changed the subject. “You don’t like your cousin very much, do you?”

  It was her turn to look surprised. “I have never especially considered the question. I do not think I have any opinion on him. Since my arrival last year, he rarely speaks to me or appears even to notice my existence.”

  “Yet you are spilling a secret that would be harmful to him.”

  “Only to you,” she said. “You cannot afford to risk his wrath any more than I, so I know you must keep silent.”

  I narrowed my eyes, suddenly suspicious. “If you don’t mean me to act on what I’ve seen, why did you show me this place?”

  She smiled innocently. “To gain your trust, of course. If you and I are to become friends, I must show that I have something of use to you. Information.”

  I didn’t know what to make of her odd notion that friendship could be so easily bought. For that matter, I couldn’t imagine why she should want my friendship at all. She kept me constantly reassessing my feelings. One moment, she seemed sly and sneaky. The next, she was harmless and a little sad.

  I cast a final look around the room. “We should probably go before we’re discovered where we don’t belong. We can’t know when the Praetor may come up here.”

  “At any time, I should think,” she said but didn’t look particularly afraid. “He’s in here nearly every night now. Or as often as he has the strength to manage the stairs. He probably hopes to find a cure among all these books of spells.”

  “Cure?” I repeated.

  “Of course,” she answered innocently. “He’s dying, you know.”

  Chapter Seven

  I stared at Morwena. “What do you mean the Praetor is dying?” I demanded sharply. “He can’t be dying. He seems perfectly healthy.”

  “Well, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I’m not the one killing him. And if he looks strong, that’s because he means everyone to think him so. But I know otherwise, and I’m not the only one.”

  I tried to make sense of her words. “You’re saying someone is behind this?”

  She drew her brows together in thought. “I don’t believe so. It seems to be an illness of natural cause.”

  “Slow poisoning?” I suggested.

  “Doubtful. He’s too devious himself to be defeated by the scheming of another. He would know who was capable of it, because it’s exactly the sort of thing he would do were their places reversed.”

  My heart was beating fast as I wrestled with the new information. Was it really true or just an exaggerated piece of gossip?

  A sudden thud made us both jump. It was only the door being pulled closed by a draft from the window. But the interruption reminded me we could be walked in on at any moment. I sensed no approaching presence, but that could change soon enough.

  “It’s time to leave,” I said. “Quickly.”

  ____________________

  Back in my room, I thought over my conversation with Lady Morwena. We had parted at the foot of the tower room stairs, and I’d had no chance to question her further. Besides, my feelings were confused and I was impatient to be alone. I couldn’t work out my thoughts under the watchful eyes of the Praetor’s ward.

  Now, as I slid beneath the covers of my soft bed, I realized what I felt at the news of the Praetor’s impending death. Disappointment. The man had been my lifelong foe and destroyed much of what I loved. Even after coming into hi
s service, a part of me had always thought one day I would find a way to escape my oaths. And then I would be free to pursue revenge. I had long enjoyed that thought.

  But just now, there was another, quieter thought I liked less. Praetor Tarius was my enemy, but he was also my uncle, the brother of my father, and an important figure in my life for as long as I could remember. Was there a secret part of me that wanted him to recognize that? Much as I had craved Rideon’s approval as a child?

  Angrily, I rejected the idea and rolled over to go to sleep. But rest would not come. After a few minutes of tossing and turning, I gave up my bed and dragged the blankets into the floor, where I settled in front of the fireplace. The fire, which must have been lit by some servant while I was out to dinner, had died down to embers and offered little warmth. But the firmness of the floor was an improvement to the unfamiliar bed. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself in Dimmingwood.

  ____________________

  I was not in the forest but in a desert canyon. The ground was a mixture of sand and shale, and a towering wall of rock rose to one side, mirrored by a similar cliff opposite. Someone was hunting me, someone who wanted to kill me with my own bow. I scrambled up a pile of rocks to escape and lie in wait, my heartbeat thundering in my ears and sweat tricking down my neck. When my enemy, a black-cloaked assassin, appeared, I pounced.

  Only he wasn’t my enemy anymore. When I had knocked him to the ground, I found it was the familiar face of Brig I was looking down at. And he was dying, pierced by a bone-tipped dragon wing. Which was strange, because there was no dragon in sight. Only Brig and me.

  I knelt at his side and took his hand, my throat aching with unshed tears. He suddenly grew younger before my eyes, the rough features of Brig, reshaping into the similar yet different face of his son, Martyn.

  “I have traded my life for yours,” he gasped. “Repay me. My young brother Jarrod. Look after him.”

  I nodded dumbly, although I had no notion where to find this Jarrod or what all my promise entailed.

  Martyn gazed past me, and I felt his life slip away.

  My vision shifted. Martyn and the desert cliffs were gone. I was in a new place now, a place I had never seen. But I knew somehow that I was seeing the present this time, not the past. I was in a green leafy clearing, where a swollen stream rushed by. On the bank of the stream sat a house, a mill with a waterwheel, and a collection of storage buildings.

  A sudden cry of pain came from the direction of the house. I crept up to the nearest wall and peeked through a window.

  ____________________

  I awoke to sunlight streaming in through the high slit-like window of my bedchamber. It took me a moment to remember where I was and why I was sleeping on the floor. The visions had seemed so real it was hard to believe they were only dreams.

  I fingered the dragon scale lying cool against my skin. The visions had been growing stronger and more frequent these past few months. Their only pattern was that they came to me in times of need. I was unable to control them. Was it something about the augmenter that was increasing their frequency, as I had suggested to Hadrian? They had not been like this before I acquired the dragon scale.

  I sat up in my blankets, slipped the augmenter and its chain over my head, and laid them aside. Then I tried to flex my magic skills unaided. Somewhere within me, there was a deep pool of power if I could only reach it. My magic had been all but burnt out last year after my battle with the Skeltai shaman. It lay dormant, but I could still feel it at odd times. I sensed it now, lingering like a fragrance in the air or a wisp of smoke carried on the breeze. It was a tenuous connection, frustratingly distant. I reached for it now, but it was no good. Without the dragon scale, I could not access my powers.

  I gave up my efforts, put the necklace back on, and dressed. No one had come to my room to summon me to breakfast, and I didn’t go looking for any now. My mind was too full of last night’s visions and the sense of urgency they had created in me to care for anything else.

  I walked the corridors, let myself out of the keep and into the courtyard. No one stopped me although I half expected the servants or the occasional guards I passed at their posts to try. The Praetor had instructed me to stay on the premises. But I chose to believe the order extended to the whole city, not only to the castle.

  So I passed through the gates and down the street, heading toward the market district and the East Bridge. There I asked around Fleet’s usual haunts to discover his whereabouts.

  One tavernkeeper chewed his mustache in annoyance, telling me, “According to rumor, you might find him hiding in the under-levels. And if you do, tell him I’m still waitin’ to see a single coin of the money he owes me.”

  He didn’t threaten to send the authorities after Fleet if the street thief failed to pay up. Which was as well, because such a threat would be doomed to be an empty one. The city guard were generally reluctant to poke the rat’s nest that was the criminal refuge of the city.

  I wondered what Fleet was doing down there. He sometimes conducted business with the inhabitants of that shadowy world, but the tavernkeeper spoke as though he had taken up residence.

  In the beggar’s quarter of the Common district, I entered the under-levels through a sewer grate. The steps spiraling downward were dark, lit only by occasional glimmer-stones cemented into the walls. But that did not matter as I knew the way well, having been forced to hide in this place when I first arrived in the city.

  The levels were a maze of stone and clay tunnels and caverns, spreading like long-reaching roots beneath the cleaner, brighter streets of the city above. Built as part of a sprawling drainage system, they had been abandoned, unfinished, long ago. Now they were a shelter for those who had no place better to go. Beggars and rats and anyone who preferred to avoid the light of day or the eye of the city guard.

  As I ascended into the still world below, the air grew foul and stifling. There was no cooling breeze here. No comforting sunlight to banish the dusk-like shadows that remained the same, night or day. There was only the unnatural greenish glow cast by the eerie glimmer-stones.

  At the end of the steps, I arrived at a large open cavern with offshooting tunnels branching in all directions. In this area, inhabitants had raised whatever meager shelters they could to give themselves a measure of privacy from the eyes of their neighbors. Torn screens, odd bits of lumber, and blankets strung out on lines became walls, marking where one hovel ended and the next began. Many of these sorry structures leaned against one another for support or were so closely situated that it was difficult to pick my way between them.

  Under-dwellers lacking even makeshift homes sat or sprawled out in the open, some of them wrapped in tattered blankets or huddled on piles of filthy straw as if they did not care that the night had passed and it was now midmorning. Over the low hum of their voices and the occasional wail of a fussy infant, persistent coughing noises rose from all parts of the room. Many here were ill. Probably contagiously so. I made my way through the beggars, the diseased, and the lame, scanning the big room for any sign of Fleet.

  I had not gotten far when a hand shot out, clutching my leg and stopping me in my tracks. I half drew one of my knives before realizing the person grabbing at me was only a harmless old man with a white head and stooped shoulders.

  “Spare a few coppers for an ancient soul not long for this world?” he implored me.

  I fished a handful of coins from my purse but didn’t give them over right away. “I’m looking for someone. A street thief and gambler by the name of Fleet.”

  Snatching the money eagerly from my hand, the old beggar pointed a bony finger toward the back of the cavern.

  I continued on in that direction until I arrived at a good-sized tent constructed of sailcloth draped over wooden beams. Leave it to Fleet to have managed to steal or otherwise procure the roomiest and sturdiest hovel in the place.

  There was no question of knocking at an entrance that had no door, so I merely parted th
e curtain at the front and stepped silently inside. In the golden lamplit interior, I was met with the sight of a dark-haired male figure standing with his back to me as he examined his reflection in a long and cracked-looking glass.

  Amused, I watched him fuss with his hair and coat until I cleared my throat to announce my presence. “If you’re trying to beautify yourself,” I said, “your efforts are wasted in this place. A fistful of coppers or a three-day-old chicken leg would be a sweeter sight to the poor women down here.”

  Fleet started at my sudden appearance but recovered with admirable speed. “Just because I rate no higher than a maggoty chicken doesn’t mean I have to look like one.”

  He straightened the decorative collar at his throat as meticulously as if it were pristine lace, not frayed or yellow by sweat stains. “I’ve been wondering when you would look me up again. I have news for you, and I’ve put myself through a lot of risk to get it.”

  He had my full attention. “What sort of news? Is it what I asked you for earlier?”

  “Your concern is touching,” he mocked. “Yes, I did escape all dangers. Thank you for asking.”

  “Very well.” I apologized impatiently. “Tell me all about the troubles you went through. Spare no detail. But then get to the part where you answer my questions.”

  “To tell the truth, it’s all mixed up together,” he admitted. “After our last meeting, I went digging for information on who might be behind your almost assassination. I talked with a bribable contact within the city guard who talked to another guardsman who heard from the captain of the guard—”

  “How long does this chain of informants go on?” I interrupted. “Because I’ve only got the one lifetime.”

  “I’m getting to the point. Word from the top has it that an unnamed someone has, or had, offered a hefty reward for the capture of a person meeting your description. Or at least your old description, before you did this to yourself.” He waved a disapproving hand at my new clothing and dyed hair.