Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel (6 page)

“Then why were you hold—”

“That sounds sensible.” I interrupted before Michael, could give the game away.

The boss snorted. “All right. But I expect the two of you to work all the way to the Port. And I don’t expect any more trouble, either. Right?”

“Of course,” said Michael.

The train boss walked away.

“He knows it was us,” Michael said.

“He suspects it. If he knew, he might not be so generous. If he could prove it, it would probably be us in the next town’s stocks. He’s not a nice man.”

“Mayhap not, but he’s been generous to us. The least we can do is to go on to the city as he asks. Besides, I think he’s going to pay us. You don’t want to waste this last week’s work, do you?”

So we came to it.

“You just want to get to the city,” I said. “You’ve been pushing us in this direction for six months. You’re going after Jack.”

“Not Master Bannister, so much,” Michael said, “but his employer. That man was responsible for three deaths that we know of, Fisk. Not to mention all those whom the wreckers killed.”

“You can’t blame Jack, or even his employer, for the wreckers’ murders,” I said. “He was just fencing their goods.”

“I still lay those deaths on them, at least in part. But even leaving the past aside, how many more will Jack’s employer kill if he isn’t stopped?”

I had no answer, except that it wasn’t our business—which has never stopped Michael for a minute.

“If we meddle with his affairs, Jack’s employer is going to kill the two of us. I know you don’t care about that, but I do. And it’s not our business! Crime on this scale is the Liege Guard’s job, not ours.”

“They don’t seem to be doing it.” Michael was wearing his I’m-a-knight-errant-expression, which meant he was no longer susceptible to rational argument. But I still had to try.

“I don’t want to go after Jack,” I said. “I
won’t
go after him.”

Michael’s face sobered, but his accursed, stubborn, noble determination never wavered.

“I can’t force you to come with me. You paid your debt, years ago. You’re free to do as you like.”

But he was going after Jack, and his powerful, deadly boss, no matter what I said. And I wanted to see Michael die at their hands even less than I wanted to see Jack on the justice scaffold. Which meant that I’d have to find some way to help Michael, and pull Jack out of it—while keeping all three of us alive. There are limits to what’s possible, even for me. But…

“You know I can’t let you go alone. You’d get killed in a heartbeat, without someone sensible to restrain you.”

“Then we go together, as always. My squire.”

Michael clapped me on the shoulder, and his smile was like the rising sun. He knew perfectly well that I couldn’t let him go into danger alone… and he’d used that knowledge against me.

On the other hand, if he was going to lay down ultimatums, then he could hardly blame me for getting…creative.

To my surprise, Fisk made no further argument about going on to the city. I know that in his heart he wanted to bring down Jack Bannister’s wicked employer as much as I did. ’Twas only this Jack he wished to…avoid, I think. At times Fisk seemed to hate the man, and I’ve gathered some great betrayal lay between them. But for betrayal to leave the scars that this one had, there must once have been great trust, and even love.

To me, Jack hadn’t seemed at all loveable. But I wasn’t a teenage boy, learning the skills to survive as a thief and con artist.

If Master Bannister was innocent, of murder at least, I might be willing to spare him. But if the blood his master shed had splashed onto his hands…

* * *

Tallowsport was larger than I’d been able to imagine, and not nearly as…I think “grand” was what I had expected. A shining, bustling richness that nothing else in the Realm could rival.

Traveling at the food train’s slow pace, we reached Tallowsport’s outskirts early in the morning. All towns have craft yards on their outskirts, so at first I assumed that the grandeur I expected would eventually appear. The craft yards were indeed bigger than any I’d seen, noisy and bustling—and even I wasn’t naive enough to expect shine and richness from such places. They ran for mile after mile. Most towns have just one central market, some larger towns have two or three, in different neighborhoods. We passed through five markets, on this road alone during the full day it took us to ride through the town. And the prices…

“A bushel of potatoes sells here for
less
than we paid the farmers for it,” Fisk told me. “And that doesn’t take transport, warehousing, and the merchant’s profit into account.”

“I know nothing of how food is handled in a place this size,” I said. “Mayhap they stockpile food that doesn’t spoil, to keep the price the same year-round.”

Fisk knows no more of a great city’s food markets than I, but his scowl deepened, and I was reminded that he hadn’t wanted to come to Tallowsport at all.

“Mayhap we’ll be here long enough for you to get a letter from Kathy,” I said, hoping to cheer him. My sister was forbidden to write to me, so she wrote to Fisk instead. And since she’d been sent to court, her letters had become even more amusing. “She never did tell you her scheme to get out of the Heir hunt.”

“Maybe,” said Fisk. But his expression brightened a bit as we rode on.

The laborers that supported all this industry were housed in tall, unadorned rooming houses, some of them four or five stories high! The folk we saw in streets and yards appeared well-fed, busy, and as happy as folk anywhere. Looking down the lanes I saw laundry lines, strung like bunting between the rooming houses. And if the clothing on those lines wasn’t brightly dyed, ’twas plentiful and not too often patched.

Dusk was falling when the carts finally rolled into a great warehouse, which they said was somewhere near the Old Market. The laborers were taken off to temporary quarters, having been told that some of them could start repaying their travel debt tomorrow by unloading the freight wagons they’d traveled with. I went to fetch True from the cooks, and Fisk went to get our pay.

I’d taken the train boss’s measure well enough that I wasn’t surprised when Fisk returned with two reasonably fat purses. I was surprised by the difficulty of finding a rooming house that had stabling for two horses and would admit a dog. And in a port city, I shouldn’t have been. But eventually, Chant, Tipple and True found a home in a garden shed, and pasture in the rooming house’s fallow garden. The landlady had once been a countrywoman, and had no problem taking care of our horses for a reasonable fee. And her son was enchanted with the idea of having a dog, even if ’twas only for a time.

True was equally enchanted with the idea of having a boy, so I left them to each other. Fisk and I settled into our two meager rooms, with a plan to seek out employment in the morning—as an excuse for seeking the information we had really come for.

The landlady served breakfast, for yet another modest sum, to any tenants who didn’t cook for themselves. Given the size of her house and the good quality of the meal, I was surprised how few showed up for it.

“It’s a bit expensive for most, day to day,” a thin, middle-aged clerk told me, stirring butter and honey into his porridge. “Not that they can’t afford it now and then. Just not every day.”

Several other men, seated around the long table, gave the self-satisfied nods of those who could afford it. They willingly held forth on our prospects for employment, until they learned that Fisk and I weren’t interested in joining a guild.

“You’ve got t’ be in a guild,” a red-faced butcher said. “No one’ll take you on, not for any decent job, if you’re not.”

Fisk asked how much the guild fees were in Tallowsport, and the answer made him choke on his porridge. Then he asked how we could get an indecent job, which sparked a roar of laughter. Though I’m not sure he was joking.

We decided to seek work at a tavern. I’ve hired on as a bouncer in such places often enough that Fisk has learned to make himself useful behind a bar, and there’s no better way to learn what’s happening in a town. And those jobs don’t require guild membership, though brewing does.

However, we soon found that in Tallowsport you had to be guild certified to get almost any job. Or, some told us, you had to be “approved.” When we asked who had to approve us they changed the subject, usually by telling us about some less respectable establishment that we might try.

It was from other tenants in our rooming house that we got some of the answers. The landlady’s son wasn’t the only child who liked playing with a dog, and within a few days I was meeting their parents, and talking to them about our failure to find work.

They told me that the guilds ran the town, which was common enough. But there was another power in the town as well. If “they” approved, you were in. And if “they” disapproved, best leave town quickly! Sometimes this mysterious “they” became “he,” and once, “the boss.”

“Do you think they’re talking about your Jack’s employer?”

Fisk and I were settling into bed, after our third day of failing to find work.

“I’d give it better than even odds,” Fisk said. “But where under two moons is the rest of the town government? Nobody talks about the mayor, the council, the town guard—or the Liege Guard, and they’ve got to have post in a town this size. I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t try to find employment on my own.”

“Not with this boss,” I said. “We don’t know enough. ’Tis too risky.”

Fisk said nothing.

“Do you really think your friend would look out for you?” Jack Bannister had, after all, tried to recruit Fisk for his employer the last time they’d met. ’Twas the fact that Jack had been willing to let the wreckers kill me that had gotten in the way.

“I know he wouldn’t,” Fisk said. “But I might be able to learn something from him.”

“’Tis too dangerous,” I insisted. “You’d be on your own, in a nest of vipers.” For there was no way they’d also hire me.

“It would be safer than burgling the man’s offices,” said Fisk. “I warn you now, I’m not going to do that. I hate burglary. I gave up burglary!”

“I’ve never asked you to commit a burglary,” I said. Fisk keeps accusing me of this, though I swear ’tis always his idea. And at this point, we didn’t even know what to burgle. “Let’s continue as we are for a time, and see what chance occurs.”

So we went on seeking employment, which we didn’t need, and learning our way about the city—at least, the area by the great port. We also discovered more about how things worked here.

Many of our neighbors had come in from the countryside, some of them on food trains like the one we’d accompanied. They were content enough, with jobs that let them feed and house their families. But those who’d been here longer complained that while you could live on the wages paid, ’twas never enough to put aside savings. And once your status as a lowly worker was established, you couldn’t rise to any higher position unless you paid a guild for extra training.

This was not common, for the guilds promote from within, and they assist the talented to rise in rank and pay as their skills improve—for the sake of their craft, as well as their members. Having to pay for training with anything but the work of your hands was yet another Tallowsport innovation…and one that might, in the long term, prove more cruel than the stocks.

We soon heard that a goldsmith had received “approval” to open a shop in the expensive streets west of the Old Market. Such folk need extra guards (myself) and clerks who are familiar with the price and quality of valuables (Fisk) so we determined to try our luck there.

But as we passed among the haberdashers, glass sellers, glovers, and fine boot makers, I heard the sound of smashing wood from the open door of a chandler’s shop.

I first thought ’twas some accident, and if no cry for help came I’d have gone on. But then a rough looking man, carrying a short cudgel in one hand, dragged a plump man in a wax-splotched apron out of the shop and shoved him into the wall so hard the windows rattled.

“Don’t, don’t,” the plump man whimpered. “You don’t have to hurt me! I’ll get the money.”

“You should’ve thought of that before,” the thug told him.

I would have expected the man’s neighbors to come to his aid, but the street around us emptied with remarkable speed. From the nearby shops I heard the clack of falling latches and the rattle of closing shutters.

Clearly, ’twas up to Fisk and me.

“Don’t hurt anyone else then,” the chandler begged. “Don’t hurt my family. Or the boys. Don’t—” The cudgel’s tip thudded into his stomach and he doubled over.

A second thug came out of the shop, carrying a handful of long white candles.

“The town guard?” Fisk murmured.

“If they’ll come, the neighbors are already running to get them. But if the guard would come, I don’t think this would be happening in the open street.”

After we reached the city, I’d returned my sword to its usual place in my pack—it was curst inconvenient to carry, and in these peaceful times there’s seldom any need. This was the exception to that rule…so of course now my sword was back in our room. I looked around for a weapon.