Den of thieves

Chapter Thirty-Four

When the Seven Day Fire finally burned itself out, leaving nearly half the Free City in smoldering ruin, a great wave of religious mania ran through the people. Both Sadu and the Lady were exalted for stopping the fire, and their adherents carried their icons through the streets in endless processions. Zealots of the two faiths came to blows in the streets, and thus began a civil war that might have finished what the fire began. The Burgrave stepped in then, crushing the leadership of the Bloodgod’s mob with brutality and a lack of discrimination. When the bodies were cleared away, he declared the Lady the official tutelary of the city. In honor of this patron deity, he seized an entire neighborhood of houses where Sadu was the only god and had them pulled down. Every timber, every stick of furniture, was demolished and carted away. The people who had lived in those houses went to live with family members if they could, or to the streets if they must. The very ground where the houses had stood was cleared to bare soil, so no sign of the neighborhood would ever be found again.

Protests had been minimal. There were already plenty of martyrs with their heads on pikes up by Castle Hill, and even the most devout were loath to join their coreligionists there. Besides, the houses the Burgrave tore down had mostly been destroyed by the fire already. Yet the Burgrave’s intention was clear-he had demonstrated that the faith of the Bloodgod was no longer an accepted religion in the city. If he allowed it to be practiced at all it was strictly at his pleasure, and he could clamp down on it whenever he saw fit. He needed a monument to that intention, and the cleared ground would be the place for it.

A stone wall ten feet high had been constructed around the six acres thus reduced. There were no gates in that wall, nor any way to enter the ground inside once it was completed. All sign of human habitation was removed from what came to be known as the Ladypark. Plants and wild animals were allowed to flourish there unchecked. Rumors persisted-and were reinforced by the roars and howls that plagued the district by night-that the Burgrave had introduced some large predatory creatures to the preserve before sealing it up. It was well known that anyone who climbed over that wall, perhaps looking to steal fruit from the many trees inside the park or to poach some of the holy game, would never climb back out in one piece.

It was a dangerous place, and a sacred one. Which meant that the watch never bothered to guard it. Perfect for Malden’s needs.

The top of the wall surrounding the park made a narrow avenue winding through half of the Stink and all the way down to the common of Parkwall. Malden ran along its top, where an endless row of wrought-iron spearheads stuck up from the capstones. One slip and he’d be impaled, but Malden never slipped.

When he reached the end of the wall he squatted down and peered through the darkness. A sliver of moon lit the scene, while vapors of mist curled on the grass of the common where a few stray sheep slept on their feet. Beyond the Ladypark’s south wall a hundred yards of open ground surrounded a grand villa. Parkwall was known for its enclosed houses, which belonged to those citizens rich enough to afford mansions yet willing to live so far away from the crowded merchant neighborhood of the Golden Slope. This house was the largest of them all: a massive three story pile of white stone, busy with gables and flying buttresses. Its walls were pierced in a hundred places by broad windows of clear, smooth glass-expensive-and in the front by a twenty-foot-wide rose window of stained glass, worked with cabalistic symbols-ruinously expensive. It would look very much like a cathedral, Malden thought, had it possessed any spires.

Smaller outbuildings clustered the forecourt, while in back of the house was a broad and meticulously tended garden of topiary and fountains. The whole was surrounded not by a wall, but by a simple fence of iron bars, pointed at the top to discourage anyone from climbing over. The fence looked imposing, but Malden might have laughed at the security it provided (had he not been trying to stay quiet as a mouse). A boy, or even just a very thin man, could slip between those bars by turning sideways.

He was not a fool, of course. He knew whose house this was, and that the fence would be the least of its defenses. It belonged to Hazoth, the only sorcerer of real power in the Free City of Ness. Malden knew of the man by reputation. Growing up in the city, unruly children were often threatened with a visit from the sorcerer, and even some adults used his name as an oath. Though Hazoth was accepted as a leading citizen (the only prerequisite of that status being gold), he was a reclusive figure who only came out of his home for grand public occasions. Such a character naturally attracted his share of attention and superstition-a reputation that was worth a dozen walls and moats and palisades. Whether Hazoth was truly as powerful as the legends made him out to be, no thief with natural survival instincts would risk drawing the man’s attention.

Trespassing on the grounds of a sorcerer was reckoned a kind of self-slaughter. There was no telling what dread curse Hazoth might levy on a trespasser. He might turn your guts to water or make your eyes burst in their sockets with a simple wave of his hand. No doctor could heal that kind of injury, nor would any touch you for fear of suffering a like fate.

No, only a fool would bother Hazoth in his own home.

Even without the threat of magic, Malden had eyes in his head to see that there were armed guards patrolling the garden behind the house. They went with shining lanterns around the corners of the stables and the kitchens, looking for anyone who dared to slip through that fence.

Malden would never have approached the place in a hundred years-had he not had legitimate business there. His investigations told him this was where Bikker was to be found, and likely Cythera as well.

So he assumed that Hazoth had to be his ultimate employer. It must have been Hazoth’s orders that sent Cythera and Bikker after the crown. What in the Bloodgod’s name could a sorcerer want with it, though? Clearly it was enchanted-normal crowns didn’t talk to people. Perhaps, Malden thought, the wizard merely wanted to study the magics imbued in the simple coronet of gold. Most likely he would never know the true answer. The motivations of Hazoth’s kind would always be mysterious to the uninitiated.

The main result of Malden’s discovery was to make him all the more eager to be quit of the thing. Hand it over, collect his pay, never think of it again. It seemed the only proper course.

Of course, it would have to be done with care. Hazoth had sought to escape scrutiny, hiding his complicity in the crown’s theft behind a double layer of employees. He would not take kindly to even his own hired thief walking up to his gate with the crown in hand, not now.

Malden made his way along the wall until he was directly over the darkest part of the common. As he had expected, it was not completely deserted. A boy in a dark-colored cloak was crouched in some bushes just below the wall. He had a cudgel on the ground next to his right hand and a sloshing jug clutched close to his chest. He also had a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face, which was a bit of a giveaway.

Malden drew his bodkin, then stepped carefully over a spearpoint until he was directly above the boy’s head. The young footpad didn’t even look up. He was too busy watching the common, looking for any poor shepherd who might have come late to collect his sheep. The take would be piss-poor, but for a certain class of desperate criminal no score was beneath plucking. Even shepherds had clothing, and there were places in the city where you could sell clothes in the middle of the night where no questions would be asked.

Without a sound Malden dropped down onto the footpad’s back. The robber struggled and started to cry out, but he placed the point of his bodkin in the join between the boy’s jaw and neck.

“If I wanted to slit your throat, I’d have done it already,” Malden said. “Now, will you be quiet? I want a word.”

The boy started to nod-and stopped when he realized that doing so would impale him on Malden’s weapon. “Certainly, milord,” he sputtered out. The alcohol on his breath was enough to make Malden’s head spin. He supposed that lying-in-wait was thirsty work.

“You’ve a chance to earn some coppers tonight, lad,” Malden said, and moved his knife a fraction of an inch away from the boy’s jugular vein. “But first you must answer me a question true. Who do you work for?”

“My own self! That’s all! I swear, your honor, I’m a good fellow, I say my prayers as often as I remember, and I’ve never done anything like this before, I-”

“You don’t report back to Cutbill? He doesn’t take a share?”

The boy squirmed violently. Perhaps the lad thought he’d been sent by Cutbill to kill him for unauthorized thieving.

“That answer’s good enough,” Malden said, easing up a little more. “Now let us converse like gentlemen of fortune.”