King Pinch (16 page)

"Hold where you are!" shrilled the last ambusher as he held Cleedis by the throat, sword point pressed into the sagging folds beneath the man's chin. "Make a move and I'll kill him!"

Pinch stepped away from his whimpering victim, shrugged, and finally drew his sword. "So what? Kill him."

The little man swallowed in terror.

"You expect me to fight fair. You expect me to care." The regulator walked forward, leveling his sword at the man. "I don't care if you kill him. I just want to kill you."

"Janol…" Cleedis gurgled.

"Shut up, old fool. Do you think I'll risk my life for you? You haven't earned it."

From the distance came the rattling clank of the gate being opened. Voices carried over the silent rooftops.

The man wanted to see who else was coming but was too terrified to take his eyes from his nemesis. Unintimidated, Pinch continued to close. At last the man's nerve broke, and he flung his hostage forward while bolting into the mazed warrens of the necropolis.

Pinch dodged to the side as the chamberlain gasped and stumbled to freedom. For a moment he thought about chasing the man but easily decided against it. Instead, he turned his attention to the fellow on the ground. Remarkably, perhaps driven by fear, the man had regained his sword with every intention of using it, once he caught his breath.

Pinch didn't wait for that. With a quick thrust he brought an end to this comedy. The body fell hard on the muddy lane.

The last survivor threw up his blood-covered hands to surrender, and the hue and cry of the arriving bodyguard forestalled the need for any action on Pinch's part.

"Seize him!" Cleedis commanded as his bodyguards sprinted to the scene. The armored men fell upon the courtier and savagely pinioned him on the ground. The man's expression was a wrenched mass of pain and terror.

"My lord chamberlain, what shall we do with him?" queried the captain of the bodyguard. A coarse-shaven man adept at killing and following orders, he looked over the rogue's handiwork with no small amount of approval.

"Keep the priests away," the chamberlain ordered. The captain nodded and ran off.

Cleedis walked over and placed the tip of his cane on the man's bloodied hand. "What's your name, fool?"

Perhaps he was too dazed to understand; perhaps he was too stubborn, but the man didn't answer.

Cleedis leaned forward. The prisoner screamed.

When the screaming stopped, Cleedis tried again.

"Sir Kurkulatain," was the burbled answer. Sweat and tears shined the man's face. "Vassal of Prince Throdus."

"Did the prince send you?"

"No, my lord!"

"Too easy." Cleedis leaned on his cane again. "Who sent you? Tell me and things will be easier."

The man could barely whisper. "Treeve. Word was Throdus offered us titles."

"This is the result of ambition," Cleedis admonished Pinch who'd been patiently sitting on the bloodstained bench until the questioning was done.

"It's the result of ill planning."

"Whatever," Cleedis shrugged. He turned to the captain of the guard, who'd returned from his mission. "This man" -Cleedis pointed at the prisoner-"is a traitor who has attacked the rightful regent of Ankhapur. Execute him."

"Shall there be a trial, my lord chamberlain?"

The chamberlain looked to Pinch with a cold vulture's eye. "I see no need for a trial. Do you?"

The rogue shook his head and got to his feet. "No, none at all."

"Rejoin us, en route to the palace," the chamberlain ordered, and the two took their leave. "I doubt there'll be any more attacks today."

"Lord Cleedis, have mercy!" shrieked the prisoner. His screams rang through the silent company he was about to join, until his echoes were one with the choir of silent ghosts pleading for their own justice.

Unless, of course, they weren't from Ankhapur.

There was a tussle in the midst of the holy men as Lissa struggled to break through the line. She was held back by another, Pinch could see, a pumpkin-bellied servant of Gond. She fought with the conviction of moral purity, but the pragmatism of girth was on his side. She was stuck fast.

It was interesting to watch the reaction of the rest of the small band, so seldom did such a diverse collection of faiths cluster together. The loyal servant of Gond, the pragmatic Wonderbringer, was saying "Such is the result of treachery," as he held Lissa off. Torm's man, the defender of justice, all but drowned him out by shouting -no, demanding-to know the proof of the assassin's crimes. The Oghmaites and the Deneirians quietly observed; watching and noting was what their lords demanded of them. The priests of the god of song seized upon the moment to begin a golden-toned dirge. In the back, the armored priest of Tempus watched with dour approval, satisfied that victory and defeat had been properly rewarded.

Pinch could imagine the clergy of the darker gods – the fallen Cyric, the grinding Talos, and the cold Loviatar-smiling to themselves in the corners where shadows became walls. Unwelcome among the necropolis guardians, nonetheless they were still there. The hidden temples of Ankhapur were always close at hand.

Cleedis gave the priests the backhand of his attention. The bodyguard formed an aisle, their swords a blued-steel fence. Given the determined disregard the chamberlain showed, the priests let their curiosity and outrage quickly fade. They made a great show of falling back into their daily habits. How fitting of man's noblest sentiments, the thief sarcastically noted. Only Lissa remained undaunted.

"Lord Cleedis, I take your leave," the regulator said. "I've some contriving to do, now that the job's clear."

Deep beneath the regal finery, the paunchy wrinkles, and the white-frosted pate, Cleedis still had the soul of a barracks-room trooper. He saw how Lissa had caught Pinch's eye and got it completely wrong. He leaned over to whisper, "She's not the kind to have you, or any man, you poxy rascal. I'll hazard my finest firewine you can't charm her."

Pinch met the suggestion with a jump of one eyebrow. It could have been an acceptance of the challenge or it might have been a gambler's tic, the sort that betrays a man's astonishment before he's even sensed it fully.

"I'll be happy to drink good wine," the rogue drawled encouragingly. He didn't correct the lord; indeed, he wanted the old man to go on dreaming of Pinch's peccadilloes. It would keep his mind from the thief's real motives.

"And what will you pledge?"

Pinch shrugged. "What little I wear is barely more than I came with, but perhaps a purse or two of your choosing."

"Fair on. My wine against your fingers."

Pinch raised his hand and waved the aforementioned fingers in farewell. "I'll make my own way back."

When the troop rounded the corner, he sought out Lissa. The man found her gathering her holy scrip. Pinch gave a weather eye to the sky. The long shadows had pushed out from the narrow lanes and were thickening in the broad lane to the gate.

"Going somewhere?" Pinch nodded toward the gate.

"What you did in there, executing -"

"I didn't execute anyone."

"You walked away while they killed one," she protested.

"What was I supposed to do? Interfere with the direct orders of the royal chamberlain?"

Lissa pressed her fingers to her eyes, confused. "You could have argued against it -"

"Asked for leniency? Those men came to kill me."

Lissa's eyes locked with his. There was the jagged hardness of rock in her glare, something Pinch hadn't expected from a priestess of the Morninglord.

"You're a bastard, you know that?"

"Dyed through and through," Pinch answered gleefully. The priestess opened her mouth to say something, but Pinch did not stop and rocketed through a litany of infamy. "I'm also a fiend, rakehell, wastrel, and ne'er-do-well as well as a shirker, cock-lorel, swigman, swadler, and wild rogue, but not a palliard or a counterfeit crank." He stopped to gasp in a huge breath. "My clothes are too good for that," He explained as an aside before launching in again with a hurried, earnest whisper favored by theatrical conspirators. "If I were you, I'd count my rings and silver and lock up my treasures when that Janol's around. I'd change the locks to the wine cellar and cast new wards on the royal treasury. I'd even make sure all the ladies-in-waiting were ugly and well out of sight."

The rogue tapped his nose with a wink and a grin, like a child's favorite old uncle. " 'Struth. I haven't seen one since I got here."

Lissa had stopped her packing, quite taken aback by Pinch's sardonic good spirits. "You're teasing me. No one's that bad."

"That bad? What about Core the Cuckolder or Fine-Cloth Durram? Now, they were that bad, I assure you. I once heard how Durram drank the best of a lord's wine cellar in one night and then came back for the goblets on the next!" Pinch kept the banter flowing while casually steering her away from the necropolis gate. He didn't want the priestess brooding on what had just happened. He needed her to like him, if not trust him.

"Let me escort you to safer streets," he said casually, offering her his arm. His gaze swept over the mud-spattered street. Save for the boulevard they were on, the neighborhood was a tangle of narrow, crooked stews and warrens of ill intent. The little garretted town houses rammed up against each other piecemeal, in places so furiously trying to steal the sunlight from their neighbors that no light reached the streets and alleys at their base. Throughout this tangle, the gardens of the festhalls provided touches of color, tenderness, and sweet fragrance that the cheap stews disdained, but only for a price. They were streets full of the unsavory, the unstable, and the immorally ambitious. They were the streets of Pinch's youth.

"Why, I could be that bad, I'm sure," he continued. "No doubt every father and mother in town would live in fear of seeing my pepper-haired pate come knocking at their door, because, you see, they'd know I had no morals, few scruples, and far too many dark habits to be safe around their daughters. Nay, if I were a proper priestess like you, I'd not spend time with that Janol, or your superiors would think you're no more than a bawdy basket."

He grinned the cat's grin and gave her a sweeping bow to cap his whole speech.

Lissa reddened and tried to wear a scowling smile but only succeeded in twisting up her face and betraying every one of her emotions: suspicion, belief, skepticism, and amusement. "Enough already. You're telling me tales."

"Of course, nothing but." Pinch made sure that his answer was too eager, like a man in the trial box denying a truth -which he was, of course.

She looked at him in just the way he hoped she would.

People who are too innocent become eventually distrusted, tripped up by some trivial character flaw; the obviously guilty never gain trust to start with. The best course was to be neither and both -believably unbelievable. Done right, the priestess would vacillate between suspicion and trust until guilt made her blind to his faults.

"How goes your hunt?" he asked, sliding the conversation into a topic she could not resist.

Now it was her turn to be evasive. "Slow progress."

Pinch nodded. "That poorly, eh?" He could see in her eyes he'd cut to the quick of her lie.

She kept her counsel on that matter, instead focusing on the cobblestones of the street.

"Well, perhaps I have news."

"You do?"

"I cannot be sure -you remember I warned you of Cleedis?"

She nodded.

"Things have happened that make me wonder."

"Things?"

"It's hard to say. What are the powers of this thing you seek?"

"Powers? It has no powers."

Pinch shook his head. "Never try dissembling with an Ankhapurian. They -we're masters of the art. I learned how to spot a lie a long time ago, a lesson from my royal cousins.

"Your temple has hunted this thing enough for me to know it has special powers. It's not just sentiment that makes them search so hard; otherwise they would have given up long ago."

"It's a relic of the great Dawnbreaker. Isn't that enough?"

Pinch searched through his royal tutor's lessons for what he might know about a Dawnbreaker. There was nothing.

"Depends. Who or what is the Dawnbreaker?"

Lissa slid naturally into the role of patient missionary. With so many gods, so many martyrs, every priest became accustomed to explaining the myths and icons of his faith.

"The Dawnbreaker was a great prophet who served the Morninglord."

"Of course." They were all great prophets -or profits. Temples without prophets or seers tended to be poor, miserly things. This Pinch knew from experience.

"He was. He predicted the Wintry Summer and the razing of the Unshadowed Palace of the Night Queen."

"Never heard of it."

"It's very ancient history. The gospel is that when the Dawnbreaker died, the Morninglord burned away the impurity of his flesh and commanded an amulet be made from the bones of his skull."

Pinch arched an eyebrow at this.

"So this bauble is really a skull? Is that what I'm looking for? 'Struth why my examinations have failed. I was looking for a mere trinket, not some old prophet's pate!"

"No, it's only a piece of his bone bound inside an amulet of rare metals."

Pinch nodded and pursed his lips as though he were imagining the relic, though that was hardly necessary since he wore the thing beneath his shirt. He hesitantly asked, as if shy at intruding into the secrets of her sect, "It wouldn't have any special powers, would it? Things that might reveal its presence?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well -and this may sound folly-curiosities have plagued me at the palace. Voices, witchlights, and the like. That wasn't…?"

Lissa cocked her head, letting her curly hair spill from the edge of her hood. "The scriptures do say the Upholder of Light called on its might against the Sun-Devourer."

"Upholder of Light?"

"The Dawnbreaker. It is another sign of our respect for the great prophet."

"Upholder, Dawnbreaker -what does it mean he 'called on its might'? What did it do?" Pinch leaned against the stuccoed wall of the first building across from the necropolis gate. It was a smoke-blackened ordinary with a very grim signboard overhead: The Shroud. Nonetheless, it sounded festive enough inside. Their conversation had steered her well away from her assigned post.

"The scriptures are very vague on all that. They just refer to some great power without really describing much. Not everyone could use it either; only the faithful are described as being able to use it."

" 'Tis not me, for certain, to gain from such a thing," Pinch lied. "I never knew about the Morninglord until I came to Elturel."

The truth was that Pinch's gain would have been all in coin. He'd spent weeks casing the Elturel temple, working out its wards, guard schedules, and even just where to make the break in the roof. The plan had been to filch the amulet and then pass it off to Therin. The Gur was to carry it west in the next caravan until he found a good broker on the Sword Coast to take it off his hands.

Cleedis had ruined all that.

Now the rogue felt like he was stuck with the thing. True, there were more than enough brokers in Ankhapur who would pay for an artifact of mysterious power, but Pinch knew his chances of getting good coin were very slim. The hue and cry embodied in Lissa's presence made matters all the worse. Every broker in the city would know where the object came from and probably who had stolen it. That knowledge could be a powerful threat to Pinch's freedom. The rogue had no ambition to discover the pleasantries of Ankhapur's prisons.

"So many questions. Maybe you've heard news?" The quick tones of Lissa's curiosity intruded on Pinch's reverie. She spoke with allegro phrasing in tones and shades that carried more meaning than her words. Pinch could imagine her in the ranks of the temple choir, a place that better suited her than the slop-strewn stews that surrounded them now.

"Maybe." The rogue kept his answer short. Talk killed thieves.

"I think the Dawnbreaker's amulet is here, in Ankhapur."

"How can you be sure?" Pinch really wanted to know her reasons, but he had to take care not to sound too intrigued. If she suspected someone, he had to include the possibility she suspected him.

"The patriarchs in Elturel have divined that the amulet is not within that city. They've sent word."

Pinch scratched at his stubbly beard. He'd not had time for grooming since some moment yesterday. "That hardly places the proof here."

Lissa lowered her voice as a drunk ambled out of the Shroud, a hairy brute whose naked chest barely fit beneath the scarred leather apron he wore as a shirt. The man strutted past them, arrogantly challenging these well-dressed strangers who ventured onto his turf.