King Pinch

7

"Stand aside, damn you! He attacked Prince Throdus!"

There was the leathery scrape of a tussle outside, over a handful of shouted voices. Not a one did Pinch recognize, but they were full of youth and vigor and he could well guess that they were rakes of Throdus's circle intent on currying favor with their patron.

By the time the courtiers bulled their way past the guard outside the door and smashed through the lock, Pinch had shucked his linen nightshirt, pulled on trousers and boots, and was standing ready for them. In each hand casually held behind his back he held a dagger by the blade, ready for the toss. Another was in his boot top.

These blades were not his first line of defense, though. Pinch had no illusions that a few puny tossed daggers would stop this group. Princes surrounded themselves with hardier worthies than that. At best he could remind them he had a potent sting.

Of course, they had to find him first. Invisibility, or a thief's version of it, was his strongest protection. While they were fumbling outside, the rogue slid into the shadowed folds of his bed canopy, between the wall and the monolithic headboard. There he shifted his shoulder so that the lines of gloom fell across it just so, tilted his head into the darkness, and pressed his legs close to the headboard until they looked like part of the carved bronzewood. There he waited very, very still. There was, after all, still the great risk that he had missed some telltale and they would discover it in a nonce. That's what the knives were for. Fools who relied on only one chance were short-lived fools.

All in one packet, three bravos cracked through the lock and crashed into the salon, a swirl of silken capes and flashing blades. The group, with their curled hair and puffy half-slashed sleeves, made a romantic trio as they whirled and thrust bloody holes into the air.

Pinch almost gave himself away, so utter was his contempt for what he saw. They practically stumbled and fell over each other in their eagerness to be the first to make the strike, the first to avenge the tainted honor of their lord. Their capes, colorful in courtly dance, snared each other, one's silk foiling the stroke of another.

"Stand clear there!"

"Step aside yourself, Faranoch."

"He's mine. You fall back."

"I yield to no man my lesser."

"Lesser?"

"Stop flailing that ham slicer. You've cut my sleeve!"

"A mortal blow, Treeve."

"Hah! I have him!"

"Hah indeed, Kurkulatain. You've killed a pillow."

"A fierce battle Prince Throdus fought," said the pudgiest as he looked about more closely, tired of blindly lunging. He prodded the spilled contents of the armoire at the entrance to the bedroom.

"Indeed," commented another, a painfully handsome fop who was just as relieved that there was no prey to be found. "They must have battled from one room to the other." As proof he swept his sword across the tangle of hurled goods Pinch had created in his search for the possessor of the strange voice.

"A skilled swordsman to have kept Throdus at bay so long," the third courtier nervously added. He was a thin stick topped by droopy ringlets.

The other two looked at the evidence for this new judgment. "Quite formidable…"

"And he forced Throdus to retreat."

As they spoke, the trio slowly bunched together, back to back to back. They eyed corners, flowing arras, even snarled lumps of linen with a newfound fear.

"Maybe he's dead."

"No blood though."

"He might have run away."

"True…" The six-legged knot blindly edged toward the door.

"Might have."

"He could have bribed the guard," the stick man brilliantly deduced.

Pinch stifled a laugh, and the urge to come roaring out of his shadow and send the lot scurrying back around Throdus's legs like yipping little pups.

"Of course. He knew someone would be coming!"

"Like us."

"We should sound the alarm," the fat one dutifully suggested.

"And let the guards hunt him!" The handsome one seized upon the idea.

"It would be the right thing," agreed the stick-pole man.

The clot backed to the door and jammed, none of the trio willing to break rank to let the others through. As they hovered there, unwilling to go forward, unable to go back, a shadow fell on them from behind.

"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" thundered Cleedis in his best military voice. The trio-as-one sundered itself in terror and blindly darted through the doorway as the old commander shouldered through them, batting his way clear with his cane.

As soon as he was inside, the white-haired chamberlain closed the door and planted the cane in front of him, leaning heavily on it as though it were a tent pole.

"You can come out now," he said like a man trying to coax a beast from a thicket, addressing the air that filled the light and dark between them. "I know you've popped yourself into some corner waiting for an unguarded moment to strike. Well, if you mean to do that to me, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction. If you want to fight me, Janol, you'll have to come and get me."

"I'd never fight you, Lord Cleedis," Pinch flattered as he stepped into view.

The old man squinted his weak eyes to be sure of what he was seeing. "Lies and pissing-poor ones at that. I'd kill you given half a reason, Janol, and I suspect you'd do it for even less."

"Killing always has a reason. If I do any less, I'm a beast." The rogue tucked the daggers in his belt and spread his arms to prove that he was unarmed. White arms spanned from his hairy dark chest, a heart eaten by shadow.

"Philosophy from a scoundrel. There is no end of wonders in the world."

"There are. I came back here."

"And dammit, what happened? I hear you brawled with Throdus."

Pinch didn't deny a word of it. He scoured the chaos of clothing for a clean doublet. "He's a jackanapes ass. Let's say he was checking the prancer's teeth when it bit him."

"And then?"

"And then nothing," came the muffled answer as the regulator pulled on an undershirt. Pinch wasn't about to mention the strange voice, not until he'd had a chance to learn more. These walls for one-he wanted to check them much more carefully.

"What did he ask?" Seeing that he was being ignored, the chamberlain lumbered to a chair and settled down.

The rogue turned his attention to the washstand. "Just as much as it pleased me to inform him."

"And what did you inform?"

"Everything, the lay of it all." The regulator ambled back into the salon, drying one ear with a towel. "Which is to say, nothing. The minstrel can't play the tune without an instrument.

"I've been thinking that now is the time to inform me, Lord High Chamberlain."

Half-dressed, Pinch stood over the seated chamberlain and let one hand stray to the daggers in his belt.

It was a tribute to the old man's years of soldiering that he looked his adversary square and firm and never once flinched. The implied threat didn't faze him; either the chamberlain had made peace with death long ago or he was canny enough to know the rogue's bluff.

"Not yet. Soon."

Sensing the determination of the rock against the rain, the rogue relented. "Anon it is, but if you don't give good words on it soon, I'll have a grievance with you, Lord Cleedis." He stepped back, a signal that the threat was naught. "Just remember, a grievance is good enough reason for killing."

The old man scowled with irritation, not exactly the reaction Pinch expected from such a promise. "Morality gets in the way. Better to just kill and be done with it. Don't think-a proper soldier knows that. You would have learned that if you'd stayed."

"Just as long as I killed in Manferic's name?"

Cleedis shrugged off the question as no matter, "It's a warrior's duty." The cane clawed the floor as the old man got to his feet, stooped back bent under the load of bloody decades of duty. "Killing's just another task."

"Then I choose to kill for my own name." The rogue frowned darkly at the figure he saw in the salon's mirror.

The chamberlain possessed a voice he seldom used anymore, a voice ill-suited to the sycophantic parasitism of court and embassy halls. It was a voice he'd learned long ago on the back of a horse, when every choice confronted death, a voice that made wiser men jump into the fire he chose. He used it now, but it was something that had long ago shriveled unused, no better than a rusted watch-spring on an ancient clock

"Stow your rubbish. A true killer makes no idle threats." The sense was there in what he gargled but the conviction was gone. "You'll wait your time with patience, and when the time's right you'll learn your job."

"I didn't come here to be your lap-boy," Pinch spat venomously.

"And it wasn't my idea to fetch you."

In his brain, the regulator seized on the statement. It was the first proof he'd been given that another mind stood behind the chamberlain's. His impulsive side, normally given to boozing and women, wanted to blurt out the question. Who had given the word? In moments like this, though, Pinch's cool heartlessness took hold. Calculating the reactions, he said nothing. The information would come to him, slowly and with time.

He made no show of noticing the old man's slip.

The door hinges creaked. "By this afternoon, I think."

And then he was alone.

A short while later, a shadow of wine-red velvet and white lace slipped past the bored guard beyond the door.

The salt-and-pepper-haired ghost padded through carpeted hallways, just slipping into dark doorways as stewards and ladies hurried by. They were blinded from the stranger's presence by their duties. Guards protected doorways, ignoring the arched halls behind them.

Pinch stayed to the darkest hallways, stuffed with their out-of-fashion trophy heads, past the servant quarters, along long avenues of interconnected halls. From the open windows that looked out over the courtyard where a squad of trainees drilled came the whiff of roasted sulfur and animal dung.

Trainees, he thought as he caught glimpses of the recruits bungling their drill. By rights, only the elite served here, but these amateurs bore the crest of Prince Vargo. These men were hasty recruits brought in as fodder to strengthen one princeling's hand. So it's come to this, each prince dredging the city for his own personal guard.

In the western wing, the search ended at a trio of guarded doors. That amused Pinch-the hopeless thought that his underlings would be challenged by a stand of overtrained watchmen. In this he was sure Cleedis or whoever was just naive; believing that only he was the threat, they underestimated the others.

It did not take long for Pinch to find a way to slip in unnoticed, and if he could get in, they could get out.

"He's fobbed you with a bale of barred eater-treys," the regulator chuckled as he sauntered off the balcony and interrupted Therin and Sprite's friendly dice game.

The game stopped in midthrow as the two twitched alert, their faces openly showing their native suspicion.

"Well, well. Doesn't need us for a damn, does he? Now look who walks in."

The halfling, perhaps with a better sense of caution, kept his mouth shut.

"You should know how things stand, Therin."

"Perhaps I do-Master Pinch. Or is it Lord Janol here?"

Pinch sidled away from the open window, just in case someone was watching. "As your prefer. Tell me, should I call you a fool?"

"Watch your prattling!" The dagger that suddenly appeared the man's hand reinforced his warning.

The regulator remained unruffled. "You really think I'd given you up, after I'd saved you from hanging in Elturel? It's a game, Gur, like those dice you hold. If they think you're worthless to me, then they'll not kill you to make me mind. Put your skene away and use your head."

The halfling gave a gentle restraining tug on the bladesman's sleeve. "Whether he's telling the truth or lying, he's right, Therin. Maybe we don't mean anything to him and maybe we do-but if they think we're a hold over him then we're all dead as a surety."

The master rogue nodded agreement to the halfling's words. "The game's to get them to think what you want them to think, not to play fair." He pointed to the dice in Therin's palm. "I'll wager you a groat you can't roll a five or a nine with Sprite's dice."

"I would never, not to my friends!" Sprite protested in his tinny voice.

The Gur eased back from his coil, slid his knife away and eyed the dice casually. "That might be," he drawled with particular serenity to make his point, "or maybe I've crossed him with a bale of contraries." He reached into his blouse and produced a pair of identical-looking dice. "That's how the game is played."

"Unfair! You've been figging me!" squealed the half-ling. He scrambled to gather up the winnings before anyone might stop him. Therin moved almost as quick, and there was a flurry of reaching and grabbing as the coins and notes in the pot vanished from the floor.

"Well played, high lawyer!" The release of anxiety welled up inside the regulator and translated itself into spurt of laugher.

When they were finished, Pinch settled into the softest chair in the room. Compared to his, this small bedroom was spartan; compared to the previous rooms of the lot, it was luxurious. The rascals had been given a set of three connected chambers, which gave them more space than they really needed.

"How fare you three?" the rogue asked.

"Well enough…" Therin was too busy counting his loot to be bothered.

"Can't say much for the rooms, but they made a fine breakfast."

Pinch wasn't sure if the halfling was being sarcastic or true to his nature. Whenever there was loot, Sprite-Heels was always squandering his on homey comforts and food, pretending to live the burghermeister's life. He'd talk about going home, describing a place of rich fields, rolling hills, and barrow homes where he could work an honest life and everyone was 'Uncle' or 'Grandmother' or 'Brother.' Contrary to this, a few times when he was truly drunk, the Hairfoot revealed another choice for his upbringing: an orphan's life in cold, wattled shacks along Elturel's muddy riverbank. Pinch could only wonder which, if either, was real.

"Where's Maeve?"

The Gur nodded toward the closed door on the left wall. There were three doors, one on each wall, and the smallish balcony behind Pinch. The door to the right was open, hinting at a room like this one. The door on the wall opposite was larger, probably locked, and a guard stood on the other side. That left the third door where Maeve was, in a room identical to this one. But not perfectly identical; from the outside only the center room had a balcony.

"She sweet-talked a guard for a couple of bottles of bub last night and she wasn't in a sharing mood. Sleeping it off, she is." Sprite pocketed his crooked dice and brushed his clothes clean.

"Damn Lliira's curse. Roust her."

The other two exchanged a wicked grin. "As you say!"

In a few moments, a splash followed by a shriek of sputtering outrage echoed from the other room. This was followed by man and halfling tumbling through the door.

"By troth, she's in a foul humor!" Therin's words were punctuated by a sizzle of sparks, green and red, that arced over his head followed by a billow of bitter smoke, a pyrotechnic display of her anger.

Pinch planted himself on the balcony and waited for Maeve's handiwork to clear.

Maeve emerged with eyes of red sorrow, her body sagging in the knot of nightclothes, wet with water dripping from her stringy hair. Spotting Therin, she fumbled into her sleeves looking for some particularly nasty scrap of bat wing or packet of powdered bone.

"Good morn, Maeve," Pinch interrupted as he stepped from the balcony.

Without missing a beat, the wizardess bowed slightly to the thief. "Greetings to you, Master Pinch. You sent these wags to soak me?

"I sent them to wake you. You were drunk."

The witch drew herself up. "Hung over. Not drunk."

"Drunk-and when I need you sober. Fail me again, and I'll cut you off." With that the rogue turned to other business, turning away from her in disdain for her temper and her spells. "What have you learned?" he asked of the other two.

"Damned little. It's only been a day."

"We aren't going to have many days here," the regulator snapped back. "Do you think this is a pleasure trip? How about escape-the ogre and the hounds?"

As he expected, the pair had done more than they allowed. "The hounds are kenneled in the southeast corner," Sprite began. "I don't know where the ogre sleeps."

"Close by his pack would be the best guess," the Gur added.

"After that, there's three gates to the city. Counted those when we came in."

"What about getting out of here?"

"They keeps us locked in all the time, 'cept for meals and necessaries." The halfling scratched his furred foot. "Well, there's the balcony where you got in. The other two rooms got windows we can climb down."

"You maybe, you little imp, not me," Maeve sniped.

"You'll do as you must, dear. What about secret passages-Sprite? Therin?"

"None we found, Pinch."

The older man nodded. "I'm thinking there's one in mine."

"What do we do now, Pinch?"

The regulator laid a soothing hand on Maeve's damp shoulder. "Watch, wait. Whatever they want, it'll happen soon. I want the lot of you to get the lay of Ankhapur. Get yourselves into the city proper. Talk and listen. Nip something if you want, just don't get caught. Cleedis means you to be hostages, so you'd best be careful."

"Well, that means he won't scrag us," Therin said with morbid cheer.

Pinch looked to the other man with a cocked eyebrow of disbelief. "Just don't put him to the test. You've more enemies than Cleedis out there."

"Your cousins?"

The rogue tapped his temple. The man was right on.

"Why? Now's time we deserve to know."

Looking at their hard faces now that the question had come up, Pinch shrugged.

"They're Manferic's spawn. It's in their blood, I think. There's not a measure of kindness granted by them that doesn't pass unwaged. Their hate's like a snake, cold and slithery."

"So why do they hate you?" Sprite pressed.

"I ran away; they couldn't."

"This king of yours must have been the dark one's own kin." Maeve sniffed a bit, sounding positively touched. She'd always been like that, the softest touch for a story. "What'd he do to you, Pinch?"

Pinch glared at the intrusion. His past wasn't any of their business. But now he'd started down the path and, like the genie from the bottle, opening it was a lot easier than pushing all the vapor back in.

It was an impossibility to try telling them, though. There was no way to adequately explain Manferic's cold, manipulative heart. On the surface, he'd been raised with kindness and generosity, far more than was warranted to an orphaned boy-even if his father had been a knight and his mother a lady. He had no memory of them. Cleedis said his father had died on campaign, carried off by a swamp troll; his mother had died in childbirth. Manferic himself had taken the foundling in and raised him as one of his own.

When he was little Jan, as he was known then, he never wondered, never questioned. In his eyes, the king was kind and good, his "brothers" mean. He quickly learned their meanness stemmed from arrogance and jealousy. He was the intruder at their hearth, a thief of privilege duly belonging to them.

It was only later that he learned a harsher lesson: that kindness and love were only masks for cold self-interest. That was the day he learned the true reason that the old king had raised him with such care.

"He was… evil." It was what he meant, but Pinch couldn't say it with the conviction the word needed. Good, evil were no longer for him the sharp lines of separation they once were.

"Enough wasted time. There's more I want you to do. The three princes are likely to make trouble. An ear to the wind should give good warning of any moves." The rogue turned to his lieutenant. "There's three idiot courtiers in Throdus's camp-Treeve, Kurkulatain, and Faranoch. Make a conveyance to know them, Therin; they may be ripe informers."

"Sprite, find us a hole in the city." Pinch tapped his temple. "My memories are past use. After fifteen years, things change."

Finally he turned to the hung-over sorceress, who winced at every sound, and in his gentlest voice said, "Now, dear, I want you to dress your finest and make friends here in the court. Use your spells. Find out what these fine people are really thinking. I may need to know where everybody stands."

"Me? Out there with them? They's a bit above my rank, Pinch. I won't know how to behave like a proper gentry mort."

The rogue touched her reassuringly. "There now, you'll do fine. A little touch of makeup and some new clothes and you'll be sitting right beside them at their tables. You always were a quick doxy."

There were no more orders to be said. Each of his journeymen nodded off on their part. The roles were not new to them; each had the eye and skill for the part Pinch gave them. With no questions, Pinch went out onto the balcony again. Just before slipping over the rail, he added one last caveat. "Therin, mind your sword. There'll be no blood in the house. Sprite, mind where you filch, too. They draw and quarter thieves here without waiting for the start of term-time. And Maeve," he added lastly, "keep yourself sober. Drink despoils a lady."

And then, like a morning mist, the rogue melted through the rail and away.