Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) Read online

  Something important was happening in the music. Vanora realized this when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the harlequin stand stock still and raise its fist to the roof. It shook its fist and beat its breast as it struck a heroic pose and the voice coming from its tiny mouth was a howl of rage. Then it suddenly lashed out with its other arm, miming the action of snapping a bullwhip, and from its mouth came the crack of the whip.

  The melody was so perfect, so beautiful and exciting it made her skin go all over in goosebumps. She had to hear it again, she didn’t know what it meant, but she was gripped with the desire to leap out of her chair and mimic the harlequin’s actions, pretending she was the singer, the performer, the character in the opera.

  It was then, looking up, that she noticed it was dark outside. Time had flown by. What time was it? The room was illuminated by a single large lantern she’d fetched from upstairs. It cast flickering golden light and deep shadows around the common room of the inn.

  Suddenly the Harlequin stopped, and cocked its small head as though hearing some distant call.

  In the silence, she remembered she was alone. How long had Bann and the watchman been gone? A turn? Longer? Much longer? She had written a great deal. Three turns?

  Ballisantirax jumped onto her lap, scaring her half to death. The cat’s heavy black muscled body tense. Vanora looked down into the cat’s face. Balli’s eyes were so dilated, there was only a sliver of yellow marking the boundary between black fur and midnight eyes. She growled deeply, staring up at Vanora. Her mouth open a little, baring her fangs. Her thick claws digging into Vanora’s legs. Was she going to attack her?

  On the table, the harlequin looked sharply behind her, Balli stopped growling, and Vanora heard a frantic scrabbling at the door to the cellar.

  She turned slowly in her chair and looked at the forbidden door to the room below. Balli loped off her lap. The scrabbling got louder, frantic, and then stopped. She watched as the latch on the door handle slowly and silently lifted, and the door swung open without a noise.

  A large black rectangle of darkness stared at her. Vanora felt a yawning in the pit of her stomach as she gazed into it, eyes wide, mouth open, breath still.

  Like a flood, a dozen small figures came boiling out of the basement in a rolling knot of silent violence. Vanora leapt to her feet and ran a few steps to the front door, but stopped halfway, frozen by what she saw.

  They were rats. Or…mice? Each was roughly 2 feet tall with thick bushy fur, some grey, some brown. Many different shades. Short noses with long black whiskers and stubby tails. They all stood on their hind legs.

  They wore clothes and bristled with weapons. Standing before her in battle poses like the harlequin, the one closest to her held a short silver sword in one hand and a crossbow in the other, a bandolier of bolts slung over his shoulder and around his chest. The others had bows, daggers, two handed swords, some wore conical leather caps. They stood together, some crouching, all tensed, ready for violence, like a metal spring wound tight. They stared at her with black beady eyes.

  The lead mouserat’s pink nose twitched. She felt something was expected of her. They looked like they’d stepped out of a children’s story, but they seethed with murderous anger. Their long, chisel-like teeth bared, they radiated battle like heat and she was afraid. What did they want with her?

  An eerie calm washed over her and her skin flashed all with goose bumps as she realized they weren’t looking at her. They were looking past her. For a moment she felt fear flood out of her body and, once again, she turned slowly around.

  There were five men dressed in black standing behind her. She started and took a step back, toward the mousemen. One of the men in black was braced above her between the top of the front door and the ceiling. One of them crouched on top of a chair.

  They also bristled with weapons. This was impossible, there was no way these men could have gotten in without her noticing. But they had gotten in, remained invisible, and she hadn’t noticed. But the mousemen had. Noticed, and come out of their warren somewhere beneath Heden’s inn to protect her. She now knew who the mice warriors were.

  With careful deliberation, without looking behind her, she took another step back toward the fighting mousemen Heden had set to defend her. At this signal, they swarmed around her, the only sound their tiny claws digging into the floor as they moved.

  They assumed their battle poses around her, pressed against her, she felt their tiny hands pushing her back. She marveled at them. She was afraid, but she felt the presence of Heden in the room, and this calmed her somewhat. She believed the mousemen would protect her. She felt she was in a dream. This could not be real.

  The assassins, for assassins they had to be, wore dark brown leather with black silk scarves tied around their waist, or wrist or neck. And wore dark grey leather helms obscuring their faces.

  They stood ready to attack, the lead assassin had a long wicked-thin sword in one hand and a silver dagger in the other. His eyes flashed back and forth between Vanora and the mousemen. None of the men moved. None of them made a sound.

  The lead assassin slowly raised his left hand and pulled the leather helm off his face. He had short, black hair and a pale white face, a thin red scar ran from his jaw down his neck. He was short. None of the assassins seemed tall, though none were standing perfectly upright.

  “All right,” the man said carefully. His voice scarred like his face. “Let’s not be hasty. No reason to get our knickers in a twist.”

  He was afraid of the mousemen. He seemed unsure of what to do or how to proceed.

  “If you’re bein’ paid,” he said, looking just past Vanora at the ratman behind her, “our employer can see you’re well compensated for looking the other way, while we…”

  There was a ‘twang!’ and a crossbow bolt shot past Vanora’s ear. The assassin slashed at it with his sword and successfully stopped it from embedding in his left eye, but at the cost of having it lodge in his sword arm.

  “Unh,” he grunted, as the mousemen leapt forward and swarmed past Vanora.

  “Squee!” one of them shouted, holding his rapier-like weapon up, commanding the other mousemen.

  The assassins were alarmed and amazed, but well-trained. They responded in accord with their close-quarters training, fighting back to back, the sword arm of each acting as the shield arm for the other. But the micemen didn’t respect their fighting style, and merely swarmed past their defenses.

  The battle was short and one-sided for though the assassins were skilled and well-equipped, they were well-equipped for fighting other men, and their skills didn’t including fending off attacks from three or four tiny assailants, each equally well-armed and lightning fast with inhuman reflexes.

  As knives stabbed and swords clashed, there was a grunt and one of the mouse fighters sailed over Vanora’s head, flung into the far wall by one of the men. This one wore heavier, metal armor and a metal headpiece. The man who threw him across the room was strong, given strength by desperation. The mouse warrior struck the wall hard, hitting his head, and slumped to the floor stunned.

  Battle raging around him in the common room, the assassin grabbed at the poisoned dagger protruding from his gut and prepared to pull it out, when another mouseman leapt onto him, this one with a tiny eyepatch over one eye. It grabbed the man’s leather chestpiece with one tiny hand, grabbed the dagger’s cross-guard with the other, looked into the man’s eyes and, baring his teeth in a feral smile, pushed the dagger in, twisting it.

  The assassin cried out and grabbed at the mouseman, only to receive a vicious bite in the wrist that caused blood to spurt wide from the wound, and the two went down, soon joined by another, then another mouse, the last the recovered mouse warrior, hacking at the downed man with a large-for-a-mouseman two hander. The room began to stink of iron, the smell of blood. The floor was awash in it. It glittered black in the lantern light.

  Vanora gasped, putting her hands to her mouth as the assassin was murd
ered in front of her. She noticed movement at her feet and saw Balli was standing there, observing it all, her fur standing on end, but otherwise unmoving, protecting her.

  The lead assassin held his own. He was cut in many places, there were crossbow bolts sticking out of flesh and armor, but he spun and whirled, his sword and dagger a blur. He leapt from chair to table, using each first as a height advantage, then as a weapon as he kicked each at his mouse assailants, retreating around the common room. He thought he’d taken down two of the mousemen, but could not be sure, they grabbed their wounded and disappeared into the fray.

  Suddenly there were more mousemen fighting him, and he realized two of his men were down, probably dead, freeing up more of the vicious little fighters to focus on him. He sneered at his assailants, and pulled a small glass orb from under his leather chest piece.

  Vanora forgotten, the lead assassin said “fuck this!” and threw the black glass orb at the floor in front of him. The orb was filled with black powder and when it hit the ground, it shattered and the dust swirled out, forming a thick mist that snaked along the ground, searching, striving, yearning. Flowing past the mousemen who were momentarily distracted, watching the black mist to see what it would do.

  It found one of the dead assassins’ bodies; the one Vanora had watched the mousemen hack apart. It settled onto him, seeped into his wounds, flowed into his nostrils and open mouth.

  The corpse began to twitch. Its broken limbs snapped back together, knotting and twisting. Its skin looked like it was boiling. A scream went up from the body, though of man or something possessing the man, none could say.

  The dead man jerked itself up, its skin now grey-green, its eyes burning coals. It snarled, then howled, its breath a putrid stink. Its fingernails long black claws. Just a moment before, it had been a man, then a moment later, a corpse. Now it looked like a nightmare.

  The ratmen stood, stunned. Vanora was stunned, terrified. Two of the remaining assassins looked at their leader in shock and fear. He returned their expression, as amazed, as afraid as they were.

  The ghoul was taller than the man had been, more massive, and faster. It lashed out with inhuman speed and long, spindly arms, and grabbed the nearest mouseman, who barely had time to struggle before the ghoul had pulled it close, ripped its head off with its black teeth and threw the body to the ground, spitting the head away.

  Vanora screamed, and kept screaming. She was rooted to the spot. She felt something tugging at her dress and spun around, snatching it away, only to see Ballisantirax, who looked at her with big yellow eyes, howled once, and ran into the cellar through the open door and into the darkness.

  Only for a moment, the mousemen looked on with horror at the corpse of their brother, then in an instant they formed a protective wall between the ghoul and Vanora.

  But the ghoul did not discriminate, and leaped across the room, wrapping its body around one of the assassins. Though screaming, and being borne down to the ground, he still attacked, stabbing the thing with twin daggers, over and over, to no avail. The ghoul crouched on his chest and tore him apart.

  One of the ratmen, dark brown, a little shorter than his brothers and unarmed, pushed to the fore of the knot of defending humanoid mice, grasped a small rodent skull that hung on a chain around his neck, held out one furry hand, his tiny pink finger-pads splayed apart, claws protruding from each, and spoke a prayer.

  The ghoul suddenly sprang up in pain. Black eyeballs exploded in their sockets, a burst of light caused everyone on the room to shield their eyes.

  The ghoul cried out, a long, ragged howl. Then it snarled and whipped its rotting, eyeless head around, back and forth, drawing in long breaths through the twin holes in its face where a nose once was. Then it would bark out the air and start sniffing again, homing in on the furry defenders. Robbed of its eyes, it could still sense them.

  “Sket!” the mousepriest swore, and pushed his brothers ahead of him. He spoke another prayer and Vanora saw something ripple through them, disturbing their fur. Something empowering them. Giving them hope, giving them a chance.

  The mouse defenders ran forward as one, and swarmed over the ghoul. Vanora couldn’t watch.

  She turned to run upstairs to her room and stopped. The staircase seemed tall and narrow. She looked to her right and saw the black rectangle of darkness that led down to Heden’s cellar, and made up her mind.

  She darted to her left, scooped up the Harlequin and his stand from where they’d fallen on the floor, and then turned and ran as fast as she could for the cellar, and what, she could not know.

  Chapter Seven

  Cole looked around the room. It was the first room he’d found upstairs. The ceiling here slanted down. There was a window built into it revealing the night sky above. A chance.

  He pushed the window up and open, jumped to grab the edge where the window hinged, pulled and flipped himself up and out of the room, onto the roof, out of the maelstrom of battle below, and to freedom.

  He landed in a crouch and surveyed the slanting rooftop. There couldn’t be anyone up here, but his training never left him. Covered in blood, panting with exertion, he stood up, trembling. His breath came in loud and ragged rasps.

  The night air was cool and moist. The sky was clear and filled with stars. Standing there on the roof, he looked down into the room below, listening to the sound of battle. He was shaken, completely rattled. No idea yet what had happened. He’d have to replay the whole scene several times before he understood it. He sighed, and then turned to leave.

  There was a polder behind him. While he jumped back, to his credit he did not shout.

  “Hey Cole,” the little man said. He was dragging a nail and letting the smoke escape idly into the night air.

  “Pinwhistle!” the assassin exclaimed. His heart was hammering in his chest.

  “What’s going on?” the small thief asked. He wasn’t wearing any armor. He didn’t need to. He wore a nicely tailored outfit, gold bracelet on one wrist, no shoes. He brushed his mop of curly blonde hair out of his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the nail. His small face was open and friendly and like everything else about him, a lie.

  He did not look like someone who, a turn before, had been shat out the ass of an extradimensional demon into a sewer.

  “Shit,” Cole said, shaking with shock. He looked back down the hole of the open window. “You about scared the piss out of me you little…,” he caught himself. The small manlike creature betrayed no reaction, but Cole knew better. “Shit, you’re not here to…you’re not going to kill me are you?”

  The polder shrugged and screwed his face up as though the idea surprised him. “Not at the moment. What are you, ah…,” he looked up at the night sky and sniffed, then took another drag on his nail. “What are you doing here, Cole?”

  Cole glanced down at the open window behind him.

  “Nothing to do with the Hearth,” Cole said, trying to maintain his footing in the conversation. He was trying not to listen to the battle below, and trying not to think about the polder’s reputation.

  “Uh-huh,” the polder said. He padded forward and shooed the man out of the way.

  “Are you here to kill us?” Cole asked, as Pinwhistle stuck his head down into the open window.

  “What’s going on down there?” the polder’s voice was muffled and echoed in the room below.

  He pulled his head out.

  “Why’s it smell like deathless?” Pinwhistle asked.

  “Can I, ah,” Cole pointed to the nail. “Can I have one of those?”

  The polder shrugged, pulled out a nail, fired it off his, and offered it to Cole.

  Cole looked at the offered nail, embers in its tip glowing red, and took a deep breath. He was committed to taking the nail, and smoking it, without his hand shaking.

  He reached out and took the nail, dragged it. Let the smoke escape from his nostrils. Acted relaxed. Acted like someone who might smoke out here in the night air with the infamous p
older fixer from the Cold Hearth.

  “Your men are dying down there, you know that right?” the little man said.

  Cole said nothing.

  “Figure that’s why you’re up here,” the thief continued. “You’ve got a good sense of self-preservation, I’ll give you that.”

  “There’s rats down there.”

  The polder took another drag on his nail, and waited for Cole to elaborate.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Radenwights.”

  “Yeah,” the polder said. “Their warren goes right under here.”

  “There’s a girl down there.”

  The polder nodded. “So?”

  Cole shrugged. “He wants her. I think she…she’s someone’s daughter or something.”

  Cole took another drag, tried to talk about what happened without thinking about it. Without thinking about why Pinwhistle might be here. “The rats tried to kill us.”

  “Uh-huh. What’d you think was going to happen?”

  “I didn’t know. I didn’t case the place. I didn’t think….”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit, you’re going to kill me aren’t you?”

  The polder frowned. “You got a one track mind.” He took another drag. “So the count sends you here to get the girl and gives you what, four scarves? Five? Blue? Green?”

  “Green,” Cole said. “Five Greens.”

  “You try to bust into this place with five green scarves?” Pinwhistle smiled and looked up at the black circle in the sky where the Dusk Moon hid late at night. “Count’s getting sloppy. You’re lucky it’s just ratmen.”

  “He gave me these…” Cole pulled four of the small marbles from a pocket under his leather chestpiece. He stared at them, thinking he could see the black dust inside swirling, striving, seeking a way out of its glass prison. Probably just a trick of the eye.

  The polder took a long drag on his nail and peered at the small black orbs in the mid-level thief’s hand.