* * * * *
Haimya leaned back against the ancient brickwork and stretched her legs out on the bench. She laid her drawn sword across her knees and began testing the edge cautiously with the back of her thumb. It was too dark down here for even her keen night-sight to find flaws in the steel, but her skin was more sensitive anyway.
She paid a price for testing her sword thus, in small cuts and scrapes that did nothing for the appearance of hands that might have been intended for a man half a foot taller. But no friend had ever thought less of her, that her hands were not Lady Eskaia’s (although those hands could wield more than an embroidery needle or a paintbrush if necessary). A good many enemies were no longer thinking at all, because of the strength and the skill in those battered hands.
She stretched her arms now, tensing, then relaxing every muscle like a cat. The sword began to slip from her lap. As she halted it, movement at the far end of the passage caught her eye.
A moment later, the movement became a kitchen boy, running with an empty slop bucket in his hand but not slowed in the least. He ran as if the Abyss were opening close at his heels, and his eyes were so wide that they were more white than not.
Haimya sprang into the boy’s path. For a moment his eyes rolled, and she thought he was going to fall senseless. She gripped his shoulder, firm and friendly at the same time.
“What is it?”
“The drowned ghosts-they’re coming-”
Haimya hoped her face didn’t look blank or bemused as she tried to remember the boy’s name and what he might be talking about. She couldn’t contrive the first, but the second flashed quickly into her mind.
Except that she didn’t believe in ghosts-at least not as much as she believed in live thieves.
Silence and secrecy were now as important to her as to the thief. She put a finger to her lips and shook her head. The boy nodded slowly and swallowed several times. When he spoke again, it was in a whisper.
“I heard them, Lady Haimya. Scraping, scratching, and getting louder.”
She ignored the mistake about her rank. “Sure it wasn’t rats?”
“I’ve heard rats, oh, I don’t know how many times. This is different.”
“Every time, I’ll be bound, that you went downcellar to empty a bucket faster.”
The boy could not meet her eyes. Haimya put a hand under his chin and lifted his head.
“Come with me and be silent. If you do, I’ll forget about the bucket.” She thought of asking him to clean up where he’d been emptying it, but that was the cellarer’s territory. The old man was also as stubborn as a badger and one of the worst gossips in the house.
“Come with me.”
Haimya strode toward the cellar door, trying to remember if there was a second way out of the cellar even for a thief. Well, if there was and he used it, he would leave traces. While he was upstairs, she could place herself in the cellar to bar his outward passage, with any fresh loot he might have seen fit to gather.
The lock of the cellar door was well greased, the hinges likewise. Both made faint squeals, like kittens at the bottom of a well-an image and a memory that made Haimya flinch. Neither was as loud as the boy’s quick breathing. The guard-maid would have given three good swords and her best helmet for one moment’s magic, to silence the boy or at least ease his fear until he would no longer awaken sleeping drunks, let alone alert thieves.
They had just closed the door behind them when Haimya saw a faint glow of light along one wall of the cellar, between a rack of wine barrels on one hand and a rack of smoked hams on the other. She listened, the boy held his breath, and the scraping indeed sounded nothing like rats.
Then the glow died.
* * * * *
Pirvan was past the worst part of the passage when an outcropping of stone knocked the hood off his lantern. In the silence of his mind, he relieved his frustration. Shielding the lantern with his body, he learned what made him think even stronger language. A tinker would have to take hood and lantern in hand to rejoin them.
A nice dilemma now faced Pirvan. Had he been on the streets or, even better, on the rooftops, he could have gone forward as swiftly and deftly in the darkness as in the light. His agility, his night-sight, and his sense of direction kept him moving the way he wished, as long as he was in the open air.
Below ground was a different matter. He had mostly foresworn deep work for that reason, and would have done so tonight. But the open-air paths to the house would surely be guarded. The only safe way lay below, and to use that, he needed light, whether or not it gave warning to anyone waiting above.
Pirvan reminded himself that, strictly speaking, he did not have to roam the house until he found Lady Eskaia’s bed and the strongbox under it. He could reach the cellar, fling the bag of jewels with its notes to Lady Eskaia attached-into the hands of any servant who might have slipped down to tap a wine barrel. Such might be indiscreet; they could even be dishonest.
Pirvan’s honor and the thieves’ safety demanded a complete, discreet return.
He could only hope that his mask would not go the way of the lantern shield.
Nothing more went awry in the remaining few minutes of Pirvan’s underground journey. Safely far back in the passage, he blew out the lantern and drew up his sack of gear. It would be an irony to make a dozen gods laugh if he needed more tools to return stolen property than to steal it in the first place.
At last he was peering out into the cellar, the lantern behind him. All seemed as he would have expected, with no alarm given. The only light was a dim, guttering one, from a single torch or lamp high up and out of his sight to the left.
Trying to keep his head up and his eyes roaming, Pirvan slipped out of the crack in what now seemed to be a cellar wall. The dim light made the wine barrels to his right seem a solid mass, whatever was hanging to his left appear as giant bats with their wings folded.
A mouse skittering drew his eyes to the right. Then across the open space, he saw something move. A human shape, creeping on hands and knees, clearly knowing that he was not alone, thinking that he had not been seen.
Pirvan drew his dagger, tossed it so that he held it by the point, then waited until he could have a clear shot at the man’s head. Man-no, a boy, more likely, or even a girl-but no one could be allowed to give warning this soon, nor would they receive more than a headache from the pommel of the dagger.
Seeking that clear line for his throw, Pirvan had taken two steps away from the wall. That was one too many. In one moment, he sensed someone approaching him from his left; in the next, the person was behind him, between him and the passage.
He whirled, angling the dagger upward to hammer the pommel up under his attacker’s chin. That could kill, but he would pull his blow if he could-
The next moment, he felt as if a dragon had whipped its tail into his lower abdomen. He doubled up, all the breath going out of him in a whuff he was sure must be waking the house. The pain he felt was such that if he had let out the scream deserved, he would have awakened half of Istar.
But the breath for the scream would not come. He was still fighting for it when he felt the dagger plucked from his hand and a second attacker behind him. Trying to turn merely cost him what was left of his balance, and as he went down, a hard fist hammered against the side of his jaw.
Pirvan the Thief was as senseless as a log of firewood before he struck the floor.
Chapter 5
Pirvan awoke with pains lingering in both head and belly. He concluded that he must have struck his head in falling. He also discovered that his bruised temple and scraped cheek had been cleaned, salved, and lightly dressed.