It was not a huge surprise to discover she was a thief, though it could yet be amusing. Daw watched from between slitted eyes in the dark, very aware that she had her hand in his bag. No kind of professional then, judging by the rustling. Not the sort to put a knife in his throat and take the whole pack and everything else she could remove from his person either. He’d been ready for that when she’d risen from the bed they’d shared, silent and careful, but not watchful enough to know he held a little razor, like a petal cupped in his hand. If she’d crept round to kill him, he would have surprised her, taught her a lesson. The sort of lesson that was always wasted.
Something jingled as she fumbled deeper in his knapsack. Daw tried not to smile as her shadow froze, the dark-haired girl turning sharply towards him, checking he was still asleep. That sound of coins would have brought him springing up out of the bed anywhere else, but not then. Somewhere in that drawstring pack was a trap he’d bought from his brother that very afternoon, a small and half-sentient thing that actually would teach her a lesson about stealing from sleeping men. Daw could feel himself practically shaking with the guffaw he would make when it sprang to life and sank its teeth into her flesh. Whoever reached into the bag would lose a finger, his brother James had said. Better still, the creature was not fully alive, being made of brass and animated. It needed no special care from the owner, beyond the single word Daw had learned to make it safe. After it had bitten, it would coil up wherever it was thrown, reset itself and be ready for the next time. For Daw Threefold, such a protection would surely be worth the torrent of silvers he had paid.
He opened his eyes a lot wider when Nancy pulled his coin pouch out and held it up to the starlight. He saw a flash of her teeth as she grinned and tucked it inside her blouse. Daw stared in stunned irritation as she shoved her hand back in, right to the bottom of the bag. Where was the scream? He had valuable things in there. If she didn’t yelp in the next few moments, he would drag her back to that lying brother of his and demand … He raised his head. There was not much light in the room, but Daw could see Nancy was holding up a lizard, cast in brass. He’d seen that Goddess-cursed useless thing creeping about on the worktop in the shop earlier that day, its tiny spiked feet rattling on the glass and mahogany. Of course it had failed. His brother had a weakness for deals, for fast-talking salesmen who sold him brass and called it gold, every damned time. Threefold clenched his jaw and his fists, feeling the petal dagger’s blunt side press into his palm.
With a lunge, he sprang off the bed, wrapping his arm around her throat and letting her feel the warm pressure of the knife. He found he was panting after so long controlling his breath. Daw turned it into a chuckle of relief as he tightened his grip.
‘Now what sort of girl steals from her lover?’ he said into her ear.
‘One who has no money, usually,’ Nancy answered. Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact, as if he did not hold a razor’s edge against her throat.
‘You don’t know how lucky you are not to be screaming at this very moment. I have a few trinkets in that bag to ward against thieves. One of them should have had your hand off. Did you know I’ve been watching you? I was just waiting for the lizard to bite, but it seems I was sold a fake.’
‘You are the fool then,’ she said. ‘Magic’s a game – for children and the gullible. For the mugs on the street. You’re not a child. Are you one of those poor fools? Let me go and perhaps you’ve learned something that will change your life, Daw Threefold. Magic? It’s all lies.’
He blinked at that, shaking his head. Despite his irritation, her claim was so outlandish that he wanted to prove it wrong. His uncle had told him once that people were more willing to believe big lies than small ones, but this was ridiculous.
He sat back away from her.
‘You were lucky, Nancy, that’s all. On any other night, you’d have lost a finger. You live in Darien, by the Goddess! We have streets of apothecaries – all with something to catch the eye in the windows. You must have seen something magical, some item or some spell you could not explain away.’
‘You have streets of fakery – and I grew up on the other side of the city, where we don’t hold with such things.’ She took a deep breath, as if it hurt her to speak. ‘In the rookeries along the river, all right? We don’t see fine magic displays around Fiveway or Red Corners. I saw a firebreather once, but he was dribbling down his chin, so I could see it wasn’t nothing magical. And I lived with a juggler for a month, though he was more a storyteller and pickpocket, if I’m honest. No magic in either of them, not if you don’t count the way they could separate fools from their money. I am not a fool, Daw! I am not a punter like all the fine families strolling along the ring road, taking in a show and talking about wine and … all that.’
He looked at Nancy then almost in concern. A slight flush had come over her as she spoke and she waved her hands. It was as if the delicate, laughing flower he’d met the previous evening had been nothing more than a creation, a part she had played.
‘Look,’ he began.
She shook her head.
‘I don’t know where you grew up, though you have that confidence that comes from always knowing you’ll be fed. I don’t resent it, Daw. The world should be like that, for everyone. But it isn’t. Perhaps you think the city is a place where the law counts for all and the Twelve Families spend sleepless nights worrying about the poor folk in the rookeries.’
‘You don’t know where I grew up,’ he said. She raised her head, waiting. He blushed slightly. ‘Yew Street, by the running track.’
‘How you must have suffered, Daw. I didn’t realise.’
‘There were gangs there, you know.’
‘No, Daw. Gangs are people who terrify you and cut you. They run the streets around Fiveway – and they don’t go near the fancy places. You have no idea, really.’
He frowned at her, irritated that he felt the desire to prove he’d grown up in poverty, which he hadn’t. His mother and father owned their home, even if the paper was peeling and they’d seen a rat once. He suspected if he mentioned it, Nancy would counter with some awful story about eating them.
‘If your rookeries are such a delight, why are you on this side of the river?’ he said.
‘I came over when the fever was running through the docks. Too many dead bodies and no one to clear them away. I didn’t see much magic there then, with children lying in the sun, and the flies buzzing around them.’ She shuddered, her gaze turning inward. ‘I thought it would be cleaner in this part of the city – and I was right, too. They don’t let the bodies lie for as long anyway, not around here. I work hard for Basker and he doesn’t touch, which makes a change. If I see a young man I like, perhaps I’ll let him buy my drinks and sweep me away for a night. I’m not complaining, Daw. You were much slower the second time.’
Daw stared at her. It seemed rude to be still brandishing his knife, so he began to clean his nails with it.
‘You must have seen magic, though …’ he went on doggedly, determined to make her admit it.
Nancy sighed.
‘I don’t waste my money up in the high streets, Daw. Where a sticky bun would cost me a day’s wage? You’ll be lucky. I save every coin and one day I’ll have enough to buy a room or two somewhere, all because I did.’ She clamped her mouth shut on the last words, as if she’d gone too far in revealing herself.
To his irritation, she leaned forward and rested her hand on his arm, speaking slowly as if he was the deluded party.
‘Punters lose their purses every day, gaping at some street magician. It’s all tricks. Tricks of the hand and eye only,’ she said. ‘Shall I make a coin vanish for you? I can do that. Learned it from a kid.’
As he watched, she held up a coin and moved her hands over it, finally pointing to one hand with the other and opening both. It was quite well done. She looked utterly calm and faintly pitying. Daw found he wanted to persuade her, if only to dispel what he realised was a full-blown fantasy. As a public service, perhaps, or because he really, really wanted her to understand, that he was right and she was wrong.
He could think of three ways without moving from that spot. Daw smiled, putting his knife in a pocket and pulling his knapsack closer. He tapped the bulge of another canvas pocket on the outside.
‘I can show you magic, Nancy. If I do, I will expect an apology.’
He was about to undo the ties when he hesitated. Could this have been her game all along? To make him reveal his most powerful objects? Well, by the golden teats, that would have included the biting lizard. He’d paid his brother a fortune for it, after all. As she sat and looked at him with one eyebrow raised, he held out his hand, pointing to her blouse. She fished it out from the depths and handed it back.
Nervous at first in case it sprang to life, then with a deepening frown, Daw felt only the stillness and heft of a piece of inert metal. He rapped it sharply on the bedpost, then sat back cross-legged to drop it into the main body of his knapsack.
‘Nancy, I would have turned you out with my heartfelt thanks this morning – and perhaps enough coin for a good meal. Darien can be a hard old place to make a living – and believe me, I have been down just as far and at least as often as I’ve been up. If you had been straight with me, I would have seen you right. Instead, you tried to rob me – and by the way, you’ll return that pouch hidden in your blouse as well unless you want me to take it back. Come on. Don’t make me show you the petal again.’
‘Show me the magic first,’ Nancy replied, patting her open blouse where the coin purse had slid down. ‘And I have a knife too, Daw. You caught me by surprise before, but I’ll trim your ears for you if you try it again. Still …’ She hesitated and in the starlight Daw thought how young she looked. ‘I’ve always wondered. I’ve seen the witches and apothecaries, the charms so many people carry – and they all seem to believe in it, but all the while I know it’s just a lie. A great lie that perhaps no one ever challenges because if they did, the whole city would come crashing down.’
‘If I show you something magic, will you give me my pouch back?’ Daw asked. His mum had always said he was weak on negotiation. He felt he’d somehow lost the advantage in the conversation, but still, he had a magic item she wouldn’t be able to deny, and while she stared at it, he’d have his knife back out. He hadn’t enjoyed the comment about trimming his ears for him.
‘I will, Daw. And I can say that, ’cause I know I won’t have to. You have yourself a deal. Show me magic and get back your purse …’
‘My pouch, Nancy. It’s not a purse.’
‘… or fail and let me keep it,’ she finished, putting out her hand as if to shake on a deal.
Daw shook hands with a pained expression. Not that it would matter in the end.
‘Light the lamp and run the wick high then, love. I think I have something that will expand your mind.’
The lamp was still warm and there was a steel and flint box chained to the dresser. Nancy spun the wheel with her thumb and blew on a spark in the pouch of tinder until she had a taper lit and then the oil wick, filling the room with golden light.
Daw looked up at that, sighing to himself at the slim figure she made. She sat facing him on the only chair in the room, crossing her feet at the ankles like a fine lady and leaning over them to rest her elbows on her knees. He could not help smiling at her seriousness. He even gestured, flourishing in the air, pointing to the two objects he had removed from his pack. One was just a small box, decorated in gold and onyx. The other was a sheathed dagger, no longer than his thumb, but worth more than everything else he owned put together, just about. He thought he could have bought that tavern and half a dozen homes around it for the price he would receive for that particular blade. It was the reason he had spent another small fortune on a pointless guard lizard that did absolutely nothing of use.
‘Oh my dear, my darling Nancy, you have come to the right man tonight. Perhaps you look at me and see merely a dashing adventurer …’
‘Perhaps,’ Nancy murmured.
Daw stopped speaking long enough to grimace in her direction, knowing she made sport of him.
‘… which I certainly am. Yet in these past few years since my eighteenth birthday, I have become a very connoisseur of magic. An expert in …’
‘A “very” connoisseur?’ she said, smiling. ‘I don’t think that is the right way to say it. You can be very brave, or very handsome …’
‘And I am both of those – and yet impatient. Do not forget, Nancy, that I could have cried “thief” as soon as I saw you reaching into my bag. You would have lost your job here, let me tell you. Basker doesn’t allow thieves in his place. Instead, I am here, doing you a favour and answering your life’s great question, once and for all. If you will consider my extraordinary patience and not interrupt me every second word, you will perhaps learn something.’
The last was said in peevish style and she settled back and folded her arms at him.
‘Very well, Daw, I will not interrupt again.’
‘I should think not.’ He picked up the box and held it before her. ‘This was made by a blessing, so I was told. The magic is set into the stones and has lasted for … three years now. It will be about a dozen before I have to bring it in for repair.’
Nancy leaned forward, her eyes reflecting the gleam of the lamp.
‘And what does it do?’ she asked in a breath.
Daw found he was enjoying her complete attention and briefly wondered if the earlier part of the evening was at an end or, like the lamp, could yet be rekindled. He resolved to be pleasant, just in case.
‘It is much like a compass, though it will point towards a particular man, with just a drop of his blood. I have used it many times and it has never let me down.’
‘You track men, Daw?’ she asked.
He shrugged, modestly.
‘I do many things. And I have many ways to do them. Sometimes, those I follow are not kind enough to leave me a scrape of their blood and then I have a few other tricks. But this finder will face its quarry no matter which way I turn it. Here, give me your hand.’
Nancy held out her hand easily, though she hissed and drew back when he touched her with a pin drawn from his lapel. Grumbling under her breath, she squeezed the fingertip until a bead showed red and bright. Daw smeared it with his own finger and flipped open the box, revealing a tiny golden disc with what looked almost like a sail in the same metal, spinning idly on some arrangement of gimbals below. Nancy looked at it in pleasure, knowing that it was a fine piece even without the lies and tales. She watched as Daw touched the tip of the sail with her blood and then held it up in something like triumph, turning the box this way and that while she watched him and wondered if she should run for the door or risk the sash window being jammed.
‘Wait … no. Look, it is turning … no!’ Daw fumbled with the box, opening and shutting the lid and tapping it with the side of his hand.
‘Yes, I see it turning,’ she said, unimpressed. ‘It’s a pretty thing, Daw.’
‘It doesn’t work! It doesn’t turn the way it should!’ he said, truly distressed and for the first time touched by panic. He hardly dared look at the knife he had laid out.
‘Goddess, I have to know …’ he said.
He tossed the box over his shoulder as if it was worthless, reaching for the sheath. Nancy froze as he drew the blade, curved and short and wickedly sharp. The hilt ended with an inch of polished ivory or bone. A single letter gleamed there in dark yellow resin, like an ancient ink stamp. To Nancy’s astonishment, she thought she saw colours flicker along the length of the weapon, purple and gold and enough to elicit a cry of relief from Daw Threefold, before the cruel-looking blade went dark and the colours faded back to grey iron.
As she watched, he dragged the blade across the bedclothes, leaving a crease.
‘Oh Goddess, what have you done?’ Threefold whispered to her. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ His eyes searched hers and she saw betrayal and true anger in them. ‘How are you doing this?’
‘I saw the colours, Daw,’ Nancy said. She shifted position subtly, ready to leap up and run or defend herself if the wild man holding a dagger suddenly lunged at her. She had not lied about her own knife. It pressed still against the small of her back.
Daw’s mouth opened and closed as he stared at the dull blade.
‘The colours?’ he whispered. ‘They were nothing. This knife … it can cut through anything, Nancy. Or it could, before. Stone, iron, bone – anything at all, with a firm push and a bit of muscle. It has saved my life …’ He looked up and his eyes were hard. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’
‘You blame me for your fancy things breaking?’ she said.
Her legs bunched on the chair and she edged forward, her left hand ready to reach behind. Daw was paler than she had ever seen him, but also colder. There was no sign of the grinning young man who had been easy with his flattery and his boasting earlier that evening. Instead, he looked at her and held the knife upright, as if he could not quite decide whether to stick her with it or throw it across the room like the compass.
When Nancy moved, it was just as he looked away. If he’d hesitated even a single heartbeat, she would have been across the room and out of the door before he could catch her. Yet he had given her the opportunity deliberately and moved to block even as she came out of the chair. She flinched away from the blade then, turning straight into a left-hand cross that crashed against the side of her head, leaving her unconscious on the wooden floor.
Daw’s eyes widened as he saw she’d been knocked cold. It was not his finest moment, though he didn’t care in that instant, not really. The rawness of his loss consumed him.
Slowly, he sat back down on the bed and rubbed his jaw with his bruised hand. In the other, he was still holding the knife he had stolen from a dead man’s home, risking his life to get in. The old man had been a famous collector, the unmarried youngest son of House Saracen. Daw had raced across Darien to loot his home before anyone else thought of it. He’d nearly been caught even then, almost breaking his ankle getting out. He’d escaped just as guards of the Saracen estate secured the property, one of his earliest and most enjoyable adventures. They had never even reported the theft.
With a glum expression, he tried to saw the end of the bed with the Saracen blade and watched as it barely scratched the wood. The knife had been in a glass case in the very centre of a room in that old mansion. With house guards blowing whistles outside, he’d smashed the glass and grabbed for it, just hoping it would be worth his while. It had been. The mark on the hilt showed what it was: one of the twelve great treasures of Darien.
He’d never dared sharpen it, for fear of ruining whatever spell had been used in its creation. It was surprisingly blunt as he drew it back and forth. Without the magic, he might use it to slice through a loaf of bread perhaps, but not much else. He slumped. That little blade had been given pride of place for a reason. It had been Daw’s secret advantage in the city.
In his world, things could go wrong in an instant. When they did, it was usually a short and violent disagreement. Men like himself sometimes had to draw a good weapon when they were threatened; that was just the price of doing business in Darien. Three times he’d been cornered over the years. Twice when he was where he should not have been, the last by a competitor. On all three occasions, he’d cut his way out, literally. The knife had saved him and he had a reverence for it. Seeing it dead and grey was like losing a good friend.
His eyes widened. What if it was a local effect? As soon as the thought registered, he was desperate to find out, his heart tripping hard in his chest. He glanced down at Nancy’s unconscious form and muttered a curse. He could not let her just slip away when she woke. Whatever was going on, whatever had happened to his knife and his blood-dial – and to his lizard bag protector – it needed more measured consideration, no matter what he intended. He drew his spare bootlaces from his knapsack and tied her hands and feet with quick efficiency.
He closed the door to his room behind him as he came out. He couldn’t lock it from the outside and he winced at the thought of all the other things in his pack. Darien was a great city, both a joy and a riot, at least as full of life as a leg of pork left too long in the sun. It was not a forgiving place, however, not of mistakes. There was always someone willing to leave you in the gutter, delighted to have had a better day than you. Perhaps he had grown up in Yew Street, on the nice side by the running track. Perhaps he had eaten jam and bread for tea each day and had two loving parents. It had not made him soft, he was certain.
Daw ran then, loping along the corridor and down the steps to the main floor of the tavern, passing a dozen cramped tables jammed in to give as many punters seats as possible, then out of the door to the street while old Basker shouted about paying his bill behind him.
Every twenty or thirty paces, Daw stopped and jammed the Saracen knife against some post or along the side of a passing wagon. Even in his distress, he was not such a fool as to reveal the Family sigil of the hilt, not on a public street. He kept that hidden in his palm as he struck out with it.
Early as it was, he still drew some strange looks and left two annoyed carters shouting after him as he went on. Yet it might as well have been a spoon for all the damage it did. The effect looked permanent and hope shrivelled in his chest as he turned at last and trudged back. In that moment, he could have killed her for what she had taken from him. He wore seven charms on his person that morning. He could feel the dead weight of them as he wandered along, made cold and empty.
‘Threefold! I thought you’d run off!’ Basker called as he came back into the taproom, already growing crowded.
Daw always stayed in the Old Red Inn whenever he was in Darien. It was clean enough and quiet. Basker was ex-infantry and a good man in a pinch, though he didn’t believe in credit and seemed to react to the idea as if he’d been asked to join a new religion. Daw shrugged at him, then paused with one hand running along the polished wood of the bar. Basker hadn’t waited for his answer, having gone back to taking orders and bawling them through to his wife in the back as she sizzled eggs with small pieces of shell and burned strips of meat in the tiny kitchen. It wasn’t even full light outside, but Basker’s place was near the city wall and Daw knew the farmers liked to set out before the sun was up, to make the most of it. He sighed, thinking of the young woman in the room overhead who had taken so very much. A great sense of sadness and loss stole over him, like an odour of spices.
Daw Threefold had not been born to real money in Yew Street, no matter what Nancy thought. His parents hadn’t had enough to pay for proper schooling, though he’d learned his letters and some history from a lodger one year. At twenty-four, Daw was not a wealthy man, but he had turned years of work and a fair skill for thieving into valuable pieces, all small enough to be carried on his person. All powerful enough to aid him in the getting of more. He had been on his way to a small fortune and a complete lack of fame when a single night of roistering with Nancy had set him back to his eighteenth birthday, just about. Without his coins, without his knife or his compass or his charms, he had very little to show for six years in the city, beyond a few scars and the tip of one finger gone. It was heartbreaking, and he looked up as the tavern clock chimed.
Daw grew still then, seeing the clock Basker had been given on his retirement. It was just a painted face that hung from a silver chain off a roof beam, perhaps the height of a man above the bar. You could see such a thing in any market, with a tiny blessing charm on the crystal behind. It kept good time and showed hands as lines of light that glowed but did not burn. Daw had glanced up at it a hundred times before, whenever Basker called last orders, though never with such complete attention as he did then. It was a magical item, admittedly cheap and tawdry, no sort of reward for a twenty-year man like Basker. Yet it swung in the same building as Nancy – and it still worked. Local effect. Had to be.
With one swift move, Daw leaped onto the bar, jumping up and snatching the swinging clock from its nail. Basker gave a great roar of confusion and rising anger as Daw scrambled down with it held to his chest and raced back across the tavern, staring at the clock hands as he went. The door to his room was perhaps some dozen paces away and a flight of stairs above.