The Thief Who Spat in Luck's Good Eye

   CHAPTER ONE

  It was to have been a relaxing afternoon in the Artists’ Quarter—a cup of wine, a walk along the Promenade, a show later in the evening—the final performance of The Yellow King. I’d wanted to see it for weeks, and I’d finally been able to filch a ticket. All in all, I was looking forward to an enjoyable few hours.

It didn’t turn out that way. Instead, Holgren wanted to talk about money. Ten thousand gold marks to be exact.

I was sitting at one of the scarred wooden tables outside Tambor’s wine shop, enjoying the first fine day of spring. Winter had held on with a tenacity almost unheard of in Lucernis, southernmost of the great cities on the western shore of the Dragonsea. It seemed everyone else in the city had the same idea as me. All Tambor’s outside tables were full while the interior of his grubby little shop was deserted. Hoof, foot, and carriage traffic along the street was heavy and more boisterous than usual. There was even a warm, easterly breeze that kept the steaming miasma rising from the gutters at an endurable level. For a wonder, I was enjoying the rare feeling of contentment.

Holgren found me and slapped down a creased, dirty notice under my nose. It was the Duke’s offer.

“This just came in with a coastal trader, Amra. The Duke of Viborg is posting it in every port on the Dragonsea apparently.” He stood there with a strange grin on his face. I gave him my best annoyed look, which failed to have any effect on him.

“Well, go on. Read it.”

I sighed, picked up the notice, and read. The Duke was offering ten thousand marks for proof of the existence of the legendary city of Thagoth. I pushed the sheet of parchment back at him.

“Kerf’s balls, Holgren. The old buzzard is insane,” I said. “That’s why they call him the Mad Duke, you know. Besides, Thagoth is a myth. If it ever existed, it’s dust and rubble now.”

“But—” Holgren started.

“No buts. Look, even if we found it, you’d never get a bent halfpenny out of the old goat, much less ten thousand marks. Now sit down, shut up, and drink. Or leave. I’m busy enjoying my ill-gotten gains.”

My partner leaned back on his heels and opened his slim-fingered hands in a gesture that he thought conciliatory and I found annoying. “Granted, the Duke will probably never pay, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth looking into.” He signaled the barmaid and sat down at my table.

“I won’t talk business today, Holgren. I won’t. I have plans that run contrary to the topic.”

He snorted, accepted the shallow earthenware cup the barmaid handed to him, and paid her. Tambor only served one vintage: cheap.

“You never stop thinking about business, woman. You’ve no idea how to relax. You’ve trained yourself out of it.” He took a drink, made a face, and exiled his cup to the edge of the table.

“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, Holgren, I don’t know what is.”

“Perhaps. Finding Thagoth won’t be business for me, however. It will be personal.” He stared at me with those hawk-like brown eyes of his. It was a look I knew. He was about to get me to do something I didn’t want to do.

“We need to find that city,” he said, “and we need to find it before anyone else.”

“What’s this really about? It’s not the money; that’s obvious.”

Holgren shook his head. “Let’s speak elsewhere.”

I put down a few coppers and followed him out to the street. So much for my relaxing afternoon.

~ ~ ~

He took a long, rambling route to the river Ose, dodging hacks, carriages, and the reeking contents of chamber pots slung out of windows despite a rather strict ordinance to the contrary. I walked beside him, hurrying my pace just a bit to match his long strides. I wondered what could get him interested in such a fool’s errand. I had to admit to more than a little curiosity. While I’d known Holgren for a handful of years, I knew almost nothing about his personal life. He was a solitary, even secretive man. Mages are like that.

He turned off narrow, twisting Gravedigger’s Row into an even narrower alley between a pair of whitewashed houses that leaned toward each other like drunken sailors on leave. At the end of the alley, we took a set of mossy, cracked steps down to the river.

The Ose ran through the city in great loops. Some sections were beautiful, ornamented with stone walkways and ancient trees whose branches fanned down to the water. Other parts abutted the back walls of tanneries, charnel houses, and squalid tenements. The stretch behind Gravedigger’s Row was hardly park-like, and I pretended not to see the vague, sodden lumps that floated by, which might have been garbage, but were likely something worse.

“You take me to the nicest places, Holgren.” I picked up a stone and pitched it into the water. “Want to tell me what this is about now?”

“This is difficult for me to speak of, Amra. I’ve never told anyone else.”

“I’m honored.”

“You never make things easy, do you?”

I bit down an easy retort. He was right. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“When I was a boy, I was apprenticed to a master of the Art named Yvoust. Ten years I slaved under him as an apprentice. By rights, I should have been a journeyman after seven. I had the skill and control. But I failed an impossible task he set me to, and was sent away in disgrace. He was a cruel master, prone to beat and starve his apprentices, but that does not excuse what I did in revenge.

“In my youthful pride and rage, I made a compact with dark powers and killed Yvoust using the Art. It was long ago, and I am not the boy that committed that act. Still, the lad is father to the man, and for that sin and for the bargain I made, my soul is forfeit upon my death.”

I just stood there for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to do or say. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off.

I suppose I should have been shocked. I’d never imagined him capable of such an immoral act, or such a stupid one. Except there were times growing up when I would have sold my soul to be rid of my father permanently. Times spent hiding in the muck under the house to avoid a drunken beating, or worse, times spent listening to it happen to my mother instead.

The only difference between Holgren and me was the fact that he’d had the magical power to make good on such wishes. I’d settled for a scaling knife. There were things Holgren didn’t know about me, either.

“Say something,” he said.

“What does this have to do with Thagoth?”

“What do you know about the legend surrounding it?”

“What everybody knows, I suppose. It was an ancient city, ruled by twin gods, a brother and sister with the power of eternal life and the power to devour souls. It and they were destroyed by a rival power, a wizard-king whose name has been lost to history.”

“Close enough.” He stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it into the water. “The power to grant eternal life…”

“Come on. Holgren the Immortal? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“I do. Better than Holgren the Eternally Suffering.”

“That’s what you think the Duke is after? Immortality?”

He nodded. “You've heard the stories. Bathing in the blood of the unborn. Putting a bounty on the two harbingers of death in Viborg, crows and owls. Banning funeral processions within a mile of his palace. Removing portraits and statues of dead ancestors from the palace. A dozen others, all pointing to a very particular condition when you consider them as a whole: The Duke of Viborg is scared to death of dying.”

“I see your point, but what makes you think this search for Thagoth is any different from those other mad, vain attempts to fend off the inevitable?”

“This offer of his is too noteworthy, too public to simply be a whim.”

“Holgren, there must be another way to settle your debt—some surer way.” Some way that might actually work, I meant.

“Don’t you think I would have tried by now if there were another way? Something has set him on the trail to Thagoth. While I might wish I knew what it was, it is enough for me to know that he wants to find it.” Holgren clasped my hands in his. “I want and need your help, Amra. I’ve seen you slip into and out of places so heavily guarded a mouse wouldn’t pass unnoticed. I’ve watched you find valuables so cleverly hidden I couldn’t have located them using the Art. Dead gods, woman, I've seen you face down demons, mad sorcerers, and the living weapon of a goddess of hate. I would be a fool not to ask you for your help.  Should you choose not to assist me, however, I will go on my own.”

“Flattery, Holgren? You must be desperate.” I pulled my hands from his and walked.

“It isn’t flattery if it’s true. Remember when you broke into Lord Morno’s wine cellar and stole an entire crate of Gol-Shen thirty-seven? He certainly does.”

“That was a lark. It’s not like there were armed guards at the door. Now, be quiet, and let me think.” I had to smile. I sent Morno an empty bottle every Midsummer’s Eve. The bounty for the person or persons responsible had risen to five hundred marks over the years.

I contemplated the murky, filthy Ose as it slid its way to the sea. It was idiocy, but how could I refuse Holgren? He was my friend and partner; how could I not at least try to help?

“I never said I wouldn’t go,” I finally said. “I just said it was pointless. Where do we start?”

~ ~ ~

Holgren started at the beginning. He identified certain texts we would need, and I acquired them; the Bosk texts, notes from Mumtaz El Rathi’s expedition to the west, a copy of General Velkaar’s campaign memoirs, many more. Maps, histories, legends, travelers’ accounts of the west, tomes of magic theory, ancient military texts—there was no rhyme or reason in what he wanted. It was all rare, hideously expensive, and generally difficult to lay hands on. I spent nearly a month tracking down, buying, or stealing what he said he needed. One particular scroll, done up in a sort of picture language I’d never encountered before, explored the lives of the Twin Gods in graphic detail. Apparently, they’d been quite a bit more than siblings if the scroll was to be believed. And the sister at least had some unwholesome appetites. I suppose gods see most things differently. Who’s going to tell them they’re wrong?

Holgren spent the time holed up in his sanctum, a moldering hovel hard by the charnel grounds. What he did there, he did not discuss, nor did I pry. He would prepare the odd amulet or fetish to aid me in whatever task I undertook. While I had little understanding of how they worked, I took it on faith that they did.

Holgren, on the other hand, always seemed fascinated by the most mundane aspects of my craft. Once I’d left a set of lock picks out, and some hours later, I found him squatting in front of an old sea chest I used for a table, methodically trying each pick in various positions while making notes in the margins of a book he’d been reading. When I’d told him the tumblers of the lock were rusted solid, he’d looked crushed.

It was a wet, miserable day when I returned from my latest foray for research materials. Spring had not fully sprung after all. Almost no one was stirring in the Foreigners’ Quarter as I returned the spavined excuse for a horse I’d rented from Alain the wainwright. I trudged my weary way home, keeping dry the fragile map I’d acquired. As I climbed the narrow stairs to my den, I wanted nothing more than hot food, a hot bath, and a warm bed.

Holgren was pacing the rooms I rented above Burrisses’ Tailors. The Burrisses were a family of immigrants from the Nine Cities who didn’t care if I was a woman living on my own so long as I paid my rent. It wasn’t as nice as the place I’d rented above the Korani Social Club, but too many not-nice people had somehow gotten hold of that address. I’d decided to move. I don’t really get attached to places in any case. Having feelings for rented rooms was like having feelings for someone else’s spouse—inadvisable at best.

“Amra!” He grabbed me by the waist. “Pfaugh! You’re ripe.”

“That’s what three days in the saddle will do.”

“Never mind. I’ve found it!”

“You found the city?” I pushed him away from me and sat down on the hall bench. Every bone ached from the ride. Wearily, I started unlacing my boots. “So you don’t need this map I just stole from a nice widow in Coroune?”

“No. Oh, it will help prove I’m right, no doubt. I’m dead certain I have the location of the city itself.”

“That’s nice,” I said with mock brightness. “Now get out so I can boil water for a bath, bolt some food, and go to sleep.”

He looked at me quizzically for a second, then had the grace to blush a little. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been killing yourself gathering all these odds and ends. I truly appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve finally located it—”

“I know, I know. Tomorrow, I’ll be suitably excited. Right now, I’m just too tired.”

“Why don’t you relax? I’ll find you something to eat.”

“Thanks.” I made my way into the main room and stretched out on the floor, on the silk Elamner pillows I used for furniture. I just closed my eyes for a second, honest.

~ ~ ~

I woke the next morning. Holgren had left a tray of nuts and a bowl of blood oranges next to me along with a note in spidery silver letters in the air above my head:

See you here, midday

The letters faded as I read them. I dug up fresh clothing and headed for the baths.

The morning was hot and bright, and the streets steamed as they dried under the indecisive spring sun. Time was passing too quickly. I knew of at least three expeditions that had already set out for the lost city. There was no telling if they were headed in the right direction, but our delays had begun to worry me. If it did exist, I didn’t want to get there only to find it plundered.

At the baths, I paid my penny and soaked for an hour, ignoring the comments muttered behind milk-white hands about my scarred hide. It was a little knitting circle of five women. Whenever I looked at them directly, their eyes would slide away, and the whispering would die down for a time. Then it would slowly pick back up again.

“—figure like a boy.”

“Such short hair, and all those scars. Perhaps she’s just come from prison?”

I kept my calm. What did they know of the world beyond their familial villas or their fathers’ shops, beyond spinning, weaving, and making babies? I knew as little of their life as they knew of mine—I understood that. It’s just that I didn’t think their difference gave me a right to talk about them, whereas they obviously did. But of course it’s always that way when you have the numbers. Men don’t hold exclusive rights to bullying.

The idea of being physically ejected from the public baths for brawling wasn’t appealing, so I decided to settle for flattening their purses when I left.

I put a washcloth over my eyes and turned my thoughts to Thagoth, and whether Holgren had actually located it.

~ ~ ~

Holgren arrived a few minutes late, a bundle of parchments and scrolls under one arm and a look of grim determination on his face. He cleared off the delicate Helstrum-made table I used for dining and spread out a map he had sketched and inked himself.

“Here we are,” he said, stabbing the east coast of Lucernia with a forefinger. “Thagoth is almost certainly here.” He moved his finger a huge distance west—about two feet on the map, which worked out to roughly two thousand miles.

“Well, that’s it,” I said. “We can’t go after it, not if it truly is that far. If you’re wrong about the location or if there’s nothing left of it, we’ll have wasted almost a year, maybe more, getting there and back. Be reasonable, Holgren.”

“I am. I agree, the distance is daunting. Which is why I am going to attempt to gate us there.”

“What?”

“According to the Bosk texts you acquired for me, Thagoth was built at the nexus of several powerful ley lines. I will transport us to that nexus. The process should be instantaneous.”

“Whenever you say things like ‘attempt’ and ‘should be,’ my blood runs cold.”

“Your worries are baseless. If I fail, the magics will dissipate, and the gate will not open. I’ll make certain there is no possibility of you suffering any ill effects.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Spoken like a true liar. Tell me.”

“Honestly? I don’t know. There’s a chance nothing will happen. There’s also a chance for a whole range of effects, from the merely uncomfortable to the wholly unpleasant.”

“The worst of which would be?”

“The worst of which would be my being blasted to cinders. It’s a very outside chance.”

“Wouldn’t that sort of be missing the point of trying to find immortality?”

“Amra, if I spent my entire life avoiding danger, I would have no life at all. If I risk nothing, death and retribution will still come. Given the choice, I would rather die trying to alter my situation. I assure you, I have taken and will take every precaution I can think of to ensure my safety and your own.”

I sighed and shook my head. “When do we go?”

“We could leave tomorrow, but I think I might better do a bit more research. There are indications from what I’ve read so far that the city is…contained, I suppose, is the best word.”

“Eh?”

He leaned back, spread his hands. “When Thagoth fell, it was to a powerful sorcerer-king, perhaps the most powerful mortal the world has ever seen. He laid death magic on the environs around the city. According to the accounts of Mumtaz El Rathi, that magic was still potent a century ago when he lead an expedition there.”

I began to pace. “Describe these death lands. Place-names with the word ‘death’ in them tend to make me very wary.”

“In practical application, everything of the death lands will attempt to destroy anything not of the death lands that enter them. Grasses will reach out to bind you while more mobile creatures finish you off. Everything has some ability to kill, be it quick or slow. Or so wrote El Rathi.”

“Lovely.” I'd had brushes with death magic in the past, though nothing on so large a scale. I'd almost broken into a room infused with a death spell that would have killed me instantly upon entering. Now we were talking about acres of the stuff. “You’re sure we won’t have to deal with this? Why hasn’t the city been swallowed up?”

“I can only assume the residual power of the Twin Gods keep it at bay. The city had not been overtaken at the time of El Rathi’s expedition a century ago. He records seeing the golden domes of what he calls ‘the Tabernacle’ and other structures from the ridge above the valley itself. The death lands seem to border the remains of the city in a precise circle with the Tabernacle at the center of that circle. Could you stop pacing? It makes me nervous.”

“No. This nexus you’re going to magic us to, tell me about it.”

“It should be well within the city and completely safe if I manage to raise the gate.”

“I hope you’re right, Holgren.”

He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulder slightly. “I’ve made my calculations with the best data available. We should be fine.”

“Let’s leave that for the moment. What do we do once we’re in the city?”

“Well, that’s really more your end of things, isn’t it?”

I stopped pacing, tilted my head. “I spent a month getting you research material. There was nothing in all of that to indicate what you’re looking for?”

He sighed. “Amra, how often are you handed maps that say, ‘valuable object located here?’”

“I know a sailor down on the docks that could sell you one for every day of the month.”

“My point precisely. I imagine the best place to search would be in the Tabernacle that El Rathi mentions since there appears to be some power there holding the death lands at bay. But I will know it when I find it, not before. I am quite certain it will be a difficult, possibly deadly task to locate and retrieve it. I need your skills. I know no one better at what you do.”

“Not who’s willing to help you with this, at any rate. No. I’m sorry. That was mean-spirited and uncalled for. I apologize.”

He shook his head. “No apology necessary. You’re right. No one else would be willing to attempt this. I need to keep that in mind and show my appreciation more.”

“You can start by feeding me.”

~ ~ ~

After an elaborate midday meal at Fraud’s, we took a walk down the Promenade: the wide, straight avenue of brick that ran from the Ministry buildings to Harad’s Square. It was lined on both sides by the marble-fronted, slim-columned manses owned by minor nobility and powerful merchants. I had promised myself the first day I’d arrived in Lucernis that I’d own one of them someday. I’d stumbled down the Promenade—penniless, starving and sick, and bitterly envying those who lived in such luxury. I must have stared at those great houses with real glass in their windows for an hour before the watch had moved me along. Then, I went and stole a half a loaf of bread. That had been a long time ago. I didn’t have to steal bread anymore. I didn’t own one of those manses, either.

The Promenade was wide enough to accommodate four carriages abreast, although no hoof traffic was allowed on it. Wealthy merchants and their wives, government functionaries, and minor nobility took to it to socialize and be seen. Much subtle business was also conducted on the Promenade—important decisions were made here, between principals, and finalized elsewhere. I’d done a fair amount of business in this fashion myself. Daruvner, my fixer, had done much more.

The Promenade was also well-policed. Lord Morno, governor of Lucernis, liked to drill his troops here. A small contingent of arquebusiers in fine new crimson uniforms was being marched around by a grizzled sergeant as Holgren and I strolled. The old campaigner kept trying to rest his hand on a nonexistent sword pommel as he barked commands.

“You see those weapons?” asked Holgren. “They are the future of warfare.”

I laughed. “Those are toys. The only way to kill someone with an arquebus is to beat them with it. A good bowman could kill five times over in the time it takes just to load one.” The only time I'd seen an arquebus be even remotely useful was during the assault on the Elamner's villa months before, and that was mostly as a noise maker. A trumpet would have been just as handy, and a lot more reliable.

“Ah, but how long does it take to become that good with a bow?” Holgren replied. “Five years? Ten? One can become proficient with firearms in a matter of weeks. Someday, they will be perfected; their rate of fire, range, and accuracy will be improved. People will die by the thousands without ever seeing their foe.” He put a friendly arm around my shoulder. “Inventions such as these will be what drives the world, Amra, not magic.” He stopped and looked at me with those piercing eyes of his.

“I want to tell you a secret,” he said.

“All right.”

“Magic is fading. The most powerful mages today cannot do half of what mages even a century ago could. Two thousand years ago, wars such as the one that destroyed Thagoth were commonplace. Entire empires were laid waste in a matter of days. Now, the Laws of Thaumaturgy are being superseded by the laws of the physical world. Who knows how long it will be before magic disappears completely?”

“You sound almost cheerful about it.”

“Do I? Perhaps I am. Since I am in the secret-telling mood, I’ll tell you another. I’ve never particularly liked being a mage.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Truly. Once Yvoust was dead, I lost the interest I’d had in the Art. What else was I to do though? I spent a decade trying to find some way out of the doom I’d created for myself. There were none—none I’d consider satisfactory, at any rate. By that time, it was the only profession I knew.”

“Wait. You’re saying there are other solutions to your problem besides haring off to Thagoth?”

“No, I’m not. Believe me, the cures I found were all worse than the disease.” He stopped and turned to face me directly. “I have a bit more research and preparation to do. You won’t see me for a few days. Will you prepare what we will need for two weeks in the field?”

“How long do I have?”

“Four days.”

“All right. Will we need pack animals?”

“No. I wouldn’t want to try to gate them as well as us.”

“I’ll have it all ready.”

“Thank you. Sincerely, Amra.”

“You’re welcome.”

He walked away then, a tall, almost gangly man in funereal black, black hair swept into a ponytail secured with a black velvet ribbon. Holgren had never much been one for fashion.

I walked a while on the Promenade, staring at the houses, trying to imagine what sort of “cures” he might have found in the past and how they could be worse than some demon keeping your soul as a plaything for eternity.

My imagination wasn’t up to the task.