“You must be tired and now that I have fed you I won’t keep you from a bath and bed any longer.”
Dannyl looked disappointed as their host rose, but to Lorkin’s relief did not protest. A gong rang out and two young women hurried into the room to throw themselves on the floor.
“Take our guests to their rooms,” he ordered. Then he smiled at Dannyl and Lorkin. “Rest well Ambassador Dannyl and Lord Lorkin. I will see you again in the morning.”
Lifting the cover, Cery leaned close to the spy hole and squinted at the room beyond. It was narrow, but very long, so the overall space was generous. He hadn’t liked the shape, but it could be divided into a string of smaller rooms, and escape routes spaced along the length.
Several men were working within the room, covering the brick walls with panelling, building the framework for the dividing walls, and tiling the floor. Two were working on the fireplace, clearing a blockage. As soon as they were finished and the mess cleared, work would start on decorating, and Cery’s new hideout – and trap for the Thief Hunter – would become a tasteful, luxurious space.
“Are you sure you want to use the same lockmaker?” Gol asked.
Cery turned to see his bodyguard’s eye illuminated by a small circle of light from beyond another spy hole.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You said you didn’t think Dern betrayed you, and if nobody betrays you then the Thief Hunter will never fall into our trap.”
Turning back to the spy hole, Cery watched the men working. “I don’t want people thinking I’m blaming him.”
“I’m still a bit suspicious about the lock. Why would Dern build into it a way to tell if magic had been used, if it was so unlikely magic would be used on it?”
“Maybe he thought it was likely. After all, I’m a Thief. Thieves have been getting murdered for some years now.”
“Then he must have reason to suspect they were killed with the help of magic.”
“Perhaps he has. Perhaps he’s heard the rumours about the Thief Hunter. But I’ve always found Dern to be habitually thorough to the point of ridiculousness and I think that’s why he made it like that, not that he knew anything about the Thief Hunter and his methods.”
Gol sighed. “Well... yes, he does seem that way at times. And while he was thankful to get more work from you, he seemed, well, nervous. Twitchy. Kept saying if the Thief Hunter and the Rogue turned out to be real and the same then what other legends might be true? Like the one about the giant ravis that eat people alive if they go into the sewers, or come up and drag people off the Thieves’ Road.”
“He would have to wonder.” Cery shook his head. “I always thought the Rogue was a myth, too. People have been saying there’s a magician hiding in the city for twenty years, even though Senfel rejoined the Guild after they pardoned him, and died of old age... what? Is it nine or ten years ago?”
“Senfel put the idea into people’s heads – as did Sonea. Now every strange occurrence that could be magical is evidence that more rogues are about.”
“Seems they might have been right about that.” Cery scowled. “But that’s more reason why we need to be sure before we tell Sonea.”
Gol grunted in agreement. “Do you think we should tell Skellin what we’re doing?”
“Skellin?” For a moment Cery wondered why, then he remembered the agreement he’d made with the other Thief. “We don’t know for sure if the person we’re baiting is the Thief Hunter. If we find evidence that he is, we’ll tell Skellin. Otherwise...” he shrugged. “He never asked me to tell him if I found a rogue.”
For a while they both looked through the spy holes in silence, then Cery let the cover of his hole swing back. The workmen knew of the escape routes they were building, but not of the ones that already existed, or of the spy holes Cery and Gol were watching them through.
“Let’s go.”
The hole of light before Gol’s eye vanished. Cery began walking, trailing a hand along the wall.
I wonder which one of the workmen I’ve hired will leak the location of my new hideout. Though Cery always treated workers well, paying them fairly and without delay, he could never be completely sure of their loyalty or ability to keep secrets. He found out everything he could about them: if they had family, if they cared about that family, if they had debts, who they had worked for in the past, who had worked for them, and if there was anyone, the Guard especially, they’d rather not encounter.
Not this time. Gol has set the information gathering in motion, but there isn’t enough time to be thorough, and that’s fine. For the trap to work Cery needed someone to leak information about it. But if I don’t take some precautions the Hunter might think it out of character, and become suspicious.
The passage turned, then turned again.
“You can open the lamp now,” Cery murmured.
There was a pause, then a faint squeak, and the tunnel was suddenly bathed in light.
“You know, any of those workers could be the Hunter.”
Cery glanced over his shoulder at his friend.
“Surely not.”
Gol shrugged. “Even the Hunter needs to eat and keep a roof over his head. He’s got to have a job of some sort.”
“Unless he’s rich,” Cery pointed out, turning back again.
“Unless he’s rich,” Gol agreed.
Once, it would have been a safe bet to assume the Hunter was rich. Only rich people learned magic. But these days, people of all classes could join the Guild. And if the Hunter couldn’t afford to bribe people, he could always blackmail and threaten them – possibly more effectively using magic to scare people.
I wish I could ask Sonea if any magicians or novices have gone missing. But I don’t want to risk meeting her again until I have proof there is a rogue in the city.
And in the meantime, he had best make sure he got that proof without getting himself killed.
Chapter 10
A New Challenge
The former Guild Ambassador to Sachaka had told Dannyl that no walls surrounded Arvice. No defensive walls, that was. There were plenty of boundary walls in Sachaka. Taller than a man, or so low they might be stepped over, and always rendered and painted white, they marked the boundaries of property. The only indication that he and Lorkin had reached the city was that high walls now lined the roadside instead of low ones, except in places where they had collapsed and not been repaired.
There have been a lot of ruins, he noted. Out in the wasteland, and then the occasional clusters of broken walls within estates that looked like they might once have been mansions. And now this... The carriage passed another collapsed wall and through the gap he could see the scorched and crumbling remains of a building. It’s as if the Sachakan War only happened a few years ago, and they haven’t had time yet to rebuild.
But if the creation of the wasteland had cut Sachaka’s food production by half, as Ashaki Tariko claimed, then perhaps the population had shrunk accordingly. Houses wouldn’t be rebuilt if there wasn’t anyone to live in them.
The war happened seven hundred years ago. Surely the houses abandoned then would be long gone. These ruins must be more recent. Perhaps the population is still slowly diminishing. Or maybe the owners are too poor to afford repairs or rebuilding.