Malden stared at him. “You’re trying to steal a crown from a wizard’s house. By definition, methinks, that makes you a thief. Or a would-be thief.”
“Ah, I see the problem,” Croy said, smiling. “No, no, we are not common thieves if we take the crown back from Hazoth. We are liberators. Heroes!”
Malden doubted very much that Hazoth would see it that way. He also wasn’t sure how he felt about being called a “common” thief. But he had better things to do than argue. “Walk back this way,” he said, and listened closely. “Maybe it’s your boots?”
Whatever the source of the clamor, there was no more to be done for it. Together they went out into the street and crossed the Stink, keeping well clear of areas regularly patrolled by the city watch. Should a cloak-of- eyes spot Croy, they would give chase on the instant. Not for the first time, Malden thought of turning the knight over to the authorities just to get him out of the way.
When they reached the Ashes he raised one hand in warning. “Don’t jump when you see them. Don’t make any quick move. Just stay calm.”
“See who?” Croy asked, but he didn’t have to wait long to find out.
A boy of no more than eight was standing in the road before them. His face was smeared with ash and he was holding a long shard of broken glass in one hand. He did not speak, of course.
Croy dropped to one knee in the soot. “Why, hello there,” he said, and held his hand out toward the boy. There was a piece of crystallized ginger in it.
Where in the Bloodgod’s name had he gotten a bit of candy? Malden wondered. Perhaps Croy carried sweets around just in case he ever met a child.
He doubted Croy had ever met a child like this. The boy did not take the ginger. He just stood there watching them, his face impassive. Waiting to see whether he should give the signal that would bring a hundred armed children down on the two of them with murderous intent.
“You know me,” Malden told the boy. The boy nodded. “I have business here, with him.” He tapped his chest above his heart. The boy knew what he meant. “This one,” he said, gesturing at Croy, “should not follow me.” He mused for a moment. “But I want him in one piece when I return.”
The boy shrugged. That was up to Croy and how stupidly the knight acted while he was gone. It was the best answer Malden would get.
“Fair enough.” He turned to Croy, who was smiling broadly at the boy and even crossing his eyes to try to make the child laugh. “Croy, he’d rather cut your throat than let you tousle his hair. Just mind yourself while I’m gone. I won’t tarry.”
He jogged around a corner and into the ruin above Cutbill’s lair, where he was quite pleased to see the three oldsters sitting once more on their coffin. “I feared you were driven off by unwelcome visitors, or worse,” he said, and clasped Loophole’s hand.
“Nay, son, we just scarpered at the first sign of trouble,” the old man replied. “That’s one of those things you learn how to do if you want to get to be an old thief. I’m glad to see you alive, though. We weren’t far away, and when we saw you coming in, we wanted to warn you but there was just no way, not without giving away our own position.”
“I understand. It was a close thing but I survived my encounter with the law. Did, ah, did Cutbill tell you anything of what it was about?”
Loophole frowned. “And why would he think to do that? His business is his own. And we don’t ask questions, the answers to which might get us in trouble.”
“Another sound policy,” Malden suggested. Some strange intuition gripped him then-a preternatural sensation that something was deeply wrong. He shot a hand down at his side and grabbed a scrawny arm. ’Levenfingers was trying to lift his purse. Malden laughed with glee. “In this mutable world I am glad to see some things don’t change.”
“It’s good to see you as well, Malden,” ’Levenfingers said. Lockjaw just scowled.
“So, have anything big planned?” Loophole asked.
His face was the picture of innocence. Malden shot him a shrewd look, but the oldster simply blinked as if he didn’t know anything.
Which told Malden what he needed to know. Cutbill might not have told them what had happened, but Malden knew perfectly well that they had asked the dangerous questions-they had just asked them very discreetly. How much they knew would remain a mystery, but it was next to impossible to keep a secret from these three. “Well, as a matter of fact… there’s a certain house on the Lady-park Common, a very special house-do you know the one I mean? I shouldn’t make it any more plain.”
“Then there’s only one you can mean,” ’Levenfingers said with a shiver. “Ooh, I wouldn’t want to be in that place in the dark. But good luck to you. No one’s ever tumbled that place and lived to tell the tale.”
“Even I wouldn’t try it,” Loophole agreed. “And I’d steal pearls off the queen’s throat, were she here now.”
Lockjaw mumbled something and then spat into the charred ruins.
Malden and the other two oldsters turned to stare at him.
“I said, ’ware the eye, and that’s all I’m saying,” Lockjaw snarled. “Now get inside, before someone sees you out here.”
“My thanks,” Malden told him. Then he headed down into the lair and was pleased to find that things had returned to a kind of normalcy. Bellard wasn’t there, of course, but the dice game in the corner was back in swing. More importantly to Malden, Slag was working at his bench, putting together some kind of collapsible fishing pole.
“It’s for taking hats,” Slag said, hefting the pole. “You know the arch under the Royal Ditch bridge? Aye? Windy fucking place. You crouch up in the supports, in the shadows, and you pluck the hats off the wealthy shits as pass underneath, and they think the wind took them.”
“Brilliant,” Malden said.
“It’ll fucking do. What do you want now?”
Malden described his needs while the dwarf scowled at him.
“The climbing gear I have in stock, no problem. This other thing, though-it’ll take a week, maybe more,” Slag told him.
“I can give you no more than three days,” Malden told the dwarf. Even that was pushing things-it meant he would not be ready until the eve of Ladymas.
“Fine. Now pay me. Gilding metal’s not bloody cheap, if you want it to look right.”
“Ah,” Malden said. “Well, perhaps I can owe you.”
It was commonly believed that dwarves never laughed. This was perhaps because most people were not so foolish as to ask them for credit. Slag did laugh at the idea, though the sound was not like a human laugh. It sounded more like a squeaky wheel coming free of a rusted axle.
“It really is important,” Malden said. “Perhaps there is some way we-”
“Sod off,” Slag said, turning back to his fishing pole.
It seemed to be a day for marvels. Lockjaw had given away a secret (or part of one), a dwarf had laughed- and now the door to Cutbill’s office swung open and the guildmaster of thieves leaned out.
“I’ll pay for the work,” Cutbill said.
Malden bowed low toward his master.
“Of course, Malden, you’ll pay me back,” Cutbill said.
“Of course.”
Cutbill shook his head. “At a rather ruinous level of interest.”
Malden bowed lower. “Of course,” he said again.
His business in the lair done, he headed back to the surface. Perhaps Croy had been filleted by the beggar children, he thought. Or maybe they’d just doused him with lamp oil and set him on fire.
One could hope.
Yet when he returned to where he’d left the knight, he stopped in his tracks and just stared. A score of the vile little children had emerged from their hiding places and gathered around Croy. They sat in the dust, staring up at him with rapt faces.
While Croy told them a story.
