“No,” Coruth said in a more natural tone.

“But-something horrible? So horrible that… Mother! What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to train to become a witch, because it is the only way you can avoid what is to come. I’ve seen enough to know that. Now. May we stop pretending that you have a choice? That what you want actually matters?”

Cythera wanted to cry. She wanted to wail, and run away, and go as far from Ness as she could get. She balled her hands into fists. Clamped her eyes shut. Finally, she nodded.

“Good. Let’s get started with your training, shall we? Lesson the first.” Coruth’s hand shot forward and grabbed her wrist. It felt like the claws of a demon digging into her flesh. Cythera cried out but the pressure only increased. She could never have broken that grip-not even Croy could have resisted as Coruth forced her hand down to the soil, forced her fingers to lock around the stem of the mandrake plant.

“Mother? No!” Cythera screamed.

“Pull,” Coruth said. And their two hands, locked together, dragged the mandrake root free of the ground. Cythera tried to cover one of her ears with her free hand, thinking to block out even a little of the deadly sound, the death throes of the root, which were always fatal, always deadly to anyone who dared to The root came free of the ground without so much as a squeak.

It looked nothing at all like a man either, not really. She had been expecting a tiny homunculus with staring dead eyes and little fangs. Instead it looked like a root vegetable, brown and fibrous, bifurcated at one end to give the barest suggestion of legs.

“But-”

“Lesson the first,” Coruth said, “is this. Think. Always, always think. Have you ever seen a plant that had lungs or a throat? The mandrake root can’t scream. Even if it could, what sound could possibly kill someone? At worst such a scream might give you a headache, and there’s plenty of willow bark around here to help with that.”

“But every authority agrees,” Cythera said when she had assured herself she was not dead. “Maybe this isn’t true mandrake, maybe you’re just trying to make a point, a point about… about…”

“That’s real mandrake, all right. Don’t believe everything you’re told. Half the old stories about our art are just that-stories. Stories made up to scare off the uninitiated. It would be too dangerous to allow just anyone to play around with mandrake, so we made up this silly story about screaming roots to keep their grubby little hands off of it. Here. Take this basket. We need a round dozen of those roots for what I have in mind.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

After Cythera went to find her mother, Malden led Slag and the crew of thieves downhill, through the district of smithies and work yards known locally as the Smoke. Normally that name was self-evident-the chimneys of a thousand forges and the fuming tanners’ vats cloaked the streets in an eternal pall of foul smoke. Today the air was almost breathable. With the exception of the blacksmiths, whose shops were crowded with men churning out arms and armor, work had ground to a halt.

“That’s-That’s fucking disgusting,” Slag said when they passed by a pewterer’s that was deserted and locked up tight. He placed his thin hands against the workshop’s brick chimney. “Ice cold, when it should be too hot to touch. They’ve let their fires go out-you never do that! Do you know how long it takes to get a furnace going from a cold start?”

“Every shop along this way’s closed,” Velmont observed. “The masters must’ve fled, and the ’prentices gone to join up wi’ that piebald army we saw.” A wicked smile crossed the thief’s face. “That makes fer a prime looting opportunity, now don’t it? I think I might like it here in Ness, Malden.”

Malden kept his own counsel. They descended into the Stink then, the part of the city where Malden lived when he was in town. His little room, above a waxchandler’s, was always warm in the winter from the great vats of molten wax directly beneath him, and the idea of sleeping in his own bed that night was appealing. However, he could not raise his landlord or any of the workers there no matter how much he hallooed or pounded on the doors.

At least the Stink was not as deserted as the Smoke had been. There were still plenty of women around, going about their business as they always had-hanging washing on lines that ran above the streets, grinding meal to make bread, carting home their shopping. The women looked wary at the sight of men as they passed, but said nothing. There were oldsters and cripples about, too, far more than Malden expected, and very young children played everywhere or ran errands for their mothers. Without any men around, they seemed far more numerous than they’d ever been before.

His face was a mask of quiet confusion by the time they reached the bottom of the city, at Westwall. Down there lay the Ashes, a region of houses that had burned down in the Seven Day Fire before he was born. The district had been so badly impoverished before the fire that the houses were never rebuilt. Weeds sprouted now between the cobbles, looking bedraggled by autumn’s coolth, and landslides of charred debris filled most of the alleys. One expected the Ashes to be deserted, and it certainly was-but there was something here as well that felt slightly off to Malden. When he realized what it was, he began to worry in earnest.

He didn’t feel like he was being watched.

The Ashes were home to Cutbill’s headquarters, but also to a gang of wholly noninnocent urchins, orphan children who had gathered together for safety and made concord with the guild of thieves for mutual protection. Normally they served as ever-vigilant guardians. They stood ready to kill anyone who came too close without Cutbill’s approval.

Normally, if you knew where to look, you could see the glint of small eyes in every razed stub of a house, or see children watching you unblinking from the exposed rafters of the district’s fallen churches. Normally, Malden knew they were about long before he saw them.

This day he felt completely alone in the Ashes.

Surely the Burgrave would not have recruited the feral children? Most of them were too young, no matter how good they might be with their makeshift weapons.

When he reached Cutbill’s lair without being challenged, Malden knew to be on his best guard. When he entered the fire-ravaged inn that topped the lair, he was no longer surprised to find it empty. A plain wooden coffin sat in the middle of the blackened floor, but no one sat atop it.

“There should be three old men here,” he explained for Velmont’s benefit. “Loophole, ’Levenfingers, and Lockjaw. The elders of our guild. I like this not.”

Slag stood well back as Malden opened the trapdoor that led down into the lair. Nothing escaped from underneath, however, save for a puff of stale air. He went down first, bidding the others to stay up top until he was sure it was safe.

Below lay the common room where Cutbill’s legions normally disported themselves between jobs. Malden had never seen the room empty before. Always-at any hour of day or night-there had been a dice game here, while Cutbill’s latest enforcer or bodyguard watched the door. Now the room was empty and silent. Perhaps, he thought, the Burgrave had taken the present crisis as an excuse to finally break and disperse the guild of thieves. Maybe he’d sent his troops down here to kill Cutbill and all his workers. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. The rich tapestries on the walls were untouched, the stolen furniture was all in its proper place. Fresh tapers even stood in the cressets, only waiting to be lit. Malden struck flint and let a little light into the place, but that just served to make it seem spookier.

Tentatively, knowing better from past experience, he approached the door to Cutbill’s office unbidden. No one popped their head out to offer him welcome or to warn him off. He checked carefully to see if the door was booby- trapped but found no sign.

He pushed gently, and the door opened. It wasn’t even locked.

Malden pressed farther into the office, expecting to find darkness and abandonment. At least in this he was mistaken.

Candles burned inside. He saw the big desk that Cutbill never used, and the stool where the master of the guild of thieves was always perched. It was empty now. Cutbill’s ledger lay on its stand. That book recorded every

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