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.
“You have no weapon?” he asked suspiciously.
Again, Entreri offered only a little shrug in reply.
“Very well, then,” the thug said, his tone firm, as if he had just made a decision. To accentuate that very point, he took up the board, still dripping with the blood of the old man. Decisively he brought it up to his shoulder, brought it up, Entreri realized, to a more accessible position. The thug was barely twenty feet away when he began his approach.
So much more was going on here, Entreri knew, and he wanted answers.
Ten feet away.
Entreri held his steady and calm pose, but his muscles tightened in preparation.
The man was barely five feet from him. Entreri’s right hand whipped out of his pocket, hurling a spray of fine sand.
Up came the club, and the man turned his head away. He was laughing when he looked back. “Trying to blind me with a handful of sand?” he asked incredulously, sarcastically. “How clever of a desert fighter to think of using sand!”
Of course it was the proverbial “oldest trick” in sneaky Calimshan’s thick book of underhanded street fighting techniques. And the next oldest trick followed when Entreri thrust his hand back into his pocket, and whipped a second handful of sand.
The thug was laughing even as he closed his eyes, defeating the attack. He blinked quickly, just for an instant, a split second. But that instant was long enough for ambidextrous Entreri to withdraw his left hand from his pocket and fling the edged stone. He had just one window of opportunity, an instant of time, a square inch of target. He had to be perfect-but that was the way it had been for Entreri since he was a child, since he went out into the desert, a land that did not forgive the smallest of mistakes.
The sharp stone whistled past the upraised club and hit the thug in the throat, just to one side of center. It nicked into his windpipe and deflected to the left, cutting the wall of an artery before rebounding free into the air.
“Wh-?” the thug began, and he stopped, apparently surprised by the curious whistle that had suddenly come into his voice. A shower of blood erupted from his neck, spraying up across his cheek. He slapped his free hand to it, fingers grasping, trying to stem the flow. He kept his cool enough to hold his makeshift club at the ready the whole time, keeping Entreri at bay, though the younger man had put his hands back in his pockets and made no move.
He was good, Entreri decided, honestly applauding the man’s calm and continued defense. He was good, but Entreri was perfect. You had to be perfect.
The outward flow of blood was nearly stemmed, but the artery was severed and the windpipe open beside it.
The thug growled and advanced. Entreri didn’t blink.
The thug stopped suddenly, dark eyes wide. He tried to speak out, but only sputtered forth a bright gout of blood. He tried to draw breath, but gurgled again pitifully, his lungs fast-filling with blood, and sank to his knees.
It took him a long time to die. Calimport was an unforgiving place. You had to be perfect.
“Well done,” came a voice from the left.
Entreri turned to see two men casually stroll out of a narrow alley. He knew at once that they were thieves, probably guildsmen, for confident Entreri believed only the most practiced rogues could get so close to him without him knowing it.
Entreri looked back to the corpse at his feet, and a hundred questions danced about his thoughts. He knew then with cold certainty that this had been no random meeting. The thug he had killed had been sent to him.
Entreri chuckled, more a derisive snort than a laugh, and kicked a bit of dirt into the dead man’s face.
Less than perfect got you killed. Perfect, as Entreri soon found out, got you invited into the local thieves’ guild.
Entreri could hardly fathom the notion that all the food he wanted was available to him with a snap of his fingers. He had been offered a soft bed, too, but feared that such luxury would weaken him. He slept on his floor at night.
Still, the offer was the important thing. Entreri cared little for material wealth or pleasures, but he cared greatly that those pleasures were being offered to him.
That was the benefit of being in the Basadoni Cabal, one of the most powerful thieves’ guilds in all the city. In fact there were many benefits. To an independent young man such as Artemis Entreri, there were many drawbacks, as well.
Lieutenant Theebles Royuset, the man whom Pasha Basadoni had appointed as Entreri’s personal mentor, was one of these. He was the epitome of men that young Artemis Entreri loathed, gluttonous and lazy, with heavy eyelids that perpetually drooped. His smelly brown hair was naturally frizzy, but too greased and dirty to come away from his scalp, and he always wore the remnants of his last four meals on the front of his shirt. Physically, there was nothing quick about Theebles, except the one movement that brought the latest handful of food into his slopping jowls, but intellectually, the man was sharp and dangerous.
And sadistic. Despite the obvious physical limitations, Theebles was in the second rank of command in the guild, along with a half-dozen other lieutenants, behind only Pasha Basadoni himself.
Entreri hated him. Theebles had been a merchant, and like so many of Calimport’s purveyors, had gotten himself into severe trouble with the city guard. So Theebles had used his wealth to buy himself an appointment to the guild, that he might go underground and escape Calimport’s dreaded prisons. That wealth must have been
