The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids (13 page)

I tore the door open. Or tried to. It was locked.

“You’re a thief, right?” asked one of the swordsmen, barely out of his teens. “You gonna pick the lock?’

“The hells with that. Take too long. You’re hefty, give it a good kick.”

“Aye.” His massive booted foot lashed out and something cracked.

“Again!”

It took three more kicks, then the door sprang open with a juddering sound.

Beyond was a room I recognized, despite the gloom. The one with the corpse sporting a knife in his heart.

Bosch was crouched over the ensorcelled corpse, his own spidery brass body humming and shivering with eldritch energies. With his head mounted atop that grotesque thing, he should have looked blackly ridiculous. He didn’t. He looked vile, mad, and dangerous.

“I want you to meet my employer,” he said in that pipe organ voice. “You won’t like him.” And two delicate, shimmering spider legs plucked the dagger from the Elamner’s heart.

He came up screaming, knocking Bosch into a corner. The look in his eyes was feral. Mad. Both the angry kind and the crazy kind. He saw the armed guards surrounding him, and disappeared.

Blood and chaos ensued.

I have never seen anyone move as fast as him. I suppose technically I didn’t actually see him move at all. Maybe the faintest of blurrings in the air. My eyes couldn’t track him.

Osskil’s little army, the ones with me and not stuck in that chamber of horrors with Holgren, started to die.

There were eight armsmen in the room with me. In three heartbeats they were all falling to the floor, throats slit, bloody handprints covering their surprised faces.

And then it was my turn.

He just appeared before me, a knife in his hand. The tip of the knife pressed ever so delicately against the skin over my carotid artery.

“Abanon-touched,” he said.

“Whatever you say. You’re the one with the blade.”

“No.
You
have Her Blade. Or you did. I can smell it on you. You must give me the Blade. Or I will kill you.” He sniffed again, shuddered. His lip curled. “I also smell an arhat.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I truly wish I did.”

“Do you believe I will kill you?”

“Very much so. But I still don’t have Abanon’s Blade.”

His eyes bored into mine. “You’re not lying. So you must be mistaken.” Suddenly he shuddered again, violently. His face went pale. “I will find you again. When I do, you will have found the Blade. Or you will be very unhappy in the brief span before you die.” And then he vanished. The window shutters rocked slightly in the breeze caused by his passage.

“Kerf’s crusty old balls,” I swore, and looked around the room.

Bosch had disappeared as well. All of the men who had come with me were dead, and the bloody handprint on their faces was the signature of the most feared, deadly assassin in the world. Red Hand.

Heirus the Elamner was Red Hand, and he wanted me to give him something I didn’t have, or he was going to kill me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“The Elamner is awake, and he’s Red Hand the assassin,” I told Holgren as he came through the door a few seconds later. I may have been gibbering, just a little.

“Yes, we managed to deal with the demon, thanks very much for ask—” He saw the bodies littering the floor. “What happened here?”

“I told you, Heirus is
Red Hand
. Bosch pulled the knife out of his chest and woke him up. He killed everybody. He wants me to give him Abanon’s Blade or he’s going to kill me too.”

I watched him chew on it for a moment, then decide what question to ask first.

“Where’s Heirus now?”

“Gone. But he said he’d find me again.”

“We’ll deal with it. We
will
, Amra. Where is Bosch?”

“I don’t know. He disappeared when Red Hand started slaughtering everybody. Bosch is, uh, different now.”

“I know, I caught a glimpse. It should limit his options for hiding at least. I don’t see him renting a room, or doing much of anything where people can see him.”

While I spoke to Holgren, Osskil posted one of the remaining armsmen at the window and the other at the door. Kluge was inspecting the bodies and the circle that Heirus—Red Hand—had been resting in. Professional curiosity, I suppose.

“First things first,” said Osskil. “We need to do something about this house of horrors.”

“Agreed,” said Holgren.

“Good idea,” I chimed in. “How do you close a hell mouth, by the way?”

“With fire, of course,” said Kluge. “Fire with fire. But then you have to seal it, lest some other mad idiot reopens it.”

“And how do you do that?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “With magic, and lots and lots of very big, very heavy rocks.”

“That’s for another day,” said Osskil. “First let’s get our dead out of this foul place, then burn it to the ground.”

~ ~ ~

Kluge and one of the armsmen made sure nobody sneaked up on us while we hauled the bodies of the rest through the window. It was the shortest route, and besides, no one wanted to chance those hallways again. I agreed in principle; I didn’t like to think of those dead men resting in the ashes of that house. I may not have known them, but I didn’t have to, to want them out of there. But I was less enthusiastic about having to haul the bodies.

I’m not particularly squeamish. It wasn’t handling their corpses that bothered me. It was seeing that bloody handprint on those dead faces, and knowing it might very well be me next. If Red Hand wanted me dead, then I was dead. If even a fraction of the tales told about him were true, he’d been around for generations, dealing death to kings and queens, priests and generals, merchants and even godlings. Red Hand was literally the stuff that legends—and nightmares—were made of.

When we’d shifted all the corpses that Red Hand had made, I turned to Osskil.

“I hate to say it, but there are two more in there.” The arquebusier the demon crab had killed, and the halberdier Bosch had done for.

“I know,” he said, “but we dare not risk more deaths to recover them.” He shook his head. “We were not prepared. I was not prepared, not for this. We should not have continued once we knew what this place had turned into.”

“I don’t think it would have mattered if we’d brought a hundred men,” I told him, “or a dozen mages. You didn’t see how Red Hand moved. Eight men dead in the space of three heartbeats. There is no preparing for a foe like that.”

He just shook his head.

“We should have burned the place to the ground right off,” he said.

“But then you’d never have known for certain Corbin’s killer was done for.”

“I could live with that. In retrospect. I went looking to avenge one death. Now there are ten more, and my brother’s murderer no closer to being dealt with.”

“Such talk does not become you, Lord Osskil.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That sounded rather haughty.”

I shrugged and pointed towards Holgren. “Been spending too much time around that one.”

It got a smile out of him at least.

~ ~ ~

Holgren and Kluge reduced the villa with magefire. I noted with some satisfaction that Kluge had to quit halfway through. He looked as though he’d run from the Dragon Gate to the Promenade without stopping. Admittedly, Holgren didn’t look much better when he’d finished. I’d have made a joke, but neither mage looked like they were in the mood.

While they were about it, the rest of us loaded the dead into the omnibus along with the prisoners. Alain wasn’t going to be happy about the blood. Alain would get over it.

I took a water skin from one of the men and gave it to Holgren, who was surveying the ruins of the villa. He took it with a grateful look and drank deep.

“So. You think Bosch is in there?” I asked him.

“I’m afraid not.” He pulled out the compass he’d prepared with Bosch’s hair. The needle pointed due East.

“I don’t understand. It’s pointing at the house. Or what’s left of it.”

“If only it were. If he were as close as that, the needle would be spinning aimlessly. He’s much farther away.”

“But that’s the Dragonsea.”

“Precisely. He doesn’t need to breathe, and there isn’t much to him anymore to attract a hungry pheckla.”

“Kerf’s balls. He’s well and truly beyond reach then, isn’t he?”

“Yes. For now. Something tells me that one won’t be content to scuttle along the sea bed for long, however. We will see him again, and sooner rather than later.”

~ ~ ~

I was deeply, deeply tired. I parted company with the others as soon as we got into the Spindles, and headed toward another one of my bolt-holes to sleep, after promising to check in with Osskil and Holgren the next day. I don’t know what Kluge and Osskil did with the Elamner’s guards, or with the bodies. I also don’t know what Myra and Alain thought about the condition they received their omnibus in. It was all in one piece, though, so they couldn’t have been too upset.

I probably should have gone with Holgren to his sanctum, but it was just too far. Instead I trudged over to the herbalist’s whose back room I rented and sneaked in the window.

As I crawled under the single dusty sheet that graced the cot in the dark, funny-smelling back room of the herbalist’s, though, one thought kept nagging at me.

It was a little thing, and it probably meant nothing, but it kept me awake for a considerable time considering how exhausted and sleep-deprived I was. You’d think it was Red Hand, and his demand that I give him something I had no idea how to get, but it was something else.

Bosch. Gloating about chopping off Corbin’s fingers.

Sure it was a nasty thing, calculated to enrage, horrible enough in its own way. But why gloat about that and not the actual murder? Why not talk about letting him run, as Kluge had mentioned, and hunting him down like an animal? That was just as cruel, if not more so.

It was a small thing, but it didn’t fit.

Something was missing. Something was off.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I slept until noon, then left the herbalist’s the way I came. What the old woman thought about her mysterious boarder I couldn’t say. The room was paid up months in advance and the door triple-locked from the inside, which must have seemed odd, but not odd enough to turn down easy money. That’s one thing I like about Lucernans; once money changes hands, they become deeply uncurious.

At Osskil’s manse I was informed that I was invited to another funeral. Or funerals, rather. Three of the armsmen he’d hired had no one to claim their bodies, and so he’d decided to inter them in the Thracen crypt reserved for retainers. It was, apparently, a rather gracious gesture on his part. They’d have a posher afterlife than they would’ve had otherwise, at least. It was scheduled for the late afternoon. I wasn’t all that keen on going, but Osskil wouldn’t be available until then. I was led to believe by his servant that he was off getting scolded by Lord Morno again.

I decided to have a very late, or rather for me a very early breakfast. At which point I realized I was thoroughly broke. I didn’t trust Holgren to have any food, and didn’t want to walk all the way to his house in any case, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get a meal and an advance from Daruvner. I’d promised to check in with him anyway.

It was quiet at his dive. No nieces, no Kettle, and very few patrons. Daruvner fed me, loaned me a few marks and then insisted I tell him everything that had been going on.

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

“I think I do.”

I shrugged. “On your head, then, old man,” I said, then filled him in about Corbin, how I’d decided to go after his killer, and how things had gone straight to hells. He supplied me with wine as I wound through the whole sordid mess, and when I was done he sat back, stared up at the water-stained, sagging plaster on the ceiling and idly rubbed his massive belly.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” he finally said.

“You’re ahead of me, then. I’m starting to feel like I don’t understand anything.”

“‘Thus wisdom grows; in stony, unaccustomed soil,’” he replied.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m sure it wasn’t flattering.”

“Just a quote. Look, You don’t even know who killed Corbin.”

“The hells I don’t.”

“Hear me out, woman. You’ve pinned this on Bosch, and his boss Heirus—”

“Call him what he really is. Red Hand.”

“I’m not sure I believe that, but say that he is. Bosch admitted to cutting off Corbin’s fingers, but never said anything about killing him, correct?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “That’s been bothering me. But his boss is Red Hand, Daruvner. You know, king of assassins? Maybe Bosch didn’t do it. Doesn’t mean his boss didn’t.”

“You say you saw this Elamner kill a half-dozen men right in front of you. You say you know it was Red Hand because he put his bloody mark on their faces. Correct?”

“It was eight men, actually, but yes.”

Daruvner leaned forward, locked eyes with me. “Did Corbin have Red Hand’s mark?”

I wanted it to be the Elamner. After all the blood and trouble, I wanted it to be the obvious bad guy. But the truth is the truth, and facts are facts.

“No. Damn it.”

He leaned back again, chair creaking under his weight. “I’m not saying he didn’t do it. I’m not saying Bosch didn’t do it. I’m not even saying it wasn’t hired out by one or the other of them. What I am saying is, you’ve been mistaking what you think for what you know. You wouldn’t do that on a job. You’ve let your anger cloud your judgment like you never would if this was business.”

“It’s not business, Fengal. Somebody killed my friend. How can I treat it as though it was just another theft?”

‘But it
is
just another theft,” he replied, his voice mild. “You’re going to take something. Something valuable. You’re going to take someone’s life. You’re going to take revenge. Here’s where I’m very much starting to worry for you though, Amra: The consequences of a mistake on your part are the same as if you were caught lifting a cask of jewels: Death. And in this case, I’m sorry to say, you’re not even sure you’ve got the right mark.”

“A daemonist who was just about to open a hell gate on the Jacos Road and his boss, the king of assassins. I may have got the wrong villains.
May
have. But they’re still villains, Fengal.”

“Since when is it your job to deal with evil, Amra? You’re a thief, not a hells-damned knight of the Order of the Oak. And consider this, please; while you’re keeping the world safe from these very bad men, it’s more than possible that your friend’s real killer is out there, safe, satisfied.”

“Well it’s a little late now. Bosch came after me first, and I doubt Red Hand is going to leave me alone just because I say sorry and pretty please.”

He rubbed his shiny head and sighed. “What can I say? You should have come and talked to me sooner. I’m deeply wise of course, but sadly I cannot undo what’s already done.”

“If you’re so wise, old man, why don’t you tell me who you think it was that killed Corbin?”

“True wisdom lies not in knowing the correct answer, but in knowing the correct question.”

“Fine. Be that way. I’ve got to go. I’ve got three funerals to attend.” I stood up.

“Don’t you want to know the correct question?” he asked.

I sighed. No, I didn’t. All right, yes I did, but I didn’t have to be happy about it. “Sure, why not.”

“Who had reason to want Corbin killed, besides the two new enemies you’ve made?”

“That’s just it, Fengal. I have no idea.”

“Well then maybe you should start trying to find out. When you have time.”

“Yeah, when I have time.”

“And for Isin’s love, get over to Locquewood’s and pick up your package. He’s been bothering me about it for days, now.”

“When I have time, old man!” I said as I went through the door.