Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune (20 page)

Chersey wanted to give them both a hearty shake, but until Dace came home to settle the matter the only thing shaking was her nerves. He’d been gone all night. Dace had never stayed out all night, and for him to disappear at the same time as Perrez’s Yenizedi rod. If such a rod had truly been in Perrez’s possession … Well, it
was
suspicious.

Ammen and Jopze were out on the streets, working their connections, hoping someone had seen Dace. Sweet Shipri, with that limp and crutch, he was easy to notice, hard to forget

“I never trusted him,” Perrez insisted. “He’d stare right at you like he was staring through you, like he was planning something. Planning to rob me blind!”

“You encouraged him,” Bezul sneered. “Showing him the rod, using him as your message boy. He idolized you—the gods only know why—”

Chersey retreated to the shop. The door was barred because none of them was in the mood for business. She was counting padpols for no good reason when she heard a knock.

“Chersey, Bezul—let me in!”

Chersey recognized the voice: Geddie—the scrawny girl from the Frog and Bucket, the very last person she wanted to see.

“We’re closed.”

“I got to talk to you—it’s about Dace.”

Chersey hurried to the door. As she opened it she saw the crutch—Dace’s crutch—in Geddie’s hand.

“Sweet Shipri—”

“Can I come in?”

Chersey retreated. “Bezul! Perrez!” She’d meant to shout their names, but there were tight bands across her breasts. “Where did you get that?” she asked Geddie. “What happened?”

Footsteps signaled that Bezul and Perrez had heard her. Chersey was transfixed by the crutch; she couldn’t turn to see her husband.

“Don’t know,” Geddie answered.

The girl’s discomfort was palpable and, to Chersey’s eye, not from grief. “How did you get his crutch? Dace wouldn’t go anywhere without his crutch!”

“He—he—I don’t know. He was where he shouldn’t’ve been and—and—he’s
gone!
That’s all.”

The world spun, taking Chersey’s balance with it. She would have fallen if Bezul hadn’t caught her. Somehow he supported her and took the crutch from the girl’s hand.

“Gone? Gone where?” Bez demanded. “Back to the swamp? Were you with him? Do you know who did it?”

Geddie shook her head and ran from the shop. Perrez started after her. Bezul barred his path with the crutch.

“Leave it. Whatever’s happened, it’s out of our hands. You were right; Dace was over his head.”

“My rod!”

“Wasn’t
your
rod.”

“He stole it from me and that girl knows—”

“Stop it!” Chersey screamed. “Stop it, both of you! He’s gone. Gone!
Dead.”

The last word tore her throat and stole her strength. They couldn’t be sure, of course. They’d never be sure, but they’d all survived the Troubles. They all knew what
gone
meant.

Chersey clung to Bezul for support. He rubbed her back and stroked her hair like a little girl’s.

“There, there. It’s not your fault. We did everything we could.”

Guilt muted Chersey’s voice, she could do no more than shake her head while she sobbed.

A
week passed. The sea went glassy and there wasn’t a breeze to be had in the whole city. Old-timers squinted at the clouds lined up on the horizon and checked the latches on their storm shutters. At the changing house, Bezul asked for help battening down the stock. Perrez heard the call and made himself scarce. He wasn’t one for hard labor or sympathy.

The way Chersey mourned, anyone would think Dace was flesh and blood instead of a thief. There wasn’t a doubt in Perrez’s mind that the Nighter had stolen the shipwreck rod. Perrez hadn’t imagined the boy had enough cunning for thievery. Frog all, if he
had
imagined it, he’d never have shown Dace the wand, much less the cache where he kept it.

Frog all.

The day after the theft—the day after the frogging boy vanished—Perrez had made a personal visit to Lord Noordiseh’s Processional mansion to confess the bad news. Lord Noordiseh had taken it well, and why not?
His
future and fortune wasn’t riding on the sale of a Yenizedi rod.

Damn the Nighter and damn the world … Every frogging time Perrez got something put together to get himself lifted off Wriggle Way, something else came along to ruin his dreams. Something named Dace.

And something called
opah.

It wasn’t Perrez’s way to blame himself when there were more worthy targets to hand, but he wished he’d handled that conversation with Dace differently. He’d guessed the boy was tangled in the
opah
trade. Perrez even had a fair idea what had happened: The Nighter had gotten himself in debt—probably to Maksandrus over at the Frog and Bucket—and Makker had put Dace up to the theft.

Perrez could have told Dace that Makker never settled for less than blood. Even money, Makker had killed the Nighter soon as he had the Yenizedi rod in hand.

“What a fracking, frogging waste,” Perrez muttered as he strode along Fishermen’s Row.

He could have bought the damn rags. The rod would have made him rich, but Perrez was not poor without it, not so poor he couldn’t have bought nine
opah
rags. He could have thrown stronger warnings across Dace’s bows, but he’d been the recipient of strong warnings all his life and knew exactly how the boy would have received them. He’d thought that disdain would be enough: Respectable folk knew better than to rot their tongues with
opah
…

Perrez came to the dock where he’d first met Dace, almost a year ago, when the boy had ventured across the White Foal to sell some cheap jewelry he’d dug out of the swamp ruins. A few gulls bobbed in the water, otherwise the dock was quiet, unoccupied, unobserved.

Perrez stared at the birds until they took flight, then he dug into his trousers and pulled out a wad of cloth. It was another waste, another fracking, frogging waste, but Perrez reckoned that he owed the boy something and slowly, scrap by scrap, he cast his
opah
rags into the water.

Gathering Strength

Selina Rosen

K
aytin feigned sleep as he heard Kadasah slamming around the hovel she called home. She made not even the hint of an attempt to move more silently in order to keep from waking him up.

And he so desperately needed to sleep. He had chased the accursed woman until she caught him, and now … Well, she was trying to use his manhood completely and totally up.

He would have liked to believe that she kept him so “busy” because she knew his reputation for being a lady’s man, and was afraid he would stray. Unfortunately, he got the distinct impression that when she wasn’t using him in one way or another she didn’t give a good damn what happened to him, or what he did, as long as he was handy when she needed him again.

Kaytin felt spent, but how could he possibly tell the woman he’d chased for years that one really could have too much of a good thing? In fact, Kaytin fully believed that if he begged for mercy she would find someone in the same minute who she believed could keep up with her.

Not that Kaytin believed any one man could.

Kadasah’s energy seemed to be boundless, and every time she killed one of the followers of the Lady of Blood, her sexual appetite became even more insatiable than usual.

And she had killed a lot of them lately. Or at least it seemed like a lot to Kaytin; of course his fatigue and Kadasah’s embellishments had blurred the actual numbers, but he was pretty sure she’d killed at least two in the last four weeks.

She would scour the area between the ruins of the Temple of Savankala and the Street of Red Lanterns, hunting for her prey. Sometimes when none of the Bloody Hand had surfaced for a while she would go into the tunnels after them with a stealth almost magical. So Kaytin knew damn good and well that she could be quiet when she wanted to!

Ever since that bloated, silk-clad pud Kadasah called her patron had given her four times her normal fee for the little added information she’d gleaned from their near-death experience in the tunnels, she didn’t need any encouragement at all to go right down into the ground. More times than not dragging poor Kaytin right along behind her.

Kadasah seemed to be highly motivated by money—a fact that defied all explanation, because she never seemed to have any, and she certainly didn’t have anything to show for it. She chose to live in the decaying outbuilding of an abandoned redbrick estate in the hills beyond the walls. The roof of this building was only a few half-rotted timbers with an old oilcloth stretched across it. The door had ropes where hinges should have been and a hole in the middle of it big enough to throw a cat through. There was no furniture, not even a stick. At night the only light was from a red lantern she’d stolen from the street with the same name. It hung from a tattered piece of rope tied to one of the before-mentioned half-rotted rafters, and every time she refilled the lamp she had less rope. When Kaytin asked why she didn’t just put up a new rope she explained that the one she had still worked.

There was a big stack of old blankets piled haphazardly in the middle of the floor, which she called a bed.

She owned exactly one stew pot, a skillet, a wooden bowl, and a spoon, all of which she kept in a wooden box by the front door of the three paces by three paces structure. She kept their food supplies in there as well, when there actually were any. And she—they—would stay here for days at a time, eating whatever might be in the box and whatever Kadasah could kill. Not, of course, including the cultists, though sometimes he wondered.

Kaytin had given up asking what the current burned animal hanging on a stick might be, deciding it was easier to eat it if he just didn’t know
what
it used to be.

Kadasah kept more in her saddlebags than she did in her house, except of course when the saddlebags were in the house. What she could pack into those bags never ceased to amaze Kaytin. It seemed that whenever she needed something for her “work” it was always contained within one of them.

Kaytin didn’t know just how much her “patron” paid Kadasah for the pieces of skin laden with scars or tattoos she left as proof of her kill—she had certainly never told Kaytin an exact amount—but he had a feeling that they could be living in the lap of luxury in some apartment in Sanctuary instead of out here in the filth.

He wondered just what she did with all the damn money. She gave him only barely enough to jingle in his pocket—Kaytin didn’t mind being a kept man at all, but he would have liked to be at the very least
well
kept.

It was true that they ate and drank a lot in the taverns and bars of the city, but they didn’t eat
that
much, and he doubted even
they
could drink that much. Besides, she made a frequent habit of sneaking out without paying her bills at all. Sometimes she’d even purposely start a brawl just to keep the barkeep’s attention drawn away from the fact that she was leaving.

In fact she stole most everything they needed. The only time Kaytin had ever seen Kadasah willingly part with money was to buy new weapons from the Black Spider.

Kaytin remembered the day well. He had found the shop shortly after it opened and happened to have been there to see the owner’s own prowess with the weapons he sold.

When later that day Kadasah had proudly shown Kaytin the new weapons she had bought to replace the ones that had been taken by the followers of Dyareela, he had looked at them, yawned, shrugged, and told her he’d seen better, and at better prices.

She demanded to know where, and he took her straight to the Black Spider.

“C
an I help you?” Spyder asked from behind the counter.

She turned to look at him and smiled. “New weapons.” “But your weapons look new,” he said looking at her, one eyebrow cocked in suspicion.

“Aye, but my friend tells me they aren’t as good as your weapons,” Kadasah said slamming a thumb Kaytin’s way.

Spyder had smiled at him. “Good to see you again, Kaytin.”

From that moment on it was as if Kaytin had gone invisible. As Spyder showed Kadasah all the weapons, she moaned and groaned in damn near orgasmic ecstasy. It was embarrassing to see her gush in such an uncharacteristic manner.

Spyder hadn’t even had to work at talking her into the most expensive bastard sword and hand ax in the entire store, with a trade-in of course. She didn’t blink an eye at the cost nor did she try to steal the things. And when she had handed over her weapons, paid the difference, and had them fastened to her person, she was in no hurry to leave. She didn’t suddenly remember that she had come there with Kaytin and say,
Come on, Kaytin, let’s go, and by the way thanks for bringing me here, and I love you with all my heart and soul.

No, she never even acknowledged his presence. In fact, it soon became painfully obvious why she wasn’t showing that she was connected to Kaytin at all as she began to flirt outrageously with Spyder, not that Spyder for his part seemed to take any notice. She engaged him in conversation about weaponry and even played dumb. She started telling him stories, bragging about her riding abilities, all her battles and her talent with both sword and ax. She even, once again, told the tired story about how she’d killed three men with one ax blow.

At first Kaytin had thought it was all some trick, some way for her to get her money back, because he had never known Kadasah to flirt with any man including—maybe even especially—him unless she wanted something. But no, she never once started to steer the conversation into, “You’re in a bad section of town, and I am the best bastard sword fighter in all the Kingdom, maybe the known world, and for a small fee …” No, she was actually flirting with him as if Kaytin didn’t exist at all.

“I’m wondering,” Spyder asked, “why you didn’t enter the tournament?”

“Tournament?” Kadasah had asked curiously.