The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids (2 page)

Chapter Two

Feeling restless and out of sorts, and with a handful of hours before midnight, I washed and dressed and went out into the night. My headache was a nasty little needle spearing both temples.

Downstairs, I could hear the swirling and clacking of bone tiles from the gaming tables of the Korani Social Club. Endless rounds of push were played down there by gruff old men far from their island home. Once a month they had a dance, and the peculiar music of a three-piece hurdy-gurdy band moaned and shuddered and wheezed up through the floorboards. Otherwise they were good neighbors.

I walked a bit in lantern light through the Foreigner’s Quarter, along streets that looked more dangerous than they really were. Lucernis had grown beyond all thought of being quartered long ago, but the name had stuck. I liked it there. It was close enough to the harbor to catch a breeze in summer, which in Lucernis was worth the rotting fish stench that came with it. And the Foreigner’s Quarter was home to all stripes and classes.

I had the least trouble there of anywhere in Lucernis. But a woman walking alone still has to watch herself and her surroundings, and I regularly put up with a nominal amount of abuse and innuendo. I dress like a man and have the figure of a boy, and if someone gets close enough to see my face and figure out my gender, they’re also close enough to see a few of my more prominent scars. It’s usually enough. If not, I’ve spent a lot of time working up a competence with knives.

I wandered down through the Night Market, past every imaginable type of hawker, and grabbed a meal from Atan. Atan is a burly Camlacher street vendor who smells of the charcoal stove he’s habitually bent over, face red and shiny from the heat. He doesn’t use any ingredients that are too foul or too rancid. He keeps the gristle quotient to a minimum. I’ve never gotten sick off it, though I’m never entirely certain what I’m eating.

“What kind of meat tonight, Atan?”

“Edible,” he grunted, fanning the charcoal.

“Sounds like something my mother would have said.”

His broad, craggy face grew even more morose than was usual. “Yes, compare me to a woman. Why not? I cook, I must not be a man.” He shook his head.

I think all Camlachers must have a touch of the morose, as if they’d fallen from some great height and were bitter about having to slog down in the mud with the rest of humanity. Comes of being a defeated warrior race, I suppose. Grey-eyed Atan should have been handling a broadsword, not meat skewers

“Nothing wrong with being a woman,” I told him. “But then I’m biased, I suppose.”

“Yes. Next time I will wear skirts and use the powder for my face. Go away, you.”

“Good night, Atan.”

He waved me off. I ate mechanically, walking down Mourndock Street, not really noticing the food. Slowly the headache faded.

When the crone bumped into me I automatically moved to block a hand dipping into my pocket. A hand that, it turned out, wasn’t there. I might be slightly suspicious.

“My pardon,” said the old lady, who was dressed in a threadbare but clean dress, embroidered bonnet perched on her iron-grey hair. She was even shorter than me. She reached out a withered hand to pat my arm.

“Never mind,” I muttered.

“You seem troubled,” she said, and I noticed her piercing green eyes. Everything else about her shouted ‘granny,’ but those eyes said something different. Something closer to predator. I pulled back. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so. I see a darkness in those pretty blue eyes of yours. And I see shadows gathering behind you.” Her hand shot out and  grabbed my wrist.

“You’d best let go of me, Gran. I don’t want to make a scene on the street. But I will.”

She wasn’t hearing me, wasn’t really paying attention to me anymore. Those green eyes had suddenly turned a stormy grey. Bloodwitch. I was having a conversation on Mourndock Street with a bloodwitch. Bloody fantastic.

“I See blood, and gold,” she said, her voice gone all hollow. “I Hear a mournful howl. Fire and Death are on your trail, girl, and behind them the Eightfold Bitch makes her way to your door.”

Twisting away from her, I broke contact. My hand itched to have a blade in it, but that would have been foolish. Bloodwitches are nasty enemies. “Kerf’s balls, woman, what the hells are you talking about?”

She smiled, a little wanly.

“Oh you have a world of trouble coming down on you, girl. Come see Mother Crimson when it gets bad. You’ll find me in Loathewater.” She moved to pat my hand, but I retreated. One more cryptic look and she was gone in the pedestrian traffic.

“Kerf’s crooked staff,” I muttered. “Aren’t fortune tellers supposed to tell you how lucky you are?” But I knew my own words for what they were – bravado. I needed a drink. Bloody bloodwitches. I’d rather deal with mages any day, if I had to deal with magic at all. At least mages generally didn’t bother with cryptic nonsense.

I spent some time at Tambor’s wine shop, at one of the outside tables, sipping vinegar from an earthenware cup and listening to gossip.

When Tambor’s closed I was in a sour mood. I’ve never been good at waiting. I can do it, but I don’t like it. I was worried about Corbin and more disturbed by what the bloodwitch had said than I cared to admit or think about. I had no idea who this Eightfold Bitch was or could possibly be, but I knew bloodwitches were the genuine article. With an effort, I filed it away for later rumination. If there was trouble on the way, it would come whether I worried about it or not.

About an hour before midnight I made my way back home to wait for Corbin, feeling aimless and surly. And worried.

Midnight came and went. I read; my mother had taught me letters before she died, and Lucernis had some of the finest and most poorly guarded private libraries of any city I knew of. But then, who steals books? If you can read, you’re probably wealthy enough to buy your own.

It was one of those slightly racy romantic histories from the past century. Normally I’d have enjoyed it, but my mind wasn’t on it. I kept reading the same passage over and over, and it kept slipping away from me. Finally I tossed the book aside in disgust and settled for pacing.

Three hours after midnight my creeping suspicion had filled out into an atavistic certainty that Corbin had come to a bad end. But all I could do was wait out the night.

Chapter Three

Cock crowed while the sky was still black. I was out the door. Whatever had happened was probably long over and nothing I could do about it, but I couldn’t just sit there. A heavy dread was slowly churning my guts. There were only two places to go. I decided to start with Corbin’s house, and check at his mistress’s if he wasn’t there.

It was a long walk to his hovel off Silk Street, through streets mostly deserted. Few hacks worked at that hour, and fewer were likely to take me where I wanted to go. There was a baker’s boy stumbling late to work, white apron trailing unnoticed on the filthy cobbles; I didn’t have to be a seer to know he had a beating in his near future. There was a lamplighter on low stilts, snuffing white-yellow flame with his telescoping pole. There was the odd wagon creaking and rumbling its way towards Traitor’s Gate Market, down cobbled streets. But mostly it was just blank dark windows and shuttered doorways, until I turned onto Silk Street proper.

Silk Street is where the boys and girls, and men and women in Lucernis practice the oldest profession. At that hour, there were far fewer wares on display, and those that were tended to be coarse stuff, made increasingly coarser as grey dawn seeped into the sky. Those left working were ones who had a quota to meet, a figure that had to be reached to avoid a beating or an eviction or the symptoms of one withdrawal or another. The ones who were willing to accept rough trade. One trollop in a soiled satin ball gown, his blue chin bristling out from under streaked face powder, cast aspersions on my manhood when I ignored his proposition. I would have found that amusing on several levels in other circumstances.

I had avoided their fate when I was younger, thanks to some wise words from somebody who could have taken advantage instead, and thanks to a cold stubbornness. But it made me uncomfortable to see how I might have ended up. It always did. I deepened my scowl and ignored the various opening ploys, trudging past with my hands in my pockets.

As always, when the tired come-ons had no effect, they turned to jeers and catcalls. Anything to elicit a response. They faded behind me as I turned off Silk Street on to the nameless, barely-more-than-an-alley where Corbin’s hovel was. The entire street was lined with narrow wooden houses, two and three stories high. Some needed paint; most needed to be torn down. Almost all of them were built far too close together. A few of the houses were so close to each other you couldn’t have walked between them sideways. It needed only a small fire and a stiff breeze to all go up.

As I got closer to Corbin’s pit, I could hear howls, and a rough old voice screeching in anger.

“Shut it! Shut up, you mongrel! Shut it, Gorm take you!” The sound of something breakable being hurled against something less breakable. The howls went on and on, heart-breaking. I’ve heard wolves calling to each other across snow covered hills, mournful and lonely. This was nothing like that. This was grief made audible. Other dogs in the area had begun picking it up, and other voices, rough and querulous with interrupted sleep, yelled protest in several languages. A door slammed. I broke into a trot. For people like me, there are damned few coincidences. Expecting the worst helps to keep you from getting sucker-punched—and in my world, there are always fists waiting to hammer on the unwary.

I saw the old man first. The one who'd used Gorm’s name in vain. Not that there’s any other way to use it, Gorm being dead and all. The old man was a greasy grey smear of nightshirt and skinny, hairy legs with knobby knees. He was swinging something that would have been a truncheon if it was shorter, would have been a club if it was thicker. His back was to me; I couldn’t see what he was beating. Then I came up on him and saw that it was Bone. The geezer was bringing his stick down on Bone’s spade-shaped head, again and again. The dog kept howling, and refused to flinch. Behind Bone was something wet and lumpy.

The mind takes in images in little snatches, and sometimes they make no sense at first. It looked like the dog was guarding a pile of garbage. I saw the red, and knew it for blood, and knew from the quantity of it on the cobbles that someone had died badly. But these little pieces of knowledge didn’t fit together right away. There was just the gut anger at an old man beating a dog.

I plucked the stick from his hand on a back swing and rolled it around across his windpipe. He squawked and gagged and clawed at the stick. I pulled him back a few steps, turned him around and planted a boot in his scrawny backside, letting the stick go with one hand. He sprawled to the cobbles, hacking. I guessed he’d stay down for a bit, so I went to check out the dog.

With his skull-thumping at least suspended, Bone had turned his attention to the bloody lump. He was nuzzling what I recognized as a hand. When it flopped back down to the street, I saw that the last three fingers were missing. Cut off cleanly, at the last joint. Of their own accord, my eyes travelled to the corpse’s face.

It was Corbin. He lay huddled at an unnatural angle, maybe a half-dozen steps from his own doorstep. Bone started up that soul-splitting howl again. Shutters were  opened here and there. Cautious heads popped out, saw blood, disappeared again as if by magic. I felt a numbness take hold. I turned back to the old man.

“You see a body in the street, and all you can think to do is beat the dog that disturbed your sleep?” I squeezed the stick so hard the tendons in my hand began to creak in protest. He gabbled something unintelligible and began to scramble away from me on his backside, looking like something between a lizard and a crab. His yellowed eyes were wide. Like all bullies, he was a coward at heart. I was surprised he’d worked up the nerve to beat Bone. The mutt was eighty pounds of brindle-covered muscle, with a face that was fashioned for malign animal intent.

I let him scuttle away into his ramshackle house across the street, and I let Bone keep howling. There was nothing to be done about either. As for Corbin, I didn’t cry for him. Bone was doing enough of that for the both of us. I squatted down next to him, realized I was still holding the old man’s courage stick. I threw it at his front door.

I figured I had at least a few minutes, and probably much longer, before what passed for the law in Lucernis made an appearance. I wanted to move on before they showed up.

Chapter Four

It didn’t work out that way.

Somebody gets cut up at night in Lucernis, maybe the corpse disappears before dawn, before awkward questions start getting asked. Nobody sees anything. Nobody wants to get involved. Not in a neighborhood like Corbin’s. Not usually, anyway.

I took a good look at what they’d done to him. Maybe I had an idea I would like to reproduce it in reasonably accurate detail. Maybe I just wanted to know what I was up against. I don’t know. But when I moved to look over the damage, Bone stood between me and Corbin.

“Too late now. Where were you when it happened?” I realized that was actually a good question. I put my hand out to him, murmured soothing nonsense. He sniffed. I suppose he recognized me, because a little of that murderous look went out of his eyes. But he wasn’t letting me manhandle what was left of his master. I settled for gently rolling Corbin over on his back. Which earned me a rumbling growl.

The damage was extensive. Somebody had worked him over with a knife. It looked as if maybe some of it was controlled, precise. Like his missing fingers. The rest just looked like Corbin had tangled with somebody in a vicious barroom brawl. Slashes on his arms, his face. Rents in his shirt suggested he’d been stabbed maybe half a dozen times, two or three of which, depending on how deep they went, could have been immediate life-enders. I’d know more if I could undress him, but I didn’t really need to know any more, and it wasn’t worth struggling with the damn dog over. Maybe he was the wiser. It was done, and maybe all that was left was to mourn.

I stepped back from the body and looked around. The sky was perceptibly lightening. No crowd yet. They’d show up after the law did. I walked over to Corbin’s house.

The flimsy door gaped. It had been busted open from the inside; that much I could tell. The lock was engaged; the frame had given way first. I supposed an eighty pound dog could eventually have battered his way through, given sufficient motive. I glanced inside. Heavy furniture, a little dust. I hesitated. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t happened in there. With the neighbors peering out behind curtains, I decided to leave it for the constables.

I ended up wishing I hadn’t.

They came around the corner as I was walking back to Bone. They knew where they were going, and they knew what to expect. Somebody had probably sent their kid down to the local watch station.

It was a pair. A fat, balding one and a young one so tall he looked stretched. Neither wore the entire uniform; Baldy had forgot or forgone his tabard, and Too-tall had substituted his deep blue woolen trousers for a paler, cooler, more wrinkled pair of linens.

Too-tall glanced at me, at the dog, at Corbin. He sighed. Baldy said with a voice like gravel, “Can you shut that mutt up?”

“No.”

He whipped out his billy club and laid it across Bone’s head with a speed that belied all his fat. Bone went down in mid-howl. I took a step forward, fists tightening. I caught myself. Baldy pretended not to notice. He slipped the billy back through the leather thong at his belt and said “So what happened here?” 

“I don’t know. I was passing by. I heard the howling. I saw a man beating on something, so I came up behind him and took his stick away. Then I saw the body. I stayed around until you showed up.”

“Just a concerned citizen, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“You know the deceased?”

“No.” While Baldy questioned me, Too-tall was going over Corbin’s corpse. Checking pockets, checking wounds. I watched him from the corner of my eye.

“Let me see your hands.”

I held them out, palms down. He took a good look at my nails. No blood. He swirled a fat finger; turn them over. I obliged. No blood in the creases. Baldy looked at me, clearly not believing a word I said. He probably would have worn the same face if I’d mentioned that water was wet.

“Any weapons?”

“Yes.”

He put his hand out, and I gave him two of my more obvious knives. He gave me the eye that he probably used on husbands that beat their wives, kids that cut purses, day-laborers that thumped their bosses and made off with the strongbox. The one that said he knew I was holding out on him. I kept his gaze. Finally he shrugged. “Why don’t you go stand over there by the wall.” It wasn’t a suggestion. I went. He put my knives in his belt and turned to his partner.

“Arwin? Anything?”

“Well, he’s dead, sure as shit. Somebody carved him up like a midwinter roast.”

“Better let’s move him out of the street.”

They hauled Corbin over to the edge of the street, then Too-tall—Arwin—went back and dragged Bone over next to him. They had a muttered conversation, then Arwin went inside Corbin’s house, and Baldy started knocking on doors, questioning neighbors. The geezer came out and started pointing his finger at me. He got in Baldy’s face. Baldy took it for a while, then jabbed one fat finger right into the old man’s sternum so hard he stumbled back, face ashen. Baldy said something, and the geezer retreated back inside his hovel, but I could see him twitch aside dusty curtains every so often.

I could have slipped off, easily enough. I think Baldy half-expected me to. I don’t think he would have cared, especially. It was just another dirty little murder in a bad part of town. He didn’t pin me for it. He was just suspicious on general principles. If it hadn’t been for the damned dog, I would have taken off. But I could see his barrel chest rising and falling. And Corbin had paid me to keep it that way.

Then Arwin came out of Corbin’s hovel, and by the look on his face I could tell things had changed somehow. He called his partner—Jarvis, apparently—and when Jarvis lumbered over, showed him something small enough to fit in one closed hand.

I heard Jarvis mutter “Isin’s creamy tits,” and then “better get the inspector.” And I knew things were about to get much more complicated.

Jarvis made it plain that he now cared very much whether I disappeared, so I settled up against a garden wall that had been whitewashed sometime back in the reign of Orvo VII. Bone started to stir, and when Jarvis looked like he was going to beat him down again, I volunteered to take care of the dog. He shrugged. I hauled Bone up in both arms and carried him over to my spot, and kept a careful hand on his thick leather collar. Old boy was dazed. He kept licking his chops, and he’d developed a tremble. It wasn’t that hard to keep him down.

We waited maybe half an hour. The sun rose higher, and the heat climbed. There was no shade. Arwin had gone off at a trot. Jarvis continued the door-to-door. A couple of night watch I could handle. An inspector would be much trickier. I was reasonably certain there weren’t any little posters tacked to a wall in some constable’s office featuring my face, but I didn’t relish someone with brains and authority knowing what I looked like. Sometime down the road, one and one might be added to make two. But it was too late to do anything about it now. And I wanted to know what they’d found in Corbin’s house.

The hansom pulled up about eight o’clock. There were no official seals on the doors. Arwin jumped out, folded down the two steps, and then a slight, middle-aged man stepped down. His hair was iron grey, cropped short and brushed forward over his long skull. He had a vaguely horsy face; prominent front teeth that his lips didn’t quite cover. His eyes were mild and blue in a face that was very dark for a Lucernan. He was dressed soberly, in deep maroon velvets that were too heavy for the season. They were immaculate, but a bit threadbare. I could see where his white hose had been carefully darned. His shoes were black and polished, well-made but worn. The buckles were plain silver. He wore no jewellery.

His only concession to the climbing heat was a stiff collar undone. He glanced at me, and I knew he’d just filed away my face in the library of his mind, for future reference. He spent a minute or so with the body, then went inside Corbin’s house. Jarvis followed him in, leaving Arwin outside.

They spent quite a while in there. By that time a crowd had begun to gather. Jarvis came out and spread a blanket over the body, then went back inside. Three more constables showed up, and Jarvis poked his head out to tell Arwin to go home and get some sleep. Arwin shrugged. He didn’t leave.

Finally one of the new constables stepped out, looked at me, crooked a finger. I dragged Bone along with me, heavy and uncooperative and dazed.

They’d done a thorough go-through. Not that there was much there to begin with. I am familiar with the careful search, having done it myself many times. It’s nothing terribly destructive. Furniture shifted to spots no one would consciously place it. Rugs rolled up and put out of the way. Wall hangings taken down. Much like someone was preparing to move house. But of course the purpose is to thump the walls, listening for hidden cavities, and check out all the undersides of tables and chairs and desks, the backs of mirrors and paintings, the mortar between stones, the joins between boards. I didn’t give them good odds on finding Corbin’s hidey-hole, wherever it was. He’d been too much of a professional.

The inspector was sitting at Corbin’s kitchen table, going over some papers. He glanced up, took in me and Bone.

“Constable, see if you can find some water for that dog, would you?” He went back to reading.

Jarvis made a face. And did what he was told.

The inspector pointed to a chair, and I sat, still keeping hold of Bone’s collar. Jarvis found a bowl and, after a second, an earthenware jug that sploshed. He put both down on the table in front of me, a little harder than was necessary. I sniffed. It was water.

“Thank you, constable.” And after a second, “I’ll call you if I need you.” I poured while Jarvis trudged out of the kitchen. Bone wasn’t interested. He sort of folded up at my feet, panting, eyes glazed.

The inspector finished the page he was reading and placed it face-down on the table. I doubt he believed I could read, but he’d noticed me glancing at the paper. Careful bastard. All I could tell from my momentary, upside-down vantage was that it was at least similar to Corbin’s handwriting, and that it looked like a letter.

“My name is Kluge. Why don’t we start with a few simple questions. What is your name?” He wasn’t taking notes. I got the impression he didn’t need to.

“Marfa Valence.” There were probably ten thousand Valences in Lucernis, and a goodly portion were likely named Marfa.

“Occupation?”

“None.”

“Place of residence?”

I gave him an address to one of the bolt-holes I kept the rent current on. Which of course was about to change.

“What was your relationship with the deceased?”

“No relationship.”

He just kept looking at me with those mild blue eyes. I could see that his pupils were ringed with a thin band of azure. Pretty. He spoke first.

“I’m going to tell you a few things, Marfa, and then we’re going to start again.” He stuck out his thumb. “Judging by the wounds on the body, we are looking at two separate attacks. Three fingers were removed some hours before the fatal wounds were inflicted. That suggests torture, and I can think of too many scenarios that might fit to make this some random street slaying. If I had to guess, they tortured him, and then they let him run for a while. All the way to his house, within sight of safety. Then they finished him off, messily.”

“Why would anybody do that?”

“Who knows why? Maybe for the sport of it.” He sighed. I started to say something and he said in a quiet tone, “I’m not finished yet.”

He held up an index finger. “The man out in the street is Corbin Hardin, known to some by the rather unfortunate moniker ‘Night-Wind’; a thief with a penchant for stealing rare art of all types.”

Middle finger. “Corbin Hardin was also known as Corbin Hardin det Thracen-Courune, second son of Count Orlin det Thracen-Courune. Father and son have been estranged for some half-dozen years.”

He reached into a pocket and set a heavy gold signet ring down on the scarred table, one with a noble coat of arms on its flat, bevelled-edge top. I didn’t try to hide the flicker of surprise that crossed my face.

Ring finger. “Corbin Hardin was a source of deep shame and embarrassment to his family while alive. But now that he’s dead, that is most definitely about to change. I guarantee you, Marfa, the father will want blood. Gallons of it. And he’ll get it.”

Little finger. “I’m the poor sod who caught all of this in his lap, which is what I deserve, I suppose, for coming into work early. Your cooperation in this matter will ensure that any involvement you may have had will remain confidential. And you are involved, somehow. I don’t think you did it. Tell me what you know, and I’ll do my best to convince Count Orlin’s people that you were just an innocent passer-by.”

He smiled wearily. “Now, let’s start again. Your name is Marfa, you’ve no occupation, you live at Borlick’s rooming house on East Southcross. Now tell me again what your relationship was with the deceased?”

~ ~ ~

He was good at what he did. I didn’t try to get too tricky. I gave him an abbreviated version of the truth. Corbin had stopped by, told me he had business that might get ugly. Told me he’d been away in Gol-Shen on a commission. That the customer had tried to stiff him. Asked me to look after his dog if he hadn’t turned up by dawn. No, I didn’t know what the commission was. No, I didn’t know who the customer was, where they were meeting, why anyone might want to kill him.