Roland Green - Knights of the Crown

Clearly, Pirvan’s night work had set the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance. From what Grimsoar had learned, Lady Eskaia and Haimya had covered their tracks for the moment, removing a few more jewels from the dower coffers to make it seem that these had been the thief’s goal. The family had informed the watch and the priests and tightened the guard on the house, but so far there had been neither scandal nor suspicion that the maid knew about.

What she did know was a rumor that Eskaia had a mage in her pay, to find the thief or avenge the theft or punish the thieves’ brotherhood or something portending bloodshed and dark dealings. Most likely, last night’s affair was the mage’s first achievement; it would not be the last.

“Even worse, one can’t be sure that the mage isn’t taking silver from both House Encuintras and the pirates,” Grimsoar concluded. “They themselves won’t come nearer Istar than Karthay, if that far, but there are always local merchants who will buy and sell for them. Merchants mentioned by name in the temples sometimes.”

“That there’s little justice in the world is something I’ve known as long as you, friend.”

“Not unless you’ve met the kind of man who judges wrestling bouts at brass-piece fairs,” Grimsoar said.

“I bow to your indescribable wisdom.”

“Then don’t try to describe it. What are you going to do?”

“Does your debt allow you to help me?”

“You might even say it commands me.”

“As well. I mean to give the jewels back.”

Pirvan had suspected for a good long while that he was going to do this, if only to keep the peace with his fellow thieves. Now that he had heard Grimsoar, suspicion became certainty.

If he did anything else, even return them by a messenger who might not hold his tongue, House Encuintras could face scandal and uproar. The thieves would face further magical retaliation.

It was against Pirvan’s principles to tarnish the honor of a victim. His night work aimed at their purses, not their reputations. It was as against the customs of the brotherhood to bring other thieves into danger. Thieves older and more successful than Pirvan had ended in the arena or mysteriously dead in back alleys, the harbor, or sewers, for endangering brothers and sisters.

Prudence, honor, and his prospects for the future all forced him in the same direction. After that easy decision, though, came the hard ones. The Encuintras estate would hardly be as open as it had been the first night. To be sure, he had only to find either Eskaia or Haimya, not open locks or penetrate strongrooms, but keeping them from betraying him (in the lady’s case) or running him through (as Haimya looked fit to do) might be quite as difficult.

The thought of the sewers returned. He looked at Grimsoar One-Eye.

“Brother. How are you at deep work?”

* * * * *

“Haimya, this is the third night you have walked the halls.” Eskaia emphasized her displeasure by setting down her teacup hard enough to chip the saucer and splatter the remains of the brown liquid over the bedclothes.

“You promised that you would allow me to engage the thief upon his return.”

“Or her. If it is a thief.”

“You have begun to doubt.”

“I have always doubted that you could prowl the house like a staring cat every night with impunity.”

“What punishment do you have in mind?” Haimya now looked not only tired but angry and frustrated, almost to the point of tears.

“I will give none. But the gods may make you ill, or so weak that the thief defeats you. He may return to give us back the jewels, but that does not mean he will care to be subdued and handed over to the watch. He may even have his eyes on some more lawful prey, or at least some that will cause less talk.”

Haimya smiled. “Did anyone ever tell you that you talk like a counselor at law?”

“Frequently, beginning with my Uncle Petrus, who taught me that manner of speaking.”

“It rings oddly on the ear, though, from one your age.”

“No doubt, Grandmother.”

Haimya was older than Eskaia, at least twenty-six to the lady’s nineteen (twenty next month), and toughened further in several years’ campaigning as a mercenary. Eskaia still refused her guard-maid the right to treat her as a child.

“Now,” Eskaia said briskly, as she swung her legs out of bed. “See that the bathchamber is prepared. Meanwhile, you can sleep here in my chamber by day, once the maids have done with it. That way no one will disturb you.”

Haimya frowned. “People will talk.”

“They already have,” Eskaia said. “I doubt that they will or even can say anything new. It was lies, it is lies, it will be lies. When we have the jewels back, you can challenge anyone whose lies have been too gross and loud. Or I can find some cause for dismissing them, even sending them to the arena.”

“I will-oh, Kiri-Jolith! If I killed everyone whose tongue wagged to my annoyance, I would have been in the arena long ago.”

“True. Few seem to understand that you are loyal to Gerik, and merely wait for him.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I suppose gossip is less of a burden than the one you bear.”

“Oh?”

“I have no father urging on me one man after another.”

“No, but neither do I have old Leri. If you were not loyal to her son, what her spirit would say to you would make anything my father has ever said sound like the cooing of doves.”

* * * * *

For Pirvan, deep work (as the thieves called traveling through the sewers and drains of Istar) with Grimsoar One-Eye had several advantages. The big man’s bull strength combined with his shrewdness about where to push and where to pull made passages through or over cave-ins possible, if not always easy or safe. He had a sense of direction underground equal to Pirvan’s aboveground. Between their combined senses it was impossible that they should get lost.

Finally, any passage wide enough for Grimsoar was more than wide enough for Pirvan, even at a dead run. He hoped tonight would demand only the Thief’s Three Laws: “Silence, stealth, subtlety,” but that lay with the gods. Pirvan did not intend to end in the arena for trying to make a restitution commanded by both his own honor and his fellow thieves!

The journey took longer than Pirvan had expected. Far below the ground, both his sense of direction and his sense of time weakened. He was sure that the gates were opening for the market carts of eggs and fish, vegetables and honey, when Grimsoar finally pointed up at a crack in the side of an ancient and odoriferous stretch of drain.

“There.”

Pirvan looked at the crack. In the flickering light of their lanterns, it looked too narrow for an eel.

“It looks too narrow for you.”

“It is,” Grimsoar said.

“Then how do you know-?”

“A brother once came up here with his son, who was about your size. The lad made it up with little trouble.”

“You know this-”

“I will name no names, but he took a deathbed oath.”

Pirvan nodded. He trusted Grimsoar One-Eye completely, and now he had to trust the dead thief. Deathbed oaths bound thieves to be utterly truthful in what they said with their last breaths. The fate for dying liars was said to be one that might make Takhisis herself flinch away.

He still disliked that shadowy crack. At least the stone around it seemed well set, for all that it must have been laid when Huma and the first dragonlances were within living memory. Istar or some city had stood on this land for a long time.

The cities had also endured much. Pirvan remembered a chronicle he had once read, of a city here enduring a siege. A party of citizens had come down, to wait out the siege living on hoarded food.