"King Pinch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook David)

"PINCH! ARE YOU-"

All at once the pair hit the top branches of the only tree in Sweetsweat Lane. Flailing for something to grip, the master thief dropped Sprite-Heels, who was squirming and howling enough already. The branches tore at Pinch's face, shredded his fine doublet, and hammered him in the ribs. Still he crashed through them, seeming to go no slower as momentum carried him in a sweeping arc toward the ground.

Pinch was almost ready to welcome the impact with the earth when his whole body, led by his neck, jerked to a stop. His fine cloak that had been billowing out behind him had snagged on a broken branch. A cheaper cloak with a clasp of lesser strength would have torn right then or its clasp would have come undone, but Pinch didn't dress in cheap clothes. Instead the cloak tried to hang him, saving the patrico of the Morninglord the job.

There was a brief second when Pinch thought his neck might snap, and then he realized he was still plunging downward-though not as fast. The one tree in Sweetsweat Lane was little more than a sapling, and under Pinch's weight the trunk bent with the springiness of a fishing pole. He felt as if he were floating, perhaps because he couldn't breathe, but there was no doubt the fall was slowing.

And then, through a shroud of pain that narrowed his vision, Pinch saw salvation. It was as if Mask, god of thieves, had reached down and parted the branches to reveal the brightly lit patio of the Charmed Maiden just below him.

Gurgling and kicking, Pinch fumbled his bung-knife from its wrist sheath and slashed at the cloth above him. The pop of threads breaking turned into a rip, and suddenly he was plunging as the branches whipped past him. With a loud crash, he bounced off a table, hurling trays of candied fruits and pitchers of warm wine into the air, and ricocheted into the warm and amply padded embrace of an enchanting lass of the Charmed Maiden. Not far away from him landed his smaller half, but with no less solid a thump.

"MAD!" Sprite-Heels howled over the shrieks of the Charmed Maiden's consorts and the outraged sputters of their clientele. "MAD, MAD, MAD! You tried to kill us! You suicidal son of a cheating apple-squire!" Sprite-Heels paid no attention to the panicked rush of the ladies or the bristling posturing of their gentlemen friends. They'd undoubtedly come out to see the commotion and were now getting more than their share.

"Stow it!" Pinch snarled as he reluctantly freed himself from the young lady's arms. "It's our necks on the leafless tree if the Hellriders take us." Though battered and hobbling, Pinch nonetheless seized the halfling by the nape of the neck and half-dragged him into the back passages of the festhall.

The pair staggered through the scented hallways, their haste increasing with each step. They passed locked doors where only soft giggles where heard, passed salons where dells awaiting the night's suitors adjusted their gowns. They hustled down the back stairs. As they neared the bottom, a chorus of shrieks and indignant cries filled the floor below. Over it all, Pinch heard the discordant clang of hand bells.

"Hellriders!" The rogue thrust his little partner back up the stairs. "Second floor-end of the hall!" he barked.

Sprite-Heels knew better than to argue. The chorus of hand bells was enough to say the watch was at the front door. The halfling could only trust the rogue's orders; gods knew the man had been here enough times.

At the top of the landing, Pinch forced his way through the sweaty couples who surged from the richly draped rooms, dodging elbows as women struggled into their gowns and the hard slap of steel as men buckled their swords to their belts. Behind them the bells and the shouts of "Hold fast!" and "Seize him!" grew stronger along with the furious pound of boots as the Hellrider patrol mounted the stairs. Forced like rats to flee rising water, the host of entertainers and clients crammed the staircase upward, so that it was mere moments before Pinch broke free into the near-empty hall. The rogue assumed his partner would follow; the halfling was able enough to care for himself. Pinch sprinted down the hall and painfully skidded around the corner.

"It's a blank wall!" wailed the voice right behind him, and indeed the words were true. The hallway ended in a solid wall, albeit one pleasingly decorated to imitate a garden seat. The small niche with a marble bench, all draped in false vines of silk and taffeta, was charming enough, but completely without a door.

"There's a way through here, Sprite. Maeve told me about it," Pinch assured. Even as he spoke, his long-fingered hands were swiftly probing the panels in search of some hidden catch or spring.

The halfling snorted. "Maeve? Our dear sweet drunken Maeve-here?"

"She was young once and not always a wizard. Now cut your whids and get to searching." From the commotion behind them, the Hellriders had reached the landing.

The halfling ignored the command. "So that's how you met her. Maeve, a-" he jibed.

"Stow it," Pinch snapped, though not out of sentimentality. He needed to concentrate and focus-and press just-so the spring-plate his fingers suddenly found.

A small panel over the garden bench swung out, opening to reveal a well of darkness. An exhalation of dust and cobwebs swept from the gap.

Pinch pulled the panel back and nodded to the half-ling. "It's jiggered; in you go."

The halfling looked at it with a suspicious eye until the clomp of boots in the hall overcame his objections. With a lithe spring he was up and through the door.

Pinch wasted no time in following, surprised that he could wriggle through the small opening so quickly after all the battering he'd taken. Grabbing the inside handle, he pulled the door shut and plunged them into darkness. With one hand on Sprite-Heels's shoulder, Pinch followed as the halfling descended steps the human could not see.

They padded downward as the thumping and thunder of the 'riders behind them faded, and then snaked through passages that wove beneath the city. In places Sprite led them through water that splashed up to Pinch's ankles and smelled so bad that he was thankful not to see what he walked through.

Their escape was so hurried that neither had a light. Several times Sprite stopped and described a branch in the sewer tunnels. Each time Pinch did his best to remember the path, though his confidence grew less and less the farther they went. He was an "upright man" now, the master of his own cohort of rogues-years away from his beginnings as a sewer rat.

At last they reached a landmark Pinch knew well from his underground days, a jagged gap in the brick casing of the sewer wall. From Sprite's description,

Pinch could see it almost unchanged in his mind-the ragged curve of the opening, the broken tumble of bricks that spilled into the muck-from the day he and Algaroz broke through the wall to complete their bolt hole from the alehouse above.

"Through there," Pinch ordered with silent relief. Up till now he had only hoped that Algaroz, who now owned the Dwarf's Pot, kept the bolt hole open. Pinch knew it wasn't out of sentimentality. Algaroz had good reasons for keeping a quick escape route handy.

The dirt-floored passage ended in a planked door, tightly fitted into a wall. Designed to be hard to find from the other side, it took only a few moments of probing to release the catches and swing the hidden door slowly open. Muddy, smelly, and blinking, the two thieves stepped into the soft light of the alehouse's cellar.

It was several hours, almost near dawn, before a man of average height and average looks finally found his way to a table at the back of the common room. Still, he commanded attention. His clothes and manner stood him apart from all the rest. The man wore the costume of an aspiring courtier-a red velvet doublet generously trimmed in gold braid, cross-gaitered woolen hose without a tear, and a fur-lined mantle draped casually across his shoulders. The tangled curls of his graying hair were neatly brushed out and his thick mustache trimmed. Most wondrous of all, he was clean and bathed, which was far more than any other customer in the smoky ordinary. A few hours before he'd been crawling on a roof, but now gone were the dark and sludge-stained clothes from the night's escapade.

The Dwarf's Pot, or the Piss Pot as some called it, was not noted for its fine clientele. Infamy more than fame brought a man here. Most of the lot were foists and nips who swilled down cheap sack and haggled with their brokers over the day's pickings. In one shadowed corner a dwarf pushed a few pieces across the table for a pittance of coin, while at another table a wrinkled old dame, a curber by trade, showed a wig and cloak she'd hooked from a window left carelessly open. Boozing hard near the entrance was a whole tableful of counterfeit cranks, those beggars who specialized in sporting their appalling deformities and maimed limbs to the sympathetic citizens of Elturel. Here in the commons, they looked remarkably hale and whole, no doubt due to the restorative powers of the cheap ale they swilled. Mingled among the crowd were the doxies and dells finally returned from their evening's labors.

"Greetings, Pinch dearie," said the sole woman at the table Pinch joined. Though far past her prime, she still dressed like she once might have been-pretty and alluring-but years and drink had long stolen that from her. Her long brown hair was thin and graying, her skin wrinkled and blotched. It was her eyes, weak and rheumy, that revealed her fondness for drink.

"Well met to you, Maeve," Pinch answered as he pulled up a chair and joined the three already there.

Across from Maeve, Sprite-Heels sprawled on a bench like a child bored with the temple service. He thrust a hairy halfling foot into the air and waggled his oversize toes. "You took your time. Find a distraction upstairs?" the little being mocked while at the same time breaking into a yawn he could not stifle.

The fourth at the table, a big overmuscled man with farmboy good looks, snorted his ale at Sprite's tweak. He broke into a fit of coughing, the scarf around his neck slipping to reveal a thick scar underneath. "Pinch don't got no time for women. 'Sides, he's got Maeve." He snickered at his own great wit.

"Ho, that's right. He's always got me, if I'd ever let him!" Maeve added with a laugh.

Pinch let the comments slide, eying the man across from him. "Therin, my boy," he finally asked with only a little comradely warmth, "what happened? I thought the constables had you for nipping a bung."

The younger man smiled knowingly. "Seems I had good witnesses to say it wasn't me with his hand in the gent's purse. By their eyes I was here, drinking with them at that very time."

Sprite's boozy voice came from below the edge of the table. "Our farmboy's learned to hire good evidences, even if he ain't learned to nip a purse. Isha shame-always learnin' the wrong thing first."

Therin rubbed at the scarf around his neck. "I've been hanged once. I don't need to be hanged again."

"See!" came the hiccup from below. "Mos' men saves the hanging lesson for las'."

Pinch propped his head on the table and gave Therin a long, hard stare, his face coldly blank. "There's some who'd say you're just bad luck, Therin. Maybe not fit to have around. It was you supposed to be there tonight." His mouth curled in a thin smile. "But then, your bad luck seems to affect only you. It was your neck for the noose and your money for the evidences. Sprite-Heels and I did just fine, didn't we?"

"Ish true, Pinch, ish true." The halfling heaved himself up till he could look over the top of the table. He was still spotted with the muck of the sewers. Fortunately the air of the Dwarf's Pot was so thick with wood smoke, stale ale, and spiced stew that his reek was hardly noticed. Right now Sprite-Heels breath was probably deadlier than his filth. "Wha'd we get? I' didn't look like more 'an a cheap piece of jewelry."

Pinch scowled at the question and waggled a finger for silence. That was followed by a series of quick gestures that the others followed intently.

Magical… important… temple… wait for money. The gestures spelled it out to the others in the hand-talk of thieves. From the quick finger-moves, they puzzled it out. Clearly what they'd taken was of great importance to the temple, so important that it was going to take time to sell. Pinch's sudden silence told them as much as his hands. The rogue was suddenly cautious lest someone hear. That meant people would be looking for what they had stolen, and Pinch saw no reason to openly boast of what they had done. Even Sprite-Heels, fuzzy-minded though he was, understood the need for discretion. The three turned awkwardly back to their mugs.

"What's the news of the night?" Pinch asked after a swallow of ale. They could hardly sit like silent toads all through the dawn.

Sprite collapsed back onto the bench since he had no answer. Therin shrugged and said with a grin, "There was a job at the temple. Somebody did them good." He, too, had nothing to say.

Maeve squeezed up her face as she tried to remember something the hour and the drink had stolen away from her. "There was somebody…" Her lips puckered as she concentrated. "That's it! There was somebody asking about you, Pinch."

The rogue's drowsy eyes were suddenly bright and alert. "Who?"

The memory coming back to her, Maeve's contorted face slowly relaxed. "A fine-dressed gent, like a count or something. Older, kind of puffy, like he didn't get out much. He was all formal and stuffy too, kind of like a magistrate or-"

"Maeve, did he have a name?" She was rambling and Pinch didn't have the patience for it.

The sorceress stopped and thought. "Cleedis… that was it. He was from someplace too. Cleedis of…"

"Cleedis," Pinch said in a voice filled with soft darkness. "Cleedis of Ankhapur."

Janol of Ankhapur

It was one of those statements that could be understood only with mouths agape, and the three did so admirably. Maeve blinked a little blearily, her slack mouth giving her the look of a stuffed fish. From out of sight, Sprite-Heels suddenly stopped hiccuping. The grumbling of a drunk as he argued the bill, the clatter of dishes carried to the back by a wench, even the slobbering snore of an insensate drunk filled the silence the three scoundrels created.

It was up to Therin, naturally, to ask the obvious. "You know this Cleetish?" he asked, wiping his sleeve at the drool of ale on his chin.

"Cleedis-and yes, I know him," was the biting answer. This was not, Pinch thought, a subject for their discussion.

" 'Swounds, but ain't that a new one. Our Pinch has got himself a past," the big thief chortled.

By now Sprite had hauled himself up from his sprawl on the bench. Though his hair was a tangled nest of curls and his shirt was awry, the halfling's eyes were remarkably clear for one who only moments ago was half done-in by drink. Still, his words were slurred by ale. "Wha's his nature, Pinch-good or ill?" The little thief watched the senior rogue closely, ever mindful of a lie.

Pinch tented his finger by his lips, formulating an answer. All the while, he avoided the halfling's gaze, instead carefully scanning the common room under the guise of casualness. "Not good," he finally allowed. "But not necessarily bad. I haven't seen him in a score of years, so there's no good reason for him to be looking for me."

"From Ankhapur, eh?" Therin asked more ominously, now that the drift of things was clear. "Where's that?"

Pinch closed his eyes in thoughtful remembrance, seeing the city he'd left fifteen years ago. He tried to envision all the changes wrought on a place in fifteen years, see how the streets would be different, the old temples torn down, the houses spread outside the outdated walls. Still, he knew that the Ankhapur he imagined was as much a dream as the one he remembered.

"South-too far south for you to know, Therin," the rogue finally answered with a thoughtful grin. It was no secret that Therin's knowledge of the world ended about ten leagues beyond Elturel. Pinch could have claimed that Ankhapur drifted through the sky among the lights of Selune's Tears for as much as Therin knew. Still, maybe it was the remembering that made Pinch more talkative than he had ever been. Home and family just weren't topics of conversation for those of his trade. "It's the white city, the princely city, built up right on the shores of the Lake of Steam. Some folks call it the boiled city. Take your pick."

"So who is this Cleedis, Pinch?" Maeve wheedled. "He seemed like a gent."

"An old, foolish man," Pinch answered offhandedly to end his reminiscence. Maybe there was more to be said, but the rogue offered no further explanation.

Sprite, his judgment decidedly impaired, was not going to let Pinch slip away. "So wha' do we do? We goin' to meet with him?"

The other poured a blackjack of sack and gave Sprite a jaundiced glare. "You're not doing anything. This fellow's looking for me, not you. We've had success tonight, and it calls for some drinking. Here's to my little diver!" the rogue raised his leather mug for the toast, and the other three quickly followed.

"Here's to Sprite," Therin and Maeve chorused.

"Aye, here's to me," the halfling burbled happily. He buried his childlike face deep into the overfull mug of wine, greedily tipping it back with two hands until the drink streamed down his chin.

Pinch took a judicious draught of his wine, while Therin and Maeve drank long and hard. Even before the others had finished, their master stepped away from the table. "I'll look for you in the usual places," Pinch advised. "Finish your drinking and keep your eyes and ears sharp. The patricos are going to be looking hard for their thieves. It won't do to have any of you scragged now."

"As you say it, Pinch," Therin murmured dourly as he set his blackjack on the greasy table. Brown Maeve nodded her receipt of Pinch's caution. Sprite was silent, already insensate and snoring on the bench.

Gathering his mantle tight, Pinch stepped over the sleeping dog by the door and walked out into the bracing dawn.

The muddy lane was flecked with clumps of long-lasting snow that clung to the patches of daytime shade. Right now it was neither light nor dark but the point where time hovered between the two. The false dawn that dimmed out the lower stars was fading, replaced by the true dawn. Here though, the sun's first light struggled against the winter mists common to Elturel. How like Ankhapur, Pinch thought as he watched the hovering frost swirl through the night alleys. The comparison had never occurred to him before, not even when he'd arrived fresh from the south. Travel had all been new, wonderful, and terrifying then; there was never time for such frivolous speculation.

The man shook his head with a snap of his curly hair, as if to shake loose these romantic notions and rattle them out his ears. Such thoughts were all fatigue, and he could not allow himself that luxury of rest. First there was Cleedis.

The Five-League Lodge was far from Pinch's normal haunts. It perched halfway up the slope of Elturel's High Road, halfway between the base world of the common man and the uppermost crest of nobility. In Elturel, a man's address said much for his status. Chaperons in their salons counted how many streets a prospective suitor was from the top of the hill. Ragpickers always claimed their gleanings were gathered from the very summit of Elturel, an artless lie their hopeful customers accepted anyway.

For Pinch, all that mattered was that the best pickings were found in the streets that looked down on the city. Of course, the higher streets had the most watchmen and wizards, too. It was here that the city's leaders lived in aeries at the top of the great High Hill, the temples of those gods currently in favor clustered around them. Farther down, those merchants who aspired beyond their class vied for the choicest-hence highest- streets left to choose from. The Five-League Lodge had done well, holding practically the last address before the realms of the privileged crowded out all others.

By the time Pinch reached the block of the inn, the morning vendors were already straining their carts through the streets. Eelmongers and bread carts competed for attention, along with the impoverished prestidigitators who went from door to door offering their skills. "A quick spell to clean your house, a word to sweeten your wine? Or perhaps, madam, you're looking for something to make your husband a little more amorous. I can do these things for you, madam. It'll only take a few coins… and he'll never know what happened."

Pinch knew these old tricks well. Tomorrow the house would be dirty again; in a few days, the husband would be as doltish as ever. The wizard wouldn't care. Some probably wouldn't even remember, the grinding scramble of the day drowned away by cheap wine in taprooms like the Dwarf's Piss Pot. That was the way things were-everybody out to make their coin.

It was the hypocrites who pretended to live above it who irritated Pinch. He'd dealt with constables, trusties, watchmen, even executioners, buying them with a few gold or silver coins, and yet they still pretended to be pure and unimpeachable. That was a joke; nobody was beyond gold's reach. Rogues knew the lies and self-deceptions men used, and made their living trading on those weaknesses. Perhaps that was why Pinch stayed in the bottom town, unlike other upright men who pretended to the ranks of the gentry. Down among the common folk, at least a man knew his business and wasn't ashamed of it.

Pinch abandoned his ruminations at the door to the Five-League Lodge, a sprawling compound of timber and stone. He stepped through the door and into the common room, this one a good deal cleaner than the place he had just left. The hall was empty save for a single charwoman cleaning the floor. Her dress hung in greasy tatters, far out of keeping with the fine appointments of the room.

"Girl, come here," Pinch commanded as he took a chair. After a start of surprise, the woman hesitantly shuffled over. As she drew near, Pinch laid a silver coin on the table and idly pushed it about with one finger. "Do you have a guest named Cleedis?"

The charwoman's gaze was fixated on the promise of the coin. "The one that looks like an empty money sack? Aye."

Another coin, matched by a scowl, was laid on the table. "That's the one. Where?"

"Up the stairs to the best chambers in the house."

With a deft tap he scooted the silver toward her and she snatched it up before it had even stopped moving. Coin in pocket, she hurried to disappear before the chance of blame arose.

Pinch was up the stairs before the innkeeper might stop him, since no doubt like all innkeepers, the man truly believed he was the lord of his domain. At the top of the stairs, it was hardly difficult to find Cleedis's room; the one entrance with double doors had to be it. The doors were a rich wood unseen in these parts and probably shaped by elves, judging from the elaborate carved panels, not that Pinch was much of an appraiser of the forest folks' handiwork. He did, however, note the keyhole of thick dwarven iron. Locks were something more in his line, and this one looked formidable. Worse still, it was probably enchanted. The last thing he needed was for the lock to shout out an alarm.

A good thief was always prepared, and Pinch prided himself on being a good thief. The slim rod of dull bronze he pulled from his pouch didn't look like much, but getting it had cost two others their lives and Pinch very nearly his. Not that his killing them bothered him; if there'd been an honest beak on the bench, both would've been hanged long ago. Death was their reward for plotting against him.

The old rogue knelt by the door and gently touched the rod to the metal lock, so carefully as not to make a single clink or tap. At the barest contact, the rod melted before the dwarven metal, dripped down its own shaft before it coagulated into a thick mass. Pinch shook it briefly, as if scattering the excess metal. When it was done, what had been a plain rod was a perfect duplicate of the lock's true key, form and shape stolen from the memory of the dwarven metal itself.

Still, Pinch held his breath as he slipped the forged key over the tumblers. There was always the chance of another safety, especially with dwarf work. The dumpy smiths were always vying to outdo each other in one form or another, building in this new intricacy or that. Fortunately, this lock did not look particularly new.

The tumblers clicked and rotated, the bolt slid back, and nothing screeched in alarm. Still Pinch waited to be sure. When no innkeeper roused from his morning kitchen came puffing up the stairs with guardsmen in tow, Pinch pushed the door open until he could just slide his body through into the gloom beyond. Once inside, he checked the lock's other side. Dwarves had a fiendish fondness for little traps like one-sided locks and other infernal tricks.

Once satisfied that the Five-League Lodge was not at the forefront of lock design, the old rogue softly pressed the door shut and looked about the room. The front salon alone was larger than any private room Pinch had seen in Elturel. The entire common room of the old, dark-stained Piss Pot could easily have fit in here. Worse still for Pinch, everything was of the finest quality-the brocades, the statuary, the plate. It was a cruel thing to have to suppress his natural acquisitive instincts. He restrained himself, not from any sense of morality but because he had business that he did not want to jeopardize. Besides, the rogue knew he wasn't equipped to do the job right. Pilfer a little now, and the owner would surely tighten his wonderfully lax precautions. Instead, Pinch made a note of the place, its best treasures, and its weaknesses. Any man who guarded his treasures so ill just might be fool enough to turn over the lot to a quick-witted coney-catcher like himself, Pinch guessed.

But the rogue shook his head ruefully, knowing his thoughts were getting away from the matter at hand. With all the stealth he could muster, Pinch slipped to the bedchamber door and gently pushed the gilded panel open. It swung on silent hinges, which suited the thief well. A dying glimmer in the fireplace lit the gloom in the far corner, casting its rays over the dark hump in the center of the bed.

With a supple twist, Pinch slid his wrist knife into the palm of his hand. He had no intention of killing Cleedis, but there was no point in letting the man know that. In three quick strides he would be at the bed.

Halfway through his second step, a light flared from the corner opposite the lamp.

"All night I've waited," groused a figure in the light, filling a high-backed chair like a lump of fallen dough. "I expected you earlier."

"Cleedis!" Pinch gasped, though his teeth were clenched. Instinct seized the thief. He whirled on the balls of his feet, blade already coming up-

"None of that!" the other barked sharply. He shifted slightly and a flash of steel glinted from his lap. "I know you too well, coz. It was me that taught you the sword."

Pinch rocked back with wary slowness. " 'Coz,' indeed, Chamberlain Cleedis. What brings you so far from Ankhapur? Fall out of Manferic's favor?"

The swordsman rose from his seat, his overweight and flaccid body filling with the stern strength of piety. "Your guardian, King Manferic III, is dead."

It was clear the old courtier was playing the news for shock, and Pinch was not having any of it. With his best studied coolness, he laid his knife on the nightstand and settled onto the bed, disinterestedly pulling the coverlet back. Underneath, a breastplate and clothes made up the lumpy outline. "So?" the rogue drawled. "He turned his back on me years ago."

"The kingdom needs you."

That got to Pinch. He couldn't help but stare at Cleedis in surprise. He looked at the courtier closely, comparing what he saw to the man he once knew. The hair, once black and rich, was receding and almost pure white. The weather-beaten campaigner's skin was now cracked and loose, his eyes sad pits without humor. The soldier's muscles were now flaccid and tired. In Cleedis, Pinch saw the fate of the warrior turned statesman, the toll that years of compromise and patience would extract from the flesh.

Pinch stared until he realized he was staring, then he gave an embarrassed snort of disgust as if to claim his shock was only an act. "I'm not such a gull, Cleedis. There are my dear cousins; what about the princelings four?"

Cleedis thrust the sword into the carpet and hobbled a step forward using the weapon like a cane. "Bors is an idiot-can barely hold his drool in at a temple service," the king's chamberlain growled. "The other three hate each other with a passion. Each claims sole right to the Cup and Knife. Vargo started it, figuring he could muscle the other two out of the race. With only one claimant, the priests would nullify the test and pronounce him the true heir."

The tale was beginning to amuse Pinch, in as much as it was all his adopted family deserved. He lay back on the pillows, although one hand was always near the knife. "Throdus and Marac didn't agree? By Beshaba, dissension in the house."

"There'll be civil war!"

"So when they're all gone, you want me, the forgotten ward, to come to Ankhapur's rescue and carry on the family name? How generous, Cleedis."

Cleedis stabbed at the floor in anger. "I'll not put a thief like you on the throne!"

Pinch sprang to the edge of the bed. "Ho! Little kingmaker Cleedis now! My, what you've become. So what is it you want of me then?"

The courtier stalked back to his chair. "Just a job. A quick and quiet solution to our problem."

"Why me? You could get any queer-bird to lay them down with a cudgel, just for freedom from the gaol-or have you lost all your influence with Manferic's death?" The aged courtier's glare told Pinch all he needed to know. "Aye, now there's a turn of Tymora's wheel. You used to inspire fear in them, and now you probably don't even have the coin for a black spell from a Thavian outcast. That's why you've come to me." The rogue let loose a gloating chuckle and settled back onto the silken pillows.

"It's not that way," was Cleedis's terse reply. "First, it's not the princes we're after. If anything odd should happen to your cousins, there'll be war for sure. In the second part, you can dance on the twisted hemp before I'd come looking for you. I'm here at Manferic's bidding."

"Oh, dear guardian; so like Manferic. He plots even after his death." It was time to be off the bed and to the door. "Go back to his grave, Cleedis, and tell him I'm not coming. I like things just as they are here."

"Heard there was trouble in town last night," the elder drawled like a snake uncoiling. Pinch knew he was hearing trouble, but he kept his stride steady. He wasn't going to play the chamberlain's game.

"You are a fool, Janol-or Pinch, should I call you? Here I am in Elturel, where nobody's even heard of Manferic or Ankhapur, and you don't even wonder how I found you."

That stopped Pinch with his hand at the door.

The seat creaked and then the floor groaned with a heavy thunk-clunk as Cleedis hobbled over, sword as cane. "The priests of Ankhapur," the courtier wheezed out, "have gotten quite good at tracking you. Shall I tell you where you were last night?"

Pinch stared blindly at the woodwork in front of him. "I was drinking." He could hear his own words locking into the cool monotone of a lie and cursed himself for getting caught.

"Maybe you were. It doesn't matter," the courtier allowed with the smooth, cold smile of a basilisk. "Guilty or innocent, it doesn't matter to me or the constables- what are they called?-Hellriders of this town. Just a word is all it takes."

Pinch turned a half step toward his tormentor.

"Not a bit of it, Janol," the old man said as he weakly swung his sword to guard. "You can't imagine me trekking to Elturel alone. I die and you're surely doomed."

"Bastard fool, you've got no proof and I've got evidences who'll swear for me."

Sword still up, Cleedis blew on his free hand to warm his finger joints. "Of course you do, and that's all good for the constables, but are a high priest's bodyguards less impetuous here than in Ankhapur? The news through the entire city is that they lost a pretty piece of property, a piece of some high holy man's jewelry they'd been safeguarding."

Resigned, Pinch leaned back against the door. If he couldn't bluff the old man, he would at least pump the chamberlain for what he could. "You know a lot for being new here."

"Don't assume I came in yesterday. I learned a lot in Manferic's service that's served me better than the sword. So, are you coming or will you wait for some temple brave to cut you down? They will find you, trust me."

There was no choice. Pinch needed to stall.

"I've got others who need consulting-"

"Let them hang on their own."

"And things to get together. This evening-we'll meet again."

The old chamberlain considered the offer, the fierce energy that had sustained him all night draining away. "Where?"

"Here," was the quick answer. Pinch wasn't about to reveal any of his hideouts, either the boozing kens where he spent his days or the stalling kens where he passed his goods to the brokers.

Cleedis nodded acceptance. "Don't turn me, cousin. I found you once; I'll find you again."

And I'll be ready for you next time, Pinch thought to himself. At the door, he gave a quick bow, part old habit and part mockery, before leaving the apartment and slipping through the dawn-drowsy halls of the inn.

The rogue was wary as he made his way back through the early morning streets. By now his head was thick with the sluggish residue of stale ale, sleep deprivation, and overexcited nerves. He had to thread his way through the sunrise press of greengrocers, tinkers, and kitchen maids on their morning rounds. A butcher's apprentice splashed by, hurrying through the muddy streets and balancing a fresh side of mutton on his shoulder while a pack of gnome striplings chased him, trying to nick bits of meat off the carcass's dangling shank. Here and there Pinch saw a fellow knave- Dowzabell, the prison trusty; Dun Teddar, who did a counterfeit of mad singing; and Ironbellow, a dwarf who limped because one foot was a bronze peg. He begged coins, claiming he'd lost his foot as a Hellrider fighting the Zhentarim, but Pinch knew in truth that a surgeon had taken it last winter after Ironbellow had passed out from drink and got a case of frostbite and gangrene.

It wasn't the unpredictable palliards or the murderous wild rogues that made Pinch wary, though. Like him, the ragged tramps and overdressed cutthroats were from the night world, the land of darkness and shadow. Now, as the sun rose, they, like himself, felt their powers wane.

It was the ones who knew no hour that worried Pinch-the Hellriders who patrolled the city. It was the rogue's greatest failing that he was too well known to the catchpole and his constables. No doubt they'd be looking for him after last night.

And the Hellriders weren't all either. The patrico's guard would want a hand in this also, to redeem the damaged honor of their jobs at the temple. With daylight, they'd be out in force.

Finally, there was Cleedis. Given whom the old man had served all these years, it was certain the sword-master was not to be underestimated. Hellriders, even temple guards, Pinch could predict. He could not say the same for Cleedis.

It's all my own vain fault, a biting voice gnawed within him. It was hardly fair to call this his chiding conscience, for while always at his shoulder, the sharp words didn't care about the causes of things. Pinch's inner voice saw the flaws in plans that might have been perfect. The trouble was, it almost always spoke in the rogue's ear when it was too late to do much anyway. The voice seemed to relish the power of hindsight that Pinch denied himself.

So Pinch moved warily. He slipped down alleys with names like Kennel Lane and Mucker's Mews, where the half-timbered houses leaned so close over the street that their roof peaks almost touched. He chose ways that kept him on the edges of the day markets and far from Elturel's High Hill. Traveling thus, skirting this and flanking that, it was not until well into the morning that Pinch returned to the Dwarf's Pot.

As the old rogue pushed open the alehouse's creaky door, Therin unexpectedly stepped out from the shadows. "Piss in Ilmater's wounds-where've you been, Pinch?" The thug's voice was torn between relief and stress, and it was mirrored in the long knife clutched in his hand even as his body sagged back against the wall. Pinch knew by the knife it was serious business, not just because Therin had a knife out, but because it was a skene, a long, thin dirk. It was a blade favored by Therin's honor-obsessed people, the Gurs-Selune's children, the people of the highway. The skene was a sure sign of deadly intent.

"Pizzle it yourself. What's the play here?" Without waiting for an answer, Pinch slipped to the side where he could get his back against the wall and face his foes directly. Even though Therin wasn't threatening anymore, a man would be a fool to think all was well. With his hold-back dagger already in hand, Pinch scanned the common room for more danger.

It was empty, which even at this hour was not right. There was always at least one drunk or well-paid doxy toasting the day-but today there was nothing. Save for Therin, there weren't even any of Pinch's gang. "Hell-riders, did they-"

Therin didn't need the rest of the question. "It was the patriarch's catchpoles. Came in here like apprentices to a cry of 'Clubs.' Set to bust up the place looking for you and the little fellow." He stooped and slid the long knife back into its boot sheath.

"Damn Cleedis and his spies! Sprite-Heels-where is he?"

"Up here" was the muffled answer. Pinch looked up in time to see a small stream of dust fall from the roof beams, and then Sprite was dangling by his awkward little arms.

Therin nodded up with a grin but made no move to help. "Slipped out of sight and got himself up there." He purposely raised his voice for Sprite to hear. "Can't imagine how a runt like him managed it, though."

"I heard that!" the halfling shrieked.

They both ignored him. "And Maeve?"

"Right here, my dear Pinch," cooed a voice at Pinch's ear. The old rogue could feel her warm, ale-scented breath on his cheek, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Got meself invisible as soon as trouble come through the door. Just in case." Vanishing was Brown Maeve's first reaction to most danger.

"Well, make yourself whole, woman." Pinch addressed the air where he thought she stood. "And you up there, get yourself down. We're leaving town." He strode through the near-deserted hall toward the upstairs.

"Leaving?" There was a loud thud as Sprite dropped to the floor. Halflings, it seemed, did not land like cats. "None too soon, I think."

A bottle on the Piss Pot's bar suddenly upended and burbled a healthy swig. "Oy, Maeve-you'll be paying for that!" snapped Algaroz as he came through the door from the back kitchens.

Caught with the snappings, the frumpy sorceress flickered into existence. "It's a going-away drink," she chided. "Old Pinch wants us to leave town."

"And none too soon, if the officers keep ruining my trade-"

"Leave, just cause we had a little trouble with the constables? Things were looking good here. I say we stay." Therin marked his objections by leaning significantly against the front door. With his big muscles and rope-scarred neck, he made an imposing obstacle.

"Fine for you to say when they haven't made you, moon-man!" Sprite snapped.

Therin reddened at the name "moon-man." It was an old insult for his kind, one that reminded him of the suspicion he'd always faced as a Gur.

From the stairs, Pinch cut it off before the pair went to their blades. "Settle it later!" Pinch shouted from the stairs. "Listen, you bastards. It's not because the catch-poles showed, but that they showed unnatural fast- and they knew whom they were looking for. Don't that strike you as queer, either of you?" He spat toward the spittoon, getting the flavor of treachery out of his mouth. "It was Cleedis's doing. He's got a job he wants me to do, and he's tipped the temple to make me do it."

"So we're running then?" Therin asked archly.

Damn the man's pride, Pinch thought to himself. "Of course we are. And if we're lucky, Cleedis will follow- and then, Therin, I'll let you take care of him."

He didn't like it. The game he thought he knew was getting out of control. First Cleedis's manipulations, and now he had to satisfy Therin's honor. Pinch didn't like any of it. "Satisfied?" he snarled when Therin didn't reply quickly.

"I'll go," Therin replied with a face like the losing dog in a challenge.

"Good then. You've all got a little time to get your things. It'll be a trip to the country until things settle down in the city." The man didn't wait see if anyone questioned his orders but went up to gather his own few clothes.

An hour later he was making his way through the midday streets, accompanied by a puffing Maeve and a scowling Therin. Darting in and out among them, like a planet orbiting its greater sun, was a small, heavily cloaked figure. It was only when the cold winter brushed up the edge of the creature's hem that a man could even notice a pair of curly-haired feet underneath.

"Take the Waterside Road; the guards ain't so choosy there," suggested Therin, their Gur. In their shiftless lives, the Gurs were masters for knowing the little ways in and out of the city. They were a group always ready to pack and leave on a moment's notice. Pinch idly speculated that Therin's newly tasted stability had made him reluctant to leave.

They followed his advice and hurried past the public docks and the fishmonger's market, where rats challenged cats for the choicest fish entrails. Just before the city gatehouse, they broke from the main avenue and wove through the side lanes until they reached a smaller, almost forlorn gate. Two indolent guards protected the old gate and all within its walls. Pinch recognized it as the Old Trade Gate, named before commerce dictated building something more.

Sure enough, the guards were lax here. In fact, the only thing that animated the bored pair was the size of the bribe they'd get from the group. After being driven down to only four gold each-business was slow for them-the two watchmen stepped aside and let the party through unquestioned.

Outside the walls, the road threaded through a jumble of shacks that had once been thriving inns when the trade route had passed this way. Now, with the merchants using the New Road, only a few struggling hostels survived here. Nonetheless, the group did not slow its pace. This close to Elturel was still too close. Pinch wanted them farther away.

At last they reached the breakwater of the city's expansion, a largish creek that separated city from countryside. The sluggish water was spanned by a claptrap wooden bridge that looked unsteady and probably was. Across the way, a horse grazed while its rider lounged in the midday sun of winter. As best they could tell, he sported no livery of the temple or the distinctive black-and-red armor of the Hellriders. Satisfied that all was clear, Pinch led them across.

It's too easy, chided the rogue's inner voice. Cleedis won't give up, and then what will I do?

Pinch had been avoiding the question because he didn't have an answer. Well, we can fend for ourselves, he firmly decided, without interference from any others.

In this, Pinch was wrong.

They had barely set foot on the other bank when the true nature of the rider was revealed. It was Cleedis, and before Pinch could react, the old warrior had gotten unsteadily to his feet.

"What kept you so long, Janol?" the foreigner casually asked. Before anyone could answer, a ring of bodyguards, all pointing crossbows, stepped from the gloomy bushes. "I expected you much sooner."

"Cleedis, you borsholder," Pinch snarled.

Sprite elbowed the old rogue's knee. "Don't provoke him. He may want you, but there weren't a thing said about the rest of us." Pinch's three companions froze with indecision, uncertain if Cleedis's invitation was extended to them or if they were unnecessary in the foreign chamberlain's eyes.

"Aye, play it out Pinch," Therin warned.

To the relief of the others, their leader slowly nodded-whether to them or Cleedis, it didn't matter. "It seems, Cleedis," the thief said in his most politic tone, "that maybe we should travel with you. Elturel was getting stale."

The old swordsman looked at Pinch's three companions and then at the determination in the rogue's eyes. The chamberlain's face was a mask as he calculated how his charge's compatriots changed the rules of the game. Finally, he turned and hobbled away. "Well and good. Daros, bring horses for them all. The rest of you, watch them close. We've found whom we came for; it's home for Ankhapur."

Travelers' Tales

"Dammit, Pinch, you owe us some words!" Therin hissed softly so that the trooper riding next to him wouldn't hear. Although it was midafternoon, it was the first chance any of them had to speak to Pinch. The small column-for Cleedis commanded his men like an army-had been forced to a halt by a poorly planked stream. As their escorts plodded across the narrow bridge, Therin seized the opportunity to maneuver close to Pinch while they waited. "Who are they and why'd you let us get taken?"

Pinch bristled at his underling's questions. He didn't see that Therin or the others needed to know about his past, and certainly not on their demands. His life was his own, to share as he chose and pizzle take the rest of them. Even his horse felt that anger and started to bolt, only to have the thief savagely rein it in.

"If you'd stayed in Elturel, you'd be dead by sunset." The master rogue couldn't hold back the snarl that drove his words. "Do you think the constables were just lucky? Are you that dense? They were tipped. They got sent-"

"That wa'rnt no reason to leave," the younger man countered hotly, his whispers becoming dangerously loud. "We've beat the catchpoles before. Piss and fire, you even cheated me off the gallows tree! We could've slipped the lot and hid out in another ken. Those constables ain't got the wit of us. For Mask's eyes, their idea of searching was just to bust up a few things and say it was good! There was no cause to go abroad."

"Think on it, Therin. Ain't they got the wit of us? Then how'd they find you-by twirling Tymora's wheel? It was that Cleedis found me over how many leagues distant and it was him that tipped the authorities. Do you think a few hide-holes and lasts would stop his priests from spying us out?" Pinch had had enough of the Gur's disputing and nudged his horse into the line, but not before giving one parting shot. "Besides, I'm curious. There may be a profit in going with Cleedis after all."

That left the awkwardly perched gypsy musing in his saddle, just as Pinch knew it would.

Beyond the stream and well on their way, it was time for Pinch to ask the questions. With a cheerful nod to his armed chaperons, the rogue trotted his horse up to where Cleedis rode.

In the saddle, the old chamberlain was a transformed man. His horse was a spirited gray stallion with a mane streaked charcoal black. Its eyes were clear and its bite hard on the bit. Even to Pinch, who was no judge of prancers, it was clear that this beast was the best breed of the southern lands. Under the reins of a weaker man, the horse would have ridden the rider, but under Cleedis there was none of that. Here on the roads, in the open air, and fitted in his commander's armor, the chamberlain was once again the cavalry captain Pinch had known as a lad.

Pinch reined in alongside and launched in without preamble. "Cleedis, you've got me now. What's the job and what's the booty?"

The chamberlain pulled his open-faced helmet back to hear better. "Job? Wait and see."

"Not good enough, coz," the rogue said as he brushed a fly from his face. "I need time to plan and think. And I'll not be killing." At least not by intention, Pinch added to himself.

"You're tired and not thinking clearly, Janol. I already said there would be no need for killing-not if you do your part well. As for more, you'll have to wait."

A little part of the mystery became clear. "You don't know, do you? You were just sent to bring me back. Who sent you-Vargo, Throdus, or Marac?" Pinch watched carefully as each name was mentioned, hoping for a telltale on Cleedis's part. There was no such luck. The chamberlain maintained a statesmanlike demeanor. "You must wait, Janol. You were, and still are, impatient. It will be your undoing someday. When we reach Ankhapur, what you need to know will be revealed."

But no more than that, Pinch heard in what was not said.

He did not press the issue. The gleaning of information was an art, and there was time between here and Ankhapur.

The rest of the day passed no worse than it had begun. By late day, the burden of the last two days' plots, schemes, escapes, and yet more plots came crushing down on Pinch and his companions. Their energies were sapped. While the guards jounced along uncomfortably in their saddles, Pinch and company slept. The old rogue was skilled enough to sleep in the saddle, but for the other three riding was an untested talent.

Therin, mounted on an impossibly small pony, would nod off until one of his cramped legs slipped from the stirrup and scraped the ground. Just when it seemed he might ride like this for miles, until all the leather was shredded from the tip of his boot, his toe would catch on a rock with a solid thwack and rouse him from slumber. Maeve and Sprite-Heels, the halfling squeezed into the saddle in front of the sorceress, lolled precariously and in unison from side to side until one or the other woke with the panic of a headlong plunge.

So it went until they stopped. The four gingerly massaged their sore parts while the troopers made camp, cooked, and saw to the needs of the travelers. By then, Pinch's companions were too tired to talk, too wary of their escorts to ask questions of the leader.

The fires were near embers and guards had taken their posts at the edge of the hostile darkness when Cleedis produced a bottle from his saddlebags. "When I was a young officer out on campaign," he began in the rambling way of a man who has a moral he feels he must share, "we used to spend all day hunting down orc bands from the Great Invasion. We'd ride for miles, getting hot and full of dust. Sometimes we'd find a band of stragglers and ride them down. It was great work."

Clawlike fingers pulled the cork free, and he drank a long draught of the yellowish wine. Breathing hard to savor the alcohol's burn, he held the bottle to Therin across the fire.

"After a day of butchering, we'd gather around the fire like this and drink." The old man looked at the suspicious eyes across from him. He pushed the bottle again toward Therin until the big man took it. "Drink up, boy," the worn-out campaigner urged before continuing his ambling tale. "Men need to share their liquor with their companions, because there's no telling who you might need at your back. Back then, a man could get himself surrounded by a throng of orc swine at any time, and then it would be too late to discover he had no friends. Drink and a tale, that's what kept us together. Doesn't that make sense, Janol?" Cleedis's eyes turned on the master rogue. The brown in them was burned black and hard by years of concessions and expediencies.

"A man can drink for lots of reasons, and most stories are lies," Pinch commented acidly.

"They say bad hearts sour good wine. Is it a good wine, Master Therin?"

The young man held the jug out in front of him considering an answer. "Tolerable, I wager."

"Tolerable, indeed," the chamberlain sighed, taking the bottle back. He set the bottle to his weather-cracked lips and gulped and gulped, and gulped at it some more until the yellow stains of wine trickled from the corners of his mouth and clung in sweet drops in the coarse beard on his chin. At last he pulled the bottle free with a choking gasp. The old man shoved the bottle into Sprite's hands and began without preamble.

"There's a lad I knew, must have been fifteen, twenty, years ago. He was a boy of a high family. His father was a noted captain in the king's guard and his mother a lady-in-waiting to the queen. She was pregnant when the captain was killed in the wars against the trolls. The lady wailed for the priests to beg their gods, but there was no bringing the captain back. She being a lady, though, the king and queen saw to her needs all the time she was with child. It was double tragedy that she died bearing her male child."

"Wasn't there a priest who could bring her back, what with the baby?" Brown Maeve asked. Her veined face was swelling with a whimper of tears, for the sorceress could never resist a sad tale. "Where was her kin?"

"She didn't have any," Cleedis answered after a long swig on the bottle he pried from Sprite's hands. "That's why she stayed at court. There wasn't any family to pray for her. It wasn't her wish to be raised; she hoped to join her husband. The king and queen pledged to raise the boy as their ward."

Maeve gave out a little sob.

Across the fire, Pinch glared at Cleedis in stony silence, eyes glinting amid the rising sparks.

Cleedis continued. "Without mother or father, in some other place he would've been one of those little beggars you kick away on the street. That's how it would have been, you know, except that didn't happen to him.

"He got lucky, more luck than he ever deserved-"

Pinch spat.

Cleedis persevered. "He was favored. He didn't have family, but he was taken in by nobility, a king no less. They dressed him, fed him, and educated him in the best ways. And you know how he repaid them?"

Pinch spat, ferociously this time, and the gobbet hissed and cracked in the flames. Springing up, he broke from the circle of firelight, making angry strides past the startled guard whose sword half-cleared its sheath.

The old chamberlain motioned the man back to give the rogue his peace. Pinch trembled at the edge of the firelight, hovering at the rim of the winter blackness.

"He repaid them," Cleedis slowly dogged on, pulling back the attention of the rogue's friends, "he repaid them by stealing all he could and fleeing the city. Now, what do you think of that?"

Man, woman, and halfling exchanged uncomfortable glances, their thoughts clearly centered on their tall master. He continued to scorn the warmth of the group.

"Did he make a good profit?" Sprite asked nervously, but the joke fell flat.

"Why stop the tale there, Cleedis?" murmured the upright man's voice from the darkness. "There's so many little embellishments you've left out. Like how the king thought his queen was barren and wanted a son for his throne. How he raised the boy with care and the best of all things-until one day his wife was fruitful and bore him a son, and then three more over the years. That was three more than he needed and certainly better than an orphan boy."

The man brought his anger back to the fire and leaned close to share it with the others. Perhaps the old man didn't like his story shanghaied, or perhaps he could feel the pain in the other's voice. Whatever the reason, his joint-swollen fingers knotted painfully about his sword.

"Or how he drove his queen to death once she'd whelped heirs for him. And then one day the dear old man woke up and decided he didn't need the boy he'd taken in, the one who wasn't his seed. All his life, the boy had lived in luxury, expecting and waiting, only to be pushed out by a group of mewling brats. How about that, Cleedis?"

The rogue turned to the other three-short, plump, and broad-sitting like rigid stones in dumb silence.

Smoothly a smile expanded on the rogue's face, oil spreading across the storm of his emotion. The coiled tiger's spring eased from his frame, and with a cheerful bow he scooped up the wine jug. "Good story, eh? One's as true as another, and they're both as true as a vagabond's tale."

The three still sat nervous and quiet, vassals unable to fathom their master's mad caperings.

Pinch threw back the jug and drained a long swallow, quenching the wine-dark thirst deep inside him. He then flung the uncorked jug toward his gang. "Drink and sleep, that's what you need!" he thundered.

As they scrambled to catch the jug and stay wide of his moods, Pinch quickly settled close to his old fencing master till his wine-breath whisper tickled the old man's ear. "You need me or you'd not come this far. No more tales-"

"You're forgetting the priests, boy," the other growled, never once breaking his stare into the darkness.

"No more tales or you'll not wake up some morning. Do you think your guards can keep us away?"

Cleedis blinked. "If I'm dead, there's no profit for you. That's all you want, isn't it?" The old man quickly shifted the terms.

A contented sigh swelled in the rogue. "I'm sure you've got enemies in Ankhapur. Wouldn't they pay to see your head packed in a pickle pot?"

He didn't wait for an answer, but left the old man chewing his words. "To bed!" he thundered once more as he herded his accomplices to the small ring of tents that was their traveling home. With cheerful wariness, they swarmed to heed him.

In the fading firelight, Cleedis watched as his former student never once turned his back on his supposed friends. The old swordsman smiled-a cold, dark smile like the dead winter night around him.

For the next three days, there were no more tales; not even any talk. It didn't take years of familiarity to read Pinch's mood. Even the coarsest soldiers knew there was a sour gloom hanging around the man. He spoke only when necessary and then barely more than a grunt. He ate quietly and drank without sharing. Most ominous of all was that he abided every inconvenience-the trails reduced to slicks of mud and slush, the streams of thin-crusted ice, even the stinging blows of sleet-with an impassive stare into the wilderness beyond. To his friends, it seemed the memory of Ankhapur roused in him a furious anger, like some furious scorpion retreating into its lair. If that were the case, nobody wanted to jab him lest they get stung.

Sprite-Heels, who watched his old companion as closely as the rest, formed a different opinion, one that he kept to himself. The halfling knew Pinch better than anybody and sometimes he held the conceit that he understood Pinch better than Pinch himself. Sprite was sure he could read the machinations in the old rogue's eyes, could divide them into patterns and stages. First the thief studied a guard, never one close to him, but one who was detached and unaware of the rogue's scrutiny. Sprite knew Pinch was finding the weaknesses, the passions, and the follies that the long ride betrayed in each man: Who gambled and lost poorly; who drank when he thought the captain wasn't looking; who shirked his duties; who betrayed others. All these things became Pinch's catalog of the levers by which he could move the men, elves, and dwarves of their escort.

After six days, the party came to a way-house on the southern road. It wasn't more than a rickety handful of a house and outbuildings enclosed in a palisade of sticks, but it offered protection from the icy sleet that had pelted them all day. The riders were frozen through to their bones. Even Cleedis, who by his station was better equipped than any of them, was chilled to his marrow. The horses were caked with mud and their hooves skittered across the sleet-slicked ground. It had been a painful lurching day in the saddle for everyone. The prospect of an inn, even a barn, right there in front of them, was a thousand times better than another night sleeping on half-frozen mud and pine branches.

A boy splashed through the melting snow, shouting out their arrival, so that by the time the Ankhapurans reached the gate, a band of grooms and farmhands faced them on the other side. The inn's staff was armed with a smattering of spears, scythes, and flails, the weapons of a ragtag militia. The signboard over the closed gate creaked in the wind, announcing that this was "The House of Pity."

"Where you be bound?" shouted one of the lot as he struggled his way to the front.

"We are Lord Cleedis of Ankhapur and his escort," shouted back the captain of the guard, the one Pinch knew was a brute to his men. "Who are you?"

"The landlord's cook," replied the cadaverously thin man who stepped to the front. He wore a greasy apron and carried a heavy cleaver, the uniform and tools of his trade.

"So much for the food," Therin whispered to Sprite.

"Well, open the gate, lackey, and give us a room for the night. My lord is not accustomed to waiting in the mud." The captain was flushed with impatience to be out of the foul weather.

With slow deliberation, the cook peered first into the woods on one side and then on the other, searching the shadows and the darkness for something. Finally he turned back to the captain. "Can you pay?

"Can we pay?" the officer sputtered. "Pay depends on service, lout!"

Now the cook slowly, and again very deliberately, looked over the riders, counting out the number on his fingers. When he'd counted both hands, his face furrowed in concentration until at last he nudged the man next to him with over-broad secrecy. Heated whispers flew until at last the second fellow held up his own hand and the cook continued to count. The captain barely suppressed his rage at this dawdling.

"Twelve!" Pinch yelled out when the count was clearly above three hands.

The cook and groom paused, looked at their hands, looked up, looked back at their hands, and then very slowly and deliberately began the count again.

The captain twisted in his seat to glower at Pinch, and for the first time in nearly a week the rogue beamed a wickedly cheerful smile and stoically endured the icy discomfort.

Behind Pinch a chorus of snickers and snorts struggled not to break into a round of guffaws.

When the pair's count reached three hands, every eye of the cold and wet escort turned on Pinch. The rogue only nodded and smiled.

"Three!" chimed Sprite's high-pitched voice.

The count began again.

The guards edged in closer, this time watching all four vagabonds.

At two hands, Maeve could stand the ludicrousness no longer, and a hysterical cackle burst from her lips. It pealed down the wooded lane.

The count began again.

The captain wheeled his horse back through the mud. "If they say anything-" he paused in midsnarl, realizing he could not carry out a threat against his master's guests. "Well," he finally continued with teeth chattering, "don't let them!"

Now the guards, sensing a pattern, paid particular mind to Therin. The big Gur smiled back at their fixed scowls and pointedly kept his mouth closed. The count passed one hand and he did nothing. Maeve, Sprite, and Pinch waited to see what he would do.

Two hands.

Therin didn't say a word.

Three hands.

The big man beamed in calm silence.

Seventeen…

Eighteen…

Nineteen…

Therin stretched his arms in a broad yawn. The guards reacted with the singing steel of drawn swords. The rude militia splashed back from the palisade fearful of a fight.

The count began again.

Pinch, Sprite, Maeve, and Therin all looked at each other and smiled.

It was moonset before all the horses had their fetlocks washed, their coats curried, and their mangers filled with moldy hay. The soldiers plodded back into the commons. Pinch and his crew came up last; in this, like all things, the last of everything.

In a night the color of simmered wine, the sway-backed inn breathed vaporous smoke from every crack in its wooden skin. As the men slouch-shouldered their way through the door, Therin drew off the last pair with the tempting rattle of dice. If the guardsmen expected a fair game, they didn't stand a chance; the Gur was a sharper with the barred bones. A quiet corner in the barn and a few hours of work would leave them poorer but probably no wiser.

The chairs inside had all been claimed, the benches overfilled with troopers. The small commons had little space for a squadron of troopers, but the innkeeper still managed to squeeze a few more customers into the space. Unimaginably, one more table was found for the three scoundrels. It barely fit at a corner in the back, which was all to Pinch's liking.

"Sour beer's all that's left," the landlord said, more as defense than apology. The spare man sloshed a kettle of brew onto the table, a stump-footed little creature of tin. Cold scraps and stale bread were the only choices left for dinner.

As they ate, the senior rogue let his eyes wander lest he notice the poor pickings before him. Since he was bored with the study of guardsmen, whose lives offered no imagination, Pinch concentrated on the non-Ankhapurans in the hall, a whole two tables' worth. It was clear from their seating-one table near the door, the other by the fire- that the two groups traveled apart. Those by the door Pinch had seen when he first arrived. The other party could only have arrived while he was stabling his mount.

There was a worth in studying the other guests, after all. If any were wealthy, there was always profit to be had in visiting their rooms before the dawn.

The two men seated near the door were garbed in hard-used traveling clothes, the type favored by old hands at the caravan trade-long riding cloaks waterproofed with sheep fat, warm doublets colored with the dried salts of sweat, and thick-sided boots stuccoed with yellow mud. Practical clothes for practical men with no obvious vanities that would mark them as good coneys to be snared.

The men themselves were as hard as their clothes. The first, who always kept an eye to the door, Pinch dubbed the Ox. He was huge, with a belly that rolled out beneath his doublet and quivered with any shift of his frame. The trembling flesh ill-concealed the, massive muscles of the man, though. Every time he reached for the capon that sat on the table between the two men, his swollen biceps threatened to burst the stitching of his doublet's seams. Though his face was clean shaven, it was nearly obscured by a wild mass of hair that hung in snarls and tangles.

The other man Pinch quickly dubbed the Lance-the Ox and the Lance, they were. The Lance was no more slender than Therin, though his shaved head made him look thinner. What truly distinguished him was that every move was a sharp strike using the minimum of effort for the maximum of gain. The Lance didn't tear at the capon, he dissected the choice meats from it with complacent ease.

It wasn't their dress or their frames that raised a caution in the rogue, though. There was a way about them that only those in the trade, for good or ill, would recognize. The way one always watched the door while the other discretely scanned the room; the way neither let both hands be filled at once; the way they held themselves on their chairs.

"Maeve, Sprite," Pinch whispered as he casually tore at a chunk of bread, "those two, what do you make of them? Hellriders?"

The halfling feigned a stretch as he leaned back to get a better look at them. "In disguise and come this far? Not likely."

Maeve set down her drink. "Hellriders is mean ones, Pinch, but I ain't never heard of them coming after someone on the road."

"Maybe not." The rogue stroked the rim of his mug. "Can you read them, Maeve?"

"Here? With all these people?"

Her leader nodded.

The wizard rolled her eyes in exasperation. "It ain't wise to use powers when you might get caught."

"Maeve, you know you won't. You're too good," Pinch flattered.

The woman harrumphed but was already digging out the material she needed. Pinch and Sprite pulled their chairs close to screen her from the others. The mystic words were a chanted whisper, the gestures minute tracings in the air. An onlooker would have thought her no more than a person distracted by her own inner dreams.

Without really looking at them, Maeve turned her unblinking gaze on the two men. This was riskiest part of the process, Pinch knew. A stranger staring at you the way Maeve did was always cause for a fight. When at last she blinked, Pinch was just as happy no one had noticed.

"You've got them dead on, Pinch. They're in the trade and none too happy tonight." Maeve smiled as she turned back to her dinner. "Got their nerves up, what with a room full of our handsome escorts. Don't know what they make of us, but they've set their eyes to the other company here. Ain't no more but some terrible thoughts I won't say in public."

Sprite sniggered. "Wouldn't have been on you now, would they? Or was you just hoping?"

Brown Maeve swivelled away from the halfling with a snap of her greasy, unwashed hair.

"Heel your dog, Sprite-Heels," Pinch rumbled. "You're none too sweet scented yourself.

"Maeve, pay this ingrate no mind. Those that count know your quality." Pinch put a soothing hand on Maeve's shoulder. "Now, dear Maeve, can you read me the other table?"

Her face a sulky pout, Maeve let her blank gaze wash for a moment toward Pinch, only to be warned off by the fierceness of his glare, shadowed by the curve of his tender smile.

"The other table, Maeve," he directed.

The witch-woman sighed and lolled her gaze where he nodded.

Meanwhile the old rogue studied their target. It was a small table by the fire, where sat a lone traveler, unusual enough in a countryside where few traveled alone. That wasn't the least of it, either, for the traveler was a woman-not unheard of, but just that much more distinguishing. The inn was in the land between lands, an area just beyond the reach of anyone who could claim it, and thus had been laid claim to by highwaymen and beasts of ill renown. The lone traveler who stumbled into this void was prey for any stronger ravager.

Ergo, Pinch reasoned, this lone woman was not weak, but possibly foolish.

"She's saying her words over dinner," Maeve puzzled out.

"Invoking what church? And what's her business?"

The sorceress stared owl-like before giving up with a sigh. "No good, that is, Master Pinch. She's got a most fixed mind. What only I got was an image of her roast chick and the thanks to some faceless power. Kept seeing it as a glowing orb, she did."

"Sound like any you know, Sprite?"

The little halfling's grasp of odd facts was a surprising source of answers. If he knew, it wouldn't be the first time he'd remembered some chestnut of useless lore to their mutual benefit.

This time Sprite-Heels shrugged. "Could be any number of trifling sun gods, let alone the big ones like Mask or the Faceless Ones."

Pinch leaned forward and looked at the woman with false disinterest. "What about that temple we did?" he asked softly.

"Not from what Maeve said. Scared, Pinch? She's probably just some wandering nun, set herself to doing good deeds on the road."

The human rapped his mug against the table in irritation. "She's more than that."

"He's right, you nasty little Sprite," Brown Maeve crowed. "She's tougher than some gentry mort. Got that from her, for certain."

"What more can you do, Maeve?"

Pinch was answered with a resigned slump. "No more, love. Spell's all spent."

Sprite, trying to restore himself to the pair's good graces, offered, "I could pinch her, see what we'd learn."

Her clothes were commonplace, sturdy, dusty, and dull, the mark of one with much sense but little coin. Pinch shook his head. "I'll not be your snap for the strike, halfling. Not worth getting caught. Have you forgot the rules? Never lay your coin on a lean horse or-"

"-your knife to an empty bung," Sprite finished. "I know the old rules. I just thought it would help."

"Ain't you two just the pair. Worried you're being hunted and worried you'll get caught when here we are, out where there ain't nobody and nothing! Not that we ain't got enough worries, what with your Lord Cleedis and all his soldiers, or do you two need to go searching for more?" Maeve snapped her words at them and then punctuated her tirade with a stiff drink. "One night in a decent place to sleep and all you pair do is peer at every stranger and guess which one's going to gut you. I'm telling you-you, Sprite-Heels, and you Master Pinch- to just quit peering under the bed sheets and drink!"

Both men, human and halfling, stared at her in surprise, thrown from their horses by her outburst. They looked at her; they looked at each other. There was nothing they could do but take up their mugs and drink until there was no more.

They drank until Therin reappeared with a purse full of extra coin and tales of how he cogged the dice to assure his wins. They drank some more to Therin's good luck, as if the Lady had any chance of swaying the Gur's dice. They drank until Sprite slid beneath the table and the innkeeper closed them down. Just in case, they took an extra skin upstairs, carrying it with more care than they carried Sprite-Heels, who had all the unconscious dignity of a sack of potatoes.

When the guards roused them before the too-early dawn, the four lurched down the stairs, their heads thick as mustard. They paled at the offering of bread smeared with bacon grease, and hurried themselves outside to gulp the farm-fresh air. It did little good except remind them of how miserable they felt. Trembly weak, they fitted the bits and saddled their mounts and unwillingly seated themselves for the day's ride. Even through all this, even though his eyes never quite focused and his head wouldn't stop throbbing, Pinch noticed last night's guests-Ox, Lance, and woman-were gone already. He wondered if each had gone a different route. The woman didn't matter, since she was not likely to see them again.

When all was ready, the troop, twenty-strong, plodded down the yellow-mud lane, lurching on their fresh mounts, until they overwhelmed the little track. Flanked by old tress that played father to stands of lush brambles, the group set out on the day's ride. Whether it was by word from the commander or just wicked luck, the trail was jolting and steep, rising and falling over gullies and streambeds. Every bounce reminded Pinch of just how miserable he felt.

"Don't you wonder where that priestess went?" Sprite asked with a cheerfulness that matched his name. Of the four, somehow the halfling was the only one unfazed by hangover; it was probably something to do with the runt's liver, most likely that it was a pure sponge. "Which way do you think, Pinch?" he pressed, though he knew full well the others could scarcely focus.

Pinch tried his fiercest glower which, right now, looked more like a pained squint. "What am I-a woodsman? Who knows in this muddy waste? Now shut up before I box you!" The rising tone of his own voice made the rogue flinch.

Snickering, Sprite-Heels whipped the pony he and Maeve shared safely out of the man's reach.

The ride continued, cold, wet, dull, and aching, through the morning and well into the afternoon. At one point, where the trail ran along a cut arched over with leafless elms and dead-gray vines, something coughed beast-like and the winter-dead branches rustled. The troop had to stop while a group of unfortunate soldiers slowly flanked the cut and beat the brush. Nothing came of it, but it delayed them an hour during which no one dared relax.

Perhaps it was that false alarm that caused them to almost blunder into a fight. The captain had given over command to a sergeant while he rode with Lord Cleedis to curry favor. The sergeant, in turn, was too busy with his flunkies to notice that the outriders were no longer so far out and the whole troop had closed into one small bunch. It was a bad way to travel, where one fireball could wipe them all out.

Thus it was that there was no one on point to shout " 'Ware!" when the soldiers slogged around the bend and straight into the midst of a battle. Right where the trail shored the bank of a half-frozen river, a ring of eight mud-splashed men-and then in a flash only seven-awkwardly stalked a single adversary. Armed with bills, hooks, and flails, the seven lunged with the stoop-shouldered awkwardness of peasants. Only one fought with any grace, so much that it took Pinch no time to recognize the Lance. Finding the swordsman, Pinch easily found the Ox.

The troopers were on top of the men before either side even knew it, the lead horseman splitting the ragged battle line from behind. The distance was to the footmen's advantage. A wild shriek tore from the lips of the nearest, and before the rider could throw down his useless lance, the billman swung his great poleaxe at the man. The blade scored the horse's neck, the beast reared and kicked, and ungoverned confusion erupted in the ranks. The closeness of the lane prevented any maneuver. The first man was thrown from his horse, and the panicked beast wheeled to gallop back down the lane. Almost immediately it crashed into the front rank of the troop, too close to part. Two more men and a horse foundered while a bloodthirsty war cry rattled the forest's dead leaves. The peasant bandits, for their dress of motley proclaimed them as such, sprang upon the fallen outrider, broad blades glinting wintry in the sun.

With their great polearms held over their shoulders like battering logs, two footmen rushed the broken line, casting more confusion ahead of them. The sergeant screamed orders, the captain screamed, Cleedis screamed, the dying men and horses screamed all at once and all at cross purposes. The twenty horsemen were already down by almost a quarter and showed no signs of turning the tide. Panic was in their ranks as the front crashed into the back, desperate to escape the hordes of murdering berserkers just behind them.

Equally desperate, Pinch tried to ride his own horse free of the mass, beating it toward the woods when a howling, mud-smeared bandit crashed out of the thicket dead ahead of him. With a shrill whinny, the mount reared. As the rogue flew off backward, he heard the popping crack when hoof smote his attacker's skull.

The churned mud cushioned Pinch's landing so that he kept his breath, but the man barely had time to slither out of the path of a galloping trooper. Struggling up, Pinch was immediately knocked flat by the charging flank of another horse.

"HUAAAA!" shrieked a man as he leapt forward to straddle the fallen rogue while whirling a poleaxe over his head.

I'm saved! I'm dead! Pinch couldn't tell which until the axe tore out the belly of a passing rider. While the bandit yanked to wrench his weapon free, the rogue drew the handle of his mucky dagger and without hesitation drove it upward into the soft gap at the belly of the man's ill-fitting brigandine armor. The man, all wide eyes and bearded slack jaw spitting blood, squealed in horror until the weight of the still-hooked rider pulled him over.

That was enough for Pinch. Dagger clenched in a clawlike hand, he scrambled blindly through the blood and slime for safety, dodging the flailing hooves of dying horses, stepping on soft things that he really didn't want to know about. He wasn't a soldier accustomed to battle and wasn't ready to become one, but each time one of the dirty highpads lunged in front of him the thief lashed out. He struck with all the wicked expertise of his knife-fighting, his anger and fury growing with each blow. "Cyric take you, you poxy bastard! Let 'em play hob with your skull in Hades!" He lashed invective as wickedly as he did his knife.

At the height of his rage, Pinch crashed onto the river and through the thin ice. The swift-moving water shocked up to his thighs, burning out of him the madness but not the killing passion. The blindness that had animated him was gone, and he could see the whole battle once again. The soldiers, finally rallied from their initial panic, were attacking in a dressed line, prancing their horses over the fallen bodies. Now it was the bandits' turn to panic, their previous discipline a fraud unmasked by the conflict of desire to loot and fear of death. Within moments the lot would break and run.

A squeal up the bank pulled Pinch's attention to the cause of this fracas. The lone traveler, who he knew was the priestess without having to see it, lay sprawled on the shingles of shore ice, her shoulder pricked by the blade the Lance held to her. Behind her the Ox lumbered up with a great, jagged 'berg in full press over his head, ready to deliver the coup de grace.

If he had been less passioned or there had been more time for thought, Pinch surely would have acted differently, considering his own self-interest before all. Instead, against all his sense, he reacted. With a snap, his long dirk flew from his hand and buried itself in the throat of the Ox. Croaking from his shattered windpipe, the fat-swaddled giant jerked up and back until the weight of the ice block he still carried over his head bore the man backward. With two staggered steps he cracked through the frozen riverbank and toppled into the fast-flowing water. The flow churned as it sucked the floundering man away.

The Lance goggled in surprise, which was the more his mistake. Though pricked, the traveler was not pinned. As the Lance hung in indecision between the woman and the menacingly slow advance of Pinch, the choice was taken from him. The mace in her hand lashed out, breaking across his knee. The leg popped out at an unnatural angle and, deprived of his underpinning, the Lance keeled to the side. She struck again, driving the iron into his padded gut hard enough to change his trajectory. The Lance hit the icy stones with an awful crack, jerked, and then didn't move again.

Cold, sweaty, and panting, Pinch stumbled across the ice to the woman's side. With a dripping boot, he gave the Lance a shove; the body rolled almost completely over before it twisted, the head along with it.

"May Kelimvore grant him swift justice," the woman intoned as she slowly got to her feet. A trickle of blood ran down her arm, another swath coated her face.

"More concern than he deserved," Pinch snarled. Remembering where they were, he looked about for more attackers but the battle was all but won. The bandits had broken and foolishly fled, and now they were the helpless prey of the faster riders. Here, in the land between lands laid claim to by bandits such as these, Cleedis's men showed no mercy. They were the law and they had friends to avenge.

"I'm Lissa of the Morninglord's Temple in Elturel. I think it would be right to say you saved my life."

At the mention of her temple, Pinch felt the rise of paranoia in his craw. There could be only one reason why a priestess of Lathander would be this far south, on this particular trail. She must surely be looking for the thieves who desecrated her temple. "A pleasure, surely, to meet you under better circumstance." Pinch paused to take a steadying breath and consider just what to say next. Certainly "Pinch" was not a good name to use at a moment like this. There was every chance she was familiar with the criminal element of Elturel. Finally, he put on his most valiant smile and, while leading her back to the trail, said what he never thought he would freely tell anyone. "I'm-Janol, ward of the late King Manferic of Ankhapur."

"Indeed!" The priestess was impressed.

"Why do you travel such dangerous land alone?" Pinch pressed the question while her thoughts were still unsettled.

"I'm searching for a thief, a scoundrel who robbed our temple," she confided.

Pinch smiled inwardly to himself. She'd revealed more than she should have and enough to give him her game. "What base villainy! On this road, bound for Ankhapur?" They stopped at a fallen log and Pinch began to examine her wounds.

The priestess winced as her rescuer prodded her shoulder, feeling the pain of his touch even through the armor she wore. Seeing the effect, Pinch poked her a little harder as she spoke, just to keep her unsteady.

"There was word the thief might flee south and sell his treasures there. Our proctor sent us, one to each road. I drew Ankhapur."

Pinch turned his attention to her scalp. A graze ran across the hairline, hardly serious but bleeding heavily like wounds to the head would. "You suspect us?" Pinch gave the words just a tinge of offended nobility.

"Certainly not, lord," Lissa hurriedly assured while the rogue wrapped a muddy cloth around her forehead.

As he dressed her wounds, Pinch considered just killing her and having done with it. Her dead body here would be no more than another, but with her suspicions lulled, it seemed a waste. Better to keep her around and uninformed, in case she proved useful someday.

Choosing an appropriately bold shyness, Pinch said, "This thief, if he is in Ankhapur, may be hard to find. If you should need some help, you must let me know. A king's ward does have some influence, after all."

Lissa flushed a little at the imagined generosity of the offer. "Again, thank you, my lord."

"This is nothing, priestess. But one last word of advice. Tell no one what you have told me." Pinch whispered the words in soft conspiracy as the riders slowly returned. "Indeed, you should not have told me. This is best as our secret, lest your quarry grow scared."

The priestess scooped a little handful of water from a muddy footprint and tried to wash the blood from her face. "Of course you're right. I've been foolish. Thank you, Lord Janol."

"Just Janol. I'm only the king's ward, not one of his blood. Now, I've a friend named Maeve. Let's see if she can properly tend to you."

A Shortcut

Cleedis did not welcome the news of an additional traveling companion.

"The woman is no concern of mine," he huffed, after pointing out that eight of his men were dead because of meeting her. The miserable performance of his troopers had stung the old warrior's pride, and he had already given the captain a blistering rating over the shabby performance of the company. All failure lay upon the officer, in Cleedis's mind-failure to drill them properly, failure to stem the rout, failure to issue clear orders, failure to grasp the basics of tactics, even a failure of will. Cleedis ignored his own contribution to the debacle and ignored the indignant captain's fuming efforts to point it out.

Given the losses, Cleedis was at least wise enough to lay no blame on the men. The captain was beside himself with rage and at one point came to the brink of offering up his commission that he had paid so dearly for, an offer Cleedis would no doubt have taken on the spot.

Pinch was for the woman, and his firmness was aided by the cool moral strength that comes after the rush of battle. While the two argued, Lissa knelt beside a trooper who'd taken an axe blow just above the knee. His tentmates were certain the leg could not be saved and were fretting over whether to finish the amputation with a clean blow or bind him and hope that shock and gangrene didn't set in before they reached civilization.

The priestess ended the debate with sharp orders to hold the man down, orders given in the tone a soldier was conditioned to obey.

They pressed him flat in the bloody mud, two men holding his shoulders while a third sat on his kicking legs and ignored his screams. While the patient writhed in their grasp, Lissa laid her hands on his gaping wound, closed her eyes, and prayed. Within moments the gash was gone and the trembling pain passed from the man. His screams gave way to murmurs as he lapsed into blissful sleep.

After that, there was no question that Lissa would ride with the company.

The priestess healed all she could while the soldiers buried their dead, for whom there was no help. Pinch warned off Sprite from rifling their pockets by pointing out that the troopers would surely spit the little halfling if they caught him at it. "And I'll let them," the upright man added. "Get your booty from those two high lawyers."

"Waste of time-after all they was robbing her," the halfling groused while looting Ox and Lance. The slim pickings he got-a ring, two wallets, and a necklace- were commandeered by the troop sergeant.

"Pensions for the dead men's wives, you thieving terrier," said the windburned sergeant, as shallow a lie as any the halfling could have put up.

After fumbling and grousing about certain over-zealous hypocrites, Sprite gave up his booty. Still, when the halfling rejoined Pinch, Therin, and Maeve, his face was a bubble of unsuppressed glee. "What gulls! I could dine off them for weeks," he chortled. With a quick nod to his hand, the little rogue flashed a fistful of cut stones and worn coins. "Didn't think I'd let him have it all, did you?"

"Then we'll divvy up tonight," Pinch stated, as coolly matter-of-fact as if he'd just done the job. "Square splits for all." The other two, sorceress and bravo, nodded their agreement.

Sprite-Heels scowled but nodded too. He had better sense than to cross his partners so openly. "Tonight then," he muttered before scurrying away.

"Maeve-"

"I'll keep an eye on him," the witch assured before Pinch could finish his words. Slip-slopping through the mire, she was already falling in behind the halfling, her voice wheezing from the effort of talking while she rushed after. "Sprite, hold slow for me, dearie…"

Pinch watched the pair weave through the scattered packs of men, Sprite poking what he shouldn't at every chance. They played the roles they had played in many a throng, that of mother and child, old Corruption's family.

Then the cold-shock settled onto Pinch. The wet, the chill, and the grime stroked his bones with their ferocious touch and drew their cruel pale to his skin. Two troopers, one a pock-faced veteran who had spent his years raising malingering to a substantial art, the other a bull with a broad, flat nose smashed in a tavern brawl, had stoked up a fire for drinks, as troopers will do given any short stop. Pinch took Therin by the arm and led him toward the growing blaze.

"Pinch, what about her?" Therin whispered with a quick tilt of the brow toward the only woman at the circle-Lissa the priestess, already favored with a seat in the troopers' midst.

"We don't panic," the regulator whispered back, cheek to cheek.

Therin turned himself away, conspicuously trying to avoid her notice. "I saw her sign when she was working spells! She's one of the temple-"

"Stay that!" Pinch hissed. He pulled the man back around and pushed him forward.

The big rogue stumbled a little step forward and stopped. "But what's she doing here?" Therin's whisper was filling with panic.

"She's looking for a thief." The dig of an elbow got Therin moving again so that his terrified stare was not so obvious.

"Damned gods, she's made us!" he blurted. "You go first, Pinch."

"Stow it and get going, you fool. She's not made me, you, or anybody. The temple's sent out patricos to watch every road out of Elturel. She's fishing and, by damn, I'm setting her to the wrong catch."

"Uncle said, 'Never rob a temple.' Too many people get too interested. Get myself hanged all again, I will-"

"I told you to stow it, so clamp your flapping lips and play a dumb show." Pinch hissed one last time as he pulled Therin toward the camp circle. The old rogue couldn't stand such whining. Their lives were their lives, not given to them, not chosen for them. Therin had chosen to be a high lawyer and a rogue, and right now that meant taking the dues in full.

I won't snivel so, Pinch scornfully reminded himself, not while there are other choices to be made.

"Now let's get warmed up before we freeze." There was no bother to wait for an answer. The rogue sent Therin stumbling into the bunch with a firm shove from behind.

The cold shivers of the group, the tight banter of near death, and the swallowed scent of blood were an effective disguise for the pair. Nobody sat comfortably around the fire, so there was nothing to note when Therin sat himself opposite the priestess and tried to stare at her without staring from across the flames.

Cleedis didn't waste time with orders to bury the highwaymen. His men heaved the bodies into the brush, far from the stream, where their decay wouldn't pollute the water. The burials of their own, dug down into the muddy half-frozen soil, were ceremonies of brutal custom-the wrapping of the body, the sergeant's words, the file-by of those who lived-all done by passionless drill.

The work done, Cleedis came by the fire and stood in the sputtering warmth from the too-wet wood. His fur-lined robes were hitched up above the muck so that he was nothing more than a grotesque mushroom, a stem of two feeble legs that tottered under the bulging top of thick winter robes. "Put it out. We're leaving."

Cloaking their irritation behind dutiful yes-sirs, the two guards set to packing their kits. Therin, proudly clinging to the image that he was uncommandable, tore his gaze from the priestess. "Now? You've already wasted your light. You won't get a mile before dark."

"We're leaving. There may be more bandits about, but you can stay if you want," Cleedis offered, his hands spread in willingness.

"You best come with us, miss," said one of the two troopers, who'd been goldbricking till now. The pock-faced veteran touched his eye in a sign to ward off evil. "There's unblessed dead here and evil they was, to be sure. Ain't wise to sleep near 'em, what with them so recent killed. Sure to know they'll come for live folks in the night. 'Course, you being a priestess and all, this ain't no puzzle to you."

"Tyr's truth to all that," murmured his flat-nosed companion.

"Quit stalling, you two!" boomed the sergeant's baritone from across the glade. "Lord Cleedis wants us on the trail now, so get your arses in your saddles, if it would not be too much effort, gentlemen!"

With a flick of his thumb, Therin went off to get their horses.

"Get to work," bossed the pock-faced fellow when his companion gawked dully. The veteran reinforced the words with a kick of mud in the other's direction. While the flat-nosed fellow juggled the still-scorching pots into his haversack, the veteran snapped off his own rude gesture as soon as the sergeant's back was turned.

"Prig-faced jackass."

"Lost his sense of the trooper's life, has he?" Pinch's question hung with the air of casual conversation.

The veteran's wary weather eye, sensing the gray front coming, fixed on the rogue. "He's well enough, and a damn stretch better than you, magpie."

The words slid off Pinch's well-oiled conscience. "Least I don't make others dance to my jig."

"That may be and that may not. Your friends don't ride too far from you." Therin slogged back through the slush, leading two horses by their jingling reins.

"Only fools split their strength in the camp of the enemy." With a middle-aged man's grunt, Pinch got one foot into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. A snap of the reins moved him away from the fire.

"What was that all about?" the younger thief puzzled as he trotted up beside.

"Salt in the wounds and oil on the water, my aide-de-camp." The old fox grinned. "Never miss a chance to rile them up and make them think you're on their side. Right now he's testy, but maybe by Ankhapur that horse soldier won't snap back so hard."

Therin saw the message. "Friends in the right places, eh?"

"Friends in all places, boy," the master corrected as the troop fell into line. With a wink and a nod to his lieutenant, Pinch reined up his horse alongside the priestess Lissa.

"Greetings, Lord Janol." Her eyes, previously open, were now wary.

"And to you, milady." Pinch bowed in his saddle. Years of tutoring in courtly manners had not all been a waste.

"Thank you again for saving my life." Although she could not be but grateful, her words lacked conviction. They were the pleasant hedge of small talk behind which she could hide her true convictions.

"What else could I do?"

"I could have been a criminal and they the innocents." The mask of suspicion was beginning to slip from her eyes.

Pinch smiled and shifted in his saddle, trying to find comfort for his sore legs. "I'm a quick judge of character."

Perhaps he answered too glibly, for the words stung. The hint of Lissa's smile, almost visible in the torch-flicker shadows, collapsed. "I'm learning to be one," the priestess announced.

"I've noticed, Lord Janol, that they do not treat you with the respect due a peer," Lissa continued. Pinch had let slip the advantage in their volley and the woman was quick to seize on it.

"Prisoners seldom are so treated."

The priestess's eyes narrowed. Without shame she asked, "A prisoner… for the crime of-"

"Inconvenience."

Pinch had to continue before his unwitting pursuer could form deductions of her own. "Too much popularity, and too little of it with the right group of people. Leaving Ankhapur was expedient, just as coming back now seems… prudent."

The rogue was lying extemporaneously, an unfair advantage he had over her.

It went as Therin had said.

In less than a mile the sun, bleeding orange, was all but screened out by the winter-barren trees. Dusk held sway briefly in the sky before vanishing into the reach of night. Winter owls and wild dogs paced them through the darkness, chasing down the mice and rabbits that bolted from the clattering horse hooves. Other things marked their passing too, with grunts of humanlike bestiality that were passed down the line of march. Torchlight brightly reflected creatures with eyes too many or too few. The clatter of steel sent them scurrying away.

It was only after hours of night riding that Lord Cleedis signaled a halt. The troopers hurled themselves to the cold, wet ground until the sergeant came by and pressed them to their duties with the hard application of his boot. With much grumbling and reluctance, the tents were pitched, double guards posted, and cold meals prepared. Pinch, Therin, and the others avoided all details and collapsed in their tents as soon as they were pitched.

For three more days the squadron rode, Cleedis holding the riders to a steady pace. Three more men were lost to a catoblepas, a beast so vile its mere look could kill. It had ranged out of the great swamp to the south in search of food. That battle had been sharp and dangerous, and seeing as there was no profit in it, Pinch and his gang had kept well back from the beast's horrifying visage.

The old rogue was concerned, though he kept his counsel to himself. Ankhapur was months away, across a great stretch of wilderness where beasts far worse than the catoblepas were far more common. They'd barely ridden the smallest portion of that distance and already eleven out of the twenty troopers had been lost. The odds seemed strong to Pinch that he and the others would be stranded well out in the wasteland without the protection of men and weapons. Could it be that Cleedis, empty without Manferic to serve, was embarked on a mad effort to lead Pinch to his doom? It wasn't impossible. In his years, the rogue had certainly heard of stranger passions-the wizard who built a magical prison just to torment his unfaithful wife or the war captain who led his entire company into Raurin, the Dust Desert, to do battle with the sand. Word was, in the stews of Elturel, the soldier destroyed his company just to avenge an insult. It was madness like this, beyond all norm, that Pinch worried about. Cleedis was old and had never had the wit of a great wizard or statesman.

And then Cleedis called the march to a halt, stopping his dwindling command at the edge of the woods, where the trees abruptly gave way to a brown, dry meadow of winter-burned grass. Even though there was still a good half day's light, a commodity precious in the shortness of the days, the sergeant bellowed out the camping drill command. The sergeant played the role of martinet extremely well, abiding no goldbricking from his men. Pinch and his companion were thankful for the cold efficiency of the squadron, since it spared them any labor.

"Pitch your tents, boys. I want a detail of five men to gather firewood-remember, two men on guard at all times. Troopers Hervis, Klind-get your bows. Bag some fresh meat for the whole camp."

The rogues couldn't help notice the reaction of the troopers to this announcement, more than just delight at the reprieve from stale rations. Never before had the sergeant sent out a hunting detail.

The three men stomped in the mud, hugger-mugger, while Maeve stayed in her saddle. "New business, this is." Sprite Heels punctuated his observation by spitting into a lump of melting snow.

"Aye." There was nothing much to say about it. Pinch spied Cleedis nearby, struggling to read something from an unruly scroll of parchment. The sheet would curl every time he let go of the bottom to trace out a line.

Catching the page, Pinch pulled it tight. "Why camp now, good lord?" the rogue asked bitingly. Looking over the top, he noted the scroll was a scrawled grid of suns, moons, stars, and seasons.

"What day is this?" Cleedis grumbled as he battled the ever-curling sheet.

Pinch felt annoyed at being ignored so clumsily. It wasn't that he hadn't been ignored before. His stock-in-trade was to pass unseen under the eyes of those who had good cause to watch for the likes of him. But it was his choice now to be seen and heard. He, the master regulator of Elturel, was important, and it wasn't even a lord chamberlain's place to forget it. Pinch hadn't come looking for Cleedis; Cleedis had come this far just for him, so the old man had no right pretending he didn't matter.

With less than good grace, the rogue pulled aside the scroll with a brusqueness certain to get his escort's attention and repeated, "Why are we camping? Ankhapur is months away, and I for one don't want to dally out here as your invited guest."

The chamberlain did something with his face, and his beard swelled to the proportions of an irate porcupine. "We're stopped because it's not the right day and we'll stay stopped until it is. You're so clever, Master Pinch, that I thought you'd have the sense to see I didn't waste my days trekking through this uncivilized land. It would have taken the whole bodyguard of Ankhapur to make the distance and months more than I've got. We're waiting for an appointment to be kept. By my calendar, tomorrow is the first of Nightal. On that particular day, at a particular hour, certain wizards in Ankhapur, still loyal to Lord Manferic's memory, will gather and cast a spell. When they do, on this spot at that time will be our way back home-without hiking or riding that whole distance.

"Now who's so clever?" Cleedis trumpeted as he bundled the scroll and thrust it under his arm.

I am, Pinch thought to himself as the man stormed away. You need me in Ankhapur more urgently than it seemed, enough to make the wizards send a whole troop across the continent to find me. Pinch didn't say a thing but shrugged like a man outsmarted and went away.

Lissa had joined their little knot by the time Pinch returned. In the days since their first meeting, he had carefully cultivated his relationship with her. Her awe at his position as Lord Janol hadn't hurt, and he carefully played on it. She was, to his mind, usefully naive, apparently unable to impute base thievery to anyone of rank. Thus, his careful suggestions that Cleedis was suspect were met with amazed acceptance. She behaved as if the veil had been lifted from her eyes, yet all the time Pinch was obscuring her target even more.

It had taken a little more art to explain away his gang to her satisfaction. They hardly met the image of suitable servants. Pinch could hardly present himself as wise and trustworthy if he employed such a crew of ingrates, unthrifts, and rinse pitchers as Therin, Sprite, and Maeve. Maeve would get drunk and confide something completely beyond the pale of any household cook. Therin, though a good lieutenant, was too proud to play the role without bristling. And Sprite-Heels- well, he might play along for a while, but only if he could ruin it with some disastrous prank.

Instead Pinch took a tack not too far from the truth. He was, the rogue explained, the once-wastrel ward now destined to be redeemed and reformed. Still, Pinch claimed, he could not surrender old companions without remorse, no matter how vile and fallen they had become. These few companions had stayed steadfast friends through his darkest days. For him to abandon them now, simply because he had regained the proper sense of his true class, was the height of callousness. He owed them and so was bringing them home where he might bestow on them small pensions for the rest of their years.

As tales went, it had just enough pathos and honor in it to appeal to the young priestess. Pinch was just, the meek were raised, and the proper order of the world had been restored. Still, the rogue couldn't resist adding a fillip: Cleedis was the villain, albeit not a grand one. The old campaigner was the shadow of Pinch's enemies, those who might not want him in Ankhapur alive. The lean shark didn't press the idea, even allowing as how he might be mistaken, but let the suggestion float through his tale.

The woman listened with a disdainfully worldly finger to her nose, dismissing most of what her traveling companion said. She was not so naive, contrary to what the youthful brightness of her face proclaimed. When she snorted at his claims or poked at her cheek with her tongue, the senior rogue pretended not to notice any more than a suitor would his paramour's sour moods. Pinch didn't expect her to believe the whole story, indeed she didn't need to believe any of it. She needed to doubt her suspicions, whether it was because she was naive or just entertained.

All that didn't matter anymore. She'd have to find her own way to Ankhapur now. Cleedis's arrangements were at least going to remove one gnawing worry.

"We've stopped." It was a cool observation, not profound but as if she held Pinch somehow responsible.

"The venerable's given orders to camp. I think he intends a rendezvous."

"Ah?" It was one of her favorite expressions.

"Arranged with the court wizards of Ankhapur, I'd guess."

"Ah." Without more comment, Lissa strode through the mud, intent on catching up with Cleedis. Pinch was about to follow when his attention was snagged by the raised squeal of an enraged halfling.

"Put me down! It's not my fault you lost!"

The halfling was dangling by his arms at eye level with a swarthy trooper, so close he could have licked the man's grubby nose. "Let's see yer dice," slurred Sprite's captor.

Pinch sloshed casually through the mud, picking his way through the sudden clot of onlookers. He took his time, curious to see if Sprite just might lick the man's nose.

"It's not my doing you lost the hazard. How could I say I'd throw a bale of deuces? It's just bad luck and you're not taking it well!" the hanging thief protested.

"Pigsy luck, indeed. When it's 'Let's play for drinks,' he throws a whole set and never makes a point-"

"There, you see, just luck!" the halfling kicked and squawked.

"But nows it's 'Lets play for coin' and he can't lose. Play for my coin maybe. I'll be wishing… you'll be wishing you was wishing you was playing somewhere-body else." The drunken trooper tried to unmangle his meaning while he groped for the purse at Sprite's waist. "Lemme see them dice and then maybe I'll gut you-"

Darkness slid forward and dealt the man a sharp rap across his fumbling fingers.

"Maybe you want to gut me, too."

The trooper looked at the bright-bladed dirk that hovered just over his hand, slithering to and fro in Pinch's shifting grasp. It was a snake, violently coiled and tempting the other to foolishness.

"Set him down and go, before I tell Cleedis you were boozing on duty."

Fear-drunk eyes darted to his fellows for support, but he had gone invisible before their gaze. Suddenly, the soldier knew where he stood: alone, wet, and dirty in the beech wood. Something unholy hacked out an asthmatic howl just across the stream, a howl that almost shaped hungry words of welcome.

Slowly the man set the halfling down.

A pointed flick of the dirk sent the man scurrying, and without him the crowd drifted away to jeer his cowardice. Already the stinging puns and cruel poesy were forming in their minds.

"YOU," Pinch intoned while snagging Sprite before he disappeared, "give me the dice."

Sprite fumbled in his shirt and produced the pair.

Pinch didn't even ask if they were loaded. There was only one answer.

"Get to the tent."

"What's this, Pinch? Since when would you be knocking in fear from these king's men?"

The rogue answered the challenge by shoving the runt forward. "It's time for a little talk," he whispered through clenched teeth.

The tone was enough to get Sprite doing what he was told. The two squeezed into the small tent where Therin and Maeve were chatting, squatted on the ground.

"Listen well." Pinch thrust Sprite onto a pile of blankets in between the other two. Ducking sideways to avoid the ridgepole, he continued without preamble. "Well be in Ankhapur soon, a few days at the latest. When we get there, things are going to change. Cleedis came north to get me, and just me. I don't know why he's allowed the rest of you along, but I'd guess he means to use you to keep me in his shackles." The old rogue smirked darkly. "Though you're a damn sorry lot of hostages.

" 'Course, he might not be such a fool as to think you've got any sway over me. We all know what happens when somebody gets caught. He's on his own."

Therin rubbed at the scar around his neck and noted bemusedly, "You snatched me from the gallows once."

Pinch didn't like being reminded of that now, or the others might think his motives then were sentimental. "I didn't get you off the gallows. I let you hang and then I brought you back to life. And I did it for other motives. From here on, this is different. Ankhapur's not Elturel."

"Ohhh?" Maeve cooed. "They're both cities. What makes this one so special?

"Besides being your home," Sprite chimed in.

Pinch looked at Maeve's thick-veined cheeks and the knobby little carrot that was her nose. He could not describe the true Ankhapur to her, the one that filled him with despised love.

"Ankhapur the White." The words came reverently and then, "Piss on it. Bloody Ankhapur, it's lesser known. City of Knives, too. Ankhapur's fair; it's got whitewashed walls that gleam in the sun, but it's all hollow and rotten inside. The Families"-Pinch stressed it so that there was nobody listening who didn't hear the salt in his words-"control everything they want, including lives. You'll never find a more cunning master of the confidence games than a man from Ankhapur. Who do you think trained me to run a gang like you? Elturel?"

Therin flopped back on his rick, clearly unimpressed. "So it's got competition. We've taken down worse."

Pinch snorted. "You're not competition-none of you are. What kind of competition are you for a king who kept a personal assassin on the payroll? Or his sons who taught playmates how to strike down their enemies? This isn't just doing the black art on a weak lock or ripping the cove from a temple roof." Pinch slipped the Morninglord's amulet from his shirt and plopped it on the damp ground between them. "They're playing for stakes that make this look small-title and crown of all Ankhapur.

"We're just a bunch of petty thieves. They're princes, dukes, and barons of the land. First Prince Bors, Second Prince Vargo, followed by Princes Throdus and Marac- there's a murderous lot. Bors is too much of an idiot to be any danger, but don't worry. Our dear Lord Chamberlain out there, the duke of Senestra, has gone begging for a fool to protect his own interests. Oh, and there's more. Tomas, Duke of the Port, is Manferic's brother, and Lady Graln was his sister-in-law. She's got whelps, princelings of the Second Order, for whom she'd kill to see crowned. Finally, there's the Hierarch Juricale. They call him the Red Priest, he's got enough blood on him. He and his sect hold the Knife and the Cup, so you can imagine no one gets crowned without his say." With slender fingers, Pinch counted out the titles until there were no fingers left. "Every one of them's a scorpion in the sheets. Compared to them, we're lewds."

"They sent Cleedis up here for you," Sprite mused, as his foot gently slid toward the bauble at his feet.

"Royal Ward Janol, Pinch to you," the regulator mocked. A light kick with his boot kept the halfling's furred foot at bay. "It's not as though the royal ward has any chance or claim. Cleedis wants me for some reason, but it's just as like there'll be a mittimus for your arrest as soon as we strike Ankhapur. From here on, abroad or in the city, cut your words goodly and keep your eyes open like quick intelligencers or somebody'll cut your weasand-pipe for certain." That said, Pinch scooped up the amulet and turned to leave.

"And you, Pinch dear?" Maeve asked.

The rogue considered the truth, considered a lie, and then spoke. "I'll stand by you all and cross-lay old Cleedis's plans any way I can." He smiled a little, the way he chose when no one was to know his true thoughts. The afternoon shadows, creeping through the door, gave all the warmth to his thin reassurance.

Outside, after ten steps, he met Lissa as though she'd been lurking around waiting for this casual rendezvous. The woman had finally shed her saintly armor, and the effect was a transformation. Pinch had become so used to the rumpscuttle mien of a warrior woman that he was taken aback by her change to more demure clothes. Her silvery vestments, though long and shamefast, were still more flattering than battered steel made to cover every weak point of her sex. Her arms were half-bare to the cool air, and her slender, fair neck uncased from its sheath of gorgetted steel. Hair, brown and curly, tousled itself playfully in the breeze. Without all that metal, she stepped lighter and with more grace than did the clank and jingle of her armored self. The transformation from amazon to gentry maid was startlingly complete.

"Greetings, Lord Janol," Lissa hailed, catching the rogue not at his best. "How fare you and your companions? Lord Cleedis says we shall be upon Ankhapur on the morrow."

"We?"

With a knowing, impish smile, Lissa brushed a loose wisp back into the tumble of her hair. "Certainly. Like yourself, Lord Cleedis is a gentleman. He's offered me passage to Ankhapur rather than leave me in this wilderness."

Either she now suspects me and favors Cleedis or the chamberlain is playing the game, using her and her temple as a threat over me. If that's the case, does she know her part, or can I still direct her? Taking up his mantle as the lordly Janol, Pinch smiled and bowed while making his cold calculations.

"As well the chamberlain should. And if he had not, I would have insisted upon it."

"Well, I'm glad you would because I'm still counting on you to help me find a thief." Her voice dropped to a whisper of winter wind through the beeches.

"If your thief is here."

Lissa nodded. "They are-I've had dreams."

"Dreams?"

"The voice of our lord. He speaks to us in our dreams. It's our way."

She could be naive, misled, inspired, or right; Pinch withheld judgment. He couldn't think of any good reason why a god shouldn't talk to his priests in their dreams, but why not just burn your words in a rock or, for that matter, limn the offender in holy fire? Had she seen him in her dreams? If not, then what was her god revealing? At least so far, that seemed to be nothing.

Gods always took roundabout ways to the straightest of things, and he for one felt they did so for his personal benefit, although perhaps not in the case of Fortune's master. Pinch did feel that the Mistress of Luck was a little too indirect in his own case-so much that he, only acting from a sense of just deserving, did what he could to speed the turn of her wheel along. So if the gods wanted to be indirect with him to the point where he helped move them along, it was apt that her god was equally oblique.

In this simplified theology, it was clear to Pinch's mind that Lissa was being tested. Succeed at the test and she would find the thief. Fail-and well, who knows?

He pulled at his ear to show doubt. "I could never place so much stock in dreams. What if you have a nightmare?"

The seminary student got the better of the priestess. "It's my duty to interpret the meaning in what I have received. If I can't, then I need to dedicate myself even more."

"Well spoken," he applauded, while settling onto a punky log, fallen several years back and now riddled with insects and mold.

She reddened at the compliment.

"So you don't really see the thief in your dreams, only some sort of symbol?"

"The words of our god transcend simple images. He speaks a different language from us. In our dreams, we filter though the things we know and find parallels for his voice." Lissa's hands flew as she talked, sometimes cupping the words only to spill them in a burst of excitement.

Pinch let her go on to explain how to tell true dreams from false visions, the five precepts of action, and more than Pinch needed to know. Still it was a good diversion from the hectic preparations for home, and before the rogue had completely succumbed to boredom, dusk wafted in from the east and it was time to retire.

The night passed quickly, dreamless for Pinch. As for the others, none would say. What kinds of dreams were left to an outcast Gur, a drink-sodden sorceress, and an unrepentant halfling?

Dawn scratched at the canvas, scarring the tan haze with morning shadows. Pinch stepped out of the sweat of tent air. It was a clammy dawn of stale wood smoke and horse manure, but over it all was the incongruous thick scent of geraniums and jasmine. The jarring sweetness clung in the throat and choked more than the stench of ordure. In the cold of coming winter, it could only be that the wizards were here, borne in on a wind of flowers of their own making.

Stumbling out of his tent, the rogue wandered through a queue of clay-colored troopers, pilgrims awaiting their turn at the shrine. Each man led his horse, fully packed and carefully groomed. They jostled and talked, smoked pipeweed or whittled, and every few minutes plodded ahead a few more steps.

At the head of the column was a small cluster of strangers, as uncomfortable as choirboys milling outside the church. As each man of the column came abreast, one of the strangers stepped from their shivering mass, thin robes clutched about him, and gestured over the line. A greenish flash bubbled out from his fingertips and swallowed trooper, spellcaster, and more. When the bright air cleared, wizard and soldier were gone.

"The time is best for you and your companions to take their place in the line," Cleedis noted as he ambled over to where Pinch stood. There was no haste or desperate urgency in the man's way; those who weren't ready could be left behind.

A swift yank on the tent pole roused the rest. As they stumbled out, Lord Cleedis, playing host and master and accompanied by Lissa, led Pinch to the front of his troop. The rogue's mates fell into line, grumbling and slouching, unruly children mocking their parents. At the front a pudgy, boy-faced wizard who couldn't be much older than twenty and hadn't gotten himself killed yet-more than a little feat for an ambitious mage-bowed to the Lord Chamberlain. With apologies, the wizard arranged them just so, positioning the five of them to some invisible diagram. Cleedis's impatience and Sprite's impish refusal to cooperate made the young mage all the more nervous until, by the time he was to say the words and make the passes, Pinch worried whether they would have their essences scattered across a thousand miles. Pinch always worried though; suspicion is what kept rogues like him alive.

Then, before the last words had gotten through the boy-mage's lips, the air around them went green, lightly at first like a fading hangover on a too-long day. It got brighter, swallowing the blue out of the sky, the cold from Pinch's boots, even the creaking of saddlery from the line of men behind him. In flickering moments, the evenness of the green overwhelmed everything, eventually even the green of the color itself. The world became a perfect color and Pinch could not see it.

The world returned with a nauseating rush. The green vanished, flooded out by other colors: blue sky, curling gray clouds, the brown-mottled turf of freshly turned fields, the fleshy green of still-leaved trees, and the glittering silver of a nearby sea. The ground lurched beneath him, practically toppling him from the unexpected jolt. Lissa clutched at his sleeve and he seized the belt of someone else. A heave of nausea washed over him and then passed.

Blinking in the sudden new light, Cleedis tapped Pinch and pointed toward the sea. Sited on the shore, between the water and the close nest of hills, were the tarnished gypsum-white walls of Ankhapur. A fog had rolled back from the thrusting wharves. Atop the hills, the morning bells of the temples had started to sound. And filling the top of the very highest hill were the colonnaded buildings of the royal palace, millipedes clinging to the rich garden slopes.

Cleedis turned and beamed a drillmaster's smile as he waved his hand up-slope. "Welcome back to Ankhapur, Janol."

Dinner in Ankhapur

Their arrival was well outside the walls of Ankhapur, in the shadow of the Villa of the Palantic Road that crowned the top of Palas Hill, one of six hills surrounding Ankhapur. They appeared at the edge of a grove, as if they had ridden through the woods and emerged to survey the vineyard-filled valley that lay between them and the city. Thus it was that their descent through the fields, while hailed by the peasants with the appropriate concern and homage, raised no questions of wonder or gossip.

Furthermore, they all looked gray, muddy, and spent, even Lord Cleedis himself. Pinch's foreign elegance was all but indistinguishable from the old-fashioned tabard Cleedis favored. Brown Maeve, Sprite-Heels, and Therin the Gur-no one could identify them as any more than merchants or servants among the entourage.

Only the wizards in their white clean shifts stood out from the ordinary, and that too was quite ordinary. No wizard was like the rest of the world, so it was only natural for them to be easily marked. At least that was the reasoning of those who watched the column pass.

In the two hours it took for the column to wend down the hairpin lanes and cross the bridge over the bog-banked Thornwash, a score of petty details returned to Pinch from the life he had fled fifteen years ago. The chill of snow and ice, that in fifteen years in Elturel he had never grown accustomed to, was gone, replaced by the faded green of Ankhapur's winter. The rhythmic lines of grapes were bare vines stretched over frames, the roads were rocky sloughs of clammy mud. To Pinch, the warm sun breathed the promise of spring, fresh grasses, and new growth. After fifteen years' absence, the sun of life was returned to him.

The warmth filled Pinch with a confidence bordering almost on joy, unwarranted by everything he knew, but that was unimportant. He was home, as much as he hated it, with all its memories and pitfalls. He was no longer Pinch, master of thieves, living his derring-do life in the slums and back alleys. By the time he rode through the gates, the ragtag scoundrel was nearly gone. In his place rode a man identical in dress, one who had invisibly traded places during the two-hour ride.

It was Janol, royal ward of the late King Manferic I, or at least some part of him that Pinch had not forgotten, who sat straight in his saddle, giving a supercilious nod to the liveried watchmen who stood at their parade best as the Lord Chamberlain and company rode underneath the whitewashed stone arch of the Thornwash gate.

There was one thing that was no different for Pinch or Janol, no matter his position. As either, the rogue felt power. These guards feared and respected men higher than them: the chamberlain, Janol, even the palace's elite bodyguard. It was the same awe and terror Pinch commanded from the thieves and constables of Elturel. There was in the common folk, he was certain, an innate sense of their betters. Even his gang understood it, though none of them might ever admit it.

To the hoarse cries of the sergeant, bellowing their procession over the squalls of the fruit sellers and the enticements of the fest queens, the company rode as directly toward the palace as the interwoven streets of Ankhapur allowed.

This morning, Ankhapur was alive early with the hurly-burly of market day. Pushcarts rocked like overloaded ferries in the sea of heads, their decks loaded with the glinting round flesh of fall squashes. Tides of serving-cooks and housemaids rippled from one stand to the next all down the shores of the streets. Chains of fishmongers heaved dripping baskets from the boats along the river, their still-twitching contents disappearing into the eager crowd. Children stole fruits and leapt over the smoky fires of the kaff-brewers, who sat cross-legged on their mats, pounding bark to steep in brass pots. The scent of that strongly bitter beverage made Pinch yearn for its rich sourness mixed with honey, a drink he'd not had in his fifteen years of self-exile.

Sated with musing, since too much reflection made a man weak and hesitant to act, Pinch leaned in his saddle toward Therin so that he did not need to shout. "Welcome to home."

The Gur shifted nervously in his own saddle while trying to negotiate his skittish horse through the throng. "Your home, maybe. It's just another ken to me. Although," he added with a smile and wave to the crowd, "one filled with opportunity. Look at all the coneys and marks out there."

"Mind your hands with caution, boy. Take some time to walk the field before you bowl the pins. Besides our game's up there, not in these stews."

Therin's eyes followed where Pinch pointed, to the clean, scrubbed walls that cut the commoners from their masters, the king's palace at the top of the hill.

"Piss and Ilmater's blood!" the enforcer breathed. "Sprite, Maeve-he's serious. He means to have us all in!"

"Gods' wounds, I ain't ever forced a ken like that in all my time," the halfling swore, half-hidden on Therin's other side. "Think of all the plate and treasures sure to be inside."

Because Pinch couldn't, Therin took the pleasure of fiercely berating the little scoundrel with a mindful thump to his shoulder. "Think of the headsman's axe too, you lusker, and let that sink on your wicked heart. Remember our warning of last night."

Sprite did his best to look wounded, but it was to naught on his companions. Further debate on the topic was broken by the need to negotiate an island of wagons that split the flow.

Pinch looked about the rest of the way, marveling at the similarity of the differences he saw. On that corner he remembered a saddler's shop; the building was the same but now it housed an ordinary from which wafted the smell of richly roasted meat. The great square where he used to practice riding was now adorned with an equestrian statue of his late guardian.

The sculptor had been good at capturing old Manferic's likeness, the flaring beard and the leonine mane of the king's regal head. He had molded into the face a sinister and scowling visage that well conveyed the king's savage love of intrigue, though Pinch felt the sculptor had been too kind by a half. In his saddle, the bronze king held the Knife and Cup, Ankhapur's symbols of royal power, as if he still owned them even in death. The Cup was raised in one hand for a bitter toast, while with his other the statue-sovereign thrust the Knife at those who stared up from his feet.

"Stand open for the Lord Chamberlain Cleedis, Regent of the Assumption!" the captain demanded as the column drew up at the gate.

There was a scurry of movement on the palace's ornamental battlement, and then a herald stepped between the merlons and replied over the clank and rattle from behind the doors. "Welcome is the return of our sovereign lord and joyous are we at his safety. The princes four wait upon his pleasure and would fain wish to greet him."

Cleedis, whom Pinch now rode beside, smiled his acceptance of this formality, but from the corner of his mouth he added an aside that only his guest could hear. "Three of those princes would fain see me dead. That's what they were truly hoping."

"Perhaps it could be arranged."

The warhorse-turned-statesman barely raised an eyebrow at that. "Not well advised."

A white dog ran before the gate. Pinch noted it, though it was completely unimportant. The incongruity of it caught his eye, the mongrel's unmarred coat against the scrubby gray of faded whitewash. "You've got me here without a hold. Do you think I care enough about those three you dragged along with me to toe your line? Kill them if you want. I can always find more." The footpad scratched at a dried patch of dirt on his cheek.

Cleedis glanced back at the trio, squabbling among themselves. "What do I care about them? I have you."

"If you kill me, your outing's been a waste."

"Still think I'm an old fool, don't you, Janol?" With a grin the chamberlain prodded Pinch with his sheathed sword. "You're as replaceable as they are. Let's just say I had some hope of bringing you back into the fold. Besides, you're more convenient, seeing as you know the ground of the battlefield."

While he spoke, the brass embossed gates cracked with a faint burst of sparkling motes as the magical wards placed on them were released. The doors swung into a shadowed arch lined by royal bodyguards, resplendent in wine-and-yellow livery.

Just as the horses were about to move, Cleedis's bare blade slapped across Pinch's reins. "One more thing, Master Janol." And then the chamberlain ordered his aide, "Bring the priestess here."

In short order she trotted her stallion to their side. Cleedis slid the blade away and pretended not to have a thing more to say to Pinch, even though the rogue knew every word was for his own benefit. The old man's crabbed body shriveled even more as he gave a perfunctory nod from the saddle.

"Greetings, Worthy. Here is where we must part anon, you to your superiors and I to affairs of state. I wish you to understand that I, Lord Chamberlain, know you seek a thief and extend my hand in any way I might to give you success. Should I learn any morsel that would aid your duty, it will be faithfully brought to you."

"Your lordship is most generous," Lissa murmured as she bowed stiffly in her rigid armor.

The old noble made slight acceptance of her obeisance and continued. "Let our contact not be all duty, though. In these days, I have been charmed by your company. You must consider yourself a guest in my household. I will arrange an apartment for you in the palace. Accept, milady. The approval of your superiors is already assured."

Lissa blushed, a freckled shade against her curled hair. "I'm… I'm honored, Lord Chamberlain, but surely one of my masters here would be of better standing. I've no knowledge of courtly things."

"Precisely my goal-a refreshing bit of air. Besides, your superiors are crushing bores. Now, forward men!" With a cavalryman's bellow, he set the whole column in motion, leaving the flustered priestess behind.

As they passed under the gate, the Lord Chamberlain spoke, as if things were of no consequence. "Priests lead such limited, suppressed lives. All those passions and thoughts, penned up in such rigorous souls. If their passions were given free reign, can you imagine the types of punishments priests could devise for apostates and blasphemers? Fascinating possibilities. I think I'll keep the worthy Lissa close at hand."

The chamberlain said nothing more as the entourage passed through the outer palace, exchanged escorts, passed gates, crossed courtyards, and finally entered the cream-white compound of the inner palace. By this time, Maeve and the others were agoggle. They had passed servants in better finery than most of the freemen they knew. In their world, they had seen only glimpses of this life through keyholes, by scrambling through windows, and in the tumbled mass of their booty. Pinch wondered just how well they would be able to restrain their larcenous souls.

At last they entered a small, private courtyard turned off from the main processional route, a guest wing attached to the main household. Pinch remembered this section of the compound as particularly secure, bastioned by a bluff to the rear and deep enough into the palace grounds to make unnoticed departures nearly impossible. Short of the dungeons, it would have been his choice for housing a crew such as his, although Cleedis was wrong to think this would contain them. Pinch and his gang had escaped from lock-ups more determined than this in their years spent looting Elturel.

A resounding chorus of yelps and howls greeted their arrival, and disabused the regulator of any hope that Cleedis had underestimated them. While they handed off their mounts to the waiting grooms, a chaos of sulfurous fire and smoke boiled from dark kennels on the east wall. At first it seemed a wild pack of hounds charged, until one saw the beasts' chops drooling embers and each yelp a belch of flame. The hounds were things of hellish fire, coal-black coats seared with eyes and breaths of flame. The horses kicked and reared with fearsome fright, dragging the boy-grooms with them.

"Gods' pizzle on the heads of the ungrateful!" blurted Therin in an old Gur curse. With a slick hiss his sword cleared the scabbard. "Pinch, strike right. I'll take the center. Maeve, your spells at ready." It was for moments like this that Pinch kept the Gur around, ceding battle command to him.

Just as the four set themselves for the slaughter- theirs or the beasts', they could not be sure-chains clanked as a trainer single-handedly dragged the lunging beasts backward across the smooth flagstones, coiling the iron leashes around his arm. Lumbering from the shadows of the wall, he was a brute, not quite a giant yet greater than a man. He was bare skinned save for a steel codpiece, scabrous fur and warts stretched over grotesquely knotted muscles. Everything about him was disproportionate. His ears and nose-a broad, corded thing-dominated his head, overpowering the weak eyes buried in ridges of bone. His arms were greater than his legs, which were mighty, and his forearms greater than the rest of his arms. Even while straining with the hellhounds, the ogre swaggered with the dim confidence of muscle.

"Surrabak hold them, small chief." It was a voice burned by bad firewine and cheap pipeweed and stretched harsher by three days of carousing, but it was his natural voice.

"Rightly done. Take them back to their kennel." Cleedis boldly stepped forward, holding a hand out to stay Pinch and the others. "Stay your hand," he said sotto voce. "He can be unpredictable."

Although he wondered how much of that was for theatrical benefit, Pinch made a quick gesture to the others, the silent hand language of their brotherhood. With slow, wary care the weapons were put away.

"Surrabak do. Hear small chief come back. Bring Surrabak orders from great chief?" The hellhounds were now within reach of the ogre's cudgel, and he unhesitatingly laid into them until their snarls became yelps of pain.

"The great chief is honored to have a killer like Surrabak. He says you must always obey… little chief." The last words bit against Cleedis's pride. Nonetheless, he pointed to the four foreigners and continued, "Little chief-me, Cleedis-tells you to guard these little ones. Do not let anyone come here unless they show my sign. Do you remember the sign?"

With the hellhounds in a tense pack at his feet, the ogre scowled, flaring his lumpy nose as he tried to remember. Tusks curved out from under his thick lips. His dim eyes sank farther in as he pondered hard.

"Surrabak know little chief's sign."

Cleedis gave a sigh of exasperated relief. "Good. Guard them well, or big chief will become angry and punish you."

"Surrabak guard. No one get in." With that, the ogre barked to the pack and slouched back to the kennels, half-dragging the iron leashes still wrapped around his arm.

"Little chief, big chief… That thing doesn't know Manferic's dead, does it?"

Cleedis ignored Pinch's question and stopped at the entrance to the wing, a small cluster of rooms once the queen's summer rooms. "The servants will show you to your quarters." As Sprite and the others stepped to go inside, the royal bodyguards stopped them. "Not you three. There are other rooms in the west hall for you." As if to reassure them, the chamberlain nodded across the way to another colonnaded building.

"We should be with him," Sprite snapped. "We're his friends and it's up to us to stay together."

"Objections, Pinch?"

For a moment nobody said anything as Pinch looked to his companions. The Gur had his hand to sword, ready for the word if it were given. Maeve looked to Pinch for protection, while Sprite glared back with cold defiance. The Lord Chamberlain let a devil's smile seize his lips and turn up the corners.

"Well?"

"Take them. They're not a damn to me."

The bodyguards sidled forward, eager for the fight. If the wind had blown a leaf a different direction across the courtyard, there might have been battle, but it didn't and there wasn't. The three stood frozen as their regulator turned his back on them and went inside.

"We're not done with you, Pinch, you bastard!" Therin bellowed as the door slammed shut.

Inside, Pinch paused, waving off the valet who hustled forward. He strained his ears for the sounds of trouble, fearful there would be a fight. It was part of the playact to turn his back on them, but as he pressed himself against the wall, the rogue was assailed by doubts. Was he playacting? He might need them; that was as much as he understood friendship. The thought of risking his life to save them simply because they were his gang… They know the game, he reasoned to himself. They'll know the playacting from the real. And if they don't…

Pinch didn't know what he would do.

Finally, when it was clear nothing would happen, Pinch followed the servant to his rooms. A bath had been drawn and clothes already laid out: a fine, black set of hose with burgundy and white doublet and pantaloons of the best cut.

It wasn't until he was washed, shaved, trimmed, and dressed that a runner arrived from Lord Cleedis with orders to attend in the west hall. The timing was no accident, Pinch knew. No doubt the servants assigned him reported directly to Cleedis's ear. The rogue had no illusions about the degree of freedom and trust the Lord Chamberlain was allowing him.

Sauntering through the halls, the rogue took his time. No doubt everyone expected his appearance with whatever eager maliciousness they possessed. Certainly his dear, dear cousins were hardly reformed; kindness, love, and generosity were not survival skills in Manferic's court. The rogue guessed that things were only worse now; while he was alive, the fear of Manferic had always been a great restraint.

So Pinch ambled through the halls, refreshing his memory for the layout of the palace, appraising old treasures he once ignored, and admiring and appraising pieces new to him. It was almost fun, looking at his old life through the eyes of another. Portraits of the royal line, with their arrogance and superiority, were of less interest for him now than the frames that held them. Vases he rated by what a broker would pay, furniture by the amount of gilt upon it. Always there was the question of how to get it out of Ankhapur, where to find the right broker.

The tip-tap of feet across the age-polished marble broke Pinch's reverie. "Master Janol, the court awaits you in the dining hall," said the prim-faced Master of the Table, a post identified by his uniform.

Let them simmer in their pots. Without changing his comfortable pace, Pinch nodded that he would be coming. He was not about to be dictated to by a petty court functionary-or by those who sent him. He would arrive late because he chose to.

Then the stone corridors echoed with a crackling chuckle as Pinch laughed at his own conceit. There was no choice for him. He would be late because they all expected him to be late. Anything else and the royal ward Janol would not be the prodigal scoundrel they all envisioned-rebellious, unrepentant, and unsubtle. Let them imagine him how they wanted; he'd play the part-for now.

By the time he pushed open the ridiculously tall doors and strode into the magically lit dining hall, the diners had dispensed with acceptable gossip and were now trapped listening to the Lord Chamberlain describe his journey. The old chamberlain looked up as the doors creaked open and, barely breaking his tale, nodded for Pinch to come to the center of the great curved table and present himself to the royal heirs.

The old rogue, a man of steady balance on a rooftop, icy nerve in a knife fight, and sure wit to puzzle but a magical ward, felt the thick, slow-motion dread of stage fright. It was a decade and more since he'd last been in such company, and suddenly he was worried about forgetting all the subtle niceties and nuances of courtly etiquette. It's not that he minded insulting some portentous ass, it's just that doing so accidentally took all the fun out of it.

Consequently, to hide the feeling of self-conscious care, Pinch studied those at the table as hard as they studied him. Passing the outer wing, the rogue gave only cursory interest to faces that confronted him, concentrating on guessing rank and position by their dress and badges. These were the minor lords of the court, those who wanted to be players in the intrigues but were only being used by the masters. For the most part these factotums and their ornaments were dull as cattle, unaware of who he was and content with their petty positions and their ordained superiority over the common masses. They worried over who sat next to whom, dripped grease into their ruffed collars, and catted about whose looks had been enhanced tonight by some illusionist's hand.

Still, here and there, a pair of bold eyes met Pinch's or a snide comment was whispered to a neighbor as he passed. Pinch took special note of these: the forthright showed some hopes of cunning or fire, the gossips were clued enough to have heard already who he was. Both might be valuable or dangerous in times to come.

Past these room-stuffers, invited mostly to fill the table, was the second tier, and now Pinch's interest became keen. Here the rogue noted faces and made brief nods to ladies and lords he remembered. Every lord and lady sitting here was a prince's ally. Pinch recognized the proud Earl of Arunrock, commander of the navy, by the out-of-fashion goatee he still kept trimmed to a point. Farther along, the rogue almost gave a start to see the merchant Zefferellin, who used to broker loot from an inn near the market. Judging from his robes of severe opulence, business must have been good enough to buy respectability. Next there was a lady he didn't know but definitely wanted to. She had a refined elegance that suggested she could break the spirit of the purest man. Finally, there was the Hierarch Juricale, a woodcutter-sized man whose black eyes glowered at people over his long bent nose and spreading white beard. He was a man whose word could inspire the faithful to kill for his cause. Even at the table he sat aloof, apart from all the others as if he alone were above all this. It was a lie, Pinch knew. There was no man more directly involved in the court's intrigues than the Red Priest.

These were the hands that held the knives of the princes and the Lord Chamberlain. There was nothing to distinguish them in dress from the pawns of the lower tier-who believed that clothes determined rank through the strange alchemy of fashion-but this inner tier knew where the true power lay. They had chosen their sides. Which wing, which side, how close to the center of table, all these were clues waiting to be deciphered.

At last the regulator reached the center, where he turned to the table and casually bowed. Along the opposite side of the curving main table sat the princes four, their backs safely to stone walls. Interspersed between them were the rest of the family: Duke Tomas and Lady Graln. At the very center, in the king's normal seat, sat Cleedis, Lord Chamberlain and Regent of the Assumption.

Pinch waited to be recognized, but now it was their turn to make him wait. Cleedis continued with his story.

Unlike the others, Bors the idiot prince, was the only one who seemed to show interest. He was still an idiot, that was clear. Flabby faced and jaundiced, he dumbly mouthed Cleedis's words, barely understanding most of it. His napkin, tied under his chin, was awash in soup spill and crumbs, and it seemed to take most of the First Prince's effort to get his spoon to his lips. Every once in a while, he would giggle softly about something that amused only him.

Next to Bors, and looking none to happy for the seat, was Duke Tomas. Had he been two seats over, Pinch would have mistaken the duke for Manferic, his late brother, even though the duke was gleamingly bald where the late king had had a full head of hair.

"Dear coz, the years have made you forget your manners." The jab brought Pinch back to the front and center, and he bowed quickly before even looking to see who had stung him. It didn't matter; even after fifteen years it was impossible not to recognize the voice, a baritone of biting silk ripe with arrogance.

"Quite true, Prince Vargo. Otherwise I would have remembered your impatience, too."

Across the table glowered a muscular man, Vargo, second son of Manferic. He was several years Pinch's younger, although his face was hard and sharpened to a point by his impeccably trimmed Vandyke. His casually tossed blond hair offset the red of his beard, and he easily could have been a dashing cavalier if it weren't for the unsatiated savagery that twisted even his brightest smile.

"I present myself, Lord Chamberlain," Pinch-now-Janol continued before his adversary could recover from the rogue's bon mot. "I am Master Janol, royal ward of the late King Manferic."

A susurration of muted surprise trickled from the outer wings, as those guests previously clueless of Pinch's identity grasped the import of his arrival.

"I… beseech… your permission to join you at table as was the courtesy my late guardian extended to me." This part of the ritualistic greeting came hardest for the regulator. It was galling to go through the show of asking the favor after the old man had forced him here in the first place. Hiding a grimace, the prodigal courtier bowed once again, this time with more flamboyance. The fear that threatened to paralyze him was fading as the familiarity with the air around him grew.

Lord Cleedis raised a glass of amber wine as if this were the first time he had seen Pinch in years. The gold elixir sparkled in the light from the mullioned windows that lined the base of the dome above.

It was all a conceit. Everyone at the table knew the old man had gone to fetch the errant ward, though the thief couldn't imagine why the chamberlain had risked absence from the court for so long. Gods knew what the princes had done-or might have done-in the regent's absence.

"Truly we are pleased to see our long-absent cousin. I, who was your guardian's servant, will not dishonor his name by sending you from this hall. Prepare a place for Master Janol where he can sit with honor."

In an instant the servants silently swooped on the diners, producing a chair, linens, goblet, and trencher. It had all been prearranged, of course, so there was no need for direction as they uprooted the foremost noble of the second tier and laid a place for the rogue. This displacement triggered a chain reaction of shifting and squeezing as each noble vainly refused to relinquish his position in the chain of importance. At the very end of the semicircular table, the lowest courtier of the lot found himself dangling off the end, trencher perched on his knees.

Pinch squeezed himself into place between Prince Marac and a glistening courtier simmering at the insult of being supplanted by a mendicant relative. The man sipped his wine through clenched teeth and eyed Pinch in way that was reminiscent of the lizards he used catch. Pinch considered being friendly, but the man was a reptile and hardly worth the effort. Instead the rogue ignored him, because it made Pinch's presence all the more stinging and that made Pinch happy.

"Prince Marac…" The rogue's cup raised in a genial toast.

Marac, youngest of Manferic's sons and the one Pinch liked the best of the slippery lot-because the youth had been easy to intimidate-eyed Pinch the way one neighbor eyes the other when his best hound has disappeared. He tried to look for the evidence of a bloody knife while trying not to seem like he was looking.

Marac was no longer the ten-year-old youth that Pinch remembered. That one had been replaced by a poor imitation of Prince Vargo. His face was fuller and rounder than sharp-cheeked Vargo, and his beard had the thin, brushed softness of youth, but already the eyes were hidden barbs. His straw-blond hair was longer than his brother's and straight where the other's was tangled. With all these differences, there was still a foundation that was Manferic's bloodline. Perhaps the two weren't Manferic progeny, but unfinished duplicates the wizard-king had fashioned in some long-forgotten laboratory, and their lives from childhood to death were one vast experiment. It would be so like the way he raised me, just to see what he could build, Pinch thought.

Prince Marac acknowledged the toast, and the glow of his face melted into a lipless smile. "Your unexpected return is a pleasure, cousin Janol."

That was all lies, from front to end.

The prince sipped at his scented wine while the servants dished out the next course, a sweetly stewed, steaming joint of some meat beyond the rogue's ken.

"An excellent cut, isn't it, Your Highness?" suggested the lizard-eyed noble at Pinch's other hand. The man was determined not to be left out of the conversation.

"Quite good hunting on your part, Lord Chalruch."

As if the words were a signal, the table that had been so quiet while Pinch sat himself roiled into gossip and banter once more.

"Thank you, milord. I bagged him in a perfect-"

"So cousin, how fares it you've come back here? How long has it been?"

"I've been abroad on fifteen years, Prince Marac."

"Not long enough," Vargo suggested from the other side of the pearly Lady Graln.

She laid a hand on his. "Vargo, you're being unkind."

"And what possessed you to return now?"

"-shot at a range of a good hundred rods-" the bore continued to a young lady on the left, who being reduced to helplessness by the seating struggled to feign interest.

"Indeed, what?" spoke a new voice from the other side of the Lord Chamberlain. Pinch had to lean out to get a clear look at his interrogator. It was Throdus, the sharpest thinker of the princes. In looks he was coal to his brothers' bonfires: dark hair, smoke-filled eyes, lean, and pale-as unlike Manferic as the other two were like him. Only the icy rigor of his manner showed the true family line.

"I brought him back," Cleedis intervened while chewing on a piece of bread. "It was your father's request, one of his last. He wanted his ward reunited with the rest of the family. Toward the end, he greatly regretted certain events of the past. It was for his memory that I tracked down and brought back Master Janol."

"Father's mind went soft," Vargo stage-whispered to Lady Graln.

"And now Cleedis's, too. It must be contagious," added Marac.

"-clean through the slug's heart." The bore prattled on, apparently determined to slay his trapped audience as surely as he had the beast. Tired of the man's determination to plow blindly onward, Pinch deliberately jerked away from Marac with staged indignation.

"They wrong you, Cleedis!" At the same time, the rogue banged his elbow against the bore's arm just as the other was about to sip his wine. The yellow liquid splashed all over the man, soaking his white silken doublet an off-color stain.

"Sir, you've bumped me!" he blurted out, seizing Pinch by the arm.

Pinch gave the lord a cursory scan. "A terrible accident, indeed," he said with a fraudulent sympathy. "If I were you, I'd go change or people will think I didn't have time to go out back and pluck a rose."

"Pluck a…?" The indignant bore stopped when he followed Pinch's gaze to the honey-hued stain that spread over his hose. His face reddened. "Perhaps that's sound," he said as he slid away, holding his napkin strategically in place. "But you'll hear from me again, sir, and soon I promise!" With that dreadful parting threat, the man hurried away.

"I'm sure I will, though any time is bound to be too soon."

A sigh of relief rose from those who'd been audience to the man's court.

"I must say cousin Janol has at least livened conversation at the table," the Lady Graln smirked from her seat. "These dinners were threatening to poison us with dullness." She held up her goblet to be filled from the fresh bottle the servant was pouring down the line.

"Better poisoned words than poisoned wine," Pinch suggested. He raised a fresh glass in toast. Everyone automatically lifted their glasses, only to hold them just at their lips, suddenly alarmed by the rogue's hint. Each watched for someone else to take the first sip.

"Come, drink!" urged Pinch once again raising his glass high, cheerfully stinging the group like a sandfly. "Drink to… oh, the memory of King Manferic! A toast to the late King Manferic!" he offered loudly so that no one could ignore it.

"To Manferic!" echoed the room. Glasses tipped back as the lesser tiers drained away their cups, while at the main table, indecision still paralyzed the lords. Refusing the toast meant a loss of face, drinking required trust. For a long moment, nobody did either.

Finally, disgusted or courageous, Vargo gulped down his portion. As he thumped his goblet down on the table, there was a long swallow from the others as they followed suit. It was only when they had all set their goblets down that they noticed Pinch had not touched his.

The rogue smirked a know-everything smile. "No taste for the bub, I guess."

"We were wondering why Father had you here," said Throdus from down the line, "and now we know. You are dear Father's last cruel jest. This way he can mock us even from beyond the grave."

"Enough of this!" Marac blurted with all the grace of a master-of-drill. "Cleedis, when do we hold the ceremony of the Knife and Cup? Things have gone long enough without a true king."

"Hear, hear!" chimed in Throdus. "You've been stalling four months now, first saying one thing and then another. I say we have the Hierarch declare the date today."

"There should not be haste," Vargo countered, sounding uncharacteristically statesmanlike.

The Second Prince was stalling, Pinch realized, until he could get other plans realized. That was important knowledge, since it meant the Second Prince was a man to be watched.

"Prince Vargo speaks wisely," defended Cleedis. "Rushing the ceremony will bring evil luck to the whole kingdom. The Hierarch has chosen the date-the first day of the Money Festival. He says that is the best day to guarantee profit and prosperity for the new reign."

More time was not a bad idea by Pinch either, since he wasn't even sure of his own part here. Cleedis had dropped enough hints for the rogue to know his job involved those instruments of the succession. Whatever he was to do, after the ceremony would be too late. Thus it was the rogue weighed in, "Fools spend a copper and hurry themselves to the gaol, while sages spend an ingot and buy the judges."

"What's that supposed to mean?" sneered Marac.

In his years abroad, Pinch had faced witnesses in a score of trials and, as was the obvious testament of his being here, had yet to feel the noose. "Patience for fools."

At that, Marac abandoned the table with a snarl. "If that's the decision, then I see no cause to remain here!"

"Nor I," calmly added Throdus. He stepped away from the table. To Vargo he added, "You have a plan and I will find it out."

The creaking thump of the great doors marked the pair's departure. After they were gone, Vargo, too, took his leave. As he left, he laid a hand on Pinch's shoulder and whispered a word in his ear.

"I don't know what your game is, dear coz, whether you're sided with Cleedis or another, or whether you're just a fool to come back here. But remember this: Cross me and you'll cross no one else in Ankhapur."

With that, the cruel huntsman left, leaving Pinch to enjoy the rest of his meal.

The Prodigal Received

When dinner finished, Pinch joined the flow of family to the private salons, the inner sanctums of his youth. At the door to the grand study, Marac suddenly stepped in Pinch's path, one finger poised like a dagger at the regulator's chest. "You are not welcome," he announced, loud enough for everyone to hear him. "You're not one of the family. Things change."

With the grace of an eel that slithers through the conger's nets, Pinch curled his lips in a smile of polite understanding and bowed to his hosts. Vargo clapped his hand on the youngest prince's shoulder and loudly said, falsely thinking it would pain Pinch all the more, "Come, brother, leave him till the morrow. There's wine to be drunk!"

As the salon door closed behind him, Pinch padded through the dark and heartless halls to his own room.

The lane had been paced, the pins set, he thought to himself. Now it was time to see how the bowl would play.

Returned to his room, the master thief settled into the carved wooden chair that was scorched dry by the heat from the fireplace. He sat immobile, gazing at the flames with the same fascination a drunk might share.

Behind the visage, though, his mind raced. Preparation, Pinch knew, warded bad luck. First there was escape, if he needed it. His apartment was large and spacious, with a public salon separate from the bedchamber. However, the two rooms were cunningly less than generous about windows. These were all small portholes set high in the wall, hardly suitable for a rat to scurry though. That left the door, discreetly locked by a guardsman after Pinch had entered. Could they believe he hadn't heard the slow grind of the heavy tumblers?

Pinch had every confidence he could work the black art on the door, even if he was a little rusty. Then in the hallway, where would he go? After fifteen years, there were changes and additions made that no longer appeared on his mental map of the palace. He replayed every step he could recall in his head, getting the sense of distance and direction sound in his memory until he was confident he could slip through the halls to the outside world.

Outside were the ogre and his hellhounds, an entirely different type of problem. Pinch couldn't see a solution there immediately. He set it aside for later study when he could get a clearer view of the ground.

Beyond the ogre, only the palace gate was certain. The here-to-there could be fraught with perils or tediously easy. It was impossible to say who might challenge him or let him pass.

The palace gate was a certainty, though. There would be a curfew after which the doors would be locked. Here his youth as the royal ward stood him in good stead. One of his patent rebellions had been to slip into the city against Manferic's wishes and get himself back well after the curfew horn had blown. Back then there were other ways over the palace walls, and the rogue trusted that they still existed. Some gates remained unsealed even at the latest hours to accommodate those visiting their mistresses or back from a night of mingling with the lewd folk.

Finally, silver and gold were always a solution. Unless there had been some catastrophic change in the barracks rooms, it was always possible to find a guardsman willing to turn a blind eye for the right price. Of course, he'd need to find himself some cash, but for a good thief that was hardly a problem.

So much for escape, should he need it. The next question concerned his companions and what should be done about them. Pinch mulled over his options, sinking deeper into the stillness before the fire.

Did he need them? If not, there was no need to worry about them. Certainly he was their upright man, but he felt no compulsion of mere loyalty to save them.

Pinch once again decided to choose in favor of prudence. He still did not know what task Cleedis intended for him; until he did know, there was the possibility the trio might be needed. Pinch hardly felt he could rely on old friendships in Ankhapur; he'd already been reminded how fifteen years could change a man. Grudges lasted longer than loyalty. Without more time, Sprite, Therin, and Maeve were the only rogues he knew well enough to rely on.

Having judged and deemed worthy, the regulator needed to communicate with his gang before they felt abandoned and reordered their brotherhood. They were no more loyal than his lingering presence. All he knew was the wing they were in. Tomorrow he would make sure to see them.

All these things Pinch did in his head, never once setting his thoughts to paper, never once stirring from the chair. This was more than just his usual nature. His staying in these two rooms, he was sure, was no haphazard choice. Cleedis had wizards at his side, powerful ones as evidenced by their leap across the vast distances this morning. Those selfsame wizards could be watching him this instant. He had put Maeve to it often enough in their efforts to scout out a new case before they broke during the night. He also knew from Maeve that it took a little knowing the place to make the spell work. There was no doubt Cleedis had put at least some of his spell-men to the task of knowing these rooms inside and out.

Even his own thoughts weren't safe, Pinch knew. Those wizards could pry through his mind, dredging up his plans if he wasn't careful. Again, Maeve and hard experience had taught him some tricks for resisting, but they weren't sure by any means. The best of all things was not to plan, but to act by pure instinct. Instinct was something that couldn't be measured, plumbed, or dissected by the arcane powers.

"Well," he announced to no one, "let the committers make something of this." And then Pinch settled in and let his mind be filled thoughts as impure, vile, horrific, and vivid as he could imagine.

And Pinch could imagine very, very well.

The next morning, Pinch took his breakfast in his room, reveling in the luxury Cleedis was willing to bestow. Even a master regulator didn't live in princely comfort. That had been a hard adjustment when he'd first fled Manferic's court. It had been a long time since he'd had sweet porridge laced with fatty smoked meat and dried fruits. It was a childhood comfort, a memory of dawns spent hiding in the kitchen, nicking bowlfuls from the pot when the cooks weren't looking.

Reverie ended with a knock at the door. Before Pinch could rise or say "Enter," the door swung open and Throdus sauntered into the salon as if the whole world were his privilege. The dark prince radiated a jaunty cheer. Without so much as a comment, he plopped into the chair opposite Pinch.

The rogue glanced up and then buried himself in slurping spoonfuls of porridge as if Throdus weren't there.

Throdus watched this until a wry smile curled his lips.

"Good cousin, I regret my brothers' behavior last night. It was a crude display." The prince stopped to examine some speck on the back of his hand.

"No doubt you would have done better," Pinch suggested between swallows, never once looking up.

"Of course. Marac did that just for our benefit."

"I know."

Throdus looked up from his digitary studies. "One might question his motive."

"Not me. He's just become more like his brother."

"Vargo? Those two were always close."

"Afraid they're plotting against you?"

"They're always plotting against me. And I plot against them. Remember, Janol, it's a game we've played since childhood."

"I haven't forgotten."

The prince went back to looking at his hands.

"I do find it interesting that you've chosen to come back now."

Ah, so that's where my lord is casting his net. Let's play the game and string him along, Pinch decided.

"My other choices were less pleasant."

"Ah, the wastrel's life-your exploits are known here."

Pinch was surprised and not surprised. His adopted cousins certainly had the resources to learn about his past, but it surprised him that they bothered. He would have thought their own intrigues kept them busy enough.

"Father always had a curiosity about your fate." The prince brushed back his black hair and watched his adversary's reaction. "Since he was curious, we had to be curious."

"Always afraid that someone else was working the cheat."

"Information is power." The words were sharp.

"So you know my life. What will you do, give me up to the constables?"

"I just want to know why you're here."

Now it was Pinch's turn to be amused. "Just that? Why I've come to pay my respects, my dear guardian dead and all. After that I'll make myself master of the trugging houses in the city. Maybe I'll even do a little brokering, not that you'd have anyone else's goods to sell."

"Cheap lies only irritate me. You hated Manferic more than all the rest of us."

"I had my cause. Try growing up like the household dog."

"He was hard on us all, but we didn't run away."

"You? You were all too afraid-afraid of him, afraid you'd lose your chance when he died."

Suddenly the shadows fell across the prince's sunny facade. "I, at least, have the right to be king. You, however, have no such claims. You're just an orphaned waif raised above his level by my father for the gods know what purpose, and then you come back here thinking you can be like one of the blood. The only reason for you to come back here is to beg for scraps. Is that it?" The prince ended the question with a sneer.

Pinch didn't answer, glowering at Throdus while he continued his breakfast.

"I didn't think so," the prince said, dismissing the possibility with a wave of his hand. "The real question is, who are you working for? Marac? That would make sense for his little show. Publicly disavow you, privately deal."

Pinch stopped in midladle and blew on his porridge. "I told him it was too obvious."

"Now you're too obvious. So it wasn't Marac. Someone brought you here for a job and I want to know."

This was getting tedious, and Throdus's temper was getting up.

"As you well knew before coming here, it wasn't Marac who took me abroad."

Throdus laughed. "You're suggesting Cleedis? He's a trained monkey. He just wears the hat of regent and dances when somebody else plays the music. You've seen it; he can't even keep Vargo from unseating Bors at the head of the table."

Pinch remembered the arrangement, unremarkable at the time, but now of greater importance: Bors drooling at the end of the family row while Vargo sat in the first son's seat at the regent's left hand. It had never been that way at Manferic's table. The old man had kept his gods-cursed firstborn in the place of honor even after his deficiencies were clear to all.

"Why should I tell you anything? I'm no intelligencer for the constabulary."

Abruptly the prince was no longer humorous, the indulgent mask peeling from his flesh to reveal the corded muscles of a snarl as he sprang to his feet. "Because you're nothing but a rakehelled orphan who lives by our indulgence! Because I want to know who you're working for and you'll tell me."

"A pox on that!" Pinch swore, shoving the bowl away. "I'll not be your intelligencer, not when you come here threatening like some piss-prophet."

"Then I'll have your heart and roast it for the dogs!"

Throdus's hand went to the jeweled dagger at his side. It wasn't hanging there just for show. The blade was brilliantly polished and glittered in the morning light.

The rogue grinned as he kicked the chair back and sprang to his feet. He drew his slim-bladed skene, with its leather-wrapped handle and well-oiled blade, and let the point trace imaginary circles in the air before the prince's chest. "And I say you're a pizzle-headed ass for thinking you can best me with your little cutter. What do you know about knife fights? Have you every jumped a man in a dark lane and pulled your blade across his weasand-pipe? Fought with a blade in one hand and a bottle in the other?" Pinch started a slow pace around the table, one that forced Throdus back from the center of the room.

"One time a captain of the guard wanted to dock me. He was a fine gentleman and thought I was too. Thought I'd fight fair. I burned his hair off before I left him hamstrung. Scarred him for life-even the priests couldn't do anything about it.

"Do you think being a prince will protect you?" Pinch whispered softly as he picked up a heavy jug with his free hand.

Throdus's rage had started to go pale, and suddenly he acted in desperate panic. With a snap of his arm, he flung his dagger.

Pinch reacted almost as fast and just managed to swing the jug into the blade's path. The hard clay shattered in his hand, sending shards skittering across the floor like mice, but the knife went tumbling away. The rogue threw the useless jug handle back and Throdus bobbed beneath it.

Pinch lunged but not so hard as to be sure of a hit. Throdus escaped harm, though his waistcoat died in the attack. Pinch's dirk pierced the fabric and stuck into the wall. As Throdus yanked frantically to pull the fabric loose, Pinch slammed his free arm against the man's chest. The air blew out of Throdus like a puffball squeezed too hard. While still skewered to the wall like a gutted rabbit, he sagged against the rogue unable to do anything but helplessly twitch as he choked for air.

Bronzewood cracked as the dirk wrenched free of the wall and came free of the punctured clothes. Pinch slithered in close, his knee poised below Throdus's gut as an extra insurance of good behavior. The rogue let the knife blade tickle the prince's torso as he deftly sliced away the doublet's strings, tracing just the thinnest line of blood down the man's hairy chest. Gently, almost tenderly, he brought his lips close to the noble ear, till he could smell the perfumes in Throdus's oiled hair and guess the flavor of breakfast the man had eaten that morning.

"What should I do with you?" the regulator whispered ever so softly, as if the prince within his clutches weren't even there. "If I killed you, who would complain? Vargo? Marac? Cleedis? Maybe that's why I'm here…"

It was to Throdus's credit that he did not cry out, but that may have been only because he couldn't. His gasping had broken into shivers the man could not restrain, so strong that he couldn't even work his lips to form words. His eyes welled up with water as he stared at the knife, unable to shift his gaze from it.

"What should I do?" Pinch whispered again. "Perhaps they'll reward-"

A rich reverberation rebounded through the apartment, the musical tolling of a bell. The sound stood out by its otherworldliness, but Pinch ignored it. It was just some errant matins bell of yet another sect, echoing up from the common city below.