Stardeep (3 page)

The man faced the wall, the pitch-soaked toes of his boots gripping the frigid mortar hardly at all. As if in supplication, he rested the side of his face against the tomb-cold stone, his arms splayed to either side. He hadn’t counted on the freakishly chill weather. Gusts off the Sea of Fallen Stars usually kept the city of Laothkund bearably tempetate, even in midwinter. Not tonight.

He eased his left foot forward. His supple, calfhide boots were ordinarily like extensions of his feet. But he was so cold he couldn’t feel his toes, and instead of providing extra grip when he needed it, the pitch seemed determined to trip him. The wind, mutteting with winter’s chill, thteatened to pull

him from the precipice, with or without help from the pitch on his boots, and dash him to the street.

A particularly stiff gust nearly turned his speculation into reality. He hadn’t had such a rude introduction to the hard cobble streets since childhood. Fear was not an option; he simply required a better hold. Immediately.

He inched his left hand along the too-smooth wall, feeling for irregularities between the bricks, his fingers searching for a grip. He’d removed his black gauntlets, as thin and fine as they were. Despite theit demonic talents, an unimpeded sense of touch was too precious to hampet when taking the street less traveled. But his fingers were quickly losing sensation in the heat-thieving zephyr.

The man, known in the city of Laothkund as Gage, was no stranger to heights. He’d plied his trade too long and too successfully to hesitate over leaping an alleyway chasm, or to shy from ascending a towet in utter darkness. He was so familiar with the lofty, tight places of the city he actually preferred them to the wide streets. Normally.

His fingertips eased over a gap, deep enough for good purchase. “Thank the Queen of Ait,” he muttered. With the new handhold, he levered himself around to the east side of the building, out of the wind.

Gage was a slender man, so much so that most assumed he was a wood elf mix. Many in Laothkund were, aftei all. But his birth hadn’t followed a moon date. No, his wiry shape was forged from years spent tunning through Laothkund’s twisting neighborhoods. Few could match his knowledge of the city or his ability to quickly navigate the congested lanes. No one was better at jumps, vaults, wall runs, slides, or lucky tumbles. No one knew better which of the many laundry lines would hold a man’s weight, and which would instantly snap if tested.

Serendipitously, the same skills were perfect for a

housebreaker. Or, as they called it in the narrow stteets of the Tannery, thieving.

Ahead was the high shuttered window that had first drawn Gage’s attention from the neighboring roof. He sidled along the ledge, moving with increasing confidence.

No light escaped from between the shutter slats. He pried a wooden strip away from the sill and saw the reason—behind the shutters, the window was completely sealed with brick and mortar.

He rubbed his nose, considering. The thief had reconnoitered the warehouse yesterday. This window was the only entrance not under constant scrutiny. Sure, he could probably engineer a ruse that would allow him to slip in the front door. But the time necessary to design and implement a plan subtle enough to penetrate the lair of Sathra of the Shadow Tongue would be onerous. And boring.

Actually, the bricked-up window might work in his favor. How could any of Sathra’s stooges predict the resources Gage could bring to bear against simple mortar? He doubted whatever lay beyond the sealed window was guarded. Gage cautiously pried a few more slats away from the shutter.

He pulled his gauntlets from his belt and slipped them onto his hands, clenching his right hand as if squeezing something lest it wriggle from his grasp. The gloves were warm, almost hot to the touch, and his chilled fingers tingled. The eye on the back of the left glove opened and blinked up at him. A muffled voice groaned. Gage brought his right fist up to his face and whispered, “Quiet. We’re on a job.”

He unclenched his fist, revealing a distuibingly realistic mouth in the palm, complete with lips botdering a dark cavity where none should be, in which a too-sinuous tongue squirmed, dripping venom. The glove whispered, “I will eat your soul.”

It always said that.

“Eat rock instead.” Gage responded.

He turned the muttering palm toward the mortared wall and pressed, achieving complete contact. The eye on the other glove blinked stupidly, but the demon physically bound in the fabric of the thin gauntlets knew what he wanted.

The wall seemed to shrink away from his touch. A moment latet, every brick in the sealed window shivered and pulsed, each pushing away from the other in defiance of the mortar that held them. Gage pushed forward and the bricks dimpled, parted around his silhouette, then closed over after him. He was inside. Behind him, the bricked window settled back into perfect solidity, hardly any worse for wear. Not a trick he could pull very often.

Gage carried many hidden advantages—a half-dozen throwing knives secreted about his body; a broad leather belt stitched with pockets containing a spool of stiff wire, a petite oil tin, several miniature abrading files, a flask of pitch, and an assottment of alchemical mixtures; and of course, his catlike grace and exceptional mind.

All these tools and talents paled in comparison to his gloves, despite their penchant for sneaking out in the middle of the night and getting up to mischief. Not for the first time Gage thanked the Queen of Air, Akadi, on his good fortune in acquiring the gloves. A year ago, he’d taken a commission to pilfer a tome called Glyphs and Griffons from the library of the mage Tenambulum. Once he’d secured the book, he’d been unable to resist looking around Tenambulum’s sanctum. The absent mage had a reputation as a demon catcher. Most of a day later, shivering and bleeding, Gage had emerged wearing the Hands of Paymon. Almost all the days since then had proved his choice a good one. Though he’d learned it was dangerous to rely on the gauntlets too entirely…

He stood in the cluttered interior of a small, nearly pitch black room. A storage closet of some sort? He produced one

of his alchemical oddities—a clear glass vessel that produced light nearly equal to a candle when shaken. He shook. Crates, barrels, and boxes jumped into visibility, jammed and jumbled together. A fine layer of dust covered everything. No one had opened the door into this room for some time.

He sidled up to the doot, under which wan light peeked. He pressed an ear to the wood and held his breath. He heatd nothing save the beat of his own heart.

Unless the silence heralded an ambush, he’d penettated the lair without alerting the occupants. Although “penettated” was perhaps too optimistic a spin on the depth of his entry into Sathra’s domain. Metaphorically, the closet was more like a ledge to which he clung by his fingers.

He sincerely doubted the prize he’d come to claim resided in the jumble of crates and barrels.

Nonetheless, he examined the contents of a wooden container; old habits were hard to break. He found dried fish—and it had gone bad. He crinkled his nose and replaced the barrel-head, careful not to touch the rancid contents. A foul smell could betray him as easily as too much noise ot straying into a sentinel’s peripheral vision.

Back to the door. The hinges were chancy. He pulled the oil tin from his belt and dripped the lubricious fluid onto the two brass fittings. He stowed the canistet, waited a moment for the oil to penetrate, then eased the doot open a finger’s breadth.

A hallway. Not very wide. Stairwell at the far end. Two other doors stood in view besides the one he peered from, one of which was ajar. A hanging lantern, its wick turned low, burned from the hallway’s center. Both ends of the passage were thick with night shadows. Good.

Gage stowed his light and emerged from the storage closet. He eased the door shut and merged with the darkness. He crept down the hallway, approaching the glimmering lantern

and the doors that stood across from each other. Brighter light danced from the slightly open door.

A raucous laugh told him the room was occupied. The laugh was followed by a hoarse shout, several jeers, and a draft redolent with stale pipeweed and vinegary wine.

He stepped up to the partially open door and squinted into much brighter light. Caps, overcoats, gloves, and cloaks lay in disarray on the floor around a large table. Six or seven hardbitten figures sat under a crude chandelier of lanterns. They were absorbed by a game of cards. Probably Sathra’s low-brow muscle, off duty from their tasks of intimidation and loan collection. He studied the amounts being wagered. A lot of coppet, some silver, and a gold or two proudly glinting from a few players’ stakes. Not worth making a play for.

He glided across the hall to the other door. It was unlocked. He risked opening it a sliver. The room served as a billet, currently empty, but with enough cots for ten or so men. He closed the door, considering.

Gage had options. He could flit past the card game and down the stairs, leaving the players none the wiser. But if he met trouble he couldn’t deal with quietly at the bottom of the stairs, the card players would come running.

He could launch a surprise attack into the chamber and try to take out as many players as possible before they subdued him. Gage was certain he could knife a couple, and the blinking eye of his left gauntlet could probably put the fear of hell into one or two more—leaving the remaining few to beat Gage into the flooiboards. He was at his best when his foes were not aware of his presence. Inviting a pitched battle was a risk he wasn’t stupid enough to take.

He could try the special alchemical concoction he’d been saving—a nasty fluid that vaporized into a gas on contact with air, and brought sudden sleep to those who inhaled it. But the game room might be too large. The gas might not

reach the farthest players before they raised the alarm.

Gage decided on a trick he’d employed on a couple other occasions with modetate success. He ran his finger down the pockets he’d sewn in his wide belt, and stopped at the one etched with two lines side by side. He pulled out a narrow tube filled with the gooey pitch he normally reserved for high climbs. Pitch had so many uses.

He rolled the tube from the end, forcing out a line of black paste he applied in a stripe up the door frame. He used half the remaining pitch in the tube, perhaps more than necessary. It was expensive, but he shrugged. Better to expend resources than wish he hadn’t skimped later. Gage recapped the tube and returned it to his belt. Taking a breath, he slowly swung the door closed. Door and frame squeezed the sticky pitch between them.

No sounds of surprise or alarm followed. If no one opened the door for another few moments, they’d find themselves held inside. Not for more than a moment, at most. But a moment could spell the difference between Gage getting in and getting out with a minimum of punctures.

He nodded at his handiwork and made for the stairs.

Five steps and he stood on a landing with a switchback. He continued down.

Gage peered into anothei passage like the one above. More doors, though; two on each side and one at the far end.

He suspected the door at the end was his ultimate destination. Still, prudence dictated he check the other four on the way.

The first door on his left smelled like a chamber pot. Sure enough, a privy, and none too clean. He doubted Sathra used this one.

Across the hall from the privy he found an office. A man sitting at a desk strewn with parchment and quills looked up as Gage peered in. “Yes?” said the man.

Startled, Gage slammed the door closed. Nice. If he sat thinking for an eternity, he doubted he could imagine a more suspicious response.

He jerked the door open again. The man was rising, his open mouth wide with alarm. “Hey!”

Quicker than thought, Gage flicked a knife from the concealed scabbard below his left arm, flinging it across the room with the same graceful motion. The knife plunged into the man’s mounting yell, silencing him.

The thief dashed forward and caught the body before it crashed onto the desk. He lowered the still-twitching form to mud-smeared floorboards. He retrieved his dagger and cleaned it on the man’s pants. Poor bastard. He told the glazing eyes, “You asked for it, working for Sathra. I’m sure you’ve done far worse in your time.”

He stood, sheathing his knife. Gage checked the hallway to see if he’d roused any activity, then pulled back, closing the door. Returning to the desk, he skimmed through the papers scattered across it. He discovered the man he’d just knifed was a mid-level functionary, captain of the muscle upstairs and another group on this floor. Not part of Sathra’s personal force, then; the captain apparently didn’t measure up enough to be counted among the so-called “Shadow Cadre.” Gage hated that name. According to a rough floor plan he found, the cadre was housed on the ground floor. He kept reading.

He found documents describing traffic in hellborn drugs, a protection racket broader than he’d imagined the Shadow Tongue could engineer, the outline of a scheme to blackmail the ruling council of Laothkund by implicating them in a made-up alliance with Thay, illicit slave trade in children… things that would curdle the stomachs of any moral person.

But Gage wasn’t here to right wrongs. He looked for a clue, any clue to the singular article he sought.

Was this it? A note about a detachment of Sathta’s cadre deployed to retrieve an item, unnamed. Whatever it was, Sathra had issued specific instructions—the item was not to be fenced under pain of death to her underlings. She wanted it returned directly to her, in this building, as her prize.

That had to be it! For Sathra to name something as a trophy instead of metely selling it, an item had to be particularly special. As he knew it to be. Gage had never seen anything quite so beautiful, and no trinket had befote awoken his acquisitive nature so surely. If he could, he’d keep it for a prize, too…

Gage shook his head. He couldn’t let his covetousness overmaster him—the object wasn’t for himself.

When Sathra’s people stole it from under his nose, Gage was furious. He was here to steal it back.