Thick as Thieves Read online

  It was like being lectured by an earnest, oversized child.

  I realized my mouth was open and shut it. I nodded. “Rethru docks,” I repeated after him.

  “After dark. Can you be there?”

  I nodded again. Certainly I could get to the Rethru docks after dark. The Attolian nodded back, then checked the corridor again and hurried away.

  I watched him go, my knees weak with relief. I staggered to the nearest alcove and slipped behind the large urn standing in the center of it. I wrapped my arms around myself and had a long, if quiet, laugh. My ribs hurt, but it was worth it. It had been a difficult few weeks, and it was good to laugh again.

  I could be free in Attolia. If only I could have shared the joke with my master, but he wouldn’t have seen the humor just then. Another time, I would have told him and he and I would have laughed until we fell down. I could be free in Attolia—a place more backward than anywhere I have ever known, with its stinking sewers and its smoking furnaces and its preening idiot aristocrats. Gods support me, they were still memorizing all their poetry because none of them knew how to read. The only beautiful thing in the whole country was the queen, and she had sold herself into a marriage with the Eddisian Thief, the very one whose hand she had cut off. There was a match made in hell.

  As a slave in the emperor’s palace I had authority over all of my master’s other slaves and most of his free men. I had my own money in my master’s cashbox. I had a library of my own, a collection of texts in my alcove that I carefully packed into their own case whenever my master moved households. I not only could read and write, I could read and write in most of the significant languages of the empire. My master had paid good money for it to be so. Someday he meant to make a gift of me to his brother, and then, as the next emperor’s personal slave, I would be one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in all the empire. I wouldn’t have taken the Attolians’ offer even if I’d believed it was sincere—and I didn’t. They meant to slice my throat and toss me in a sewer, I was sure.

  When my amusement passed, leaving my ribs aching, I shook my head at the self-aggrandizement of the Attolians, and headed back to my master’s apartments. There is freedom in this life and there is power, and I was ambitious for the latter. I looked forward to the day I would be in my master’s confidence again—I would tell him about the Attolian, and he and I would laugh together. In the meantime, I thought, I would be anywhere that evening but out on the Rethru docks.

  I was still smiling when I saw Laela ahead of me. I knew her first by her robe. It had been a gift from our master and was dyed a deep blue that was expensive and unusual. I made out her face only as she drew nearer. Normally as warm toned as myself, she was sickly pale. She raised a hand to her lips as she approached, and silently she turned me around to pull me through a curtained entrance into the nearby serviceway. We stood in that narrower connecting passage, the slatted roof just above our heads admitting sunlight that striped Laela’s face and clothes. When she’d checked to be sure we were alone, she leaned close. I could smell the cosmetics on her skin, and when she spoke, I was reminded of the Attolian’s warm breath on my ear.

  “Nahuseresh is dead,” she whispered.

  For the second time that day a statement was too nonsensical to understand.

  “Poison,” Laela said, looking at my face for some comprehension.

  Dead. She meant, murdered.

  “His meeting was cut short. He came back to the apartments and called for the doctor but when the doctor came, he was already gone.” She turned my unresisting body away from her. “Go,” she said, putting her hands to my shoulders and pushing me down the serviceway. “Go.”

  I turned back, reaching for her hand, but she pulled it free. Her face was in shadow and she put both hands to her cheeks, as if to hide her tears. “Save yourself, Kamet,” she whispered.

  I nodded as tears pricked my own eyes and started moving, one stumbling foot in front of the other.

  “When?” I asked, over my shoulder.

  “Just after the noon bell,” she said as she, too, turned away, pulling the scarf at her shoulder to hood her face as she passed back through the curtain.

  I needed to make a plan, but my thoughts ran in all directions at once, like rats in a grain store when the door is thrown open. I considered the Attolians—I’d already guessed they meant to kill me, not set me free. Had they meant to use my disappearance to implicate me in the murder of my master? It made no sense. They’d wanted me to leave that night and while they might have wanted to murder Nahuseresh, they couldn’t have carried it out. I had been free to run errands in the city only because my master had meant to spend the entire morning with his brother. When his powerful friends had failed him, he had staked everything on the support of Naheelid, and he had been absolutely certain his brother would help him. If what Laela had said was true—if my master had returned directly from that meeting—then he had been fatally mistaken.

  My master’s brother was served by the emperor’s own servants, his food provided from the emperor’s own kitchens. The slaves who oversaw this process had served the emperor for years, and as most, if not all, would die with him—sacrificed at his funeral and buried in his tomb—they were fanatically loyal. There were only two men who could have poisoned my master—his brother, or the emperor himself.

  The reversal of my master’s plans in Attolia—that had not just been a personal humiliation. My master had showered the Attolian queen in gold, the emperor’s gold, and then had nothing to show for it. The emperor had committed troops on my master’s recommendation, troops that had been overwhelmed by the combined forces of Eddis and Attolia. Afterward there had been painfully expensive goodwill gestures to placate the Greater Powers of the Continent, alarmed as they were to find the emperor encroaching on what they thought of as their territory. It had been in every way a disaster, and every bit of it laid at my master’s door. He had since schemed tirelessly to restore his position and he’d failed. Failed utterly.

  I cast about for any possible alternative. My master could have been poisoned earlier, but he would have died more slowly. I had eaten dinner with him the night before, and I was fine. Neither of us had eaten in the morning—my master had ignored his breakfast tray, as he often did, and I couldn’t touch his leftovers if he hadn’t eaten first. He would hardly have taken anything on his way to meet with his brother. I retraced what I knew, reordering my knowledge, trying to deny my conclusions, but they were too clear. It was not as if the emperor hadn’t poisoned people before. There had been a number of imperial dinners that were the stuff of nightmares.

  Trying to move more quickly, but not so quickly as to attract attention, I was still turning at random, distancing myself from my master’s apartments.

  And from Laela.

  When a man is murdered, his slaves are tortured. If any confess, then all are executed whether they share in the guilt or not. No one will buy them and they can hardly be freed—what a temptation that would put before the enslaved population. In the case of a poisoning, where the administration of the poison is unclear, the slaves are put to death on principle. The Medes fear little in quite the way they fear their own slaves.

  The torture begins with the most intimate servants, the valet, the secretary. If a slave implicates another in his confession, the rest of the slaves will be fiercely interrogated as well, but if not, there may be no torture for the others, just death. After the recent beating, I would be doubly suspect, and if anyone had seen Laela warning me, she would be in greater danger as well. That it was the emperor who was guilty, that everyone would know it, changed nothing. We would be arrested and tortured not just into confessing, but also into implicating our fellow slaves—all of us judged an infection in the body of the empire, to be cut out at any cost. The houseboys, eight and twelve years old. Hormud, my master’s cook, and Mirad, his valet. The men in the stables, the dancing girls. None of them could leave the emperor’s palace. Of all my master’s slaves, on
ly I had that privilege.

  The only thing I could do for them was go. If I escaped, blame might fall on me alone. I might be a loose end that the emperor would tolerate—my successful flight bolstering an official story that I was involved in a conspiracy to murder my master, that the emperor had nothing to do with his death. A chance to die quickly instead of slowly was all I could give them.

  So I walked on.

  I hadn’t known my master was in such danger. I blamed myself for that. A man like my master is not eliminated without hints and foretellings running through the palace first, like a fracture through glass before it breaks, but I had been cooped up in my little alcove hiding my bruises. Had my master’s brother ordered his death, or had the emperor? Eternal gods, I thought, what if the emperor had turned against his heir and both he and my master had been killed? I shuddered at the chaos that could be coming to the entire empire and stumbled over my own feet.

  Laela had said that my master had died not long after noon. I’d heard the great bell ring just after I spoke to the Attolian—while I was laughing at him from the alcove. Who was laughing now? I thought, before I wrenched my attention back to the matter at hand. The wheels of the palace turn slowly, but they would be turning. I had some time, but not much, before the doctor would call Nahuseresh’s death poisoning and officially inform the emperor, and then the guard would be sent to arrest all of my master’s slaves. I needed to leave the palace before all the gates were closed to keep me in.

  I touched the pocket on my belt. I’d visited the tailor in the city that morning to order a robe for my master, one he would now never wear, and I had the money left over from that. My own savings, in the little bag inside my master’s cashbox, were out of reach. My scrolls, my own small damaged statue of Shesmegah, goddess of mercy . . . I dared not return to the apartments to collect any of my things, and I knew it, but my thoughts kept circling back to my little office alcove. I wanted so much to be seated at my slanted desktop, with my cot behind me and my account books in front of me, my only problem in life my master’s temporary dissatisfaction. My treacherous feet kept slowing down and I understood the impulse of small animals that hold themselves motionless until they are eaten. I felt a kinship for the rabbit sitting perfectly still, hoping that the lion would somehow pass him by.

  I lifted my chin, forced myself to move faster. I didn’t want to draw attention, and it was not like me to creep. I needed to move more briskly about my business. I passed a few other slaves without any acknowledgment, and they deferentially dropped their eyes.

  The serviceways, narrow and only partially covered, lay between the walls of various apartments and ran throughout the palace in an endless warren, their sand floors silencing the footsteps of slaves and servants who carried out the work of the palace out of sight of its privileged inhabitants. This was where the slop jars were carried, where the laundry went on its way from the beautiful apartments to the washhouses and back again. It was an easy place to get lost, with as many twists and turns as there were dead ends, but I had known this labyrinth since I was a child newly brought to the palace by my master. I was only an apprentice to his secretary then and had had plenty of time to learn every path through it.

  I passed into darkness where the passage was roofed over and then back into the sun as I turned this way and that, choosing the narrowest, darkest, and least-used route that would carry me toward one of the work gates where the wagons came in and out, carrying all that was needed for the inhabitants of the city inside a city that was the emperor’s palace. There were several such gates, but I wanted the one nearest the stables and the emperor’s zoo, with its cages of lions and wild dogs and other animals. I’d visited it often over the years, feeling sorry for the sad-eyed gazelles tapping nervously about, so near to their predators. There was a giraffe and several zebras, as well as lions and cheetahs. There had been a white bear once, a gift from the Braelings in the north, but it had died in the heat. My mind was wandering again, and I forced it back to the present.

  The narrow passages grew wider and became alleys between separate buildings. Where there had been apartments and gardens on the other side of the high walls around me, there were now storage sheds and dormitories. I came to open ground near the enclosure where a placid giraffe stood chewing as he gazed off into space. Between the animals in the zoo and the working animals in the stables, wagon after wagon of dung had to be hauled out every day, usually at about noon when the morning cleanout was completed. I didn’t use this gate often, but I would be allowed to pass through without question and probably without any notice so long as there had been no news of my master’s death yet, no call for my arrest.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped out toward the open gate.

  “Kamet,” one of the guards called like a curse out of a clear blue sky.

  Even before I recognized him, I smiled politely. Well trained, I would have smiled so at my executioner.

  “On your way out again already?” he asked. He’d been at the main east gate earlier that morning and we’d said hello to each other as I’d left to see the tailor. I brought up the story I’d prepared, just in case.

  “More orders for the feast my master plans for the emperor’s birthday,” I said.

  “Is it going to be as big as the one he sponsored before you went abroad?”

  “Bigger,” I said.

  “Will you get me onto the guard duty for it? We ate like kings at the last one.”

  I promised that I would, the lie easy on my lips, and waved a good-bye to him as I passed through the gate.

  I crossed the wide boulevard that surrounded the palace and headed directly into the narrow streets on the other side. In a few steps I knew I was out of his sight. I still hurried around several corners and deeper into side streets before I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I made my way to the tailor’s.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Gessiret,” I explained apologetically, “my master says that one set of robes is insufficient. He will want two.”

  Gessiret looked at me suspiciously, but I was used to that and so was he. Tradesmen have few means to force their powerful clients to pay their debts, and no one was more mistreated financially than the tailors. They are so dependent on their trade with the wealthy they can’t afford to offend even the most delinquent clients.

  “Two?” Gessiret asked.

  “Indeed, he will give you twice the sum we agreed upon.”

  “Very well,” said Gessiret. “He is good to bring us his business.” He was still waiting for the bad news.

  “It is a large sum, and my master will pay for the robes when they are completed.”

  Gessiret nodded fatalistically. “And he would like returned the money that you paid me this morning?”

  I nodded back at him, trying to look sympathetic. Gessiret knew I was lying but assumed it was on my master’s behalf. He thought my master had decided to put his cash to better use. Gessiret could refuse to return the coins, but he would offend Nahuseresh—and Nahuseresh was the rare client who paid his bills more often than not. Two robes was a substantial commission. Sighing, he reached into his cashbox. Together we nodded our heads and rolled our eyes at the ways of our betters—me knowing exactly how he felt, him thinking he knew how I did.

  I agreed upon a meaningless date for the robes to be completed and left. I had crossed the city to get to Gessiret’s little shop, focused on nothing but retrieving the money I’d paid him earlier that morning. Now that I had it, I had no reason not to face the truth I had been hiding from: I had nowhere to go.

  I needed to leave the city, but I could think of no way out.

  The imperial city of Ianna-Ir sits on the flat plain of the wide, slow-moving river Ianna. The city itself is surrounded by its famous copper-topped walls, many times the height of a man and wide enough at the top to allow two chariots to pass in opposite directions. Except for the riverfront and a smaller, unfortified area on the opposite bank, outside the walls of Ianna-Ir, there
are only open fields, irrigated by the river to provide food. There is nothing else for miles.

  As a slave, I could hardly ask a farmer with a cart for a ride out to the wilderness or downriver to the Ianna’s delta to board a ship. I was entrusted by my master with the freedom to move around the city, but not to leave it. The guards at the walls of the palace were used to seeing me come and go, but the guards at the gates of the city were not. I might cover the chain at my neck, but in my straight shift, with my legs bare, I was obviously a slave, allowed to pass through those outer walls only in the company of my master. If I approached the gate alone, I would be stopped and then returned to the palace to be tortured.

  I thought again about where I might hide inside the city walls. I had very little time and no one to turn to. I had done business with many of the merchants of Ianna-Ir, but no honest man would break the emperor’s law to hide me. I knew dishonest men as well, quite a few, in fact, but they wouldn’t risk the emperor’s wrath except for sums of money I didn’t have. The money from the tailor wasn’t enough to buy me any safety. It probably wasn’t good for anything except a last meal if I bought it quickly.

  My mind began to fill with visions of the rack and spikes, of instruments heated until they were red hot, of the barbed lash. These were the thoughts I’d tried to bury with memories of the Braelings’ white bear, and imaginary plans for a feast, and concern for my master’s other slaves, but all my other thoughts were retreating in the face of this remorseless horror. The sweat on my skin stung—I tried to breathe and heard myself gasping instead. I had to get out. I told myself I was too well dressed, much too respectable to be taken for an escaping slave—I had an embroidered shift and a gold chain on my neck, after all. I decided to go to the Iannis-Sa gate and try to brazen my way through. I would attach myself to the party of a wealthy man and hope to pass unquestioned. I started toward the south side of the city.