Den of Thieves

Den of Thieves

Book One of The Ancient Blades Trilogy

David Chandler

For F.L., M.M., and R.E.H., the Grand Masters

Contents

Map

Prologue

Nearly one hundred thousand people lived in the Free City…

Part I

A Thief’s Ransom

Chapter One

There were evil little things skulking in the shadows, their…

Chapter Two

Inside the ruined building three old men dressed in rags…

Chapter Three

The darkness inside the box was a solid thing, as…

Chapter Four

Well. He knew what to do with locks.

Chapter Five

Beyond the locked door was a snug little office, heated…

Chapter Six

Neither of them spoke for a while, as the meaning…

Chapter Seven

He drank the whole bottle and got rather drunk and…

Chapter Eight

The accused was brought into the square on a hurdle,…

Chapter Nine

Malden pushed through the crowd, which tried to push back.

Chapter Ten

Approximately three hundred yards to the northwest, Market Square had…

Chapter Eleven

For a while Malden’s world was only a terrible ringing,…

Chapter Twelve

The sorcerer Aelbron Hazoth lived in an imposing four story…

Chapter Thirteen

The next day Malden spent in preparation.

Chapter Fourteen

As they hauled away from the Smoke and up the…

Chapter Fifteen

Malden had learned to climb almost from the time he…

Chapter Sixteen

Croy hated subterfuge, but sometimes the direct approach was just…

Chapter Seventeen

Malden listened to the clamor beyond the wall for only…

Chapter Eighteen

Malden found himself in a small bedroom that looked like…

Chapter Nineteen

Malden’s feet kicked wildly at nothing as his body dropped…

Chapter Twenty

“You’re—You’re mad,” Malden had said two days before, when Cythera…

Chapter Twenty-One

The crown—technically a coronet—was not a work of great art…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bile rushed up Malden’s throat and his head swam. The…

Chapter Twenty-Three

A great crashing noise stopped Croy in his tracks. “That…

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was all Malden could do to hold on. His…

Chapter Twenty-Five

Croy’s blood thrummed with excitement, as if his veins were…

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Curse you, leave off,” Malden whimpered. His strength was nearly…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Warm gusts of air chased up the shaft and made…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Croy dashed into the shadows, keeping his head down as…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

As a child growing up in a brothel, Malden had…

Chapter Thirty

Malden rushed back through the arches, thinking Kemper must have…

Part II

An Unquiet Crown

Interlude

Chapter Thirty-One

Croy and Cythera spent much of the night in furtive…

Chapter Thirty-Two

It took Malden the better Part of the day to…

Chapter Thirty-Three

Finding Bikker was easily enough done, for a man with…

Chapter Thirty-Four

When the Seven Day Fire finally burned itself out, leaving…

Chapter Thirty-Five

The boy’s face was freckled and his chin weak, when…

Chapter Thirty-Six

Knightly interruptions notwithstanding, Malden’s preparations were finished long before midnight.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

An hour later Malden was fast, and finally, asleep.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The rough hands that dragged Malden inside the door threw…

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Wizardry was not technically illegal in Skrae. It was not…

Chapter Forty

“I’m half of a mind to string you up anyway,…

Chapter Forty-One

And then Cutbill was alone. For quite a while he…

Chapter Forty-Two

Sir Croy had been raised to be a knight, to…

Chapter Forty-Three

Malden needed a plan, desperately. He needed some stratagem that…

Chapter Forty-Four

Kemper drew too many stares after that to allow any…

Chapter Forty-Five

It was not difficult to get into the Burgrave’s palace,…

Chapter Forty-Six

It was not Anselm Vry who next approached Hazoth’s villa,…

Chapter Forty-Seven

When Malden’s eyes adjusted he found himself in a broad…

Chapter Forty-Eight

“So you can read, boy? I’m impressed.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Hazoth rose from his chair and went over to one…

Chapter Fifty

Kemper had been reluctant to help Malden in his reconnaissance…

Part III

The Crew

Interlude

Chapter Fifty-One

There were many eyes watching Hazoth’s villa the next day,…

Chapter Fifty-Two

An hour or so later the watchmen trooped down the…

Chapter Fifty-Three

Despite the cool day, the palfrey was panting and its…

Chapter Fifty-Four

Ahead of him, at the main gate leading down into…

Chapter Fifty-Five

There was nothing Croy wanted more than to just lie…

Chapter Fifty-Six

“It’s just as I said, ha ha,” Tyron told them.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Croy didn’t die in the night. He didn’t wake up…

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Kemper held the sword as far away from himself as…

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Later that day, Malden climbed up on top of a…

Chapter Sixty

The button seller looked up with a broad smile as…

Chapter Sixty-One

Malden spent the day drawing crude maps of the villa,…

Chapter Sixty-Two

“Milady,” Malden said, bowing low. “I thank you from the…

Chapter Sixty-Three

“But … why?” Malden asked. He thought of the mural…

Chapter Sixty-Four

“I’m afraid I’ve been of little help, save to make…

Chapter Sixty-Five

Malden sent Kemper to keep an eye on Hazoth’s villa—discreetly—while…

Chapter Sixty-Six

“Where are we going?” Croy asked as they headed up…

Chapter Sixty-Seven

The river Skrait was the Free City’s lifeblood. It flowed…

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Malden looked to right and left, but there was nowhere…

Chapter Sixty-Nine

A new and much improved plan had begun to come…

Chapter Seventy

When Croy came in, an hour later, Malden and Cythera…

Part IV

The Job

Interlude

Chapter Seventy-One

It was the night before Ladymas, one of the most…

Chapter Seventy-Two

At the side of the house, Malden crouched with Kemper…

Chapter Seventy-Three

The second floor of the villa was as silent as…

Chapter Seventy-Four

Gurrh made no attempt to fight the guards, but they…

Chapter Seventy-Five

Croy’s wound throbbed as he strode across the grass. It…

Chapter Seventy-Six

Malden crept down a hallway that ran the length of…

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Gurrh dropped to one knee. The iron fencepost he’d been…

Chapter Seventy-Sight

Malden stepped through the doorway and into the trapped corridor,…

Chapter Seventy-Nine

The floor did not ripple or shimmer like liquid. It…

Chapter Eighty

Croy took a step forward and nearly collapsed. The wound…

Chapter Eighty-One

Hazoth’s sanctum was a long room with high vaulted ceilings…

Chapter Eighty-Two

Bikker made no move to draw Acidtongue from its glass-lined…

Chapter Eighty-Three

Malden scrubbed at his eyes with the balls of his…

Chapter Eighty-Four

“A fool, perhaps, but—”

Chapter Eighty-Five

Drops of acid hit Croy’s arm and seared right through…

Chapter Eighty-Six

Malden kept his eyes shut until he was sure the…

Chapter Eighty-Seven

“Glorious! When it is finally born, there will be no…

Chapter Eighty-Eight

Bikker was sweating. He wiped his brow with the back…

Chapter Eighty-Nine

The demon howled in agony, and Malden had to hang…

Chapter Ninety

Croy gritted his teeth.

Chapter Ninety-One

Malden hurried down the long corridor at the back of…

Chapter Ninety-Ttwo

A minute earlier, outside:

Chapter Ninety-Three

“Croy! Croy!” Malden called, racing around the side of the…

Chapter Ninety-Four

Malden rolled on the ground, his body coming to pieces…

Chapter Ninety-Five

Witchly light filled the sky over the common, and the…

Chapter Ninety-Six

“Lay easy,” Cythera said. She held Croy’s hand tight. His…

Chapter Ninety-Seven

Market Square was thick with crowds, people of every station…

Chapter Ninety-Eight

Earlier—just at dawn—Gurrh the ogre had brought the leaden coffer…

Chapter Ninety-Nine

Coruth, her own arm fully healed now, muttered to herself…

Chapter One Hundred

Cutbill made a single notation in his ledger, then crossed…

A Thief In the Night

Prologue

In a place of stone walls, attended by his acolytes

Chapter One

A thin crescent of moon lit up the rooftops of

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books By David Chandler

Copyright

About the Publisher

Map

PROLOGUE

Nearly one hundred thousand people lived in the Free City of Ness, stuffed like rats in a sack too small to contain them all. The city was less than a mile across and filled every cranny of the hill encircled by its high defensive wall. At midnight, seen from a hill two miles to the north, it was the only light in the nighttime landscape, a bright ember smoldering in the midst of dark fields that rolled to the horizon. It looked, frankly, like all it needed was one good gust of wind to stir it up into a great whoosh of flame.

Bikker grinned to see it, though he knew it was only a trick of perspective. He was a giant of a man with a wild, coarse beard and a magic sword on his belt. He did not know how the other two members of the cabal felt, but for himself, he’d love to watch the Free City of Ness burn.

The lights he saw came from a thousand windows and the forges of a hundred workshops and manufactories. The city supplied the kingdom of Skrae with all the iron and steel it needed, most of the leather goods, and an endless river of spoons and buckles, as well as lanterns and combs made of horn. The guilds worked through the night, every night, filling the endless demand. Streamers of smoke rose from every chimney, rising like boiling columns of darkness that obliterated the stars, while half the windows in the city were illuminated by burning candles as an army of scribes, clerks, and accounters scratched at their ledger books.

On the near side of the river, gambling houses blazed with light, while whores marched up and down long avenues carrying lanterns to attract passersby. Half the city, it seemed, was still awake. “D’you suppose any of ’em know what’s coming?” Bikker asked.

“For the sake of our scheme, I pray they do not,” his employer said. Bikker had never seen the man. Even now the mastermind of the cabal was ensconced in a darkened carriage pulled by two white horses that pawed at the turf. The horses bore no brands or marks, and the driver wore no livery. The coach might have belonged to any number of fine houses—all its insignia had been removed.

A slender white hand emerged from a window of the coach, holding a purse of gold by its strings. Bikker took the payment—the latest of many such—and shoved it inside his chain mail shirt. “For your sake, I advise sealed lips.”

“Don’t worry, I can be discreet when I choose,” Bikker said with a laugh. “Though what a juicy tale I could tell! In a month the city will be torn in half, and the streets will be lined with the dead. How many lights do you think will show then? And no one will ever know what part I played in it all.”

“No, they will not,” the third member of the cabal said. Bikker turned to face Hazoth, whose visage was covered in a thick veil of black crepe. As much as Bikker disliked this business of unseen associates, he supposed he was glad for that veil. It was not good to look on the naked face of a sorcerer. “If you cannot maintain silence, I can enforce it on you. Don’t forget your place. Your part in this is minimal.”

Bikker shrugged. He knew that perfectly well. He’d been hired to perform a variety of small services, but mostly because he was probably the only person in the city who could stop these two, if he so chose. When he’d agreed to meet with them—and then agreed to their tentative, secretive offer—they’d been comically grateful. His reputation preceded him, and they didn’t dare offend his vanity. But they never truly let him forget that he was their lackey. “I do what I’m told … when I’m paid. Gold has a way of stifling the tongue. I know better than to ask of him,” Bikker said, jutting one thumb toward the occupant of the coach, “but what are you getting out of this, wizard? What could he pay you that you can’t just magic up on your own?”

“I’ve agreed to turn a blind eye to Hazoth’s … experiments,” the coach’s occupant said, “once I rule the city. Does that trouble you?”

There had been a time when that would have given Bikker pause, indeed. Sorcerers could be dangerous. Hazoth stank of brimstone and the pit, and he was capable of things mortal men should never try. Sometimes sorcerers made mistakes and the whole world paid. The sword at Bikker’s side was a testament to how high the price had once been—it was sworn to the defense of the realm against the demons a sorcerer could summon up but couldn’t always control.

There’d been a time when Bikker was sworn to that same defense. But the world had changed. Times had changed. He too had changed. Any belief he’d had in nobility or service was ground down by a mill wheel that moved very slowly, but never stopped. Once, he’d been a champion of humankind.

Now he only shrugged. He peered down at the city. From here, it might have been a nest of termites clambering over themselves and their dung heap. “Slaughter ’em all. Feed ’em to your pets, Hazoth, if you like! By then I’ll be far enough away not to care.”

“Indeed. The gold in that purse will take you far. And there is more to come, once you have fulfilled your part of our design. You know the next step?”

“Oh, aye,” Bikker said. He spat in the direction of the city as if he would put out all those fires with one gob. “Next thing to do is find our unwitting fourth.” A fool was required, someone who would have no idea what he was doing. Without such a pawn, the plan could go nowhere. “I need to scare us up a thief.”

CHAPTER ONE

There were evil little things skulking in the shadows, their eyes very bright in the gloom. In every burned-out shell of an old house, Malden could hear their tiny footsteps and the occasional whisper. No lights at all showed in this part of town, and the fog hid both moon and stars. The lantern Malden carried could paint a crumbling wall with yellow light, or show him where the cobblestones had been pried up and deep pools of mud awaited an unwary step. It could not, however, pierce the darkness that coiled inside the ruined houses and stables, nor show who was watching him so intently.

He didn’t like this.

He didn’t like the time of the meeting, an hour past midnight. He did not like the location: down by the wall, near the river gate, in the wasteland called the Ashes. In the same year he was born this whole district had been consumed by the Seven Day Fire. Because the doss-houses and knackeries down here belonged to the poorest of the poor, no effort was made since then to rebuild or even to tear down the gutted remains. No one lived here if they had any choice, and the Ashes had been abandoned to decay. Now limp weeds were sprouting from between the forgotten cobbles, while vines strangled the fallen roof timbers or slowly chewed on the ancient smoke-damaged bricks. Eventually nature would reclaim this zone entirely, and Malden, who had never set foot outside the city since he was born, found this distinctly uncomfortable—the concept that part of the city itself, which was his whole notion of permanence, could rot and die and be effaced.

Behind him something dashed across a forgotten street. He whirled to catch it with his light. Despite well-honed reflexes he was still not quick enough to see what it was, only that it disappeared through the gaping hole where a window had once looked out on the street. His hand went to the bodkin he kept at his hip but he dared not draw it. You never showed your weapon until you were ready to strike.

Malden stopped where he was and tried to prepare. If an attack was coming, it would come quickly, and being braced for it would make all the difference. His eyes showed him little—the scorched beams and the soot-stained street were all of a color by his little light. So he turned to his other senses in his search for signs. He heard nothing but the creaking of old, strained wood, the sifting of ash. He could smell the smoke of the fire, so many years gone.

Behind him he heard soft footsteps. The sound of bare feet slapping against charred timber. Only for a moment, before the sound stopped and he was left in silence again. Silence so profound—and so rare in the clamoring city. It sounded like a roaring in his ears.

He turned slowly on his heel, scanning the empty door frames on every side, the twisting little roads that curled between the buildings. He longed to get his back against something solid. There was a brick building up ahead, or at least the husk of one. Its roof was gone and one wall had come down. The other three still stood, however, and if he could get inside them, at least he would not have to worry about being attacked from behind. He hurried forward, his lantern held high—and then a noise from quite close by stopped him in his tracks.

One of the watchers had stepped out into the street behind him. He heard its feet splashing in a puddle. This time, however, it did not rush off as he turned to see it. This time it held its ground.

Even before he completed his turn his hand was on the hilt of his knife. He hesitated to draw, however, when he saw the creature he faced. It was a child, a girl no more than seven years old. She wore a stained shift of homespun and had rags wrapped around her feet in place of shoes. She also had a hammer clutched before her in both hands. Her eyes stayed on his face and they did not blink.

Malden spread his own hands wide, showing her they were empty. He took a step toward her, and when she did not flee, he took another. He reached down toward her—

—and suddenly the street was full of ragged children. They seemed to emerge from the mist as if generated spontaneously from the cold and the damp, like fungus from a rotting log. They were of both sexes, and varied in apparent age, but were dressed all alike in torn shirts and tunics too big for their skinny frames. And they all held makeshift weapons. One had a carpenter’s saw. Another held a cobbler’s awl. Bits of wood with protruding nails. A length of iron chain. One of them, a boy older than the rest, had a woodsman’s hatchet that he held down against his thigh as if he knew how to use it.

A gang of orphans, Malden thought. A band of urchins joined together in their poverty to waylay any traveler foolish enough to come here by night. A ragged little army. There were dozens of them, and though he was certain he could best even the older boy in a fair fight, he could see in their eyes they held no concept of fairness or justice, such things as impossible and mythical in their experience as the continents the sages claimed lay beyond the sea. They would be on him in a heap, slashing and hitting and pounding and mauling him until he was dead. They would offer no quarter or mercy.

They were waiting for him to make the first move. To try to run, or fight. Not because they were afraid to attack, but because they wanted him to make some mistake, to calculate the odds incorrectly. They would take advantage of whatever weakness he showed and make short work of him.

Malden licked his lips and turned slowly this way and that, looking for an opening. There was no way out, it seemed. Unless … unless there was another reason for their silent waiting, for their constant unblinking stares.

“You want some password or sign,” he said, “but all I have is this.” He reached inside his cloak. They moved toward him, closing the circle they formed around him. They were ready to attack at the first sign of aggression. But he was not reaching for his bodkin. Instead his nimble fingers reached into his purse and drew out the scrap of parchment that had beckoned him to this dreadful place at this beastly time. He unfolded it carefully—the old paper cracked down the middle but he held the pieces together—and showed them the message he had received:

This house is ONE OF OURS,

and its owner under my protection.

At next Witching Hour come ALONE

to the Ashes hard by Westwall—or

you’re DEAD before next Dawn.

“I found it tacked to the windowsill of a house I was in the process of burgling. This is what you want to see, yes?”

Could they read it? he wondered? But no, of course they couldn’t. It was foolish to think these children had ever been tutored or given even religious education. And yet they seemed entranced by the brief missive. Ah, he thought. They recognize the signature, a crude drawing of a heart transfixed by a key.

He did not know what that sign meant, not for certain, but its power on these children was intriguing. One by one they came close and touched the paper, as superstitious merchants will sometimes touch a statue of the Lady before sitting down to some tricky negotiation. When they had seen the sign for themselves and perhaps decided it was no forgery, they filed away, back into the darkness. All except the girl with the hammer, the first one he’d seen. She still held his eyes with her own. When they two were alone again, she finally broke his gaze and started walking toward the brick ruin he’d thought to shelter in. She led him right up to a doorway and then gestured inside with one hand. Then she made a perfect curtsy and ran off to join the others.

Clearly this was the place. Holding the scrap of parchment before him like a talisman, Malden stepped through the door.

CHAPTER TWO

Inside the ruined building three old men dressed in rags sat on a long wooden box. Two of them had long white beards, while the other was bald and clean-shaven. Age had withered their muscles but their eyes glinted with cunning—no dotards, these. Malden had the sense there was a great deal more to them than what he saw.

He nodded to the men but did not speak yet. First he studied the interior of the building—its fallen and shattered roof beams, the piles of scorched plaster in the corners. The floor was covered in a thick layer of debris. There did not seem to be anywhere an assassin could hide, though between the lack of light and the tendrils of mist that coiled around his lantern, it was hard to be sure.