A Thief in the Night

chapter Four

Malden grabbed a sack of coins from the wagon—Doral’s first payment, made in advance—and walked away from the horse and its burden, knowing they would be taken care of by the children. The urchins who lived in the Ashes, orphans all, were desperate, violent little sprites but they worked hard for the pittance Cutbill gave them. It was their only way of getting food other than catching the district’s vast number of feral cats and roasting them over open fires.

Malden turned a corner and walked into the ruin of an old inn. Three old men waited for him there, ancient graybeards who nodded and smiled as he approached. They were sitting on a coffin in the middle of an abandoned building, just as they did every night. The old grand masters of the guild of thieves.

“Well met, Malden,” Loophole said, raising a hand in welcome. Malden took it warmly and smiled. “More grist for the mill?”

“The wheel of the gods grinds slowly, but it grinds the barleycorn exceeding fine,” Malden said, making sure to use the night’s password. He bowed and started to walk past the old men, when ’Levenfingers stopped him with a discreet clearing of the throat.

“Someone’s been asking for you.”

Malden stopped where he was and turned to look at the oldsters. It was Lockjaw, he who rarely spoke at all, who gave him the news.

“It’s nothin’. Just some fool poking around where he don’t belong.”

“What kind of fool?” Malden asked. “The heavily armed kind?”

’Levenfingers sighed. “The children spotted him, an hour hence, just on the edge of the Ashes. Little fellow in very plain clothes. Not a watchman, nor a bravo with a grudge. Looked more like a priest.”

“Perhaps he came to save my soul,” Malden suggested.

“He got naught from the bairns, save a nasty look,” Loophole told him. “He was smart enough to clear off after that.”

“It’s nothin’,” Lockjaw said again, and waved one hand in dismissal.

“I appreciate the warning, all the same,” Malden said, feeling distinctly uneasy. Cutbill kept his headquarters in such a forlorn place specifically so that approaching strangers would be conspicuous solely by their presence. Anyone asking for him who knew where he worked should be considered potentially dangerous, no matter how holy their intentions.

Nor could Malden afford to be reckless. Collecting protection money for Cutbill might seem like an easy job, but it actually held far more danger than straight thievery. When you robbed someone, if you did it correctly, they never knew who had done it. Doral, though, knew his face now. If Doral cared enough to spend some money, it would not be difficult for the merchant to learn Malden’s name. After all, he was making enemies these days, enemies who knew where to find him.

Brooding on this, Malden passed the old men and opened a trapdoor hidden in the debris of the fallen inn. He headed down a short flight of stairs and pushed aside a tapestry to step into a room full of warmth and light. The din of the place overwhelmed him as he walked inside, right into the middle of a dice game in full swing. The gamblers gathered up their money and moved backward to let him through, some of them touching their hoods in salute. Malden was greeted warmly by the guildmaster’s new bodyguard, a swordsman in red leather named Tyburn, and the pair of working girls who were keeping him company. Having grown up in a brothel, Malden knew the girls well and bowed as deeply to them as he might to a pair of fine ladies. They giggled and batted their eyelashes at him.

Slag the dwarf was hard at work, as always, at his chaotic workshop in one corner of the room. It looked like he was making a grappling hook, bending rods of iron in a vise. His mop of ragged black hair was greasy with sweat and he swore liberally as he twisted the metal.

“I owe you a debt of gratitude,” Malden said. “Those darts you made me worked a trick.”

“They ought to. I sighted them in myself.” The dwarf glared up at Malden with wild eyes. “And you owe me nothing, you bothersome bastard. You paid for them, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I did,” Malden admitted with a laugh.

“Then leave me be, so I can get back to my own business,” the dwarf finished, and turned away without another word.

Malden shrugged and made his way over to the massive door in the far wall that led to Cutbill’s office. He knocked the requisite number of times before opening it. Stepping inside, he felt an edge of cold iron kiss his throat.

He never had gotten used to that sensation, though it was hardly the first time he’d experienced it. He held still until the owner of the knife withdrew the weapon and stepped back behind a hanging tapestry before Malden could see his face.

Sighing, Malden stepped into the office. It was grandly appointed, with a massive wooden desk and a cheerily glowing brazier giving heat. The walls were covered with rich tapestries, woven with gold thread that caught the light.

Cutbill, however, sat on a stool in the coldest corner of the room, facing a lectern on which was propped a massive leather-bound ledger book. He was making notations in its pages with a quill pen. The guildmaster of thieves didn’t look like much to see, not at first glance. He was a small man, thin, with little hair and a pair of dark, beady eyes behind his long nose. He did not look up as Malden entered.

Malden placed the sack of coins on the unused desk and then leaned his hip against its solidity. It had been a long night and he longed to be abed, but he had to make his report first. Cutbill was a stickler for detail, and liked everything done in a precise way. His exactitude had bothered Malden once, but in the time he’d worked for Cutbill he’d learned just how necessary the details were. Cutbill’s operation was vast, and one man alone could barely keep all the figures straight, even a man with Cutbill’s great talent for order. One slip-up could see the entire organization hanged. So Malden had learned to accept, and even appreciate, Cutbill’s niceties. Even when he was so tired he was seeing spots before his eyes.

“You were successful, I see,” Cutbill said. He made another notation in his ledger, then turned back several pages and consulted a figure.

Malden didn’t question how Cutbill could know that before he’d even given his report. Cutbill had a way of always being three steps ahead of anyone he spoke to. “A new customer, and three new recruits.”

“Hmm.” Cutbill sounded vaguely amused. It was hard to tell—the guildmaster never smiled, and certainly had never laughed in Malden’s presence. But Malden was beginning to learn his moods all the same. “That makes ten new clients you’ve recruited in two weeks,” Cutbill went on. “I wonder what will happen if you keep operating at this pace. By way of a hypothetical, what would Ness look like if the entire population of the Stink were on my payroll at the same time, while every citizen in the Golden Slope was receiving my protection? Would we completely eliminate thievery in one fell swoop?”

“Perish the thought,” Malden said. He scowled into the middle distance. “I can’t imagine a more boring possibility.”

“Hmm.” It was as good as a belly laugh, coming from Cutbill. It seemed the man was pleased with his work. Well, that was something.

Once upon a time Malden had hated Cutbill with a passion. The old man had blackmailed him into coming into the guild, just as Malden had browbeaten the three thieves that night. But rather than just welcoming him in with open arms, Cutbill had exacted a ridiculous payment for the right to work as a thief in Ness. A hundred and one gold royals—a vast fortune—to be paid before Malden could earn a single copper for himself. He’d made that payment, though nearly died in the process. Other people had died, though no one the world would miss. Once the price was paid, Malden had believed he would go on hating Cutbill for what he’d been put through. He’d been convinced he would spend the rest of his life looking for a way to put the man in his place.

And yet over the months that followed, something strange had happened. He actually came to respect the guildmaster of thieves. He would never go so far as to say he liked the man. Yet as he had watched Cutbill plot from his tiny office in the Ashes (as far as Malden knew, Cutbill never left the room), he began to see something of the man’s brilliance. The way he played the various factions of the city off one another. The way he kept his people out of harm’s way, and his thieves’ necks out of the noose. Cutbill could be a vicious schemer, and he was not above having people killed if they got in his way. Malden imagined the man had not a single moral compulsion in his slender skull. Yet by operating in such a ruthless fashion, Cutbill managed to save lives, to put money in pockets that had been empty, and to ameliorate some small portion of the city’s misery. It was almost enough to make Malden think the guildmaster had a heart after all.

Cutbill gestured at the night’s takings. “You may take your cut from the bag. I don’t need to count it.”

Malden stood up straight. That was a level of trust he’d never anticipated from Cutbill. He reached into the sack of coins and took out twenty small gold gravines. One part in ten of all he’d earned—the going rate.

“Just write me a receipt, if you’d be so kind,” Cutbill said. He put his pen down for a moment and actually looked up. “You know, Malden, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. I’m worried about you.”

In the middle of scribbling his receipt on the desk, Malden managed to misspell his own name.

“You . . . are?” he asked, trying not to sound too surprised.

Cutbill frowned. “You’ve been taking on these protection and recruitment assignments more and more often. I might begin to suspect you were looking to move up in the organization, if I didn’t know you better. This sort of work is hardly fit to your temperament. You’re a housebreaker, not a kneebreaker. Blackmail and extortion are foreign to your character—if you take a coin from a man’s pocket, it seems to actually pain you to smile at him afterward. It’s one of the things I like about you. You’re the most honest thief I know.”

“I didn’t know you took such a personal interest,” Malden said. In truth, he found it rather disturbing.

“Do not give me too much credit,” Cutbill said. “A happy worker is a good earner, that’s all. I like to keep my people happy when I can. So I would like to know—why do you keep taking assignments you must hate?”

“For the money, of course. They pay so much better.”

Cutbill picked up his pen and looked down at his ledger. The time for concern and caring, apparently, was over. But then he surprised Malden again. He nodded vigorously, though he didn’t seem convinced. “I’m all for uncomplicated cupidity, of course. Greed is a wonderful motivator. But would you indulge me and answer one more question? What is it that you plan to buy with all that money?”

“A house,” Malden admitted. “A fit place for a fine lady.”

“Indeed? Malden the thief looks to marry? Fascinating,” Cutbill said, and wrote a number down in his ledger, as if he’d taken the empirical measure of Malden’s heart. “Does this most fortunate creature have a name?”