An Illusion of Thieves Read online

  “I’ll do it, you cursed witch!”

  My brother’s rage filled the room, beautiful in its passion and monstrous in its torment—like Dragonis itself. When the heated blade touched my wrist, it took everything in me not to move. But I held still and silent and expressionless. Moon House mistresses had beaten me for days on end to teach me that skill.

  Neri’s hand did not shake … but neither did it press any harder. “Romy,” he said hoarsely, “you’ve never had to—”

  “Don’t you dare make excuses,” I said. My rage matched his. “Don’t you dare speak. Cut me or drop the knife.”

  When the blade plummeted to the dirt floor, I snatched it up. That was when he started trembling like leaves in a storm wind. As did I.

  I sliced through the rest of his bindings and waved the knife at him. “Lie down and go to sleep.”

  Eyes dark as charcoal pits, he scrunched his lanky body on his pallet as if to make himself one with it. I sat on my own blankets, back to the wall, and doused the lamp.

  After a long while, his tight, short breaths grew long and even. Yet another night passed without sleep.

  * * *

  Morning light sneaked through the shutters and poked Neri awake. Nothing moved but his eyes, watching me heat water over our brazier and wash my face, neck, and hands—a small inviolate moment I stole every morning to remind myself there were other ways of living.

  “I can heat the knife again or we can talk,” I said, hanging my washing rag on a peg. “Which will it be?”

  “Talk.” His eyes were smudged with despair, not anger. “I don’t want you dead, Romy.”

  His croaking whisper prompted me to start a brew of hawthorn seed tea, a poor man’s nasty substitute for coffee.

  “Go on.”

  “Every night I dream about Da’s bloody stump.” Neri’s knuckle hammered on the table as if to jar out each word. “And I can’t forget how Mam sold you when you was naught but Lina’s age. Last spring, the little ones couldn’t even cry, they was so empty. And then I think of those rubies—of the fine things I saw in that house where you were—of other goods out there for the taking, things rich folk mightn’t miss. With this cursed magic, I could fetch them.”

  One would think I’d opened an aqueduct.

  “I’ve stole bread with my magic. A duck once from the polter. Oil when Mam couldn’t buy none. And yeah, a biscuit and a fig and wine and such, but it weren’t never enough to make me feel anywise but a coward. And I’m so stupid, I didn’t even know what to do with those rubies. Who buys ’em? Do they bring in sniffers if the one selling jewels is like me? I’m so scared of gettin’ sliced up, burnt, drowned—all what you told me—and just wanting so hard, I can’t think straight. But I swear I never told no one what I can do, nor what you can do … magic, that is. Nor who it was owned you.” He glanced up, cheeks ablaze. “Didn’t mean to make things so bad.”

  Neri’s rushing confession trailed away. Maybe he’d opened a part of himself he hadn’t intended. For certain his story had raised my own long-dismissed guilt. No matter what I’d told myself all these years, no matter logic, even at the Moon House I’d never starved.

  “Coming to fetch me at the Shadow Lord’s house, to warn me, was as brave a thing as anyone ever did,” I said. “Even what Da sacrificed for us—he didn’t have any choice. You did.”

  I poured the hawthorn seed tea and we drank in silence. When the cups were emptied, it felt as if a peace had settled over the house.

  “An idea came to me last night,” I said. “You held my knife all cockfisted. I think you need to learn proper fighting techniques. You’re almost sixteen and your sister can take you down as if you were three. It’s not just because I’ve eaten better than you for fourteen years. It’s because my Moon House tutors taught me to kill a man as efficiently as to rouse him.”

  Neri’s mouth moved but nothing came out of it, and his narrow cheeks flamed like the sun at its birth. To witness such total embarrassed stupefaction was almost worth three exhausting months. Ever cautious, I did not laugh, but by Lady Virtue’s hand, I wanted to.

  I didn’t want to believe Neri hopeless. To survive, he needed discipline. That, along with some tricks with knives, I could teach him. Other subjects, too, if he would allow it, but first, I thought, give him the teaching he would value most.

  Neri had seen enough over the past months to admit I knew things about combat that he didn’t. His alleyway flailing had never gotten him anything but bruised and humiliated. So we set aside an hour every evening to work. I began as the Moon House tutor had, teaching Neri ways to break the hold of a bigger and stronger attacker. From body positions and unexpected moves, we went on to strikes to nose, eyes, or side of the knees, where to plant elbows, and how to use the fist and fingers like a knife. I made him repeat each technique over and over every day until it was perfect before we moved on to the next. Discipline.

  “Such things were never to be used on one’s own master or mistress, of course,” I told him, when he marveled that a whore had been taught such things. “And never on their master’s friends who’d been given permission to use such prize possessions as Moon House courtesans are.”

  Neri—still a boy in so many ways—blushed when I added such scraps of information, no matter he spoke worse with his tavern friends. I pretended not to notice. I’d sworn to be honest with him, hoping he would be honest with me in return.

  “None of this will make you a soldier or a duelist. It might be enough to get you out of a scrape, but only if you’re quick enough and smart enough to run away once you’ve done it. I was groomed to become a complete servant who could pour coffee with grace, read my mistress poetry, or hold an assassin at bay long enough for my master to escape and summon his soldiers. We’ll work on the holding an assassin at bay before manners or sonnets.”

  “You’re thinkin’ to sell me to the Moon House?” Neri snickered, but with enough of an edge to tell me the jest had sober roots.

  “Oh, I see how girls look at you,” I said, nudging him a bit as he gulped a cup of ale. “But the Moon House wants children young enough that they can beat them down to nothing and start over. You’re far too old and stubborn for that.”

  “Demonshit, Romy!”

  Exactly so.

  * * *

  Ten days into our truce, Neri and I were making progress. It was the knife work he wanted, of course. He had no idea you could kill a man with a knife to the back of his neck or pierce a man’s heart from under his breastbone. I said I would teach him those things only when I could trust him not to use them unless in extremity. “… and before we go further, you have to start paying for the lessons.”

  “Told you none’ll hire me. I tried. Wasn’t lyin’.”

  “I believe you. So you’re going to work for me. Your pay will be your keep and more teaching.”

  I hoped to solve several problems at once. The larger problem was that the only skill Neri had was magic; to avoid the temptation to use it, he needed a way to earn his own money and to defend himself.

  The lesser, but still critical problem was that it was near impossible to keep the damp and dirt from sullying my clients’ pages. My father had taken only clients who supplied a place for him to work, but I dared not leave Neri on his own for so many hours. Our little hovel still needed a real door to block the wind and a real floor to minimize the damp.

  With the stifling discomfort that I was throwing away a good proportion of our remaining coin, I laid seven precious silver pieces in Neri’s hand. “Starting today, I need you to make us a door—something better than this scrap to keep out wind and rain. I also need you to cover this damnable dirt with wood.”

  “Me? But I don’t—”

  “Yes, you. I certainly don’t know how to do either task. Talk to people about it, watch, ask. Start with the ironmonger on the corner. He can likely tell you who to speak with and where to get the materials. We can’t afford to hire it done, and we cannot spend a copper more th
an’s necessary, certainly no more than this I’m giving you. If you need an extra hand for something, I’ll help, but you have to do the job. That’s how you earn more lessons.”

  He glared at the coins with such spite, I thought he would throw them in my face. Then without a word, he stormed out. I hoped I hadn’t ruined our peace. I hoped he would come back.

  It was a very long morning. But shortly after midday, he dragged in a few planks, a rusty chisel, and a wooden hammer. In less than an hour, I had to move my writing work to the Duck’s Bone, as his clumsy attempts to fit the splintered pieces together stirred up a maelstrom of dust, dirt, and unending streams of invective.

  Every evening he had to show me his progress and tell me what he’d learned. Most days he also vowed to quit, swearing I’d only given him the task to make him look the fool. The toolmaker refused to make a wedge for a thief’s spawn. A beggar woman stole the auger the ironmonger had given him. He cut his thumb trying to shape pegs with his eating knife.

  I helped bind the wound, but did not relent. If he showed me progress, I taught him something new, reminding him again of the consequences of brawling, thieving, or even thinking about magic.

  One of his excursions ended with a split lip and an eye swollen shut. His only explanation: “It was nothing. Didn’t scrap. Didn’t use magic. Didn’t spill secrets.”

  I had to trust him. That was the hardest work I’d ever done.

  By the end of a month, Neri declared his project complete. He pulled me into the alley to admire the newly hung door.

  No one would hire Neri to build a house any more than they would hire him to protect their children. Not yet. The splintery floorboards were more crooked and uneven than the course of a river, and the lightest spring breeze was going to whistle through the gaps in and around the plank door. But a well-fitted band of metal held the door planks together, the hinges didn’t screech, and the latch was solid, and when I sat on my pallet, I smelled clean pine beneath me, not piss-infused dirt. He’d even scooped the filthy oil and water from our sleugh and replaced it with new. Maybe it would keep our own demons at bay.

  “Decently done. A fitting day to move forward,” I said. “Did you know this is your birthing day?”

  “Today?” Was I imagining that he stood a bit taller? “Knew it was close—summer and all—but never knew exactly…”

  I showed him a page I’d been working on, pointing out the words he couldn’t read. “First day of the Month of Vines. Sixteen years ago today. On the night you came squalling into the world, I asked Da how I could remember the new baby’s birthing day and he showed me the date on a page he was copying.”

  “Da was a fool. Should’ve drowned us.”

  I couldn’t chastise him for a sentiment I’d voiced so often.

  To celebrate the completion of Neri’s task, I coiled the wire rope and hung it on the wall. At the night market we bought him a dagger of his own. Once home again, I taught him how to kill a man with a single thrust.

  That was as far as I could take him. On the next day, I went looking for the best swordmaster the Beggars Ring had to offer.

  6

  YEAR 987: SUMMER QUARTER

  “That is a listed duelist?”

  I couldn’t believe the bedraggled bulk huddled in the mud behind the Duck’s Bone could lift a sword, much less earn his living fighting other people’s contests of honor. He didn’t even lift his head as he spewed half a cask of wine into the fetid swamp of a horse yard.

  “The name Placidio di Vasil moved from unknown to second on the duelists’ list in Tibernia in less than half a year, when he was not even three-and-twenty,” said Fesci, the granite-boned, gravel-voiced woman who marshaled the Duck’s Bone. “My brother lives in Tibernia, in the shadow of the conte’s palazzo, and swears the story true.”

  “What happened?” The wine stench likely told the story. Drunkards’ tremors would ruin a swordsman.

  The taverner’s boot nudged the man’s hind end and elicited no response but a groan.

  “One match happened. Placidio was standing for the conte’s own cousin, who was also his chancellor, who had challenged the conte’s birthright. The duelist Gaetano di Brun, first on Tibernia’s dueling list for seventeen years and still in his prime, carried the honor of the conte himself. My brother witnessed the match, and says Placidio had Gaetano well in hand, toying with him to please the crowd before dealing the final blow. But the conte’s supporters near rioted, shouting that the upstart chancellor must have bribed Gaetano to fix the outcome in his favor, and the fight was stopped. The referees conferred and concluded that all was legitimate, especially as Gaetano was red-faced, sweating, and swilling wine as he waited, while Placidio stood cool and sober at the edge of the dueling ground.”

  “Then how … this?”

  “Placidio lost the bout. Some said he yielded because he feared reprisals from the Tibernian conte, whose fiefdom includes his own village of Vasil. Some said it was only luck he’d got so far up the list and Gaetano’s mastery won out. My brother believes that Placidio judged Gaetano too drunk or too ill to fight, and backed away from the win out of respect. Whatever the reason, Gaetano laid such a beating on Placidio as will never be forgot. The disgraced chancellor was banished forever from Tibernia and his children disinherited, no matter that the conte himself was childless, and that most believed the chancellor’s claim was righteous. Placidio fled. Eventually he came to Cantagna and started from the bottom again. Never made it more than halfway up our list. On occasion, you can glimpse the fighter he was. The rest of the time…”

  Some unintelligible mumbling shifted the muck by the duelist’s face.

  “What’s that, old man?” Fesci pulled a bucket from the rain barrel by the Duck’s Bone’s back door and doused the swordsman’s head.

  “Win more’n lose. Poor folk need champ’ns, too.”

  This was delivered with a sloshy resignation that did not bode well for clients relying on Placidio de Vasil’s prowess. You might stay alive by hiring a listed duelist to fight your battles. But if your champion lost the match, you still had to pay the fine, yield the land, suffer the marriage, or lose whatever honor you had submitted to the adjudication of Lady Fortune and the sword.

  “And he teaches swordsmanship?”

  “If you don’t mind he’s drunk more than not. None who’s put up with his teaching for more’n a month failed to learn summat, no matter they can’t say a rapier from a shepherd’s crook to start. You said you needed cheap…”

  “Life mus’ balance. Fast, slow. Win, lose. Drunk, sober. Live, die.”

  The big man rolled to his back, filthy beard, threadbare finery, and overpowering stink entirely at odds with a position even halfway up a list of fighters who relied on skill and wit to keep them alive to collect their pay. But the price the taverner had quoted was much less than every other swordmaster I’d queried, and perhaps a tutor whose wits were frequently clouded might remain unaware of the dangers associated with Neri and me.

  “Where does he teach?”

  “Uses the old barracks yard up to the Asylum Ring like all the others.”

  “That won’t do.” Condottieri, the mercenary soldiers hired by merchants and wealthy men like Sandro, often trained there. So did nullifiers. “I’ll find a place.”

  Grudging, I showed the duelist two silver solets, then dropped them in Fesci’s hand to hold for him. “The month’s retainer. Report to Romy in Lizard’s Alley at half-morn tomorrow. Sober. Bring variant arms suitable for a novice youth.”

  A grunt served for acknowledgment.

  I argued with myself all the way home. Neri needed this. But only fifty silver coins remained from Sandro’s purse of some hundred and fifty. I’d thought the purse could last us five years. My belly hollowed at the thought of living on my writing fees. I wasn’t yet earning enough to feed us.

  * * *

  “Humph.” The grunting swordsman stood in our open doorway. “Your place here—unexpected for the
neighborhood.”

  But for the accuracy of his sentiment, one might easily doubt that Placidio di Vasil’s swollen, seeping eyes could take in the details of my household. The rest of him was no more promising. He reeked of wine and urine. An angry scar creased his face from the left eye to a square chin buried in a clotted rats’ nest of black hair. Grime and grease disguised the colors of his limp shirt and threadbare doublet. Yet my expectations were not entirely correct, either. I’d thought him run to fat, but the buff jerkin and leather breeches hugged a big frame layered with muscle and sinew, and though the taverner Fesci had called him old man, not even his unhealthy skin would mark the duelist past five-and-thirty.

  “Fortune’s benefice, swordmaster. Be welcome.” I motioned him to step inside.

  “You’re no lawyer, are you, Romy of Lizard’s Alley?” he asked, lip curled enough to twist the ugly scar. He dropped a large bag of scuffed leather as his glance scoured the table and my shelf of pen cases, ink flasks, and stacked parchment.

  “Why do you care what I am?” I said, more curious than annoyed.

  “’Tis unsafe to have me waving a blade near vermin.”

  Truly, many citizens had reasons to be wary of lawyers. “Be at ease. I’m but a lowly scribe,” I said. “And it’s my brother Neri will be your student.”

  “Student?”

  My brother had arrived in the doorway as if his name had summoned him. He scowled at the slovenly man whose height topped his by the length of his forearm and whose shoulders made a solid wall the bedraggled garments could not disguise.

  “I know how to swill wine well enough.” He set a stack of clean parchment on the table.

  I’d hoped Neri’s errand to Fedig the pen seller would keep him away while I interviewed the swordsman. Fearing I’d be unable to find a teacher we could afford, I’d not told him of my search.