Candlemasstreet was a broad, tree-lined thoroughfare that lay southwest of the harbor. Here the Ellidon Hills flattened out into isolated drumlins and knolls atop which local chieftains had constructed their ring-forts in ancient days. Now it was a graciously apportioned district of gridded streets and houses reared in well-masoned stone. The light of the dying sunset honeyed their square courses and sparked out glints from diamond-leaded windows nestling half-hidden in ivy. No one lived in the Candlemas area who was not well rooted in Ascari society. Courted though Psellos was by the nobility, they would never have countenanced his existence here.
Another rain-loud night. Rol pulled the oilskin cloak tighter about his shoulders and tugged its hood lower down his face. All to the good. He was just one more shadow among many hurrying home out of the rain.
Fifty yards to his rear, the shape following him paused when he did, and melted into an ivy-hung wall.
He stopped. The Canoval manse was set in its own gardens, and these in turn were surrounded by a twelve-foot stuccoed wall, its top arrayed with iron spikes. A massive ironwork gate provided the only means of entrance or egress, and it was slightly ajar.
Rol cast aside his hood and cloak and bundled them tight, then tied the roll to his belt. He felt with one hand behind his right shoulder and met the reassuring coldness of Fleam in a back-scabbard. Then he moved up close to the gate. The soles of his boots were thin enough for him to feel every gap in the flagstones of the street and a suit of black hose clung to him head to foot like a second skin.
Just within the gate, Canker waited patiently, his cap feather drooping and soaked, his eyes bright as sea-gleams. Rol moved gently as a stalking cat, thinking his veil of shadow into place about him, but Canker merely nodded.
“You are on time. That’s good. Stop prowling like a second-rate burglar and follow me. A filthy night, but then it’s a filthy deed.” He grinned brightly in the pouring dark.
Deflated, Rol followed the King of Thieves into Canoval’s garden. Mature trees shrouded the lawn and well-graveled paths formed bright lines in the grass. The pair halted under a massive beech five fathoms from the back door.
“There you are, lad. I can’t do much more if I’m not to lead you through it by the hand. I will be here when you return-if there is no alarm. Cause a scare, and I’ll take off.”
“I have to talk to you, Canker,” Rol said, pitching his voice over the hissing rain. He wiped water out of his eyes irritably.
“Talk is cheap, time is precious. Get on with the job.”
“You are to die tonight.”
Canker paused. He did not seem surprised, but he seemed to grow taller, as if everything in him had tensed.
“I see. Why this night as opposed to any other?”
“You and Canoval both. He protects the Feathermen from a crackdown, and takes them over, all in one night.”
“Either that, or his young protege has reasons of his own for wasting my time.”
Rol nodded over Canker’s left shoulder. “Ask her.”
The King of Thieves spun round in a twinkling, a blade opening in one palm, but he found one black-metaled stiletto light against his jugular and another pricking up under the edge of his tunic. This second moved slowly inward until he sucked breath sharply through his teeth and the heels of his boots left the ground. Rowen smiled, but her eyes were cold with murder.
“Drop the blade.”
He did so, face calm again. “The lovely Rowen. It has been a long time. I remember those luscious lips well. Last time I saw them up close they were working hard round my prick.”
Rowen smiled. “There is something different at your prick now. One move, and I’ll blind that eye for you.”
Canker’s gaze never left her face. “I have but to raise my voice and half a dozen Feathermen will be on your backs.”
“You would be dead before they got within ten feet of us, you know that, Canker,” Rol said. He surveyed the dark, rain-swept garden but could see nothing.
“He’s not lying,” Rowen said. “I count five, and I may have missed one or two. Our friend the King of Thieves came prepared. But he is willing to talk, or we would be dead already, and his manhood would be sliding down his leg.”
“I am rather attached to it,” Canker admitted. “Put up your weapons, the point is made.”
Rowen stepped back but kept her stilettos loose in her hands. “He’s telling the truth. I was to assassinate you tonight, at the same time that Rol was to kill Canoval.”
Canker bent to retrieve his dropped knife. When he had straightened his face was hard and ugly. “That is a pity. I had hoped we might work together, Psellos and I. But you two who are his foundlings, his orphans-why would you choose to tell me this?”
“We no longer choose to serve him,” Rowen said evenly.
“Then who will you serve?”
“No one and nothing. We are done with Ascari.”
“Ascari without the charms of the beautiful Rowen would be a duller place. If you will not serve, then you must lead, surely.”
“This is not a debate. We are here in good faith as far as you are concerned. What would you have us do?”
“What is this? Are you mine to command now?”
“For tonight. We’re all in the same crock of shit now.”
Canker stared at Rowen for what seemed a long time, face expressionless. At last he said: “All right, then. To my mind, Canoval must die, if we are not to have a war. And so must Psellos, of course.”
“That is what we thought,” Rowen said. “Rol will kill Canoval tonight as planned.”
“But not his wife,” Rol said quickly. “I am not a murderer of crippled women.”
Rowen and Canker stared at him with the same look on both their faces: a kind of puzzlement. Canker shrugged. “As you wish. And the other?”
“Psellos is a different pot of fish entirely,” Rowen said. “We shall want your help with him, and it must be done swiftly, tonight. That is the price for Canoval’s killing.”
“You could not do it alone?”
Rowen shook her head. “He’s too strong.”
A flicker of something passed over Canker’s black eyes, and was gone. “I shall have it put about within the hour that I am dead, assassinated. These lads with me are trustworthy, but if Psellos is confident he can lead the Feathermen after me then he must have suborned many of the others, including some of my lieutenants. If word of my death is spread it will cause an upheaval in the city, but that cannot be helped. Psellos and his traitors must be convinced. Then you must get me and these lads with me into the Tower. We’ll do it together, and may the gods be behind us.” He held out a hand.
Rowen shook it, holding his eyes. “So be it.”
The thing began as Canker had said it would, and if Rol had not seen it for himself he would not have believed it possible. The little group of Feathermen went about their disseminating work with amazing speed, running from tavern to brothel to gambling den, down the hill toward the stews and slums near the waterfront. The news spread like wildfire. Canker was dead, and his kingship was vacant.
When a Thief-King died, all contracts were canceled. The common merchants and shopkeepers and tavern-masters were left on their own to face the leaderless predators of the slums, or else they must needs stump up huge amounts of ready coin to win over the Watch and persuade them to do their job. But the Watch were scarcely less rapacious than the gangs they were supposed to suppress-this was a chance to settle old scores, to rob and murder with impunity, and few in Ascari who could would resist that temptation. Rol thought that Canker was grimly amused by the thought of his own putative demise.
“Let them see what Ascari would come to without me,” he said.
Canoval’s death was as quick and quiet as Rowen’s training could make it. A hand on the sleeping mouth, a blade in the heart. Rol watched the eyes spring open white and shocked above his fingers. The arms came up, but there was not the strength in them to do anything about their extinction. A life going out under his hand, lips working against his palm, trying to scream. The arms sinking again.
His wife stirred, smiled in her sleep, and laid a hand on her husband’s dead shoulder. Rol withdrew the knife-always let the heart stop beating first if you want to avoid a lot of blood, Rowen had told him-and then stood silent in the ornate bedroom a moment. He could still feel Canoval’s dying lips moving against the palm of his hand. Last words.
A hired bodyguard knocked on the head, Rol was back in the garden minutes later. Rowen looked at his white face, and touched his arm. “Well done.”
“For killing a man in his sleep?”
“For making a neat job of it. There’s not a drop of blood about you and there was not a sound to be heard either. Any fool can take a life.”
“Where is Canker?”
“Gone to the Tower with the best of his men. Come, we must go too.”
Rol did not move. The rain was still pouring down but the trees above sheltered them from the worst of it. They stood in a dripping shadow, the rain all about them like a curtain.
“Rowen, let us not go.”
“What?”
“Let Canker and Psellos kill each other if they will. We are free. We could be on a ship tonight, and all this astern of us, the whole wide world before the bow.”
Her face was white as marble with the rain shining upon it. She set a hand upon his cheek. “I cannot.”
He had expected that, of course. Perhaps it was true of him also. If there were to be any symmetry about this, any sense of completion, then it would be found in the Tower.
“I know.” He kissed her cold face.
They banged on the postern gate together and it was opened by Quare; a nervous, silent Quare who had smelled something in tonight’s wind perhaps. He took their wet cloaks and said diffidently: “The Master awaits you both in his study.”
They nodded, but as the manservant turned to go, Rol detained him, smiling. “I almost forgot. I have something for you.”
Fleam flashed out of the back-scabbard and settled at Quare’s throat. His Adam’s apple scraped the tip as it moved up and down convulsively.
“Master, Mistress, I do not know what-”
A slight push, and the strange-colored steel parted his skin, sliced through his esophagus, and halted, scraping in the vertebrae of his neck. He looked down in disbelief at the bar of bright metal under his chin, and then his weight grew heavier on the blade until Rol turned it to one side and he slid off, to crumple on the floor.
“No more beaten maids,” Rol said with a satisfaction that was somehow hollow.
He caught Rowen’s eyes and was chilled by them. Before he could say anything else she went to the postern and opened it again. A low whistle, and then she stepped back to allow Canker and six other Feathermen to enter. The King of Thieves and his followers had donned metal-studded byrnies of hardened leather. Three of them wielded small hand-crossbows, the rest swords of one kind or another and many knives in scabbards strapped all over their torsos.
“I am glad to see you well prepared,” she told Canker dryly. “Follow us, but remain outside the door until I give the word.” The King of Thieves nodded, his lips drawn back from his teeth in what might have been a smile.
Rol and Rowen led them up the stairs, checking their weapons as they went. There was a peculiar quiver in Fleam’s hilt, like anticipation. Rol could only marvel at Rowen’s composure. She was as calm and collected as if she were going to dinner.
“Do you think he knows?” Rol asked her.
“He knows this is one ending, else he would not have promised you that key. By now he will have received word of Canoval’s death, and Canker’s. I hope that will persuade him we have come round to his way of thinking. It is our only edge.”
“That, and seven Feathermen,” Canker said behind them.
“They barely even the odds,” Rowen retorted.
Canker and his followers fell back after that. Passing a maid on the stairs, Rowen knocked her senseless with the butt of a dagger and laid her down carefully. Then the little group continued, until at last the door was before them. Rowen knocked smartly upon it.
“Enter.”
Rol and Rowen looked at each other, faces expressionless but for the light in their eyes. It was Rowen who opened the door, Rol who closed it behind them.
The familiar firelit room with its leaping shadows, shelves of books about the walls, wing-backed chairs and gleaming decanters. Psellos was sitting staring at the fire with an opened scroll held in his hands.
“The King is dead. Long live the King. I hear rumors the night went well.”
“It is not over yet,” Rowen told him.
He looked up at that, and smiled. “Join me by the fire, children. Rol, pour us some wine. We have things to discuss.”
Neither moved. After a while Psellos looked up from his scroll. His smile did not waver, but something in his eyes changed.
“So, it is like that, is it? I feared as much. Ah, but it is a pity, you two. We could have had such fun together, playing games with the world.” He bent to his scroll again, and Rol saw his lips move. Then he stood up, dropping it into the chair. He was unarmed, dressed in his customary black hose and velvet.
“You had best kill me and have done with it.”
The oddest reluctance overcame Rol, a sense of waste. He had so many questions still to ask of this man, and if truth were told, Psellos had never done him any harm. Rowen he had debauched and debased, yes, but to Rol he had been firm and generous-even kindly. The very sword at his hip was Psellos’s gift.
“Rowen-” Rol said hoarsely.
She unsheathed her stilettos. “He’s spelling us.” And louder: “Canker!”
She was moving even as the King of Thieves barreled through the door behind her. The white hands whirred in two blurred arcs and the stilettos hissed through the air. They buried themselves in the spines of books above the mantelpiece. Psellos had moved with blinding speed first one way, then another. The chair wherein he had sat came flying across the room. Rowen threw herself flat on the floor and it crashed into the wall above her. Wild laughter filled the place, and a wind whirled ash and smoke out of the hearth. Psellos was a black marionette of shadow moving so fast the eye could barely follow him.
The Feathermen who followed their king into the room appeared to be fighting sparks from the fire, cursing and batting them aside. One of them screamed as a darting glede smote his eye and burned the socket black. He fell clutching his face. Crossbow bolts snapped through the air like mad bats, standing quivering in the wood-paneled walls.
“Stand fast!” Canker shouted. “Don’t let him out of the door!”
The laughter was all about them, as though baying out of the very walls. Rol stood with Fleam naked in his fist, turning this way and that, clinking airborne coals away from his face. Something made him peer upward, and looking down upon him was Psellos’s face, grinning diabolically. He was clinging to the ceiling as lightly as a spider.
“Rowen!” Rol screamed. He threw himself backwards instinctively. Psellos’s tongue shot out like a black whip and cracked the air where his head had been.
“Weren!” Canker bellowed in alarm. “Great gods above, he is Weren! Get out, lads, get out!”
“No!” Rowen shouted. Her hands moved, and a fusillade of gleaming steel stars went out of them. Psellos cried out in pain and anger, and leaped.
Clear across the room he went, turning in midair. He caught a Featherman in passing and the fellow went hurtling backwards with a slashed throat. Psellos landed on all fours by the door and sprang up again as easily as a bounced ball. He came at Rol next, and Fleam jumped into the air between them, a living thing of steel. The metal barely touched him, but blood spattered Rol’s face as he bounced away again, snarling.
They backed away toward the door, swords pointed outward.
Psellos’s tongue flicked out and caught a Featherman round the calf. He slid across the floor and was thrashed into a broken carcass; pieces of him flung up to fleck the walls. The Master careered about the room scattering books, his silver eyeteeth dark with blood. He capered across the ceiling on all fours, laughing again. He feinted, and a flurry of knives buried themselves in the plaster where he had been. But he came at them from the side, a boneless, spinning thing. Another Featherman fell, hamstrings slashed at the back of both knees. Canker dropped his sword, clutching at a hole in his side with a yell of shock and fury. Rowen’s sable leathers were sliced in ribbons from her back. She spun and it was as though her fingers had grown blades. A scream of pain, and Psellos was clear across the room again with the gore of his wounds a dark mist in the air behind him.
Coals came hailing out of the fire in a bright barrage, striking flesh and sticking to those they smote, burning inward. Men shrieked and tried to pick them out of their own smoking bodies. A terrible stench filled the air and the smoke grew thick as fog. Psellos’s insane laughter hurt their ears.
The surviving Feathermen were tumbling over one another to get out of the door. Canker had fallen to one knee and held a single long knife in one fist while the other was pressed to his punctured chest. Rowen’s hair was flying about her face like a banner and her hands were full of the tiny metal stars whose fellows peppered the ceiling.
“What, leaving so soon?” Psellos’s voice said. A shelf-load of books sailed through the air and pelted the fleeing Feathermen, opening up like pale-winged birds, flapping about their heads. The heavily bound volumes knocked them from their feet and fell, opening and closing feebly on the floor about them. The door slammed shut on the last of the Thieves with preternatural force and pinched off his feet at the ankles. They could hear the rest of him shrieking on the landing outside.
Psellos dropped lightly to the floor again in front of Rol.
“I’ll have that sword back,” he said, and his fingers fastened about Rol’s arm with horrible strength. Fleam jerked back and forth between them and Psellos’s tongue darted out at Rol’s eyes. Rol snapped his head aside and it seared a length of skin from his temple. A light sprang up in Rol’s face, a bright, furious disgust. He released the hilt of the sword, throwing Psellos off balance, and with his scarred left hand clutched the curved blade near the point. It should have sliced his hand in two but Ran’s scar turned the edge. He pulled the blade to one side in one clean movement and the metal sliced clear through the Master’s snaking tongue. A yard of black flesh wriggled to the floor. Psellos gave a great gargling cry, and Fleam clanged to the floor between them. A gush of blood steamed out over the Master’s lips and he staggered backwards, the stump of his tongue flailing.
Rowen came to Rol’s aid. Together the pair grasped Psellos’s kicking body under the armpits and ran it forward as if they meant to batter a door open with his head. They thrust it into the blazing hearth and held it there, seized the Master’s hose at the buttocks in tight fistfuls, and propelled him further into the fire. He leaped and bucked in their hands as they held his face down on the burning coals. Acrid, sickening smoke billowed out of the hearth. His hair took fire and his skin blackened and withered on the bones of his skull. He twitched, the long fingers snapping and curling in spasms, scrabbling at their legs. Finally they dropped to the floor. A shudder went through the Master’s body and he was still.
Rol straightened, retrieved Fleam, and stabbed the bright blade double-handed between Psellos’s shoulders. The blood jetted out smoking and black and Fleam trembled in his hands. A kind of charge went through the weapon, transmitting itself to Rol’s loins in a momentary flash of ecstasy. He groaned, closing his eyes.
When he opened them again the fire in the hearth was obscenely bright, and what was in there seemed shapeless as a hewn log. Rowen was sprawled on the floor with her hair a matted curtain around her shoulders. Beyond the bodies that littered the room Canker sat with his back leaning against the door, his face bloodless and gleaming.
Rol straightened. His foot clicked against the spindle of the scroll Psellos had been reading. He picked it up, but the parchment was blank. Something curled itself about the toe of his boot. Psellos’s tongue, still writhing feebly. Disgusted, he transfixed it with Fleam’s smeared point and it joined the Master’s carcass in the fire.
There was blood in Rol’s mouth. His precious blood, worth so much. He spat it hissing into the fire, his head burning where Psellos’s tongue had stripped the skin from his temple. Rowen raised her head, and he saw the blood pooling behind her back as she sat. But her eyes were clear. She looked up at him and smiled one bright, unclouded smile of pure joy. He wished, then and later, that he could have smiled back.
Twelve