Mercedes Lackey - Intrigues

The would-be thief was a boy, not a man, a boy no older than he was. A boy with a master to answer to, and who, so far today, had nothing to bring back to him. Coming back meant a beating or worse, and no supper. The boy looked at Temper with the eyes of a hunter amd saw good clothing, a man well-fed, with no obvious weapons. That was enough; the thief made his decision. Before Mags could even think of something to try and stop him, the boy was moving.

His was the cut-and-run style, rushing at the victim from under cover, cutting the bands of the belt-pouch, and dashing off with it. Effective only when conditions favored a swift escape, it was well-suited to a night-thief, and to thefts where crowds thickened and thinned again, hampering pursuit.

The boy thought he had such conditions—night, the alley, and a half a dozen escape routes on the other side of the street.

He was wrong.

The man heard the running footsteps; his instincts all came alive, and an unholy glee came over him.

The rest was a blur to Mags, caught as he was between the thoughts of the cutpurse and the thoughts of Temper. Temper threw off such violence that it rocked Mags back on his heels, but it was precise and calculated violence, and an acute pleasure in what he was about to do that was very nearly pain in and of itself.

The man moved at the last minute; the boy’s outstretched hands missed the tempting purse. There was a moment of anger and bewilderment on the part of the thief as his hands closed on air.

Then a flash of terrible pain and incredulity.

Then nothing.

And in the street ahead, all that anyone would have seen was the thief make a rush, the man step aside, and the thief falling to the ground as if he had stumbled. Except the thief didn’t get up again.

Temper passed on, leaving the cooling body of the boy in the street. It happened that quickly. One moment the thief was alive, the next, dead.

Mags could scarcely believe it; shaken to his core, he sought for Dallen, but found only that haze that meant Dallen was heavily drugged, and nothing would rouse him.

He recoiled from Temper’s thoughts, as the man savagely reviewed the three steps he had taken to break the boy’s neck with the pommel of his hidden dagger, so as to leave no obvious signs of violence on him for the Watch to find. Temper lingered lovingly over each move, each sensation, culminating with the climax of the weighted pommel striking exactly the precise point where the skull joined the spine, the single point that would kill the cutpurse instantly—lingering over the feel of the butt-heavy dagger in his hand, the solid impact with the skull, the sight of the boy sprawling just a little ahead of him, momentum taking what was already a corpse into a slide on the street. It was a perfect kill. Nothing could have been better—except, perhaps, if he’d had the leisure to strangle the thief with his bare hands.

Temper loved this. This was how it should be. This was what he should be doing, not skulking around, trying to find the—to find the—to find the—

Book! Mags realized as he finally “saw” what the man had been looking for all this time. He recognized it. He’d handled it himself, all unknowing.

It was the book of poetry with the pictures of flowers in it that had been left behind when they vacated, kicked under a couch and forgotten in the haste to depart.

The book of poetry. But—why?

Temper had been working for moons to discover who had it, what had become of it. Without the book he couldn’t—he couldn’t—

Before that thought could emerge, Temper’s goal swam to the forefront of his thoughts. The Palace. No... the Guard Archives. That was where their possessions had gone when everything possible had been gleaned from them. Temper had finally determined this, after weeks of finding where the Palace Guardsmen went on their nights off, and pouring wine down willing throats to lubricate them. Now he was heading for the Palace to get it back.

And there was no way for Mags to alert anyone, not this far away. Dallen was sleeping like the dead.

Now Temper’s thoughts were overlaid with agitation and anxiety, born out of the fact that the man knew he had orders, yet did not know what those orders were. In his world, following orders was of absolute importance, yet he could not follow the ones he had been given, because he didn’t know what they were. How could he not know what they were? That didn’t make any sense.

The book—the book—

What did the book have to do with all of this?

Mags tried to think what on earth there was about the book that had escaped everyone. Every single soul that knew how to look for such things had examined it. There were no false covers, there was no invisible ink. There was no way for packets of orders to be hidden in it.

So why—

Mags didn’t dare pause, for Temper, acting with that terrible urgency impelling him, was making his way from shadow to shadow with a speed that Mags could scarcely believe. The only possible way Mags had of trying to contact anyone up at the Collegium was to stop and concentrate, but he didn’t dare stop. If he did, he’d lose the man; if he lost the man and couldn’t say where or how the man was going to get in, the only choice would be to rouse the Collegium. If he did that, Temper would see and know that he had somehow been exposed, and he would vanish again. All that Mags could do for the moment was to stick with him, and hope that once they were on the grounds he could get hold of someone to raise a quiet alarm and ambush Temper as he searched for the book—the book—why the book? Why that book?

Then, like a gift, another set of images flashed across his mind and into Mags’ grasp. And suddenly Mags knew why he wanted it. The thoughts were carried on waves of frustration and despair.

The book was the key to a cipher he, and the rest, were using to communicate with their superiors.

It was nearly unbreakable too, unless you had the key.

The key was simple enough. Every fortnight it would change to the next set of lines in the given poem. Letters of the alphabet were assigned to the letters in those lines. There were further complications involving maths that Mags barely glimpsed and which made his head spin, but the basis was the changing lines of poetry in that book.

The irony was, since no one in Haven had had any idea that they were getting secret orders—from whom? Mags couldn’t tell, that wasn’t in Temper’s surface-thoughts—the orders probably could have been written plainly.

The problem was, Temper and his cohorts had come to the end of the poem they were using. The last message gave the number of the page the next one would be on. But they hadn’t memorized that, so even if they had memorized all the poems in the book, the odds of then remembering which one was on which page was rather slim.

And they couldn’t tell that to their masters. The message delivery all went one way. Nor was there any possibility of getting another copy of the book.

Not without going home. And anyone going home to report such failure would be killed. There was very little tolerance for mistakes; none at all for a mistake like this one.

The man Mags called “Temper” slowed his pace.

They were now among the homes of the well-to-do. There was great danger of being spotted here, there were many patrols of both the Watch and the Guard, and they were more alert to subtle signs of an interloper than were the ones down deeper into Haven, who watched mostly for overt violations of the law and crimes being committed openly on the streets. This was how Mags had gotten away with purloining so many dinners. Innkeepers and householders were expected to see to their own security. After all, there were only so many Watchmen and Guards, and far too many windows, doors, and roof-hatches.