Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune (19 page)

“Oh, your poor face! You should’ve come to me. I could’ve told you other things to offer Makker.”

“Too late now.”

“Yeah. You want to come upstairs?”

Dace thought of the cot, of sex … of the
opah
they’d shared, and needs got the better of him.

“You figured out how you’re gonna steal that wand?” Geddie asked when they were naked and sated.

“I can’t.”

“You’ve gotta. Makker’ll kill you … or he’ll have Kiff do it.”

Dace could handle the idea of being dead, it was the idea of dying—of being killed—that terrified him. “I can’t. They took me in, made me part of their family. I can’t steal from them.”

“It’s not stealing; it’s saving your froggin’ life.” Geddie extracted herself from the cot. She prowled through her belongings and produced an
opah
rag. “Want some? I’ve got wine left” She brought it and the rag back to the cot.

He hadn’t forgotten his silent oaths, but what did oaths matter to a man who’d be dead by midnight? His tongue had healed from the last time he’d used the drug. He didn’t get the mule-kick exhilaration when he sucked the wine-soaked rag and eyed an undampened corner. But Geddie had made her feelings known about folks who took their
opah
without wine and, anyway, after a few moments, it no longer mattered.
Opah
was singing through his veins. It took the edge off his despair and told him that if the wand was worth more than five shaboozh, well, then, his life was worth more than any wand—

There was daylight left when Dace made his way down the stairway. He had a plan, a bright,
opah
-fueled plan that took him to Perrez’s iron-locked door.

“You in there?”

No answer—just as Dace had hoped. He imitated Perrez’s bumps and raps. It took three tries, but the bolt slid free and, opening the door no wider than necessary, Dace eased into the room. The windows were shuttered. There wasn’t enough light to see his hand in front of his face, but Dace didn’t need to see anything. He lowered himself to his knees and felt across the floor for a distinctive knothole against which he pressed with all his weight. A pressure clasp sprang free and Dace pried up a nearby floorboard. A cloth-wrapped bundle greeted his fingertips. He unwound the cloth and fit the wand easily into the pocket formed where he tucked his shirt beneath his belt. To make sure it stayed there, Dace tightened his belt until it hurt, then he searched for something wand-shaped that he could wrap the cloth around before returning it to the cache.

A spare candle came to hand. Wrapped in the cloth and laid carefully in the cache, Dace told himself it would pass casual muster. He patted the wand for luck and, with his heart pounding in his throat, slipped out of the room. Bump, rap, twist, and the lock was set.

No one had seen him come or go, he hoped. No one suspected that he was carrying ancient treasure above his belt, he hoped. No suspicion would fall on him when—as would inevitably happen—Perrez realized his fortune had gone missing.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the lock.

Jopze and Ammen were deep in a game of draughts. They didn’t notice Dace until he was in the shop and, as neither Bezul nor Chersey were behind the counter at that particular moment, neither of them suspected he had come from Perrez’s room. He thought about taking the wand up to his room, but that would only add complications when it came time to take it to Makker—for that matter, Dace had considered taking the wand straight to Makker, but it was time to put the kettle on for supper.

Chersey surprised him in the kitchen while he chopped second-rate greens. She said he looked peaked and wanted to send him upstairs to rest. Dace could scarcely meet her eyes; she was so concerned and so wrong about what was on his mind. She would likely have given him three shaboozh, if he could have borne the shame of telling her why he needed them.

But he couldn’t bear it and he insisted on fixing supper—his
last
supper. Careful as he’d been in Perrez’s room, Dace didn’t believe he was going to get away with robbery. The dragon’s claws and teeth scratched against his belly. The tight belt kept his secret, but not for long.

Dace burned the soup and nearly spilled it all when his shirt hem caught on the kettle’s handles. The wand was a few threads from catastrophe, but somehow it didn’t fall out and Dace got himself put back together. He excused himself as soon as the dishes were scraped.

“I’m going to the Frog,” he told them all, Chersey, Bezul, Gedozia, and Perrez together.

“That girl again.” Chersey rolled her eyes.

It wasn’t right for Chersey to blame Geddie for every wrong thing, but she didn’t know about
opah
or Perrez’s black wand, so tonight, Dace let the insults slide. He escaped into the amber light of a summer sunset.

So froggin’ far, so froggin’ good.
Perrez didn’t yet know his precious wand was missing. There’d be hell to pay when he discovered the robbery, but maybe—just maybe—he’d blame someone else.
I’d be a fool to run off to the swamp. Run off, and they’ll know it was me. Stick around, swear I did nothing, and
—
who knows
—
maybe I’ll get through this … .

C
hersey emptied a basin of dirty water into the sump. Bezul was in the back figuring the day’s accounts, Gedozia had taken the children for a walk, and Perrez was skulking in the kitchen. She ignored her brother-in-law. It was usually the best way to avoid his pleas for money and, usually, he got the hint.

Tonight was different. He hadn’t asked for money; that was a big difference. He hadn’t said much of anything at all until she’d wrestled the basin into its home beneath the sideboard.

“Chersey,” he said now that her chores were finished. “I need to talk to you.”

She dried her hands and sat on a stool. “About what?”

“Dace. I’m worried about him. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but he’s changed in the last few weeks—”

“He’s fallen in love with that girl above the Frog and Bucket—or he thinks he has.”

Perrez shook his head. Suddenly he looked older, soberer than she remembered seeing him. “It’s not women. I think it’s
opah.”

“Opah?
That’s what—? Some new plague come down from Caronne?”

“In a way. They make it from
krrf
and the best
krrf
—the strongest—comes from Caronne. But I’ve heard they make it right here, in the villages outside the city. Last week, Dace offered to sell me some. He’d gotten it from Makker … at the Frog:’

Everyone who lived on Wriggle Way knew Maksandrus, and stayed out of his way. Every few months he or one of his cronies showed up at the changing house, hoping to trade the fruits of his labors. Those were the days when Ammen and Jopze earned their keep. Chersey hadn’t made the connection between Dace, the girl, and Makker. Guilt rose within her.

“Let me get Bezul.”

“I didn’t want to bother him.”

“It’s no bother. Bez needs to hear this.”

She fetched her husband and together they listened to Perrez’s account of a conversation he’d had with Dace the day before he’d gotten battered on his way home from the market.

“If you ask me, he got caught selling the stuff—and not by the guard. He’s in over his head.”

“Why tell us
now?’
Bezul demanded. “We needed to know last week.”

“I thought he’d come to me and we could work it out together without involving you!”

“And now you don’t. What’s come up?”

Perrez writhed his shoulders. “He’s hiding something. He’s done something—it was all over his face at supper. I
know
that look, Bez—you know I know it. You’ve got to talk the truth out of him.”

“I can’t very well now, can I?” Bezul’s voice rose. The only time he ever yelled was when Perrez got under his skin. “He’s gone off for the evening. Gone to the Frog … or do you expect me to walk over there and haul him out by the shirtsleeves?”

In the moments before Perrez framed an answer, they all heard the sounds of footsteps and laughter: Gedozia bringing the children back. Chersey caught Perrez’s eye, enjoining him to silence.

Perrez obeyed by flinging himself out of his chair and marching out the kitchen door a half step before the children rushed in.

M
akker’s thick fingers stroked the shaft of the dragon wand. Dace himself hadn’t held the wand long enough to know if the shaft was wood or stone. He’d laid it on the table as though it were a thing on fire.

“You did well, Dace. I admit, I wasn’t sure you’d come back—froggin’ bad cess for you, if you hadn’t. I wouldn’t have wanted to break your good leg.”

Dace wasn’t sure how to respond. A nod seemed the best course: a nod, a smile, and a fervent hope that he could leave soon.

“I’ve got an idea,” Makker said, smiling in a way that dashed all Dace’s hopes. “There’s a man who wanted this thing—a man I think you should meet Walk with me to the Maze. You can make it that far?”

He should have said no, but a lifetime of denying his deformity set his head bobbing.

Makker’s bodyguards flanked them: Kiff and the other one whose name was Benbir and wore five knives on a baldric across his barrel chest. Dace had never felt so safe—or terrified—as he felt with these three men matching his gimpy stride.

Though Dace had never ventured into the Maze, he knew the names of its more infamous taverns and brothels. There was no mistaking the Vulgar Unicorn, not with its signboard hanging brazen in the twilight.

The tavern stank of stale wine, spilled beer, and charred sausage. The long tables in the middle of the commons—the “cheap seats” Kiff called them—were dotted with men and a few women, all of whom went back to looking at their drinks as soon as they’d taken Makker’s measure. There were fewer folk at the smaller tables along the shadowy sides of the room. One of them was a lopsided man—Dace assumed it was a man—with hair on one side of his head, but not the other, and a tongue that lolled out the corner of his mouth. He had a huge hump where his right shoulder should have been and lurched violently as he walked. His arms looked long enough to drag on the floor.

Dace had never seen anyone more crippled than himself and, despite all the cruel stares he’d endured, couldn’t take his eyes off the scuttling fellow.

“That one’s got a friend,” Makker said softly. “We leave him alone, and he does the same for us. Come along now.”

Kiff led the way up a flight of stairs to a corridor of shut doors. He paused on the hinge side of a door no different than the rest. Benbir took a similar position on the latch side. Makker knocked once and a man’s voice called Makker by name. Makker gave Dace a shove and, leaving Kiff and Benbir behind, they entered.

A ceiling lamp provided the room’s only light. Its flame cast long shadows over a seated man’s face, making it difficult to fix his features. He was a small man—small, at least, compared to Makker, Kiff, and Benbir—but there was no doubt in Dace’s mind that he was in the presence of a powerful man. The stranger’s head was bald and shiny, his fingers, long and menacing Even Makker drew a deep breath before saying—

“He got it.”

“You wouldn’t be here otherwise,” the seated man said with what was both a Wrigglie accent and something more refined. “I’ll take it now.”

He extended that elegant hand and Makker gave away the wand as fast as Dace had given it to Makker.

“A beautiful thing. Yenizedi. A thousand years old; and still charged. You’ve done well, Makker, you and your friend. Introduce me to our thief.”

Makker motioned Dace forward. “Dace, from the Swamp of Night Secrets. Lord Night.”

Dace stepped into the cone of lamplight. He extended his hand; the gesture was not returned. He couldn’t see Lord Night’s—that had to be a made-up name—eyes but knew he was under close scrutiny and was determined not to blink or quiver.

“You’re an insolent lad, for one with but a single leg to stand on.”

Dace’s breath caught in his throat—not for the insult. He could bear any words, but the word itself was an unusual one. Truth to tell, he didn’t know what “insolent” meant, except he’d heard a similar word, in a very similar accent, in a very different place: the Processional when a nabob wearing a false beard had ordered him aside. Lord Night was clean-shaven; that only strengthened the connection.

“Lord Noordiseh,” Dace muttered, unaware that his tongue had shaped the words aloud. “Perrez turned to you.” Dace’s eyes fastened on the object in the nabob’s hands. “He told you about the wand. He trusted you—”

A gasp echoed through the room. Dace couldn’t say from whose throat it had emerged. Lord Night, who was also Lord Noordiseh, had raised his head and Dace couldn’t break the stare of the man whose eyes he could not see.

Oh, Thufir, save me!
Dace prayed, but his silence and his prayer came too late. The amber drop at one end of the wand was glowing and a thin wisp of smoke rose from the golden dragon’s head.

The smoke first thickened, then divided itself, becoming two airborne serpents with shimmering amber eyes. Makker made a break for the door, but Dace couldn’t move to save himself or try. His serpent flew closer, coiled, and raised itself in easy striking distance. Its maw opened: amber, like its eyes.

Oh, Thufir
—Dace prayed.

He could not even shut his eyes as the fangs fell. There was no pain, so perhaps Thufir had intervened at the last. The room dimmed and Dace felt as though he were falling from a very great height as he heard a woman’s voice say, in Wrigglie—

“Well done, my lord. Your secret is safe with these two—”

P
errez, paced the kitchen, full of anger and self-pity, as only he could mix them. “It was worth a fortune. A frackin’ froggin’
fortune
. It was going to set me up. I had a deal with Lord Shuman Noordiseh. He was going to sell it to one of King Sepheris’s court magicians. I’d sworn him a quarter share, but I swear, the gold alone was worth a hundred royals.”

“Maybe Lord Noordiseh wasn’t satisfied with a quarter share. Maybe Lord Noordiseh stole it,” Bezul suggested with the bitterness he reserved for his younger brother.