Paul Durham - Dishonour Among Thieves

“Who are you?” Rye demanded, doing her best to channel her mother’s voice.

The reply came from deep inside a hollow. “Names are a precious paint to be shared cautiously. Offer yours first, and I’ll tell you mine.”

“Rye O’Chanter,” she said, forcing herself to stand straight and stare hard at the masked face in front of her.

The man reached forward with a long gloved finger. Before she could flinch, he pulled her hood from her head. He leaned in closer, as if studying her. His mask was scaled armour the texture of an adder’s skin, his own eyes just slits behind its red-ringed eyeholes. Unlike all of the other Luck Uglies’ masks she had ever seen, this one had no nose. But a gaping maw loomed open, part of a grotesquely distended chin that extended all the way to his chest.

“I’ve seen you before.” He was close enough that she felt his breath when he said it.

“What’s your name?” she asked sternly, ignoring the knot tightening in her stomach. “Before you do something you’ll regret, you should know that my father is a Luck Ugly too.”

“Slinister,” he said from deep behind his mask. “Now you say it.”

“What?” Rye asked, in a retreating voice that was very much unlike her mother’s.

“You asked me my name and I told you. Now repeat it.”

“Slinister,” Rye said quietly. If words had taste, this one would have rolled sour off her tongue.

“That’s correct,” he said. “And yes, I know very well who your father is. In fact, I know him better than you do.”

The hollow of his masked mouth was so black and wide it seemed it might swallow her. She took a step away. When he didn’t move to follow her, she took another.

“You may go,” Slinister said, waving a dismissive hand. “Perhaps we’ll have a chance to meet another day.”

Rye’s steps quickened as she moved along the ice, never taking her eyes off the man named Slinister. She found Good Harper struggling to regain his feet. She grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him up, then hurried him across the frozen river. His plum-coloured scarf dragged behind them.

“Remember my name, Rye O’Chanter,” Slinister called as he watched her go. She glanced back over her shoulder just once, and was relieved that the night now shrouded his fiendish mask.

As Rye and Good Harper took refuge in the safety of the woods, Slinister’s cohorts slipped from the shadows and plundered the Mud Sleigh, loading their own sledges with every last gold grommet and silver shim. They unhitched the horses and led them away. Finally, when the sleigh was stripped to nothing more than an empty shell, the looters lit a raging ring of fire around the camp. Their sledges had disappeared far downriver by the time the sleigh broke through the melting ice and sank beneath the frigid water.

Rye and Good Harper huddled under a tall pine. Rye shivered, more from the shock than the cold. She couldn’t comprehend what had just happened.

“A pox on the Luck Uglies and their bargains,” Good Harper muttered. “Mouse droppings for the whole lot of them.”

No sooner had he uttered his curse than a spectre clad in black leather and fur appeared like a flickering shadow. In the moonless night, Rye could have mistaken it for a massive wolf rising up on its hind legs, but in its hands, two blades glinted in the light from the fire. Rye pressed her back against the tree. There was nowhere to run.

“Come to finish the job?” Good Harper called defiantly.

The shadowy figure loomed for a moment then, stepping forward, violently thrust its swords downward. Rye pinched her eyes tight. She heard the steel sink into something moist. Perhaps she was just too numb to feel their bite. But when she cracked open one eye, fearful of what she might find, she saw both blades embedded in the ground.

The figure pulled off its wolf-pelt hood and clutched her by the shoulders.

“Riley,” the man whispered, his familiar grey eyes wide in a face of faded scars, “what in the Shale are you doing out here?”

“Harmless!” Rye exclaimed. She blinked in disbelief. “You tell me – you’re the one who sent for me!”

He gently touched her cheek. His hands, like the rest of his body, were etched with tattoos, and while Rye didn’t think there was anything magical about the circular patterns on his palms, whenever he did this it seemed to warm her whole body, his night-chilled skin notwithstanding.

“Make no mistake, I’m always glad to see you,” he said softly. “But I did nothing of the sort.”

Rye shook her head as if she didn’t hear him correctly.

“Three Luck Uglies came to our cottage with a message. And here, on the river, there was a man – a Luck Ugly, I thought. He called himself Slinister.” She shuddered at the thought of his split tongue. “He said he knows you well.”

Harmless’s jaw hardened. A darkness seemed to creep through the lines of his scarred face. Rye had only seen brief flashes of that look before and each time it had unnerved her. Harmless must have sensed her unease and pulled her close. His embrace and tender tone shielded her from the fire in his eyes as he scanned the burning river.

“Don’t fret,” he whispered. “We’ll sort this out in due course. But right now we must be on our way. I know a safe place to spend the night.”

The hour was late by the time Harmless escorted Good Harper to the closest roadhouse on the path back to Drowning. But to Rye’s surprise he then led her away from the warmth of the inn. They travelled not to the village, but over the edge of a tall bluff and down the jagged coastline. Waves crashed around them as Harmless navigated a rocky shoal that seemed to lead directly into the sea. He only stopped when they reached a mountainous outcropping nestled among the tide pools.

“Here?” Rye asked in disbelief.

Harmless put an arm over her shoulder and waved a hand above him. “Here.”

What looked to be a massive sea stack loomed over them. But now, within spitting distance, it became clear that it was nothing of the sort. The battered rocks had been hollowed out and rising from the waves were two enormous doors. Each the width of a castle’s drawbridge, they were wide enough to sail a ship through with the tide out to sea, but would once again become a submersed secret when the water rolled back in. A towering, weatherworn mansion seemed to grow out of the craggy rocks, its crooked gables, twisting turrets and jumbled archways slinking upwards like coral in search of sun.

Rye shot Harmless a wary glance from under the folds of his fur cloak.

“You’ll like it. It’s a secret – even from the Luck Uglies,” he said, appealing to her insatiable curiosity. “We won’t stay long. I promise to return you to Drowning in short order.”

But as luck would have it, the lingering hand of a stubborn winter delivered one last blow the next morning. And no one, not even Harmless, the High Chieftain of all the Luck Uglies, was going anywhere at all.