Den of thieves

Chapter Forty-Nine

Hazoth rose from his chair and went over to one of his bookshelves. He ran his finger along a number of spines before selecting a slim volume and pulling it free. “It was good of you to come here and give me your warning, boy. However little it was needed. Do you have anything else to say before you leave? You may speak.”

Malden bit his lip. Circumspection was everything now. “I can only plead with you then, Magus. Beg, if I must. I’m in a great deal of trouble, trouble I earned in your service. Does that not entitle me to some consideration? It would be a trifle for you to offer me some protection under your roof. If nothing else I could come work for you, in whatever capacity you saw fit.”

“A job? You want a job? But you already had one, dear boy. If there were risks involved, you knew them when you took it. Or perhaps you will claim you didn’t understand the magnitude of your crime. Well, considering your limited resources, I suppose that’s understandable. Come here.”

Malden’s legs started walking toward the sorcerer before he thought to move them. He’d had every intention of doing as he was bid, but it seemed the sorcerer wanted to compel him anyway. When he was standing only a few feet away-inside knife range, he thought bitterly-his legs stopped and froze in place.

Hazoth gestured with the book he held in his hands. “If I needed a table boy, or someone to muck out my stables, I could have you with a thought. I could render you mindless and servile. Bind you to my service for the remainder of your life, and do it in such a way you would be unutterably happy, thrilled every morning to rise from your pile of straw and spend another day working for me until your fingers bled. If I wanted that, it would already have begun.”

Malden swallowed carefully. His heart was racing.

“Such a waste that would be, though. You can read. Do you understand how rare that is? Reading is the difference, the mark, of a being capable of thinking beyond its own petty concerns. It is the one thing that truly separates humanity from the beasts. Somehow you have managed the art, and like a trained dog that can count with its paws, you amuse me. So no, I won’t give you a job. Or my protection. But you may have this instead: the greatest treasure I can convey, or at least the greatest that you will be able to comprehend.” Hazoth pressed the book into Malden’s hands.

It was bound in calf’s leather and was duodecimo in size. Gold characters were printed on the spine but in an alphabet Malden did not know.

“Read it at your leisure. I’m sure you’ll find it most edifying.” Hazoth smiled, revealing a double row of perfect white teeth. “You may thank me.”

“Thank you, Magus,” Malden said.

“It is nothing. Now. Cythera-perhaps you will see our little friend out. Take him the back way, so no one sees him leave. I have no doubt Vry is already watching this house and saw him enter. Or,” Hazoth said, turning his frigid eyes on Malden, “did you not consider that when you came?”

Malden had not been told to speak, so he held his peace.

“Come,” Cythera said, and headed toward a door at the far side of the library from which they’d entered. Malden glanced over his shoulder on the way out and saw that Hazoth was no longer in the room.

“A neat trick,” he said as she led him down a side corridor. “This vanishing and appearing. You know it as well,” he added, remembering how he’d first met her, when she appeared out of thin air on the roof of the university cloister.

“A simple one, once it’s mastered. Mostly it is a matter of misdirection. Of moving when no one is looking.” She pushed open a wide set of doors and brought him into the villa’s dining room. Its walls were of carved oak, and the table could seat sixteen in spacious comfort. The chairs were pushed up against the walls-they were carved of some glossy wood in intricate patterns and looked far too delicate to support the weight of a human being. The table itself was a slab of marble three inches thick. Something about it demanded Malden’s attention. When he looked closer, he saw it had no legs. The slab simply floated in the air, perfectly motionless. He couldn’t resist the urge to push down on one edge, but the table easily resisted any force he put on it. Cythera sighed in frustration and pointed toward the door. “Leave that be, Malden. You must go now, and quickly, before he changes his mind. He is known to be capricious.”

“Oh? You think he’ll take his book back?” Malden asked.

“He has decided to let you live for today. I’m worried he’ll rethink that choice.”

At the back of the dining room was a small preparatory, where food brought in from the kitchens could be arranged on platters before going to table. The preparatory had a single high window that was open to catch the breeze. It didn’t look like it could be locked.

“You’re concerned for me,” Malden said as she opened the doors to the garden. “I’m touched.” He blinked in the sudden rush of sunlight when she led him out onto a gravel path.

She turned to face him, her face an impassive mask. “I don’t like to see people hurt. It gives me no pleasure. In that way, I am different from him. But don’t count on that fellow feeling for too much.”

He sketched a simple bow as they hurried along, and made a show of stumbling so that his foot kicked a spray of gravel against the side of the villa with an annoying rattle. They were passing the kitchens, which were housed in their own outbuilding. That way if they caught fire they would not burn the main house.

“Do you find me handsome?” he asked, with a grin on his face.

“I find you brazen. If you think I’m going to swoon over your looks, or give you my kerchief to tie around your lance, you’re fishing in the wrong pond.”

“Ah-but you smile when you see me. You admire my courage. You like me, I can tell. Well, working for that sort, I can understand why you’d turn your affections toward gutter trash. We’re easier on the heart.”

She stopped in the middle of the path and turned to face him directly.

“After today, I will never see you again. So it really doesn’t matter if I care for you or despise you, does it?”

Malden stretched his hands out at his sides. “Life is long, and the city is not so big. Only a fool says ‘ever’ or ‘never.’ ”

“Then think me a fool.” She moved her hands through the air, and it felt like a cloud passed through Malden’s body and was gone. “There. The barrier is down. Go, and do not return.”

She held out one arm and pointed toward the gate. But he didn’t move. Not until she looked at him, as if to see what was the matter with him and why he didn’t flee.

He caught her eye, though she tried to look away. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but he held her gaze until she stared back at him defiantly. Still he looked into her eyes, the only part of her he could see that was not covered in the images of sorcery. He held her gaze until something behind her eyes softened, if only for a moment. Softened, and looked back into his eyes, and did not flinch away.

“Just as I thought,” he said. Then he touched his forehead in salute and left without awaiting a reply.

The back garden gate brought him out a hundred yards from the towering Parkwall, which cut off the sun and left him in deep shade. He hurried along the wall’s length until the houses surrounding the common swallowed him up again, and only then did he allow himself to relax. As long as he had been in sight of the house he was certain he was still being observed. Once he was in the Stink proper, though, he headed toward a tavern several streets away and immediately headed into a private room in the back. A serving boy brought a flagon of small beer and some sausages when he called for them, then left him alone. Malden sat back in a chair to wait.

It was only a moment before Kemper walked through the wall and sat down next to him. “How went it, lad?”

“Like a charm,” Malden told him. “They let me in with barely a question, and Cyth-that is, his servant-showed me half the house without meaning to. I even offered to come and work there, though I was rebuffed.”

“A job! Y’asked fer a job!”

“Of course,” Malden said. “Think on it-after a day inside those walls, I would have learned more than I can studying it from the outside for a month.”

Kemper laughed heartily. “A bolder scalliwag I ne’er yet met. Ye’ve cased the premises, and him none the wiser, ha ha!”

“He even gave me a book,” Malden said, and reached inside his tunic to bring it out. “I can’t read the title, but it must be worth a fair handful of silver.” He examined the small volume and admired the snug binding, the gilt lettering on the spine. He put a thumb inside the cover and started to open it, intending only to look and see if the contents were in the same alphabet as the title.

“He just gave it t’ye?” Kemper asked, his eyes suddenly suspicious.

“Well, yes,” Malden said. “He was so impressed by- Blast!” He dropped the book to the table, where it fell open, facedown. A tiny droplet of blood welled up on his thumb. “I cut myself on the paper,” he said. A second drop appeared on his flesh, and he stared at the wound. It didn’t look like a paper cut. It looked like a rat bite.

“Lad,” Kemper said, jumping away from the table. “Lad!”

The book was crawling across the table. It arched its back-its spine-and pushed itself along the scarred wood with its pages like a slug. It was headed for a sausage on a plate and left a trail of drool or slime behind it as it moved.

“He tried to kill me,” Malden exclaimed, jumping out of his chair. “I went in there to give him a friendly warning, and he tried to kill me.” He watched the book move for a moment, fascinated by its silent slithering. Then he drew his bodkin and brought the point down hard through the cover of the book. The thing flapped and shook for a moment, then a trickle of black ink ran out from underneath its dead pages.

Kemper stood as far from the table as he could get, and refused to come back.

“It’s all right,” Malden said. “I think it’s dead now.”

Kemper shook his head in distaste. “I’m glad I never larnt t’read,” he said.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Malden said as he cut a slice of the sausage and popped it in his mouth. He kept one eye on the predatory book, not unafraid it would rise again and come for him once more. “Before, I had nothing against the sorcerer. I was only going to break into his house because I had to.”

“An’ now?” Kemper asked.

“Now I’ll be happy to take this bastard down a peg. Kemper, tell me-how did you make out? When the barrier spell came down, did you get inside?”

“Aye, son, aye,” Kemper said. “An’ none as saw me either. Let me tell ye what I found.”