Entreri resumed his surveillance of his domain, his eyes scanning left to right, then back across the way. He saw every movement and every shadow-always the hunting cat, looking more for prey than for danger.
He couldn’t help but chuckle self-deprecatingly at the grandeur of his “kingdom.” His street? Only because no other thief would bother to claim it. Entreri could work six days rolling every one of the many drunks who fell down in the mud in this impoverished section and barely scrape enough coins together to eat a decent meal on the seventh.
Still, that was enough for the waif who had fled his home; it had sustained him and given him back his pride over the past five years. Now he was a young man, fourteen years old-or almost fourteen. Entreri didn’t remember his exact birthdate, just that there had been a brief period right before the even briefer season of rain, when times in his house were not so terrible.
Again, the young man shook the unwanted memories from his head. He was fourteen, he decided; as if in confirmation, he looked down at his finely toned, lithe frame, barely a hundred and thirty pounds, but with tightened muscles covering every inch. He was fourteen, and he was rightly proud, because he had survived and he had thrived. He surveyed his street, his domain, and his smallish chest expanded. Even the old drunks were afraid of him, showed him proper respect when they addressed him.
He had earned it, and everybody in this little shanty town within the city of Calimport-a city that was nothing more than a collection of a thousand or more little shanty towns huddled about the white marble and gold-laced structures of the wealthy merchants-respected him, feared him.
Everybody except one.
The new tough, a young man probably three or four years older than Entreri, had arrived earlier in the tenday. He did not ask permission of Entreri before he began rolling the wretches in the mud, or even walking into homes in broad daylight and terrorizing whoever was inside. The stranger forced Entreri’s subjects into making him a meal, or into offering him whatever other niceties could be found.
That was the part that angered Entreri more than anything. Entreri held no love, no respect, for the common folk of his carved-out kingdom, but he had seen the newcomer’s type before-in both his horrid past and in his troubled nightmares. In truth, there was room on Entreri’s street for two thugs. In the five days that the new tough had been about, he and Entreri hadn’t even seen each other. And certainly none of Entreri’s wretched informants had asked for protection against this new terror. None of them would dare even to speak with Entreri unless he asked them a direct question.
But there remained the not-inconsiderable matter of pride.
Entreri peered around the shack’s corner, down the muddy lane. “Right on schedule,” he whispered as the newcomer strolled onto the other end of this relatively straight section of road. “Predictable.” Entreri curled his lip up, thinking that predictability was indeed a weakness. He would have to remember that.
The new thug’s eyes were dark, his hair, like Entreri’s, black as the waters of the Kandad Oasis, so black that every other color seemed to be mixed together in its depths. A native-born Calimshite, Entreri decided, probably a man not unlike himself.
What tortured past had put the invader on this street? he mused. There is no room for that kind of empathy, Entreri scolded himself. Compassion gets you killed.
With a deep, steadying breath, Entreri steeled his gaze once more and watched coldly as the invader threw a staggering old man to the ground and tore open the wretch’s threadbare purse. Apparently unsatisfied with the meager take, the young man yanked a half-rotted board from the uneven edge of the nearest shack and whacked his pitiful victim across the forehead. The old man whined and pleaded, but the tough struck him again, flattening his nose. He was on his knees, face covered in bright blood, begging and crying, but got hit again and again until his sobs were muffled by the mud that half-buried his broken face.
Entreri found that he cared nothing for the old wretch. He did care, though, that the man had begged this newcomer, had pleaded with a master who had come uninvited to Artemis Entreri’s place.
Entreri’s hands went down to his pockets, slipped inside, feeling the only weapons he bothered to carry, two small handfuls of sand and a flat, edged rock. He gave a sigh that reflected both resignation and the tingling excitement of impending battle. He started out from the corner, but paused to consider his own feelings. He was the hunting cat, the master here, so he was rightfully defending his carved-out domain. But there remained a sadness Entreri could not deny, a resignation he could not understand.
Somewhere deep inside him, in a pocket sealed away by the horrors he had known, Entreri knew things should not be like this. Yet the realization did not turn him away from the battle to come. Instead, it made him even angrier.
A feral growl escaped Entreri’s lips as he stepped around the shack, out into the open and right in the path of the approaching thug.
The older boy stopped, likewise regarding his adversary. He knew of Entreri, of course, the same way Entreri knew of him.
“At last you show yourself openly,” the newcomer said confidently. He was bigger than slender Entreri, though there was very little extra weight on his warrior’s frame. His shoulders had been broadened by maturity, by an extra few years of a hard life. His muscles, though not so thick, twitched like strong cords.
“I have been looking for you,” he said, inching closer. His caution tipped observant Entreri that he was more nervous than his bravado revealed.
“I’ve never lived in the shadows,” Entreri replied. “You could have found me any day, any time.”
“Why would I bother?”
Entreri considered the ridiculous question, then gave a little shrug, deciding not to justify the boastful retort with an answer.
“You know why I’m here,” the man said at length, his tone sharper than before-a further indication that his nerves were on edge.
“Funny, I thought I was the one who’d found you,” Entreri replied. He hid well his concern that this thug might be here, might be on Entreri’s street, with more of a purpose than he’d presumed.
“You had no choice but to find me,” the invader asserted firmly.
There it was again, that implication of a deeper purpose. It occurred to Entreri then that this man, for he was indeed a man and no street waif, should already be above staking out a claim to such a squalid area as this. Even if he were new to the trade, this course would not be the course for an adult ruffian. He should be allied with one of the many thieves’ guilds in this city of thieves. Why, then, had he come? And why alone?
Had he been kicked out of a guild, perhaps?
For a brief moment, Entreri feared he might be in over his head. His opponent was an adult, and possibly a veteran rogue. Entreri shook the notion away, saw that his reasoning was not sound. Young upstarts did not get “kicked out” of Calimport’s thieves’ guilds; they merely disappeared-and no one bothered to question their abrupt absence. But this opponent was not, obviously, some child who had been forced out on his own.
“Who are you?” Entreri asked bluntly. He wished he could take the question back as soon as the words had left his mouth, fearing he had just tipped the thug off to his own ignorance. Entreri was ultimately alone in his place. He had no network surrounding him, no spies of any merit, and little understanding of the true power structures of Calimport.
The thug smiled and spent a long moment studying his opponent. Entreri was small, and probably as quick and sure in a fight as the guild’s reports had indicated. He stood easily, his hands still in the pockets of his ragged breeches, his bare, brown-tanned arms small, but sculpted with finely honed muscles. The thug knew Entreri had no allies, had been told that before he had been sent out here. Yet this boy-and in the older thief’s eyes, Entreri was indeed a boy-stood easily and seemed composed far beyond his years. One other thing bothered the man.