The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Another secret Bath surely knew, and kept to himself, was that control is an illusion.

I’d built myself a bridge of rage, but as I walked across it, it disintegrated behind me. I had broken free of the Apathy the god of secrets had laid on me. But with the removal of the threat of being secreted away in some corner of his temple for eternity, a breathing corpse, a receptacle for the Blade’s hate — with that threat avoided, it was hard to keep hold of my wrath.

The Blade was quiescent, but I didn’t trust it. The old priest of Lagna was right; it
wanted
to be used. And if I did use it? What then? How could I possibly trust it? How could I trust myself? I was riding a dragon. Whatever control I believed I had, there would be a reckoning as soon as I turned loose.

And if I never turned loose? If I used Abanon’s Blade as it wanted me to? Heirus was right. I could use the Blade to do awful, magnificent things with just a shred of hate and the will to see it through.

Yes, Amra. Show me what you hate, and that we will obliterate.

“I told you to shut up.”

Traitor’s Gate had seen better days. Better centuries, maybe. The gate itself was long gone. The pale yellow stone was fissured, and the narrow steps leading up to the abandoned guard room above were choked with refuse. But the oak door to the guard room was still relatively sound, and the lock sturdy. I should know, since I installed it myself. Another one of my bolt-holes. One with a nice view of the market, and a stupendous reek of rotting produce.

I sat in the window, on the wide ledge, looking down on the afternoon bustle. By this time of day most of the greens were limp. People haggled. Children darted amongst the makeshift tables, playing and shrieking.

I held the Blade in my hand. I couldn’t put it down.

What did I hate?

I thought on it for a while. Could I actually use the Blade for some sort of good?

“Blade, could I use you to, say, kill every rapist in Lucernis?”

It throbbed in my hand.
Yes. Yes. We will hunt them down and make them pay-”

“No. I mean right now. Can you make every rapist just drop dead.”

Its silence was all the answer I needed.

What did I hate?

“Blade, can you end hunger? Poverty? Deformity in children? Can you heal the sick? Can you do one useful fucking thing other than destroy?”

Silence.

“You’re bloody useless, aren’t you?”

I am the hate of a goddess made manifest. I am a Power.

“You know what I think? I think she discarded you because you were
useless
. No, more than useless. A hindrance. A liability.”

I could extinguish the sun. I could rip the world in twain. I could drown nations in rivers of blood.
The stones of the gate tower trembled.

“But you can’t fill one child’s empty belly, or cure a cough, or even get a stain out of linen.”

Tools are made for a purpose. They have a function, sometimes many functions. Their existence is
predicated
on their usefulness.

A tool that cannot be reliably taken in hand, fit for no useful purpose: Was it even a tool, in any rational sense of the word?

This Blade I held wasn’t broken; it was flawed from its very creation.

It must have sensed the direction my thoughts were leading, because it began to vibrate in my hand, its form flickering from one type of cutlery to another. A dull keening started up from it, and a hellish red glow.

“A workman relies on his tool to do the job at hand. His skill, his hand, guides the tool. A tool that turns in his hand should be discarded.”

Yes. Discard me. Leave me here—

“But no responsible craftsman would leave a dangerous tool lying around for any fool to pick up. Even swords, meant only for killing, come with scabbards.”

Then find a sheath for me. I will lie quiet.

“Ah, but every tool, flawed or not, put away or left out, holds the potential to be used again.” I held it up before me, looked long and hard at its coruscating form. Felt the hate bubble up like hot bile. Let it.

“You asked me what I hate. I’ll tell you. I hate
you
, you useless—”

There was a soft
pop
, and a soft sigh. In my hand was only grit and ash, and tiny bits of charred bone.

I wiped the residue on my thigh, but it left a gray stain on the skin of my palm. It's still there to this day.

After a time, I got up and walked down the steps. I still had one more job to do.

I still had to tell Osskil who’d killed his brother.

With Abanon’s Blade dust, I found I’d lost my thirst for revenge. After everything that had happened, dealing with Estra would just have been an unpleasant chore. But it might still mean something to Osskil.

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was a beautiful robe. No, beautiful did not do it justice. The robe was exquisite. Made of the finest silk, it lay in an almost liquid pool of itself, every ripple casting a lustrous crimson sheen. It probably cost what I made in an average year. It was probably the costliest bathing robe ever made. I reached to touch it, and he closed the lid of the carved, lacquered box.

“Better not,” said Osskil. “Only the interior has been… treated. But why take a chance.”

It was odd, having him here in my rooms. All I had for him to sit on was a decrepit sea chest. He didn’t seem to mind.

I looked into his eyes, saw the flicker of some deep passion. Something hotter than rage. Something colder than revenge. Then he blinked, and shrugged, and the raw emotion subsided beneath the lordly demeanor.

“All the time we thought it was about some Goddess’s artefact,” he murmured, “when in fact my brother was murdered over the basest of human emotions. Jealousy.”

I shook my head. “It’s not so simple, I think. Estra Haig has been a great beauty all her life, and it’s slipping away from her now as she grows older. When Corbin threw her over for a younger, prettier girl, it must have struck her at her core, her very sense of self.” I rubbed absently at my hand, permanently marked, it seemed, by the Blade, or its residue. A barely visible discoloring of the skin; virtually unnoticeable compared to all the other scars I carry, and an itch that wouldn’t go away. I'd learn to live with it. I'd learned to live with much worse.

“Anyway, in a real sense it wasn’t jealousy. It was desperate denial,” I said.

After a short silence he said “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, really. Betrayal is betrayal, and traitors always find compelling reasons to excuse their actions.” His heavy-lidded gaze rested, unblinking and again hot, on the box.

“How long will it take?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Who can say? If she towels herself thoroughly first, perhaps fifty heartbeats before she notices anything. Much faster if she wears it wet. Either way, she will be a long while about the business of dying. The spasms will be ferocious. People poisoned thus have been known to break their own backs, the muscles convulse so furiously.” His eyes may have shown emotion, but his voice displayed none.

I shuddered. “A terrible way to die.”

“Poison is the proscribed death for traitors.”

“Why?”

“Because traitors poison faith and trust.”

“I mean why tell me about this at all?”

He was silent for a long time. I began to believe he would not answer. Then, “I loved my brother. My father sent me to see justice done because it was expected. But he despised Corbin. I’ll never be sure why, but I think it was because Corbin favored Mother so much, in his looks. If only he’d looked a little less like her....”

He looked at me. “Because, of all those searching for my brother’s murderer, only you did so not because you were ordered or paid to. Because you shamed me in that prison.

“Only you and I know the world grew a little darker at his death. Only you and I and this damned dog.”

There was one other who probably knew, but I didn't bring up Corbin's lover. Best leave well enough alone, I thought.

Osskil reached down and scratched behind Bone’s ears. Holgren had brought him round the day before, saying he was going somewhere for a couple of days, and that I needed a guard dog more than he did. When Osskil had first seen Bone, and been told it was Corbin’s dog, he’d immediately asked if he could keep him. I couldn’t say no.

“You were in on the beginning of it all,” he said, pulling me back from my thoughts. “It is only fitting you know how it ends.”

“Speaking of the dog,” I said, changing the subject, “are you sure you want to burden yourself with such an ugly mongrel?” I hated to admit it, but I was going to miss Bone, slobber and all.

“Mongrel? This dog is a pureblood royal boarhound. He has the best lines I’ve ever seen of the breed. It would not be uncommon for one such as Bone to fetch more than a warhorse would. How he ended up on the streets of Lucernis, I’ll never fathom.”

“You’re joking.”

“My family breeds the finest dogs in Lucernia. I never joke about dogs.”

I could think of nothing to say. We sat there for a while in silence, a thief, a baron and a royal cur. Then he rose, a beautiful, horrible death tucked under one arm.

“Thank you for the wine. If you are in Courune, and not then spectacularly at odds with the law, I would consider it an honor if you would call upon me.” A ghost of a smile touched his heavy lips.

“You’ll make a practice of taking in strays if you aren’t careful. But all right. If I am in Courune, and not employed, I’ll do just that.” A thought occurred to me. “When will you send it?” I pointed at the box under his arm.

“I will call on Madame Haig personally this afternoon. We will pass pleasantries. I’ll make discreet noises to the effect that she should not consider trying, in any fashion, to leverage her relationship with Corbin to gain anything from the Thracens. I will give her this gift as a token of my admiration. I wager she will think it no more than her due. And she will be right.”

“What about whatever thugs she hired to kill Corbin? Will you hunt them down as well?”

He shook his head. “I don't see much point in that,” he said. Silently, I agreed.

He left then and, shooing Bone before him, stepped into the gilded carriage waiting outside my door, oblivious to the threadbare crowd that had gathered to gawp at such a sight, in such a neighbourhood.

I saw him once more, years later and far from Courune. But that, as they say, is another tale for another time.

~ ~ ~

A couple of days later I found myself in Loathewater, one of the many slums of Lucernis. The day had dawned grey and heavy with rain that refused to fall. I hadn’t been able to sleep much or well, what with all the punishment my body had taken over the past few days, and so I found myself doing what I always seem to do when at loose ends; walking aimlessly, trying to keep ahead of my thoughts. Or trying at least to tread water, so to speak.

I’d set out to kill Corbin’s killer. I might not have done it with my own knife, but it was done. Estra Haig was a dead woman, whether she knew it yet or not. Along the way a lot of others had gotten dead. Some had deserved it. One, at least, had desired it. But I couldn’t help but wonder if things wouldn’t have been better off, in the grand scheme of things, if I’d just let well enough alone.

After all, none of it had brought Corbin back.

I’d walked most of the night away and on into the dawn when I looked around and found myself surrounded by the scrap shanties and towering trees of Loathewater. The sudden feeling of being watched had pulled me out of my ruminations.

She was standing in her doorway. She, like her house, was crisp and clean and straight, though the neighborhood was dilapidated, quietly desperate, and muck-strewn.

The bloodwitch.

“Seems you’ve found your way to my door,” she said.

“Just passing through.”

“Oh, come now. I knew you’d be around. I Saw it. Come inside then, and have some tea.”

“No offense, but I’d rather not.”

She smiled. “We each of us do things we’d rather not. It’s part of life. There are things we should discuss that are best not spoken of on the street.”

I really didn’t want to offend a bloodwitch. Still, I hesitated.

“Come, I’ll feed you as well. You look like the type who enjoys a scone.”

My stomach rumbled. I went inside.

The interior was sparse and almost harshly clean. I don’t know what I expected. Jars of newt eyes and bats in the rafters, maybe. Instead it reminded me of how my mother had kept her house, all those years ago. I could almost hear her muttering “poor’s no excuse for filthy” the way she had when she was scrubbing something.

There was tea, with honey, and freshly toasted scones, with raisins, all on a little table set for two. I'm not all that fond of raisins, but the scones did smell good.

“You Saw me coming? Or do you lay out breakfast like this every day?”

“I know why you don’t like me, Amra Thetys,” she replied. Or didn’t reply.

“How can I dislike you? I don’t even know you.”

“But you know what I am, and what I can do. You hate the very idea of fate, and so how could you be comfortable in the presence of someone who can See it?”

I took a sip of tea while I considered what she’d said. It was true, as far as it went.

“I don’t doubt you have the Sight. But I’d make a distinction between seeing the future, however cloudily, and knowing what fate has in store for someone. If fate even exists.”

“Oh, it does, though I won’t bother trying to convince you of the fact. But you are right in believing seeing the future isn’t the same as knowing what fate has in store.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to agree.”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “To see the future is to see the likeliest route of a journey. To know fate, my dear, is to know the destination. I Saw your future, dear, and I’m sorry to say that it is a dark and bloody one, for the most part.”

“Was. That’s over. Abanon’s Blade is no more, and Red Hand is dead. I’m done with your Eightfold Bitch.”

She smiled, and while there was a little pity in it, it seemed to me there was far more of something I’d call contempt. But then I generally assume the worst of people unless given a reason not to.

“I’ve Seen your future, and something of your fate. While you think you are done with the Eightfold Goddess, She is far from done with you. You will have truck with gods and goddesses, demigods and demons, and Powers of the Earth and Aether before you breathe your last—”

I stood up, knocking back my chair. “Why the hells would you tell me such things?”

“Because they are true.”

“So
what
? What good does it do me?”

“Because you need to prepare.”

“And just how the hells do you suggest I go about doing that?”

She looked down at her scone. “I don’t know. That’s for you to discover.”

A hot flash of anger surged through me. “And there, r
ight there
, is why I want nothing to do with Seers. Because for all your signs and portents, however true they might be, you never offer a scrap of useful advice, and you never,
ever
offer the simplest shred of hope. Fate is a slaver, bloodwitch, and I refuse its chains.”

As I walked out her door, she spoke in a quiet voice.

“That is why fate has singled you out, Amra Thetys.”

~ ~ ~

Holgren found me at sunset. I was sitting on the breaker wall just north of the harbour, staring out at the darkening sea, not think much of anything, if I’m being honest.

“The sunset is in the other direction,” he said, sidling up beside me and leaning on the rough stone.

I grunted. “I’ve seen enough sunsets in my life. How did you find me?”

“The ways of the magi are mysterious,” he said with a small smile. He held out two pinched fingers. It took me a moment to see the hair trapped between them.

“You left this on your first visit to my sanctum.”

I gave him a flat stare. “That’s a bit creepy.”

He shrugged and let the hair float down to the restless sea below us. “Speaking of hair, yours is coming in quite nicely.”

I had nothing to say to that, so I didn’t. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

“I’ve got some bad news,” he finally said. “Gavon is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone, disappeared, vanished.”

“With my money. Of course.”

“I’m afraid so. But Daruvner said he’d like to see us once we’ve recuperated. There’s a commission he thinks would be perfect for us.”

“Are you broke, too?”

“Not really. But I may have mentioned that I was open to commissions if you were involved.”

“What? Why?”

He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I told you before. You’re capable, and you have two wits to rub together. And you do get up to the most interesting goings-on.” He put out a hand. “Partners?”

I looked at him. I realized for the first time that I trusted him without question, for all that he was a mage. Realized, however much I didn’t want to, that in the past few days I had come to rely on him. Realized with something close to shock that I was fine with that reliance.

And so I took his hand, and shook.