The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids Read online

  I stood up, knocking back my chair. “Why the hells would you tell me such things?”

  “Because they are true.”

  “So what? What good does it do me?”

  “Because you need to prepare.”

  “And just how the hells do you suggest I go about doing that?”

  She looked down at her scone. “I don’t know. That’s for you to discover.”

  A hot flash of anger surged through me. “And there, right there, is why I want nothing to do with Seers. Because for all your signs and portents, however true they might be, you never offer a scrap of useful advice, and you never, ever offer the simplest shred of hope. Fate is a slaver, bloodwitch, and I refuse its chains.”

  As I walked out her door, she spoke in a quiet voice.

  “That is why fate has singled you out, Amra Thetys.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Holgren found me at sunset. I was sitting on the breaker wall just north of the harbour, staring out at the darkening sea, not think much of anything, if I’m being honest.

  “The sunset is in the other direction,” he said, sidling up beside me and leaning on the rough stone.

  I grunted. “I’ve seen enough sunsets in my life. How did you find me?”

  “The ways of the magi are mysterious,” he said with a small smile. He held out two pinched fingers. It took me a moment to see the hair trapped between them.

  “You left this on your first visit to my sanctum.”

  I gave him a flat stare. “That’s a bit creepy.”

  He shrugged and let the hair float down to the restless sea below us. “Speaking of hair, yours is coming in quite nicely.”

  I had nothing to say to that, so I didn’t. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

  “I’ve got some bad news,” he finally said. “Gavon is gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Gone, disappeared, vanished.”

  “With my money. Of course.”

  “I’m afraid so. But Daruvner said he’d like to see us once we’ve recuperated. There’s a commission he thinks would be perfect for us.”

  “Are you broke, too?”

  “Not really. But I may have mentioned that I was open to commissions if you were involved.”

  “What? Why?”

  He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I told you before. You’re capable, and you have two wits to rub together. And you do get up to the most interesting goings-on.” He put out a hand. “Partners?”

  I looked at him. I realized for the first time that I trusted him without question, for all that he was a mage. Realized, however much I didn’t want to, that in the past few days I had come to rely on him. Realized with something close to shock that I was fine with that reliance.

  And so I took his hand, and shook.

  Epilogue

  An age was ending. In the grand scheme of things, this was not such an uncommon occurrence. The Age of the Gods had been on the downhill slope for more than a millennium in any case. Soon magic would run dry, barring some unlooked-for intervention. Soon the gods and demons, those who still survived after the Wars and the Cataclysm, would take their longstanding squabbles on to some new plane of existence.

  As for what would come next, well. Perhaps the Age of Humanity, of Invention, of Ingenuity. Or perhaps something entirely other.

  In the Lower Realms and in the Upper, change was coming, and sentinels who had stood watch for thousands upon thousands of years were abandoning their posts, drawn to the siren call of re-creation, of rebirth, of a resetting of the cosmic board.

  Soon there would be no one left to watch for the return of the Eightfold Goddess. Soon there would be no one left who knew what to watch for, or why. The signs and portents would come about, and none would be the wiser.

  The first already had.

  Abanon’s Blade was dust, destroyed by a mortal’s will.

  The first of the eight seals had finally, finally been broken.

  In Her hiding place, in Her self-made prison between the planes, She laughed, and stretched Her fearsome frame.

  Author’s Note:

  Dear reader,

  Thanks very much for reading The Thief Who Pulled On Trouble's Braids. I hope you have enjoyed it. It has taken an embarrassingly long time to write; something like six years from beginning to end, if memory serves correctly. But the time it spent marinating in the dubious confines of my brain has made it a better (or less bad, depending on your point of view) story. Trust me.

  If you’ve enjoyed the book, you may be interested to know that Amra and Holgren have had further adventures. The next book in the series is called The Thief Who Spat In Luck’s Good Eye, and is available pretty much everywhere e-books are sold. And following that one, the third book in the series, The Thief Who Knocked On Sorrow's Gate is now available for pre-order and will be released on December 10th, 2014.

  Finally, if you'd like to be informed of other writing-related news from yours truly, you can just sign up on this handy dandy mailing list.

  Thanks again for reading.

  Michael McClung

  P.S.

  An Excerpt From

  The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye:

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

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

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

  Then Holgren found me and slapped down a creased, dirty notice under my nose.

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

  “Well, go on. Read it.”

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

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

  “But—” Holgren started.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ~ ~ ~

  He took a long, rambling route to the river Ose, dodging hacks, carriages, and the reeking contents of chamber pots slung out of windows despite a rather strict ordinance to the contrary. I walked beside him, hurrying my pace just a bit to match his long strides. I wondered what could get him interested in such a fool’s errand. I had to admit to more than a little curiosity. While I’d known Holgren for a handful of years, I knew almost nothing about his personal life. He was a solitary, even secretive man. Mages are like that, and Holgren was no exception.

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

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

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

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

  “Well I suppose I should be honored.”

  “You never make things easy, do you?”

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

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

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

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

  I suppose I should have been shocked. I knew he was capable of frighteningly violent acts: He’d saved my life once by turning another mage into a red smear with a flick of his fingers. But Holgren never, ever made stupid decisions, and any way you look at it, selling your soul to a demon is deeply stupid.

  Except there were times growing up when I would have sold my soul to be rid of my father permanently. Times spent hiding in the muck under the house to avoid a drunken beating or worse, times spent listening to it happen to my mother instead.

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

  “Say something,” he said.

  “What does this have to do with Thagoth?” I asked.

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

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

  “Close enough.” He stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it into the water with an unconsciously graceful flick of the wrist. It skipped over the water half a dozen times before it sank, and he spoke again. “Close enough,” he repeated. “But not just eternal life. The power to grant eternal life....”

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

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

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

  He nodded. “He has a horror of death—oh, not the death of others, of course. But nearly every insanity reported of him has an interior logic, if you look at his motivation. Bathing in the blood of the unborn. Putting a bounty on crows and owls in Viborg, the two harbingers of death. Banning funeral processions within a mile of his palace. Removing portraits and statues of dead ancestors from the palace. Buying—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ~ ~ ~

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

  Holgren spent the time holed up in his sanctum, a moldering hovel hard by the charnel grounds. What he did there he did not discuss, nor did I pry. I knew where it was, but I rarely went there. I have little interest in the arcane, except what can kill me. Occasionally he would prepare the odd amulet or fetish to aid
me in whatever task I undertook. While I had little understanding of how they worked, I took it on faith that they did.

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

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

  Holgren was pacing the rooms I let above Burrisses’ Tailors. The Burrisses were a family of immigrants from the Nine Cities who didn’t care if I was a woman living on my own so long as I paid my rent.

  “Amra,” he shouted, and grabbed me by the waist. “Pfaugh! You’re ripe.”

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

  “Never mind. I’ve found it!”

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

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

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