Crown Thief

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I couldn't pretend I'd felt the slightest affection for Synza. I certainly hadn't wanted him to kill me. Yet, as the last skittering of falling pebbles subsided, I couldn't but feel a little horrified by his abrupt vanishment from the world.

I fell back against the trampled grass. My struggle with Synza had drained what little strength I'd managed to recover. The possibility of staying conscious was as remote as the likelihood of my climbing onehanded back up to the forest edge above.

One thought, however, rattled in my brain, even as it sank into welcoming darkness. Synza had defeated Stone, reputedly one of the greatest killers in the land. I in turn had played a part, more by luck than intent, in Synza's demise. Perhaps I'd never been much of a thief, but my ranking as an assassin had just gone through the roof.

I almost wanted to laugh. Knowing how much it would hurt, I passed out instead.

I dreamed someone was shouting my name. Every time they called, they kicked my head — inside my head, somehow, with a boot covered in hot pins.

It didn't take much of that to make me open my eyes. The light had changed; it was softer, yellowed like new butter. The kicking, however, continued unabated.

"Damasco!"

I was curled over, feet towards the brim of the ledge. Alvantes's voice came from behind me and above.

Where was the crown?

If he saw it, it would mean more explaining than I could even begin to contemplate. My eyes flitted desperately across the narrow outcrop. There — a clump of tall grass close to the edge, and stripes of gold amidst the green. It must have rolled from my fingers when I blacked out. I made it to all fours, though the rush of pain through my hurt arm made me want to weep. Now I could see Alvantes, peering down. He, too, was hurt. A gash in his forehead was bleeding liberally, staining the left side of his face a rich, moist crimson. Another cut on his arm had clotted but looked, if anything, deeper and more unpleasant.

"What are you doing down there?" he called.

I crawled forward, placing myself between Alvantes and the crown. "I used to be a thief. Now I mostly seem to fall off things. It's not a change I much planned."

Alvantes's gaze wandered further down the cliff face. His face showed faint surprise. "Is that Stone?"

"Yes."

"And…?"

"Next to him? That's Synza."

I might have expected admiration or at least approval, but Alvantes's tone was lifeless as his expression. "How?"

"Long story. I've lived through it, and you don't want to. Any chance of a rescue?"

His only response was to disappear from view.

Alvantes was gone for almost an hour — ample time for me to recover the crown, wrap it once more in my cloak and cram both into my pack. That done, I propped myself against the rock wall to try and recuperate a little. When he returned, it was with a bundle of knotted creepers, presumably gathered from the strip of forest. Tied together, they made a length of rope just long enough to reach me.

It was a sound enough plan in theory, utterly hopeless in practise. Between Alvantes's single-handedness and my recent injury, it wasn't long before his rescue attempt had come to seem like a particularly bad joke.

How did the one-armed man help the other one-armed man climb the cliff?

Very, very slowly.

Eventually, after colossal discomfort and much cursing, I caught hold of a tree perched on the ragged rim of the cliff and hauled myself up, to lie panting in the long grass before the woodland.

Once my head had stopped swimming and my eyes had uncrossed, I took a moment to consider Alvantes's latest injuries. The blood on his face had dried now, a grotesque half-mask of gore. He'd made no attempt to clean himself, which probably made the wounds appear worse than they were — but they certainly looked bad enough.

"You got him?"

Alvantes didn't answer. For a moment, I considered pressing the question, pushing to discover how he'd single-handedly dispatched one of the most notorious killers in the land. It took me that moment to realise I really didn't want to know. There was something behind his eyes that told me all I needed and more.

Instead, I asked, "Do you think it was him? I mean, was he the one who…" Even that sentence wasn't worth finishing. "Either way," I finished lamely, "they're both dead now."

I almost added something like, Your father's death is avenged. However, I could read Alvantes's face even through its half coat of red — and for all my occasional tactlessness, even I could see that the grief ingrained there could never be cleansed by anything as simplistic as revenge.

If I'd ever felt real sympathy for him, it was then. Yet it wasn't quite enough to make me forget my own misfortunes. After all, I'd just tumbled down a cliff, nearly been assassinated, nearly been assassinated again and then been dragged back up that self-same cliff — all with an arm that, medical opinions of recently deceased assassins aside, certainly felt broken. Nothing I said was going to make things better for Alvantes. Platitudes would only waste the strength I needed to endure the next few hours.

We were, after all, still fugitives. Sooner or later — likely sooner — Stick and Stone's absence and therefore the possibility of their failure would come to the royal attention. Given the King's penchant for lunatic overreaction, it was hard to imagine what forces he'd marshal against us next. If we had the faintest hope of survival, our only hope lay in not waiting to find out.

We had one thing in our favour, at least. Alvantes had managed to hang onto his mount, and to recover mine as well. They were tied to a spindly aspen near the verge of the forest, watching us steadily.

I walked to my horse and patted his nose. "So what's our plan?" I asked.

"Plan?"

"How do we get out of here? Back to the Castoval?"

"What does the Castoval matter?" said Alvantes, without interest.

I could have argued, could have mentioned Estrada or the Altapasaedan guardsmen he'd left in jeopardy. But I knew enough to recognise a man who was beyond the point of being reasoned with, not even by himself. If I was going to get through, I'd need to keep it simple.

"Have you forgotten what your father told you?"

Alvantes's dark eyes flashed like embers in his halfbloodied face. "I haven't forgotten."

"Then what's the plan?"

"An acquaintance I met in Aspira Nero mentioned he'd be stopping near here," he said. "If we ride fast, we might catch him."

I wasn't convinced either of us could ride at all, let alone fast. I wasn't about to tell Alvantes that. "You'd better pick our route," I said. "I haven't had much luck in that department so far today."

We travelled westward at first, towards the distant mountains, following the line of the cliffs below and the edge of the forest to our right.

Eventually, the dense trees petered out, revealing plains much like those we'd crossed outside Pasaeda. Soon after, a way downward presented itself; the cliffs to our left became broken ground, then steep slope, and finally a steady decline to another vast swathe of grassland.

The ground was still uneven, though, littered with blunt protrusions of rock as though the sward was flimsy fabric tearing around the contours of the Earth. It was sheer in places, and slow to navigate. To our left I could still see the cliffs, descending in jagged tiers. On one of those lay Synza. I had no reason to feel guilty for my part in the momentary carelessness that had cost him his life. I should have been glad to be rid of him, glad our interminable chase was finally over. I was. But the memory of watching him plummet from sight still plucked at my mind. If nothing else, it was a reminder that I hardly needed of how tenuous life could be.

After a while, the ground levelled once more. Ahead, it was bracketed only by the mountains to our right and a shimmer of heat haze in the direction of the river. We made sure to keep our distance from the only signs of life — herdsmen marshalling great squadrons of cattle and of horses, which drifted across the land like cloud shadows.

We camped that night near a thread of stream, in a clearing neatly fenced by trees. It was my suggestion; Alvantes would probably have ridden all night if I'd left him. We had no food, and neither of us was in any state to catch any. However, I did struggle through my languor to carefully unpack my cloak without revealing its precious cargo.

Had I given the matter a little thought, I could have saved myself the effort.

"Your pack." Alvantes's voice was ethereal in the darkness.

I started. "What about it?"

"They took it. When we were arrested."

"Oh." My heart was in my mouth. I wanted urgently to gulp it back down. Instead, I said, "That's right. I found it."

"Found it?"

"Your bags were there too. But empty." I strained my ears, trying to catch a reaction. All I could hear was the sigh of wind in leaves. "There must have been something in them they wanted."

I sat tensed, not even quite sure what to fear. More questions, which would penetrate my obvious lie? Alvantes to tear the pack from my shoulder?

When I eventually dared look, long minutes later, he was curled with his back to me, obviously sound asleep.

In the morning we used the stream to wash. For the first time, Alvantes made some effort to bathe his wounds. The gash on his forehead was messy, though shallow. The cut on his arm was deep, as I'd expected, but cleaner than I'd have guessed. I counted it a small mercy that neither showed sign of infection.

For my part, my arm hurt abysmally. I reluctantly asked Alvantes to help me strap it, and was surprised when he did an excellent job. If the splint he improvised rendered it even more useless, it at least dulled the pain to a level I could about tolerate.

"How much further?" I asked. "Can we still reach this friend of yours?"

"Who knows?" was Alvantes's only reply.

We set out riding once again, through terrain much like that we'd crossed the day before. Though I could sometimes see towns and cities in the distance, we never came close to one, just as we continued to keep our distance from the roaming herdsmen and their charges. As the day wore on, it began to seem that Ans Pasaeda consisted of one colossal, more or less empty field.

Then, around noon, the glistening stripe of a river came into view ahead. It cut down from the western mountains to carve a ragged line that frayed into nothingness far to our left.

"The Mar Fex." It was so long since Alvantes had spoken that I jumped at the sound of his voice. "It runs to meet the Mar Corilus," he said. "We need to follow it."

A highway kept close to the water in the shallow river valley below, its grey thread stringing together wide-spaced beads of villages, villas and farms. It was well travelled — the closest we'd come to civilisation since we'd left Pasaeda. By unvoiced agreement, we chose to avoid it. The higher ground was easy enough to ride, and our view of the river was clear.

Late in the afternoon, Alvantes pointed out a dirty smudge of grey against the riverside green. From a distance it looked like a long-abandoned quarry. "That's Ux Durada."

My impression didn't improve as we grew nearer. I came to realise that what I'd mistaken for ugly slabs of uncut stone were in fact the ugly slabs of buildings; but even then they looked as if they could only have been made by something else falling down. Closer up, there was at least an air of faded glory to Ux Durada's sagging edifices. A few, like a large temple with cracked windows of stained glass, had clearly once been grand. Yet whenever its heyday had been, I couldn't imagine any of the town's inhabitants were old enough to remember it. All else aside, the atmosphere was so noisome and the streets so foul that it was hard to believe anyone lasted long in Ux Durada.

In the end, we had no choice but to abandon our solitude for the road. Even then, no one showed us much interest. Those who did glance in our direction looked away just as quickly once they registered our palace guardsmen's uniforms. It apparently didn't matter that they were torn and bloody, that one of us had a splinted arm, that the other was missing a hand and had a clumsily bandaged head and shoulder. Uniforms told them all they needed to know.

It took us barely ten minutes to reach the strip of dockside I assumed to be the justification for Ux Durada's pitiful existence. It was located at a point where the Mar Fex broadened to a navigable width, and once it had probably been a valued link in Ans Pasaeda's net of transportation. Perhaps a larger port had sprung up downriver or the requirement for whatever goods were moved this way had dried up. Whatever the reason, only a few shabby craft were moored here now, and the air was thick with lethargy.

I realised Alvantes's interest was focused on one particular boat, moored to a decaying wharf at the farther end. At a distance, the vessel looked curiously familiar. I'd only been in Ans Pasaeda for a few days, and to the best of my recollection I hadn't spent any of that time in studying boats. Yet the nearer we drew, the more that sense of recognition nagged in the back of my mind.

At the last moment, I realised it wasn't just the craft's wretched appearance that was ringing bells. A peculiar stench rose off it, so virulent that I could taste it too, so richly foul that it staked its own space amidst the general miasma of Ux Durada.

A figure, previously hidden by the heaped cargo on deck, stepped into view.

"Oh no," I said. "Not you. Anyone but you."

The man upon deck was of clearly significant but otherwise indeterminable age. He wore a dress coat, once red, now faded to roughly the same shade of coppery brown as his deep-lined face. His shovel of beard would have been impressive had it not been trimmed so unconventionally. Just then, his mouth was hanging open and his eyes were bright with horror.

"I won't have that… ruffian… near my boat," he said.

Alvantes held up his hand. "Anterio…"

"I thought he'd be dead by now. Didn't I help you arrest him? Did he somehow escape? Have you travelled all this way to bring him back to custody? Far better to lop his head off right here and leave his body for the fish."

"Anterio."

"He's even posing as a guardsman again. Has he no shame? Guard-Captain Alvantes, with the greatest respect…"

"Anterio!" Alvantes's roar did the trick — but not without attracting the notice of half the dockside. At a more subdued volume, he added, "Perhaps we can discuss this more privately?"

"Of course," agreed Anterio sheepishly. "Come aboard, Guard-Captain." Even his nervousness, however, wasn't enough to stop him throwing a last glance of disgust in my direction.

"Wait here," Alvantes told me as he set foot on the gangplank. "Do nothing. Touch nothing. Speak to no one."

Anywhere else, I might have struggled with such exhaustive restrictions. In Ux Durada, I was more than happy to keep my head down. There was no one on the dilapidated dockside I had the faintest desire to talk to, nothing I'd feel safe touching. The people were every bit as filthy as the boats, as the heaps of cargo, as the water lapping thickly round the wooden harbour.

At least it made sense that we should run into Anterio here. In our previous encounters, his riverboat had seemed uniquely fetid, just as he himself had been a paragon of uncleanliness. In Ux Durada, however, Anterio and his boat hardly stood out. In Ux Durada, they belonged.

The first time I'd met Anterio was when Estrada, Saltlick and I had been fleeing towards Altapasaeda. The last time I'd been trying to escape that fair city. On both occasions, he'd betrayed me; on both I'd ended up losing my freedom. As Anterio had just made clear, our relationship could fairly be described as antagonistic.

However, the man had a boat. As much as I didn't like it, he offered a way out.

Alvantes and Anterio conducted their discussion out of view, behind the tarpaulin-covered mounds of whatever unpleasant cargo Anterio was currently hauling. Their conversation seemed to go on for an unreasonably long time. All the while, I was increasingly aware that my presence was drawing attention. Likely, it was only the local underclass's trained response to anyone in uniform, but it was hard not to feel conspicuous. Ragged uniforms were the kind of thing that stuck in the memory when people came asking questions.

Just as I was starting to give up hope, Alvantes and Anterio materialised on my side of the boat.

Anterio cleared his throat and glowered at me. "The guard-captain assures me you'll receive due and thorough punishment once he's returned you to the Castoval," he said. "That being the case, you may come aboard. Still, you're a vile reprobate, and I won't trust you one jot."

"You have a point there," I agreed. "I doubt there's a viler reprobate between here and Altapasaeda. Very good of you, Captain, to help make sure I get my just desserts."

Anterio looked me up and down, trying and failing to judge if I was mocking him. "Quite right," he said. "Best hurry then."

I trotted up the gangplank. As soon as I was on deck, Alvantes pressed past me. "I'm going to get rid of the horses," he said. I assumed he meant sell them, though his manner left some doubt.

What composure Anterio had managed to recover vanished once more. "You're leaving him here?" he asked. "Unguarded?"

"You'll be safe enough," said Alvantes.

"It's not myself I'm worried for," replied Anterio darkly. "More that I mightn't be able to keep from shoving him overboard."

"I'm sure you'll restrain yourself."

Alvantes's tone offered no room for argument. Anterio nodded dumbly.

Still, I felt I should do something to alleviate his concerns — especially if the alternative was a swim in the filthy water lapping the boat's flank. Talking was unlikely to improve matters, so I sat down instead, and swung my feet above the scummy surface of the river.

It didn't help. Whenever I looked up, Anterio was staring fretfully. Each time he caught my eye, he tried to turn his expression to one of menace, which only served to make him look unbearably constipated. On the third occasion, he noticed that the two boys who shared the boat with him — sons, I'd assumed, though it was hard to see any resemblance — were spying from the stern. Anterio waved them away and fell to pacing, with such energy that the vessel shuddered bow to stern.

I willed Alvantes to hurry. If Anterio wound himself up any further, one or both of us was bound to get a dunking.

When Alvantes did finally return, it was from the opposite direction, and the first I knew was the sound of his footsteps on the gangplank. My nerves were so frayed by then that it was all I could do to keep my perch on the boat's side.

"Those were royal horses," I said, trying to sound jovial. "I hope you got a handsome price."

Alvantes scowled and said nothing.

"Best be casting off," called Anterio to the two boys. It was evident Alvantes's black mood was only adding to his jitteriness.

One boy hopped ashore to free the rope that held us moored, then dashed back up the gangplank and hauled it in behind him, a feat of agility obviously perfected through long practise. The other, meanwhile, having shoved us clear of the docks with a wide-bladed oar, hurried to take the tiller. He swung us in a wide arc, until we'd matched the direction of the river's lazy flow.

"We need to get out of view," Alvantes told Anterio. "They may be watching the river junction."

I hadn't thought to wonder where we'd be passing our time during the journey. Only now did it strike me that the possibilities were distinctly limited.

Apart from its inimitable odour, Anterio's craft was much like any other that plied the broad inland waters of the Castoval and Ans Pasaeda. They were wide and shallow-bottomed, propelled by the currents where possible, by sail when the elements chose to play along, or in desperate circumstances, by oar. The result was a method of transport that had long ago become a byword for inefficiency.

The only shelter on Anterio's boat was a tiny structure, too low to stand up in, rising from the tip of the stern. That must be where Anterio and the two boys slept on colder nights, presumably piled atop each another. Excepting a band across its middle where the mast stood, all the remaining space was filled with Anterio's rank cargo. In short, there was no room for us except the narrow perimeter of deck, and certainly nowhere we'd be hidden from sight.

"This way," said Anterio, beckoning towards the back of the boat. Catching his eye, I saw a twinkle I definitely didn't like. He paused just before the tiny shelter and with a few vigorous kicks, forced back the edge of the tarpaulin. His efforts revealed a narrow trapdoor; he reached to pluck up a ring laid in its surface and drew it open.

There was only darkness in the cavity beneath — wet, cramped, impossibly foul-smelling darkness.

Now I understood how he'd managed to restrain himself from trying to kick me into the river. Compared to what he'd had in mind, it would have been an act of mercy.

• • • •

What followed were the worst three days of my oftmiserable life.

Three days in blackness, nostrils and throat and lungs filled to bursting with the stink of rotting vegetables. Three days in silence, alleviated only by the ancient craft's creaking threats of disintegration, the stifled noises from on deck and brief periods at dawn and dusk when Anterio let us out to eat. Three days wishing that repulsive boat would finally sink, wishing we'd be found by the King's troops, wishing I'd go mad — longing for anything that would alleviate that interminable torment.

The King's interrogator would have been in awe of Anterio's efforts. The most imaginative sadist couldn't have invented a more hideous torture. The pain in my arm, which had been steadily diminishing since Alvantes splinted it, grew to epic proportions in the boat's cramped hold. The immobilised appendage throbbed and itched abominably — and if reason told me that meant it was healing, reason wasn't enough to stop me wanting to chew it off to end my suffering.

Worse even than the pain, however, was the boredom. Or rather, the boredom made everything else a hundred times more intolerable. Without relief or distraction, all that was left was to dwell on every minuscule detail of my discomfort. In comparison with the inside of Anterio's boat, the sewers of Altapasaeda had been a paradise; the King's dungeon had been the height of luxury. I mentally replayed every hardship I'd ever endured, wondering how I'd ever let myself be discomposed by such harmless provocations.

In short, it was almost a relief when the soldiers came.

I was vexing myself with thoughts of the many things I might have done with my two gold coins when the shouting started. I didn't know how far downriver we were. Even during our limited deck time, conversation had been scant. Neither Alvantes nor Anterio had volunteered any information, and I'd been too busy trying to eat without gagging to ask. If we'd been unlucky with the wind, we might only be halfway to the border. However, I had a feeling, perhaps based on some remembered shoreside detail I'd glimpsed, that we were closer than that.

Mouldering wood and foul produce muffled the raised voices. One I recognised as Anterio's. The other, more distant but nearly as loud, I assumed to be coming from the bank or a neighbouring vessel. The two exchanged half a dozen abrupt sentences. Then the timbers groaned with a new note; the noise of the water roundabout changed from a swish to a dull slap.

We were turning against the current — heading towards the bank.

The sounds from outside seemed to grow clearer. I thought I could differentiate Anterio's slow tread from the quick tap-tap his sons made as they scurried back and forth. I recognised the whoosh of the boat's mooring rope being hurled into wet grass. There was more shouting, not quite so loud this time, and the distinctive creak of the gangplank.

Then came the thud of booted feet.

I counted. The gangplank gave a particular groan whenever anyone crossed its midpoint. A dozen feet. Six men.

Even Alvantes couldn't handle six men. Not singlehandedly — and especially not now that he was single-handed. Our only hope lay in not being discovered.

It was a small hope indeed.

Because Anterio would betray us. I had no doubt. His loathing for me would inevitably outweigh whatever loyalty he felt for Alvantes. He had cast me into the arms of the authorities twice before. Likely, he'd only taken me on board in the hope that this moment would arrive.

Sure enough, six booted pairs of feet, led by Anterio's lighter step, marched in our direction. When the voices returned, they were quieter — furtive. Still, I thought I could make out the occasional word. The steps were so close that it sounded as though they were inside the boat rather than on it. When they stopped, they stopped together.

I tried to tense. I'd already decided to fling myself overboard if I could. Better that than what the King would have in store for me. But my muscles, turned to jelly by days of stillness and cramp, refused to comply. I was helpless. All I could do was wait for the creak of the hatch.

There was no creak. In its place came another round of conversation. I caught snatches of queries, and of Anterio's answers. I couldn't piece sentences together but I followed the gist. Had he seen anything suspicious? Heard any rumours? Spoken to anyone out of the ordinary? If they'd seen the hatch, they wouldn't be asking vague questions. If they'd seen the hatch, they'd have opened it now. Which meant…

Which meant Anterio wasn't entirely a fool. He'd been keeping the trapdoor covered during the days with his repellent cargo. No one would ever go digging through that unless they were damn sure what they wanted lay beneath.

A few last words were spoken. The footsteps trooped away. Again, I heard the gangplank's complaint. Moments later, the timbers round me shuddered and I knew we were heading back out into the current.

We'd made it.

Or had we?

Every charged nerve in my body told me not to trust Anterio. Twice I'd done that. Twice he'd tricked me. Probably they'd left to gather reinforcements — a sensible precaution when it came to Alvantes. Probably they were just making sure that the trap, when sprung, was inescapable.

Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes dragged by. Then, sure enough, I felt us heave back against the current. The boat protested as it scudded against something solid. Again, there were footsteps above us — and this time, the wet slither of mouldering produce being cleared.

Abruptly, the hatch sprang open.

I heard it more than saw it. At first I thought I might have gone blind in the pitchy hold. As my eyes adjusted, I realised I could just make out the dimples of pale stars. Half blocking that glimmer-studded sky, a shadowy figure hovered over the opening.

"Out you come," grunted Anterio.

I clambered up, flopped limply onto the deck gasping for air. I gazed about me, blinking.

There were no soldiers.

Yet it wasn't for that reason I almost sobbed with relief. I knew now that even capture and the promise of violent death would have been a relief after those three horrible days of stinking, claustrophobic horror.

By the standards of the hold, the air on deck was sweet as a fine lady's perfume. Compared with its lightless depths, the night-time black was the caress of softest velvet. Set against its muffled creaks and groans, the faint echoes of life from the shore were the choiring of songbirds.

There before me, scattered in gleams of gold upon the silhouetted mountainside, was Aspira Nero, entrance to the Castoval.