Den of thieves

Chapter Forty-Three

Malden needed a plan, desperately. He needed some stratagem that would see him inside Hazoth’s house, where he might find the crown and escape with it to safety. He needed to do a great deal of thinking and hone his wits to a razor’s edge.

First, though, he needed to get drunk.

He could tell himself that he was looking for creativity in a cup, that the best plans were based on the kind of daring folly that came to one only when the mind was befuddled and the tongue loosed.

Mostly, though, he just needed to drink until he wasn’t afraid.

“Ale,” he said, and the barkeep obliged. Malden slid a wedge-shaped farthing across the bar and it disappeared. He did not have many left. He had chosen a particularly filthy tavern in one of the worst parts of the Stink, not for the ambience, but because it was cheap and his funds were small. The place had a few grimy windows made of the bottoms of old glass bottles stuck in plaster. Only a few beams of blue and green and brown light made their way inside. There was a bar made of an old door up on trestles, and behind that a stack of barrels with leaking bungs. There were a few tables but most of the patrons stood and drank from leather tankards and wiped the foam from their beards with their sleeves. A brawl had just been dying down when Malden entered, and one poor fool still lay knocked out on the floor. The serving wench stepped high over him every time she had to pass.

“More,” Malden said when he was done with his cup. The barkeep waited until he took another farthing from his purse and laid it on the bar.

The fear of death was nothing new to Malden. At their first meeting Cutbill had threatened him casually enough, and he stood up to the promise of death without quaking in his boots. That had been different, however. The threat was meant as a spur, to make him take the action Cutbill desired. It was understood by all parties that he retained an option, that he had a chance to save himself. That had just been good faith negotiation. There were countless other times over the years he’d been in mortal danger, and every time he’d kept good cheer and found the way through. Even in the Burgrave’s palace, when he faced instant death from the traps and the demon, he had known there was a way through if he was clever enough to find it.

Stealing from Hazoth, though, was another matter.

Bikker would slay him the moment he walked through that gate. There was an enchantment over the entire house-he had watched the footpad lifted into the air and held there like a starling impaled on the claws of a cat. There were armed guards all over Hazoth’s estate, and no diversion to draw their attention.

Worst of all, should he succeed, and find some route into the sorcerer’s inner sanctum-he would then be prey to magic.

No man was wise who flaunted wizardry. Magic was unpredictable at the best of times. Students of the arcane were more liable to blow themselves up-or drawn down bodily into the pit by angry demons-than to live long enough to ply their trade. Those who did succeed in their studies, however, became powerful. They gained access to abilities normal men could scarce imagine. And Hazoth was one of the greatest sorcerers of history.

Malden had begun to believe all the stories he’d heard about the sorcerer. There was the tale of how Hazoth drove the elves away from southern Skrae by making every tree for a hundred miles wither and die in a single night. Old men sometimes spoke of the day Hazoth wiped out an entire barbarian army almost single-handed, how a simple wave of his hand rooted the painted berserkers to where they stood so they could do nothing but rave and curse as the knights of Skrae cut them down at leisure. The stories of what Hazoth had done to men who crossed him were too gruesome for Malden to want to remember.

The sorcerer might place some dread curse on him that would make the rest of his life a living hell. Hezoth might make his skin turn inside out. He might boil his stomach inside his body, so he died shitting out parts of himself over a course of days. Or he might simply flay the flesh from his bones with a word and a wave of his hand.

“Another,” Malden said, and slapped his money on the bar. He was starting to feel the liquor in his veins. It wasn’t helping.

For distraction, he turned and studied the low-lifes in the barroom. Most of the patrons were honest enough folk-laborers in leather aprons, covered in flour or candle wax or soot from some forge. They talked loudly to each other and laughed lustily and stamped their feet when they made some jest or swore an oath. In the back of the room, near the hearth, a card game was in progress. The players looked like the kind of desperate bravos who would cut each others’ throats over a mislaid wager. They were playing in earnest, though, and were almost silent as they took turns laying down their trumps. The game they were playing was unknown to Malden, so he wandered over to observe. One of the players, a mangy fellow with an unkempt beard and a smear of dirt on his forehead, looked up and growled, but the others insisted he play his hand, and he ignored Malden after that.

The game, it turned out, could not be simpler. The cards were thin pieces of paper with hand-drawn pips on one side and nothing on their backs. They were numbered from one to ten. Each player had a hand of five cards, drawn at random from the deck. He would throw coins into the center of the table based on how high his cards ran, and the others were required to match his wager or forfeit the hand. Then the player would lay down his cards to show the table what he had. If none of the others could beat it, he took all the money. Everyone who had played would draw a new card and the cycle would begin again with the betting.

One of the players had the king’s share of the coins before him. Clearly the cards had been running his way. From the way the others glared at him, they must have been wondering how he got so lucky. He did not bother to look their way, instead pausing in his play only to drink from his cup. Bizarrely enough, he had a hollow reed stuck in his tankard, and when he wished to drink would place his lips around its end and suck up ale like water through a hosepipe.

“Are ye playing, lad, or gawkin’? ’Cause there’s a tax for gawkin’,” the lucky player said. The others guffawed, but Malden’s mouth fell open. He had been paying attention to the cards and not the faces of the players, or he would have recognized the man sooner.

“Kemper?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

A ripple of anger went around the table as each player in turn stared wide-eyed at the lucky man.

“Kemper?” the gambler with the dirty face said, rising from his stool. “I’ve heard of a cove called Kemper. A cheat, they call him.”

“Then they lie, don’t they?” Kemper told him. “Now sit back down, ye piebald cur.”

“I’ll not sit at table with a card sharp!”

“Play, or leave, ’tis all the same to me.”

“You’ve been taking my wages all day!” the gambler shouted. “Let me see those damned cards of yours. They must be marked!”

“Sit an’ play,” Kemper repeated.

Malden jumped back as the gambler grabbed up the table and hurled it aside. Coins and cards went flying as he rushed at Kemper, his belt knife suddenly in his hand. Kemper did not rise from his seat as the gambler thrust the knife again and again into his chest.

There were screams and shouts from every corner of the room, and the barkeep stormed out from his post with a hand spike, but it was already over. The gambler had gone milky white and stared at the knife in his hand. There was no blood on it. He staggered backward, and Malden saw that Kemper was unharmed, sitting with perfect composure on his stool, still holding his cards.

“Clean this up, then,” Kemper said to the gambler, “and get back t’playin’, a’ready.”

The dirty-faced gambler ran gibbering from the barroom. The others eased away from Kemper as if they’d seen a demon jump up and save him from the knife. All but one of the cardsmen, anyway, who bent down to anxiously grab up coins from the floor.

“Leave ’em,” Kemper insisted. “They’s mine. For me trouble, like.”

The greedy gamester nodded and hurried off.

“Ah, lad, yer timin’ is not of the best. Yet I’m glad to see ye, I am,” Kemper said, and finally rose from his stool. He pushed his cards in his pocket and stepped toward Malden.

“That knife-his aim was deadly serious,” Malden said. He wondered if his face showed as much shock as he felt. “Yet there’s no drop of blood on you.”

Kemper laughed. “Here, shake me hand an’ see why.” He held out a callused and scarred hand, and Malden reached to take it.

It could not be done, however. Malden’s hand passed right through Kemper’s as though it weren’t there. He felt nothing more than a cold clamminess, as if he’d tried to hold a wisp of fog. He gasped and grabbed at the man’s arms and then his hair, unbelieving. He could not touch the man at all. He might as well try to grapple with his own reflection in a mirror.

“You’re-a ghost,” Malden said.

“A livin’ ghost,” Kemper agreed. “Which’s the saddest contrary I ken.”