When Demons Walk (6 page)

He raised his hand to knock a second time, but stopped when the door opened smoothly to reveal another one of the bland-faced servants that Sham was developing a hearty dislike for—a dislike that was compounded by the dancer in her sleeve. If it hadn't been for that bland I-am-a-servant expression she wouldn't have taken the blasted thing in the first place. She glowered at the wiry man who held the door.

“The Reeve was expecting you, Master Talbot. Come in.” His voice was as expressionless as his face.

Giving in to the impulses that had often brought her grief in the past, Sham slipped the statuette into her hand and gave the valet the little dancer with her glittering green eyes and begemmed costume.

“Someone is bound to have missed this by now.” Her tone was nonchalant. “You might take it to the first long room to the right of the main entrance and give it to one of the footmen.”

A brief snort of masculine laughter emerged from a darkened corner of the room. “Dickon, take the stupid thing to
the emerald meeting room and give it to one of my mother's servants before they shrivel with terror.”

With no more than a slight nod of disapproval, the manservant left the room holding the statuette in two fingers as though it might bite him.

Sham looked at the expansive room that managed somehow to appear cluttered. Part of the effect was caused by the way the furniture had been arranged to be easily accessible by a wheeled chair, but most of it was the result of the wide variety of weaponry and armament scattered on walls, benches, and shelves.

“Thank you, Talbot, I see you found her.” As he spoke, the Reeve wheeled into the light that drifted into the room through colored glass panels of the three large windows high on the outer wall. Although the original builders of the Castle had planned on the building being fortified, later Southwood Kings had added a second curtain wall and traded safety for comfort and light.

Sham was surprised at how unaltered the Reeve seemed. Though confined to the chair, the silk of his thin tunic revealed the heavy muscles in his upper arms and shoulders. Even without the bulk of the chainmail he'd been wearing the night of the Spirit Tide, he was a big man. She couldn't tell anything about his lower body because it was wrapped in a thick blanket.

“Have you satisfied your curiosity?” There was bitterness in his voice, though the man's innate courtesy kept him speaking Southern rather than his native tongue.

Sham looked up into his face and saw there the changes she hadn't seen in his body. Pain darkened his eyes to black and made his skin grey rather than the warm brown it had been. Lines she didn't remember seeing before were etched deeply around his eyes and from nose to lips.

Remembering the young soldier who sought the company of a child too young to hide her curiosity rather than endure the sympathetic pity of his former comrades, her reply was different than courtesy demanded.

“No.” Her voice was neutral. “Do you cover your legs because they are deformed or because you are cold?”

She knew that she'd chosen correctly when his crack of laughter covered Talbot's gasp at her temerity.

“A bit of both, I suppose,” Kerim answered with a surprising amount of humor considering his former bitterness. “The wretched things have started to twist up. Since it bothers me to look at them, I wouldn't want to inflict the sight on anyone else.”

Sham observed him shifting slightly uncomfortably in the chair and said, “You ought to have more padding in the seat. And if you asked your wheelwright, he'd tell you that a lighter, larger wheel would turn more easily. You might try something like the ones on the racing sulkies—” she shrugged and found a seat on the wide arm of an expensive chair, “—if more padding and bigger wheels work for horses, they should work for you.”

The Reeve smiled. “I'll take that under consideration. I trust that Talbot explained what we need you for?”

She grinned at him. “He said that I get to rummage through the houses of the aristocrats with your permission. It will certainly make life easier, if not as much fun.”

Talbot cleared his throat warningly, but Kerim shook his head and said, “Don't encourage her, she's just baiting you.”

“Who else is going to know about me?” she questioned, realizing that she was enjoying herself for the first time in a long time.

“Just Talbot and myself,” answered the Reeve. “I don't know who else to trust.”

“What about your source?”

The Reeve's eyebrows rose.

“You know, the one who told you the killer is here?”

“Elsic,” said Talbot. “He doesn't know about ye, and we won't be telling him.”

Sham looked at the Reeve's discomforted face and Talbot's bland one and thought that the first thing she would look for was this Elsic.

“Do you have any particular house that you want me to . . . explore first?” She asked.

Kerim shook his head and gave a frustrated grunt. “I
don't have any idea where to start. If you've robbed the manors of Landsend as frequently as the Whisper claimed, you probably have a better idea than I.”

Sham shook her head. “No. I've been fairly selective in my targets. I haven't stolen anything from anyone with close connections to the Castle for . . . hmm . . . at least a year.” So she lied—did they really expect her to give them something solid enough to hang her with?

The Reeve grunted; she almost hoped he knew how much her answer was worth. “Talbot and I have talked about it. We thought it might help you to meet the people of the court before you decide which residences to . . .
explore
. I tire too easily of late to keep abreast of the latest gossip, and Talbot has no entrance to the court proper, as he not only is a stranger and a peasant, but also a Southwoodsman.”

“So am I,” she commented, “stranger, peasant, and Southwoods native as well.”

Talbot grunted. “But you're not the Master of Security either.”

She allowed her lips to twist with amusement. “How are you going to introduce me to your court? ‘Excuse me, but I'd like to introduce you to the thief who has been relieving you of your gold. She's going to look around and see if she can figure out which of you is killing people, so be sure that you tell her who it is.” '

Kerim smiled sweetly with such innocence in his expression she knew immediately that she wasn't going to like what he was about to propose. “The original idea was that you could become one of my household.”

Sham raised both of her eyebrows in disbelief. “Half the servants know who I am, and the rest of them will know before I leave here this morning. The only reason the thief-takers haven't hauled me in is because they can't prove what I do, and you have the reputation of punishing thief-takers who work with more zeal than evidence. A reputation, I might add, that I am extremely grateful you deserve.”

Kerim's smile widened, and the innocence was replaced
with sudden mischief and a certain predatory intentness that made her realize again how well the title of Leopard suited him. “When we found out just who and what you were, lady, Talbot and I came up with a much better solution. They know Sham the Thief—a boy. You are going to be Lady Shamera, my mistress.”

Talbot put his hand to his mouth and coughed when Sham spit out a surprised curse she'd learned from one of the more creative of her father's men.

“Ye won't have to go quite that far, lassie,” commented the Reeve blandly, in a fine imitation of Talbot, complete with seaman's accent. “I don't demand anything so. . . strenuous from my mistresses.”

Sham gave Kerim an evil glare, but she held her tongue. He was almost as good at teasing as she was, and she refused to present him with any more easy targets. She took a deep, even breath, and thought about what he'd proposed, her foot tapping on the floor with irritation.

“I expect—” she said finally, biting off the end of each word as if it hurt her, “—that you mean I am to play the role of mistress, not fulfill it.
If
that is the case, I am inclined to agree that the role would have its uses.”

A short silence greeted her, as if neither Kerim nor Talbot had expected her to give in so easily. Before either man had a chance to speak, the door opened and Dickon returned from replacing the statuette. Sham shot him a look of dislike which he returned with interest and doubtless more cause.

Clearing his throat, Dickon addressed the Reeve. “When I arrived at the emerald meeting room, Her Ladyship had already been summoned. She questioned my custody of her statuette. I had no choice but to inform her where it came from. She instructed me to tell you that she will be here momentarily.”

“Dickon, wait outside the door to welcome her in,” snapped the Reeve, and the servant responded to his tone and jumped to do his bidding.

“Hellfire,” swore Kerim. “If she sees you, she'll recognize you when you reappear as a woman. My mother has
eyes that would rival a cat's for sharpness.” He wheeled rapidly to the fireplace that all but spanned one of the inner walls and pressed a carving. A panel of wood on the wall next to the fireplace slid silently inwards and rolled neatly behind the panel next to it, revealing a passageway.

“Ah,” commented Sham, tongue in cheek. “The fireplace secret-passageway; how original.”

“As the passage floor is mopped every other week, I would hardly call it ‘secret,” ' replied the Reeve sardonically. “It will, however, allow you to avoid meeting my mother in the halls. Talbot, get her outfitted, cleaned up and back here as soon as you can.”

Sham bowed to the Reeve and then followed Talbot into the passageway, sliding the door in place behind her.

 

“W
E NEED TO
get ye clothes befitting a mistress of the Reeve,” commented Talbot.

“Of course,” replied Sham in a casual tone without reducing the speed of her walk.

“Lord Kerim told me to take ye t'home. My wife can find something for ye to wear until a seamstress can whip something up.” He cleared his throat. “He also thought we ought to take a week and ah . . . work on your court manners.”

“Wouldn't do to have the Reeve's mistress tagging valuable statuettes?” ask Sham in court-clear Cybellian as she stopped and looked at Talbot. “I should think not, my good man. Must not tarnish Lord Kerim's reputation with this little farce.”

“Well now,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “I suspect that clothing might be all we have to worry about.”

She nodded and started off again. After a mile or so Talbot cleared his throat. “Ah, lassie, there is no place in Purgatory that carries the sorts of silks and velvet that ye need.”

She sent him a sly grin. “Don't bet on it. If there is something that people will buy, Purgatory sells it.”

He laughed and followed her deeper into Purgatory.

 

“T
HE PROBLEM WE
face—” she explained as she led him through the debris-covered floor of a small, abandoned shop near the waterfront, “—is that a mistress of a high court official must always wear clothes built by a known dressmaker. Most of them wouldn't let someone dressed like me through the door. If we managed to find one that would, it'd be the talk of the town by morning.”

She stooped and pulled up a section of loose floorboard out of the way, leaving a narrow opening into a crawlspace that the original owner of the building had used for storage. She had several such storage areas here and there around Purgatory and she was careful never to sleep near any of them. She had found she lost less of her belongings if she didn't keep them with her.

“You're too big to fit in here, Talbot. Wait just a moment.”

Sham slipped through the crack with the ease of long practice and slithered through the narrow crawlway until she came to the hollow that someone else had widened into a fair-sized space underneath the next building over. No one mopped the floor twice weekly here, and the dust made her eyes water.

She called a magelight and found the large wooden crate that held most of her clothing. Lifting the lid, she sorted through the costumes she had stored there until she came to a bundle carefully wrapped in an old sheet to protect it from the dust. As an afterthought, she also took her second-best thieving clothes and added them to her bundle.

In darkness again she crawled back out the small passage. She put the floorboard back and scuffed around with her feet until the dust by the loose floorboard was no more trampled than it was in the rest of the room.

“If you'll turn your back for a bit, I'll change into something that the dressmakers will find acceptable.”

Talbot nodded and walked a few paces away, staring through the dirt-encrusted window at the vague shapes of the people walking on the cobbled street outside, commenting, “For a Purgatory thief, ye know a lot about the court.”

Sham removed her belt and set it aside, after freeing the small belt pouch that carried the few coppers that she traveled the streets with. It gave her time to think about her answer.

“My mother was a lady in the king's court, my father a minor noble,” implying that her parents were court parasites, poor gentry with aspirations and little else who hung on at court for the free boarding. Not flattering to them, but somehow she didn't want to tarnish her father's name by making it common knowledge that his daughter was a thief. Sham set the money aside and pulled out a comb, a few hairpins, and a clean cloth, before stripping out of her clothes.

“Didn't ye have a place to go? Purgatory is not where I'd like to see a young court miss forced to live.” Like the gentleman he was, Talbot kept his back firmly toward her.

“After the Castle fell? No. My parents died when the gates were opened. They had no relatives who survived the invasion.” There had been no one to turn to, just a blind old man who had been her teacher. He had wanted to die as well, but she wouldn't let him. Perhaps he would rather have gone then, than survive these last twelve years blind and magicless.