Thief Mage, Beggar Mage, page 23
*
Epsi returned first, slipping into the room from the shadows of another realm. He brought golden and green light with him and the darkness receded. Tet let out a slow breath. One hound.
Something metallic clattered on the floor and Tet crouched down to see that Epsi had dropped the mangled and crushed remains of what had once been a clockwork mantis made from the thinnest beaten metal, enamelled and jewelled. A priceless trinket. He smiled grimly.
‘Thank you.’ Tet inclined his head to the waiting hound and retrieved the broken mantis. If anything, it was more beautifully crafted than the beetle that had crawled into his room the previous night. The wings were the finest silk, the threads almost invisible. Tet could only just make out the faint green gauze of them when he turned the mantis just so.
The long grasping front legs were spiked sharp enough to draw blood and the delicate wires of its antennae bent gently under the slightest pressure of a fingertip. The eyes were true masterpieces of the toymakers’ craft. They had not been crafted from a single jewel, as any lesser toymaker might have done. Instead, each eye had been built up of a thousand pin-prick jewels, and the graduations of colour as Tet tilted the creature in the dim light were breath-taking. It was dead now, but if it were still infused with magic it would be impossible to see it as anything but a live creature.
This was no simple mechanical toy. Tet pressed the carapace open to find the little glass heart that held his essence and crushed it between finger and thumb.
His hunter liked beauty. The toymaker’s work was the most skilled he’d seen and it was no wonder the prince kept them for himself. For all the times Tet had dismissed the clockwork mages as toymakers, it would be churlish to do the same to this new enemy of his. Tet’s respect for them had doubled. So had his fear that it would not be long before they caught him.
The nets were closing, and Tet was sorely aware that, for now, the three dogs were the only things left keeping him from a painful death. It turned out that he did have Dozha to thank for something, whether the thief mage realised it or not. The flint pouch was more valuable to Tet now than any riches. The gift had given him a sliver of hope that he would survive this. Tet breathed out, falling into the familiar pattern of Dragon Mountain breath, and his snarl of twisted fear began to unravel. There was hope, a bright flame, three sparks.
Earlier he’d cheered himself with the thought that his luck had at least always run strange, and here was the proof of it. He closed his fist around the mantis and crushed it smaller, the fragile metal crumpling and tiny jewels falling with the sound of sand grains. If he’d never used what he’d been given, had not struck that flint in fear of the dark, Tet would be dead now. Instead a gift that had seemed small and useless to a mage who could start a fire with a word had turned out to be the greatest of treasures.
Epsi sat with him as they waited for the others to return, tail thumping softly against the scarred wood floor. The bells of the city were calling out the second hour of morning when Vitash came back, his silver-white fur brightening the room. On his back was a small chest of carved wood, balanced like an elephant’s palanquin, though held with no straps or girths. Although Vitash seemed to not notice its weight, when Tet stood to retrieve it, his legs almost buckled.
The ornate chest took a moment to open, as Tet struggled with the latches and locks. When he raised the lid, he found it filled with small coin. Perhaps not as much as he’d had when he’d begun his sham as the merchant Ohtet Maynim with his thief’s cache of jewelled treasure, but enough to begin making plans. Most of the coins were bronze and there were no diamonds or precious stones to augment it, but it would do. The coins slid through his fingers, chinking softly. He closed the chest again, and stared thoughtfully at the design. On the wood of the chest was carved the lioness-head of Nyangist, surrounded by the sun. The White Prince’s emblem.
Tet grinned.
Stolen from the prince’s own treasury. Proof that there were ways to get around his guards and wards, as long as one had the right magic. And proof that the prince was just a man, whatever power he held. Ymat Shoom might be underhanded as any thief but Tet agreed with what he wanted done; take away the prince’s protection, strip him of his power, of Nyangist’s strength, and the wars would end. Or at least, slowly ebb to something a little more manageable. Less devastating. Tet remembered the bodies, the ice, the raw red blood turned to slush. The smoke trails from the cantons, and the starveling hordes.
Just one man.
And I will find a way to bring him down. He could make plans spun out of hope and relief. Once he had his soul back he’d find a way round the prince’s enchantments, battle the clockwork monsters, retrieve the opals and the breastplate. Nanak would have her eyes back and Ymat Shoom would have what he wanted. All Tet’s debts would be paid but for one.
And he could see the glimmer of a way out of that last. If he could destroy the prince and bring his toymaker to heel, Tet could have her make a simulacrum of Dozha’s head so lifelike that even the gods would be fooled.
While he waited for Nanak to return, Tet made his plans in the dark, desire burning like a forest fire on winter-dry wood. All of Tet’s lofty ambitions rested on one fine point: a beetle-black stone, the clatter of his trapped soul like a pebble dropped down an empty well.
*
The stars were beginning to burn themselves out by the time Nanak finally returned. Tet’s dreams shattered, the disappointment bitter in his mouth when he saw what the hound had brought him.
He jolted to his feet, face twisting as a rush of terror dragged him out of his cloud castle. He cursed the day Dozha had dropped the flint pouch.
Perched high on Nanak’s back like a hunter on a mountain pony was a woman with hair of falling night and eyes that glimmered with the reflection of stars in snow.
‘Ohtet Maynim,’ Kani said, from her seat on the dog’s back. She slipped down to stand before him. ‘You’ve changed since we last saw one another. There were many who would be interested to know that you still exist, though none have found you yet.’
Nanak had, in her own way, brought Tet his soul. The beetle pendant hung at Kani’s throat, the chain wrapped twice around her slender neck. In the eerie light of the three dogs, it moved and flickered.
The shadows in the room and the feeling of unreality cloaked the two of them. Perhaps it was only a nightmare. ‘Do I exist?’ Tet said mildly, his heart beating bird-fast. ‘Or do you speak with a ghost?’
‘A ghost?’ Kani laughed. ‘Or perhaps a dream.’
She could kill him with a word, and yet she hadn’t. The princess was almost as unreal as the long-ago sending of Vitash’s priestess, and she watched him coolly, waiting for him to make the first move.
Tet glanced across the small room to the wooden walking stick he used on the days when the pain was at its worst, but Kani stood between him and the door. There was no way he’d be able to grab his stick before Kani snapped his neck with a word. And even if he could reach it – what then – bludgeon her to death?
Epsi stilled, tail ceasing its slow thumping. The little hound growled, and Tet faltered, catching the breathing pattern of Dragon Mountain again. Don’t lose your head. Kani had made no move yet, and he did at least have the dogs, if nothing else. And he had once had some measure of wit, which, if he could be bothered to use it, Tet admonished himself, would be very useful.
He’d try reason. She was, after all, a fellow mage. ‘I see you’ve brought it back to me.’ Tet’s voice was very soft, and he couldn’t draw his eyes from the pendant. It was him, his soul, and she wore it like it was nothing more than a mundane gem.
‘This?’ One gloved hand touched the beetle lightly. Her fingers were slim and elegant, and as she brushed her skin Tet felt the ghost of that touch against his own throat, soft as a lover’s caress, a warning and a promise, and he swallowed.
Even in the darkest hours she was dressed to dance, in her devil’s robes and her long gloves. He wondered where she’d come from – had the hound fetched her from the prince’s side, stolen her away. Or had she been roaming Pal-em-Rasha like a demon-ghost?
‘Why would you want a gift my beloved gave to me when I asked him so sweetly?’ She smiled crookedly, and the hand dropped to her side. ‘I know what it is, Maynim. I also know you cannot take it from me. Not even if you were to kill me. It must be given freely.’ Her half-smile slipped. ‘You will know this spell, of course. It is the same one that keeps the little thieves that Shoom hires from parting the prince from his beloved breastplate. It is not a spell you can undo with a word.’
She was warded. And extremely powerful. And Tet did know the spell she spoke of. It was a simple one that was also devastatingly clever. However, for all its apparent simplicity, it took a god’s power to charge it. The prince must have petitioned Nyangist to help with the warding that kept the breastplate bound to him, but what god did Kani serve? It was not one of the Sinal ones, whatever lies she told. And it was not his own gods. She could serve one of the eastern deities. Not a southern one – they were little more than house-spirits, barely capable of much more than turning sour milk fresh.
‘What temple do you serve?’
Kani snorted in answer as she turned slowly. There was little room for her to move, but she did so with an effortless grace that made Tet growl. She hadn’t been broken, crippled. And like all people who were whole and healthy, she thought she was untouchable.
She is. ‘Temple,’ he repeated.
She ignored his question, flicking it away as though it were an annoying flea. ‘What a dreary little place to have ended up, Maynim.’
‘That’s not my name.’
Kani laughed. The sound tripped down Tet’s spine, lingering in the hollows between his bones, and he thought of Dozha’s mockery, how it had slid over his skin, igniting each cell it touched. What have I turned into – a man so desperate for the touch of power that I would let this happen to me? He should have bought himself a night’s entertainment when he’d still had the coin, and fucked the need away.
‘Oh, I know that, Maynim.’ Kani slid the name over her tongue, like a stolen sweet. ‘But we were never truly introduced.’ She offered him a brief mockery of a bow. ‘The Princess Kani, of Sinal. I worship only myself. I am my own temple.’ She smiled like a sickle moon. ‘And what is your true name, then?’
‘You must think me a fool.’
‘I know you to be a fool.’ She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her left hand. When she lowered it again, Kani stared at him for a long while, her brow slightly furrowed. ‘I am unused to dream-hunting, to think that you would tell me your true name simply because I ask it. Each time I dream you, you will not answer me.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘Still, we have spoken further, this time. Usually, there is little talking between us.’
Tet blinked. The scheming witch actually thought she was dreaming this meeting with him. Or she thought to draw him out with deceit. He would have to tread carefully. ‘Do you often dream of me, and hunt me down?’
The thought pooled red-hot gold about his innards, and he cursed himself. This wasn’t desire. It was need. Tet wanted what she kept round her neck. But she dreamed of him, and he wanted to know what he did in these night-time meetings, if they played games of maket, or if their fingers met in other ways, using slower strategies, sighs and whispers.
The smile Kani gave him was sly, familiar. ‘Perhaps. But they are never true dreams, they are only the after-images of desire.’
Laketri had already told Tet that Kani wanted his true name. She held his soul. Why not simply crush the beetle into dust and destroy him utterly? Perhaps she dreamed of what she could use him for if she owned his name. He’d be a tool in whatever scheme she played with the White Prince. Or against him.
‘And what happens in these false dreams of yours?’ Despite himself, Tet was curious.
‘We dance,’ she said. ‘Sometimes.’
Tet’s throat closed. ‘I’m no dancer, I promise you.’ Did they press close to each other, like the women in the bars under the paper lanterns. Or was it a formal dance, diagramming alliances? ‘I have no time for it.’
‘Oh?’ Her left hand rose again to play with the oresh-beetle at her throat, stroking down its closed wings. Her right was clenched in a fist, betraying her. ‘And why is that? Even cripples dance when the song is right, whether their wounds are from swords, or birth, or the random cruelty of little gods.’
She knew who he really was. Ohtet Maynim had never publicly appeared limping. But Tet-Nanak was broken. Sektet Am, this soldier he was pretending to be, was. Tet was cursed by his gods, and she knew it. He was shaking. Like Shoom, like Sinastrillia, Kani knew too much about him for him to ever be safe.
‘Don’t be so furious, Maynim—’
‘Stop calling me that.’
She tilted her head to the side. ‘Fine. The dance is over. The game is done. I have your soul, Tet-Nanak. If I give it back to you, you will be powerful again and you will want your revenge. I cannot have that. I will return your soul only when you tell me your true name. Consider it a safe-guard.’
Tet wanted to laugh, to spit in her face. Impossible. They were back where they began, only this time it was not the White Prince asking for something he did not have.
‘I’ll think on it,’ he said.
‘Don’t think too long, Tet-Nanak. Even I can grow bored.’
Outside, the first birds were calling in long looping patterns. It would soon be dawn. The dogs were fading, looking more ghostly with each passing moment. ‘Your dream is over,’ Tet said to the princess, and he nodded to Nanak, as Kani leapt up on her back as easily as if the woman were made of empty cocoons.
The dog and her strange burden vanished and the other two hounds slowly ghosted out of sight as the night turned over in its sleep and welcomed the rising sun.
THE MONKEY’S STRATAGEM
The three hounds may not have done exactly as Tet wanted, but thanks to them he was no longer a poor soldier starving to death in a garret room. Dozha’s gift had bought Tet another night to live, and a chance to not only eat, but to pay for the fall of a temple. And – if Tet could ever find Dozha – a chance to pay the mage enough to steal Tet’s soul back for him. It was doubtful Dozha would have been so free with the little gift had he realised what it was.
Tet was almost a rich man. The birds were singing as he dressed in soldier’s old rags. and braided back his hair. He left Widow Peniki’s house carrying his lute as always, but now his coat was loaded with coin. There was a spring to his step, and even the pain seemed less.
Instead of his usual spot next to the blind beggar Sovhar, Tet found a new place on the opposite end of the market, far from the view of people who might recognise him.
It was time to reset the board in his favour. With the begging bowl placed before him, Tet played the love songs of dragons and watched the crowd. When the first scarred coin fell into his chipped tea bowl, Tet stopped playing and grabbed the wrist of the girl who had dropped it. Her hand was marred, six-fingered.
The girl tried to pull herself free but Tet held tighter, pulling her closer to him until her face was inches from his. With his prey trapped, Tet fished a small pouch of coins from behind his belt and pressed it into her caught palm. ‘This,’ he hissed between his teeth, soft enough that only the two of them would hear, ‘is a down payment.’
The girl’s face remained expressionless, but her fingers closed around the pouch, squeezing the coins together so that she could feel the edges of the money sharp against her skin. ‘For?’ Her voice was low and gave nothing away.
‘A fire,’ Tet said, and grinned humourlessly. ‘This is a spark. Bring me a fire in its place and I will give you a lord’s ransom.’
A trickle of sweat cut a thin path through the dust on her face. She answered his smile with one of her own, more a twitch and curled lip than anything else. ‘I am not an arsonist.’
‘And I am not a soldier.’ Tet released her hand, and she drew back but made no motion to leave. Everyone had a price, and at that moment, Tet commanded a small fortune.
The girl narrowed her eyes, considering the job, and the promised offer. It was no small thing to burn down a building, but it was done often enough and for varying reasons. ‘How do I know you will pay?’
‘You do not.’ Tet shrugged a shoulder. ‘But by Sinastrillia I swear it.’ He hid the shaking in his hands by picking up the lute from his lap and setting his fingers to the familiar lines, calling out the songs the mountain dragon had sung in her deep, echoing voice when she was drunk on millet beer. He had invoked the girl’s own god, and this was dangerous ground. Gods, above all else, were jealous.
And murderous. Which is what had brought him to this point in the first place. Tet steeled himself. ‘There is a god,’ he said, still soft, not singing yet. He let the music drown his words, ‘who would consume everything if she were not kept in check.’
The girl glanced up at the sky, as though at any moment the gods might appear, looking down on their playthings. ‘We are not the lords of gods.’
‘It suits gods to have us think so.’ He played a run of notes, a cheerful lilt. ‘But with so many gods, it seems it is up to us to choose a master. There is power in that. We keep balance.’
‘Hmmm.’ She weighed the coin bag in her palm. It was a dangerous job he was asking, Tet knew, but he hoped those who worshipped Sinastrillia would see that as a perk. To tweak the nose of an enemy god, and get good coin for it, that was incentive enough for the thieves and cut-throats of the Underpalace. And there was no love lost – Nyangist had killed too many – and now that Tet had pushed Nyangist’s temple into withdrawing from the contract between the two gods, he had another lever to use. ‘A god owes a god a debt,’ Tet said, conversationally, ‘and will no longer pay it. How many who should go to the Underpalace will now die on her altars?’
