A Thief in the Night

INTERLUDE

Snurrin the dwarf armorer closed up his shop an hour early that day, sending his human employees home with a half-hearted excuse—he’d had too much sun, he told them, and needed to rest somewhere cool and dark or he’d be worthless for the next morning’s appointments. The humans didn’t seem to care why they were released early from their labors. As was typical of the gangly bastards they were just glad for a chance to spend the evening in a tavern drinking away their wages.

“Fucking layabouts,” Snurrin muttered once they were gone. It felt good to be able to swear like a proper dwarf, something he never did when humans were around. Humans, he thought, were so very tall and brutish, and so very good at killing one another, but they acted liked strong language was more dangerous than any weapon in his shop. Utter one good profanity and half of them just fainted dead away.

He locked up the day’s take in his strongbox, then cleaned up the workshop where he’d spent most of the day fletching crossbow bolts. When he was done he headed up to the top floor of his shop where he kept his living quarters. Heavy velvet drapes covered all the windows there, blocking out the fierce sunlight. They were tacked in place but still a few errant beams of light broke into his room. More than enough to see by. Snurrin went to his desk and took out a long thin strip of paper. Using a heavy stylus of white lead, he wrote out a message in dwarven runes. When he was done the paper still looked blank, but if it were held over the proper sort of oil lamp for a few moments the runes would be revealed, as the particles of smoke adhered to the paper but not to the lead. What he had written was not for every eye to see.

Snurrin was no stranger to spycraft. Every dwarf living in Skrae—or at least every one loyal to the dwarven king—was expected to keep an eye on what the humans did, and report as necessary. The treaty between the crown of Skrae and the kingdom of dwarves was ironclad and made their two nations fast allies. That didn’t mean they trusted each other for a moment.

When the message was ready Snurrin headed up to the roof where he kept a wooden box sealed with a good stout padlock. Inside were a dozen bats each as big as his forearm, still asleep with their wings folded over them like cloaks. He picked one with three black dots painted on its back and rolled his message around its leg. The bat kicked and squealed in its sleep but it was unable to shake the slip of paper loose. When Snurrin was sure it was done properly he locked the box again and went back downstairs to take his supper. His work was done.

The city of Redweir lay over a hundred miles away, far to the southeast on the Bay of Serpents. It would take a human rider three days to cover that distance, even if he rode through the night and assuming he had fresh horses waiting for him at every stop on the way. A fast ship sailing with a fair wind might make it there in half the time. But even if the entire Free City of Ness had been swallowed up by a crack in the earth and dragged down to the pit of souls, no human in Redweir would hear of it and quicker than that.

The dwarves had a far more convenient method of getting messages back and forth between the two cities. That night when darkness fell, the bat would clamber out of a thin slot in the side of the box and wing toward Redweir. It knew the only way to get the objectionable piece of paper off its leg was to present itself to a certain dwarf who lived there. It would fly at full speed and arrive by dawn, when a minor clerk in the dwarven embassy at Redweir would find it just as he was headed for bed. The clerk would take the message—unread—directly to the Envoy of that city, who would know exactly how to make it legible. The Envoy would also know exactly what to do with the information Snurrin had provided:

BARBARIAN LEAVING TODAY FOR VINC MUST NOT FIND WHAT IS HIDDEN THERE THE KING GIVES THIS UTMOST PRIORITY HUMAN CASUALTIES ARE ACCEPTABLE SEND BALINT

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The band of adventurers passed through King’s Gate without any trouble—none of the guards were interested in stopping such a dangerous-looking crew from leaving the City—and before Malden knew it he was out in the world.

His reaction was immediate, and visceral.

Never, in his entire life, had he set so much as a foot outside the walls of the Free City of Ness. He was for the first time seeing that there even was a world beyond.

And it terrified him.

The land rolled like the waves of a vast ocean, a sea of tawny grain that never stopped moving under the lowering gray sky. In the distance the clouds broke and sunlight streamed down in impossibly long, straight rays to flicker on golden fields. A small army of peasants worked out there, bent over with sickles to harvest the glowing treasure. To the northeast a church stood white and straight, its spire pointing upwards like an accusing finger. It looked terribly alone in that open space, its right angles and distinct shape like some piece of Malden’s life cut loose and cast down carelessly like a plaything by some cyclopean child.

Every hour of Malden’s life to that point had been spent in narrow lanes, or climbing over rooftops, or in well-mannered parkland hampered by walls. Now there was nothing on any side of him that he could reach out and touch. If I were plucked up into the sky by some violent wind, Malden thought, and tossed out into the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, this is how it would feel. He felt exposed, naked, vulnerable in a way he distinctly disliked.

Over time this unease ebbed, though it never left him.

For hours they ambled through the fields under the blustery rain, never seeing more than the occasional distant group of laborers. The only way to measure the distance they covered was to count the mile markers that stood by the side of the road, simple piles of stones marked with the sigil of the local nobility: a crudely drawn stork or a pair of chevrons or just a simple crown. To Malden the symbols meant only one thing, really: all this land belonged to someone else. He was trespassing on someone else’s property, and if they wanted to, they could run him off.

It seemed there was no place outside the city where a man could be free, after all.

Despite his unease Malden soon found himself drowsing in his seat. He worried that if he fell unconscious he would slump and fall from the swaying wagon, and so he was almost grateful when Croy began to sing a traveling song. It was a rather sentimental tune about a knight who went out riding to do battle for his lady’s honor. Malden knew a far different version, a much lustier tale of a farmer’s lovely daughters and dragons that disguised themselves as naked women (and only gave themselves away by a certain scaliness of their skin), but he knew there would be plenty of time to sing his version later. This journey was likely to take more than a week, after all—no need to use up all his songs on the first day.

After about an hour’s travel Cythera dropped back to ride beside the wagon. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she told him, “though I’ll admit I’m rather glad.” She reached across to touch Malden’s face. “Oh. You’re hurt,” she said.

Malden shrugged, even though it pained him to do so. “’Tis a trifle only,” he told her.

“What happened?” she asked.

Malden puffed himself up and said, “A host of villainous assassins came upon me in the dark. Now, normally I would have been ready for them, but I was busy at that moment stealing the silver out of the moon, so they got first licks in before I knew what they were about. After that, of course, it was a done deal, and I left them in far worse shape than I found them.”

She laughed, which made him smile for the first time in a day.

“Boasting’s not your strength, thief,” she said. “Regardless, I’m glad you weren’t killed. Or arrested, for that matter. Was there much silver in the moon? It looks no bigger than a single coin held out at arm’s reach.”

“When matched with the gold I took from the sun, that’s still a sum worth stealing.” He glanced sideways at Croy but the knight made a good show of paying no attention to their talk. He was busy singing, anyway, and was deep into a verse about the virtue of courtly love, so Malden felt he had a little liberty to spend. “I must say, if you’re surprised to see me, I’m doubly so to see you. I didn’t think you were prone to Croy’s nature of folly.”

“I’ve spent my whole life working for my father or my mother, almost every day of it inside Ness’s walls. I wished to see the world one time before I was married. Once I am pregnant with Croy’s get, there will be no more opportunities of this sort.” She looked away from him and added, “Besides, there were certain temptations I wished to leave behind me,” she said.

“Like me,” he said.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she told him, looking straight ahead.

Malden shook his head. “I saw the way you hesitated when you tried to sign the banns. You aren’t sure of your own heart, are you?”

“Malden … we’ve spoken of this before. You know my mind’s made up. When we return to Ness I’ll marry Croy. My life’s course is sure and steady before me, straighter even than this road.”

“I’ll believe it when I see you wed,” he told her.

Her eyes flashed when she turned to look at him. Her mouth set in an angry line. If she’d possessed her mother’s gift for magic, he imagined she might have cursed him until his skin turned inside out, then and there. Instead she could only glare.

He met her gaze, measure for measure. When she refused to take the bait, however, he eventually looked away. After a bit of riding in silence alongside him, she spurred her horse and went back to riding in front of the wagon, by Mörget’s side. It seemed their conversation was done.

The day passed, as days spent traveling in the rain will, with little talk and much brooding. When no one joined his song, Croy eventually fell quiet, though still he smiled as the road passed beneath them. Malden had never seen the knight happier. Even Mörget seemed listless and irritable when faced with the prospect of endless miles of plodding through mud and cultivated fields. Of them all, only Croy kept his spirits high, despite the rain.

Eventually the sun sank toward the horizon as they rode away from it, into the east. The sky turned yellow, then pink, and it was getting hard to see when Croy called ahead to Mörget to say they should stop for the night.

Thank the Bloodgod, Malden thought. His legs were near as bruised as his face after eight hours on the wagon, and every stone and rut in the road brought new pain. He had never imagined he could get so tired from sitting all day.

Up ahead a milehouse stood in a patch of weeds by the side of the road. Before long Malden made out its sign, a crudely painted sway-backed cow. The king’s law, Croy told him, required that houses of lodging like this be placed every ten miles on the road from Ness to Helstrow, for the comfort of travelers like themselves. Once Malden saw the place he wondered what the legal definition of comfort might be. It was a ramshackle affair of only a single story, with a row of stalls to one side where horses could be stabled for the night. Its walls had been whitewashed with lime at some point in the past, but time and dust had robbed it of any cleanliness or cheer. Its thatched roof crawled with rats but at least a little yellow light beamed out from its windows.

There was no stable boy to take the horses, so Mörget agreed to see to them—and sleep with them for the night. “I’m used to sleeping out of doors,” he explained, “and would feel ill at ease in such a place.”

Malden was more than glad to jump down from the wagon and head inside with the others. The common room of the milehouse proved as shabby as its exterior: a long room with a low, sagging ceiling, lit only by the guttering fire in its hearth. A cowhide had been nailed to one wall, its fur rubbed off in places by years of customers brushing against it. The room was empty save for themselves and the alekeep, who looked more tired than Malden felt. The man ushered them to a table by the fire and brought them what he had to eat. This proved to be coarse bread and pottage—a thin stew of vegetables, tasteless and fit only for the peasants who patronized the Cow. There was ale, though, which was more than welcome.

None of them spoke much while they ate, and by common agreement they retired immediately after their meal to the small rooms provided for them at the back of the house. Cythera and Croy each got their own room, while Malden and Slag had to share.

“What is this?” the dwarf asked, when he saw their accommodations. The room was barely big enough for a pair of mattresses, which proved to be sacks of straw with musty blankets piled on top. When Slag pulled the blankets off of one mattress dark things with many legs scuttled away from the light. “This is unacceptable.”

“Call down to the master of the house, and bid him bring you a proper bed, then,” Malden said. “I, for one, could sleep on a pile of leaves just now, with a rock for my pillow.”

“Ha! Laugh now, jester. That’s exactly what’s in your future,” Slag told him. “Once we cross the river Strow, this will seem like luxury. I fucking hate traveling. Nothing for it, I suppose. That damned wagon bounced and rattled so bad I couldn’t get a wink of sleep today.” The dwarf threw himself down on the bed with a deep sigh, and in a few minutes began to snore. That was the sign Malden had been waiting for. Tired as he was, he had to answer a question or he knew it would plague his dreams. Making no noise at all, he slipped out of the door of the room and down the hallway.

Cythera had taken the room nearest the front of the house because it was likely to be the warmest. Malden tapped lightly at her door—if she were already asleep, he had no desire to wake her. He waited a long while, thinking himself a fool, before the door cracked open and he saw one of her blue eyes peer out at him. The eye went wide when she who was there.

“Malden, what are you thinking, coming to me like this?” she whispered.

“I was thinking I might be welcome,” he said.

“If Croy came in here right now—”

“—he would slaughter me where I stand,” Malden said. “I deem the risk worth the prize.”

“I was going to say it would destroy him. His best friend, taking liberties with his betrothed! I ask again, whatever gave you the idea to come here like this?”

“The words you said today on the road put a notion in my mind. I could not rest until I found out exactly how you felt. You said I was a temptation.”

“One I wished to leave behind.” She reached for his hands. “Malden, I will not deny I bear a certain … affection for you. And I do owe you a debt. Without your help, both my mother and myself would still be enslaved.”

“I didn’t come here seeking payment for services rendered.”

He could barely make out her face in the darkness, but he was certain the look in her eye then was one of utter relief. Had he insisted on a reward, would she have given herself? But of course, then she could never truly love him after. Malden knew enough about women to understand that.

“No,” she said. “I know you don’t see it that way. You’re a kindly man, Malden, under all that arrogance. So—be kind. Let me repay my debt by never speaking of this to Croy. And in turn, do me another service, and forget this fancy.”

A wiser man would not have tried to kiss her, then. She did not try to stop him, but merely turned her cheek so he ended up kissing the line of her jaw instead of her lips. He sighed and lifted his lips to her ear.

“I see,” he told her. “You’ve truly made up your mind.”

“I’ve never suggested otherwise,” she sighed. Was there regret in her voice, a certain heaviness, a longing? Or did he simply wish there was?

Malden nearly choked on the lump in his throat. He had hoped … well, he had hoped. And hope was worth exactly what it cost. “Very well,” he said. “I will trouble you no more.”

He slipped away from the door without a backwards glance, and leaned up against the wall outside him own room, and waited for his heart to stop racing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In the morning Malden woke late, and came out to the common room to find that he could not break his fast—the kitchen was already closed. Remembering there was food stored in the wagon, he headed out toward the stables and found his companions there waiting for him. Cythera and Croy were already on horseback, looking impatiently toward the east, while Mörget and Slag had the wagon up on blocks. The dwarf was underneath its wheels, grunting and swearing as he worked on the wagon’s undercarriage with a hammer and a wrench. The barbarian stood placidly by, ready to lift the vehicle by one end as Slag requested.

Eventually Slag emerged from beneath the wagon and told Mörget to remove the blocks. The barbarian kicked them out of the way and the wagon dropped heavily onto its wheels—and bounced up and down for a while before coming to a stop. As Mörget strapped the two hackneys into their harness, the dwarf explained.

“I spent all yesterday trying to sleep in this thing and failed miserably. Every time we drove over a pebble in the road I got thrown against this berk’s pile of iron weapons,” he said, nodding his head in Mörget’s direction. “So I fixed it.”

Malden looked underneath the wagon and saw a cunning arrangement of leaf springs mounted to the axles. “So now it will bounce and rattle even more?” he asked.

“I fixed it,” Slag repeated, one eye squinting nearly shut. “I’m a dwarf. Trust me. You’ll be happier this way, too.”

They got underway quickly enough then. Mörget proved to have an easy hand for the reins, and while the wagon did sway more than it had before, Malden soon realized the dwarf had done something right. When the wagon wheels passed over deep ruts in the road, the wheels went up but the body of the wagon did not, and when the wheels dropped into ruts, the springs kept Malden from flying off his seat. It was almost like the wagon was suspended above the road, held up by invisible hands.

The only disadvantage of the rebuilt wagon was that it made it even harder to stay awake. After a mostly sleepless night, and unable to stretch his legs, Malden found himself dozing constantly, only to be awakened with a fright as he realized he was about to slump over to the side and fall from the wagon—or worse, to lean over and rest his head on Mörget’s shoulder. He was uncertain what the barbarian would do if Malden inadvertently touched him, but he was sure it would be painful.

Watching the fields of wheat go by on either side only made things worse. The mile markers were too far between to hold his attention. Cythera rode far ahead of the wagon, so he could not talk to her, and Croy was singing again. There was nothing for it but to talk to the barbarian.

Fortunately Mörget seemed to love the sound of his own voice. He told Malden many tales of his native land, few of which Malden could understand. Apparently there was no feudal system at all on the eastern steppes. No villeinage, no manorial obligations. No kings or knights or lords, either. That sounded fine—wonderful, in fact, to someone with Malden’s political sympathies—until you learned what the barbarians had in place of those institutions. “The strongest man rules, as chieftain,” Mörget said. “This is the basis of all our laws. If you disagree with his policies, you challenge him to a fight. If you win, you get to be chieftan and make your own rules.”

Malden frowned. “But surely some young fool with muscles but no brains could become king of you all, then.”

“Aye,” Mörget said. “And often does. But such rarely last long. No matter how strong a man’s arm may be, there’s always someone stronger out there, waiting.”

Malden frowned. “But what of justice? What recourse do the meek have, if the strong decide what is right?”

Mörget laughed, loud enough to make Slag shout for peace. The barbarian shrugged and told Malden, “In Skrae, I’ve met many such as you. Philosophers and priests, two things we have none of on the steppes. They’ve tried to explain this justice to me, and other abstract concepts, and yet all I hear is the voices of children saying, ‘it’s not fair, it’s not fair.’ Where they got this idea that life was meant to be fair remains a mystery to me.”

Malden tried to imagine how he would survive under barbarian law and the prospect made him queasy. “If every chieftain makes his own laws, what is to stop him from saying that murder is no crime, or that a man may lie with his sister if he chooses?”

Mörget shrugged. “In principle, I suppose, it is possible. Yet I’ve never heard of a chieftain that would ignore such basic laws. If a man kills in cold blood, we run him through with a sword, that’s always been the way. If a man rapes another man’s daughter or wife or mother, we strangle him.”

“What if … just hypothetically, here—a man were to steal another man’s property? Say, his horse blanket. Or something trivial like that.”

“What’s the penalty for such in your Free City?”

Malden shrugged. “Hanging.”

“Ah! You see, there’s where your civilization breaks down. You put a man to death for stealing? Regardless of why he did it? What if he only takes a loaf of bread, to feed his hungry family? That is senseless cruelty!”

“I always did think the penalty too harsh,” Malden agreed.

“Yes, in the east we are far more humane. We do not kill our thieves. We simply cut off their feet and leave them crawling in the dirt like the dogs they are.”

“Oh,” Malden said. “But then—how would such a thief feed his family after that? He would be reduced to begging.”

“We have no beggars in my country,” Mörget said.

“No?”

The barbarian laughed again. “If a man cannot feed himself, we make him a slave. We would never let someone starve!”

“Ah,” Malden said.

“You know—sometimes I think if my people overran this country,” Mörget said, gesturing at the fields of wheat, “it would be a good thing for your people. You’re so soft! You need a good war to toughen you up. Make you remember what is important in life.”