your money for the evidences. Sprite-Heels and I did just fine, didn't we?'
'Ish true, Pinch, ish true.' The halfling heaved himself up till he could look over the top of the table. He was still spotted with the muck of the sewers. Fortunately the air of the Dwarf's Pot was so thick with wood smoke, stale ale, and spiced stew that his reek was hardly noticed. Right now Sprite-Heels breath was probably deadlier than his filth. 'Wha'd we get? I' didn't look like more 'an a cheap piece of jewelry.'
Pinch scowled at the question and waggled a finger for silence. That was followed by a series of quick gestures that the others followed intently.
Magical… important… temple… wait for money. The gestures spelled it out to the others in the hand-talk of thieves. From the quick finger-moves, they puzzled it out. Clearly what they'd taken was of great importance to the temple, so important that it was going to take time to sell. Pinch's sudden silence told them as much as his hands. The rogue was suddenly cautious lest someone hear. That meant people would be looking for what they had stolen, and Pinch saw no reason to openly boast of what they had done. Even Sprite-Heels, fuzzy-minded though he was, understood the need for discretion. The three turned awkwardly back to their mugs.
'What's the news of the night?' Pinch asked after a swallow of ale. They could hardly sit like silent toads all through the dawn.
Sprite collapsed back onto the bench since he had no answer. Therin shrugged and said with a grin, 'There was a job at the temple. Somebody did them good.' He, too, had nothing to say.
Maeve squeezed up her face as she tried to remember something the hour and the drink had stolen away from her. 'There was somebody…' Her lips puckered as she concentrated. 'That's it! There was somebody asking about you, Pinch.'
The rogue's drowsy eyes were suddenly bright and alert. 'Who?'
The memory coming back to her, Maeve's contorted face slowly relaxed. 'A fine-dressed gent, like a count or something. Older, kind of puffy, like he didn't get out much. He was all formal and stuffy too, kind of like a magistrate or-'
'Maeve, did he have a name?' She was rambling and Pinch didn't have the patience for it.
The sorceress stopped and thought. 'Cleedis… that was it. He was from someplace too. Cleedis of…'
'Cleedis,' Pinch said in a voice filled with soft darkness. 'Cleedis of Ankhapur.'
2
It was one of those statements that could be understood only with mouths agape, and the three did so admirably. Maeve blinked a little blearily, her slack mouth giving her the look of a stuffed fish. From out of sight, Sprite-Heels suddenly stopped hiccuping. The grumbling of a drunk as he argued the bill, the clatter of dishes carried to the back by a wench, even the slobbering snore of an insensate drunk filled the silence the three scoundrels created.
It was up to Therin, naturally, to ask the obvious. 'You know this Cleetish?' he asked, wiping his sleeve at the drool of ale on his chin.
'Cleedis-and yes, I know him,' was the biting answer. This was not, Pinch thought, a subject for their discussion.
' 'Swounds, but ain't that a new one. Our Pinch has got himself a past,' the big thief chortled.
By now Sprite had hauled himself up from his sprawl on the bench. Though his hair was a tangled nest of curls and his shirt was awry, the halfling's eyes were remarkably clear for one who only moments ago was half done-in by drink. Still, his words were slurred by ale. 'Wha's his nature, Pinch-good or ill?' The little thief watched the senior rogue closely, ever mindful of a lie.
Pinch tented his finger by his lips, formulating an answer. All the while, he avoided the halfling's gaze, instead carefully scanning the common room under the guise of casualness. 'Not good,' he finally allowed. 'But not necessarily bad. I haven't seen him in a score of years, so there's no good reason for him to be looking for me.'
'From Ankhapur, eh?' Therin asked more ominously, now that the drift of things was clear. 'Where's that?'
Pinch closed his eyes in thoughtful remembrance, seeing the city he'd left fifteen years ago. He tried to envision all the changes wrought on a place in fifteen years, see how the streets would be different, the old temples torn down, the houses spread outside the outdated walls. Still, he knew that the Ankhapur he imagined was as much a dream as the one he remembered.
'South-too far south for you to know, Therin,' the rogue finally answered with a thoughtful grin. It was no secret that Therin's knowledge of the world ended about ten leagues beyond Elturel. Pinch could have claimed that Ankhapur drifted through the sky among the lights of Selune's Tears for as much as Therin knew. Still, maybe it was the remembering that made Pinch more talkative than he had ever been. Home and family just weren't topics of conversation for those of his trade. 'It's the white city, the princely city, built up right on the shores of the Lake of Steam. Some folks call it the boiled city. Take your pick.'
'So who is this Cleedis, Pinch?' Maeve wheedled. 'He seemed like a gent.'
'An old, foolish man,' Pinch answered offhandedly to end his reminiscence. Maybe there was more to be said, but the rogue offered no further explanation.
Sprite, his judgment decidedly impaired, was not going to let Pinch slip away. 'So wha' do we do? We goin' to meet with him?'
The other poured a blackjack of sack and gave Sprite a jaundiced glare. 'You're not doing anything. This fellow's looking for me, not you. We've had success tonight, and it calls for some drinking. Here's to my little diver!' the rogue raised his leather mug for the toast, and the other three quickly followed.
'Here's to Sprite,' Therin and Maeve chorused.
'Aye, here's to me,' the halfling burbled happily. He buried his childlike face deep into the overfull mug of wine, greedily tipping it back with two hands until the drink streamed down his chin.
Pinch took a judicious draught of his wine, while Therin and Maeve drank long and hard. Even before the others had finished, their master stepped away from the table. 'I'll look for you in the usual places,' Pinch advised. 'Finish your drinking and keep your eyes and ears sharp. The patricos are going to be looking hard for their thieves. It won't do to have any of you scragged now.'
'As you say it, Pinch,' Therin murmured dourly as he set his blackjack on the greasy table. Brown Maeve nodded her receipt of Pinch's caution. Sprite was silent, already insensate and snoring on the bench.
Gathering his mantle tight, Pinch stepped over the sleeping dog by the door and walked out into the bracing dawn.
The muddy lane was flecked with clumps of long-lasting snow that clung to the patches of daytime shade. Right now it was neither light nor dark but the point where time hovered between the two. The false dawn that dimmed out the lower stars was fading, replaced by the true dawn. Here though, the sun's first light struggled against the winter mists common to Elturel. How like Ankhapur, Pinch thought as he watched the hovering frost swirl through the night alleys. The comparison had never occurred to him before, not even when he'd arrived fresh from the south. Travel had all been new, wonderful, and terrifying then; there was never time for such frivolous speculation.
The man shook his head with a snap of his curly hair, as if to shake loose these romantic notions and rattle them out his ears. Such thoughts were all fatigue, and he could not allow himself that luxury of rest. First there was Cleedis.
The Five-League Lodge was far from Pinch's normal haunts. It perched halfway up the slope of Elturel's High Road, halfway between the base world of the common man and the uppermost crest of nobility. In Elturel, a man's address said much for his status. Chaperons in their salons counted how many streets a prospective suitor was from the top of the hill. Ragpickers always claimed their gleanings were gathered from the very summit of Elturel, an artless lie their hopeful customers accepted anyway.
For Pinch, all that mattered was that the best pickings were found in the streets that looked down on the
