Den of thieves

Chapter Sixty-One

Malden spent the day drawing crude maps of the villa, showing all of its entrances and exits that he knew of, and the location of each room he and Kemper had seen. He studied them over and over with a feverish intensity. Endlessly he made corrections to them as he remembered something, as some detail that had previously seemed trivial suddenly offered new possibilities-or new hazards. His hands grew black with charcoal as he drew the maps again and again, then tore them up and made new drafts.

As confounded as he might seem to an outside observer, Malden was in his element. This was what he had been born for, he now knew. There were two kinds of thieves in the world, in his experience. There were those who turned to crime because they wanted money and they didn’t want to work for it. Those were the kind of thieves who ended up very quickly swinging from a rope. The other kind were the sort for whom a perfectly planned burglary was a labor of love-a work, in fact, of art. The planning, the considering of angles, the second-guessing of one’s own abilities and of one’s opponents’ motivations, the sudden inspirations that made the impossible seem, at least in theory, possible-these were what drew Malden to his profession, and in a way, he was quite happy poring over his maps.

Then again, perhaps he was just glad that for all of a day no one tried to kill him, or chase him across the rooftops, or threaten him with baneful sorcery. It was a nice change of pace.

The day fled, and night came all too soon. For hours he’d been thinking through every angle of his plan without bothering to rest or even eat. Now he took a pickled fish from a pot and chewed on its cold flesh without even tasting it. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “we’ll have four days until Ladymas. I’d like to get this done as quickly as possible. We don’t know what will come in the next few days. Anselm Vry might have tricks up his sleeve still. Hazoth might be aware already of our scheming, and be taking steps to forestall us. So it behooves us to get it done soon, rather than later.”

“Agreed, lad, yet ye mustn’t rush,” Kemper said. He had his deck of cards in his hands and he was rubbing each one with his thumb, which he said always brought him good luck. “That’s been the endin’ o’ more thieves. This’ll be hard enough.”

“I know,” Malden said. He scratched his head and thumped the table with his fist. “All right, let’s go through it one more time.” He pulled the map of the villa’s ground floor and the garden toward him. “The magic barrier comes this far, very close to the fence. I’ll be here, and you’ll be… here,” he said, pointing out a spot with his finger. “You can hide in these bushes. The guards relieve each other at midnight.” It had taken some dedicated spying to learn that much, but it seemed to happen the same time every night. Hazoth didn’t seem to rely overmuch on his retainers, and hadn’t trained them with military discipline. Malden had even seen one fall asleep at his post one night. It was too much to hope that they would all fall asleep at once, though. “When the night’s sentries come out from the barracks, here, the relieved guards head inside, ready to fall into their bunks and sleep. It will take some minutes for the fresh batch to reach their stations. While they’re all in front of the villa, we’ll get Cythera to lower the barrier. It will be down only for a moment, just long enough for us to run up here, to the preparatory door.”

Kemper nodded. “And where’ll yer titled friend yonder be, then?”

Malden looked over at Croy, who was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He had barely moved from the spot all day, and then only to pass water. “Him? I’m not counting on him at all. When we brought him in on this I thought he’d be useful, but I’ve seen now he’ll never be one of us. He’s wounded and can hardly run, and anyway, he makes too much noise even when he’s trying to be quiet. He did his part by helping us contact Cythera. Now that’s done. Forget him.”

“Just the twain o’ us, then,” Kemper said, sounding doubtful. “ ’Tis much work for two, in the time we got.”

“I know. We’ll just have to be fast. Once we’re inside, you’ll head to the front hall. There’s likely to be a guard inside-I’m counting on it, in fact. You’ll make yourself seen and he’ll sound the alarm, drawing the rest of the guards inside.”

“I must say I like this bit not,” Kemper grumbled.

“You have nothing to fear. None of the guards has so much as a silver boot knife that we’ve seen-and even if they do have some way to hurt you, you can just slip through the wall and be gone before they catch you.”

“Mayhap Hazoth’s got some charm ’gainst spectral folk,” Kemper said, shaking his head. “Some spell or other t’trap me.”

“Probably,” Malden admitted. “But if he’s locked up in his laboratory, or better yet, in his bedchamber-remember those cold-forged iron chains-then he’s not likely to come out just because one of the guards thought he saw a ghost. They know nothing of you, remember. It’s my face they’ve all memorized.”

“So be it,” Kemper said finally. Malden could tell the card sharp was not satisfied, but Kemper owed him-if he hadn’t freed Kemper from the Burgrave’s dungeon he would be dead now. Besides, Kemper stood to benefit from this caper in more tangible terms. Hazoth had a full set of silver plate and cutlery, which Kemper could carry out of the villa and keep for himself. Malden wanted nothing of the treasures the house contained. He would be satisfied with the reward Croy had promised him. His efforts in the villa would be all about getting the crown back.

Which led to the far more difficult phase of the plan. “It’s up to me to reach the third floor undetected. The crown is in the sanctum, at the end of this hall-Cythera told Croy as much. The hallway, we know, is full of traps. I’ll have to overcome them somehow.” Without knowing what they might be, that was a lot to presuppose. But there was no way around it. “Then I can get into the sanctum, grab the crown, and beat a very hasty retreat. The guards will all be inside looking for you, so when we exit through the garden there’ll be none there to stop us. Cythera will lower the barrier once more and we escape, both of us unscathed, me with the crown, you with all the silver you can carry. After that we split up. I’ll go to Cutbill and you’ll leave the city by means I don’t want to know about.”

“Aye,” Kemper said, and shuffled his cards distractedly. The simple motion of his hands seemed to soothe him. It made Malden want to reach over and grab them away from him, throw them across the room, even tear them up and throw the pieces out the window.

He was under a bit of strain.

There were too many variables. Too many things he couldn’t plan for. What if Hazoth took the night off from his studies? What if Cythera betrayed them? What if Anselm Vry was watching them right now, waiting for them to make a move-just so Vry could seize the crown as soon as he brought it out of the house, so that Cutbill couldn’t claim to have recovered it?

“This plan will work,” he said, trying to convince himself.

“Aye,” Kemper replied.

“It’s the best plan we’ve had so far.”

“Aye.”

“With a little luck-”

He stopped because Cythera was sitting on the sill of his open window.

“With a great deal of luck,” she said, “that plan will see you both killed very quickly. That way Hazoth won’t be able to torture you. He’s very good at that.”

It was midnight.

Four days left.