A Thief in the Night

chapter Seventy-five

After Slag was taken away, the night passed without further incident.

Malden slept, finally—after a fashion. He mostly drifted on dark currents of his own thoughts. Sometimes those thoughts grew bizarre in character, sometimes incomprehensible, and he would realize that he had been dreaming. Yet there was no sharp disconnection between wakefulness and slumber.

Certainly he got little rest.

Cythera woke when they were brought food so they could break their fast. More mealy bread, this time accompanied by small beer with a distinct mushroomy flavor. It occurred to him to wonder how the bread was made without wheat flour. Probably ground bits of mushroom.

He wondered what had happened to Slag.

He was almost certain he didn’t want to know.

Cythera said little that morning, and moved less. She mostly sat watching the gaolers, the revenants who were themselves motionless. Malden wondered if she were doing something witchy. Trying to take control of their rotting brains with the hypnotic power of her gaze, perhaps. Or cause them to erupt into flame with an ancient incantation in some language lost in the mists of time.

Perhaps—maybe just perhaps possibly—she was coming up with some way of freeing them from the gaol. Maybe she had some brilliant idea. Maybe she could spring them from the stockade. Together they could make it up those stairs, slip past the guards that were sure to wait at the top. Find some way through the maze of elfin tunnels, then past the demons and the revenants. Perhaps together the two of them could make it back to the surface. To real daylight, to freedom.

He started sweating just thinking about it. He wanted out. He wanted out so badly he started convincing himself she was going to say something, that at any moment she would speak and tell him what she’d realized, what she had discovered, that would save them both.

He watched her face more carefully than he’d ever watched a guard patrolling outside a warehouse, with more rapt attention than he’d ever wasted on a fat purse he planned to snatch or a lock he planned to pick. He watched every twitch of her mouth, watched her eyes move from one revenant to another. When she was about to speak, he was ready, he could see her tongue start to form the words, and he nodded in excitement, in anticipation.

“That one’s taller,” she said finally.

Malden shook himself out of his reverie. “I beg your pardon?”

“The one on the left is taller. They look like they’re exactly the same height. But there—look. The floor isn’t quite level, so the one on the left is actually a hair taller than the one on the right.”

Malden’s entire body sagged with disappointment, every one of his muscles giving up a little more hope. “I think you have something there,” he said, and decided not to rely on her for any daring escape plans.

He’d gotten himself so worked up that when an elfin soldier came down the stairs, he jumped up and grabbed at the bars with white knuckles. It was probably just their next meal being delivered, he told himself. This soldier didn’t look nearly as bored as the others had, though. One of his pupils was larger than the other, as if he’d stolen a taste of the Hieromagus’s sacrament.

“Are you . . . Malton?” he asked.

“No.”

“Oh.” The soldier looked confused and stared through the bars for a moment as if he couldn’t remember why he’d come. Then he turned and started to head back up the stairs.

“Wait,” Malden said. “We need blankets. It got very cold last night. And we can’t live on just mushrooms. We need better food.”

The soldier turned around slowly. “You,” he said.

Malden waited for something more. Eventually he grew tired of waiting. “Yes?” he asked.

“Are you Sir Croy’s squire?”

“No,” Malden said again.

“Oh.” The soldier went away, back up the stairs without another word.

He came back an hour later. This time he asked no questions, but threw open the gate of the cage and grabbed Malden. Cythera screamed and begged him not to take Malden away, but the soldier ignored her.

“It’s all right,” Malden told her. “You’ll be all right. Croy is coming. Croy will save you,” he told her. Croy is dead, he thought. If he was coming, he’d be here by now. “Cythera. When I die—your name will be on my lips.”

She was still screaming when he was pushed up the stairs. As he was marched down the hallway, he could hear her.

The soldier dragged Malden down a side passage, then pushed him through a door. The room beyond could not have shown a greater contrast to the stockade, a riot of color and sound and fragrant smoke of incense, and the transition was so jarring that Malden fell to the rich carpet and barely caught himself on his hands.

Slowly he looked up to see where he was. The room’s walls were lined with tapestries in every color imaginable, its furniture of varied styles and bizarre forms. A group of elfin musicians up in a choir loft played very loud. In the center of the room, the Hieromagus lay on a bright yellow divan, his shapeless robe spilling out across the floor.

“Your exalted presence radiates the light of the soul, Hieromagus,” the soldier said. “This is Malton, as you requested.”

“My name isn’t Malton!” the thief shouted.

The Hieromagus slowly sat up. As distracting as the room’s contents might be, his gaze was fixed on something wholly elsewhere. “He’s telling the truth. You brought the wrong one.”

The soldier dropped to his knees. “My honor, my allegiance, my life, my love, all for you. This was the only male remaining in the stockade.”

“He must serve, then,” the Hieromagus said. “Come closer, child.”

“I’m no child either,” Malden protested.

“To the Elders, all other races are children,” the Hieromagus said. He was smiling with real warmth. “Come a little closer. I need to make sure you will not run away. Sir Croy gave me his word, which is good enough from a noble man. From a commoner, I’m afraid I need better assurances.”

Malden guessed what was about to happen a moment before it was too late to run away. The Hieromagus shot one impossibly thin hand out from under his robe and grasped Malden’s ankle.

An invisible serpent wrapped around Malden’s leg and sank its fangs deep in the meat of his calf. The muscle there stretched painfully and refused to relax, no matter how hard Malden tried to command it.

He attempted to draw back, to get away from the evil touch of the Hieromagus. It didn’t work. His leg was frozen in a stranglehold of pain. He could barely walk on it, and he knew he would never be able to run until that muscle was released. Which, of course, was the point.

He had been hobbled.