06 - Rule of Thieves (4 page)

All of this filled me with a sense of dread as I left Dimmingwood. I had the disturbing premonition I might not be enveloped in its comforting shadows again for a very long time.

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Getting back into Selbius was a little more difficult than getting out had been because I had to invent a false identity and business in the city in order to get past the gate clerk. Once within the walls, I pushed through the bustling streets. Later, I would check in with Fleet and see what information he had uncovered for me. But right now, I was impatient to get to Hadrian. It was high time I discovered what was behind the very different messages I had received from him and Terrac.

He usually lodged with the river people at the old docks on the outskirts of the city, a little-visited place with abandoned warehouses and rotting piers. But when I reached the wharf, I didn’t find the usual collection of rafts the river folk lived on. There were only a couple of dinghies bobbing on the water and a pair of young boys fishing off the pier.

On questioning them, I learned the river folk had finished their long project of repairing the city walls and had left the lake, returning to the tributary rivers they came from. I felt brief regret that I would likely never see the fascinating people again, especially Hadrian’s friend Seephinia and her nephew Eelus. The fishing boys knew nothing about an eccentric warrior-priest and could not guess where he might be found.

Luckily, I could. As a former priest of the blade, Hadrian was entitled to live in the Temple of Light with the local priests if he wished. With his river folk friends gone, I had an idea I would find him there.

So I made for the garden district called Beautiful, cutting down back alleys to avoid the crowded main streets. I hadn’t forgotten the manner of welcome I would receive in some quarters of this city remained unpredictable. If I must travel in broad daylight, best to avoid the busy thoroughfares.

But at this hour of the day, even the alleys were not untraveled. As I was going down one shadowed lane, I was followed by the bold ring of another pair of footsteps behind me. Whoever they were, they came at a fast pace, so I moved aside to let them pass. But then I felt something, a sudden flare of warmth where I carried the bow wrapped in sacking across my back. I had felt that warning before.

Instantly alert, my hands snuck up my sleeves, fingering my knives in their wrist-sheaths. The unknown person was advancing quickly, and I couldn’t look back over my shoulder without being obvious. Should I whirl to confront him? But there was nothing stealthy in his approach. The bow’s warning could be wrong, in which case, rounding on an innocent passerby, weapons drawn, would surely raise a cry for the city guard.

As I debated, the opportunity slipped away. The person came even with me and then passed me by without a glance, hurrying on up the lane. He was an average-looking fellow, squat and balding and utterly unintimidating. But as I watched him turn the corner, his cloak shifted in the wind and I caught a brief glimpse of chain mail underneath. Black mail, of the sort worn by the Iron Fists.

I froze in my tracks. He was gone now. Out of sight. Besides, he had paid me no attention. Yet I had the strangest feeling that if I continued on to the end of the path I would find him lying in wait for me around the corner.

After a brief hesitation, I trusted my instincts and those of the bow. Scaling a crumbling brick wall lining one side of the way, I clambered atop a low building and scurried softly across the roof. At the far edge, I dropped to my belly and peered over the side. There, directly below me, was not one man but two. The cloaked fellow in black mail had been joined by an undisguised Fist. Both had drawn swords and taken up a waiting stance at the mouth of the alley. At any moment they would begin to wonder why I had not emerged.

My mind raced. This was no random operation of the city guard. These were the Praetor’s elite soldiers. For them to be after me meant something was seriously wrong.

But there was no time to think and even less to act. I crawled back from the ledge and darted silently across the roof. It was a long jump to the roof of the next building. I barely made it, landing clumsily facedown and cutting my forehead on a jagged tile. There was no disguising the racket I made as I knocked loose a few old tiles and they clattered noisily to the cobbles below.

Knowing my position was already given away, I forgot stealth and ran, jumping from roof to roof and finally dropping into a narrow street below. This way intersected with a busy thoroughfare ahead, and I made for it. Better to take my chances in a crowd than be hunted down in the lonely backstreets.

Although I heard no sounds of pursuit from behind, I didn’t slow my steps until I reached the intersection and lost myself in the moving streams of pedestrians. Only then did I rest, lungs burning and sides aching, behind a parked wagon filled with barrels. I wiped sweat from my forehead, and my hand came away bloody from where I had cut my face on the tile.

I watched the empty street I had come from and was shortly rewarded with the sight of the two Fists spilling into the intersection and pausing, no doubt wondering where their quarry had gone. After a brief hesitation, they plunged into the crowd, going the opposite way. I breathed a sigh of relief. My brief sprint had winded me, and I didn’t feel up to a fight against trained soldiers who had me outnumbered.

Moving with the flow of the crowd, I continued on toward the Beautiful district. As I walked, I was surprised to find myself still panting. A year away from this sort of action had left me weak and soft. Something told me I would have to grow accustomed to the old pace of things again if I wanted to survive this homecoming.

It was getting on toward evening by the time I reached the colonnaded walks and landscaped gardens of the Beautiful, an island of serenity in the heart of the bustling city. Crickets were chirping in the sculpted hedges, and the daylight was fading. The small, graceful trees of the park would provide little cover from unfriendly eyes. But I knew from past visits that a person could hide or be lost for days within the mazes of tall hedges if she left the main paths behind.

But perhaps I would have no such need. There weren’t many people strolling the gardens right now, and those there were conversed in hushed tones and had eyes only for each other. The cool evening breeze carried the sound of water trickling and splashing in nearby fountains. Here and there, marble sculptures dotted the way. I dipped my head in greeting to the towering statue of Queen Tamliess lit by the glow of candles visitors had placed in the niches of her robes.

I passed the water cemetery and continued on until the public gardens let onto the grounds of the temple. I felt like an intruder crossing the manicured lawn to approach the temple. I had never actually been inside the building before. Once I had come seeking Hadrian during the Middlefest celebrations, but I hadn’t passed through the great doors even then.

I wondered, mounting the steps to those doors, whether they would admit me this time. Even as I sounded the heavy dragon’s-head knocker, I had the foolish fear they might turn me away as a trespasser. I didn’t exactly look like I belonged in a temple of light. Self-consciously, I straightened my rough, travel-stained clothing and combed my fingers through my tangled hair. I remembered belatedly that I had a smear of dried blood along my hairline.

When the ornate double doors creaked open, the wrinkled old man peering around them found me spitting on my hand to wipe my bloody forehead clean.

Quickly, before he could shut the door on me, I explained I was looking for a former priest of the blade I believed to be staying here.

It wasn’t difficult to guess the vocation of the shriveled old man I was speaking to, even apart from his surroundings. His white hair was cropped close in the typical style of the priests, and he wore the simple gray robes favored by the Honored Ones.

Seemingly hard of hearing, he made me repeat myself several times in raised tones before finally comprehending my request. At mention of Hadrian’s name, he made a faintly disapproving sound. But he didn’t turn me away. Instead, he beckoned me inside and bid me wait in the great empty hall while he made inquiries. Since he looked about a hundred, I thought as I watched him totter away that I would likely be waiting a very long time.

The place he left me standing in was a high-ceilinged atrium with tiled floors and polished walls that showed my reflection and echoed my every movement. Each cough or shuffling of my feet seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness. All the priests must be in a separate region of the temple, because I heard no sign of them. The dancing glow of the many candles in recesses along the walls revealed no one but myself. A series of shadowed passages branching off from the atrium led to what I could only guess might be private quarters or places of worship. It was down one of these corridors that the old man who had admitted me had disappeared.

Doubts ran through my head as I awaited his return. What if no one here knew anything of Hadrian? Maybe I had guessed wrong and my friend wasn’t to be found in this place. Perhaps he had left Selbius altogether. It was weeks since I received that message from him, and anything could have happened since.

I gripped Hadrian’s letter inside my pocket as if it had the power to conjure him up before me.

The echo of footsteps coming down one of the side passages pulled me out of my thoughts. Through the magic of my dragon scale, I sensed his familiar presence before he came into view.

“Hadrian, thank the fates you are here,” I cried. “I didn’t know where I would look for you next.”

“Ilan.” My friend smiled. “I’m glad to see the road brought you safely here.”

He crossed the hall to greet me with a bearlike embrace. He looked much the same as I had last seen him, only clean-shaven and without the dust of the road that usually clung to him. He wore fresh robes and, although he still kept his dark hair longer than other priests, it was sleeked back in a tidy tail now.

There were other subtle differences. His usual sword was nowhere in sight, maybe because it was unnecessary here or perhaps because the temple priests discouraged his wearing it. It struck me that, although he was normally a tall, barrel-chested man, he seemed smaller and strangely subdued in these surroundings. At least his smile had not lost its warmth.

“Forgive me for not explaining my whereabouts in my letter,” he said. “I should have told you the river folk had moved on, forcing me to seek other lodgings.”

“Never mind. I’m here now and eager to hear what news you’ve collected since we last met.”

“Of course. But first, let us talk someplace more comfortable.” He dropped his voice although to all appearances we were alone. “There are many ears in this place, not all of them as deaf as old Honored Damien.”

“You do not trust the other priests?” I was surprised.

“Oh, they mean no harm. But some of them have a propensity to gossip. Come, I’ll take you someplace more private.”

“I don’t have to leave my weapons out here, do I?” I asked. I recalled from the long-ago days when Terrac had aspired to the priesthood that Honored Ones, with the exception of Hadrian’s order, had a strong aversion to violence and the carrying of weapons.

Hadrian reassured me as long as I kept mine concealed from view, what his brethren didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. I breathed a sigh of relief because I would have felt naked if I’d had to give up my knives. And letting my bow out of sight was something I always had a deep reluctance to do. Even separated by thick walls, it would have plucked at my mind and worried me until we were together again.

Following Hadrian down a winding corridor, I assumed we were going to his private quarters. Instead, the room he led me into looked more like a library, with row upon row of books lining the shelves along the walls.

“They won’t mind me entertaining a visitor in here, and I think you’ll find this more comfortable than my dark little cell,” he explained, ushering me into a high-backed chair and taking another for himself. “The temple priests have been good enough to give me a room, but they don’t exactly believe in luxuries here. I would offer you a drink, but they don’t approve of those either.”

Amused, I said, “I have a feeling your coming is a bit of a shake-up for them. The old man at the door didn’t seem overly fond of you. I thought he was going to turn me away when I mentioned your name.”

“Don’t mind poor old Honored Damien. He isn’t overfond of anybody. Not that I can complain of my hosts. They’ve given me food and a roof while I’m in the city. And as I’m not of their order, that’s all I’m really entitled to.”

We talked briefly of how he had spent his time since returning to Selbius putting the finishing touches on his book of magicker cultures and histories. I gave a short account of my journey here from Cros. And then we got to the subject I had been waiting to broach.

“I was puzzled by your message that it was now safe for me to return to Selbius,” I told him. “As you can see, I took you at your word and made my way here. But the strange thing is, I received a letter from Terrac at the same time telling me the opposite. That it would be dangerous for me to return. Tell me, did you truly discover no cause for concern? Martyn told me very plainly that I had an enemy in the city. Someone close to the Praetor. Have you managed to unmask this person?”

“I have made careful inquiries,” came the answer. “And I’ve been able to find no evidence of a plot against you or even a whisper of a secret enemy in the Praetor’s council. Are you certain this Martyn person wasn’t just inventing a story to save his own skin? It seems likely he was acting on his own initiative in his attempts to kill you. Maybe based off his personal vendetta against you over the death of his father. You said he blamed you for that.”

“Yes, but that is not a story he would have got from the outlaws, who would never have accused me of betraying Brig to his death. That false notion must have been fed to him by somebody, and he swore it was an advisor to the Praetor. And Martyn may have tried to kill me, but I’d stake my life on his honesty in this. He believed the story he gave me. I saw it in his eyes…”