Den of thieves

Chapter Ninety-Nine

Coruth, her own arm fully healed now, muttered to herself as she mixed herbs together in a stone mortar, then ground them together with a copper pestle. She sang a little song as she painted the resulting foul concoction across Croy’s broken ribs and the acid wounds on his arms. Whenever he tried to speak, she shushed him severely. Throughout it all, Cythera sat by his side, smiling, her face unbesmirched by sorcery. Her eyes glittered with mischief to see him almost naked in the bed, only his nethers hidden by a cloth.

If you had to lie abed for weeks and heal what should have been mortal injuries, Malden supposed you could pick few finer places to do it. Croy had been moved just across the Ladypark Common to the house of his friend, the rich merchant. There was no secrecy about the move, and had the Burgrave wished to seize Croy (for violating the terms of his banishment, if nothing else), little resistance would have been offered. Yet in the six days since Ladymas, no one showed up at the door with a writ of arrest.

It was possible that the Burgrave was only afraid this would displease Coruth. With Hazoth gone, the witch was now the most powerful user of magic in the Free City. Already old clients and new were showing up daily to ask if they might consult with her, but she refused all comers. She had much to do, she said, and once Croy was healed, there would be quite a reckoning of accounts. More than one powerful personage in the city had begun making discreet inquiries, looking to hire any magicians capable of deflecting curses.

When the witch finished her ministrations for the day, she went to the window and flew off as a flock of blackbirds again. No one knew where she went, and there was no way to follow her. Even Cythera could only shrug when asked. “Perhaps she goes to fetch medicinal herbs. Or maybe to spy on the city, and learn how it has changed in her absence. She has never kept counsel with me, even before Hazoth imprisoned her.”

“Milady,” Malden said, “you’ll forgive me if I say you have a strange family.”

Cythera smiled knowingly. “We can’t all come from noble lineages full of great heroes and comely ladies,” she said, glancing at Croy.

The knight was too busy to notice what she said. He was scrawling something on a parchment with a quill pen. “Here, Malden. Your prize. As promised.”

The thief took the paper he offered and studied it. When Croy had first come to him, looking for his help in freeing Cythera and Coruth, Malden’s first instinct had been to sweat the knight for gold. Then it occurred to him that Croy had something else in his possession, something of infinitely more use to him. The scrap of paper in his hand was what he had asked for in lieu of money. It was a grant of land, in the amount of one eighth part of an acre, in the northern part of the kingdom near the fortress of Helstrow. A very small piece of Croy’s ancestral lands. It named Malden as its new owner.

“Is it a pleasant spot?” Malden asked now.

“A rocky field, completely useless for cultivation. It overlooks a dismal bog, and in the summer it is swarmed with flies. May you find much happiness there.”

Malden laughed out loud, long and heartily. “Maybe I’ll never see it. It matters not. Croy, for this-for everything. I thank you.”

Cythera looked confused. “What would a thief want with a desolate patch of ground, not even large enough to put a house on?”

“Freedom,” Malden said. “With this parchment, I am a man of property. It makes me a landowner-with the full rights thereunto pertaining. I can go anywhere now. I can leave the city walls and not be enslaved. Here in Ness I can go to the moothall whenever I choose, and stand before the masters of all the guilds, and demand my right to speak. I could even go to Helstrow and request an audience with the king.”

“Do you want to do any of those things?”

“No!” Malden laughed. “None of them. But the power to do them-the right to do them-means I am no more a prisoner in the place where I was born. It means I’m free! I imagine you can appreciate that.”

“Oh, yes,” Cythera said, her eyes far away.

Malden kissed the paper. “My heart’s desire. One of them, anyway.”

Cythera favored him with a warning smile. Then she looked down at Croy’s scarred leg. “You should rest,” she told the knight. “Mother says if you don’t sleep twice as much as normal, the treatments will be inefficacious.”

“You are my lady, and I obey your command,” the knight said. He closed his eyes and in moments began to snore.

Malden shook his head. “Like an infant, he sleeps.”

“He believes that he has done a man’s work,” Cythera whispered. “He sleeps like the just. Come with me, Malden. I wish to speak with you.”

The two of them headed out onto the room’s balcony. It looked out over the remains of Hazoth’s villa. There wasn’t much left but a pile of ashes and a few scraps of useless lumber-the people of Ness had taken away everything of value, and their definition of value was quite broad.

“Tell me,” Cythera said when they were alone, “what reward has Kemper claimed?”

“I had Slag make him a new deck of cards,” Malden said.

She frowned. “But with his curse-the only way he could even hold the old deck was because it was so immured with his own essence. He had possessed those cards so long they had become parcel with his being.”

Malden nodded. “Aye. So the new deck had to be special. They’re made out of pure silver, beaten thin and etched with vitriol for the pips. They’re probably worth more than most of the stakes he plays for, but he can hold them easily, and even slip them up his sleeves or down his tunic.”

Cythera smiled. “And Gurrh, the ogre? What price did he charge you?”

“None at all. He wished only to serve the Burgrave. If every man had the nobility of that ogre in his heart, we would all live in Croy’s world.”

Cythera leaned out over the balcony. “Then it seems we all have been repaid for our trouble, and each of us came out of this nightmare better than when we began, and all unscathed.”

“All but one,” Malden said, his brow furrowing. “I did something, Cythera, that I am not proud of. I took away a man’s freedom. It’s the greatest sin I know.”

“You mean Ommen Tarness?” she asked. “He was a simpleton. And anyway-you saved his life. Had he appeared before the procession in his natural state, Vry would have had him killed afterward.”

“I know,” Malden said. That wasn’t the point, though. In the last moments before the crown was returned, Ommen had said something that struck Malden to the core. He was getting smarter, he claimed. The imbecility was wearing off. He had not been born mindless-only the crown stole his wits, and without it he was becoming himself again. And he had stopped that process before it could properly begin.

But that was his burden to bear. He decided not to share it with Cythera.

After all, there was one other thing to discuss.

“Come away with me,” he said without warning.

She turned around very fast as he put an arm around her waist. He leaned forward and kissed her. Hard.

“I don’t have to stay here anymore,” he said. “I can travel the world. Come with me, and be my wife.”

Cythera glanced into the room, toward where Croy lay in bed.

“Forget him. You broke off your betrothal already.”

“Not in so many words.”

Malden grimaced. “I was the one who freed your mother. Not him.”

“And you think that means I must marry you now?” she asked. “That’s how the stories end, isn’t it? The hero slays the dragon, and the damsel throws herself into his embrace. Who lives in old stories now, Malden? Isn’t that something you always despised about Croy? This is the real world.”

“And here, now, I love you,” he told her.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and for a moment he thought she would say it in return. Then she leaned her head against his chest. “Malden, you’re a thief. A man of property now, but still-a thief. You must understand-you have to understand-that people in the real world do what they must to survive. To make their lives better.”

“And that means you will stay with him,” Malden said.

“You have a strip of land unfit for human habitation. He has a castle. Servants and retainers. A title. My children will have all those things, too. Do you understand why that matters? Look at my life. Look what my parents gave me. Can you accept that I would do anything not to pass on that inheritance?”

Malden let her go. He strode to the far end of the balcony and looked uphill, toward the palace. All around him the city lay in its unalterable tiers, with the poorest people at the bottom and the rich up top. So it would ever be.

She started to go back inside, to the sickroom. He stopped her by calling her name.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“What a silly question,” she said, and then went inside.