Shadow of the Father (14 page)

Yilon craned his neck and saw that a fourth mouse had planted himself in front of the mounts. Corwin threw himself back in the seat, ignoring the mice as best he could. “Where are the guard? Call them.”

“Already done, sir,” the driver said. “I hailed the one down the street. He’s on his way.”

“They’re not doing anything,” Yilon said. He leaned back in his seat too. The beggar mice were remaining politely out of the cart, mostly. It was clear that this was a time-worn tactic to get money, but his heart pounded anyway. It couldn’t be a coincidence, not here outside Market Street where he’d told Sinch to be. The urge to look behind him was nearly overwhelming, but he reminded himself that he had to act natural.

“I do apologize for this further delay,” Corwin said. It was the first time Yilon had seen him without even a hint of a smile, his eyes fixed dead ahead of him.

“We had beggars in Divalia,” Yilon said. “They were all over.”

“What do we pay those guards for?” Corwin muttered.

Yilon was about to press further when he felt a touch on his ear, no more than a breath. He started, and turned despite himself. No mouse was in sight, but a tall cloaked figure was striding quickly away from his cart, a bushy red tail dragging on the ground behind it.

The beggar mice stepped back in unison, and the cart lurched forward. “Finally,” Corwin grumbled, as Yilon was thrown back into the bench, his paw landing on the empty spot where his leather satchel had been.

 
Sinch lay still under the bed, listening to Yilon and the servant-fox discuss clothes. Yilon, bless him, was talking loudly, no doubt to distract the servant from any sounds Sinch might make. But Sinch was very good at being quiet. The only thing he couldn’t do anything about was his scent, especially around foxes, and especially without any of the powders that were in the small bag of tools under the loose floorboard in the room he’d rented half a mile away.

Still, either Yilon’s nose or his authority kept the servant from looking under the bed to see the huddled mouse there. Once the bedroom door clicked shut and Sinch could see the empty floor, he scurried out to the open window, flipped through, and made his way quickly down. In the morning light, someone might see him, but he had no alternative, really.

Rodenta was with him. No sound met him at the bottom of the wall. He followed the line of the building to the place where the lawn between the house and outer wall was narrowest, and then followed the wall to the unattended door in the back. Nobody was watching on either side, so he slipped through the narrow entrance and out into the city. It would’ve been no big trick to climb the wall, but it was easier still to find an unguarded door. He liked impressing Yilon with accomplishments that were easier than they appeared.

In the still of morning, the city lay quiet. He’d noticed last night that the crowds persisted in the streets into the evening and well into the night, which was reasonable when you considered the city was made up entirely of foxes and mice. In fact, he hadn’t slept at all between the time the driver had left him at the edge of the Warren and the time he’d crept into Yilon’s room.

The Warren was the most fascinating place he’d ever been. From the time he’d stepped past the squad of fox guards, across the boundary the driver wouldn’t cross, and breathed in the scent of what must be a thousand mice, he’d been entranced. The mice, at first suspicious of him, thawed quickly when he explained that he was new in town and had been arrested. They sent him to Miss Chakray’s boarding-house, and one, warning him to keep away from “a troublemaker and thief by the name of Balinni, or any of his gang,” had given him without meaning to the name of someone who might be able to help him. He’d boasted, “I’m not afraid of any thief in this town,” hoping word would get back to this Balinni mouse. Otherwise, he’d have to find him, and he had an idea that would be difficult in the Warren for someone who didn’t know it.

The boarding-house, two stories tall, consisted of a moderately-sized common room on the ground floor where the four tenants and the landlady spent most of their time, three rooms in the basement which were the cheaper ones on account of the mold (according to one of the residents), and three rooms on the second story, one of which was Miss Chakray’s residence. Sinch gathered that that room was also available to boarders, with a slightly enhanced array of services offered. He declined that option politely, took the empty second-story room, and secured his belongings as best he could in the featureless space that was barely enough for him to turn around in. The straw pallet by the window took up one entire wall, and the only other furniture was a chair with a broken leg—not that there was room for much else. Spiderwebs filled the corners, and the straw pallet smelled of everyone who’d stayed there before, though not strongly. It took him only a few moments to find a floorboard he could pry up to hide his money below. His clothes he left in his satchel, but he took the dagger from the Divalia armory. He had a feeling it might come in handy when he went to find Balinni.

As it happened, Balinni came to see him before he’d been in the common room of the boarding house for more than half an hour. He’d barely finished the thin root soup Miss Chakray had served when the two mice he’d been talking to got up in mid-sentence and left the table. Sinch looked up, into the hard eyes of a seasoned thief. “He wants to see you,” he said.

With no more than a nod, trying not to show his nerves, Sinch followed the mouse outside, around one corner and then another, through cramped alleys. Despite being alert, he didn’t hear the approach of the mouse who seized him from behind and spun him around. Sinch had his knife drawn before he registered the torn ear and scarred muzzle of a mouse who was so thin he might have been described as emaciated if his shoulders and arms hadn’t been so muscular.

“New in town,” Balinni’d said, and it wasn’t a question. “Let’s see.”

He pointed Sinch to a painted target in the wooden side of a crate fifteen feet down the alley, and handed him five rusty knives. When he’d thrown the last one, hitting the target four times, Balinni jumped him and grappled him to the ground, but Sinch got out of the hold. He didn’t manage to pin the other mouse, but Balinni chuckled and said, “Good,” so no more was expected of him.

The scarred mouse leaned against the brick wall of the alley.

“Where you from?” he asked, while his henchmouse fetched the knives.

Sinch talked about Divalia, but Balinni cut him off mid-sentence.

“You’ve not improved your lot,” he started. “Life in the Warren is hard. Best you realize that now. If it’s not for you, get yourself back to Frontier and catch the next coach east. But there are opportunities here for a mouse who can avail himself of them. The redtails hate us, but won’t get rid of us, and we can live off them if we keep our eyes open and keep a step ahead of them.”

“Do they all hate you—us?”

“Every last one.” Balinni’s eyes glinted. “They blame us for all the ills that befall them, from the ones we caused to the ones we suffer from along with them. So we might as well cause as many as possible.”

It was Balinni that Sinch thought of as he crept from the palace back to the Warren in the dawn light. Yilon had told him his plan, but not how Sinch was supposed to pull off his part of it. The mouse’s head ran through one idea after another, but he was missing the information necessary to decide which one would work best. He had been able to sneak past the guards once, but could he do it again? Could a whole crew do it, if necessary? How much time, realistically, would he have?

The Warren already felt comfortable to him. The narrow alleys and hidey-holes, the buildings that were just pass-throughs to another street, the streets choked with cleverly placed piles of garbage, pools of filthy water, or ramshackle barricades, all of it was like an immense puzzle that he had to solve every time he wanted to travel somewhere. Being comfortable didn’t mean he could find his way, though. Just getting to the small house where Balinni had told he could be found took him a good half hour, though it was only a hundred yards from Miss Chakray’s house.

The small one-story house, flat-roofed and damp, appeared to be Balinni’s alone. Despite the damp, it smelled clean, though again it smelled of dozens, if not hundreds, of mice. Two of them lounged in the front room on cots stuffed with straw. Though they looked asleep, huddled under patched cloaks, one of them spoke up as soon as Sinch walked in.

She got up when he’d told her his business and walked into the back room, “to see if Mister Balinni is awake.” A moment later, she poked her head back out. “You Sinch?” When he nodded, she jerked her head toward the back. “C’mon in.”

Balinni was awake, and listened to Sinch’s plans over a breakfast of delicious-smelling bread that he did not offer to share, laid out on a low stone desk that was otherwise cluttered with parchment and ink bottles.

“That’s good an’ interesting,” he said. “Got some good thoughts there. I like the distraction one. Speaks to our strengths. But I’d add one little twist to it.”

He raised a paw for the female mouse, who’d stayed in the room. “Run over to Marisco’s and get Kishin,” he said, wiggling his paw behind and over his head. She was gone in a moment.

“Now,” he said to Sinch, “this is pretty big. What’s this thing you’re to take? And how do you know so much about where it will be?”

“I don’t know exactly what it is,” Sinch said. “When the guards arrested me yesterday, I heard them talking about the new lord in town, and how he felt he didn’t have to have guards to go around with. And one of them said, “Carrying that around with him with no guards, it’s just begging for trouble”.”

Balinni’s rolled the breadcrumbs below his slender fingers. “They just said that, right in earshot of you.”

“Those guards didn’t know I was there,” Sinch said. “They threw me into the cart and those other foxes were talking outside.”

“Hm.” Balinni rolled the breadcrumbs ball back and forth, collecting the rest of the crumbs. “It is true that there’s a new lord, arrived just yesterday. We don’t know much about him. But he might be taken around the city tomorrow. Might be our last chance for a big score. Been a nice couple of years for us, old Lord sick and no heir around. And the last couple of weeks! Never been busier. So if your information proves true, so much the better. You don’t strike me a mouse in the habit of lying.” He picked up the breadcrumb ball and popped it into his mouth.

“I’m not,” Sinch said, hoping his voice and tail didn’t betray his nervousness. “I just want to share in whatever it is.”

“You’ll get a share, all right.” Balinni licked his fingers. “Might take a little while to get it to you. We couldn’t sell a royal treasure here in the city.”

Sinch nodded, his mind leaping ahead to the problem of what to give Balinni once the theft was accomplished. Hopefully he could stall him and then leave with Yilon, and it wouldn’t be a problem. His whiskers tingled at the danger in that plan, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He’d have to ask Yilon for something from the treasury, something valuable.

He was rather startled when the female mouse returned barely a few moments later. She must be better at navigating the streets than he was. She did not have any person in her company; rather, held away from her body, she carried a large parcel wrapped in sackcloth, about as large as her chest, that reeked of fox.

“Thank you,” Balinni said, clearing a space in the center of his desk. “On here.”

She set it down and slouched back into a corner of the room. Balinni smiled at Sinch and pulled the sackcloth away to reveal red fur. He lifted three items out and laid them carefully side by side: a wooden pole with a leather harness on one end, about the length of Sinch’s arm; a long red-furred tail with a white tip on one end and another leather harness on the other. Sinch barely had time to register that the tail appeared to be a real fox tail, because when Balinni lifted out the last item, all other thoughts flew from his head, and he jerked back from the table.

Facing him was the empty, staring head of a dead fox.

“Beautiful, no?” Balinni caressed the ears fondly. “Marisco does lovely work. Cleaned up all the smell of death, brushed with musk from a couple of different foxes so nobody can identify the scent. You wear a cloak over it—never the same one, unless you’re on the same job—and wear this on your head. Strap the tail around your midsection, and you can pass for one of them at a glance.”

Sinch couldn’t take his eyes off the head. It was the most grisly thing he’d ever seen. The eyes had been replaced by glass baubles, and all the fur was neatly brushed and clean, but the nose was dry and wrinkled. He wanted more than anything for Balinni to put the head back in the sackcloth; he wanted never to have to see it again, let alone touch it. But Balinni had attached the wooden pole to the base of the hideous thing and was holding it out to him.

“Try it on,” the scarred mouse said, with almost fatherly pride.

There was nothing Sinch could do but close his eyes and take it in his paws. The cheek ruffs felt dry and dead. He couldn’t help thinking about Yilon’s cheek ruffs, so warm, how they’d felt a couple hours ago. He forced a smile to his muzzle and lifted it over his head. Balinni fastened the harness around Sinch’s neck.

The weight balanced over him so that when he nodded his head forward, it felt about to fall off. He kept his head carefully upright after that, while Balinni chuckled. “It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works well. We’ve used it a few times now.” His eyes, rather than meeting Sinch’s, rested above, as though he were talking to the dead fox head. “We call him Kishin.”

Sinch swallowed. “Was that… was that his name?”

Balinni laughed. “Rodenta’s teats, no. No idea who he was. He came in and died on our doorstep a decade ago. Kishin was one of the nobles who particularly hated us.” He traced a finger over his most prominent scar, a gash running from his eye halfway down the right side of his muzzle. “I got this from his soldiers, five years ago. They came in and tried to burn down the Warren one night.”