Mark, too, this teller of the tale, with his sage wink. We are in the midst!
Night, shadows overlapping, a most indifferent blur that would attract no one’s notice, barring that nuisance of a cat on the sill of the estate, amber eyes tracking now as one shadow moves out from its place of temporary concealment. Out goes this errant shadow, across the courtyard, into deeper shadows against the estate’s wall.
Crouching, Torvald Nom looked up to see the cat’s head and those damned eyes, peering down at him. A moment later the head withdrew, taking its wide gaze with it. He made his stealthy way to the back corner, paused once more. He could hear the gate guards, a pair of them, arguing over something, tones of suspicion leading to accusation answered by protestations of denial but Damn you, Doruth, I just don’t trust you—
—No reason not to, Milok. I ever give you one? No—
—To Hood you ain’t. My first wife—
—Wouldn’t leave me alone, I swear! She stalked me like a cat a rat—
—A rat! Aye, that’s about right—
—I swear, Milok, she very nearly raped me—
—The first time! I know, she told me all about it, with eyes so bright!—
—Heard it made you horny as Hood’s black sceptre—
—That ain’t any of your business, Doruth—
And something soft brushed against Torvald’s leg. The cat, purring like soft gravel, back bowed, tail writhing. He lifted his foot, held it hovering over the creature. Hesitated, then settled it back down. By Apsalar’s sweet kiss, the kit’s eyes and ears might be a boon, come to think of it. Assuming it had the nerve to follow him.
Torvald eyed the wall, the cornices, the scrollwork metopes, the braided false columns. He wiped sweat from his hands, dusted them with the grit at the wall’s base, then reached up for handholds, and began to climb.
He gained the sill of the window on the upper floor, pulled himself on to it, balanced on his knees. True, never wise, but the fall wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t even sprain an ankle, would it? Drawing a dagger he slipped the blade in between the shutters, carefully felt for the latch.
The cat, alighting beside him, nearly pitched him from the sill, but he managed to recover, swearing softly under his breath as he resumed working the lock.
—She still loves you, you know—
—What—
—She does. She just likes some variety. I tell you, Milok, this last one of yours was no easy conquest—
—You swore!—
—You’re my bestest, oldest friend. No more secrets between us! And when I swear to that, as I’m doing now, I mean it true. She’s got an appetite so sharing shouldn’t be a problem. I ain’t better than you, just different, that’s all. Different—
—How many times a week, Duroth? Tell me true!—
—Oh, every second day or so—
—But I’m every second day, too!—
—Odd, even, I guess. Like I said, an appetite—
—I’ll say—
—After shift, let’s go get drunk—
—Aye, we can compare and contrast—
—I love it. Just that, hah! . . . Hey, Milok . . .—
—Aye?—
—How old’s your daughter?—
The latch clicked, springing free the shutters just as a sword hissed from a scabbard and, amidst wild shouting, a fight was underway at the gate.
—A joke! Honest! Just a joke, Milok!—
Voices now from the front of the house, as Torvald slid his dagger blade between the lead windows and lifted the inside latch. He quickly edged into the dark room, as boots rapped on the compound and more shouting erupted at the front gate. A lantern crashed and someone’s sword went flying to skitter away on the cobbles.
Torvald quickly closed the shutters, then the window.
The infernal purring was beside him, a soft jaw rubbing against a knee. He reached for the cat, fingers twitching, hesitated, then withdrew his hand. Pay attention to the damned thing, right, so when it hears what can’t be heard and when it sees what can’t be seen, yes . . .
Pivoting in his crouch, he scanned the room. Some sort of study, though most of the shelves were bare. Overreaching ambition, this room, a sudden lurch towards culture and sophistication, but of course it was doomed to failure. Money wasn’t enough. Intelligence helped. Taste, an inquisitive mind, an interest in other stuff – stuff out of immediate sight, stuff having nothing to do with whatever. Wasn’t enough to simply send some servant to scour some scrollmonger’s shop and say ‘I’ll take that shelf’s worth, and that one, too.’ Master’s not too discriminating, yes. Master probably can’t even read so what difference does it make?
He crept over to the one shelf on which were heaped a score or so scrolls, along with one leather-bound book. Each scroll was rolled tight, tied with some seller’s label – just as he had suspected. Torvald began reading through them.
Treatise on Drainage Grooves in Stone Gutters of Gadrobi District, Nineteenth Report in the Year of the Shrew, Extraordinary Subjects, Guild of Quarry Engineering. Author: Member 322.
Tales of Pamby Doughty and the World Inside the Trunk (with illustrations by some dead man).
The Lost Verses of Anomandaris, with annotation. Torvald’s brows rose, since this one might actually be worth something. He quickly slipped the string off and unfurled the scroll. The vellum was blank, barring a short annotation at the bottom that read: No scholarly erudition is possible at the moment. And a publisher’s mark denoting this scroll as part of a series of Lost Works, published by the Vellum Makers’ Guild of Pale.
He rolled the useless thing back up, plucked out one more.
An Illustrated Guide to Headgear of Cobblers of Genabaris in the fourth century, Burn’s Sleep, by Cracktooth Filcher, self-avowed serial collector and scourge of cobblers, imprisoned for life. A publication of Prisoner’s Pit Library, Nathilog.
He had no doubt the illustrations were lavish and meticulous, detailed to excess, but somehow his curiosity was not up to the challenge of perusal.
By now the commotion at the gate had been settled. Various members of the guard had returned from the fracas, with much muttering and cursing that fell away abruptly as soon as they entered the main house on their way to their rooms, telling Torvald that the master was indeed home and probably asleep. Which was something of a problem, given just how paranoid the bastard was and as the likely hiding place of his trove was somewhere in his damned bedroom. Well, the world presented its challenges, and without challenges life was worthless and pointless and, most crucially, devoid of interest.
He moved to the door leading to the hallway, pausing to wrap a cloth about his face, leaving only his eyes free. The cat watched intently. Lifting the latch he tugged the door open and peered out into the corridor. Left, the outer, back wall not three paces away. Right, the aisle reaching all the way through the house. Doors and a central landing for the staircase. And a guard, seated facing that landing. Black hair, red, bulbous nose, protruding lower lip, and enough muscles slabbed on to a gigantic frame to fill out two or three Torvald Noms. The fool was knitting, his mouth moving and brow knotting as he counted stitches.
And there was the horrid cat, padding straight for him.
Torvald quietly closed the door.
He should have strangled the thing.
From the corridor he heard a grunting curse, then boots thumping down the stairs.
Opening the door once more he looked out. The guard was gone, the knitting lying on the floor with one strand leading off down the stairs.
Hah! Brilliant cat! Why, if he met it again he’d kiss it – but nowhere near where it licked itself because there were limits, after all, and anywhere a cat could lick itself was nowhere he’d kiss.
Torvald quickly closed the door behind him and tiptoed up the corridor. A cautious glance down the wide, central staircase. Wherever the cat had run off with the ball of wool, it was out of sight, and so too the guard. He faced the ornate
double doors directly behind the vacated wooden chair.
Locked?
Yes.
He drew his dagger and slid the thin blade between the doors.
Ornate decoration was often accompanied by neglect of the necessary mechanisms, and this lock followed the rule, as he felt the latch lift away. Boots sounded downstairs. He tugged open the door and quickly slipped inside, crouching once more. A front room, an office of sorts, with a single lantern on a short wick casting faint light across the desk and its strewn heap of papyrus sheets. A second door, smaller, narrow, behind the desk’s high-backed plush chair.
Torvald Nom tiptoed towards it.
Pausing at the desk to douse the lantern, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, crouching yet lower to squint at the crack beneath the bedroom door, pleased to find no thread of light. Drawing up against the panelled wood with its gold-leaf insets now dull in the gloom. No lock this time. Hinges feeling well oiled. He slowly worked the door open.
Inside, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Soft breathing from the huge four-poster bed. Then a sigh. ‘Sweet sliverfishy, is that you?’
A woman’s husky, whispering voice, and now stirring sounds from the bed.
‘The night stalker this time? Ooh, that one’s fun – I’ll keep my eyes closed and whimper lots when you threaten me to stay quiet. Hurry, I’m lying here, petrified. Someone’s in my room!’
Torvald Nom hesitated, truly torn between necessity and . . . well, necessity.
He untied his rope belt. And, in a hissing voice, demanded, ‘First, the treasure. Where is it, woman?’
She gasped. ‘That’s a good voice! A new one! The treasure, ah! You know where it is, you horrible creature! Right here between my legs!’
Torvald rolled his eyes. ‘Not that one. The other one.’
‘If I don’t tell you?’
‘Then I will have my way with you.’
‘Oh! I say nothing! Please!’
Damn, he sure messed that one up. There was no way she’d not know he wasn’t who he was pretending to be, even when that someone was pretending to be someone else. How to solve this?
‘Get on your stomach. Now, on your hands and knees. Yes, like that.’
‘You’re worse than an animal!’
Torvald paused at the foot of the bed. Worse than an animal? What did that mean? Shaking his head, he climbed on to the bed. Well, here goes nothing.
A short time later: ‘Sliverfishy! The new elixir? Gods, it’s spectacular! Why, I can’t call you sliverfishy any more, can I? More like . . . a salmon! Charging upstream! Oh!’
‘The treasure, or I’ll use this knife.’ And he pressed the cold blade of the dagger against the outside of her right thigh.
She gasped again. ‘Under the bed! Don’t hurt me! Keep pushing, damn you! Harder! This one’s going to make a baby – I know it! This time, a baby!’
Well, he did his part anyway, feeding his coins into the temple’s cup and all that, and may her prayers guide her true into motherhood’s blissful heaven. She collapsed on to the bed, groaning, while he backed off, knelt on the cold wooden floor and reached under the bed, knuckles skinning against a large, low longbox. Groping, he found one handle and dragged it out.
She moaned. ‘Oh, don’t start counting again, darling. Please. You ruin everything when you do that!’
‘Not counting, woman. Stealing. Stay where you are. Eyes closed. Don’t move.’
‘It just sounds silly now, you know that.’
‘Shut up, or I’ll do you again.’
‘Ah! What was that elixir again?’
He prised open the lock with the tip of the dagger. Inside, conveniently stored in burlap sacks tagged with precise amounts, a fortune of gems, jewels and high councils. He quickly collected the loot.
‘You are counting!’
‘I warned you.’ He climbed back on to the bed. Looked down and saw that promises weren’t quite enough. Gods below, if you only were. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I need more elixir.
In the office. Don’t move.’
‘I won’t. I promise.’
He hurried out, crept across the outer room and paused at the doors to the corridor to press his ear against the panel.
Softly, the slither-click of bamboo knitting needles.
Torvald slid the dagger into its scabbard, reversed grip, opened the door, looked down at the top of the guard’s hairy head, and swung hard. The pommel crunched. The man sagged in his chair, then folded into a heap at the foot of the chair.
The cat was waiting by the library door.
*
Uncle One, Uncle Two, Father None. Aunt One, Aunt Two, Mother None.
Present and on duty, Uncle One, Aunt One and Cousins One, Two, Three. Cousin One edging closer, almost close enough for another hard, sharp jab with an elbow as One made to collect another onion from the heap on the table. But he knew One’s games, had a year’s list of bruises to prove it, and so, just as accidentally, he took a half-step away, keeping on his face a beaming smile as Aunt One cooed her delight at this sudden bounty, and Uncle One sat opposite, ready to deliver his wink as soon as he glanced over – which he wouldn’t do yet because timing, as Uncle Two always told him, was everything. Besides, he needed to be aware of Cousin One especially now that the first plan had been thwarted.
One, whose name was Snell, would have to work harder in his head, work that cunning which seemed to come from nowhere and wasn’t part of the dull stupidity that was One’s actual brain, so maybe it was demons after all, clattering and chittering all their cruel ideas. Snell wouldn’t let this rest, he knew. No, he’d remember and start planning. And the hurt would be all the worse for that.
But right now he didn’t care, not about Cousin One, not about anything that might come later tonight or tomorrow. He’d brought food home, after all, an armload of food, delivering his treasure to joyous cries of relief.
And the man whose name he’d been given, the man long dead who was neither Uncle One nor Uncle Two but had been Uncle Three and not, of course, Father One, well, that man would be proud that the boy with his name was doing what was needed to keep the family together.
Collecting his own onion, the child named Harllo made his way to a safe corner of the single room, and, moments before taking a bite, glanced up to meet Uncle One’s eyes, to catch the wink and then nod in answer.
Just like Uncle Two always said, timing was how a man measured the world, and his place in it. Timing wasn’t a maybe world, it was a world of yes and no, this, not that. Now, not later. Timing belonged to all the beasts of nature that hunted other creatures. It belonged to the tiger and its fixed, watching eyes. It belonged, too, to the prey, when the hunter became hunted, like with Cousin One, each moment a contest, a battle, a duel. But Harllo was learning the tiger’s way, thanks to Uncle Two, whose very skin could change into that of a tiger, when anger awakened cold and deadly. Who had a tiger’s eyes and was the bravest, wisest man in all of Darujhistan.
And the only one, apart from young Harllo himself, who knew the truth of Aunt Two, who wasn’t Aunt Two at all, but Mother One. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, wouldn’t ever say it, and wouldn’t have hardly nothing to do with her only child, her son of Rape. Once, Harllo had thought that Rape was his father’s name, but now he knew it was a thing people did to other people, as mean as an elbow in the ribs, maybe meaner. And that was why Mother One stayed Aunt Two, and why on those rare occasions she visited she wouldn’t meet Harllo’s eyes no matter how he tried, and why she wouldn’t say anything about nothing except with a voice that was all anger.
‘Aunt Stonny hates words, Harllo,’ Gruntle had explained, ‘but only when those words creep too close to her, to where she hides, you see?’
Yes, he saw. He saw plenty.
Snell caught his eye and made a wicked face, mouthing vicious promises. His little sister, Cousin Two, whose name was Mew, was watching from where she held on to the table edge, seeing but not
understanding because how could she, being only three years old; while Cousin Three, another girl but this one named Hinty, was all swathed in the cradle and safe in there, safe from everything, which was how it should be for the littlest ones.
Harllo was five, maybe close to six, but already tall – stretched, laughed Gruntle, stretched and scrawny because that’s how boys grow.
Aunt Myrla had the rest of the vegetables in a steaming pot over the hearth, and Harllo saw her flick a knowing look at her husband, who nodded, not pausing in massaging the stumps below his knees, where most people had shins and ankles and then feet, but Uncle Bedek had had an accident – which was something like Rape only not on purpose – and so he couldn’t walk any more which made life hard for them all, and meant Harllo had to do what was needed since Snell didn’t seem interested in doing anything. Except torment Harllo, of course.
The air in the cramped room was smelling earthy and sweet now, as Myrla fed more dung on to the small hearth beneath the pot. Harllo knew he’d have to go out and collect more come the morrow and that might mean right out of the city, up along the West Shore of the lake, which was an adventure.
Snell finished his onion and crept closer to Harllo, hands tightening into fists.
But Harllo had already heard the boots in the alley outside, crackling on the dead fronds from the collapsed roof opposite, and a moment later Uncle Two swept the hanging aside and leaned into the room, the barbs on his face looking freshly painted, so stark were they, and his eyes glowed like candle flames. His smile revealed fangs.
Bedek waved. ‘Gruntle! Do come in, old friend! See how Myrla readies a feast!’
‘Well timed, then,’ the huge man replied, entering the room, ‘for I have brought smoked horse.’ Seeing Harllo, he waved the boy over. ‘Need to put some muscle on this one.’
‘Oh,’ said Myrla, ‘he never sits still, that’s his problem. Not for a moment!’
Snell was scowling, scuttling in retreat and looking upon Gruntle with hatred and fear.
Gruntle picked up Harllo, then held him squirming under one arm as he took the two steps to the hearth to hand Myrla a burlap-wrapped package.