dances when somebody else plays the music. You've seen it; he can't even keep Vargo from unseating Bors at the head of the table.'
Pinch remembered the arrangement, unremarkable at the time, but now of greater importance: Bors drooling at the end of the family row while Vargo sat in the first son's seat at the regent's left hand. It had never been that way at Manferic's table. The old man had kept his gods-cursed firstborn in the place of honor even after his deficiencies were clear to all.
'Why should I tell you anything? I'm no intelligencer for the constabulary.'
Abruptly the prince was no longer humorous, the indulgent mask peeling from his flesh to reveal the corded muscles of a snarl as he sprang to his feet. 'Because you're nothing but a rakehelled orphan who lives by our indulgence! Because I want to know who you're working for and you'll tell me.'
'A pox on that!' Pinch swore, shoving the bowl away. 'I'll not be your intelligencer, not when you come here threatening like some piss-prophet.'
'Then I'll have your heart and roast it for the dogs!'
Throdus's hand went to the jeweled dagger at his side. It wasn't hanging there just for show. The blade was brilliantly polished and glittered in the morning light.
The rogue grinned as he kicked the chair back and sprang to his feet. He drew his slim-bladed skene, with its leather-wrapped handle and well-oiled blade, and let the point trace imaginary circles in the air before the prince's chest. 'And I say you're a pizzle-headed ass for thinking you can best me with your little cutter. What do you know about knife fights? Have you every jumped a man in a dark lane and pulled your blade across his weasand-pipe? Fought with a blade in one hand and a bottle in the other?' Pinch started a slow pace around the table, one that forced Throdus back from the center of the room.
'One time a captain of the guard wanted to dock me. He was a fine gentleman and thought I was too. Thought I'd fight fair. I burned his hair off before I left him hamstrung. Scarred him for life-even the priests couldn't do anything about it.
'Do you think being a prince will protect you?' Pinch whispered softly as he picked up a heavy jug with his free hand.
Throdus's rage had started to go pale, and suddenly he acted in desperate panic. With a snap of his arm, he flung his dagger.
Pinch reacted almost as fast and just managed to swing the jug into the blade's path. The hard clay shattered in his hand, sending shards skittering across the floor like mice, but the knife went tumbling away. The rogue threw the useless jug handle back and Throdus bobbed beneath it.
Pinch lunged but not so hard as to be sure of a hit. Throdus escaped harm, though his waistcoat died in the attack. Pinch's dirk pierced the fabric and stuck into the wall. As Throdus yanked frantically to pull the fabric loose, Pinch slammed his free arm against the man's chest. The air blew out of Throdus like a puffball squeezed too hard. While still skewered to the wall like a gutted rabbit, he sagged against the rogue unable to do anything but helplessly twitch as he choked for air.
Bronzewood cracked as the dirk wrenched free of the wall and came free of the punctured clothes. Pinch slithered in close, his knee poised below Throdus's gut as an extra insurance of good behavior. The rogue let the knife blade tickle the prince's torso as he deftly sliced away the doublet's strings, tracing just the thinnest line of blood down the man's hairy chest. Gently, almost tenderly, he brought his lips close to the noble ear, till he could smell the perfumes in Throdus's oiled hair and guess the flavor of breakfast the man had eaten that morning.
'What should I do with you?' the regulator whispered ever so softly, as if the prince within his clutches weren't even there. 'If I killed you, who would complain? Vargo? Marac? Cleedis? Maybe that's why I'm here…'
It was to Throdus's credit that he did not cry out, but that may have been only because he couldn't. His gasping had broken into shivers the man could not restrain, so strong that he couldn't even work his lips to form words. His eyes welled up with water as he stared at the knife, unable to shift his gaze from it.
'What should I do?' Pinch whispered again. 'Perhaps they'll reward-'
A rich reverberation rebounded through the apartment, the musical tolling of a bell. The sound stood out by its otherworldliness, but Pinch ignored it. It was just some errant matins bell of yet another sect, echoing up from the common city below.
'Stop.'
It was the bell, now formed into a single word. It was a phantom of his thoughts, not real noise, the rogue realized now. It's my conscience, he thought almost breaking into laughter. I didn't think I had one.
'Do not kill him.'
It wasn't his conscience. It was a voice, more powerfully deep than was humanly possible and somewhere behind him. Pinch flung the quivering Throdus aside and spun to face his challenger-
There was no one there. The room was empty and silent save for the prince who crawled, mewling, toward the door. Pinch whirled here and there, jabbing the air in case his threat were invisible, but there was nothing.
Throdus had reached the door and was struggling to his feet. It's him; he's doing this. I can't let him go, Pinch thought, his own mind racing on the verge of panic. 'Tell your wizards to stop or I'll kill you!' he shouted.
'No,he is nothing. let him go.'
The voice was behind him, Pinch was sure. In a single move, he spun and threw his dagger at the source. The skene twirled across the room and stuck fast into the wall, quivering. Nothing was there.
Behind him, the door creaked and then slammed as the prince bolted for safety. By the time Pinch could turn, Throdus was gone.
Frustrated, the rogue whirled back to face the empty room. 'Damn you! Who are you?'
'Later…' The deep tones faded away, leaving behind only a hollowness of muffled sound.
Pinch tore through the rooms, overturning chaises, throwing aside coverlets, flinging the armoire doors wide. There was nothing, nowhere. No hidden visitors, sorcerous imps, or mischievous gremlins. He was alone.
At last the rogue collapsed in the center of the frenzy, in the nest of bed sheets and clothes that littered the floor. What had happened? Who had happened? And what would happen next?
For once, the thief couldn't say.
7
'Stand aside, damn you! He attacked Prince Throdus!'
There was the leathery scrape of a tussle outside, over a handful of shouted voices. Not a one did Pinch recognize, but they were full of youth and vigor and he could well guess that they were rakes of Throdus's circle intent on currying favor with their patron.
By the time the courtiers bulled their way past the guard outside the door and smashed through the lock, Pinch had shucked his linen nightshirt, pulled on trousers and boots, and was standing ready for them. In each hand casually held behind his back he held a dagger by the blade, ready for the toss. Another was in his boot top.
These blades were not his first line of defense, though. Pinch had no illusions that a few puny tossed daggers would stop this group. Princes surrounded themselves with hardier worthies than that. At best he could remind them he had a potent sting.
Of course, they had to find him first. Invisibility, or a thief's version of it, was his strongest protection. While they were fumbling outside, the rogue slid into the shadowed folds of his bed canopy, between the wall and the monolithic headboard. There he shifted his shoulder so that the lines of gloom fell across it just so, tilted his head into the darkness, and pressed his legs close to the headboard until they looked like part of the carved bronzewood. There he waited very, very still. There was, after all, still the great risk that he had missed some telltale and they would discover it in a nonce. That's what the knives were for. Fools who relied on only one chance were short-lived fools.
All in one packet, three bravos cracked through the lock and crashed into the salon, a swirl of silken capes and flashing blades. The group, with their curled hair and puffy half-slashed sleeves, made a romantic trio as they whirled and thrust bloody holes into the air.
