A Thief in the Night

Chapter Sixty-nine

Croy barely noticed the brass lift. It was magical in nature, of course-some kind of invisible spirit of the air carried the cage on its back, he imagined, its labors spurred on by the simple ritual of pulling on a chain-and therefore of little interest to him. He was far more intent on finding Cythera. Balint had given him some veiled hints that he might not like what he found, but he had to see for himself.

In the foundry level, he lifted his candle high and stared at a sticky black stain that spread across the floor. It couldn’t be blood. He was certain of that much. It wasn’t Cythera’s blood.

It couldn’t be.

He registered the threads hung from the walls and the various pry bars scattered outside the door of some vault of treasures. He saw the piles of scrap metal and the incomprehensible machinery of dwarven manufacture. The odds and ends strewn from torn-open knapsacks. These things meant nothing. The black stain, well, it meant nothing as well. It couldn’t be blood.

He knew, with a perfect certainty, that it was not Cythera’s blood.

“Show me what we came here for, Balint,” he said, growing impatient. Clearly Cythera wasn’t here. He needed to find her as soon as possible, before she ran afoul of the elves. That was what was important.

The knocker ran around the room in circles, tapping at the floor, the walls, the trash strewn across the flagstones. Balint turned to face Croy. “Smells like someone’s guts exploded, doesn’t it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “Look, my blueling found something. What’s this?”

The knocker had found a knife tossed haphazardly into one corner of the room. Croy took it from the diminutive creature and recognized it instantly. It was Malden’s little bodkin. Little more than a belt knife, but the thief treasured it.

“I see no sign of Acidtongue,” Morget announced. The barbarian sifted through some other detritus. It looked like Malden’s pack had been rifled and its contents discarded when they failed to prove valuable. “The elves must have taken the blade.”

“They must have gone through your friends’ belongings, taking what they counted valuable, discarding the trash. Now, what’s this?” Balint said as the knocker handed her more objects. “Ah, this is a little hammer. This must have belonged to your Slag.” She held it out toward Croy. He glanced at it. Shrugged.

“Something else, maybe,” Balint said. She sent the knocker forth again and it returned with a small piece of worked horn. Croy thought he might recognize it, but he didn’t look very closely.

“Ah,” Balint said. “Now, what have we here? A lady’s comb.”

Croy grabbed it from her.

For a while he didn’t look at it. He couldn’t.

“It must have belonged to the thief’s bit of tail.”

Croy’s hand ached and he realized he was crushing the comb. Its tines dug into his palm until one of them snapped off. He forced his fingers to relax. “You won’t speak of Cythera like that again,” he told Balint. “She is my betrothed.”

The dwarf looked confused. “Really? I could have sworn she was spreading her legs for the craven.”

“You… were wrong,” Croy said, his teeth grinding together. She had made a mistake, that was all.

Just like she was mistaken in thinking Cythera was dead.

“Your woman, eh?” Balint asked. There was a gleam in her eye Croy did not care for at all. “I’m sorry, then. This must be very hard for you, knowing the elves got to her. Took her here.”

“There are no bodies in this room,” he said. “No blood either. That stain… is not blood,” he insisted.

“You saw what the porridge monster did to my Murin,” Balint told him. “They eat our dead, and leave no bodies behind.”

“Perhaps,” Croy said, squeezing his eyes shut at the thought. “But-”

When he opened his eyes again, Balint was staring at him expectantly. Across the room Morget watched him with the dead, emotionless eyes of a hunter.

“Yes?” Balint said.

“What? What, blast you?”

Balint rubbed at her furry upper lip. “You said ‘but’ as if you had some point to make. But then you said nothing more.”

“There was nothing more to say. Cythera is not here. We should go. We should go and find her, wherever she is.”

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Balint told him, sounding almost compassionate. “It might be easier to deny that it happened.”

“There’s no need to deny anything. I’ll admit it looks like Cythera was here at some point,” Croy said, trying to stay calm. He needed to think this through. He needed to think, period. It was hard when a little voice in the back of his head wouldn’t stop screaming in terror. “Cythera, and Slag, and-and Malden. And clearly they were surprised by-by something. Something that searched their packs. Beyond that-”

“It was elves. You know it was,” Balint said.

Morget nodded. “Revenants wouldn’t have searched their things. Nor would the demons.”

“And you know the elves, at least by reputation,” Balint went on. “You know what all the stories say they used to do to their human captives.”

“Be silent!” Croy thundered. Then he calmed himself. Forced his passions to cool themselves. “Please.”

“I don’t think there’s two ways to read this,” Balint said. “I’m sorry, but you must see it, too. The elves slew your woman. Your beloved.”

Croy wished she would let him think. “You can’t know that. You can’t know for sure that she’s dead-”

“Tell me, human. If the elf who butchered her was standing right here, right now, would you hail him and say, ‘Well met’? Or would you stick your sword so far down his throat it would come out brown on the other end?”

“That sounds reasonable,” Morget pointed out.

“Cythera isn’t dead,” Croy insisted. He could feel the blood burning under his skin. “She lives, still. I would know somehow, I would feel it in my bones if she had perished. The love we share is so strong that I am bound to Cythera by holy chains. It was my sacred duty to protect her. If I had failed her so thoroughly, the Lady would strike me down with lightning out of heaven.”

“Maybe She’s just waiting till you’re outside,” Balint interrupted. “Hard to throw a levinbolt through a hundred feet of solid rock.”

“My soul would have shriveled inside me,” Croy stated. “My heart would have broken. I would feel-”

“The world doesn’t work that way,” Morget growled.

“I would feel-something.”

But he did feel something, didn’t he? He felt doubt. For the first time since they’d been separated, he truly doubted that Cythera was still alive.

“I feel-I feel-”

“These are elves we’re talking about,” Balint said. “They probably had her sixteen different ways before they let her die.”

He knew he was being goaded. He knew she was manipulating him. It didn’t stop him from feeling the guilt. Guilt, for letting Cythera come to this haunted place at all. Guilt for not protecting her better. Guilt for leaving her side, even for an instant.

“I-feel-”

“Do you think she was the kind to scream when they tortured her, or would she not give them that satisfaction?” Balint asked.

“I-”

But Croy couldn’t finish the thought. His vision went red. His sword jumped from its sheath and he slashed at the air in front of him, not caring what he struck, only needing, desperately, to cut and thrust and stab anything that was in front of him. For Cythera, he howled in his head. For Cythera. For Cythera.

“That’s the spirit,” Balint said, with a nasty laugh.

He could barely hear her over the roaring of the blood in his ears.

“What do you want from me?” he demanded. “Why do you torture me like this?”

“I want revenge,” Balint told him. “Against the arseholes who killed Murin and Slurri. I might need your help to get it. So I’m asking. Do we team up and get our revenge? I aim to pull their giblets out their arses and strangle them with their own guts. What say you?”

“I say yessss,” Croy hissed.

“And you, Morget?” Balint asked. “You have no reason to love me. But will you help?”

“This design of yours, to slaughter elves. Does that extend to their pets as well? Their demons?”

“Of course,” Balint told the barbarian.

“Then my axe is yours,” Morget told her.