"I'd like to ask some questions, and get answers for a change." he asked the crone, "Then I'll leave you alone."
"Ask away."
The old woman's face was a mass of wrinkles, but her white hair was drawn neatly back and pinned. Her clothing consisted of a single voluminous dark robe, an all-encompassing garment that would keep out rain or sun and keep in heat. Most of the thieves wore the same. Only the part-elven leader wore thin leather, as if she were impervious to the subterranean chill.
Sunbright got busy asking his questions. "What's your name?"
The woman cradled the leader's head, dabbed off blood. "Call me Mother," she told him. "Everyone does."
"Are you really any of these folks' mother?"
"I was a mother once. It suffices."
Sunbright grunted, settled more comfortably on his heels, and asked, "What's her name?"
"Knucklebones."
"Huh? What kind of name is that?"
Mother mopped dirt from the woman's hair as she said, "What's the toughest bone in any animal's body?"
"Oh." Sunbright replied. Dogs and wolves could eat any part of any animal, crack any bone for the marrow, except knucklebones. "Is that why she wears a knucklebone pendant?"
"And because she's good at the game of Knucklebones. And because she wears these," she said, indicating the brass knuckles on the young woman's right hand, filed and shaped to fit her fingers like multiple rings. Mother picked at her own throat, tugged up a thong, showing a glimpse of white. "But we all wear these. The badge of her family."
"You mean gang."
Mother shot him a look from under thin eyebrows and said, "Don't be impertinent."
"My apologies."
Sunbright squatted with his back to the iron door, one ear tuned lest it move. The other thieves were dividing or storing the food in stone jars with wooden lids.
"Family it is. And the man from whom I took the knucklebone. He was a member of your family?"
"And her lover," replied Mother. Gently, she stroked her finger along Knucklebones's nose. Sunbright saw the fingers glow a pale red, saw the swollen flesh slowly sink to normal size. Mother was a hedge wizard, he supposed. Or else minor healing was just another spell everyone knew. "His name was Martel. He went into the garbage chutes, I take it."
"Yes." Sunbright may have damned himself, but said, "I stumbled on a street brawl. He was out to kill me, tangled me with his weighted chain so he could stab me. I think. I was confused. I didn't want to kill him."
"Explain that to her when she's up," replied Mother evenly. "But I'm not surprised. We should stick to thievin', not hire out to the noble brats for their hell-raisin'. Knuckle' didn't want him to go. They argued, and he didn't come back. We heard why."
Sighing, Sunbright changed the subject. "You live by thieving. Why not work?"
"There's no work," she laughed. "Only for friends of the nobles. This city is about played out, ready to collapse under the weight of the nobility. They've eaten away their foundations, you see, let termites bore through their homes."
"And you're the termites?"
Now Mother sighed. She dragged loose cloth around and covered Knucklebones, who was in and out of sleep. Sunbright hoped he hadn't caused her brain damage, or injured her spine. "No," she told him, "we're nothin', rats livin' off garbage, just a nuisance. It's the nobles who're their own worst enemy. They'll drown in their own sewage."
"I don't understand."
"You really are from far away, then. It's this way all over the empire," Mother said, creaking upright and fetching two bowls of porridge a girl had warmed by the fire. She and Sunbright ate with their fingers. "The nobles're greedy. They've always been so, but as time goes by, their appetites increase and they want more. They take it from the commoners. Eventually they take too much, the commoners starve, and then the nobles do too. But they never see it comin' and never try to stop it.
"How much of the city have you seen? How many shops closed? How many people out of work? The workin' class has been taxed-robbed-out of existence. Leather workers and milliners and blacksmiths couldn't pay their taxes, so their shops're taken and they're thrown out of work. They starve a while, then choose: die or steal. The ones caught are executed or thrown into labor camps and worked to death. Anyone who complains about the oppression, bards singing or printers selling broadsides, or minor officials who know the poor're also silenced, banished, or killed outright. The city guard are nothin' but murderous thugs, out to collect graft and kill anyone who raises his eyes to a noble. Their watchword is 'Mind your betters.' And down on the ground, they tell me-I've never been there-it's better, and worse.
"Worse," she continued, "because farmers're thrown off their land and made to wander. But here, we're like fish in a pool, all fightin' for crumbs. Folks can't work, so families split up to find food. Children are abandoned… look at these lost souls Knucklebones has taken in. And the high-and-mighty archwizards don't care, they only demand the guards grind down harder, punish more terribly."
Sunbright interjected, "But all that food in the marketplace. And the goods?"
"For nobles only," Mother sighed, shaking her head. "Their cooks and chamberlains're the only ones permitted in the market once it's open. Any commoners comin' near would be beaten to death by silver. Oh, there are some folks still makin' things. The archwizards have private workshops and hired artisans. They have cooks to prepare fabulous food for their endless parties, I'm told, and craftsmen to manufacture toys. Certainly they make flyin' disks for the Hunt, so the nobles can kill peasants on the ground. They lark and game like blind children. But the nobles skate on thin ice that's bein' licked away from underneath by a changing tide. They can prop the empire with brutality, with magic, with money-but it can't hold up forever."
"So what's to happen?"
Mother shrugged, said, "One day, sooner or later, the ice breaks. And the empire crumbles. And us at the bottom'll be crushed first.
"But the nobles'll have a mighty rough landin' too."
Sunbright asked all the questions he wanted, for Mother liked to talk about big ideas, and her brood was not mentally inquisitive. They were too concerned with staying alive. The big man was Ox, once a wrestler, until his eyes were gouged out by city guards. His tiny daughter was Corah. Their wife and mother was rumored to be dead, spirited off the streets one night in one of the guards' many random sweeps. Aba and Zykta, foundlings, were the topknotted twins. A skinny boy was Rolon. Others came and went, Mother explained, and Knucklebones commanded them all. Their rules were simple: defend and share. They stole when they could, avoided the guards daily, fought when necessary, and occasionally brawled with other gangs under the city, but not often. Life was tenuous, yet the poor showed one another mercy. No one else did, not the noble archwizards, and not the gods.
Sunbright nodded, deep in thought. For all their cooperation and organization, these folks were incredibly vulnerable. Even knowing little about the city, he could think of a dozen ways the nobles and their guards could crush these thieves. They could pump heavy gas such as infested coal mines down the tunnels and suffocate them. Or pour in oil and set it afire. Or loose trained dogs, or assassins guided by wizard eyes. Even a spell to divert a lake and flood the caves would do the job. Right now, the thieves only lived at the sufferance of the nobles, who were too preoccupied to wipe them out. He wondered if Knucklebones had considered these macabre threats, and planned for them. Or if she simply crossed her fingers and prayed.
Sunbright learned more. Which archwizard families ruled the city. How they all deferred to crazy Karsus, and curried his favor for magical trinkets and new spells. Where the guards bunked and how they patrolled. How the thieves managed to avoid capture and death. How they could trip traps and time the guards' rounds. How to penetrate a building sealed against the weather. Even how the fish was frozen. Out in the ocean were weirs, floating fish traps that funnelled fish inside. When an edible fish entered, it was instantly shifted hundreds of miles to a huge room spelled with a Veridon's chiller, then separated out and sold.