Honor Among Thieves (19 page)
W
alking through the brambles surrounding Coruth’s shack was disincitement enough, Malden thought, to keep most intruders away. Yet he now knew there would be other, less passive guardians to deal with. He tried to be on his guard.
Yet when a horse snorted close to his left ear, he still jumped. He wheeled around, half expecting to see some spectral animal gnashing its big ghostly teeth at him, but there was nothing there.
He had dealt with the supernatural often enough to respect it, and to avoid it whenever possible. He was willing to give up, to return to his boat and row away, his original purpose thwarted. He would come by at some later date when Coruth was prepared to receive him. However, when he tried to retrace his steps toward the shore, he heard a great rumbling thunder of hooves treading the flinty soil, directly between him and his rented boat.
“All right, witch—show me how to leave, that’s all I ask,” he said aloud.
The neighing of horses all around him was like laughter.
He could see nothing. The ghosts of horses left no hoofprints in the soil, it seemed. Nor could he smell any animals. Yet whenever he tried to lift a foot, or move his hands, he heard them all about him as if they were pressed very close, ready to stampede and trample him.
If he remained very still, he thought, perhaps he would be safe. Perhaps the ghostly trap was only meant to keep him where he was, until such time as Coruth chose to collect him.
But then he heard the noise of a great charger running straight toward him, every hoof falling like thunder. He could hear its great infernal breath snorting in and out of its undead lungs, even hear the brasses slapping and ringing on its sides. If he didn’t move, if he didn’t flee, it would surely run roughshod right over him—
Unless, of course, this was one of those traps that only fooled you into thinking you were in danger, when in fact you were perfectly safe the whole time. Typically such traps were designed to startle you into running away, right into an actual hazard you could have easily avoided.
Malden tried to stand his ground. Yet as the sound of the galloping horse came closer and closer, never deviating in the slightest from its course, clearly intent on his destruction, even his devious brain stopped thinking and started reacting.
Shouting in his fear, he turned and ran.
Horses were on either side of him, their heavy feet crashing down so fast and so frequently he was certain they would step on him at any moment. He felt their hot breath on his neck, could hear nothing but their whinnying and snorting and the enormous noise of their rhythmic running. He threw his arms over his head for protection and ran he knew not where. If he ended up running right into the cold waters of Eastpool, that was fine. If he was being herded back to his boat, he would give great thanks, if—
Something very solid and very real smacked into his face and nearly broke his nose. When he dared open his eyes again he saw he was standing on the porch of Coruth’s shack in the middle of the island. He’d run right into her front door.
He could no longer hear the sound of horses from any direction. The salt wind barely moved through the thorny vegetation behind him. The silence was like deafening laughter, and he felt his cheeks grow hot.
Then the door of the shack opened with a creak. Light and warmth spilled out across him, and then Cythera was standing before him, speaking his name, a look of utter confusion on her face.
He grabbed her up in a feverish embrace and kissed her deeply. She did not resist—not here, where there was no one to see it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He kissed her again.
“Sweet kisses,” she laughed, “do not an explanation make.”
“Just glad to be alive,” he told her. “Your mother’s illusory guardians are most compellingly believable.”
“The horses?” she asked.
“The horses,” he said. “Though—now that I can think again, I have to wonder. Why not something more immediately frightening? Like basilisks, or demons?”
“I seem to remember the first time you sat a horse,” Cythera laughed. “You were certainly frightened then!”
Malden smiled. “It wouldn’t stop moving. I was certain I would fall.”
Cythera laughed again. “If you must know, witchcraft doesn’t work that way,” she told him, ushering him inside. “Certainly a sorcerer could create the illusion of dragons swooping down, spitting fire, or whatever the sorcerer could imagine to scare away interlopers. Sorcery draws power from the pit and its denizens, but they have to be repaid for their gifts—you’ve seen the way they distort a sorcerer’s soul.”
“Not to mention his face,” Malden said, thinking of some of the sorcerers he’d met. No natural deformity could match the freakish countenances of wizards. In public, they always wore black veils to hide their features.
“Witches use the power of the world around them. They make subtle changes in what is already there, that’s all. This is the Isle of Horses, so horses it must be.”
“I see,” Malden said, though as usual when someone tried to explain magic to him, he had the creeping suspicion that the parts that seemed to make sense were only glosses on a text far beyond his comprehension. “To actually answer your question,” he said, putting matters of philosophy aside, “I’ve come to see your mother.”
“You’ve met someone else,” Cythera said teasingly. “You want to buy a love spell. Or is it revenge you want—on me for being such a fickle lover?”
He smiled. She wasn’t normally this playful. “Neither, my leman. You’re the only woman in all Skrae who can catch my eye, and I love your contradictions as much as I love your deeper constancy. But tell me—what’s put you in such a good mood?”
Her smile fell for a moment, but then it returned. “Mother’s been scrying. Watching the land around Helstrow, specifically.”
“A grisly sight to behold, I’m sure,” Malden said, thinking of what the barbarians must at that very moment be doing to the farmland around the royal fortress.
“I didn’t ask for details. I only wanted to know one thing, and I got the answer I was looking for. Croy still lives.”
“Does he?” Malden asked.
“Don’t look so dismayed. When he finds out about us he’ll be wrathful, but for now he thinks of you as his best friend. Here, sit down. I’ll get you a cup of tea. Mother will be out in a moment, once she’s finished with her working.”
Malden sat down and watched her head through another doorway into what appeared to be a kitchen. The shack was quite different from what he’d expected. He had imagined a cauldron bubbling over a fuming fire of brimstone. Bits of various animals, hacked off and dried and hanging from the ceiling by bits of string. Perhaps bones everywhere, or instead thousands of glass bottles holding weird and unknowable substances. A pile of books with a human skull on top as a paperweight. He would not have thought a stuffed reptile or two would be remiss.
Instead he was sitting in a very tidy, very plain parlor. The chair he sat in and the few other sticks of furniture in the room looked well-made but simple. There was a fire in a hearth but it glowed the cheery orange of normal, healthy, burning wood. There was only one sign that he was in the receiving room of a terrifying witch, and at first glance it seemed wholly innocuous: a bucket sat on a table at the far end of the room. Malden got up and glanced inside it, sure he would find frogs brains or skinned ghosts or the blood of virgins set to congeal—the kinds of things a witch would collect and use in her spells.
Instead the bucket held a half dozen long, pale roots, parsnips perhaps. Maybe Cythera had collected them to make her mother’s dinner. Malden was slightly disappointed. Yet when he looked closer, he saw the roots were strangely bifurcated, so that each of them seemed to have legs and arms. Indeed, they looked almost like human bodies. One even had a crude mouth and a pair of wrinkles that might have been eyes. He started to reach for one of the roots but before he could touch it jumped back in terror. He was certain one of those wrinkles had opened—and a blind, milky eye had peered back at him.
Coruth came storming into the room then, her iron-colored hair flying all around her head. “Whoever you are, it’ll mean your life if you touch that!” she screamed.
M
alden moved out of the way as she swept toward him, her long dress whirling around her. She went to the bucket and bent low over it, speaking incantations he couldn’t follow. The words were in no language he knew, but he swore they sounded more like a mother soothing a crying baby than a witch invoking dark powers. He pressed himself up against the wall and tried not to move.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” Coruth shrieked, spinning around to face him. Her eyes didn’t focus on his features, however. They didn’t seem focused on anything.
“Coruth, it’s me, Malden,” he said.
“Malden?” she asked, as if trying to remember the name. Then, “Malden!” Her eyes snapped to his face, and her mouth curled in a warm smile. She rushed to embrace him with something like fondness. “So very good of you to come, my boy. So very good of you to visit an old woman and her spinster daughter.”
“Mother!” Cythera said from the door. “Malden, please forgive her. She was very far away there, for a moment.”
“Seeing,” Coruth agreed. “Far seeing. Dangerous stuff.” She dropped into a chair and put her legs up on a table. Leaning her head back, she exhaled noisily. “You can get lost so easily when you’re that far from your body. And of course there’s no guarantee you’ll like what you find. Malden,” she said, leaning toward him, “how fare you? I haven’t seen you in quite a while.”
“I live, which is something I’m always grateful for,” he said with a shrug. “Beyond that, it seems the wheel of luck turns for us all. Helstrow has fallen, and—”
“Redweir will be next,” Coruth announced. Her mouth tightened into a defensive scowl. “The barbarians move quickly—that’s one of their greatest tricks. They are not hampered by complicated supply lines, for they ravage every land they cross, and provender themselves on the spoils. Each chieftain commands his own clan with great autonomy, so there’s no need for companies to sit in garrison waiting for orders from on high.” She shook her head. “Redweir will fall. But they won’t stop there. They’ll turn west. They’ll come here.”
Malden felt all the blood rush out of his face. “You’ve . . . seen this? With the second sight?”
“Don’t need to,” Coruth said, waving one bony hand. “It’s just logical. Everyone here knows it’s coming. That’s why anyone who could has already left.” She gave him a shrewd look. “Cutbill, they say, even Cutbill has fled.”
Malden was shocked that Coruth even knew Cutbill’s name. Yet he supposed a witch might know anyone—and know their business, too, and more than they wanted. He nodded. “Yes, I learned that just a short while ago myself.”
“And with him gone, who will minister to the thieves?” Coruth asked.
Had it been anyone else, Malden would have lied. No need advertising his new position—that was likely to get him killed or arrested. This was Coruth, however. She would see through any falsehood. “As a matter of fact,” he told her, “that’s why I came to speak with you. He left me in charge.”
The witch’s eyes widened and her smile returned. She did not seem surprised that Cutbill would choose Malden as his successor. “Did you hear that, Cythera? He’s a guildmaster now! A man of position. You could do a lot worse.”
“I take it you know that Cythera and I have—” Malden said. Or tried to say.
“I know all, see all,” Coruth said, with a twinkle in her eye. “If she wishes to marry you, I won’t stop her. That’s her decision to make.”
“Right now, I’ve decided to see to our supper,” Cythera said, and hurried into the kitchen.
For a while Coruth and Malden sat in silence. Eventually the witch took a pouch from her belt and spilled its contents into her hand, what looked like dried fruit. Malden would not have ventured a guess as to what it actually might be. Coruth took one of the desiccated things and tucked it under her tongue.
“You didn’t come for advice on love,” she said quietly.
Malden took out the page he’d torn from Cutbill’s ledger. “No,” he said. “I came to ask your help with this. It’s some kind of cipher, but I can’t make odds or orts of it.”
Coruth nodded and studied the paper carefully for a while. Then she brought it to her face and sniffed it. Rubbed it between her fingers and listened to the way it squeaked. “No magic to it. Nor would I expect such from Cutbill.”
“Why not?”
Coruth smiled. “Because then I could have read it for you as easily as if it were written in plain Skraeling. No, this cipher is meant to be broken the hard way. He meant you to work this out on your own.”
“I may not have time for that. I have to meet with his—rather, with my thieves tonight. I need to tell them something, give them some direction. Otherwise they’ll think I’m just a puppet, someone to keep the books while Cutbill’s gone. If I want them to actually follow my orders, I need them to know I can actually give some.”
“Then you have your work cut out for you,” Coruth said, handing the page back to him. “This message isn’t for me, at any rate. He would not have enciphered it had he wished someone else to read it. I can’t solve your riddle, Malden. But I can show you how it is to be done, if you like.”
“That would be most kind,” he said. “I can pay you, of course, for your trouble.”
“No, you can’t,” Coruth said. “I won’t take your money. You saved me from eternal imprisonment once, Malden, and I will not forget that.” She gave him a smile that looked almost matronly. “I may be your mother-in-law someday as well.”
“I won’t ask for Cythera’s hand as some kind of reward,” Malden said. “She’d never love me, not truly, if she thought I’d bought her somehow.” He shook his head. “No, she must decide to take my hand freely.”
“Good man. Now,” Coruth said, “before Cythera has finished cooking for us—you will stay to eat, won’t you?—let’s discuss ciphers, and their proper use, and how they can be broken.”