kitchens, looking for anyone who dared to slip through that fence.
Malden would never have approached the place in a hundred years-had he not had legitimate business there. His investigations told him this was where Bikker was to be found, and likely Cythera as well.
So he assumed that Hazoth had to be his ultimate employer. It must have been Hazoth’s orders that sent Cythera and Bikker after the crown. What in the Bloodgod’s name could a sorcerer want with it, though? Clearly it was enchanted-normal crowns didn’t talk to people. Perhaps, Malden thought, the wizard merely wanted to study the magics imbued in the simple coronet of gold. Most likely he would never know the true answer. The motivations of Hazoth’s kind would always be mysterious to the uninitiated.
The main result of Malden’s discovery was to make him all the more eager to be quit of the thing. Hand it over, collect his pay, never think of it again. It seemed the only proper course.
Of course, it would have to be done with care. Hazoth had sought to escape scrutiny, hiding his complicity in the crown’s theft behind a double layer of employees. He would not take kindly to even his own hired thief walking up to his gate with the crown in hand, not now.
Malden made his way along the wall until he was directly over the darkest part of the common. As he had expected, it was not completely deserted. A boy in a dark-colored cloak was crouched in some bushes just below the wall. He had a cudgel on the ground next to his right hand and a sloshing jug clutched close to his chest. He also had a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face, which was a bit of a giveaway.
Malden drew his bodkin, then stepped carefully over a spearpoint until he was directly above the boy’s head. The young footpad didn’t even look up. He was too busy watching the common, looking for any poor shepherd who might have come late to collect his sheep. The take would be piss-poor, but for a certain class of desperate criminal no score was beneath plucking. Even shepherds had clothing, and there were places in the city where you could sell clothes in the middle of the night where no questions would be asked.
Without a sound Malden dropped down onto the footpad’s back. The robber struggled and started to cry out, but he placed the point of his bodkin in the join between the boy’s jaw and neck.
“If I wanted to slit your throat, I’d have done it already,” Malden said. “Now, will you be quiet? I want a word.”
The boy started to nod-and stopped when he realized that doing so would impale him on Malden’s weapon. “Certainly, milord,” he sputtered out. The alcohol on his breath was enough to make Malden’s head spin. He supposed that lying-in-wait was thirsty work.
“You’ve a chance to earn some coppers tonight, lad,” Malden said, and moved his knife a fraction of an inch away from the boy’s jugular vein. “But first you must answer me a question true. Who do you work for?”
“My own self! That’s all! I swear, your honor, I’m a good fellow, I say my prayers as often as I remember, and I’ve never done anything like this before, I-”
“You don’t report back to Cutbill? He doesn’t take a share?”
The boy squirmed violently. Perhaps the lad thought he’d been sent by Cutbill to kill him for unauthorized thieving.
“That answer’s good enough,” Malden said, easing up a little more. “Now let us converse like gentlemen of fortune.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The boy’s face was freckled and his chin weak, when the scarf was removed. Malden held onto his cudgel and his jug while he conveyed the message. Walking like a man on the way to the headsman’s block, the boy crossed the common and went right up to Hazoth’s gate. He gave one last look over his shoulder-even though he couldn’t possibly see Malden so far away in the dark-and then stepped inside the open gate.
The effect was immediate, and startling.
A crackling sound rustled through the grass, and then the boy lifted into the air, as if he’d been snatched up by some invisible hand. Inside the sorcerer’s laughable fence all was suddenly action. Guards rushed out to see who the intruder was, and Malden heard dogs barking in their kennels and horses stamping in their stalls.
Slowly the boy sank back down to earth. There was a sudden flash, not of light but of darkness-like the pulsing of shadows after lightning strikes. Malden’s eyes narrowed. He was glad he’d sent the boy in his place. Apparently the iron fence was only a symbol for a quite different kind of protection.
The guards circled the boy and drove him to his knees. The boy lifted his hands above his head as a spear was jabbed into the small of his back. Malden could hear him wailing out his message, the one Malden had made him rehearse several times to get every word right.
You never told me it could talk, the message ran. Let us three meet at midnight, at the Godstone.
It was a risk, sending this message. Someone might be listening-someone who belonged to the city watch or some other enemy. If they were, he had given them the time and place where they could seize him with ease. Hopefully the words were obscure enough to confuse anyone who didn’t know all the particulars of what had happened.
The boy was released unharmed. The guards held him a bit roughly, perhaps, but they didn’t break his bones for his impudence. Once he was beyond the gate again, the boy ran off toward the Stink, not even bothering to return to Malden for payment. Perhaps in his fear he had forgotten the thruppence promised him. Malden dug in the soft soil underneath the bush where he’d found the boy concealing himself. There, he buried the cudgel, the jug, and three pennies, wrapped up in the filthy scarf. If the boy was brave enough or bright enough to return for his things, he well deserved the money.
Then Malden fled back into the night, running the way he’d come, along the top of the Ladypark’s enclosing wall. There was much to prepare.
The fact that his secret employer was a master of the arcane sciences worried him greatly, but not near so much as Bikker did. The big swordsman had killed two men just to create a diversion, and Malden had no doubt that Bikker would be willing to kill him as well. Either the swordsman would want to keep the gold for himself-or more likely, would want to keep him quiet, in the most expedient way possible. When he’d taken this job, Malden believed it was little more than a prank. The crown would be replaced with a duplicate, and no one would ever be the wiser- the Burgrave wouldn’t even publicly acknowledge the theft, out of fear of embarrassment.
Now things had changed. The crown was enchanted, and thus far more important than just some well- wrought lump of gold. The Burgrave would want it back, and stop at little to secure its return. Bikker and his master would want to maintain total secrecy, and the only way they could assure that was to slit his throat and dump his body in the river.
Malden sighed as he ran atop the wall. No one had ever said his new life as a daring burglar was going to be easy. He came to a corner of the wall and slipped down to the street below, a shadowed lane running toward a row of houses in the Stink. The houses there closed in quickly, filling the available space around the common like a miser jealously throwing his arm around a pile of pennies. It felt good to be back on cobblestones, back in a district he knew well. He’d spent his life on these streets, and though he knew all too well their dangers, he knew how to manage them as well. He felt almost safe as he headed uphill, toward the eastern section of the Stink.
Not completely safe, of course. But he felt like he was the master of his destiny again. He felt like he could pull this off. If he was careful. There were still ways he could get his gold and keep his life, but it would take much planning and “Hold, if you please.”
Malden’s heart stopped beating, but only for a moment. He’d seen no one following him, had thought it impossible. Who could this be?
Whoever it was, he did not wish to meet him now.
He leapt back toward the wall of a half-timbered house. Its eaves cast a deep rich shadow on the street below that would hide him. He made no answer to the call. He did not so much as breathe. He considered closing his eyes so they would not glint in any stray beam of starlight. But no, he needed to see what was coming for him.
“It is not my design to hurt you,” the voice said.
Light burst all around him. The other must have had a dark lantern and suddenly drawn back its shade. For a moment Malden could see nothing, and his eyes, adapted as they were to the darkness, burned with pain. Throwing
