A Thief in the Night

chapter Fifty-eight

Malden’s head spun. Lights burst in the backs of his eyes and drool fountained out of his split lip. He reeled as he staggered to keep his feet, one hand reaching for Acidtongue.

“Oath-breaker,” he swore, as he rubbed at his hurt jaw. “The law—”

Balint’s eyes were wild. She stared down at the wrench in her hand as if she were holding a feral animal that was likely to bite her. Her mouth opened to form words but for a moment she was so stunned by what she’d done (perhaps more stunned than Malden was by the pain of it) that she could not speak.

Considering the mouth on her, that was a marvel in itself.

Then she seemed to recover a bit of her composure. “I . . . don’t see any witnesses,” she said, and changed her grip on the wrench.

Malden drew Acidtongue a few inches from its sheath.

“Is this really what you want?” he asked.

She swallowed noisily. “F*ck you.”

Malden stepped backward. His head still rang, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if his jaw was broken. It hurt badly enough. Still. He could focus enough to draw Acidtongue free of its scabbard and hold it out to his side, the way he’d seen Croy hold Ghostcutter many times.

Balint looked terrified when she saw the sword. She was trembling visibly. She clearly wasn’t afraid enough to give in, however. Malden watched in grudging admiration as she drew her screwdriver with her free hand. It would make a serviceable dagger, more than capable of putting out his eyes.

Assuming he bent over so she could reach, and that he was obliging enough to hold still while she did it.

Malden took a step toward her. His magical sword dripped acid onto the rooftop. It would cut through her like a loaf of bread the first time it touched her. He had a longer reach. He was faster than she was. He outweighed her—a fact he’d seen end more fights than any other factor.

She started shaking. The wrench rattled in her hand.

“Just give me the antidote,” Malden said. He frowned, then added, “The barrels, too. Then you can run away.”

“I . . . can’t do that,” Balint told him. Her whole body was shaking now.

“Of course you can.”

“No! The barrels must be destroyed!”

“By the Lady’s eighty-nine nipples! What’s in those barrels that makes dwarves go crazy?” he asked. “What could possibly be so important?”

“You don’t know anything. You know nothing of our history, and don’t even pretend otherwise. I have my orders, straight from the lips of my king. No human—nor any dwarf—can ever have the barrels. I’ll give my life for that command.”

“A pox on your orders!” He lifted the sword higher, preparing to bring it down in a killing stroke.

“Why don’t you go shit blood?” she asked. Her mouth closed tightly as if she were trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “Go ahead and kill me, you—you . . . girl-slayer. My men will still get away with the barrels, and Urin will still die.”

Malden lifted the sword and pointed it at Balint’s face. She yelped in terror.

And then his heart broke inside his chest. What in the name of the Bloodgod’s trousers am I doing?

Malden had grown up hating swords. More accurately, hating anyone who wore one on his belt. Swords were the answer to any question, it seemed, for those who had them always got their way over those who didn’t. In his experience most swordsmen took advantage of that fact and abused their power. How many times as a child had he seen a client refuse to pay one of his mother’s colleagues, and get away with it because he had a length of iron on his belt? How many times had he seen tradesmen and merchants and the abject poor of Ness shoved to the side of a street, thrown in the gutter, because they were in the way of a man with a sword?

It wasn’t until he’d met Croy that he even considered that there might be armed people in the world who didn’t want to steal from, lie to, and cheat everyone else, and then claim that was their right because they were born to the proper parents.

And now here he was. About to slaughter a dwarf—a dwarf, in Sadu’s name!—to get what he wanted. With a sword.

He had fallen in with low companions, he thought. Croy possessed a terrible influence on him. Made him forget everything he’d once believed. Croy had given him Acidtongue as if it was some great prize, some mark of esteem. In the process the knight had turned him into one of those arseholes he’d grown up hating. The ones who used to make his blood boil. He’d always considered himself an enemy of power, of the abusive system of knights and lords and kings that held Skrae in an iron grip.

When he accepted Acidtongue from the knight, he’d joined that crew.

He moved the sword back to his side. He wanted to throw it away. He didn’t sheathe it, though. He still needed that antidote, at the very least.

“Keep your benighted barrels, then. Give me the antidote and I’ll leave you in peace.”

Balint stopped shaking immediately. A look of incomprehension crossed her face—but then, suddenly, her eyes went sly. “I have your number now. You’ve got grease for guts,” she said. A nasty smile split her face. “You can’t do it. You can’t kill me, even with that length of iron in your hand. What is it? Are you just a coward? Or are you going to tell me you’ve got too much honor to slaughter an innocent?”

“I’d hardly put that label on you,” Malden told her. “But I won’t cut you down. Not like this. Give me the antidote.”

“I told you, there isn’t any.”

Malden sighed. “And I know you’re lying. Cythera—you met her back at the Hall of Masterpieces—told me so. She’s the daughter of a witch, and she’s worked with poisons herself. She told me no poisoner is so foolish not to keep the cure for her own venom somewhere on her. So you must have it. Hand it over. Now.”

She watched his face for a while, perhaps trying to judge just how far she could push him before he attacked her in blind rage. Then she reached down inside her shirt and took out a tiny glass vial with a cork stopper. A few drops of brown liquid rolled around inside the glass.

“Put that iron prick-replacement away and I’ll consider it,” she told him.

He scowled at Balint, but then he shoved Acidtongue back into its glass-lined scabbard, as she’d asked. He kept his left hand near his belt, where his bodkin was ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. If he was going to have to kill her, he wanted to do it with a poor man’s weapon.

“How do I administer it?” he asked, nodding at the vial.

“One drop is all he needs. Any more and the antidote will make him shit out his bowels, his brains, and everything in between,” Balint said.

She might be lying, but he reckoned Cythera would know the truth.

“He won’t be much good for anything for a day or two. Of course, a debaser like that isn’t fit to lick clean my privy any day.”

“Just give it to me,” Malden said.

“Certainly. Here you go!” she cried, and flung the vial past his outstretched hands and over the rooftop.