King Pinch (12 page)

Reverie ended with a knock at the door. Before Pinch could rise or say "Enter," the door swung open and Throdus sauntered into the salon as if the whole world were his privilege. The dark prince radiated a jaunty cheer. Without so much as a comment, he plopped into the chair opposite Pinch.

The rogue glanced up and then buried himself in slurping spoonfuls of porridge as if Throdus weren't there.

Throdus watched this until a wry smile curled his lips.

"Good cousin, I regret my brothers' behavior last night. It was a crude display." The prince stopped to examine some speck on the back of his hand.

"No doubt you would have done better," Pinch suggested between swallows, never once looking up.

"Of course. Marac did that just for our benefit."

"I know."

Throdus looked up from his digitary studies. "One might question his motive."

"Not me. He's just become more like his brother."

"Vargo? Those two were always close."

"Afraid they're plotting against you?"

"They're always plotting against me. And I plot against them. Remember, Janol, it's a game we've played since childhood."

"I haven't forgotten."

The prince went back to looking at his hands.

"I do find it interesting that you've chosen to come back now."

Ah, so that's where my lord is casting his net. Let's play the game and string him along, Pinch decided.

"My other choices were less pleasant."

"Ah, the wastrel's life -your exploits are known here."

Pinch was surprised and not surprised. His adopted cousins certainly had the resources to learn about his past, but it surprised him that they bothered. He would have thought their own intrigues kept them busy enough.

"Father always had a curiosity about your fate." The prince brushed back his black hair and watched his adversary's reaction. "Since he was curious, we had to be curious."

"Always afraid that someone else was working the cheat."

"Information is power." The words were sharp.

"So you know my life. What will you do, give me up to the constables?"

"I just want to know why you're here."

Now it was Pinch's turn to be amused. "Just that? Why I've come to pay my respects, my dear guardian dead and all. After that I'll make myself master of the trugging houses in the city. Maybe I'll even do a little brokering, not that you'd have anyone else's goods to sell."

"Cheap lies only irritate me. You hated Manferic more than all the rest of us."

"I had my cause. Try growing up like the household dog."

"He was hard on us all, but we didn't run away."

"You? You were all too afraid -afraid of him, afraid you'd lose your chance when he died."

Suddenly the shadows fell across the prince's sunny facade. "I, at least, have the right to be king. You, however, have no such claims. You're just an orphaned waif raised above his level by my father for the gods know what purpose, and then you come back here thinking you can be like one of the blood. The only reason for you to come back here is to beg for scraps. Is that it?" The prince ended the question with a sneer.

Pinch didn't answer, glowering at Throdus while he continued his breakfast.

"I didn't think so," the prince said, dismissing the possibility with a wave of his hand. "The real question is, who are you working for? Marac? That would make sense for his little show. Publicly disavow you, privately deal."

Pinch stopped in midladle and blew on his porridge. "I told him it was too obvious."

"Now you're too obvious. So it wasn't Marac. Someone brought you here for a job and I want to know."

This was getting tedious, and Throdus's temper was getting up.

"As you well knew before coming here, it wasn't Marac who took me abroad."

Throdus laughed. "You're suggesting Cleedis? He's a trained monkey. He just wears the hat of regent and dances when somebody else plays the music. You've seen it; he can't even keep Vargo from unseating Bors at the head of the table."

Pinch remembered the arrangement, unremarkable at the time, but now of greater importance: Bors drooling at the end of the family row while Vargo sat in the first son's seat at the regent's left hand. It had never been that way at Manferic's table. The old man had kept his gods-cursed firstborn in the place of honor even after his deficiencies were clear to all.

"Why should I tell you anything? I'm no intelligencer for the constabulary."

Abruptly the prince was no longer humorous, the indulgent mask peeling from his flesh to reveal the corded muscles of a snarl as he sprang to his feet. "Because you're nothing but a rakehelled orphan who lives by our indulgence! Because I want to know who you're working for and you'll tell me."

"A pox on that!" Pinch swore, shoving the bowl away. "I'll not be your intelligencer, not when you come here threatening like some piss-prophet."

"Then I'll have your heart and roast it for the dogs!"

Throdus's hand went to the jeweled dagger at his side. It wasn't hanging there just for show. The blade was brilliantly polished and glittered in the morning light.

The rogue grinned as he kicked the chair back and sprang to his feet. He drew his slim-bladed skene, with its leather-wrapped handle and well-oiled blade, and let the point trace imaginary circles in the air before the prince's chest. "And I say you're a pizzle-headed ass for thinking you can best me with your little cutter. What do you know about knife fights? Have you every jumped a man in a dark lane and pulled your blade across his weasand-pipe? Fought with a blade in one hand and a bottle in the other?" Pinch started a slow pace around the table, one that forced Throdus back from the center of the room.

"One time a captain of the guard wanted to dock me. He was a fine gentleman and thought I was too. Thought I'd fight fair. I burned his hair off before I left him hamstrung. Scarred him for life -even the priests couldn't do anything about it.

"Do you think being a prince will protect you?" Pinch whispered softly as he picked up a heavy jug with his free hand.

Throdus's rage had started to go pale, and suddenly he acted in desperate panic. With a snap of his arm, he flung his dagger.

Pinch reacted almost as fast and just managed to swing the jug into the blade's path. The hard clay shattered in his hand, sending shards skittering across the floor like mice, but the knife went tumbling away. The rogue threw the useless jug handle back and Throdus bobbed beneath it.

Pinch lunged but not so hard as to be sure of a hit. Throdus escaped harm, though his waistcoat died in the attack. Pinch's dirk pierced the fabric and stuck into the wall. As Throdus yanked frantically to pull the fabric loose, Pinch slammed his free arm against the man's chest. The air blew out of Throdus like a puffball squeezed too hard. While still skewered to the wall like a gutted rabbit, he sagged against the rogue unable to do anything but helplessly twitch as he choked for air.

Bronzewood cracked as the dirk wrenched free of the wall and came free of the punctured clothes. Pinch slithered in close, his knee poised below Throdus's gut as an extra insurance of good behavior. The rogue let the knife blade tickle the prince's torso as he deftly sliced away the doublet's strings, tracing just the thinnest line of blood down the man's hairy chest. Gently, almost tenderly, he brought his lips close to the noble ear, till he could smell the perfumes in Throdus's oiled hair and guess the flavor of breakfast the man had eaten that morning.

"What should I do with you?" the regulator whispered ever so softly, as if the prince within his clutches weren't even there. "If I killed you, who would complain? Vargo? Marac? Cleedis? Maybe that's why I'm here…"

It was to Throdus's credit that he did not cry out, but that may have been only because he couldn't. His gasping had broken into shivers the man could not restrain, so strong that he couldn't even work his lips to form words. His eyes welled up with water as he stared at the knife, unable to shift his gaze from it.

"What should I do?" Pinch whispered again. "Perhaps they'll reward -"

A rich reverberation rebounded through the apartment, the musical tolling of a bell. The sound stood out by its otherworldliness, but Pinch ignored it. It was just some errant matins bell of yet another sect, echoing up from the common city below.

There was no one there. The room was empty and silent save for the prince who crawled, mewling, toward the door. Pinch whirled here and there, jabbing the air in case his threat were invisible, but there was nothing.

Throdus had reached the door and was struggling to his feet. It's him; he's doing this. I can't let him go, Pinch thought, his own mind racing on the verge of panic. "Tell your wizards to stop or I'll kill you!" he shouted.

GO."

Behind him, the door creaked and then slammed as the prince bolted for safety. By the time Pinch could turn, Throdus was gone.

Frustrated, the rogue whirled back to face the empty room. "Damn you! Who are you?"

"LATER…" The deep tones faded away, leaving behind only a hollowness of muffled sound.

Pinch tore through the rooms, overturning chaises, throwing aside coverlets, flinging the armoire doors wide. There was nothing, nowhere. No hidden visitors, sorcerous imps, or mischievous gremlins. He was alone.

At last the rogue collapsed in the center of the frenzy, in the nest of bed sheets and clothes that littered the floor. What had happened? Who had happened? And what would happen next?

For once, the thief couldn't say.

There was the leathery scrape of a tussle outside, over a handful of shouted voices. Not a one did Pinch recognize, but they were full of youth and vigor and he could well guess that they were rakes of Throdus's circle intent on currying favor with their patron.

By the time the courtiers bulled their way past the guard outside the door and smashed through the lock, Pinch had shucked his linen nightshirt, pulled on trousers and boots, and was standing ready for them. In each hand casually held behind his back he held a dagger by the blade, ready for the toss. Another was in his boot top.

These blades were not his first line of defense, though. Pinch had no illusions that a few puny tossed daggers would stop this group. Princes surrounded themselves with hardier worthies than that. At best he could remind them he had a potent sting.

Of course, they had to find him first. Invisibility, or a thief's version of it, was his strongest protection. While they were fumbling outside, the rogue slid into the shadowed folds of his bed canopy, between the wall and the monolithic headboard. There he shifted his shoulder so that the lines of gloom fell across it just so, tilted his head into the darkness, and pressed his legs close to the headboard until they looked like part of the carved bronzewood. There he waited very, very still. There was, after all, still the great risk that he had missed some telltale and they would discover it in a nonce. That's what the knives were for. Fools who relied on only one chance were short-lived fools.

All in one packet, three bravos cracked through the lock and crashed into the salon, a swirl of silken capes and flashing blades. The group, with their curled hair and puffy half-slashed sleeves, made a romantic trio as they whirled and thrust bloody holes into the air.

Pinch almost gave himself away, so utter was his contempt for what he saw. They practically stumbled and fell over each other in their eagerness to be the first to make the strike, the first to avenge the tainted honor of their lord. Their capes, colorful in courtly dance, snared each other, one's silk foiling the stroke of another.

"Stand clear there!"

"Step aside yourself, Faranoch."

"He's mine. You fall back."

"I yield to no man my lesser."

"Lesser?"

"Stop flailing that ham slicer. You've cut my sleeve!"

"A mortal blow, Treeve."

"Hah! I have him!"

"Hah indeed, Kurkulatain. You've killed a pillow."

"A fierce battle Prince Throdus fought," said the pudgiest as he looked about more closely, tired of blindly lunging. He prodded the spilled contents of the armoire at the entrance to the bedroom.

"Indeed," commented another, a painfully handsome fop who was just as relieved that there was no prey to be found. "They must have battled from one room to the other." As proof he swept his sword across the tangle of hurled goods Pinch had created in his search for the possessor of the strange voice.

"A skilled swordsman to have kept Throdus at bay so long," the third courtier nervously added. He was a thin stick topped by droopy ringlets.

The other two looked at the evidence for this new judgment. "Quite formidable…"

"And he forced Throdus to retreat."

As they spoke, the trio slowly bunched together, back to back to back. They eyed corners, flowing arras, even snarled lumps of linen with a newfound fear.

"Maybe he's dead."

"No blood though."

"He might have run away."

"True…" The six-legged knot blindly edged toward the door.

"Might have."

"He could have bribed the guard," the stick man brilliantly deduced.

Pinch stifled a laugh, and the urge to come roaring out of his shadow and send the lot scurrying back around Throdus's legs like yipping little pups.

"Of course. He knew someone would be coming!"

"Like us."

"We should sound the alarm," the fat one dutifully suggested.

"And let the guards hunt him!" The handsome one seized upon the idea.

"It would be the right thing," agreed the stick-pole man.

The clot backed to the door and jammed, none of the trio willing to break rank to let the others through. As they hovered there, unwilling to go forward, unable to go back, a shadow fell on them from behind.

"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" thundered Cleedis in his best military voice. The trio-as-one sundered itself in terror and blindly darted through the doorway as the old commander shouldered through them, batting his way clear with his cane.

As soon as he was inside, the white-haired chamberlain closed the door and planted the cane in front of him, leaning heavily on it as though it were a tent pole.

"You can come out now," he said like a man trying to coax a beast from a thicket, addressing the air that filled the light and dark between them. "I know you've popped yourself into some corner waiting for an unguarded moment to strike. Well, if you mean to do that to me, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction. If you want to fight me, Janol, you'll have to come and get me."

"I'd never fight you, Lord Cleedis," Pinch flattered as he stepped into view.

The old man squinted his weak eyes to be sure of what he was seeing. "Lies and pissing-poor ones at that. I'd kill you given half a reason, Janol, and I suspect you'd do it for even less."

"Killing always has a reason. If I do any less, I'm a beast." The rogue tucked the daggers in his belt and spread his arms to prove that he was unarmed. White arms spanned from his hairy dark chest, a heart eaten by shadow.

"Philosophy from a scoundrel. There is no end of wonders in the world."

"There are. I came back here."

"And dammit, what happened? I hear you brawled with Throdus."

Pinch didn't deny a word of it. He scoured the chaos of clothing for a clean doublet. "He's a jackanapes ass. Let's say he was checking the prancer's teeth when it bit him."

"And then?"

"And then nothing," came the muffled answer as the regulator pulled on an undershirt. Pinch wasn't about to mention the strange voice, not until he'd had a chance to learn more. These walls for one -he wanted to check them much more carefully.

"What did he ask?" Seeing that he was being ignored, the chamberlain lumbered to a chair and settled down.

The rogue turned his attention to the washstand. "Just as much as it pleased me to inform him."

"And what did you inform?"

"Everything, the lay of it all." The regulator ambled back into the salon, drying one ear with a towel. "Which is to say, nothing. The minstrel can't play the tune without an instrument.

"I've been thinking that now is the time to inform me, Lord High Chamberlain."

Half-dressed, Pinch stood over the seated chamberlain and let one hand stray to the daggers in his belt.

It was a tribute to the old man's years of soldiering that he looked his adversary square and firm and never once flinched. The implied threat didn't faze him; either the chamberlain had made peace with death long ago or he was canny enough to know the rogue's bluff.

"Not yet. Soon."

Sensing the determination of the rock against the rain, the rogue relented. "Anon it is, but if you don't give good words on it soon, I'll have a grievance with you, Lord Cleedis." He stepped back, a signal that the threat was naught. "Just remember, a grievance is good enough reason for killing."

The old man scowled with irritation, not exactly the reaction Pinch expected from such a promise. "Morality gets in the way. Better to just kill and be done with it. Don't think -a proper soldier knows that. You would have learned that if you'd stayed."

"Just as long as I killed in Manferic's name?"

Cleedis shrugged off the question as no matter, "It's a warrior's duty." The cane clawed the floor as the old man got to his feet, stooped back bent under the load of bloody decades of duty. "Killing's just another task."

"Then I choose to kill for my own name." The rogue frowned darkly at the figure he saw in the salon's mirror.

The chamberlain possessed a voice he seldom used anymore, a voice ill-suited to the sycophantic parasitism of court and embassy halls. It was a voice he'd learned long ago on the back of a horse, when every choice confronted death, a voice that made wiser men jump into the fire he chose. He used it now, but it was something that had long ago shriveled unused, no better than a rusted watch-spring on an ancient clock

"Stow your rubbish. A true killer makes no idle threats." The sense was there in what he gargled but the conviction was gone. "You'll wait your time with patience, and when the time's right you'll learn your job."

"I didn't come here to be your lap-boy," Pinch spat venomously.

"And it wasn't my idea to fetch you."

In his brain, the regulator seized on the statement. It was the first proof he'd been given that another mind stood behind the chamberlain's. His impulsive side, normally given to boozing and women, wanted to blurt out the question. Who had given the word? In moments like this, though, Pinch's cool heartlessness took hold. Calculating the reactions, he said nothing. The information would come to him, slowly and with time.

He made no show of noticing the old man's slip.

The door hinges creaked. "By this afternoon, I think."

And then he was alone.

A short while later, a shadow of wine-red velvet and white lace slipped past the bored guard beyond the door.

The salt-and-pepper-haired ghost padded through carpeted hallways, just slipping into dark doorways as stewards and ladies hurried by. They were blinded from the stranger's presence by their duties. Guards protected doorways, ignoring the arched halls behind them.

Pinch stayed to the darkest hallways, stuffed with their out-of-fashion trophy heads, past the servant quarters, along long avenues of interconnected halls. From the open windows that looked out over the courtyard where a squad of trainees drilled came the whiff of roasted sulfur and animal dung.

Trainees, he thought as he caught glimpses of the recruits bungling their drill. By rights, only the elite served here, but these amateurs bore the crest of Prince Vargo. These men were hasty recruits brought in as fodder to strengthen one princeling's hand. So it's come to this, each prince dredging the city for his own personal guard.

In the western wing, the search ended at a trio of guarded doors. That amused Pinch -the hopeless thought that his underlings would be challenged by a stand of overtrained watchmen. In this he was sure Cleedis or whoever was just naive; believing that only he was the threat, they underestimated the others.

It did not take long for Pinch to find a way to slip in unnoticed, and if he could get in, they could get out.

"He's fobbed you with a bale of barred eater-treys," the regulator chuckled as he sauntered off the balcony and interrupted Therin and Sprite's friendly dice game.

The game stopped in midthrow as the two twitched alert, their faces openly showing their native suspicion.

"Well, well. Doesn't need us for a damn, does he? Now look who walks in."

The halfling, perhaps with a better sense of caution, kept his mouth shut.

"You should know how things stand, Therin."

"Perhaps I do -Master Pinch. Or is it Lord Janol here?"

Pinch sidled away from the open window, just in case someone was watching. "As your prefer. Tell me, should I call you a fool?"

"Watch your prattling!" The dagger that suddenly appeared the man's hand reinforced his warning.

The regulator remained unruffled. "You really think I'd given you up, after I'd saved you from hanging in Elturel? It's a game, Gur, like those dice you hold. If they think you're worthless to me, then they'll not kill you to make me mind. Put your skene away and use your head."

The halfling gave a gentle restraining tug on the bladesman's sleeve. "Whether he's telling the truth or lying, he's right, Therin. Maybe we don't mean anything to him and maybe we do -but if they think we're a hold over him then we're all dead as a surety."

The master rogue nodded agreement to the halfling's words. "The game's to get them to think what you want them to think, not to play fair." He pointed to the dice in Therin's palm. "I'll wager you a groat you can't roll a five or a nine with Sprite's dice."

"I would never, not to my friends!" Sprite protested in his tinny voice.

The Gur eased back from his coil, slid his knife away and eyed the dice casually. "That might be," he drawled with particular serenity to make his point, "or maybe I've crossed him with a bale of contraries." He reached into his blouse and produced a pair of identical-looking dice. "That's how the game is played."

"Unfair! You've been figging me!" squealed the half-ling. He scrambled to gather up the winnings before anyone might stop him. Therin moved almost as quick, and there was a flurry of reaching and grabbing as the coins and notes in the pot vanished from the floor.

"Well played, high lawyer!" The release of anxiety welled up inside the regulator and translated itself into spurt of laugher.