RINGS (The Paladin's Thief Book 2) Read online

  “You’ll have to share with Carmen.”

  I get them my spare and we hoist Carmen out of her chair and onto the soft rug. Lucinda is more gentle than I’ve seen her, except maybe when she’s feeding the orphans out behind the Black Cat. It isn’t but a moment and her golden hair is mixing on the kitchen floor with Carmen’s red, and both are sleeping. Carmen’s light, soft inhalation is masked by Lucinda’s deeper, huskier tone.

  Finally.

  My aching bones tell me what to do. I’m halfway asleep when there’s a sound at the door.

  Knock. Knock.

  POUND.

  POUND. POUND. POUND.

  “Youhoooo! Yooohoo? Mishter Shteeps?”

  There’s a ruckus outside and the clattering of shutters from the third apartment up, just across the narrow alley. The elderly lady that lives there isn’t always in the best overall health, but she’s got a great set of pipes, some healthy arms, and she doesn’t like being woken up.

  “PAN’S MANGY BEARD! THIS SHOULD SOBER YOU UP, YOU NOISY SON OF A RAT’S NUT!”

  Splash.

  “Arrsh!”

  I stumble down the stairs, wondering what poor creature got blasted with Sonya Marconey’s wastewater. It’s Markel, incredibly drunk, but otherwise dry as a brick from the oven.

  Where his shirt and coat are, Pan only knows.

  “Hi!” His face implies he needs some hospitality.

  “Sorry, Markel. No alcohol policy, remember.” That’s mostly true. I certainly don’t drink it, but sometimes I steal it. Nobody really needs high quality alcohol, so I don’t feel as guilty about fetching it down to Petri for the resale. Some of Barkus’s finest drinks come courtesy of my careful wine cellar investigations.

  Markel doesn’t need to know this though, and his grinning face falls a bit when he realizes that even in the wake of Magnus’s stunning victory, I still want him to be sober around my kids. He bounces back quick, though. “Ish he up thersh? The champignon?”

  I can’t help but smile. Markel makes me laugh. “Yes. Sleeping. Which is where I need to be.”

  “Wait.” Markel scowls. “Ish Lushinda up there?”

  I don’t bother to answer that one. There’s no telling what Markel will do if he finds that out. “Good night, Markel. Goodnight!”

  “I’ll shtand guard!” he offers, swaying unsteadily as he lowers himself slowly, using the doorframe to help manage his awkward descent. Evidently he’s not actually planning to ‘stand’ guard.

  “Never shleep a wink!”

  “Not a wink,” I insist, closing the door slowly, careful not to pinch his sagging body.

  I’m just settling into my knothole in the attic when I remember the bare cupboards, but it doesn’t matter: the haze of sleep is already coming. The guests can fend for themselves. “There’s only so much you can do, Tee,” I remind myself.

  There’s another knock at the door but my bones are too heavy to investigate whether it’s just my imagination or someone really out there banging on the door. Instead, I float away on a puff of cloud, to the tune of more yelling. “Mishter Shteeps shaid, ‘No more vishitors tonight!’”

  Indistinct noises.

  “Unhand thish porsh, fiend!”

  Then, more splashing.

  Sleep. . .

  He lunges at me, midnight cloak billowing. I can feel his long, white claws around my throat. “You’ve got to tell him, Teacup.”

  “Tell him what?”

  He doesn’t answer the question. “I’m dead. Ashfire and starlight.” His pallid face smiles crookedly, as sunlight shines on green grass. Light and dark swirl around his face.

  I can’t quite recognize who I’m talking to. His face is familiar, but only in the dream sort of way, when a face says it’s someone that it doesn’t really look like.

  I remember this face being scarier in the waking world.

  “You’ve got to tell him.”

  “Who? What?” I say, confused.

  “I can’t remember, worm-brain. I’m dead.” He pauses, rubbing cold, murderous fingertips together. “Have you tried cataloguing all the people you’ve deceived?”

  “Have you tried cataloguing all the times you were ‘dead?’”

  A raspy, percussive chuckle. “I am though, right?”

  I wake—it seems like minutes—to a smell this house hasn’t known in years. It’s salty and smoky and sweet, and my stomach punches me out of bed so fast I nearly bang my head.

  Bacon.

  “Sara?”

  Sleep clears, and I know it’s not her. It’s got to be Lucinda. Or Carmen.

  I scamper down my ladder—a red-and-gold silk banner that I “borrowed” a few years ago from one of the lookout towers on the southern wall. (I know they have extras, and I can always take this one back, if they run out.) I don’t peek over the dividing wall between the closet, bedroom, and the kitchen. I drop straight to the bedroom floor and go through the door.

  When I enter, I can see that it’s just Timmy and Magnus. Like the rest of the living quarters, the kitchen’s on the second floor. Sara and I paid a double handful when we bought this place, just to have the all the space downstairs for inventory and display. And a second story fireplace. Happy Soles, we’d called it. We were young and naïve.

  Magnus and Timmy have fished out the cast-iron and they're frying bacon. Or rather, Timmy’s frying bacon and Magnus is sitting at the long table, directing him in the finer points.

  “ . . . get too hot. Then the bacon bubbles and sticks to the pan.” Even sitting, Magnus is still taller than Timnus, who is small and tidy, like myself.

  This morning Timnus is also impatient and hungry, probably salivating. I can tell by the twitchy movements of his short, knobby limbs as he pushes the bacon with the spatula. Normally, he has perfect control. I’ve caught him playing with Sara’s tools before, making little doll outfits for younger kids in the neighborhood. I don’t know where he’s been getting the leather though. . . and he won’t ever let me get a good look. For a 13-year-old, he’s surprisingly good at hiding things.

  But we’re also different. He’s definitely less interested in high places than I am. He’d be a good climber, but he prefers to make things with his hands, rather than climb with them.

  Timnus starts pulling the bacon out of the pan.

  “Not yet, good sir,” Magnus laughs. He can’t see very well yet—that’s odd—but he’s sniffing the air. “Give it another minute or two for that fat to render.”

  Timmy bobs his short, brown hair without saying anything. He normally doesn’t talk, unless there’s a purpose in it. Saves room for Val, I think.

  Speaking of Val, there’s a banging up the staircase, the thumping she makes whenever she’s carrying a heavy load of some sort. She enters with an armload of Pan-knows-what. Food, probably. She’s followed by a mountain of textile. It’s Carmen, carrying enough cloth to bury herself.

  “Err.”

  “Hi, Tee!” she says, blushing slightly. “Sleep okay?” Her angular eyebrows arch imploringly. “I can still make my commission if I hurry.”

  “There’s probably room on the bed,” I say, looking at the pile, which is dominated by blues and yellows. I can’t help blushing back. There’s a tradition in Ector: you’ve got to be careful just how much hospitality you show a woman.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, guessing my thoughts, “it’s just for a couple of days.”

  “Not worried,” I worry quietly.

  She lays the cloth on the corner of the bed in the next room, which I notice has been beautifully made.

  Suddenly, I’m conscious that my hair doesn’t lie flat in the back when I press it down.

  There’s a snort from behind. Lucinda. I turn just in time to see her approach Magnus, soft-handing him his game-winnings from last night. That’s a first, her returning a full purse.

  “Didn’t even make a dent,” she says.

  “We will see about that,” Magnus says, fumbling with the knot to his belt. �
�Wait till we find those orphans you were talking about.”

  Lucinda shoots an irritated look at me, one that says I flubbed the dosing. It’s my fault he’s blind, after all, even if I did save his life. Twice. But that doesn’t stop Lucinda from being snippy.

  She reaches down to help his fingers finish. “Nonsense, Magnus. If you go throwing money around this side of town you’ll attract the wrong sort of attention.”

  “I want to help them.”

  “They just need a warm place to stay at night. . . .”

  “Not here!” I interrupt. “Even the front porch is taken!”

  Valery is setting out plates, short, brown hair fluffing out to the sides where’s she’s slept on it. She’s got beautiful brown eyes and a long face—none of my kin will ever be plump—but her legs and face promise she’ll tower over both Timnus and me when she’s done growing.

  Carmen’s crafty fingers have cut some apples, nothing wasted. It’s as if the apple saw her coming and surrendered stem, seeds, and blossom stubble without a fight. She’s smiling at the kids, at Lucinda, at me as she passes the slices around. It’s the best thing I’ve tasted in months, including last night’s meal from Barkus’s kitchen.

  “Thanks, Carmen.”

  “Anytime, Teacup,” she says by way of invitation.

  Lucinda rolls her eyes.

  Valery’s head pops up from examining a spot on a faded wooden plate. “Da, there’s someone thumping the door below. . . . Want me to check?”

  My fingers tingle, slightly hot.

  “Nah. Help Carmen.” I head for the stairs.

  “You sure get a lot of visitors,” Magnus offers.

  Timnus looks at him with a big grin that reminds me of brown-haired Sara. “Usually only during tax season.” I motion for Timnus to shush, but Valery picks up right where Timmy leaves off.

  “Last year we got over 14 summons!” she says gleefully. “I counted them.”

  Magnus looks confused. “In Solange you’d only get two! Then they send the . . .”

  “We do things a little differently here in Ector,” I call back, already halfway down the stairs.

  It’s too soon for tax collectors, and I’ve already paid my burden for the year. Or rather, Barkus has, and I’ve repaid him by drugging Magnus, which I plan to never do again.

  Who could it be this time?

  I open the door, wondering if Pale Tom’s death-spell might have cursed my doorstep. I like peace and quiet and this is getting to be outrageous.

  “Teamus Steeps?”

  I’m greeted by a broad grin that doesn’t quite reach the slanty eyes on his not-tax-collector face. He’s got a long, blond braid poking out from beneath the hood, and a pointy ear. His hands are gloved, and his autumn brown clothes are a little too nice for this side of town, a little too quiet.

  “Who?” I lie. It’s my de facto response to questionable inquiries.

  He ignores my ploy. He knows it’s me. “I have a message on behalf of Tom Leblanc of Maudark.”

  “Tom’s dead,” I say trying to push the door shut. “Died last night.”

  “I know,” says the sharp-eared man, smiling broadly, boot smashing into the door and throwing me back. “You did a number on him, I hear. That’s why this message is for you.”

  Time slows like a foggy night. Not like last night, sharp and uniform, when I could see the Nightshades crumbling before a master of their craft, but jerky and in fits and starts, as though from a distance. But still it’s slow enough, slow enough to see a blade being drawn from beneath the cloak, and that is something I don’t want to happen.

  And I know what to do. I’ve seen Tom do this very thing, one particularly dirty night in the alley, when I happened to catch him working while casing a house from the rooftops. It may not have been as much an accident as I’d previously thought, I realize.

  I don’t fall back; I fall towards him, my palm hammering the nerve that controls bicep muscles needed for drawing a dagger in reverse grip. My other hand jams down on the pommel pinning his suddenly limp hand in place and pushing the blade back through fabric and flesh. His eyes go wide with pain, but his head descends and I’m not quick enough to get out of the way.

  Smash!

  Stars. I’m falling now. I catch his braid, and sort of swing on it as I go down. There’s a bit of a cracking sound as his head connects with the cool, stone threshold. I flinch as the probably-poisoned-blade in his leg cuts my cheek in passing, but I wiggle out the back between his legs, rolling past rhododendrons in broken pots, up and running before I realize he isn’t moving. Blood is dribbling to my shoulder and I’m suddenly worried about passing out.

  I wander back towards my house as people scatter. Lower Ector doesn’t mind a good brawl, but they’ll run for cover if blades are drawn.

  I feel dizzy.

  “Magnus?” I yell. “Lucinda?”

  I don’t want the kids to see. Or Carmen.

  “Markel?”

  No Markel. He’s too smart a drunk to be mixed in with this sort of trouble.

  I can feel my ability to prioritize fading. I sit down in the doorway, beneath the lintel, right next to the corpse, which I realize isn’t a corpse. The man’s still breathing, but he’s shaking and I can feel the heat radiating from his bare skin. I should probably be doing something, but the best I can think of is stealing the pretty black ring he’s wearing before someone untrustworthy finds it. Seems important.

  His hand is limp, and it’s a cinch to twist it off and slip it on my big toe.

  Heh Heh! Fits quite well.

  For a moment, things come into focus. Tom wanted me to have his ring. Not this one. The one I left at the Black Cat last night. He put it deliberately in the false-bottomed jewelry box in that house on Lantern street. The rings are important, but I don’t know why.

  Headache.

  I put a hand to my cheek and more blood—gummy—seeps between my fingers. The sun dims.

  What was I doing?

  “Magnus?” I croak. I’m too dizzy to get to my feet.

  Suddenly, large hands scoop me up. “Teacup. What happened?”

  I smell him. It’s the smell of strength and fresh bandages. He’s carrying me up the stairs quickly, steadily, like I’m no effort at all.

  “Message from Tom.” I can’t manage much else.

  Magnus grunts.

  There are cries of alarm in the kitchen as the dishing and scooping of food stops. I feel the heat of the crowd around me.

  “Give him some space,” Magnus says. “Timnus, go halfway downstairs and be my eyes. Yell if anyone approaches. Do not close the door. Do not leave the house. Valery, window. Look for men on rooftops. Lucinda, water. Needle. Thread. Carmanthum. Carmen . . .”

  I worry. I don’t have much carmanthum; I used most of it on Magnus last night. I worry about Carmen and the kids seeing this. About Timnus on the stairs. But my tongue’s not working correctly. My whole face feels numb, like it’s going to sleep.

  Valery says something about Petri watching the door, two roofs over.

  How does Petri get on a roof?

  In a moment that lasts forever, Timnus is back reporting, breathless and scared. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s clear that the not-dead man is now dead, knifed in the back, not my doing.

  I hear Carmen’s voice interspersed with Magnus, arguing ferociously until the two come to some mutual agreement. I imagine the sharp lines of her face softening as they move together in some purpose my shaking body can’t comprehend.

  Val blurts out suddenly that Petri’s gone from his post and he’s talking to the worst possible person: Sanjuste.

  My scalp prickles and my hands burn. Sanjuste. I try to rise and stumble, hand going to a knife that isn’t there.

  Lucinda catches me, whispering frantically in my ear so no one can hear. “They can’t get you here, Teacup. They’re afraid of Magnus.”

  I shake my head, trying to talk. “ . . . all . . . missing orphans . . .” I’m back
in this very room seven years ago, watching Sara slip away, and the pieces fall into place. “Sara,” I gasp.

  Sanjuste the cobbler. Sanjuste the Cruel. Sanjuste, a man that not even Tom would mentor. . . . And with Ector’s chief assassin gone, there’s no one to check the man’s lust for blood, not even the dark code of the Nightshades.

  Lucinda’s face goes white with understanding, but she keeps her head, puts her hand on my forehead. “Magnus, he feels like a furnace! I need cold water.”

  I can’t really see what anyone else is doing, but I know there’s a flurry of movement as they clear the oak table and lay me on it.

  Lucinda doesn’t stop whispering in my ear. “Hang on, Teacup. We’ll deal with Sanjuste, but we need you. Your kids need you. Carmen needs you. Magnus and I need you.” I don’t know if she’s speaking truth, but it’s nice to hear. I only understand about half the words, my heart tripping like a three-legged dog trying to climb a tree.

  The world is burning around me. They’re splashing me with water, cutting off my clothes, forcing a wooden spoon between clenching teeth, and I can hear my own head banging against the table. Thump. Thump. Thump. Or maybe that’s my heart?

  Sanjuste. Suddenly, all I can think is how I told Sara not to press him, not to take his clients. Not from a man who’d had spent time in the far south, done boot work in Byzantus. Not from a man who liked watching people suffer. I guess I’d known secretly, even then.

  Now I’m the one shaking on the table, just like Sara seven years ago. Nothing anyone does is going to save me.

  Him. I try gasping through the wooden spoon, but my jaw is too busy grinding the wood.

  Carmen—frightened and determined—is holding my hands, Lucinda my feet, and Magnus my head when I lose consciousness in a cloud of pain and white light.

  For a split second, Pale Tom is standing over me, kicking me in the side, a scowl of surprised fury on his face. “Get up, you little runt. Go teach that fat dungwad a lesson. Then you can die. No apprentice of mine will be killed by that grungulous wad of toad shistle . . .”

  My world flashes again, bright-white lightning burning through the red-orange fire of hell in my bones. I gasp awake.