Honor among thieves

Chapter Sixty

Coruth did not wait to hear if he would follow. She walked across the square and turned herself into a bird.

He’d seen that trick before, but it still made him uneasy. She did not flap her arms, or say a spell, or even shrink in size that he could see. It was like she walked into a shadow and walked out of it with wings and a beak. Then she stretched her new wings and shot up onto the roofbeam of a house, and there waited for him to follow.

Malden climbed the house easily. The shingles of the roof were painted with moonlight and a tinge of red. He didn’t know where that light came from. Coruth didn’t say a word. She just fluttered across the street to the house across the way and sat on a roof there, pecking at her side with her beak as if digging out a mite.

Malden shook his head. He had to follow her, of course. He’d learned enough about witchcraft to know it was unwise to disobey a witch. He ran across the roof, flat-footed to keep his balance, and leapt to the next house. Just in time to see Coruth take to the air and fly on.

He followed her like that halfway across the city. The roofs in this part of the Stink were steeply pitched but all of roughly the same height. It was nothing he had not done a thousand times before to move quickly and silently across that elevated sea of shingles and waterspouts. He swung along the gargoyles of a church. Leapt from a chimney pot to catch a balcony with his hands, and in one easy motion swung himself up to the second floor of a bakery. Eventually Coruth ran out of perches when they came to the Woolcarder’s Bridge. Malden dropped to street level and crossed the bridge even before Coruth could leap into the air again. He knew now where she was leading him.

The Stink gave way to the Golden Slope, the district of mansions once held by the rich merchants of Ness. From the rooftops there was little to mark the change of neighborhood, except that the shingles in the Slope tended not to shift or crack when he landed on them with his full weight. Up ahead, though, lay the Spires, where all the buildings were made of stone, and many had lead-lined roofs to keep out the rain. Still Malden followed, clambering across the many-gabled dome of the counting house until he came to where he could look down on Market Square-and beyond, the wall of Castle Hill.

Now he saw the source of the reddish light. The square was full of firebrands, held aloft by a screaming mob. The crowd had lost none of its rage. The gate leading into Castle Hill was sealed shut, but men who had never lifted a hand in anger before in their entire lives were rushing forward to pile firewood against the gate. Others cracked open casks of lamp oil and splashed it on the wood, on the gate, much of it on themselves.

Clearly the mob intended to burn down the gate and storm the palace.

Up on the wall, a handful of watchmen attempted to repel the invaders. They had bows and were firing recklessly into the crowd, perhaps too afraid to even pick proper targets. Every time an old woman or a one-legged beggar was pierced, the crowd’s howling grew in volume and intensity. The halfhearted defense served only to further incite the crowd.

Malden had never seen anything like it. Always in his experience the people of Ness backed down at the slightest show of force. There had never been a time when the people truly loved the Burgrave, but always they had respected his authority-authority backed up with the point of a sword, or a line of halberdiers wearing cloaks-of-eyes. He had seen plenty of riots in Ness-plenty of moments when the people started picking up cobblestones to throw at their betters. Always before, a man with a sword and a plume on his helmet had taken control of the situation and calmed everything down. Always before, the unrest had been quelled before it could really get started.

This was different. This was outright rebellion.

“You see the power of belief,” Coruth said. She sat atop the dome in her human form again, as if she had climbed down out of the sky in search of a comfortable seat. “Perhaps you made a mistake, Malden, when you took sides with a god.”

“Pritchard Hood used religion against me-I thought only to fight back with the same weapon.”

“It worked.”

The crowd never faltered, even as the watchmen dropped stones over the wall to crush the attackers, as they called for more arrows, even as they tried to reason with the people. No matter what they tried, the defenders failed to keep the mob from lighting their bonfire. The flames licked high at the wall, scorching the stones. The wooden gate held against the conflagration, but it couldn’t stand up to that heat forever.

The archers stopped firing. The watchmen started hauling buckets of water up the wall to douse the flames, though this seemed to achieve nothing but to create great clouds of silvery steam. The watchmen were joined by palace servants and a few guards in green cloaks. The Burgrave had left precious few men behind when he rode out of the city, and now there were not enough for the task at hand.

“You need,” Coruth said, “to start thinking what you’ll do with this new power you possess.”

“Power? Me? I have never felt more helpless in my life,” Malden insisted.

Coruth laughed. “That’s one of the first lessons I had to learn as a witch. The world is large, and the forces arrayed against us are numerous and vast. You do not gain power by opposing them. You gain it by becoming one with them. Every victory is a surrender to inevitability.”

“Please, Coruth-no riddles, not now. I am sickened by this. I want no part in it. You speak of power! If I had any, I’d use it to stop this!”

The witch shrugged.

In the square, the gate began to shift on its hinges. Perhaps they were melting-or perhaps the wood of the gate was warping in the heat. Soon it would fall, and nothing would stand in the way of the mob.

Coruth turned to face him. “Tomorrow the people will own this city. There will be no civil authority left. I do not know if they will slaughter the Lady’s priests. Their anger seems directed more toward the Burgrave who abandoned them. It matters little. Tomorrow they will look for someone else to lead them. To tell them what to do. Someone who has already demonstrated that their cause is his own. Someone who can take action, and speak pretty words, and convince them they were blameless for what happened tonight.”

“Blameless! What they’ve done already sickens me.”

“Best you don’t tell them as much. They need someone to forgive them. They need someone to tell them what to do next.”

“But that can’t be me,” Malden said. “I’m just a thief! No,” he said, looking inward. “No, I won’t do it. I can’t.”

“Be careful, Malden. If you will not take on that role, someone else surely will. Someone not of your choosing. You will do what you must do, Malden. No point in fighting it, not any more. When you need my help, come to me, and I will give it freely.” She rose grumbling to her feet. He knew she was about to turn back into a bird and fly away, fly somewhere he couldn’t follow.

Now there was power worth having.

“Wait,” he called. He had to know something. “At least tell me how I should-” he began, but Coruth was already gone.

He stayed atop the counting house all night, until the scene below him played itself out. The gate fell. The defenders made a valiant stand. They were well-trained and well-armed. For every one of them, the mob could send fifty men and women against them. And the mob didn’t care how many of its individual members died.

By dawn fire licked from the stone windows of the palace, and the roof of the barracks had been pulled down, and its stones broken.

Castle Hill was a ruin. Everything it stood for was gone.