Anthology: Thieves World: Turning Points

Cauvin flinched. It wasn't his answer the Irrune wanted, it was the Torch's. He braced himself for the sensation, a half-breath shy of pain, that came with a dive into a dead man's memories.

"No," he croaked, then, "Yes," as, in his mind's eye, rippling draperies the color of dried blood fell slowly over a round, silvery moon and-alongside the moon, as it could only be in recollection, never in life-a black disk sliced into the sun. The Torch's memories held nothing of shadows, but the Rankan priests had known the eclipses-that was the word Cauvin found with the images-were coming and that they would be over quickly, without damaging either the sun or the moon.

Cauvin fought his way back to his own mind. From Arizak to the guard holding the spear, everyone in the audience chamber was staring at him. "It could be," his tongue told the tyrant while his thoughts cursed the Torch to greater torments. "If-If Irrunega says it could."

"Wise man," Zarzakhan crowed, rushing to Cauvin's side. "Wise man."

Cauvin held his breath, but that trick failed when the shaman clapped him hard between the shoulder blades. Odor as thick as smoke filled Cauvin's chest and there was nothing he could do to keep himself from gagging. Zarzakhan clapped Cauvin a second time before retreating a pace. Cauvin couldn't stop coughing. Arizak couldn't stop laughing. The tyrant shook so much the stool beneath his rotting foot toppled and his foot dropped to the floor like a stone.

Cauvin froze mid-cough and stayed that way while Tentinok darted to Arizak's aid. The older man righted the stool and gently- oh-so-froggin'-gently-lifted the tyrant's foot onto it.

"Better," Arizak said through clenched teeth. "Leave us." He dismissed Tentinok with a flick of his hand.

Tentinok dropped to one knee instead. " Sakkim ," he pleaded, giving the tyrant his Irrune-language title. "I ask-I beg- She has done it again-"

"Kadasah?"

Tentinok nodded. "There was much damage. Many complaints. They want money ."

Cauvin was too close. He could hear the conversation he was not meant to hear.

Money was a sore subject between the Irrune warriors and the city they ruled. Bluntly, they froggin' refused to use it, said it broke their honor, and they'd have risen up against Arizak perMizhur if he'd been fool enough to argue with them. The tyrant was not a fool. He let his warriors keep their honor intact and quietly paid their bills from the palace. Shite for sure, since he could scarcely leave his cushioned chair, paying those bills-especially the bills run up by his own sons-was the joy of Arizak's life. Tentinok's problem was that he didn't have a wild son; he had a wild daughter who drank and fought from one end of Sanctuary to the other and back again.

Cauvin slid one foot back, prepared to get out of earshot-but retreat would only prove that he'd been listening, so he stayed put.

"I said, last time was the last time. You said there'd be a marriage."

Tentinok hung his head like a bullied child. "I have tried, Sak-kim ."

Cauvin had seen-not met, merely seen across the common room at the Vulgar Unicorn-the lady in question. She was attractive enough, even had a few dogged admirers-the timid sort of men who needed a froggm' strong arm to back them in their brawls- none of them Irrune or worth marrying.

Anzak understood. He laid a hand on Tentinok's arm and promised that he'd have his Wngglies-Cauvin and his neighbors, the native blood of Sanctuary, had been called Wngglies so long that they no longer considered it an insult and used it among themselves-settle Tentinok's debts… again.

"Now, go," the tyrant concluded and pointed toward the chamber doors.

Tentinok mumbled his appreciation and escaped. Cauvin wished he could have followed, but Anzak had already caught his eye and motioned him-or, more properly, his froggm' memories-into confidence range. Like Tentinok, Cauvin dropped to one knee beside the cushioned chair. Raith joined them-he had the itch for governing a city-and so-the gods all be froggm' damned-did the reeking Zarzakhan.

"It has gone as you predicted," Anzak confided once his circle had drawn close around him.

He fished among the cushions and withdrew a parchment coil with a broken seal that he handed to Cauvin who unrolled it. Only a few froggm' months earlier and Cauvin wouldn't have known which end of the scroll was top and which was bottom, much less that it was written in the elegant hand of an Ilsigi court scribe. Reading-even reading languages he couldn't froggm' speak or understand-was another of the Torch's froggm' legacies.

But read Cauvin could and read he did, while Anzak explained to his brother and Raith.

"The Ilsigi king hears his rival, the Rankan emperor, has sent a tournament to Sanctuary-to honor our role in his recent victories. The Ilsigi king suspects his rival has other reasons. He does not say so, of course, but he has sent us the emissary who brought this, a golden statue of a horse my grandmother would not stoop to ride, and eight fighters to-what?-'uphold our ancestors' glory'?"

Cauvin nodded: Those were the words and the gist of the letter King Sephens IV had signed and sealed himself.

"So," Anzak continued, "now we have them both in Sanctuary, suspecting each other while they pry after our secrets. What are our secrets, my friend?" The tyrant scowled down at Cauvin. "Why are they here?"

"War," Cauvin replied with his own wits. He'd had enough time with the Torch's memories to learn some things for himself. "The Nis in the north are finished. Garonne is in revolt and devouring itself. There's nothing to keep Sepheris and Jamasharem"-the Ran-kan emperor-"from each other's throats."

"Of course, war," Arizak snapped. "They are young and strong and the world is too small. But why here ? Why Sanctuary?"

A twinge of almost-pain squeezed Cauvin's heart. He couldn't speak until it had passed and, by then, it was all clear in his mind.

"Sorcery-magic, prayer, and witchcraft." He listed all three branches, of which witchcraft was the most feared, the most reviled. "They know about the eclipses… When the moon is swallowed, everyone from Ilsig to Ranke will know, but the disappearance of the sun"-Cauvin swallowed hard: The Torch's memories were no match for his own dread-"that will happen here . And between the two"-he shook his head, but the images of fire, blood, and things he could not name would not dissolve-"great sorceries will be possible."

"This tournament is diversion," Arizak mused. He was a wily, farsighted man. "An excuse to flood Sanctuary with strangers… sorcerous strangers."

"Irrunega!" Zarzakhan shouted and slammed his staff to the floor.

"What manner of sorcery is possible between the eclipses?" Raith asked.

Cauvin got along well with Raith. He would have answered the young man's questions without a goad from the Torch's memories, but memory was no fair guide to the future. "Powerful sorcery, that's all I know," he admitted. "The sort of sorcery no one's seen for forty years or more. Worse than ten years ago, when the Bloody Hand tried to summon Dyareela. Doors could get opened, and left open. We can't be too careful."

Arizak stroked his chin and nodded. "We need someone in that tournament, someone who'll win-"

"And someone who'll attract trouble," Raith added, and they all turned toward him. "Naimun," he suggested with a guileful smile. "Who better than my brother?"

"Anyone would be better than Naimun!" Cauvin answered. "He can't be trusted!" Raith's slow-witted but ambitious elder brother had already been caught treating with the outlawed remnants of the Bloody Hand, not to mention every foreign schemer who washed ashore.

"We don't need to trust him," Raith snarled coldly. "We need only follow him."