“Oh, sweet jumping fuck,” muttered Jean.
“I might point out, however,” continued Locke, “that our man at the carriage is due to check on us soon, and he’ll have his crossbow with him.”
“Oh, you mean the unconscious fellow I like jacked over the head with a rock, sir? Sorry to report that he was drunk.”
“I don’t believe you. We didn’t give him that much beer!”
“Beggin’ pardon, but he weren’t all that much man, gents. Skinny fellow, if you savvy. As it is, he’s sleepin’ now. And he didn’t have no crossbow anyway. I checked.”
“Well, I hope you don’t blame us for trying,” said Locke.
“I don’t, not one little bit. Good try. Very creditable, like. But I’m sort of interested, if you don’t mind, in the wheres-abouts of your purses.”
“Safely down here with us,” said Locke. “We might be convinced to surrender them, but you’ll have to help haul us up if you want them.”
“Now on that subject,” said the stranger, “you an’ I have a sort of difference in outlook, like. Since I know you’ve got ’em, now, I think it’s easier to just chop you down and collect ’em at my ease.”
“Unless you’re a much better rock climber than you look,” said Jean, “it’s one hell of a climb down and back for the sake of our little purses!”
“And they are little,” said Locke. “Our rock-climbing purses. Specially made not to weigh us down. Hardly hold anything!”
“I think we probably got different ideas of what anythin’ is. And I wouldn’t have to climb,” said the stranger. “There’s easier ways down to that valley floor, if you know where to go.”
“Ah, don’t be foolish,” said Jean. “These ropes are demi-silk. It’ll take you some time to cut through them. Longer than it will take for us to climb back up, surely.”
“Probably,” said the man in the cloak. “But I’m still up here if you do, ain’t I? I can just crack you over the edge and make your skulls into soup bowls, like. See if I don’t!”
“But if we stay down here, we’ll die anyway, so we might as well come up and die fighting,” said Locke.
“Well, have it your way, sir. Whole conversation’s gettin’ sort of circular, if you don’t mind me sayin’, so I’m just gonna start cuttin’ rope now. Me, I’d stay put and go quiet, was I you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a miserable cur,” shouted Locke. “Any child of three could murder helpless men hanging over a cliff. Time was when a bandit would have the balls to fight us face-to-face and earn his pay!”
“What do I rightly look like, sir, an honest tradesman? Guild tats on my arms?” He knelt down and began to chop at something, steadily, with Jean’s hatchet. “Splattin’ you against those rocks below seems a fine way of earnin’ my pay. Even finer, if you’re gonna speak so unkind.”
“You’re a wretch,” cried Locke. “A cringing dog, a scrub, damned not just for avarice but for cowardice! The gods spit on those without honor, you know! It’ll be a cold hell, and a dark one, for you!”
“I’m chock-full of honor, sir. Got lots of it. Keep it right here between my empty stomach and my puckered white ass, which you may kiss, by the way.”
“Fine, fine,” said Locke. “I merely wanted to see if you could be goaded to misjudgment. I applaud your restraint! But surely, there’s more profit to be had in hoisting us up and holding us for ransom!”
“We’re important people,” said Jean.
“With rich, important friends. Why not just hold us prisoner and send a letter with a ransom demand?”
“Well,” said the man, “for one thing, I can’t read nor write.”
“We’d be happy to write the demand for you!”
“Can’t rightly see how that’d work. You could just write anythin’ you like, couldn’t you? Ask for constables and soldiers instead of gold, if you take my meanin’. I said I can’t read, not that I got worm piss for brains.”
“Whoa! Hold it! Stop cutting!” Jean heaved himself up another foot and braced his rope within the descender to hold him. “Stop cutting! I have a serious question!”
“What’s that, then?”
“Where the hell did you come from?”
“Roundabouts, here and there, by way of my mother’s womb, original like,” said the man, who continued chopping.
“No, I mean, do you always watch these cliffs for climbers? Seems bloody unlikely they’d be common enough to skulk in ambush for.”
“Oh, they isn’t, sir. Ain’t never seen any, before you two. Was so curious I just had to come down and take a peek, and ain’t I glad I did.” Chop, chop, chop. “No, mostly I hide in the woods, sometimes the hills. Watch the roads.”
“All by yourself?”
“I’d be cuttin’ you down faster if I wasn’t by myself, wouldn’t I?”
“So you watch the roads. Looking to rob what, carriages?”
“Mostly.”
“You have a bow or a crossbow?”
“Sadly, no. Think maybe I might buy a piece if I can get enough for your things.”
“You hide in the woods, all by yourself, and try to ambush carriages without a real weapon?”
“Well,” said the man a bit hesitantly, “has been a while since I got one. But today’s my lucky day, ain’t it?”
“I should say so. Crooked Warden, you must be the worst highwayman under the sun.”
“What did you say?”
“He said,” said Locke, “that in his highly educated opinion you’re the—”
“No, the other part.”
“He mentioned the Crooked Warden,” said Locke. “Does that mean something to you? We’re members of the same fraternity, friend! The Benefactor, the Thiefwatcher, the Nameless Thirteenth, patron of you and I and all who take the twisty path through life. We’re actually consecrated servants of the Crooked Warden! There’s no need for animosity, and no need for you to cut us down!”
“Oh yes there is,” said the man vehemently, “now I’m definitely cuttin’ you down.”
“What? Why?”
“Bloody fuckin’ heretics, you are! There ain’t no Thirteenth! Ain’t naught but the Twelve, that’s truth! Yeah, I been to Verrar a couple times, met up with lads and lasses from the cuttin’ crews what tried to tell me ’bout this Thirteenth. I don’t hold with it. Ain’t right like I was raised. So down you go, boys!” The man began hacking at the demi-silk ropes with a vengeance.
“Shit. Want to try and snag him in the belay lines?” Jean swung over beside Locke and spoke with soft urgency. Locke nodded. The two thieves took hold of their ends of their belay lines, stared upward, and at Jean’s whispered signal, yanked them downward.
It was hardly an efficient trap; the lines were slack, and coiled up above the cliffs. Their tormentor looked down at his feet, hopped up, and stepped away as seven or eight feet of each belay line slipped over the cliff’s edge.
“Ha! You’ll have to get up earlier than that, gents, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so!” Whistling tunelessly, he vanished out of sight and continued chopping. A moment later he gave a cry of triumph, and Locke’s coiled belay line flew over the edge of the cliff. Locke averted his face as the rope fell just past him; it was soon dangling in thin air from his waistbelt, its frayed far end still too many feet above the ground for safety.
“Shit,” said Locke. “Right, Jean. Here’s what we do. He should cut my main line next. Let’s hook arms. I’ll slide down your main line, knot what’s left of mine to the bottom, and that should probably get us within twenty feet or so of the ground. If I haul up my belay line and knot that on the end of the other two, we can make it all the way down.”
“Depends on how quickly that asshole cuts. You think you can tie knots fast enough?”
“I think I’ve got no choice. My hands feel up to the task, at least. Even if I just get one line lashed, twenty feet’s a happier fall than eighty.”
At that moment, there was a faint rumble of thunder overhead. Locke and Jean looked up at just the right moment to feel the first few drops of rain on their faces.
“It’s possible,” said Locke, “that this would be really fucking amusing right now, were it anyone but us down on these ropes.”
“At the moment, I think I’d take my chances with your pigeons if I could,” said Jean. “Damn, I’m sorry for leaving the Wicked Sisters up there, Locke.”
“Why in Venaportha’s name would you have brought them down? There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Although,” said Jean, “maybe there is one other thing I could try. You carrying sleeve steel?”
“Yeah, but it’s in my boot.” The rain was beating down fairly hard now, soaking through their tunics and wetting their lines. Their light dress and the stiff breeze made it seem colder than it really was. “Yourself?”
“Got mine right here.” Locke saw a flash of bright metal in Jean’s right hand. “Yours balanced for throwing, Locke?”
“Shit, no. Sorry.”
“No worries. Hold it in reserve, then. And give us a good silent prayer.” Jean paused to pluck off his optics and tuck them into his tunic collar, then raised his voice. “Hey! Sheep-lover! A word if you please!”
“I sort of thought we was done talkin’,” came the man’s voice from above the cliff’s edge.
“No doubt! I’ll wager using so many words in so short a time makes your brain feel like a squeezed lemon, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t have the wit to find the fucking ground if I threw you out of a bloody window! Are you listening? You’d have to take your shoes and breeches off to count to twenty-one! You’d have to look up to see the underside of cockroach shit!”
“Does it help, yellin’ at me like that? Seems like you should be prayin’ to your useless Thirteenth or somethin’, but what would I know? I ain’t one of you big-time Verrari felantozzers or whatever, am I?”
“You want to know why you shouldn’t kill us? You want to know why you shouldn’t let us hit that valley floor?” Jean hollered at the top of his lungs while bracing his feet more firmly against the cliffside and pulling back his right arm. Thunder echoed overhead. “See this, you idiot? See what I’ve got in my hands? Something you’ll see only once in a lifetime! Something you’ll never forget!”
A few seconds later, the man’s head and torso appeared over the edge of the cliff. Jean let out a cry as he flung his knife with all of his strength. The cry became triumphant as he saw the blurred shape of his weapon strike home in their tormentor’s face…and changed yet again to a frustrated groan as he saw the knife bounce back and fall away into thin air. It had struck hilt-first.
“Fucking rain!” yelled Jean.
The bandit was in serious pain, at least. He moaned and clutched his face, teetering forward. A nice hard smack in the eye? Jean fervently hoped so—perhaps he still had a few seconds to try again.
“Locke, your knife, quickly!”
Locke was reaching into his right boot when the man thrust his arms out for balance, lost it, and toppled screaming over the edge of the cliff. He got one hand around Locke’s main line a second later and fell directly into the crook of Locke’s waist and rope, where they met at the iron descender on his belt. The shock knocked Locke’s legs away from the cliff as it knocked the breath from his lungs, and for a second he and the bandit were in free fall, flailing and screaming in a tangle of arms and legs, with no proper pressure on the line in the descender.
Straining himself to the utmost, Locke curled his left hand around the free side of the line and tugged hard, putting enough strain on the rope to snap them to a halt. They swung into the cliff face together, the bandit taking the brunt of the impact, and dangled there in a struggling mess of limbs while Locke fought to breathe and make sense of the world. The bandit kicked and screamed.
“Stop that, you fucking moron!” They seemed to have fallen about fifteen feet; Jean slipped rapidly down beside them, alighted on the cliff, and reached out with one hand to grab the bandit by the hair. With the hood thrown back, Locke could see that the fellow was grizzled like an underfed hound, perhaps forty, with long greasy hair and a gray beard as scrubby as the grass on the cliff’s edge. His left eye was swelling shut. “Stop kicking, you idiot! Hold still!”
“Oh, gods, please don’t drop me! Please don’t kill me, sir!”
“Why the fuck not?” Locke groaned, dug his heels into the cliff, and managed to reach the edge of his right boot with his right hand. A moment later he had his stiletto out at the bandit’s throat, and the man’s panicked kicking became a terrified quivering.
“See this?” Locke hissed. The bandit nodded. “This is a knife. They have these, wherever the fuck you came from?” The man nodded again. “So you know I could just stick you right now and let you fall, right?”
“Please, please, don’t….”
“Shut up and listen. This single line that you and I are dangling from right now. Single, solitary, alone! This wouldn’t be the line you were just chopping at up there, would it?”
The man nodded vigorously, his good eye wide.
“Isn’t that splendid? Well, if the shock of your fall didn’t break it, we’re probably safe for a little while longer.” White light flashed somewhere above them and thunder rolled, louder than before. “Though I have been much more comfortable. So don’t kick. Don’t flail. Don’t struggle, and don’t do anything fucking stupid. Savvy?”
“Oh, no, sir, oh please…”
“Shut up already.”
“Lo…er, Leocanto,” said Jean. “I’m thinking this fellow deserves some flying lessons.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” said Locke, “but thieves prosper, right, Jerome? Help me haul this stupid bastard back up there somehow.”
“Oh, thank you, thank—”
“Know why I’m doing this, you witless woodland clown?”
“No, but I—”
“Shut it. What’s your name?”
“Trav!”
“Trav what?”
“Never had no after-name, sir. Trav of Vo Sarmara is all.”
“And you’re a thief? A highwayman?”
“Yes, yes I am.”
“Nothing else? Do any honest work?”
“Er, no, not for some time now…”
“Good. Then we are brothers of a sort. Look, my smelly friend, the thing you have to understand is that there is a Thirteenth. He does have a priesthood, and I’m one of his priests, savvy?”
“If you say so….”
“No, shut up. I don’t want you to agree with me; I want you to use your misplaced acorn of a brain before the squirrel comes looking for it again. I have a blade at your throat, we’re seventy feet above the ground, it’s pissing a nice hard rain, and you just tried to murder me. By all rights, I ought to give you a red smile from ear to ear and let you drop. Would you agree to that?”
“Oh, probably, sir, gods, I’m sorry….”
“Hush now, sweet moron. So you’d admit that I must have a pretty powerful reason for not satisfying myself with your death?”
“I, uh, I guess!”
“I’m a divine of the Crooked Warden, like I said. Sworn to the service and the mandates of the god of our kind. Seems kind of a waste to spit in the face of the god that looks out for you and yours, doesn’t it? Especially since I’m not so sure I’ve been doing right by Him recently.”
“Uh…”
“I should kill you. Instead, I’m going to try and save your life. All I want you to do is think about this. Do I still seem like a heretic to you?”
“Uh…oh, gods, sir, I can’t think straight….”
“Well, nothing unusual there, I’d wager. Remember what I said. Don’t flail, don’t kick, don’t scream. And if you try to fight, even the tiniest bit, our arrangement’s off. Wrap your arms around my chest and shut up. We’re a good long way from sitting pretty.”