Malden shook his head.
“That images of lust were an offense before the sight of the Lady. I told him, of course, that I am not a worshipper of his new religion. He informed me, quite politely, that in times of war the Lady’s favor was to be sought by all people. Believers and nonbelievers alike.”
“He truly is a zealot,” Malden said, and new hatred burned in his heart for Hood. The people of the Free City of Ness had always in the past been granted a certain measure of religious liberty. Clearly Hood intended to revoke that freedom.
Malden wondered, though, if this attack were purely motivated by faith. It was too well calculated to hurt him as well. It was well known that Cutbill made more money from his investments in the Royal Ditch than he ever had from direct thieving. The gaming houses alone made Cutbill rich. Now that he had inherited all those accounts, perhaps Hood intended to beggar him by cutting off his sources of revenue.
Herwig exhaled noisily. “You need to do something, Malden. You need to help me. You and I have never been close. But you are a friend to every working woman in this city-or so I’ve heard. Demonstrate that friendship now.”
“I’d like to,” Malden said, playing for time to think. “I have my own problems, you know.”
It seemed Herwig would brook no excuses. She rose from the chair and headed for the door. Before she left she turned back to stare at him. “I’ve always found men to be useless when real needs arose. It’s why I never married any of them, and instead found ways to make my own place in this world. For once-just for once-I hope I’m proved wrong.”
She left before he could promise anything. Herwig was a shrewd woman, and he doubted she would have believed anything he said anyway.
He was visited twice more that night by the madams of other houses, who told similar tales. It seemed Pritchard Hood had been very busy. The only house that hadn’t been visited by the watch on some trumped-up pretext was the Lemon Garden, which gave credence to the theory Hood was trying to bankrupt Malden before he slaughtered him. In desolation, Malden did the only thing he could, and turned back to the cipher.
He made no progress at all. He worked well into the night and nothing came to him. Slag returned and kept him company, for which he was grateful. Yet Malden’s frustration had grown to the point where he was afraid he would lash out at even his most faithful friend if he wasn’t careful.
“It’s gibberish!” he howled, tearing a sheet of parchment into ribbons and casting them into the air. They fell like the fluttering leaves of autumn. “There are just too many characters. Or too few. If it was two ciphers intermixed, there should be forty-four characters. But there are only thirty-seven.”
Slag looked up from the plate of sops he’d been eating. “Thirty-seven?”
“Yes!” Malden, exasperated, grabbed up the grammar book he’d been using. “Which makes no sense at all. The alphabet of the Old Empire uses twenty-nine characters. Even in the Northern Kingdoms, where half their letters are draped in umlauts and circumflexes and diacritical marks no one can even remember how to pronounce, there are only thirty-one. There has never been a human alphabet in all our history that used thirty-seven marks, not even if you include full stops and question marks and the like.”
“Not a human alphabet, no,” Slag said, “but-”
“It’s useless!” Malden shouted, and threw himself full length on the bed, crushing his wasted parchments and staining his tunic with ink. “Cutbill didn’t want me to break this. I see it now. First he sent an assassin to slaughter me. When that didn’t work, he gave me this job knowing I would foul things to the point my own thieves would turn on me. And he left a maze of meaningless characters for me to lose myself in, and waste so much time I would miss the killing stroke when it came.”
“No, lad, I don’t fucking believe it for a moment. He wanted you to solve this riddle. He knew what tools you would have on hand-Coruth, to teach you of ciphers, and, well, me.”
Malden sat up suddenly. He said nothing, for fear of interrupting Slag.
“There are thirty-seven runes known to the dwarves. Exactly thirty-seven,” Slag said in a very, very quiet voice.
Malden got to his feet and walked over to where the dwarf sat in the chair, the plate of milky bread in his lap. He started to reach for the dwarf’s shoulder.
He was stopped because there was a knock on the door. Before Malden could answer it, the door flew open and he saw Velmont standing there. The Helstrovian thief looked like he’d run all the way from the wall-he was gasping for breath and sweat slicked his face. “The thief-takers’re at it again,” he announced.
“Who did they get this time?” Malden asked.
Velmont wiped at his mouth. “Loophole,” he said.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Croy knelt low in the brambles by the side of the road. He could see very little by the thin sliver of the moon, but every time a weed stirred in a night breeze or an owl swept down from the trees on some vicious errand, his whole body tensed and his hand tightened on Ghostcutter’s hilt.
He had only a few troops at his disposal that he could count on not turning around and running at the first sign of danger. He was making a terrible mistake, and he knew it.
He had his orders.
From the trees well south of his position, he heard the cawing of a crow, and knew the time was coming soon. Crows flew by day, and slept at night, like reasonable creatures. That call was the signal that riders were approaching from the direction of Redweir.
There would be four of them, he knew. Four quick scouts, headed back to Helstrow with the news of Redweir’s capture. They would not be Morget’s best warriors, nor would they be berserkers. He was relatively sure of that.
Before long he heard the sound of their hooves chewing up the half-frozen road. He did not see them until they were nearly at the trap. “Now,” he whispered, and behind him there was a sudden, violent motion.
A stout rope leapt out of the road, trailing dust, and snapped taut at neck height. It ran all the way across the road, and if you didn’t know it was there, it was almost impossible to see. It caught the first rider and yanked him backward out of his stirrups to crash on the ground. His horse kept going. The second rider reacted in time not to be throttled, but did foul himself in the line. The barbarian grabbed for a knife to cut himself free.
Behind him two more riders slowed their mounts to a stop.
That had gone far better than Croy had dared hope. Of course, it wasn’t over yet.
What if the message they carried was in the saddlebags of the first horse? he wondered. He would never be able to catch the animal in the dark. If it was smart enough to run all the way back to Helstrow But there were more pressing concerns. “To arms!” he bellowed, and all around him torches flared to life. “Soldiers of Skrae, to arms!”
Croy’s company swept out of the trees, pikestaffs and bill hooks jabbing at the mounted men. Croy unsheathed Ghostcutter and ran toward the man who had fallen. He could see well enough now to count the crosses on the man’s neck, one for each time he’d gone reaving. How many villages had this barbarian put to the torch? How many women had he defiled, how many innocent throats had he cut? He was struggling to get up, to even roll onto his arms. His legs weren’t moving at all-perhaps his back was broken.
Croy had his orders. Ghostcutter flashed down and cut through the man’s throat, almost deep enough to behead him.
The snagged rider wheeled his horse and drew an axe with a long haft. Moonlight shone through quatrefoils piercing the blade. Ghostcutter rang as it parried the first stroke. The rider hauled backward on his weapon to recover and Croy moved in, stabbing upward. The rider fended off his blow, but only by blocking it with his forearm. The sword bit deep into the man’s flesh and blood spattered Croy’s face.