The Thieves’ Guild

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Cael awoke to the distinct sounds of someone moving about the room in the quiet fashion of someone trying not to wake a sleeper. A clink of a cup, the soft rutch of a drawer closing, a swish and rustle of long, heavy cloth across a wooden floor. The noises that propelled his mind back to his half-remembered childhood, of waking from a long illness to the patient care and heartwarming delight of his mother.

He opened his eyes and slowly turned his head. A figure stood with her back to him beside a simple dresser of pale wood, setting candles into a wooden box. She was short, dressed in a black dress that dragged the ground, hiding her feet. Over her head she wore a hood of similar material. She moved with the slow and deliberate care of the old, placing each candle in the box as though carefully counting them out.

Beside his bed stood a severe, straight-backed chair, and beside the chair a low table with a clay pitcher and battered pewter cup, and a wooden bowl over the lip of which dangled a wet rag. He lay beneath an open window, and outside the window the spreading branches of an elm were dappled with the sunlight Opposite this was another window, also thrown wide, which, judging by the seagulls gliding in the blue empty air outside, overlooked the bay. Beside the dresser stood a door, opened a crack.

The old woman finished her task and placed the candle box into a drawer, then slowly slid it shut, making as little noise as possible. She started for the door, glancing quickly at the bed before leaving.

The face that peered out from the hood was not old but that of a girl. A few strands of dirty blonde hair spilled from the hood’s depths. Her eyes opened wide with surprise and delight, seeing Cael awake.

“Hello, Claret,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

In answer, she flew to the door and jerked it wide. “He’s awake!” she shrieked, then dashed to his side. He feared for a moment that she would throw herself atop him, but she paused, and instead gently touched his arm beneath the coverlet. “How do you feel?” she asked softly but with excitement.

“Hungry,” Cael said. “I feel thin as a wight.”

“I can fix that!” Claret said, grinning. She turned to the door at the sound of a small, joyous gasp. Cael followed her gaze.

Alynthia stood in the doorway, one hand covering her lips. She wore trousers of brown homespun, a simple blouse, and her feet were bare. She had cut her hair, shorn off all her tight ringlets, leaving her with an unruly mass of short black curls.

Her hand shook as she lowered it. “It’s about time you woke, you old lazybones,” she said with feigned anger. The sparkle in her dark eyes revealed her happiness.

“Elves never sleep,” he answered. “I was merely faint from hunger and torture.”

“Well, then you fainted for a month and a day,” Alynthia laughed.

“How long?” Cael cried in surprise as he rose up in bed-and found he couldn’t. He fell back heavily, gasping.

“You should rest,” Claret said to him as she glared at Alynthia. The captain of thieves approached the bed and laid a hand on Cael’s forehead.

“Your fever only broke yesterday,” she softly said to the elf. “Claret is right. I’m sorry.”

“A month and a day!” Cael sighed as he let them rearrange his coverings. “What happened?”

“What do you remember?” Alynthia asked.

“Not now!” Claret barked. “Let him rest. He needs food, then more sleep.”

“No, I want to know,” Cael protested. “Tell me.”

“Where do I begin?” Alynthia asked as she slumped wearily into the chair beside the bed.

“I’m going to heat some broth,” Claret said. She left the room, her long black dress swishing over the wooden floor.

“I remember waking in the sewer. Was Gimzig there?” Cael asked.

“Yes,” Alynthia answered without looking at him.

“What happened?” Cael demanded. He had the dimmest recollection.

“He was taken…” she began, then shook her head as though fighting to control her emotions. “Protecting us,” she finished with cracking voice.

“Taken? Taken how?”

“A sewer monster, dammit! Must I relive all the horrible details?” Alynthia cried.

“No,” he said. “Gods! Poor Gimzig.”

“After… that, I brought you here. You had a fever,” Alynthia continued. “You raved for a while, then you grew still as death, your eyes open, staring at nothing, lips moving. You stayed that way for weeks. I thought… I feared… but yesterday your fever broke, and you seemed to slip into a restful sleep. The healer said you would either recover or would never wake.”

“Where is this place?” Cael asked, looking around.

“It’s my own,” she said proudly. “It isn’t a palace, but no one, not even the Guild, knows of its existence. It’s near the university.”

“Are you hiding me from the Guild?” Cael asked.

“No, I am hiding us,” Alynthia said.

“Us?”

“Oros has announced that I have been kidnapped.”

“Why?”

“I rescued you, against the strict prohibition of Mulciber. She had ordered that you be allowed to die in the dungeons of Palanthas, that there was not sufficient danger of your betrayal of the Guild under torture, as you knew little of the Guild’s workings.”

“So why did you rescue me?” Cael asked.

Alynthia looked away and said nothing for a long while. Cael watched her, looking for any outward clue to her emotions, but her face remained rigid, her eyes staring blankly at the wall.

Finally, she spoke. “You saved my life three times that night,” she said, almost choking on the words. “Risked your life to save mine. On the other hand, my dear husband has announced that your accomplices kidnapped me in order to secure their escape from the city. There have even been ransom notes. He, of course, refused to negotiate. Mulciber has, no doubt, ordered my death as well as yours. So now the Guild as well as the Knights of Neraka search for both of us.”

“You shouldn’t have sacrificed yourself for me,” Cael said.

“There is more,” Alynthia continued, ignoring his statement. Her face was grim. “You should hear it all. They killed your friend, Kharzog Hammerfell.”

“Oh, gods no!” Cael groaned. He remembered what happened at the Dwarven Spring. Had Kharzog tried something foolish on his behalf?

Cael’s hands wrenched at the bedsheets. “How did he die?” he asked.

“I wasn’t there. They say that Arach Jannon cut him down in public, made an example out of him. There was nearly a riot over it. The dwarf was well loved.”

“Aye,” Cael sighed. “Aye, that he was. He was my only friend in this world. Now there is no one.”

Alynthia looked away, unable to bear the sight of the elf’s grief over the loss of his friend. She did not tell him of the dwarf’s funeral, where fate, it seemed, had introduced her to the gnome, Gimzig and where she heard his plan for rescuing Cael. Nor did she tell him of the extraordinary turnout by the local dwarven community. Few citizens of Palanthas had ever suspected that so many dwarves lived in their fair city. Even a few gully dwarves had made an appearance, much to the dismay of everyone.

Claret opened the door and eased into the room, balancing a tray in one hand. Atop it, fragrant steam rose from a wooden bowl.

“What about her? How is she involved in this,” Cael said suddenly, almost fiercely.

“Her father was imprisoned and died of fever. Her mother is in one of the labor camps, under suspicion of aiding you. Her brother is in an orphanage. They never caught dear Claret. She is too clever for them. She is too clever even for me. She found us here, and now she helps us by going in disguise to the market to purchase our supplies and gather news.”

Claret smiled at these compliments while handing Alynthia the tray. She helped Cael sit up in the bed, propping him up with pillows fetched from the dresser. “I’m sorry, Claret,” Cael whispered during her gentle ministrations.

“Don’t be,” she answered with a trembling smile. Without warning, huge tears welled out from her gray eyes. She turned and rushed through the door, pressing the hem of her dress to her face. They heard her in the other room, sobbing.

“She has not cried until now,” Alynthia said.

She eased the tray with the bowl of broth onto the bed beside Cael and took up the wooden spoon. She stirred the broth.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, trying to sound cheerful.

He nodded, his eyes closed.

“Claret has made this broth for you,” she said. “It smells good.”

Cael turned and looked at it, then at the door. He nodded again and reached for the spoon. Alynthia held it out of his reach. “Just relax,” she said. “Let me.”

He lowered his hand with obvious reluctance. She held the spoon to his lips, and he noisily gulped the warm broth. “I feel like a fool,” he muttered between sips.

Eventually, the sobs in the other room stilled, and Claret once more appeared at the door, stripped of her covering of heavy black wool and wearing a homespun shift She dabbed at her red eyes with a cloth but smiled at Cael when she saw him eating.

“Is it good?” she asked.

He nodded, taking another sip. The warm broth seemed to ease the turmoil in his heart, and after a few sips he remembered how hungry he was. The simple pleasure of eating, the sating of hunger, lightened his spirit.

He finished the bowl, feeling the warm and hearty nourishment already making him feel stronger. Smiling, Alynthia started to wipe his lips with a napkin, but he took it from her.

“You can at least let me do this myself!” he said. He pressed it to his lips and chin, and as he did a strange look passed across his face.

Alynthia smiled, and Claret snickered, hiding her mouth behind her hand. Cael felt gingerly along the lower half of his face, fingering the strange nest of curling red hair that had sprouted and grown full and luxuriant from his chin and cheeks.

He looked at Alynthia with such an expression of bafflement that she laughed out loud.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “You grew a beard. Claret wanted to shave it off, but I wouldn’t let her.”

“I don’t like it,” Claret said poutingly. “It makes him look too human.”

“This is impossible,” Cael gasped. “Elves cannot grow beards.”

“I think it makes you more handsome, not so boyish,” Alynthia said, ignoring his protest. “Once you are better and have filled out those ghastly hollow cheeks, you’ll have a rugged, manly look about you.”

“Well, I just don’t like it!” Claret protested. “He was much prettier without it.”

Cael stared in horror from the girl to the woman, all the while touching the alien growth of hair on his face. “Neither of you understand, do you?”

“Understand what?” they asked in unison, gazing upon him with merry eyes.

“Oh, just leave me!” he snarled. “Leave me alone.”

Slowly, laughing together, they walked to the door, Alynthia carrying the tray. “Men are so sensitive about their looks,” Claret whispered loud enough for Cael to hear.

“I’ll say,” Alynthia agreed as she shut the door.