Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel (30 page)

The mad jeweler, surrounded and held by four Liege guardsmen. I couldn’t tell if the tears on his face came from crying or the bright light—though they’d let him turn away from the sun.

I went up to the man who appeared to be in charge of him.

“You do understand that his madness is real? He’s not faking.”

“Well, it can’t be a fake, not if he can work real magic,” the man said. “But I understand. We’ll watch out for him.”

That was a phrase that could be interpreted several different ways.

“He’s been tormented before, by people studying his magic,” I told them. “They got nothing from him. Roseman treated him almost decently, and this man served him well.”

Curiosity dawned in the soldier’s face. “The Liege wants to understand his magic too, but no one’s going to torment anyone. There’s a project at Pendarian University, that’s where he’s headed. Those professors, they teach kids. They aren’t monsters.”

Looking closer, I saw that the men who held him were gripping his arms quite gently, so it might be true.

“Excuse me, but who are you?”

I turned and walked away, ignoring him. He might have gone after me, if not for the evidence tag on my pack. And the fact that one of Roseman’s men, trying to escape, would never have stopped to chat with him.

Carrying “evidence” got me all the way out the gate. I walked to the cart where evidence was being logged in…and right on past it. One yank removed my makeshift tag, and I became just another man in the crowd. It had gathered rapidly, now that the battle was over.

In fact, as rumors that the Liege’s troops were sacking Roseman’s townhouse spread, it seemed like the whole city was turning out to watch. Making my way through the throng felt like swimming against a stiff current, and it took some time before I got far enough from the house that walking was no longer a struggle.

Those who hadn’t gone to see for themselves stood in the street, speculating wildly. Some said they’d got the Rose in chains, to haul off to the Liege to be hanged. Some said they’d hanged him already, from the balcony in the entry hall, or a tree in the yard. Or that he’d had his head cut off in the fight, clean off. Or no, it was his arm cut off, and he bled out before they could stop it, or… Everyone sounded nervous, but no one seemed particularly upset at the thought of Roseman’s death. Though I heard a few say the Rose was too smart to be taken, that he’d escaped through a secret tunnel and was long gone by now.

I noted that Jack’s so-secret tunnel was no secret from the friends and neighbors of the men who’d done the digging. For such a successful scammer, Jack wasn’t very perceptive about people.

I reached the inn where Michael had been staying and told the clerk I’d come to collect his things, since he’d probably be a guest of the High Liege for a while.

“You mean a prisoner?” The clerk was in his early teens. The older staff had probably gone to find out what was happening. “Did he get arrested, along with the Rose?”

“No, I mean a guest,” I said. “An honored one, because he helped bring about Roseman’s downfall.”

“How do you… Were you there? What’s going on? Is Tony Rose really dead? How…?”

I gave him a brief description of the battle, and he was so fascinated and distracted that he gave me the key to Michael’s room without proof or protest.

The room was bleak and somewhat shabby, like so many rooms we’d shared these last… More than two years, now. I would keep my temper, even if he lost his. I’d known what I was doing. No need to get mad about it.

I was always the one who packed both Michael’s and my bags, because I was neater. I’d gotten accustomed to sorting things by weight and fit, rather than what belonged to whom, so it took longer than usual.

I would miss Kathy’s letters.

I was finishing up when the door slammed open, and Michael strode in.

“You let Jack go. That’s why you sent me out to negotiate the surrender. So you could sneak down to the basement and let him go.”

“They’d have hanged him.”

“He deserved to hang! He was willingly complicit in starting a war that would have killed hundreds, maybe thousands, and who knows how many other crimes—and you let him go! I left
children
to
kill
, because that was the only way I could think of to save you. How could you do this?”

“I told you from the start that I wouldn’t go after Jack,” I pointed out. “You just didn’t listen.”

“But he ran off and left you to take the blame for some scam. He told us about that, Fisk. He bragged about it.”

“Yes. He did that. But he also taught me. I owed him.”

“
I
saved your life. But I notice that debt doesn’t weigh with you.”

“If you’re going to bring that up, I’d have to say that Jack’s probably saved my life more often than you have. That’s not what this is about.”

Michael clutched at his hair, a gesture I’d never seen him make. “This isn’t about loyalty. It’s about justice. It’s about right and wrong, and all the things that matter.”

And here we came to it. As I’d known we would.

“Those things don’t matter to me.”

“Yes, they do.” He’d deluded himself about that from the day we met. “I know they do, for I know you. Mayhap better than you know yourself! We can track him down, make this right. You know how he got out of the house. He may still be in the city. We can find him.”

“You couldn’t,” I said.

“But you could. You’re the only one who can. Who can make what I did, what the children did, mean something. Accomplish something.”

“Killing the Rose wasn’t enough? Your tender little children know what matters. They’re probably dancing on the man’s grave. And I betrayed Jack to Roseman to save
your
life, though you don’t seem to have noticed that.”

Despite my resolutions, I was shaking with anger. Michael might be right about some of it. I knew he was right about some of it, but I no longer cared. “You’re not the only one who’s had to compromise.”

“Is that how you see justice? As a
compromise
?”

“I see justice as a scam,” I said. “But that’s not what matters, really, even to you. The thing that’s making you so mad, is that for once it didn’t all end up the way
you
wanted it. You couldn’t create your perfect, knight-errant ending this time, no matter how hard you tried. Because this time, Michael, it wasn’t your call.”

“But you’re my…my…”

“No. I’m not your poxy squire, I’m not your employee. My debt to you was paid off long ago.”

“I acknowledged that! I freed you to go then. And I certainly free you to go now. Go, and make your own lousy, crooked choices. And no doubt get yourself hanged, if that’s how little justice means to you. Here’s your share of the blood money!”

Michael pulled a fat purse from his pocket and dumped roughly half of it onto the bed. Despite my emotional turmoil, the sight distracted me—the coins that clinked onto the blankets were gold roundels. And there were a lot of them.

“Where did you get this?” Just half of that purse was enough to keep me for over a year, if I was reasonably frugal with it.

“They paid me off as soon as Dalton identified Roseman’s body. A
reward
.”

He made it sound like a pile of rotting offal, instead of a well-deserved payment for saving the whole United Realm from a bloody war—but then, Michael was always a little bit crazy. I gathered up the cool coins and tucked them into a corner of my pack. I could feel the contempt in his gaze.

“If you’re so cursed upset about it, how come you’re keeping yours?”

“I’m going to buy the chandlery, for any of the orphans who don’t have someone to take them in. They’ll never have to kill again.”

“They didn’t
have
to kill this time,” I pointed out. “They chose to.”

“Because I gave them the chance!”

“Well, that’s more than you gave me.” I fastened the last buckle on my pack.

“What do you mean?” He was honestly confused, curse him. “Who did you want to kill?”

“I didn’t want to kill anyone. That’s the point.”

“I didn’t
want
to kill,” said Michael, still missing it. “I wanted justice.”

“Which would have left Jack no less dead. And for once, just this once, I got what
I
wanted—even if I had to go behind your back, and risk getting us both killed to do it.”

He frowned, still puzzled, still too furious to care. I picked up my pack.

“I separated our goods. I’m taking Tipple, too. I’ve earned her.”

He was so angry I thought he might object to that. But his curst, knight-errant generosity got in his way.

“Fine. She’s yours. Just leave me Chant and True.”

“Oh, the dog’s all yours. With my blessing.”

I threw the pack over my shoulder and walked out. I half-expected him to call after me. On the rare occasions when Michael loses his temper, his anger never lasts long.

If I waited a few days, probably even a few hours, he would apologize and have me back—and spend the next two years trying to convince me to worship justice and principle, as he did. So I kept walking, feeling sad and empty…and strangely light. It was time I moved on.

Michael had some right on his side, for he’d betrayed his precious principles to save me. Just as I’d betrayed Jack to save him…and then betrayed him to save Jack.

If he’d been able to see this, Jack would have laughed his head off. He had been right about something, too. Living with Michael was making me…not soft, but dependant. Too willing to compromise, to obey, to abandon my choices, my way of looking at the world, in exchange for friendship.

I had actually become his squire.

Oh, yes. It was time to move on.

Hilari Bell writes SF and fantasy for kids and teens. She’s an ex-librarian, a job she took to feed her life-long addiction to books, and she lives in Denver with a family that changes shape periodically—currently it’s her mother, her adult niece and their dog, Ginger. Her hobbies are board games and camping—particularly camping, because that’s the only time she can get in enough reading. Though when it comes to reading, she says, there’s no such thing as “enough.”

Chapter 1: Michael