to drive down the steep hill that took him from the houses of the wealthy through the district of workshops and manufactories called the Smoke. There he entered a maze of narrow streets that led farther downhill into the Stink, where the poor had their homes. It was just as he entered that zone of wattle-and-daub houses, where the streets and the alleys between them were hard to tell apart, that he heard the first groan from behind him.
The wagon appeared to be full of hay. If he were stopped, Malden could claim to be making a delivery to the stables of an inn nearby-it was close enough to dawn to make sense for such traffic-but if a watchman heard the hay moaning in pain, he might ask questions that Malden would find uncomfortable to answer. So he pulled his team into a very dark, very deserted byway, and leaned back over his cargo. He thumped the side of the wagon very hard with the pommel of his bodkin and waited until he heard another grunt. “I know you can hear me,” he said to the hay. The three men underneath it, the thieves from Doral’s house, were just now waking from their drugged stupor. They would be unable to use their limbs for a while yet, but their ears would be fully recovered. The drug Malden had used on his darts was measured out quite carefully, and he knew its effects well-he’d even tested it on himself, to be sure of its efficacy. He knew how groggy and listless it would leave them, and how unable to defend themselves.
Still the hay rustled as they tried to rouse themselves and escape. Malden sighed and said, “If I tell you to be quiet, I expect you will try to shout. It’s what I would do in your situation. Allow me to point out one thing, however. If I wished to kill you, I could have done so quite easily, hours ago. Instead I did you a very great favor: I saved you from the hangman’s noose. I’d like to do you another favor, but it depends on my getting to my destination without incident. You may therefore remain silent, and keep your groans to yourself. Or I can stop your breath right now, while you’re still too weak to fend me off. Do we have a deal? Cry once for yes, or twice if you wish to die.”
“Oooh,” one of them moaned.
“Pluh-pluh-pluz,” the second begged.
“Gah,” the third one muttered. That must be the one he’d struck in the tongue.
“Very good. Lie still, then, and you’ll live, for now.” Malden got his horse under way again and headed for the Ashes.
That ancient district of the Free City of Ness was named for a calamity that happened well before Malden was born, the Seven Day Fire that claimed half the city. There was very little evidence of the conflagration left in Ness, save for a small zone of houses that had been so decrepit before the fire-and their owners so desperately poor-that they had never been rebuilt. The Ashes had become a section so desolate no one ever wanted to live there again. It was a grim place of streets that verged on nothing but charred ruin, all of it hid during the day by the shadow of the city’s towering wall. It was a place decent folk-and thus the city watch-never ventured.
Malden had come to know it well. He could find his way through the labyrinth of vacant lots and piles of rubble, through the lanes where weeds grew up through the soot-stained cobbles and moonlight soaked everything a sodden gray. He knew just where to turn, and, more importantly, just where to stop.
He stood his horse in the middle of a street and leaned forward on the reins. The horse snorted in the cold air, mist making twin plumes from its nostrils.
He did not wait long. Glancing over at a collapsed house to his left, he saw a flicker of motion, and then a boy no more than seven years old stepped out into the street. The boy lingered in a door frame that was warped out of true by fire and time. He wore a tunic made of patched-together rags, and his face was filthy with ash. In his hand he held a stick, no longer than his diminutive forearm, with a twopenny nail driven through its end. A poor urchin’s eye-gouger, that weapon. Malden had no doubt he was well drilled in its use. The boy, one of a small army of orphaned children with nowhere else to go, worked for Malden’s master. The children made sure no one entered the Ashes without being seen, and, if they were unwelcome, made sure they didn’t leave again.
Malden nodded at the boy, then made a complicated gesture with his fingers. The boy nodded in return, then stepped back into the darkness and was gone.
The entire interchange took five heartbeats to complete, but it spoke in an elaborate and eloquent vocabulary. The message was plain: Malden had three new recruits with him. He had not been followed. He needed to speak with the boss. The boy had understood, and would see to everything.
Malden jumped down from the seat of his wagon and walked around to the back. He shoved the straw away and let the three men sit up. As they rubbed at their numb faces and shook out their deadened legs, he studied them carefully. They were scrawny, shortish men dressed in dirty clothing. They didn’t look like much at all. He knew their type all too well. Men broken down by poverty until they were willing to take the risk of being hanged rather than go another day without coin. Men who labored at menial jobs when they could, or relied on their families for a few coppers to keep them from starving to death when no work was available. Men who had spent every day looking at the houses of rich merchants and wondering why fate had denied them such luxury and comfort. One of them, Malden knew, was a cousin of Doral Knackerson’s valet. It had been his brilliant idea to buy off the servants and burgle the rich man’s house. It must have seemed like such a foolproof plan.
“I’ve taken your weapons, and the few coins you had on you,” he told them. “The drug I gave you has no lasting effect, but it will leave you weak for tonight. I really don’t recommend making a fuss now. You’ve been given a second chance and I hope you will all take it. The job you did tonight was a clumsy affair, poorly planned out and executed with only a modicum of skill. It was enough, however, to gain the notice of my employer.”
The three of them stared at him. One of them mouthed Cutbill, but was smart enough not to breathe the name aloud.
Malden nodded. “You may know that he runs all the crime in this town. You three thought you could go into business for yourselves. That shows initiative, but also stupidity. No one steals a copper farthing in the Free City of Ness without attracting his attention. You made a choice to try anyway, and now you are under his most exacting scrutiny. You have another choice to make, right now. You can get up, and walk into that building over there.” Malden pointed at the ruin of a feed store across the street. It had no roof, but three of its walls still stood. Only darkness lay within. “A little girl will take you from there to a place where you can sign on with my crew. Your other option is to walk back up that hill,” and here he pointed behind him, “and look for honest work, and forswear ever taking up thieving again.”
“Do you know how hard it is to get a decent position just now?” one of the thieves demanded. “The trade guilds say who may work, and who must starve. And you have to pay them just to get on a list of men waiting for a chance.”
Malden felt little pity for the men. He himself was the son of a whore. He’d never known who his father was, had never had any family to fall back on. He’d been far more desperate once than these men would ever get. Yet he was going to offer them the same hope he’d clutched to himself.
“My guild,” Malden said, “is willing to welcome you in, tonight.”
The thieves fell to communing with each other, in the mode of desperate looks and shrugs and shaking of heads. The one with the hurt tongue-the valet’s cousin-seemed to be their leader, since the others turned to him as if begging him to make a decision. He ended this silent conversation with a grudging nod.
“You’ll not regret this, good sir,” one of the others said. He jumped down from the back of the wagon and ran toward the ruined feed store.
Another laughed out loud. “When I saw you on that bed, I thought I was dead as an elf,” he announced, and followed his accomplice.
That just left the leader, whose tongue was still swollen in his mouth. He stared at Malden for a very long time. He was making it clear he didn’t think Malden had done him any favors. But eventually he, too, took what was offered.
Chapter Four
Malden grabbed a sack of coins from the wagon-Doral’s first payment, made in advance-and walked away from the horse and its burden, knowing they would be taken care of by the children. The urchins who lived in the Ashes, orphans all, were desperate, violent little sprites but they worked hard for the pittance Cutbill gave them. It was their only way of getting food other than catching the district’s vast number of feral cats and roasting them over open fires.
