Among Thieves

Chapter Eleven

The sun was tinting the east with purple and pink when Baldezar arrived at his shop. Some of his younger apprentices had been there for an hour already, grinding pigments, sorting papers, and gathering glair from the egg whites they had wrung through sponges the night before. I had waited across the street beneath a bookbinder’s eaves. I’d nearly nodded off twice, and had only managed to stay awake by chewing a handful of ahrami. Now, though, just the sight of the scribe was enough to quicken my heart.

I stepped across the street and slipped up behind Baldezar as he opened the door to his shop.

“Bene lightmans, Jarkman,” I said as I put a hand between his shoulders and shoved. He stumbled across the threshold and fell to his knees. I stepped in behind him and shut the door. Throughout the shop, the apprentices froze, their eyes wide.

Baldezar spun around on the floor. His face was already turning red, both from anger and embarrassment. His mouth was a dark scowl.

“How dare you!” he said as he began to gather his feet beneath him. “What do-”

I stepped forward and kicked out, catching him just inside the left shoulder with my foot. I held back on purpose, not wanting to break anything at this point. Right now, I was just setting the tone.

Baldezar went over backward. I heard his head strike the floor with a hollow thunk. He relaxed but didn’t go entirely limp. Dazed but not unconscious-good.

I reached behind me and locked the door to the street. “The shop is closed,” I said to the apprentices. “No one comes or goes until I’m finished. Is that clear?” They all nodded. I pointed to a corner. “Sit there. Don’t move.” They didn’t quite fall over themselves getting to the corner, but it was close.

I bent down and pulled Baldezar to his feet. “We need to have a talk,” I told him as he shook his head, trying to clear it. “Upstairs.”

Baldezar turned and walked unsteadily toward the steps. I followed behind, a hand on his back to steady him as much as to reinforce the threat.

He fumbled briefly with the latch before opening the door to his office. Baldezar settled in heavily behind his reading table, rubbing at the back of his head. I stood, hand on the back of the chair that faced him. One of the apprentices had opened the shutters earlier in preparation for their master’s arrival. The room was a strange mixture of gentle morning light and leftover shadows.

“This had better be good,” he said, managing to summon a sliver of his normally imperious tone.

“Yes,” I said, taking the forged letter out of my sleeve. I unfolded it and set it on the table in front of him. “It had better be.”

He stared down at it for a long moment. Finally, he picked up the paper, holding it gently between his thumbs and forefingers.

“I take it,” he said dourly, “you think I did this.”

“The thought had occurred, yes.”

“Then the thought would be wrong.”

I leaned on the chair. It creaked under my weight. “I’m not in the mood for hints and vagaries, Jarkman.”

Baldezar touched the back of his head gently. “I’d gathered as much.” He wet his lips, then set the letter back down. “Since I don’t know the context of this forgery, I can only guess it was used to get you somewhere for some reason. The text is clear on that much. But the reason you’re here is because whoever wrote the letter used the name, writing, and chop of a certain noblewoman with whom we both know you do business.”

“Which puts the person behind the letter into a very small circle of someones.”

Baldezar nodded. “Yes. And my having done work for both you and her in the past, and having access to her writing through you”-he shook his head-“a very neat line, I admit.”

“But?” I said.

“But I’m not stupid. That’s the key.” Baldezar eased gently back in his chair. “I’ve been forging documents for decades, Drothe. Bills of lading, imperial trade waivers, letters of passage, contracts, tax stamps, diplomatic negotiations… More documents than I can name, and most of them far more dangerous than a simple letter of summons. If I’ve been able to keep nobles, ambassadors, tax masters, and imperial ministers from tracing things back to me, do you really think I would make it this easy for you? Forgers die if they give people easy trails to follow.”

“Normally, yes,” I said. “Except when they expect the recipient of the forgery to end up dead.”

“Murder? Is that it?” Baldezar shook his head. “I’m surprised you settled for knocking me down. The more traditional response would have been to run me through, would it not?”

“Dusting people is easy,” I said. “Getting answers is a bit more tricky. Corpses make it even harder.”

“Very pragmatic,” observed Baldezar. “But I’m pragmatic as well. By all accounts, you’re a hard man to kill, Drothe. How many attempts now-two, three?”

“More,” I said.

Baldezar nodded. “Precisely. And I’m to think I will be the exception? I would have to consider the possibility you might live, and that you might get your hands on this letter. That’s too clear a road back to me.”

“Unless you were in a hurry. People make mistakes when they’re rushed.”

“True, but what’s the hurry? Why would I even want to kill you in the first place?”

“It wouldn’t have to be you,” I said. I pointed at my sister’s forged signature. “You do this kind of thing for hire.”

“Yes. And I like to be able to spend the money I get for it, too. Besides,” he said, flicking at the paper, “this is substandard workmanship. I wouldn’t turn out something this poorly done, no matter whether my life were on the line or no.”

I thought back to what Josef had said about the letter. “The flaws were minor at best,” I said, “and damn hard to find.”

“But you found them,” said Baldezar. “A good forgery should be able to withstand an amateur’s scrutiny. This did not.” He pointed at various spots on the page. “Improper forms here, here, and here. Inconsistent pen strokes on the third and fifth lines. And at least two scraped and redone stylistic errors I can see at a glance. This is beginner’s work. Forging is as much art as it is duplication; whoever did this was a copyist, not an artist.”

“Whoever it was had access to Baroness Sephada’s letters,” I pointed out. “And he knew about our business arrangement. That still points to you.”

Baldezar nodded. “Yes, and that’s what troubles me. It means someone either gained access to my office, or someone in my shop is involved. Either way, I’m not pleased. But I have no reason to want you dead.”

Baldezar studied the letter again, then held it out to me. “I’ve explained to you why I wouldn’t have done this, Drothe, but I can’t prove it to you. It’s a forgery, and that’s what I do. But I’m an excellent forger, and this isn’t an excellent forgery.”

If it had been anyone besides Baldezar, I would have laughed in his face at that explanation. But it was Baldezar, and I had been dealing with him long enough to know he was right; he couldn’t put out a bad document even if he wanted to. His ego wouldn’t allow it.

I took the letter from his hands and leaned in close. “All right,” I said. “Even if you didn’t do it, I’m thinking the information about the baroness and me came from here. Find out how they got it and who they are, or I might be less ‘pragmatic’ my next visit.”

“Not to worry,” said Baldezar. “We’re both victims in this. I want whoever did this as much as you do.”

I grinned darkly. “I doubt that very much, Jarkman. Very much, indeed.”

The sun was a good two hand spans above the horizon when I finally made it home and crawled into bed. Ideally, I could have used ten hours or so of sleep, but my brain was having none of it. Dreams of fighting, falling, sewers, and giant pen-wielding Angels filled my head. By midafternoon, I decided to cut my losses and crawl back out into the day.

I had a quick bite at Prospo’s, checked for messages with three of my usual drops, and began working the streets. Not surprisingly, half of the rumors I gathered in the first two hours dealt with me-or, more specifically, with Tamas’s attempt on me, and what it had meant. When you have a running fight in your own front yard, the locals are going to notice. Little of what I heard was accurate, some was downright wrong, and a few people even seemed surprised to see me alive.

I wrote that last reaction off to overblown accounts of the fight-until I ran into Betriz. Like me, Betriz was a Nose, Wide to my Narrow, and like most Noses, she told me something I didn’t want to hear.

“Street says you’re holding out on Nicco.” She said it matter-of-factly as she popped an olive into her mouth. She had six more on the tips of her fingers-the easiest way to carry the snack she had purchased moments before.

“What?” I said. “Holding out how?”

Betriz was a long, lean woman, with deep brown eyes and the knowing smile of a Nose. She swallowed her olive and showed me that smile now.

“Whispers are you found a Snilch in Nicco’s house and haven’t told him,” she said, licking the brine from her lips. “That true?”

I stared at her, my face impassive even as my mind raced. The Snilch rumor was supposed to be soft, dying-not making the circuit with other information brokers. I’d had Mendross put out the word to kill it. What in the hell was Betriz doing with it?

“You’re a fool,” she said, reading my silence. “You, of all people, should know better than to hold out on Nicco, Drothe.”

“I’m not…” I began, then stopped. I took a deep breath and started over. “I’m doing my damn job, which you, of all people, should understand: I’m separating the bull from the shit. I’m keeping Nicco from tearing his own organization apart to look for something that isn’t there. There’s nothing solid on this. The last thing I need is for him to start swinging ham-handedly at anything that catches his suspicion.”

Betriz arched a sun-faded eyebrow. “The last thing you need?”

“Me, the organization, everyone.”

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t sound completely convinced.

“Where’d you hear this?” I said.

“Oh, you know…” Betriz gestured vaguely with an olive-tipped finger. “Around.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said. “How much?”

Betriz beamed down at me. “That’s what I love about you, Drothe-you know how to cut through the bullshit.”

I paid Betriz, got a handful of names, and spent the rest of the afternoon tracking rumors. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot to find. The rumor about me and Nicco was young yet, and the one on the Snilch still fairly mild. I talked to some people, paid off some others, and put the lean on a couple more. It wouldn’t solve anything permanently, I knew, but it might give me some working room.

If I wanted to fight these rumors-if I wanted to keep Nicco from digging into his own organization, not to mention holding my feet to the fire for not telling him about the whispers-I needed to come to him with something bigger, something better. I needed to be able to stand in front of him with names and answers and maybe even a body or two, so that I could tell him that instead of chasing after rumors, I had spent my time getting results.

Success was my best argument now, but to get that success, I needed to go to back into Ten Ways.

Word of my previous visit to Ten Ways had already gotten around. The locals had tagged me as Nicco’s man, and some even blamed me for Fedim’s death. The irony of the latter was not lost on me.

Few of the local Kin had any interest in talking to me. Being Nicco’s Nose was almost the same as being Nicco himself in that cordon, and most Tenners would rather be gut-stabbed than help a foreign boss.

Still, hawks have a way of starting conversations. And, as it turned out, so did mentioning Rambles’s name.

Rambles, it seemed, had been stepping on more toes than anyone could count. According to the street, he’d come in, set up shop, and begun acting as if Nicco’s tenuous holdings were a bastion of criminal strength. Sure, he needed to throw some weight around and reestablish Nicco’s presence in the cordon, but that didn’t mean he could roll over the native talent, push out local operators, and call the neighboring gangs to heel like a pack of misbehaving dogs. Nicco-and by extension, Rambles-didn’t have the clout to pull off something like that in Ten Ways.

I needed to talk to Rambles to see what the hell was going on. Nicco hadn’t wanted me to pay a call on him, but, if Rambles was going to make my job harder, I wanted to know why he was doing it in such a damn efficient manner.

Rambles’s people, it turned out, were depressingly easy to find, and his base of operation not much harder. He had established himself in the back of a gaming den, one floor above a milliner’s shop. The gambling room wasn’t so much a cover as a source of income, I gathered, given the ready action in the place. I passed among the tables to the back of the room, where a big Cutter was busy making the door he guarded look small.

“Rambles in?” I asked as I came up. My hand went out for the handle, was engulfed by a slab of meat with fingers before it reached it.

“He’s out.”

I looked meaningfully at the light showing beneath the door. As I watched, a shadow passed across the sliver of illumination from the other side.

“Uh-huh,” I said. I gave my hand a slight tug, but it stayed where it was. “Well, in case he isn’t, you may want to tell him Drothe is here. He’ll be in for me.”

“He ain’t, and he won’t be. Not for you.”

That told me something: Rambles had heard I was in Ten Ways, and had given orders that I was to be kept away. Interesting.

I tilted my head back and met the Cutter’s eyes. He smiled, showing yellowed teeth. Try me, the smile said, please.

“You got a name?” I said.

More teeth.

“Any idea when he’ll be back?”

Teeth again.

“Should I be talking slower?”

He scowled and squeezed my hand. I winced as I felt the bones rub together, but I met his gaze. After a long moment, he let go. I resisted the urge to snatch my hand back and instead let it fall casually to my side.

“Get out,” he said.

I stood there just long enough to make him wonder if he’d have to haul me out on his own, then turned and left.

The sky was a deep blue going on black when I stepped outside. Behind me, one of Rambles’s people stepped through the door and leaned against the wall beside it. Another one joined him. The second one smiled and waved good-bye. I got the message.

Four blocks later, when I was sure I wasn’t being followed, I doubled back and took to the roofs. It was a clear night, with a waning moon that wouldn’t be up for hours. Between the early darkness and my night vision, I wasn’t worried about any high watch Rambles may have stationed above his building. As it turned out, it didn’t matter-the roofs were empty all the way to the milliner’s shop.

That gave me pause. Either Rambles was being incredibly confident, or incredibly stupid. And since he wasn’t a stupid man, that meant he thought he was safe in Ten Ways-safe enough to not bother putting even one person on the Dancer’s Way. This ran counter to the grumblings I’d heard on the street.

That, or it was a trap. Either way, though, I wasn’t going to find anything out staring at his shingle-covered peak.

Six dormers, three on a side, poked out from the roofline of his building. A quick investigation showed the windows boarded up on five of the dormers. The sixth, however, had had its boards pried away. It was dark inside, and my night vision showed me signs of squatters from sometime in the past. Judging by the dust and bird nests, no one had been up here in a while.

I slipped inside and crept along carefully, worried as much about finding a rotted board as about making noise. The damp odor of mold and bitter scent of bird droppings filled the place, tickling my nose. Below me, I could hear the shouts and curses and clatter of the gaming room coming up through the floor. Farther along, the noises faded to a murmur, then a hum. I knelt and put my head close to the floor. The faint buzz of two people in conversation came to me.

It occurred to me as I knelt there, trying to make out even a fraction of what was being said, that I didn’t know for sure it was Rambles in the room below. I was just going on instinct, a shadow beneath a doorframe, and the Cutter’s bad attitude. And even if it was Rambles down there, he could just as easily be spending the evening with his whore as talking about anything I cared about. Hell, odds favored the former, to be honest.

I smiled to myself in the darkness. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I got a face full of dust and dried bird droppings on my clothes while Nosing. Creeping around on long shots was part of the job.

Nothing-or, more precisely, not enough of something came to me through the attic’s floor. The conversation was tantalizingly distinguishable, just not understandable. I drew out the listening cup I kept in my herb wallet-a short, fluted tin tube I’d had since my days as a Wide Nose-and looked around more carefully. Seeing a faint sliver of light shining up through the floorboards, I crawled to it, then laid myself prone, my ear to the cup and the cup to the light.

Better.

“… the damn cordon,” Rambles was saying. “I’m supposed to be getting things in order here, not taking them over the edge.”

“Funny,” said another voice. “I could have sworn you were trying for the exact opposite.”

I started to take an involuntary breath, then stopped myself before I ended up with a mouth full of dust. I knew that voice-deep, gravelly, with the mildest irreverence riding beneath the surface. Last time I’d heard it, it had been coming down through a sewer grate rather than up through a crack in the ceiling. I didn’t have a name or a face to put to it, but I recognized it from the conversation Degan and I had overheard beneath the street outside Fedim’s.

What the hell was he doing here with Rambles?

I heard Rambles make a noise, maybe a laugh or a cough. “And your people have nothing to do with it, right?”

“Her people aren’t the problem here,” said the other man. “Yours are. They’re thick on the street and leaning hard. People expected Nicco to react, yes, but not like this. Ten Ways Kin are spitting when they speak his name, lad; that, or spitting on their steel as they hone it. What you’re doing, it’s too-”

“Too much like him?” said Rambles.

“Too heavy, too fast.”

“Then it’s just what he’d want,” said Rambles. “Nicco likes results, and I’m not about to put my neck on the line for your timetable. You’re the ones who stirred things up in the first place-don’t blame me if the locals aren’t playing the tune you set out. As far as my boss is concerned, as long as I don’t start a war, he’s happy.”

There was a pause. “You do know it might well come down to that?”

“What-my starting it, or a war happening?”

“Either way.”

This time I did take an involuntary breath and barely kept from choking. A Kin war in Ten Ways? The blood would flow in rivers. In most other cordons, a gang war could be kept among the Kin, leaving the Lighters out of it. The empire might notice, but, as long as we spent our time putting knives in one another, it didn’t really care.

Ten Ways, though, was a different animal. The local gangs would take a full-scale war as an excuse to settle old scores, even if they weren’t directly involved. Nor would they make as fine a distinction between Kin and Lighter; any slight, real or imagined, would be cause enough for vengeance. And it would only spiral out from there.

Too many riots had begun in Ten Ways for the empire to ignore a gang war in the cordon. At the first hint of anything larger than a turf battle, the empire would send the legions in, all Black Sashes and swinging swords. And if the legions couldn’t handle it, well, then the White Sashes would wade in, just as they had when they threw down Isidore, the Dark King.

I shuddered. No, best not to think about the Whites.

I let out my breath slowly, suppressing a cough. My mouth tasted like dust and bird droppings; dry, gritty, with acid and vinegar mixed in. I grimaced, tried to summon up enough spit to move some of it out, and failed. I wanted nothing so much as a long drink and a good coughing fit, but neither was an option-not while Rambles and his friend were talking below.

“I thought it wasn’t supposed to come to a war,” Rambles was saying. I noted he didn’t sound terribly surprised at his visitor’s announcement.

“Aye, well, there’ve been some new… considerations… brought into the mix. It’s not just a matter of playing the locals off against one another anymore.”

“You mean you aren’t the only ones trying to manipulate the Kin in Ten Ways,” said Rambles smugly. “You’re having to deal with other players now.”

“Down, lad. It’s not what you think,” said the other man. “We wanted some of the other Upright Men and Rufflers to take notice. Nothing against your boss, but even he’s not a big enough threat on his own to motivate a cordon like Ten Ways. We needed the Kin here to feel threatened, to have a reason to start acting like a single entity, rather than a bunch of warring gangs. But you’re going too far. Kin on the edge of Nicco’s territory are getting anxious. They’re looking for protection from other Uprights when we want them to come to you.”

“I can’t offer people protection if I don’t have a stable base, damn it! ” said Rambles. “Nicco has to have enough clout in the cordon to be seen as a refuge. That’s what I’m working on. You’re the ones who’ve been pushing Ten Ways from every direction, prodding gangs into turf wars and playing with local politics. If you hadn’t put the Kin here so on edge, they wouldn’t be trying to cut my damn nose off every time I stuck it out.”

I chuckled silently at the analogy, appreciating it far more than Rambles ever could. It was a mistake. The sharp movement of air in my throat started it itching. My chest convulsed once, twice. I took a slow, deep breath and held it, trying to force the cough down.

“If they’re that worked up, we may need to give them something else to think about,” said the man.

“Such as?”

There was a pause. My chest was still convulsing. I let my breath out in slow, shallow gasps, hoping to ease the pressure.

“It may be time to see just how far an Upright Man can be pushed,” said the man.

“You mean into war?” said Rambles.

“If we have-”

That was when the cough came. I clamped my mouth shut and locked my teeth together. No good. All I accomplished was to turn the cough into a snort. I quickly put a hand over my face. The listening tube shifted beneath me, tipped over. Another snort. I grabbed for the tube with my free hand and put it back over the crack.

Silence.

Then the man said, “Rats?”

“Rats don’t sneeze.”

More silence. Then I heard something fall to the floor, followed by a muttered curse.

“Shit!” said Rambles. “Screw sneaking up on him. Just go. Go!”

I jumped up and ran, ducking beneath beams and leaping over debris. Below, I heard voices and the sound of feet thudding on floorboards. I wasn’t sure where the stairs leading up from the second floor were, but I was certain they had a quick way up here. I dodged around a portion of floor that had felt weak earlier and veered toward the window.

I was just putting a leg through when the chamber began to grow brighter behind me. I was aware of feet pounding up steps, Rambles yelling, and some sort of light source being brought up. I slipped over the sill, ducked around the edge of the dormer, and scanned the roof. No one coming up over the eaves or down from the peak.

Leaving then would have been the smart move. Instead, I scrambled partway up the roof, slipped over to the dormer, and peak-walked out to the edge. Then I sat down, straddling the dormer’s ridge, and looked down at the window I had just exited. I drew my rapier.

Light shone out the window now, bright in the early-evening darkness. I blinked several times, letting my night vision settle down.

Beneath me, I heard Rambles curse again as he found the evidence of my presence left in the filth. There sounded to be at least four of them in there, maybe more.

A shadow moved across the window, and I readied my blade. I didn’t want to dust anyone so much as to persuade them not to follow me. If I were lucky, it would be Rambles sticking his head out; I had some questions for him.

A head wearing a gray flat cap came out of the window, followed by a broad pair of shoulders in a tan and gold doublet. The head turned from side to side, looking along the roof. I caught glimpses of short steely gray hair.

“Anything?” called Rambles from inside.

The head began to shake, then paused. Slowly, he twisted until he was looking up at me. He had a broad nose and a prominent jaw. No obvious scars, but I could tell it was a fighter’s face-hard, solid, not afraid to be hit. He saw my rapier poised above him and smiled slowly, showing small, even teeth.

“We won’t be catching him tonight,” he said in the deep, gravelly voice I knew from the sewers; the voice I now had a face to put to. “Not without a lot of pain and trouble, anyhow.”

“Shit!” said Rambles. “We need to know how much he heard. Who he was working for.”

The man raised an eyebrow. I pretended to study my rapier, then shook my head. He shrugged, glanced inside, and gave me a questioning look. Could he go back in?

I debated. I was in a good position, wanted answers, and might not get a better chance. However, I didn’t know whether or not Rambles had people moving toward the roof even now. Nor could I count on Rambles’s going easy on me just because we both worked for Nicco. Our mutual dislike aside, it was obvious he had a side deal going with the man below me, if not an outright partnership. Depending on how much or how little Nicco knew about it, Rambles might not be inclined to let me walk away.

No, best to get away while I could. Sticking around, no matter how tempting, could get me in far worse trouble than I cared to court.

“Name?” I said to the man.

He considered a moment. “Ironius,” he said. “You?”

I grinned and said, “Tell Rambles his favorite Nose said, ‘Bene darkmans.’ ” Then I leaned back from the edge, vanishing from his sight, and took to the roofs. I didn’t get down off them until I was safely inside Stone Arch cordon.