Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel Read online

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  About the Author

  Thief's War

  Copyright © 2014 Hilari Bell

  Cover art & design © Anna-Maria Crum

  Book design by © 2014 DeAnna Knippling

  Euternia Ornaments courtesy BoltCutterDesign.com

  Courtney Literary, LLC, Colorado Springs

  www.courtneyliterary.com

  To Charles Bell, Wilson Bell and Joyce Griffen, a.k.a. Aunt Kelly, Uncle Bill and Uncle Chuck. You are missed.

  The sounds of injustice reached our ears as we rode into the town square: shouted taunts, the mushy thump of soft fruit smashing against wood, and the low angry mutter of the crowd. It was a large crowd, for a smallish town—it looked like every adult in Casfell was out in the streets and our hound, True, moved in closer to the horses’ heels. There were so many people that at first I couldn’t see the object of their ire.

  Fisk spotted it before I did. “There’s someone in the stocks.”

  “No. Surely no one would…”

  I followed his gaze and saw the flat wall of boards, two hands and a balding, gray-haired head emerging from it as if some obscene sportsman had mounted a kill there.

  Fisk and I had seen these contraptions in several of the towns and villages we’d passed through lately. Except for the stocks, the towns appeared quite pleasant. The buildings were mostly made of plastered mud-brick in these treeless plains, roofed with thatch that glowed golden on days less overcast than this one. The stocks had been the only off note—and I’d not really believed that anyone would put them to use.

  The law of the High Liege, which runs throughout the United Realm, is that crimes against property are paid in coin. If a man can’t pay another can redeem him, and he then works off the debt. Crimes of blood and pain are paid with the lash, or in extreme cases, maiming. And if life is taken, the noose.

  These stocks, we were told, were an innovation out of the great city of Tallowsport, and that a man who owed coin and couldn’t raise it could pay back his victims and the law with this lesser pain. A “middle ground” of sorts. Though from what I could see, it might hurt as much as a flogging.

  “He’s not a young man. After a few hours in that position his back will begin to cramp. A few more hours, and he’ll be in agony.”

  ’Twas too late now, for anyone to pay this man’s fine, but in any other part of the realm he’d have been allowed to work off his debt. A surge of anger, of the need to make this right swept over me. The Liege’s law shouldn’t have permitted this, but the Liege wasn’t here.

  I was.

  “Maybe they’ll let him out at sundown,” Fisk said hopefully. He knew what I was thinking. “That’s just a few hours off.”

  Indeed, the gathering clouds, which we’d been hurrying to beat into town, made it seem almost dusk already. The low buildings, none more than two stories tall, did little to cut the cold wind that swept before the storm.

  “And if no one was willing to put up coin to redeem him,” Fisk continued, “maybe he did something rotten enough to deserve this. Have you considered that?”

  “Doubtful.” I gestured to the sullen townsfolk. “’Tis the guardsmen who are throwing fruit and insults. These people are angry with them.”

  Indeed they were, an anger so bleak and dark that, True, who usually frolicked up to strangers for a pat, slunk behind us with his ears and tail drooping.

  Fisk sized up the crowd with a gaze more expert than mine would ever be.

  “There’s no way I can talk you out of this, I know. But we’ll have to wait till everyone’s gone to bed. You do realize that?”

  I did. I also knew that ’twould gall Fisk to leave the poor man to suffer till nightfall as much as it did me. However…

  “I’m not that foolish. He needs a crafty rescue, not a noble failure.”

  “Then we might as well go to the inn, and get a room and a meal,” Fisk said practically. “And more information as well.”

  I sometimes wonder if Fisk has quite forgiven me for rescuing Lady Ceciel—which I must admit, we shouldn’t have.

  Almost a score of guardsmen, in the blue and brown tunics of the Tallowsport City Guard, were standing around the stocks. A daring daylight rescue would only bring Fisk and me to join their victim.

  And remembering Lady Ceciel, a bit more information might not come amiss.

  Still, a deep and helpless pity dragged at my heart as I turned my horse, Chanticleer, toward the inn at the far side of the square. Righting things like this was my chosen profession, and I was loath to let it wait.

  * * *

  “So,” Fisk said as a waitress in a clean cap and apron set plates down before us. “What’s all that about?”

  Lanterns had been lit against the darkness of the oncoming storm, giving the large room a cozy air, and ’twas warm enough to hang my cape and Fisk’s coat on the pegs near the door. The taproom was redolent with the scent of roast pork, and the hefty helping of turnips, carrots and potatoes that accompanied it looked delicious. Despite my anxiety for the old man in the stocks, appetite stirred. We’d been riding all day.

  “That’s a local problem.” The man who spoke sat on Fisk’s other side. He wore a blue cloth coat with brass buttons. A clerk, mayhap, or a well-to-do craftsman. “Bad business. But no matter for a stranger.”

  “’Taint a local problem!” a stout man across the board from us said. This inn seated most of its customers in the old way, at a single long table with benches, though there were smaller, more private tables along the walls. For our needs, this common board was perfect.

  “Judicar Makey may have been born in Casfell,” the stout man went on. “But he learned his law in Tallowsport. Those guardsmen are out of Tallowsport. Even those stocks are a Tallowsport perversion. Only thing local is the man in ’em! It’s a curst shame, and if our mayor was here it wouldn’t have happened!”

  A number of voices chimed in to agree with that, and we soon had the story without having to ask more than a few questions.

  The man in the stocks was a farmer named Ruffo. When the food train came through, Ruffo tried to sell them short measure, using crooked scales…or so the judicar who heard the case had claimed when he passed sentence.

  Fisk and I had seen the long lines of freight wagons that hauled goods and coin out of the city and went back laden with food. Although in this early spring season, the only produce available was grain and a variety of hardy root vegetables, like those that vanished from our plates as we listened to the townsmen argue. The food trains were always accompanied by a large contingent of guards, which made sense, considering the coin they carried.

  So what were those guards doing here, when the train had moved on?

  Most of the townsmen said that Ruffo was an honest fellow who would never cheat on his scales, no matter how much he’d objected to the food train looting local larders. A smaller portion of the men around us thought that Ruffo hated the trains so much he might have cheated—but they seemed more admiring than disdainful.

  Trust in the integrity of this Judicar Makey was notably lacking. Several men commented on how very well the judicar was doing these days, but no one uttered the word “bribery” aloud.

  The argument was still rumbling on, and getting louder, when Fisk and I left the table and made our way up to our own room—a private room, which Fisk complained cost more than we could spare. But staging a daring rescue out of a room occupied by six other men was beyond even Fisk’s notion of economy.

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “I think so many of the men do
wnstairs are making suspicious statements, the sheriff won’t even think to put a couple of strangers on his suspect list.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant. Injustice is being done here. Do we need to bring this Judicar Makey down, after we’ve freed his victim?”

  Fisk sighed. “I suppose it’s no use trying to convince you that tackling every injustice in the world isn’t our job. We’re certainly not getting paid for it!”

  “You agreed with me about leaving a bit of money for that widow and her children,” I pointed out.

  “It was more than a bit! And that has nothing to do with this.”

  That was Fisk, squirming out of admitting that he’d been the one who thought of setting the woman up in a business so she could maintain her new family. I must admit, the loom cost more than I’d expected.

  “Besides, prying him out of the stocks might get that man into worse trouble,” Fisk went on. “He’s got a farm. It’s not like he can take to his heels.”

  That was a fair point.

  “Once we’ve taken out the guards, we can ask him if he wishes to be freed or not,” I said. “Whatever the obstacles, we can’t leave him to suffer. If need be, we’ll find some way to return him to his farm.”

  “I love the way you say, ‘Once we’ve taken out the guards,’” Fisk said. “There’s a score of city toughs around those stocks.”

  “There won’t be a score,” I assured him. “Once the street clears, they’ll only leave a couple of guards. Maybe none, if it rains.”

  “We couldn’t be so lucky,” Fisk said.

  A brilliant flash outside the shutters and a grumble of thunder answered him.

  * * *

  The cold rain cleared the street, and with the clouds obscuring both moons ’twas dark long before folk went to bed. It was just after nine when Fisk and I locked True, who Fisk refuses to call by his rightful name, into our room and let ourselves out of the inn’s back door.

  The laundry maid must have doubted the storm as well, for a line of clothing dripped as we crossed the yard. We opened the back gate, and after we’d passed through I propped it nearly closed with a handy cobblestone. I didn’t want anyone to see it swinging wide and latch it behind us.

  The night was so dark we had to grope our way along the alley wall, back to the square. I heard the splash ahead of me, more than I saw Fisk stumble. His curse was almost inaudible in the pattering rain.

  “You may be right,” he said. “No one sane would stay out in this. They’ve probably already made their point. When we get there the stocks will be empty, and we’ll be soaked and freezing for nothing at all.”

  “Mayhap.” But neither of us turned back. And on reaching the mouth of the alley, I saw that for once Fisk was wrong.

  The old man still hunched in his bonds. Rain poured down on his back, which must be aching like fire by now.

  I could see this clearly because four lanterns had been set around the stocks, spread far enough apart to bathe a forty foot circle in the clear white light shed by magica phosphor moss—the only light source that gets brighter when it’s wet.

  One guardsman remained. He’d removed his tunic and thrown it over his head for shelter, but he hadn’t had the decency to throw even a blanket over his prisoner.

  “They’re well equipped,” said Fisk quietly. “If they can afford magica lanterns.”

  “It’s a safe light source for moving carts down the road after dark.”

  I wondered why they’d left those expensive lanterns and a guard behind, for Fisk was right. They’d made their point—whatever it was—after Master Ruffo’s first hour in the stocks. But it seemed they didn’t agree with us, which meant I had a point to make.

  “We won’t be able to get there before he spots us,” Fisk said. “Not even close.”

  “Yet we must approach to take out the guard.”

  I expected some smart comment about seeing the obvious, but Fisk stiffened.

  “Wait here.”

  He turned and hurried back down the alley. I heard a splash, and a muttered “poxy potholes” as he tripped again.

  I turned back to observe our target. The lanterns that surrounded the stocks had their downside. I had sat by enough campfires to know that the guard would be able to see nothing beyond that circle of brilliance. But the opposite side of that coin was that we would have to go into the light to disable him.

  Only a few minutes passed before Fisk returned, carrying a patched cloak from the laundry line and an empty grain sack… “Because unless you’re willing to kill him, it would be good if he never sees our faces.”

  I wasn’t willing to kill, and Fisk’s plan was better than anything I’d come up with. I emerged from the alley and set out across the square, walking easily, like an ordinary citizen returning from the inn.

  It appeared I’d been right about the guard’s night vision; he didn’t even glance in my direction. So instead of going back behind the houses, I turned and made my way quietly up the square, simply keeping low enough that I wouldn’t pass between him and the light that glowed behind the shuttered windows.

  The fact that he clearly didn’t see me did nothing to quell the mix of terror and elation that always set my stomach quaking before a fight. It’s somewhat like the feeling I got looking down from the top of a precipice—part of my imagination playing with the feeling of taking flight, while the rest of it pictured the carnage at the end of the fall. That feeling, multiplied by twelve.

  I reached the best position I could attain without coming into the light, and waited for Fisk.

  Looking out of the shadowed alley, Fisk’s night vision was better than the guard’s. He set off across the square immediately. And if the guard couldn’t see him at the first, he was still aware of his presence because Fisk kept up a high-pitched muttering monologue. As he drew nearer, I’d have sworn I heard him say something about “goat brains.”

  The guard had dropped his tunic down to his shoulders, staring narrow-eyed into the darkness with a hand on the hilt of his sword. Then Fisk tottered into the light.

  The cloak’s hood covered his face, but that might not have mattered, so perfect was the rest of his performance. His back bent into an old woman’s hunch. His feet moved in an old woman’s tiny, rapid steps—he even wobbled from side to side, as the ancient sometimes do.

  His voice was an alto croak that certainly sounded like an elderly woman to me, as he trotted determinedly forward.

  “Goat brains,” he mumbled. “Gad rabbit, goat brains.”

  “What?” said the guard. “Mistress, you shouldn’t be out here. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Whip snapper, goat brains, ressa frizzlitz,” said Fisk. Or words to that effect. He had almost reached the stocks now, but suddenly he listed and then staggered to the side. Away from me.

  The guard took his hand from his sword, and leapt to steady “her.”

  “I’m sorry, Mistress, I don’t understand what you’re—”

  “Goat brains!”

  Fisk exploded from under the cloak like a crossbow bolt, his fist smacking squarely into the guard’s jaw.

  The man dropped to his knees, then reached out his hands to catch himself as he fell forward.

  ’Twas the work of a moment to dash out of the shadows and pull the grain bag over his head. I pushed the guard flat, put my knee on his back, and bound his hands behind him.

  Fisk hopped around shaking his fist and exclaiming, “Curse it, that hurts! How come I never remember how much that hurts?”

  “Because you don’t do it often enough?”

  The guard began to stir and struggle. I rolled him over, and located his mouth by the way the sack sank in as he drew breath to shout. His first cry was muffled by my hand clamped over it. The second by the handkerchief I stuffed in, taking quite a lot of the sack with it. I didn’t entirely manage to avoid his snapping teeth, but the heavy fabric blunted their sharpness. Fisk’s handkerchief, tied over the mess to keep it all in place, en
ded any threat from the guard. I bound his ankles and left him to roll about emitting muffled shouts, which we both ignored.

  Fisk had gone to the old man in the stocks, who’d been staring at us in shock. “Master Ruffo, do you know if this guardsman has the key?” He jiggled the padlock that fastened down the top board.

  “No. That is, I don’t know. He wasn’t the one who locked it. My back…” Even in the rain, I could see that he wept with pain. “I don’t think I can move.”

  “Then we shall move you,” I told him. “Fi— uh, can you pick the lock?”

  Fisk, who would never have forgotten that a man bound and gagged still has his ears, was already searching the guard’s pockets. “Nothing. If I had the proper tools, warm hands, and all the time in the world, maybe I could. As it is? No. But there’s another way. Hang on.”

  He threw his cloak over Master Ruffo’s thin, drenched coat before he raced off. I was beginning to shiver myself; the poor farmer had tremors running all through his body.

  I put my hand under the cloak and began to rub his back, briskly for warmth, but gently too. His muscles felt like wood they were so cramped, and I feared we’d have to carry him.

  “Master Ruffo, what will happen if you vanish tonight? It occurred to us that an escape might leave you in even worse trouble.”

  “Get me out of this.” The man’s teeth chattered so much he could hardly speak. “I’ll worry about the rest later.”

  My sensing Gift, which sometimes tells me when I’m followed or that someone is about to approach, must have been taking a nap. I wasn’t aware of the woman’s presence till an astonished voice demanded, “Who under two moons are you?”

  Gifts are talents that anyone might possess, enhanced to an unnatural degree. Some of them are as reliable as breath. And some, like the sensing Gift, aren’t.

  She stood at the edge of the light, old, though not as ancient as Fisk had feigned to be. A basket hung over her arm.

  “Madge!” Master Ruffo’s voice shook. “Get out of here. You’ll get—”

  “We’ll get both of you out of here,” I promised, somewhat rashly. “Mistress, remember that guard is probably listening.”