Among Thieves

Chapter Seven

No money was missing, either from Fedim’s purse or from the cash box behind the counter. The back room was empty, save for a bed and the Dealer’s personal effects.

“Must keep the swag somewhere else,” I said as I came back into the front of the shop.

“Either that, or it was taken.” Degan was standing near the entrance, peering out through a gap in the curtain that served as a door.

“And the hawks were left? No, this is a message.”

“From?”

“From whoever I’m supposed to find.”

“I thought you were supposed to find Fedim.”

“Change in plan,” I said.

I stepped over to Fedim and looked down at him. As Kin went, he was fairly unremarkable with his olive complexion, thinning hair, and long nose. Acne scars covered the left half of his face. If he hadn’t been lying dead on the floor, I doubt I would have remarked on him at all.

“This is bad,” I said.

“What a surprise,” said Degan.

“No.” I nudged Fedim’s lifeless form with my foot. “It’s worse. I was supposed to do this after I was done with him.”

Degan nodded. “You’re right,” he said, “this is bad.” Then a wry smile slid onto his face. “Still, it’s ironic, no?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ironic.”

Before we had found him, Fedim was a minor problem that needed solving. Now that he was dead, he was a big embarrassment. That was the first little bit of irony: If I killed Fedim, it was business; if someone else dusted him, it was an insult to Nicco’s strength.

The galling part was, no matter what I did, word would get out: Nicco couldn’t shield his clients. Open season on Nicco in Ten Ways. This was exactly what he had been trying to avoid, exactly what I had been sent to prevent. If the person or persons responsible weren’t brought down hard and fast, Nicco’s reputation would fall instead-and so would my head.

That was the other piece of irony: Since I was supposed to have killed Fedim, it was my responsibility to track down whoever had dusted the Dealer and return the favor.

Drothe, the Avenging Angel-I didn’t care for the sound of that.

I was staring at Fedim, wishing his soul a long, frustrating journey to the Hosting Grounds, when Degan snapped his fingers twice. I looked up to see him flatten himself against the wall beside the doorway. He held up a single finger, then pointed toward the door.

Translation: a visitor.

I looked around for somewhere to hide, then thought better of it. Instead, I sat myself on a table in easy view a few feet past Fedim’s body. I drew my rapier and placed it across my lap for effect.

The sound of leather scuffing on dirt came from beyond the curtain. A throat cleared.

“Fedim?” It was a male voice, half whispering. “Fedim?”

The curtain moved aside to admit the craning head of a young-looking man. What little hair he had was in full retreat from his forehead and shaved down to a thin black stubble. His narrow features were screwed up into a squint that quickly collapsed when he spied the body on the floor. He looked at me and made to bolt, but Degan already had hold of the man’s neck.

Degan dragged the man the rest of the way inside. To his credit, the man didn’t cry out-not that it would have done him any good. Screams were almost as common as cockroaches around here.

Our visitor was small, though still slightly taller than I, and thin. No, not thin-lean. There was strength beneath those baggy clothes and ill-fitting belt-Degan actually had to work to keep his hold on the man. He had a cloth satchel in one hand that he clutched to himself.

“I didn’t see anything!” the man said quickly. “You weren’t here.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

He stopped his struggling and tilted his head as far to the side as Degan’s hold would allow. Already, there was the beginnings of an opportunistic, almost carnal gleam in his eyes.

“Huh?” he said.

“I need someone who’s seen something,” I explained.

He looked down at Fedim, licked his lips.

“Such as?” he asked.

“Such as who dusted the Dealer, here.”

“Not you?”

“Not me. Or him.” I indicated Degan with my sword.

“Truth?” the man asked.

I smiled. “It’d be nice.”

“I don’t know.”

“Not the answer I was looking for.”

He shrugged. “Sorry.”

I lifted my jaw. Degan squeezed.

“Wait!” yelled the man. “I can find out. I can find out!”

“How?”

“I can play Ear.”

“Got local Ears,” I lied.

His eyes flicked around the room. “But I know-knew Fedim. I know who to ask, where to listen.”

I nodded, as if considering his offer. “How’d you know the Dealer?”

“He holds-uh, held my swag for me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “He held your swag? Don’t you mean he moved it?” Fences didn’t hold on to stolen property; they sold it, usually as quickly as possible.

“No, he held it.”

I must not have looked convinced, because Degan began squeezing again. The man hunched his shoulders against the pain.

“I’m a Whipjack!” he gasped. “Fedim held my stuff for a cut of the profits.”

“Ah,” I said. Now it made sense.

Whipjacks did “turn around” thefts-stealing from one person, selling to another, then stealing it back again and returning it to the original owner once a reward had been offered. The idea was that, besides making twice the profit off a single piece of swag, the Whipjack couldn’t be caught with the valuables in hand since he moved it between marks so fast.

Fedim must have been this Whipjack’s middleman, selling the swag and then leading the thief back when it was time to steal it again. It was a relationship that required trust on both ends; either man could sell the other out for a quick profit. And trust, I’ve found, breeds reliance, which leads to shared confidences. It was those confidences I needed to know about.

I indicated a three-legged stool in the corner.

“Sit,” I said.

The Whipjack obeyed. Degan resumed his post at the curtained doorway.

“What’s your name, Whipjack?” I asked.

“Larrios.”

“Tell me about Fedim, Larrios.”

He shrugged. “Fedim was a Dealer. We got along all right.”

“Did he specialize in anything?”

“Not really. He took almost anything from anyone-coin, jewelry, cloth, steel, books, beer… anything. He used to say that being in Ten Ways, he had to make up for quality with quantity.”

“Did he have anyone he unloaded to regularly?”

“I don’t know, but he always found someone to buy.”

“He ever cheat anyone?”

Larrios snorted.

“All right,” I said. “Had he cheated anyone recently that you knew about?” If I could find out who Fedim had dealt with, I might be able to get a line on who wanted him dead; or on who had been leaning on him to make Nicco look bad; or both.

Larrios leaned back against the wall behind the stool. “Not that he mentioned. I know he’d been talking to this one man, I think. He never said his name, but he referred to ‘him’ a lot.”

“Any idea what about?”

“Swag, I’d guess.”

“Makes sense.” I pointed at his satchel. “What’s in the bag, Larrios?”

He smiled thinly. “Swag, I’d guess.”

“Is that why you were here?” I said. “To move your swag?”

Larrios’s smile grew strained. “I didn’t catch your name?”

“That’s right. You didn’t.”

His face curled itself up into another squint. “You’re not from here-you’re from outside the Ten. What’re cousins from the outside doing in the cordon?”

“Slumming,” said Degan from the doorway.

I shot Degan a glare.

“Looking for Fedim,” I said sharply. “Only now, we’re looking for whoever dusted him.”

“That, too,” said Degan.

“Mind if I ask why?” said Larrios.

I ignored the question. “What did you want with Fedim?” I asked again.

Larrios regarded me through narrowed eyes. “Fedim was yours, wasn’t he?” he said after a moment. “They beat you to him.”

“ ‘They’?” I said.

This time Larrios ignored my question. He looked across the room at Fedim’s body. “You’re more important dead than alive,” he told the corpse, grinning. “And you can’t make a single hawk from it. Serves you right.”

I reached out and tapped Larrios with my rapier, letting the point linger on his chest. “You mentioned ‘they.’ ”

He looked down at the blade, then back up at me. His voice tried for flippant but failed. “ ‘They’ depends on who you are.”

“I’m the man with the sword who’s losing his patience.”

“Good… uh, point.” Larrios’ eyes flicked around the room once more, then came back to me. “Fedim had been complaining about someone putting pressure on him. He kept saying he didn’t know why he was paying for protection when anyone could put the rough on him night and day.”

“Any idea who?”

“You mean who was putting on the rough? I don’t know-this is a pretty open cordon, you know? I just remember Fedim’s saying they laughed in his face when he threatened to go to Nicco about it.”

Great. Not only were people leaning on and crossing Kin, but they were also laughing at the Upright Men who controlled them. If Nicco got wind of this… No, I didn’t want to think about that at the moment. One disaster at a time.

“All I know,” continued Larrios, “is that there had to be some serious pull behind those guys.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Are you kidding? Nicco isn’t the only one getting snubbed around here: Nijjan Red Nails, the Five Ears gang, maybe some others. Hell, I even heard that Kells’s operation over on the west side has-”

“Wait a minute,” I said, my mind skidding to a sudden halt. “Kells actually has people in Ten Ways?” What in the hell was he doing here? I’d been hoping it was just a bad rumor.

Larrios shrugged. “Well-”

“Company,” announced Degan.

“What?” I said, turning toward the door.

“Cutters,” he said, drawing his sword. The hiss of the steel clearing the scabbard only emphasized the statement.

I looked back to Larrios.

He shook his head. “Don’t look at me: I work alone.” He seemed worried.

“How many?” I called to Degan.

“Enough.”

“Enough what? Enough to make it interesting, enough to work up a sweat, enough to dig us each a grave? What?”

“Enough to consider the back door.”

I pictured Fedim’s back room in my mind. “There isn’t one.”

“Unfortunate, that.”

I prodded Larrios. “Who are they?”

“How the hell should I know?”

I kicked the stool out from under him, sending Larrios sprawling on the floor. I was crouching beside him in an instant, the edge of my blade against his throat.

“If I find out you planned this party,” I said, “I’ll make sure it’s slow and painful before you die.”

“We don’t have time for this,” called Degan.

“I swear,” said Larrios. He was sweating-a lot. “I came alone. I just wanted to get some swag Fedim was holding. I swear.”

I stared at Larrios for a long moment. Two choices: kill him or trust him.

Ah, hell. Degan was right. We didn’t have time for this. Besides, if there were as many as Degan said, they didn’t need a man on the inside. Nor would they move if we had him.

I leaned back, indicating the long knife on Larrios’s belt with my chin. “You any good with that?”

Larrios put his hand on the blade and smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to see. “I manage.”

“Now that we’re all friends,” said Degan from the doorway, “I can die a happy man. Alone, defending a curtain, but a happy man.”

“You’re not dead yet,” I said. I stood up and walked over to Degan, leaving Larrios to pick himself up off the floor.

“They haven’t begun closing in,” said Degan. He was standing away from the curtain now, looking through the space where it failed to meet with the doorway. He stepped aside as I moved up and put my eye to the fading daylight.

The easiest way to tell when something is going down on the street is to watch the locals. They don’t run or shout or make a fuss, at least not in the parts of town I’m used to-they just slowly fade and vanish. It’s a sort of sixth sense for crowds, a survival instinct. And right now, that instinct was hard at work, because the street out front was empty of any sort of normal early-evening traffic.

Instead, I saw three men lounging on the corner across the street and two to our right. On our left, a man and woman were taking turns tossing coins against a wall. Three more men were standing in a doorway directly ahead. I could just make out the bows leaned up against the door behind them. All of them were looking at Fedim’s shop far too frequently.

“Four more on this side of the street,” said Degan as I stepped back from the curtain. “They slipped into a couple doorways before you came up.”

I gave a soft whistle. “Twelve? Just for us?”

A caustic grin formed on Degan’s face. “Flattering in a disturbing sort of way, isn’t it?”

Frightening, more like it. Who spends a dozen blades on two? The odds were obscene, unnecessary, even with Degan in the equation. Someone wanted us beyond dead-someone wanted to erase us.

“You didn’t see them coming before they were in position?” I asked.

Degan shrugged. “Their turf.”

I tapped my rapier against my boot. Maybe they were just holding us for someone. After all, they hadn’t started to-

“Here we go,” said Degan.

I flipped a small bit of curtain back with my sword. The five up and down the street were starting to move our way, slowly. The three in the doorway seemed to be staying put.

“They won’t rush until they’re close,” said Degan. “They’re hoping we panic and make a break for it. Easier for them to take us in the open.”

“Good thing we don’t panic,” I said.

Degan smiled. “Good thing.”

“Got anything to throw?”

He gestured at a shelf on the wall. “Vases.”

I drew the knife from my boot and held it up for Degan. I had the one in my wrist sheath for myself.

Degan shook his head. “More your style than mine.”

I turned around to Larrios. “Can you throw a-”

He was gone. Of course. Damn. Damndamndamn.