Canavan Trudi - The Traitor Queen

There is a mistaken belief, in Imardin, that printing presses had been invented by magicians. Anyone unaware of the workings of presses and magic could easily gain the impression, from the spectacular noise and the convulsing actions of the machine, that some sort of Alchemy was taking place, but no magic was required so long as someone was willing to turn the wheels and operate the levers.

Cery had learned the truth of the matter from Sonea years ago. Prototypes of the machine had been presented to the Guild by the inventor and the Guild had embraced it as a fast and cheap way of making duplicates of books. A printing service was then offered to the Houses for free, and to anyone from other classes for a charge. The impression that printing was magical was encouraged to deter others from starting their own trade. It was not until people of lower-class origins entered the Guild that the myth was dispelled and printing presses began to appear in the city in significant numbers.

The downside to this, Cery reflected, was the boom in popularity of the romantic adventure novel. A recently published one featured a rich heiress rescued from her luxurious but boring life by a young, handsome Thief. The fights were laughably implausible, nearly always involved swords rather than knives, and the underworld was populated by far too many good-looking men with impractical ideas about honour and loyalty. The novel had given a portion of the female population of Imardin an impression of the underworld that was a long way from the truth.

Of course, he had said none of this to the woman lying in bed beside him, who had been reading to him her favourite parts of these books every night since she had agreed to let him stay in her cellar. Cadia was no rich heiress. And I am no dashingly handsome Thief. She had been lonely and sad since her husband’s death, and the idea of hiding a Thief in her basement was a pleasant distraction.

And he… he had all but run out of places to hide.

He turned to look at her. She was asleep, breathing softly. He wondered if she really believed he was a Thief, or if he simply fitted well enough into her fantasy that she didn’t care if it was true or not. He was not the dashing young Thief of the novel — he certainly didn’t have the stamina for the adventures described, either in bed or out of it.

I’m getting soft. I can’t even walk up stairs without my heart thumping, and getting out of breath. We’ve spent too much time locked away in cramped hiding places and not enough time in fighting practice.

A muffled thump came from the next room. Cery lifted his head to regard the door. Were Anyi and Gol awake? Now that he was, he doubted he’d sleep again for some time. Being cooped up always led to him sleeping badly.

He slipped off the bed, automatically pulling on his trousers and reaching for his coat. Slipping one arm into a sleeve, he reached for the door handle and turned it quietly. As he pushed it open Anyi came into view. She was leaning over Gol, a blade catching the light of the night lamps, poised ready to strike. He felt his heart lurch in alarm and disbelief.

“What…?” he began. At the sound, Anyi turned to look at him with the enviable speed of youth.

It was not Anyi.

Just as quickly, not-Anyi’s attention moved back to Gol and the knife stabbed downwards, but hands rose to grab the assassin’s wrist and stop it. Gol surged up off the bed. Cery was through the door by then, but checked his stride as a new thought overrode his intention to stop the woman.

Where’s Anyi?

He turned to see that another struggle was underway over at the second makeshift bed, only this time it was the intruder who was pressed to the mattress, holding back the hands that held a knife hovering just above his chest. Cery felt a surge of pride for his daughter. She must have woken in time to catch the assassin, and turned his attack against him.

But her face was stretched in a grimace of effort as she tried to force the knife down. Despite the assassin’s small size, the muscles of his wrists and neck were well developed. Anyi would not win this trial of brute force. Her advantage was her speed. He took a step toward her.

“Get out of here, Cery,” Gol barked.

Anyi’s arms were forced back as her concentration was broken. She sprang out of reach of the assassin. He leapt off the bed and dropped into a fighting stance, whipping out a long, thin knife from within a sleeve. But he did not advance on her. His gaze moved to Cery.

Cery had no intention of leaving the fight to Anyi and Gol. He might one day have to abandon Gol, but this was not that day. He would never abandon his daughter.

He had slipped his other arm into the coat sleeve automatically. Now he stepped backwards and feigned fear, while reaching into the pockets, and wriggled his hands into the wrist straps of his favourite weapons: two knives, the sheaths fastened inside the pockets so that the blades would be bare and ready when Cery drew them out.

The assassin leapt toward Cery. Anyi sprang at him. Cery did too. It was not what the man expected. Nor did he expect the twin knives that trapped his own. Or the blade that, well aimed, slid through the soft flesh of his neck. He froze in surprise and horror.

Cery ducked away from the spray of blood as Anyi withdrew her knife, knocked the assassin’s knife from his hand, then finished him with a stab to the heart.

Very efficient. I’ve trained her well.

With Gol’s help, of course. Cery turned to see how his friend was faring and was relieved to see the female assassin lying in a growing pool of blood on the floor.

Gol looked at Cery and grinned. He was breathing hard. So am I, Cery realised. Anyi bent and ran her hands over the male attacker’s clothing and hair, then rubbed her fingers together.

“Soot. He came down the chimney into the house above.” She looked at the old stone stairs leading up to the basement door speculatively.

Cery’s mood soured. However the pair had got in, or found them in the first place, this was no longer a safe hiding place. He scowled down at the dead assassins, considering the last few people he might call on for help, and how they might reach them.

A small gasp came from the doorway. He turned to see Cadia, wrapped only in a sheet, staring wide-eyed at the dead assassins. She shuddered, but as she looked at him her dismay turned to disappointment.

“I guess you won’t be staying another night, then?”

Cery shook his head. “Sorry about the mess.”

She regarded the blood and bodies with a grimace, then frowned and peered up at the ceiling. Cery hadn’t heard anything, but Anyi had lifted her head at the same time. They all exchanged worried looks, not wanting to speak unless their suspicions were true.

He heard a faint creak, muffled by the floorboards above them.

As soundlessly as possible, Anyi and Gol grabbed their shoes, packs and the lamps and followed Cery into the other room, shutting the door behind them and lifting an old chest into place before it. Cadia stopped in the middle of the room, sighed and dropped the sheet so that she could get dressed. Both Anyi and Gol turned their backs quickly.

“What should I do?” Cadia whispered to Cery.

He picked up the rest of his clothes and Cadia’s bedroom lamp, and considered. “Follow us.”

She looked more ill than excited as they slipped through the trapdoor that led to the old Thieves’ Road. The passages here were filled with rubble and not entirely safe. This section of the underground network had been cut off from the rest when the king had rebuilt a nearby road and put new houses where the old slum homes had been. Though it was not quite within the borders of his territory, Cery had paid an old tunneller to dig a new access passage, but had left the old ways looking abandoned so that nobody would be tempted to use them if they did find them. It had been a handy place to hide things, like stolen goods and the occasional corpse.