“M
alden, no one loves me,” Cutbill said. He poured two cups of wine from a pewter jug. He held them both out to Malden to choose which he would drink from. Malden took the one on the left. Cutbill quickly took a drink from the one on the right, to prove he hadn’t poisoned them both. It was all done without much attention, a formalized ritual they both instinctually understood.
“That isn’t . . . completely true,” Malden said. “The thieves of your guild—”
“They fear me,” Cutbill said. “Perhaps some of the more intelligent among them, who understand a portion of the things I do, even respect me. Please don’t misapprehend me. I have no desire to be loved. I never have. When I was first putting the guild together, I had to make of myself a completely unlovable villain. Do you know anything of how I became who I am?”
“Is this another test?” Malden asked.
“If you like.”
Malden sat down in a comfortable chair, laying Acidtongue in its scabbard across his knees. He thought back on what he’d heard—rumors and hearsay, mostly, but over time he’d established a few real facts. “There’s some mystery about where you came from originally. Whether you were born in Ness or some other place. What I’m sure of is that you took a crew of common thugs and criminals and turned them into the most lethal gang in the city. This was, when—twenty years ago?”
“Twenty-five,” Cutbill corrected.
Malden frowned. Cutbill must be older than he’d thought—or he must have started his career in crime much younger than would seem probable. “By murdering the leaders of other gangs, you consolidated your power. Many of your rivals tried to draw you into open warfare in the streets, but you favored the knife in the dark, the carefully staged accident, and on occasion,” he finished, looking down into his cup, “poisoning.”
“The city watch cared little if one thief or another turned up dead in an alley come morning—but they would never have tolerated gangs of villains attacking one another in broad daylight.” Cutbill shrugged. “Further, had I butchered thieves indiscriminately I would have been left with a weakened force of my own. When I killed one man, I could absorb all his crews, and my organization grew.”
Malden nodded. “In other words, you rose to power because you were nastier than any other criminal in Ness.”
“Instead, say I was more efficient. More practical. I had to make many difficult decisions back in those days. Respond to threats in the same hour they arose. I did not sleep like a normal man, not for many years. Even today the slightest sound or even an odd smell will waken me. It is not a life I recommend.”
“And yet when you absconded from your post, you gave that life to me.”
Cutbill laughed, a short, unpleasant sound that did nothing for Malden’s nerves.
“Why?” Malden demanded. “I originally thought you were afraid of the barbarians, like all the rich men. That you had escaped to some safer place. Yet here you are—hiding in the very place you supposedly fled. Why disappear at all?”
“Because it was your turn.”
Malden just stared at Cutbill.
“You are capable of the one thing I could never achieve. Because of the things I’ve done, the people of Ness think me a shadowy villain. A bogey to scare children with, like Jarald of Omburg.” Cutbill looked up at the ceiling, at the Chapterhouse above them. “You, Malden, are quickly becoming a folk hero. The son of a whore, penniless and despised, who became the most daring—the most dashing—thief in Ness. And now, so much more. They’ll write ballads about you someday.”
“You flatter me.”
“Never,” Cutbill said, quite serious.
Malden shook his head, trying to make sense of this. “But even so, what of it? The guild was doing a brisk business. The money was coming in faster than anyone could spend it. Despite the fact the city’s deserted, we’re actually turning a nice profit by looting abandoned homes. Why wouldn’t you want to be in charge of that?”
Cutbill said nothing for a while. He went to the hearth and poked at the fire. Drained his wine and refilled their cups. Malden wondered if he was trying to think of the proper words. He’d never imagined Cutbill could be at a loss in that regard.
“Because,” he said, at last, “I saw what was coming.”
“The barbarians,” Malden guessed.
“Not the specifics. But I knew that things were about to change. There are signs, if you know how to look for them. I knew I’d taken the guild as far as my abilities allowed. Already there were forces in place that threatened to destroy all I’d made. The relationship I enjoyed with the Burgrave had become increasingly strained. Once, he and I shared an understanding. He believed that the guild of thieves served a needful purpose by keeping crime in the city to a certain acceptable level. In recent years, however, my power continued to grow. It was only a matter of time before he decided I was too influential to be allowed to continue. I knew the jig was up when Pritchard Hood became the new bailiff, a man who would have slit my throat with his own hand if he could.”
“He certainly tried to slit mine,” Malden agreed.
“If my organization was going to survive, I needed to prune away the one thing that would hold it back, keep it from growing. From developing into something new. And that one thing was me. I needed to vanish so people would forget how much they feared the guild—it had to shed its evil reputation. But that meant I would need a successor. You were the obvious choice.”
“Because people love me?”
“Because of that, yes, and because you have a brain in your head. You don’t always use it, but when you do you can think your way out of most scrapes. You see beyond the immediate circumstance, and grasp the why and the wherefore.”
“So you tried to kill me, knowing I would survive,” Malden guessed.
“No. I tried to kill you, knowing if you didn’t survive, then I’d made a mistake that could have cost me everything. There was no guarantee for you, Malden. There couldn’t be. I chose Prestwicke very carefully as well.”
Malden frowned. “Prestwicke.” He considered something, something he didn’t like very much. Which made him think immediately that it must be true. “If he had killed me—if he had met the terms of his contract—”
“Then,” Cutbill confirmed, “he would be sitting in that chair, holding that same sword. Drinking my wine, even now.”
Malden swallowed thickly.
“You both made promising candidates. I needed to know which was the better choice. That’s why I tried to have you killed.”
Malden jumped to his feet, wrapping his hand around Acidtongue’s hilt. “Prestwicke was a sadist. A madman!”
“And a devout servant of the Bloodgod,” Cutbill pointed out. “The people wouldn’t have called him Lord Mayor. They would have called him High Priest. But the result would have been the same.” Cutbill placed one hand on Malden’s shoulder. Malden fought the urge to shrug it off. “For many reasons, I’m glad it was you. But he would have served. Now, will you sit down and hear what is to come?”
“T
he barbarians will arrive within the week,” Cutbill told Malden.
“That soon? I thought they were bogged down in Redweir,” Malden replied, feeling his heart race. He had hoped—in vain, it now seemed—that the barbarian horde would be stuck in the east for the winter, unable to push west against bad weather and a lack of food. Of course, he’d met Mörget before and should have known better. The barbarians thrived on death and destruction. They would probably laugh in the teeth of winter storms and eat frozen grass rather than slow their advance. “We aren’t ready,” Malden said. “I’m not sure how we could ever be ready, but now—”
“How many archers have you trained?”
“Sorry? Archers? Ah,” Malden said. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He’d seen the archers practicing at Helstrow, under edict of the king. He should have implemented the same program for his own people. “Well—”
Cutbill shook his head wearily. “I’m sure you’ve had other things to worry about. Have you at least reinforced the gates? The only real advantage you’ll have against the barbarians is the city wall. It will keep them out for a while, but those gates are weak points that must be shored up if you hope to have a chance.”
Malden could only shrug. Those gates were massive portals of wood reinforced with iron. It had never occurred to him that they
could
be reinforced further.
“Get Slag on it at once. Give him everything he needs—he’ll definitely prove your best ally in what’s to come. You are about to be besieged. You need to know how these things are done, Malden.” Cutbill rose and went to a shelf behind Malden’s chair. It was stuffed with books and old manuscripts. “The Learned Brotherhood left some things behind when they were driven out of the Chapterhouse. I saved what I could. Here,” he said, handing a book to Malden. “This is Rus Galenius’s
Manual of Fortifications
. It’s the best volume on the subject that I’ve found.”
Malden opened the book and flipped through its pages. There were copious illustrations. One showed men standing on battlements, turning a crank mounted on the side of a giant kettle. Below them other men threw their arms over their heads as a rain of hot oil or perhaps molten lead came down toward them. Many of the illustrations were cunning diagrams, showing the proper employment of fascines and mottes, or exploded views of siege towers and mantlets. The text was in a language he didn’t know, however. “I can’t read this,” he admitted.
Cutbill stared down at him along his nose. “It’s the high tongue of the Old Empire. Until very recently, every book written in the world was in that language. You don’t even know the basic grammar?”
Malden frowned. “I learned how to read so I could keep the books of a brothel. I was lucky to get that much of an education. I never had a chance to study foreign languages.”
Cutbill nodded sagely and considered this. He reached for another book, then shook his head. “There’s no time for you to learn it now. Slag can at least make sense of the drawings and charts, but you’ll need a translator for the text. The priests of the Lady are all fluent in the high tongue.”
“Perhaps, but they’ve all fled,” Malden said. Which, he thought, you should know already—your spies should have told you as much. Even locked up in the Chapterhouse, Cutbill would have eyes and ears everywhere in the city, and some way of keeping abreast on developments. For Cutbill to claim ignorance now meant he was hiding something. Malden wondered what was really going on here.
Cutbill sat down and steepled his fingers below his nose. “Of course, I can read it. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. You’ll have to come back here every so often for lessons.”
And advice, Malden thought. Whether I want it or not.
He saw the game here. When one dealt with Cutbill, one always needed to be looking for the hidden stratagem. Missing it was fatal. He looked back over the recent events of his life, seeing how Cutbill had shaped them, step by step. When the Burgrave wanted to kill him, Cutbill had forced the lord of the city to spare his life. When Malden had refused to go to the Vincularium, Cutbill made sure he had a very good reason to want to leave the city. When Malden returned to Ness, the leadership of the guild of thieves was waiting for him. Cutbill had made sure all the pieces fit together. If he hadn’t opposed Pritchard Hood in quick order, he wondered how Cutbill would have forced that confrontation. He was certain Cutbill would have had a plan.
Cutbill was a master manipulator because he followed one simple rule. He made sure, always, that when he wished to convince someone to do his bidding, no other course of action was even thinkable. He never told anyone what to do directly. He merely spelled out the dire consequences of doing anything else.
“I’ll advise you on every element of the city’s defense. I’ll give you lists of things you need to get done, and the sooner the better,” Cutbill said. “Together we’ll make a stand, and save Ness.”
“What if I refuse?” Malden said.
Cutbill blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“What if I decide I won’t do your bidding? You’ve groomed me for this role. You’ve given me no choice so far. But a free man always has a choice.”
“I’m offering you help at a time when you desperately need it,” Cutbill pointed out. “What fool would turn that down?”
“The kind of fool who knows that everything has a price. You said earlier you wanted a man with a brain in his head for this job. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? You only want a puppet. A figurehead, capable of being loved by the crowd. But entirely beholden to you, and bound by iron chains to your counsel.”
Cutbill stared at Malden for a very long time without speaking. Finally, he looked away. “I think you should consider carefully before you make a grave error,” he said.
Malden rose to his feet and put a hand on Acidtongue’s hilt. “You didn’t prepare for this, did you? You don’t have a gambit ready in case I do balk.”
Cutbill glanced down at the blade. “Are you sure of that?”
Malden drew the sword an inch out of its scabbard. Acid dripped on the rushes and sizzled.
Cutbill didn’t flinch. “You could kill me now, of course,” he said. “We’ve already established that. Think of what you’d lose, though.”
“A job I never wanted? A master who treats me like a raw apprentice?”
“Malden,” Cutbill said, very slowly. “I’ve heard how well you fared against Sir Hew at Helstrow. How you showed that a man with a sword is no match whatsoever for a man with a sword who also knows how to use it.”
“I don’t see you holding a sword,” Malden said.
“When I was half your age, I led a gang of beggar children. We fought on the streets every day for a few rotten peelings of a turnip or enough coin to let us sleep in a stable on a cold night,” Cutbill said, again very softly. “I haven’t forgotten what I learned back then. I know more dirty tricks than you do.”
Malden stood his ground.
“All right,” Cutbill said with a sigh. “You’ve threatened me. I’ll even do you the honor of believing this is no bluff. But fighting you now would help no one, and hurt a great number of plans I’ve been working on for years. Put that sword away. I’ll buy my life from you.”
“I don’t need gold. I have plenty of my own,” Malden said.
“I wasn’t going to pay you in coin. I possess something far more dear than money. Through that door,” he said, pointing across the room, “is a store of foodstuffs. I knew this would be a bad winter, so I laid in provisions for a very long wait.”
“You’re going to buy your life with a cask or two of salt pork?”
“I have a hundred barrels of flour back there. I bought them at the peak of harvest time, when the price was quite low. They’re yours, Malden.”
A hundred barrels of flour would feed the entire city for a week. He needed that flour. He considered killing Cutbill and taking the flour anyway.
But in the end he shoved the sword home and lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. “I’ll take what you offer. The flour, and the advice. But I want you to know one thing—I don’t work for you anymore,” he said. “You work for me. As a counselor. I will make my own decisions, and if they align well with your advice, that’s well to the good. If they deviate from your plans, I will not apologize.”
Cutbill smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
Malden wondered then whether he had won a small victory—or if the confrontation had played out exactly as Cutbill had hoped from the start.