Thief Mage, Beggar Mage, page 16
‘I’m not here to kill you, old man,’ his rescuer said. Old man, gently mocking. ‘But I will be paid only when you are free, so hold your rancid tongue and follow. Here.’ He shoved something towards Tet, and the mage smelled musky ox wool. He fumbled until his broken, aching fingers closed on a heavy length of material. A few moments and Tet had covered himself in what felt like a traveller’s long cloak. The relief from the cold was enough to make his heart fill. Such simple happiness.
Tet’s legs were weak from sitting, from pain, from infection, from lack of food, and although it seemed all he’d done these past weeks was cry or sleep, he’d never felt so weary. The chance of freedom spurred Tet to follow, clinging to the walls for balance, his rescuer’s whispers in the dark leading a path away from his incarceration.
They left behind Tet’s pit, his stone coffin, his dreams of death, and Tet staggered through a web of underground tunnels so vast that he was certain by the end of it they would come out in the mountains of the gods, where the three spires stood wreathed in perpetual storm, the statues of the Dogs looming over them.
When they were far from the wide passages of the castle and deep into the subterranean network of sneak’s tunnels the man seemed to know better than the map of his own hand, Tet ventured to speak again. ‘Who are you?’
‘A friend,’ the man said and laughed. ‘A paid friend.’
‘The best kind.’
They stopped, and the man handed Tet a leather skin of water, clean and cold as mountain springs, and Tet drank deeply. A distant rushing rumble made him think of waterfalls in the mountains, and the sound worsened his thirst. After Tet handed the water-leather back, slivers of dried and salted meat were pressed into his hands and it took all his strength of will to not just swallow them down and beg for more. Tet chewed slowly, forcing himself to squeeze the meat to mush, to grind and grind every last swallow of flavour from the dried meat. His teeth were loose, the gums soft and swollen with putrefaction. Tet pushed the lump of meat into the hollow of his cheek and sucked at it like a child.
The rescuer offered no more. ‘Dozha,’ he said.
Tet choked on the lump, coughed. ‘Your pardon.’
The man chuckled softly. ‘My name. The greatest name in all of Pal-em-Rasha.’
‘Ah.’ Tet swallowed, his stomach a tight ball of pain. ‘Can’t say I have heard it.’
‘And that’s why it is great.’
The man was an excellent thief to know the ways in and out of the White Prince’s palace as if it were nothing more to him than taking a stroll in the public gardens. Even Tet, with all his map-knowledge, gleaned from years of study, did not know a quarter of the under-tunnels, and certainly none that would lead him straight to the Pistil dungeons. And if his rescuer was not a master thief, then he was a petty thief with the right knowledge. It didn’t matter. Let the man believe in his own grandeur. What business is it of mine? ‘Ymat Shoom sent you?’
‘The fat man with his fingers in all the millet bowls, yes.’
If Ymat Shoom wanted Tet dead, he would have paid for a knife in the dark, not for this. Tet hoped. ‘I guess I will owe him,’ he said softly.
‘Your soul and more, I would say.’
What more could he take from me? Tet supposed now Ymat could tie his loyalty to his schemes, and use him as a servant. Perhaps Ymat thought he would do what the White Prince couldn’t and, once his soul was returned, make Tet a pet mage. If I get my soul back. Tet couldn’t bring himself to ask Dozha if he had recovered that too. He was not ready for the disappointment if the man said no. What had Ymat said about the separation of soul and flesh – that it would bring his death closer. How long would that take?
‘Are you rested?’ said Dozha, ‘We’ll reach the crossing soon.’
‘Crossing?’
Tet couldn’t see the thief smile in the darkness, but he was certain Dozha was laughing at him.
‘Where Imal the Black runs under the palace grounds.’
Ah. The White Prince’s city was built partly over the river, diverting it underground. Tet had heard whispers that the underground river was sacred to Sinastrillia, the water-serpent god of thieves. A god Tet was half-certain had been invented. He knew little of the cult’s practices; they were secretive, and few openly admitted her worship. There were rumours that all thieves and assassins were sacred to her, that the Underpalace was her temple, but Tet had heard only rumours, and nothing more. What he had heard wasn’t reassuring.
Sinastrillia took Nyangist’s former sacrificial offerings, and while that might mean that the blood of children no longer wet the altar of that murderous lioness-god, it didn’t tell Tet what happened to those children instead. Perhaps her temple saved them from sacrifice so they could become thieves and assassins instead. Assassins who died with a word and with the snap of their spine. Tet pushed the thought away. ‘To Imal the Black. And what of the serpent god?’
‘You will be safe from her,’ Dozha told him. ‘She does not eat her own kind.’
‘Meaning?’
But Dozha only said, ‘Keep to me, old man.’
Again, the insult. It was not the first time someone had tried to mock Tet with those very words. But the other had a young man’s voice, sly and new, with a different accent, more cultured.
Tet followed the near-silent pad of Dozha’s footfalls, keeping to his heels, while around them the rushing sound grew louder. They were coming to Imal. The tunnel widened and a small sphere of light in the distance was enough for Tet to make out the wide stone paving on the banks of the icy blackness of the river. He didn’t have the chance to get a glimpse of his rescuer.
Dozha spoke in the language of the dragons and shifted. At the same instant, magic rushed over Tet’s skin, and he fell to his belly; arms and legs obliterated, long stomach muscled and ridged with overlapping scales.
His tongue flickered at the air, tasting the million river tastes, the million air tastes, the million skin-and-scale tastes of his serpent-brother in the darkness.
‘What have you done?’ Tet hissed, and Dozha replied, ‘It is the only way to cross,’ his forked tongue quivering, moon-and-star eyes blacker even than the river. He had turned them both to water-serpents.
The thief was a powerful mage. These were not illusions spun over skin; both men had been completely remade and at simply a word. And that was certainly not the first time Tet had seen such a trick performed. Ymat Shoom must have paid a fortune for my rescue. And how many mages lie hidden beneath the stones of Pal-em-Rasha, gathered like woodlice, waiting to be uncovered from the dark? Ahead of him, Dozha the water-serpent slid into the black, and Tet followed, writhing on his belly.
*
The underground river was colder even than the stones in Tet’s cell, and he grew drowsy and slow as he wound through the inky water, following the barbed tail of Dozha. Once, halfway across, something huge arched below him and Tet felt a jolt of recognition.
Dragon.
She brushed his serpent belly with her ridged head, her smooth scales, and then she was gone. The speech of dragons, echoing and full of underwater bells, sounded in his head. Her name, soft as distant songs until it became simply meaningless sounds. Sinistrillia, sinastrillia, sinastrillia.
Then she spoke, mind-to-mind. Swim, Lord of Time, she said. Swim.
It left him shaken. Tet had dismissed her cult, dismissed her as an idol worshipped by scavenging heathens, but Sinastrillia was real. Imal the Black boasted a river-serpent unlike any other. A dragon of the river. The ones from the mountain might never speak of such, but they had never been a race prone to telling truths to men.
Dozha released them from his magery once they had slithered out the water and into another tunnel. When Tet had a human mouth again and all his limbs, he remarked only, ‘That was well done.’ One does not ask questions of mages, especially ones who have the skill to transmute flesh and form. Even his cloak was bone-dry.
Tet’s hunger and thirst had dropped away from him as if his body had gorged itself on that magic instead, and the rest of the journey passed in wincing silence. Tet wondered just what he would now owe Ymat Shoom. And how much it would cost him to hire a mage named Dozha, should he need to steal his soul back.
They climbed a flight of steps so narrow that the walls brushed against their sides. Tet limped up, each jerking half-step sending pain grinding between the joints of every bone, rasping raw skin. From above came the smell of tanning leather, pungent and putrid, and the sulphurous light of gas lamps, the stink of sweat, and the chant of leather workers. Tet hugged the cloak tighter to hide any weakness, nakedness. His bare feet were bruised and bloody and aching, but he refused to stumble into freedom.
Dozha’s silhouette was narrow and oddly hunched. Tet could make out little except for his wiry slightness and the length of his hair as his plait flicked from side to side with each step. It was only when he stepped out into the light and turned to give Tet a hand over the last crumbling ledges that Tet was able to truly see the man who had saved him. Sly dark eyes and wide bronze cheeks, the narrow nose and arched brows.
One good hand was held out in an offer of assistance.
The other was missing, cut off at the elbow.
NUMBER SIX CHILD PERSON
The stars were a thin haze through the smoke and sickly yellow lights of the leather-workers’ ghetto, but the moon was a silver grin, and Tet could clearly see his rescuer’s face. There was no doubting who he was now, not with those black eyes and that missing right hand, the arm that ended in a puckered stump. The mage’s face was subtly older, the youthful cast discarded like a worn disguise. But it was him. The thief mage Vitash wanted Tet to kill. The one he’d met at the fireside of the People of the Dogs.
‘What?’ the mage Dozha said at Tet’s continued silence. ‘You were a soldier. You’ve spent how many weeks in Pal-em-Rasha, you speak her tongue like you were born in her gutters, and you’ve never seen a cripple before?’
Tet shook his head. It couldn’t be the same thief who had slipped through the caravan like a shadow, robbing the People blind. Vitash had tasked Tet with bringing him the thief’s head, and had burned the mark of his moon-curse into Tet’s right knee. Vitash’s witch-sending had led him to a fortune so that Tet could do as he commanded. And now the youth – Tet squinted; the man, wiry and stunted by a hard life – had led Tet out of his own hell. Tet owed Dozha a debt, whether he liked it or not. ‘Who are you, truly?’
‘I told you my name.’ Dozha shrugged. ‘We have no time to stand here. Shoom waits, and my pockets are empty.’ He gave Tet a hollow grin, but his eyes remained black and humourless.
Tet knew he couldn’t stand there naked but for a cloak, too weak to run, pondering on the identities of thieves. He was a dead man if he was seen by the wrong people. By now it was certain that the guards had found the cell empty. If his sudden change in luck held, then perhaps Tet might have another day or two before his escape was reported, while the guards tried to find him in order to save their own hides. But soon enough, the palace would know. He could take no chances. For the moment Tet would have to put his trust in this thief, this liar, this rogue mage. ‘Lead on, then,’ Tet heard himself say, though a small part of his mind was screaming at him that he was letting himself be manoeuvred from trap to trap.
Dozha turned round, shadows cloaking him, and beckoned for Tet to keep pace.
They kept to the flickering shadows of narrow buildings crammed up against each other like oxen at spring dipping. They flitted through the dark, leaving the stink of the leather works behind, turning down a twisting warren of alleyways until Tet began to recognise familiar landmarks.
He oriented himself, pinpointing the place in the large map in his head. They were going to the outer south-eastern petals of the city. If Tet’s guess was right, back to the double-storied battered hovel where Ymat had performed the southern witchcraft that took Tet’s soul and magic and put it in the form of a stone and clockwork beetle. He clawed one hand uselessly against the mark at his chest, and shuddered at the sudden stabbing pain. Perhaps the thief had done more than steal Tet back for Ymat Shoom – perhaps he had other treasures. Please. Please let Ymat have my soul.
Trailing Dozha, Tet hobbled down a familiar street and toward the painted wooden door he remembered from that briefly wonderful, and mostly awful night. There’d been a clockwork mage in Ymat’s employ too; a Sai Tiger. If Tet’s soul had not been returned, perhaps the clockworker would be able to trace the oresh-beetle, since he had fashioned it. Tet clung to the faint wisp of hope as they approached the door.
Dozha rapped against the splintered wood, and after a few moments the stairs creaked under the weight of a solid man.
Ymat’s sallow round face greeted them when the door squealed open. He was frowning, sweating despite the chill air. ‘In, in,’ he whispered, and waved the mages into the hovel, shutting the door quietly behind them after a quick nervous glance at the deserted street.
The front room was lit by a guttering oil lamp with a length of silk thrown over its glass cage so that the room was sunk into deep lake greens. Once he was certain that they had not been followed, Ymat relaxed, the frown smoothing away. He mopped at his forehead with a small red handkerchief that he tucked back into his wide sleeve, then breathed deeply through his nose, puffing up like a mating season pigeon. ‘You look better than I had hoped for,’ he said. ‘Though you will need to see a medical man.’
Tet’s scraped skin, the tears from the hooks, his ribs like a starving dog’s, the mangled fingers – and that was all Ymat could say? Tet shook his head in disbelief. He wanted to collapse where he stood, but he forced himself to stay upright, swaying slightly. ‘You freed me. Why?’
Ymat stared, eyes bulging a little. ‘My dear Ohtet,’ he said, his voice stiff and slow. ‘I am not a disloyal man.’ He beckoned for the mages to follow him and showed Tet to a low seat in the back room. ‘Sit. You have been grossly ill-treated. I’m afraid I have no servants here to draw you a bath, but I brought food, and wine. I will have clean clothes found for you.’ He gestured at a small table next to the seat, where a clay bowl and two jugs waited.
Tet peered into them. One jug of crystal water and the other of sweet rhododendron wine.
He glanced back up at Ymat, who nodded, and waved his hands toward the waiting food. ‘Eat, eat.’ This time, he had left his simian friend behind. It was a good thing, Tet didn’t think he’d have the energy to try snatch his food away from a monkey.
Tet sat, grateful to finally ease the weight from his shaking legs. If he kept trying to hang on to the dregs of his dignity and stay standing out of some kind of stubborn spite, he’d probably end up falling. The rush of exhilaration in escaping the White Prince’s dungeons had fled, leaving Tet wrung out and limp as a grey washrag. His hand trembling with the meagre effort, he poured water, spilling drops down his hands and chin. He didn’t care. The water was cold as the heart of a winter-night, like the source of Imal the Black.
‘My coin, fat man,’ said Dozha, from where he was leaning against the door frame, watching Tet with a faint look of pity.
‘Ah.’ Ymat looked from Tet to Dozha, wringing his hands. The intricate silver rings of rank flashed in the eerie light. His teeth shone like underwater pearls. ‘That.’
‘Yes,’ Dozha drawled. ‘That.’ His face had gone very hard, almost as lifeless as a clockwork automaton. Even his voice had taken on a mechanical harshness. Tet decided he would not want this mage’s dislike turned on him. Pal-em-Rasha might think the Underpalace was a realm of rumour, but Tet was ready to believe that it had its own kings and princes. He was certain now. The mage was a dark prince to mirror the white one above, an anomaly he had not expected to find in this city that hated mages.
The conversation had continued while Tet had pondered, and it took him a moment to realise that Ymat was addressing him about the question of Dozha’s fee. ‘I am afraid that Sai Dozha’s price for rescuing you was rather high,’ Ymat said to Tet. ‘And while I am responsible for vast wealth, none of it is technically mine. With things being as they are right now, I cannot take the risk that an amount of that size would go unnoticed. You must understand.’
‘I see.’ Though Tet didn’t. His brain was furred with decay, with hunger, with waves of pain that rose and crashed over his head. The water had re-awoken that desperate black hunger in him. His stomach growled and tightened. With a steadier hand, Tet poured some wine and watered it down.
‘After your arrest, I had your belongings swiftly removed from the garden-house,’ Ymat explained. ‘There will be enough there to cover Dozha’s price.’
‘I understand.’ And it was a fair enough deal. Wealth that had come easily, and now easily dispersed. He could hardly have expected Ymat to pay for his freedom out of the goodness of his heart. ‘Yes, of course.’
Ymat walked out the room, and Tet heard the clattering of dishes before he returned with a covered brass tray. The smell of cold meats and fried battered vegetables seeped out into the room, and Tet’s mouth filled with saliva. ‘We can discuss our next moves on full stomachs, I think.’
The thought of what Tet might be forced to do next sounded unappealing, but at least there was food. While Tet ate and drank, filling his stomach until it seemed that his skin would burst and he would die a far less glorious death than any he could have imagined for himself, Ymat left the room, off to busy himself with Dozha’s reward.
‘So,’ said Dozha, casually. ‘You were a rich man?’
‘Am,’ Tet told him, and gnawed at the remains of a bantam wing sticky with orange sauce. His chin was wet with grease. The tear in his lip burned, his teeth wobbled in his gums, but the need for food called louder than pain. Whatever Dozha’s cost, there would be something left over with which to start again. He’d had so much.
