Roland Green: Knights of the Crown

He also had time for relief, that the newcomer was a woman. She was as tall as he and possibly as strong, judging from the solid wrists and the wide shoulders. The face was heart-shaped, however, the wide eyes an appealing green, and the hair (cut as if intended to fit under a helmet) shining and fair.

The woman wore sandals of gold-stamped leather, a robe of fine linen that clung to a figure well worth clinging to, and a broad, plain leather belt that held a purse and a dagger. Pirvan had no time to speculate what this curious combination might signify, when the woman turned and came straight for the bed.

Pirvan could not make himself invisible, but he did the next best thing. He cast the Spell of Seeing the Expected, making himself look like one of the spare quilts sprinkled with herbs and thrust under the bed in a silken bag. He was sure he only roughly matched the shape and probably did not match the color at all, but the woman was unlikely to look under the bed with a lamp in her hand, and the spell would conceal him against anything short of that.

The woman did not look under the bed. Instead she knelt beside it and reached both hands beneath without looking. If she had looked, Pirvan’s luck might have been up, because her left hand passed within a finger’s length of his nose. Even in the shadows and through the faint blurring of the spell, Pirvan saw that the hand was strong and shapely, with short, clean nails, weapon calluses on palms and fingers, a fresh, ridged scar across the back, and a shallower, older scar on the wrist.

Both hands gripped something in the deeper shadows just above Pirvan’s head and withdrew. He heard the clink of a lock or catch, something falling, something else (heavier and wooden, he thought) also falling, and another clink. He saw the hands returning, this time clearly holding something thin, dark, and rectangular. They seemed to lay it down in thin air, then withdrew again.

Pirvan waited long after the hands withdrew, and even a good while after the hands’ owner withdrew. Apart from relighting the night lamp, the warrior-lady did not linger, and Pirvan now remembered tales that one of Lady Eskaia’s chief maids, being a retired mercenary, also served as her bodyguard.

Why retired? Pirvan asked the shadows. She’s younger than I am, or I’m a gully dwarf.

Pirvan reached cautiously into the shadows until his fingers met something in the right place. A cautious tap said “wood.” A cautious grasp brought down a wooden strongbox, as plain as any journeyman carpenter had ever made for himself, to hold the day’s earnings.

Indeed, it lacked even the simplest of locks. Clearly this was something protected by secrecy rather than strength. Pirvan flipped the latch, trusting to his gloves to guard him against any spring-thrust poisoned needles.

Instead his grip slipped, and the box upended, spilling a dozen small, irregular silk packages to the floor. They were about the size of large lumps of charcoal, but from the sound they made, were a good deal heavier. They also felt heavier in Pirvan’s hands, and when he opened one, he understood why.

After opening the rest, he understood much more. He held in his hand a fortune in gemstones, enough to buy this estate or dower Lady Eskaia for marriage to a prince. Rubies, moonstones, serpent’s-crowns, and more-none set, but all cut and faceted by the hand of a master. Possibly of use in magic, but one would have to deal with a mage to sell them for that. Without that dishonorable and dangerous course, they were still of use in giving one Pirvan the Thief an easy life for some time.

If Lady Eskaia and her house could spare that much. The jewels being concealed this way suggested that they were a secret between the lady and her martial maid. This suggested that they would not raise a great uproar about their disappearance.

The jewelers also would not raise an uproar. But they might ask hard questions about more than-oh, six such bags. Since each bag contained seven or eight jewels each worth a month’s easy living, Pirvan decided against taking more than six. Indeed, three might be enough-but since he had never encountered such a light and valuable fruit of a night’s work, why not make it four?

Four bags of jewels were in a pouch carefully left empty for just such a purpose when Pirvan crawled out from under the bed and began retracing his steps.

The Willow Wand was not famous throughout Ansalon or even throughout the city of Istar. This was exactly the way the owners wanted it.

“Famous taverns go through three stages,” one of them had said, some years before Pirvan had begun frequenting the place. “First, they flourish because everybody is coming and spending freely. Then the money doesn’t roll in so freely, because people are coming to be seen rather than enjoy themselves. That sort drives the paying customers away, faster than a drunken minotaur.

“Finally, the ‘I was at the Willow Wand last night’ sort find some other place to go. They leave, all the others are gone already, and if you don’t have to shut your doors, it’s only because Shinare is on your side. Now, what kind of ale did you order?”

The owners carried this opinion so far that about the time Pirvan became a notable thief, the Willow Wand became a notable place if you wanted to be invisible while you amused yourself. This a man or woman could do easily enough, as the food was good, the drink better (after the owners disposed of a lot of alleged dwarf spirits, which they bought under circumstances they would never reveal), the rooms were clean, and the service as friendly as anyone might reasonably wish.

Two nights after his night work at the Encuintras estate, Pirvan was sitting at a table in a shadowy alcove, normally reserved for three or four guests. But it was a slow night; Reida had led him straight to the table and put down a mug of beer before he even had a chance to slip his boots off. She came back with bread and cheese, pickles, and word that the special stew was almost hot.

Pirvan went through two servings of the bread and cheese before the stew came (it hadn’t been as far along as Reida had thought), and ordered another beer with the stew. Even a single use of his one modest spell took a good deal out of him, and he’d had to use it again on his way out, making himself look like an elaborately pruned dragon’s-tongue bush for nearly ten minutes. (He’d met the lovers on their way in, with no time to hide. They were disheveled and sweaty, but not so far into passion now that they would overlook a strange man clad entirely in black wandering the grounds.)

The best way to put back into himself what the spell took out was to rest and eat well for a few days. The recovery had gone on longer than it had the last time he’d needed the spell, and he’d begun to think that the years were overtaking him. (If so, he intended to give them a long chase. He also intended to avoid having to use the Spell of Seeing the Expected more than once in any single piece of night work.)

The stew had potatoes, onions, carrots, lamb, and assorted spices. Tonight was one of the milder versions; Pirvan had encountered one batch that was potent enough to fire from siege engines, to spatter over attackers and blind them, or even blister them inside their armor. Pirvan all but inhaled the first bowl, and Reida was there with a second one before he knew that he was going to ask for it.

“Never understood how you can eat so much and stay so lean,” she said, setting the bowl before him.

Pirvan smiled before he touched his spoon. Most women described him as “thin” or something even less flattering. Reida had a reputation of being the friendliest of the serving maids, though she was pleasant-looking rather than pretty. Indeed, it was said that she could be very friendly indeed, if she liked you-but her likes and dislikes were as random as lightning bolts (and she had a tongue that could burn anyone she disliked as thoroughly as the lightning, too).