The Merchant of Sanukawa (Novella) (Thieves of Askaria Book 1) Read online

  “Kovit’s lair?” Adusa asked quietly.

  “I expect so,” his friend smiled.

  Rishi immediately crossed over to the room’s only door, his footsteps muted by a plush rug.

  Adusa couldn’t help but laugh. “For a champion of a reckless god, you sure are meticulous Rishi.”

  “The prepared thief lives longer,” the other man said, almost as if he were quoting someone. As he spoke he tried the door lever, but it too didn’t budge.

  Adusa left him to it. The bookcase looked far more interesting. He began to fill his pockets with a few of the more valuable ornaments. None would fetch a fortune, but along with the treasures they had liberated the previous night, they would provide a sizeable nest egg.

  “The door is deadbolted from the other side,” Rishi reported. “Too near the frame to fit a saw.”

  “We’ll have to go back out into the alley and find another way in then,” the tall man replied.

  Nodding, Rishi began to move back across the room, then stopped at a large desk opposite the bookcase. “Do you see anything interesting on the shelves?” he asked.

  “A few trinkets,” Adusa shrugged. “Nothing of any real value in here.”

  “You may be wrong there, my friend,” the other man replied. “We’ve not yet looked everywhere.”

  “Oh?” He turned to find his friend staring at a tapestry behind the desk. Sometimes he really didn’t understand how the man’s mind worked. It was a pretty tapestry, but surely the ornate desk was of greater interest. He was about to ask what Rishi was thinking, when the thief flipped the wall hanging aside and pulled on a cord hidden behind it. There was a soft click, then one of the wall panels shifted aside, revealing a row of liquor bottles and a tray of crystal glasses.

  Adusa stifled a chuckle. “We’ve no time for a tipple, Rishi,” he admonished.

  “Do you know, my friend, that Muzirian craftsmen are the leading manufacters of hidden sliding panels, fake-bottomed drawers and other secret caches?”

  “Are they?”

  “Indeed. We also do great business in hiding hidden switches in hidden compartments,” Rishi said, then reached behind one of the ensconced bottles, and with a another click, a second panel slid aside below the first, revealing a well organised filing cabinet.

  “You wasted your youth, Rishi,” Adusa laughed.

  Crouching down in front of the cabinet, the talented thief pulled a compact little lantern from one of his pockets and then lit it with flint and firesteel from his tinderbox. Shielded on three sides, the lantern’s pale beam of light cast in only one direction. He paged quickly through the titles on the spines of the folders, picking out a few that caught his eye.

  “Is that really going to be worth anything?” Adusa asked, leaning against the front of the desk.

  “Honest men don’t hide their records in walls,” Rishi answered. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He opened one of the folders at random, scanning quickly over the page he had come to. “This is an invoice from a toolmaker to make modifications to two dozen scales.”

  Adusa laughed. “That certainly proves how fair his business dealings are, but how does knowing that get us any profit? We’re not really in a good position to attempt blackmail.”

  “You may be right,” the other man conceded, “but it’s still rather interesting.” He pulled out another folder, this one bearing the title of “Shen”. After reading for a moment he continued. “This is a record of meetings between the merchant and the men who aim to assassinate the royals. It seems that Kovit is their sympathic ear in the city. He’s supporting their effort.”

  “That is interesting!” Adusa exclaimed, stepping around the desk to get a closer look.

  “Then I think you will really like this,” Rishi said, passing him another page from the folder.

  “Our Kovit really is a most interesting man,” the tall man said once he’d skimmed over it.

  Shoving the handful of files he had removed into his vest, Rishi replaced the other folders and slid the panels closed. “It seems quiet outside now. Let’s get moving.”

  Nodding his agreement, Adusa passed the piece of paper back to Rishi, who tucked it away with the little lantern.

  The bearded thief moved quietly over to the window and, pulling aside the heavy drapes, looked out to check for any sign of the guards. The alley was quiet and abandoned. Holding the window open, he motioned Adusa through before climbing out himself, pressing it closed as he went.

  As soon as his feet were back on the ground, Rishi moved straight to the kitchen door. He briefly examined the crack alongside the lever, then pulled a small foldaway saw from a vest pocket.

  “It will fit,” he whispered to his partner, crouched beside him, then started gently sawing at a deadbolt on the other side. After a tense few moments, the bolt gave way with a small twang.

  He was just about to try the handle when someone cleared their throat behind him. The thieves whirled around. Rishi met the hawkish eyes of a man with massive moustache, his hand resting on the hilt of a long sword scabbarded at his waist. Arraigned in a semi-circle around them were a half dozen more hard-faced men—the Shen.

  “My name is Ruang, and you should not move,” advised the Shen chief. “A well trained Shen warrior can draw his weapon and cut a man clean in two in a single motion taking less than a second. You are within the range of our blades. We are all well trained Shen warriors.”

  Seeing them comply, Ruang motioned to two men standing to his right. “Lead,” he said curtly, and then to thieves, “Follow behind them.”

  The warriors led the way back down the garden path, heading toward the outbuilding under the tall black wattle tree. The Shen hadn’t bothered to take the thieves’ weapons, but with the knot of men walking behind them, each with a hand on the hilt of their sword, it seemed to make little difference.

  Reaching the end of the path, one of the men eased open the door of the little building, revealing a plain, low-roofed room. Its undecorated, whitewashed walls were bathed in the bright light of a lantern hanging from the ceiling. Piled up sleeping pallets and a basin of unwashed dishes gave the room a lived-in look. On a small table, encircled by low stools, was a mismatched collection of half-full beer mugs.

  The thieves were directed to sit down on the floor in an open space next to the door, their backs to the wall. The warriors then pulled the stools closer, and sat down across from them.

  “Kovit told us that the king’s spies had tried to enter the house last night,” Ruang said to them, “and he said that he thought you may try again, but we had not expected you foolhardy enough to return the very next day. A fatal mistake.”

  “King’s spies?” Adusa asked incredulously. “Why do you think we work for the crown?”

  “You waste your time denying it. I am not easily fooled.”

  Rishi chuckled. “We’re thieves, and no ally to their majesties, as your man can confirm.” He pointed to one of the men sat alongside the chief. “Your name is Chatri. We saw you this very afternoon in the guard captain’s jail.”

  Chatri looked back at him in surprise, his eyes widening as he recognised them. “It is true,” he said to his chief. “They were prisoners in the jail I escaped from.”

  Ruang stared at the two men for a while, more fully taking in their appearance. “I see. Kovit must have been mistaken then.”

  “It would be very strange for foreigners to be spies for the king,” mused an old warrior sitting to the left of the chief. He considered the thieves with an angry scowl.

  Ruang nodded. “That is also true, but it is very hard to believe that thieves would be determined enough, or foolish enough, to try to steal from the same house twice in two nights. You may not be spies, but I don’t believe you are simple thieves either.”

  “It doesn’t matter what they are,” said the angry old warrior. “They will get in the way of our task. We cannot let them leave.”

  Ruang nodded again. “Kovit has been a good ally. It wo
uld not be gracious to allow those who steal from him to walk free.”

  Rishi smiled. “We never said we weren’t spies as well, though perhaps that is more a hobby now.” He reached into the pocket where the small lantern had been secreted, and withdrew the piece of paper he’d found earlier. “You were fooled after all,” he told Ruang as he passed it to him.

  Ruang unfolded it and quickly scanned through the contents. His normally stoic expression quickly shifted to shock, and then to blind rage. “Kovit has deceived us,” he told his companions, making an obvious effort to keep his voice calm.

  The other warriors clustered around him, all trying to read the letter as well. “It is an order to the tax collectors, instructing them to raise the tax against the farmers, and it bears the mark of the councillor,” the chief explained to them.

  “I knew we couldn’t trust that merchant,” said the old man, his eyes blazing. “Every night people come to his house and they go down to that basement. I saw them! They dress in black robes and wear hoods. What honest people would do this? I said they would betray us!”

  “The king is innocent then,” said Chatri.

  “Where did you find this,” another of the warriors asked, looking over at the thieves, but they were already gone.

  The waxing gibbous moon hung low in the western sky as the two men jogged back across the rear garden. As he rounded the corner into the alley, something caught Rishi’s eye.

  “What’s the matter?” Adusa asked from where he stood waiting beside the kitchen door.

  “Adusa,” he said softly. “The wall in the kitchen is straight isn’t it?”

  “It is,” the other man confirmed.

  “And the walls along the sides of the hall are diagonal?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there are no doorways set in either wall, excepting the door in the little corridor that connects the rooms?”

  “Yes, yes, Rishi, there are no other doors. Why all of these questions?” Adusa asked.

  Rishi looked over at him with a smile. He could see his friend was becoming impatient, but he couldn’t resist teasing it out. “As we snuck out of the cottage that old warrior mentioned a basement. Where do you suppose that basement could be?”

  “I don’t know, but we haven’t got time to be worrying about that right now. It will be dawn soon. We need to look for the orb,” the tall thief said exasperatedly.

  “Our sense of the gem’s location lead us straight to the shelf the fake gem was on,” Rishi continued doggedly. “If there were a basement directly below the hall, and the real gem were in it…”

  Adusa’s scowl shifted slowly to comprehension. “That would explain why our sense lead us to the fake!”

  Rishi turned to the wall beside him. “And unless builders in this city have a reason for leaving large empty spaces between their walls, I expect we’ll find a stairwell hidden here.”

  “That must be where that man appeared from last night!” Adusa said excitedly. “The entrance is in the hall.”

  Rishi’s smile broadened. “Let’s go and steal a little piece of the power of the gods.”

  Adusa slipped quickly through the kitchen door and, with Rishi in tow, padded noiselessly across the darkened room. This time they didn’t pause to barricade the other doors, instead going straight toward the little corridor that led to the hall. With time running out, they couldn’t afford caution.

  The door swung open silently, and then they were in the dark interior of the high ceilinged hall once more. They rounded the spiral staircase to the left of the doorway and walked over to the wall beside it, empty but for a tall, painted wall hanging. The tapestry showed a long river, lined on each of its curving banks with golden temples and palaces, wooden huts and the green fields of farmers. In each part of the riverside town were tiny figures, acting out their role in the ancient community.

  “Can you find the switch?” Adusa asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  In response, Rishi drew aside the tapestry, and slowly ran his hand over the surface of the wall behind it. Finally after carefully checking the whole area, his eye settled on a slightly uneven board in the floor at the base of the wall. He stepped down on it firmly. They heard a muted clunk, then a section of the wall slid away soundlessly on a well-oiled mechanism.

  Beyond lay a small, low-roofed chamber. The only illumination was a weak, flickering light that poured from a narrow stairway. Leaving Rishi to slide the door back into place behind them, Adusa crossed the rough, stone floor and started down the steps. Halfway down, he came to a landing—and also the source of the light. Set into a bracket on the wall was a sputtering, tar-coated torch, a wisp of thick grey smoke rising up from it.

  Adusa paused in front of it. “I’ve never seen one of these used before,” he said as the other thief caught up. “I didn’t realise they smelled so bad.”

  “They’re still used at the great sandstone temples at Ertu,” Rishi whispered back. “The priests are great traditionalists. They say oil lanterns just don’t have the same atmosphere.”

  His eyes starting to water, Adusa turned and continued on down the stairs, a little more quickly now. When he finally reached the bottom, he found himself in a long, gently curving corridor. The walls, floor and roof were all clad with rough, grey stone slabs. To his dismay, the corridor too was lit by the sputtering torches. These were not however the corridor’s most striking feature.

  Running along the floor was a long, plush, black carpet, and on the wall, alternating with the iron brackets the torches were placed in, were a line of wall hangings—also black, but with a dark purple trimming. On every surface, stamped, stencilled or embroidered, was the same emblem, a complicated design with a stylised eye set inside a hood, and circled by a maze of concentric lines.

  “Definitely the place,” Rishi chuckled softly. He motioned toward a wooden door, half hidden in a recess at the base of the stairs. “Let’s take a look in there first.”

  Adusa nodded and turned back to try the door. He pushed down on the handle and the door swung open.

  A small man in a black robe looked up from where he was sitting on a stool beside the door. “You’re late,” he said. “Hurry up and get your robes on. You’ll still have time to catch the end.”

  Lowering his head apologetically, Adusa decided to take the man’s advice and grabbed a robe from the long rack that took up the whole wall of the tiny little cloakroom.

  “That will never fit you,” the little man said, springing up from his stool. “The other side. Get one from the right. That’s where the biggest ones are.” He lifted a robe from the very end of the rail and passed it to the tall man. “And for you,” he said to Rishi, taking a robe from a little nearer the middle, “here take this. Now hurry and go. The master won’t be pleased if you miss his speech.” With that he hustled the two men back out into the corridor and shut the door behind him.

  “That was convenient,” Adusa grinned as he began to slip the robe on over his clothes.

  “He has a great eye,” Rishi remarked as he examined his robe, “it’s a perfect fit.”

  “I wish I could agree,” the tall man said drily. He looked like someone who had put on a younger sibling’s clothes by mistake. With a sigh of resignation, he raised his hood and set off down the corridor, pointedly ignoring his friend’s sniggering.

  Soon the thieves began to hear a booming voice, growing louder as they advanced.

  “…have destroyed the pirate encampment and executed their leader. Believing us their allies, they were entirely unprepared for the assault. Their destruction was absolute. The report from our agent also confirms that the mercenaries we hired seized every one of their ships and have delivered them, as promised, to the port of the Crimson Sail.”

  Padding along soundlessly on the carpet, Adusa came to a wide, arched doorway. He crouched down beside it and peeked inside. He saw a large open chamber, similar in dimension to the hall on the floor above, but the ceiling was low, and, like the
corridor, all was clad once more in the irregular stone slab. The décor too matched the corridor. There were plush carpets and tall tapestries in blacks and purples, and, on everything, the hood and eye emblem. The room was filled from wall to wall with people—all of them wearing hooded black robes.

  The owner of the booming voice stood at the opposite end of the room, but was mostly hidden from Adusa’s view by the sea of darkly dressed men and women, easily two score in number. The speaker had the voice and manner of a man used to addressing large crowds, speaking easily and without need for pause. “With that our bargain with the Crimson Sail pirates is complete. They are sworn to harry only the shipping of our rivals, and will escort ours safely through the lawless waters of Port Klang.”

  This announcement was met by a round of applause and a few calls of appreciation, the sound echoing off of the stone walls. Taking advantage of the clamour, Adusa rose and slipped smoothly into the rear of the crowd, taking up the applause as he tried to blend in.

  “Basking in the favour of great Mask, He of a Thousand Schemes, we have successfully realized every ambition of this endeavour. The last obstacle that stands between us and complete domination of the ocean trade routes is now gone. The Lantau and Muzirian filth won’t be able to compete with our lower prices, and will slowly be driven from the market, bringing ever more wealth to our great city,” he boomed triumphantly.

  Moving slowly through the crowd, Adusa finally got a clear view of the man—a striking figure who gesticulated wildly as he spoke. He too had on a black robe, but over it he wore a light, decorative cuirass, finely worked in gold and silver. It was matched on his shoulders by a gleaming pair of spaulders. To this was added a long, crimson cloak with a voluminous hood and, peeking out from beneath it, a shining golden mask. It was wrought in the shape of a man’s face, but where nose, brow and cheekbones should have been, was instead just a single large eye.