Knights of the Crown

Chapter 4

A rumbling, grumbling snore woke Pirvan. He sat up and tested head, ears, eyes, nose, and all his limbs. All were still attached and working.

He was sitting on a pallet in a low, whitewashed room that had the air of a recently and roughly cleaned cellar. Just beyond arm’s reach was another pallet, with Grimsoar One-Eye asleep on it. The big man’s head was shaved, and he wore a bandage over his scalp wound, but otherwise he looked quite healthy. His helpers had even bathed him, which was more than they had done for Pirvan. The thief stood up and prodded his comrade in the ribs with a bare toe.

“Uck,” was the reply.

Pirvan prodded harder. Grimsoar rolled over, until his back was turned to Pirvan. Pirvan contemplated the other thief’s back. The man had been a successful wrestler only a few years ago; his back was still slabs of rock-hard muscle.

Probably break a toe if I really kick him, the agile thief thought. Time for a bath before he wakes, I suspect.

Pirvan had no trouble arranging for a bath. The only problem was persuading Yanitzia not to attend him in it. Being in the presence of a hero seemed to have curious effects on women, which he would be glad to put to good use some other time. Unfortunately, all he wanted now, from woman or man, besides a clean body, was the full tale of what had gone awry in the matter of Lady Eskaia’s jewels.

He had no aversion to seeing them returned, but beyond that, his instincts told him that he had not learned as much as was either lawful or necessary.

When Pirvan returned to the chamber, feeling fully awake at last, as well as clean, Grimsoar One-Eye was likewise awake. He was also fully clothed, except for his eye patch, and putting away a substantial breakfast.

Pirvan reached for a sausage and got a rap on the knuckles for the effort.

“There’s only enough for me,” Grimsoar said. “When they came with this, you were in the bath, and no one knew when you’d be out. Not with Yanitzia in there with you.”

Pirvan snatched a hot roll from the wicker basket and munched on it. “Remind me not to save you, the next time you’re buried alive. Whatever the lady intended, she didn’t accomplish it.”

“Unlike you,” Grimsoar said. He gripped both of Pirvan’s hands in one large, greasy one. “I don’t know who sent you, or if you came by your own will. But I’m-oh, to the Abyss with all this pap. What is mine is yours, any time you ask for it.”

“Except your breakfast?”

“Well, a man needs to keep a little back-”

But Pirvan had snatched up a sausage and another roll, this time without getting his knuckles rapped. By the time he’d swallowed both, he knew what he wanted.

“Find out the truth about Lady Eskaia’s jewels.”

“Oh, that,” Grimsoar said. “Ask me something difficult.”

Pirvan fought his jaw back into position. “You know?”

“Yes. I was coming to tell you. That was why I was there last night. If I hadn’t thought you needed to know it, I certainly had better company in mind than a band of old thieves.”

Pirvan sat back on the pallet. “I think I’m going to throw you back in that hole and then push it in on top of you. You knew and didn’t tell-”

“Don’t gallop without tightening your girth,” Grimsoar quoted, holding up one plate-sized hand. “I only learned yesterday myself. Or perhaps I should say the night before.”

“A woman?”

“A cook’s maid at the Encuintras estate. I had in mind some night work there myself, and I was going to begin with her. But she was so eager to talk about the jewels that I didn’t hear a word about anything else.”

“Eager?”

“And frightened. Now, I don’t say this is the whole story, but if the half of it’s true, she has reason to be. And so do you.”

After Grimsoar finished, Pirvan had to agree. It seemed that Lady Eskaia had been appropriating jewels from her dowry to make up a ransom for her guard-maid Haimya’s betrothed. The gentleman was a prisoner of pirates on the Crater Gulf to the northeast, and Lady Eskaia was not going to be able to raise the ransom from her own allowance or her family’s funds. They barely approved of Haimya at all; they would never approve a substantial sum of money to ransom one who was, after all, a near stranger to House Encuintras.

Clearly, Pirvan’s night work had set the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance. From what Grimsoar had learned, Lady Eskaia and Haimya had covered their tracks for the moment, removing a few more jewels from the dower coffers to make it seem that these had been the thief’s goal. The family had informed the watch and the priests and tightened the guard on the house, but so far there had been neither scandal nor suspicion that the maid knew about.

What she did know was a rumor that Eskaia had a mage in her pay, to find the thief or avenge the theft or punish the thieves’ brotherhood or something portending bloodshed and dark dealings. Most likely, last night’s affair was the mage’s first achievement; it would not be the last.

“Even worse, one can’t be sure that the mage isn’t taking silver from both House Encuintras and the pirates,” Grimsoar concluded. “They themselves won’t come nearer Istar than Karthay, if that far, but there are always local merchants who will buy and sell for them. Merchants mentioned by name in the temples sometimes.”

“That there’s little justice in the world is something I’ve known as long as you, friend.”

“Not unless you’ve met the kind of man who judges wrestling bouts at brass-piece fairs,” Grimsoar said.

“I bow to your indescribable wisdom.”

“Then don’t try to describe it. What are you going to do?”

“Does your debt allow you to help me?”

“You might even say it commands me.”

“As well. I mean to give the jewels back.”

Pirvan had suspected for a good long while that he was going to do this, if only to keep the peace with his fellow thieves. Now that he had heard Grimsoar, suspicion became certainty.

If he did anything else, even return them by a messenger who might not hold his tongue, House Encuintras could face scandal and uproar. The thieves would face further magical retaliation.

It was against Pirvan’s principles to tarnish the honor of a victim. His night work aimed at their purses, not their reputations. It was as against the customs of the brotherhood to bring other thieves into danger. Thieves older and more successful than Pirvan had ended in the arena or mysteriously dead in back alleys, the harbor, or sewers, for endangering brothers and sisters.

Prudence, honor, and his prospects for the future all forced him in the same direction. After that easy decision, though, came the hard ones. The Encuintras estate would hardly be as open as it had been the first night. To be sure, he had only to find either Eskaia or Haimya, not open locks or penetrate strongrooms, but keeping them from betraying him (in the lady’s case) or running him through (as Haimya looked fit to do) might be quite as difficult.

The thought of the sewers returned. He looked at Grimsoar One-Eye.

“Brother. How are you at deep work?”

* * * * *

“Haimya, this is the third night you have walked the halls.” Eskaia emphasized her displeasure by setting down her teacup hard enough to chip the saucer and splatter the remains of the brown liquid over the bedclothes.

“You promised that you would allow me to engage the thief upon his return.”

“Or her. If it is a thief.”

“You have begun to doubt.”

“I have always doubted that you could prowl the house like a staring cat every night with impunity.”

“What punishment do you have in mind?” Haimya now looked not only tired but angry and frustrated, almost to the point of tears.

“I will give none. But the gods may make you ill, or so weak that the thief defeats you. He may return to give us back the jewels, but that does not mean he will care to be subdued and handed over to the watch. He may even have his eyes on some more lawful prey, or at least some that will cause less talk.”

Haimya smiled. “Did anyone ever tell you that you talk like a counselor at law?”

“Frequently, beginning with my Uncle Petrus, who taught me that manner of speaking.”

“It rings oddly on the ear, though, from one your age.”

“No doubt, Grandmother.”

Haimya was older than Eskaia, at least twenty-six to the lady’s nineteen (twenty next month), and toughened further in several years’ campaigning as a mercenary. Eskaia still refused her guard-maid the right to treat her as a child.

“Now,” Eskaia said briskly, as she swung her legs out of bed. “See that the bathchamber is prepared. Meanwhile, you can sleep here in my chamber by day, once the maids have done with it. That way no one will disturb you.”

Haimya frowned. “People will talk.”

“They already have,” Eskaia said. “I doubt that they will or even can say anything new. It was lies, it is lies, it will be lies. When we have the jewels back, you can challenge anyone whose lies have been too gross and loud. Or I can find some cause for dismissing them, even sending them to the arena.”

“I will-oh, Kiri-Jolith! If I killed everyone whose tongue wagged to my annoyance, I would have been in the arena long ago.”

“True. Few seem to understand that you are loyal to Gerik, and merely wait for him.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I suppose gossip is less of a burden than the one you bear.”

“Oh?”

“I have no father urging on me one man after another.”

“No, but neither do I have old Leri. If you were not loyal to her son, what her spirit would say to you would make anything my father has ever said sound like the cooing of doves.”

* * * * *

For Pirvan, deep work (as the thieves called traveling through the sewers and drains of Istar) with Grimsoar One-Eye had several advantages. The big man’s bull strength combined with his shrewdness about where to push and where to pull made passages through or over cave-ins possible, if not always easy or safe. He had a sense of direction underground equal to Pirvan’s aboveground. Between their combined senses it was impossible that they should get lost.

Finally, any passage wide enough for Grimsoar was more than wide enough for Pirvan, even at a dead run. He hoped tonight would demand only the Thief’s Three Laws: “Silence, stealth, subtlety,” but that lay with the gods. Pirvan did not intend to end in the arena for trying to make a restitution commanded by both his own honor and his fellow thieves!

The journey took longer than Pirvan had expected. Far below the ground, both his sense of direction and his sense of time weakened. He was sure that the gates were opening for the market carts of eggs and fish, vegetables and honey, when Grimsoar finally pointed up at a crack in the side of an ancient and odoriferous stretch of drain.

“There.”

Pirvan looked at the crack. In the flickering light of their lanterns, it looked too narrow for an eel.

“It looks too narrow for you.”

“It is,” Grimsoar said.

“Then how do you know-?”

“A brother once came up here with his son, who was about your size. The lad made it up with little trouble.”

“You know this-”

“I will name no names, but he took a deathbed oath.”

Pirvan nodded. He trusted Grimsoar One-Eye completely, and now he had to trust the dead thief. Deathbed oaths bound thieves to be utterly truthful in what they said with their last breaths. The fate for dying liars was said to be one that might make Takhisis herself flinch away.

He still disliked that shadowy crack. At least the stone around it seemed well set, for all that it must have been laid when Huma and the first dragonlances were within living memory. Istar or some city had stood on this land for a long time.

The cities had also endured much. Pirvan remembered a chronicle he had once read, of a city here enduring a siege. A party of citizens had come down, to wait out the siege living on hoarded food.

But outside the walls, the besiegers had a wizard in their ranks. He churned up the water of the lake, and it roared through the streets of the city. Most folk were able to scramble to safety, but not those far below. When the water came down the drains, every last one of them had drowned.

Pirvan raised his lantern and studied the crack. It would be a tight fit without abandoning clothes and gear, but he’d brought a sack and a long rope to take care of that danger. He stripped, stuffing each item he took off into the bag, then tied one end of the rope to the neck of the bag and the other to his waist. The only gear with him were the jewels in a bag around his neck and the dagger in the belt at his waist.

Climbing light made it easier, and only twice was he in danger of being wedged. The crack also stank even worse than the tunnel below. Clearly a certain amount of midden waste had come down it, when servants grew lazy. He hoped none would be lazy tonight.

But Pirvan would have faced a continuous flow of filth and many tight passages to finish tonight’s work. Finish tonight’s work, redeem his own honor, preserve the thieves from further attacks, and be out of this underground warren with its stinks, shadows, and vengeful ghosts!

* * * * *

Haimya leaned back against the ancient brickwork and stretched her legs out on the bench. She laid her drawn sword across her knees and began testing the edge cautiously with the back of her thumb. It was too dark down here for even her keen night-sight to find flaws in the steel, but her skin was more sensitive anyway.

She paid a price for testing her sword thus, in small cuts and scrapes that did nothing for the appearance of hands that might have been intended for a man half a foot taller. But no friend had ever thought less of her, that her hands were not Lady Eskaia’s (although those hands could wield more than an embroidery needle or a paintbrush if necessary). A good many enemies were no longer thinking at all, because of the strength and the skill in those battered hands.

She stretched her arms now, tensing, then relaxing every muscle like a cat. The sword began to slip from her lap. As she halted it, movement at the far end of the passage caught her eye.

A moment later, the movement became a kitchen boy, running with an empty slop bucket in his hand but not slowed in the least. He ran as if the Abyss were opening close at his heels, and his eyes were so wide that they were more white than not.

Haimya sprang into the boy’s path. For a moment his eyes rolled, and she thought he was going to fall senseless. She gripped his shoulder, firm and friendly at the same time.

“What is it?”

“The drowned ghosts-they’re coming-”

Haimya hoped her face didn’t look blank or bemused as she tried to remember the boy’s name and what he might be talking about. She couldn’t contrive the first, but the second flashed quickly into her mind.

Except that she didn’t believe in ghosts-at least not as much as she believed in live thieves.

Silence and secrecy were now as important to her as to the thief. She put a finger to her lips and shook her head. The boy nodded slowly and swallowed several times. When he spoke again, it was in a whisper.

“I heard them, Lady Haimya. Scraping, scratching, and getting louder.”

She ignored the mistake about her rank. “Sure it wasn’t rats?”

“I’ve heard rats, oh, I don’t know how many times. This is different.”

“Every time, I’ll be bound, that you went downcellar to empty a bucket faster.”

The boy could not meet her eyes. Haimya put a hand under his chin and lifted his head.

“Come with me and be silent. If you do, I’ll forget about the bucket.” She thought of asking him to clean up where he’d been emptying it, but that was the cellarer’s territory. The old man was also as stubborn as a badger and one of the worst gossips in the house.

“Come with me.”

Haimya strode toward the cellar door, trying to remember if there was a second way out of the cellar even for a thief. Well, if there was and he used it, he would leave traces. While he was upstairs, she could place herself in the cellar to bar his outward passage, with any fresh loot he might have seen fit to gather.

The lock of the cellar door was well greased, the hinges likewise. Both made faint squeals, like kittens at the bottom of a well-an image and a memory that made Haimya flinch. Neither was as loud as the boy’s quick breathing. The guard-maid would have given three good swords and her best helmet for one moment’s magic, to silence the boy or at least ease his fear until he would no longer awaken sleeping drunks, let alone alert thieves.

They had just closed the door behind them when Haimya saw a faint glow of light along one wall of the cellar, between a rack of wine barrels on one hand and a rack of smoked hams on the other. She listened, the boy held his breath, and the scraping indeed sounded nothing like rats.

Then the glow died.

* * * * *

Pirvan was past the worst part of the passage when an outcropping of stone knocked the hood off his lantern. In the silence of his mind, he relieved his frustration. Shielding the lantern with his body, he learned what made him think even stronger language. A tinker would have to take hood and lantern in hand to rejoin them.

A nice dilemma now faced Pirvan. Had he been on the streets or, even better, on the rooftops, he could have gone forward as swiftly and deftly in the darkness as in the light. His agility, his night-sight, and his sense of direction kept him moving the way he wished, as long as he was in the open air.

Below ground was a different matter. He had mostly foresworn deep work for that reason, and would have done so tonight. But the open-air paths to the house would surely be guarded. The only safe way lay below, and to use that, he needed light, whether or not it gave warning to anyone waiting above.

Pirvan reminded himself that, strictly speaking, he did not have to roam the house until he found Lady Eskaia’s bed and the strongbox under it. He could reach the cellar, fling the bag of jewels with its notes to Lady Eskaia attached-into the hands of any servant who might have slipped down to tap a wine barrel. Such might be indiscreet; they could even be dishonest.

Pirvan’s honor and the thieves’ safety demanded a complete, discreet return.

He could only hope that his mask would not go the way of the lantern shield.

Nothing more went awry in the remaining few minutes of Pirvan’s underground journey. Safely far back in the passage, he blew out the lantern and drew up his sack of gear. It would be an irony to make a dozen gods laugh if he needed more tools to return stolen property than to steal it in the first place.

At last he was peering out into the cellar, the lantern behind him. All seemed as he would have expected, with no alarm given. The only light was a dim, guttering one, from a single torch or lamp high up and out of his sight to the left.

Trying to keep his head up and his eyes roaming, Pirvan slipped out of the crack in what now seemed to be a cellar wall. The dim light made the wine barrels to his right seem a solid mass, whatever was hanging to his left appear as giant bats with their wings folded.

A mouse skittering drew his eyes to the right. Then across the open space, he saw something move. A human shape, creeping on hands and knees, clearly knowing that he was not alone, thinking that he had not been seen.

Pirvan drew his dagger, tossed it so that he held it by the point, then waited until he could have a clear shot at the man’s head. Man-no, a boy, more likely, or even a girl-but no one could be allowed to give warning this soon, nor would they receive more than a headache from the pommel of the dagger.

Seeking that clear line for his throw, Pirvan had taken two steps away from the wall. That was one too many. In one moment, he sensed someone approaching him from his left; in the next, the person was behind him, between him and the passage.

He whirled, angling the dagger upward to hammer the pommel up under his attacker’s chin. That could kill, but he would pull his blow if he could-

The next moment, he felt as if a dragon had whipped its tail into his lower abdomen. He doubled up, all the breath going out of him in a whuff he was sure must be waking the house. The pain he felt was such that if he had let out the scream deserved, he would have awakened half of Istar.

But the breath for the scream would not come. He was still fighting for it when he felt the dagger plucked from his hand and a second attacker behind him. Trying to turn merely cost him what was left of his balance, and as he went down, a hard fist hammered against the side of his jaw.

Pirvan the Thief was as senseless as a log of firewood before he struck the floor.