The Blacktongue Thief

57 Behind the False Wall

Stars winked in the night sky above me. I squinted like a mole, hoping I wasn’t pushing up the stone lid just near the heel of a biggun who’d step on me when I was half out. As I slid up into the street, my body actually tensed, anticipating being crushed. No giant’s heel awaited me, though, and I slipped from the darkness of the sewer to the darkness of the house with no one to see but stars.

This house was where the Full Shadow had taken the Queen once he had her, Ürmehen had told me. The thought of finding the Full Shadow inside it now scared me more than getting stepped on by a giant. A squashing would at least be quick. I had neither means nor will to fathom the cruelties that lay ahead for me if I were caught here.

But my luck was high, and the house proved empty. It was a narrow, three-story affair with arched doorways throughout, delicate off-white brickwork and nails where the rich tapestries the merchant used to trade in had hung. It was also now missing one wall and teetering like a good breeze would tumble it, clinging as if drunk to its neighbors, both of which were in somewhat better shape. A strange, smelly grease covered the wood on the main floor as well; I would find out later it was human fat.

I searched the basement, which was unlocked. I smelled where sacks of Urrimad tea had once stood, and telltale hairs from the pelts of southern beasts like the one adorning Ürmehen’s shoulders, but I soon found a hidden door behind a swinging panel of false stones. This door was locked, and carefully, but yielded to my lock-picking skills after a short while. I knew the door was likely to be trapped and relaxed a little after I tripped and avoided the first iron needle with its drop of poison, probably stillheart. The second needle almost got me.

A series of cells waited behind the false wall and Guild-locked door; a proper dungeon. Whoever or whatever had occupied these dank, frigid rooms was long gone, and good luck to them.

The queen. Queen Mireya, infanta of Ispanthia.

There were four small cells and one larger one, complete with benches and iron rings to which chains or ropes might be secured. Faint bloodstains marred them all. One closet held all manner of tongs and scalpels, which made even me shudder, and I’m no dewflower.

These were questioning rooms.

My search turned up no further false doors, so I headed back up.

It was on the main floor that I found a tunnel, cleverly hidden in the hearth, under the ash grate. I only figured this out because of the way the ash was spilled—it had been tipped to the back.

I went slowly, using the fireplace poker to prod the steps down, expecting one of them to shoot poison spikes up, but they never did. I made my way along the tunnel, which, past the hearth’s false entrance, was surprisingly wide, a real piece of engineering, using every sense I could; I prodded and poked with the poker; I felt for magic’s prickle; I plumbed my luck, ready to freeze on my heels as soon as the chill of impending misfortune gripped my heart.

I padded on without incident for perhaps a hundred yards.

That’s when I saw the dead boy.

He had been skewered from above by an iron spike that entered behind his collarbone and exited right of his bunger, poking a hole in the stone floor below. Probably a great stone weighed down the spike and had propelled it through a cylindrical chamber. Pity it missed his head—his agonized expression suggested it had taken him a moment or two to die. His mates had left him here, there was naught else to be done save trying to cut him loose, a job a butcher would have quailed to do. They’d left his good boots on him. Either they were too fond of him to loot him, too scared to stay, or wanted none of his bad luck. He hadn’t done anything wrong, just failed to skirt left, where the tunnel got wider, and caught a tripwire.

I said, “Samnyr pipe you somewhere better,” and carried on.

As I walked, I consider all that Ürmehen had said. That the Guild had provoked the giants while posing as Oustri; that they had orchestrated Oustrim’s destruction as retribution for having been expelled from the kingdom. I knew my Guild were brutal bastards with their fingers in every pie—that was half their appeal to an aspiring thief—but to set in a motion a plot of that scale? I wouldn’t have thought it, even of them.

Ürmehen had said also Queen Mireya was like the Queen in Towers, hunting out the traitors. This had the ring of truth, as she and her husband had thwarted three attempts on their lives, a rare feat for someone the Guild meant to see dead. I remembered the mummers’ play in Cadoth, with the infanta Mireya’s monkey prophesying to her, warning her of her rat of an uncle’s plan to kill her father and usurp the throne. Was that how it was? Could Mireya use an animal’s nose to sniff out lies and know the hearts of those before her?

But there were no answers to be had in this tunnel. Over the next several miles, I found and avoided three more tripwires, one bear-pit, and one false ladder up, which I believe would have decapitated me had I taken it, before I got to the true ladder and a face full of fresh, cold air and nearly blue sky.

It was morning.

I had surfaced in the Starehard Hills.

I saw tracks leading up a goat path—someone had tethered a donkey here, and the party, including the Full Shadow and possibly their royal captive, had ascended into the hills here. It had been more than a day ago. I was tempted to go on before the tracks were gone completely, but I needed the others. Norrigal was a better tracker and, anyway, had that magic-sniffer. This bunch was strong in magic.

Lovely Norrigal. The thought of seeing her face again pleased me, and I put the clovenstone in my mouth, hid behind a bush, and, lying on my side because it felt more comfortable than lying on my back, fell right to sleep.