In addition to the cloak, she wore rather plain brown clothes and scarred knee-high boots. She was no longer the teenager she'd been when Wick had first made her acquaintaince but the years had been kind to her. She also carried more throwing knives on her person than anyone Wick had ever met.
“Greetings, dear Wick,” she said, smiling with real affection. She grabbed him and hugged him, then glanced at Craugh and back at him. “I didn't know you were coming along on this trip. At least, not this part of it.”
Sonne was one of Brandt's Band of Thieves, a ragtag group devoted to stealing from the wicked and evil to build a war chest to make a bid to get Brandt's kingdom back from the man who murdered his parents.
“Craugh never mentioned that you were to be part of this either,” Wick said.
Sonne grinned broadly. “According to Craugh, there's quite a fortune waiting
to be claimed for any who's careful, quick, and greedy.” She cocked her head to one side. “That fits us in every way.”
“How long have you been here?”
“For days. Ever since Craugh sent a message by way of a Dread Rider.”
Wick looked at Craugh. “You didn't think to tell me this?”
“You've been busy working on this problem with your own special talents,” Craugh said. “I saw no reason to distract you from what you were doing. Nor was your knowledge necessary.”
“With Craugh planning to rob the house of a wizard,” Sonne pointed out, “who else would he call on?”
That was true. Wick sighed. He should have known Craugh wouldn't have walked into Torgarlk Town on his own.
“Did you track the goblinkin that attacked us at the Big Ol' Bear's Tavern?” Craugh asked.
Sonne nodded. “After the two that lived recovered, they went straightaway to Kulik Broghan's house.”
“Kulik Broghan?” Wick put in.
“The wizard who currently holds Boneslicer and Seaspray,” Sonne said. She grinned impishly. “Of course,
that
won't last much longer.”
“Brandt has a plan?” Craugh asked.
“Brandt,” Sonne said, “
always
has a plan. I think you'll like this one. Cobner even likes it. A little.” She clapped Wick on the shoulder. “Having Wick will not only be like old times, but it will make our task easier.”
“Easier?” Wick repeated.
Easier
generally meant things were more dangerous for him.
Easier
generally meant risking his neck first before all the others risked theirs.
Easier
generally wasn't
easier
at all. “Maybe we should rethink the situation if having me here is going to make things
easier
. Maybe we should just go along with the plan the way it was originally conceived.”
Back when I wasn't here to make things easier.
Sonne laughed. “Come on.” She linked her arm through Wick's. “The others will be glad you're here. Cobner especially. He always enjoys your visits.”
Wick had mixed feelings about seeing Cobner again. Back in Hanged Elf's Point, in the Serene Haven Cemetery where the Keldian mosaic puzzle had led them, Wick had saved Cobner's life. Maybe. That was the way Cobner told it, and in every telling Wick got braver and braver. Instead of merely taking an arrow in the posterior, Wick usually defeated six or eight warriors in single combat, then somehow managed to leap out and catch the arrow in his teeth to save Cobner's life. The romance writers on the shelves of Hralbomm's Wing had nothing on Cobner's tall tale-telling.
But looking at Sonne's winning smile, Wick knew he couldn't refuse.
“All right,” he said, and walked with her, hoping that the short walk didn't lead him to his doom.
“Cake! That's What This Will Be!”
B
randt and the Band of Thieves took one whole floor of the building where they were renting rooms. Since there were only four rooms on the floor, that wasn't as impressive as it sounded.
The human who rented the rooms to the thieves knew something was in the wind, but he was an old hand at criminal activities and his price had been met. In addition, Sonne had said, Cobner had offered to slit his throat if he ratted them out.
Inside the building, Sonne led them up two staircases to the third floor. She paused at the closed door and held Wick and Craugh at bay with a raised hand. Cautiously, her left side turned to the door, she used the thin handle of a throwing knife to rap on the door.
The cadence was one Wick knew the thieves used when they were on operations. He recognized the answering signal when he heard it, then Sonne pushed the door open and went inside.
Hamual, tall and lanky, his light brown hair hanging down into his gray eyes, wore a mustache these days, but still looked younger than his years. He had the soul of a poet and Wick had taught him how to play a lute. Today he wore a warrior's light leather armor under his long cloak. Before Brandt rescued him and brought him into his little family of thieves, Hamual had been a slave. Cuffs covered the scars on his wrists.
“Look who I brought,” Sonne said, gesturing to Wick.
“Wick!” Hamual exclaimed in delight, then knelt on one knee and hugged him.
Touched, and a little hurt to see how much the boy had become a man in his absence, Wick returned the hug. “Hamual, you're looking fine.”
Breaking the embrace, Hamual pulled a flute from his cloak. “I've been practicing.” He fingered the instrument and fit it to his lips. Instantly, a happy tune piped through the hallway.
“Yes,” Wick agreed. “You have been. You'll have to show me what you've learned.”
“A few things, though probably nothing you've never heard. The Minstrel Ordal teaches me songs now and again when we happen to meet him in his travels.”
“He's a good teacher,” Wick agreed. “He'll instruct you more than I ever could.”
“Perhaps,” Hamual said. “But it was you that taught me to love making music.”
Face reddening with the praise, Wick said, “The music was always within you. I merely pointed out to you what it was.”
Karick, an older, heavier human stood guard on the door with Hamual. His hair was dark brown but was shot through with gray these days. He was usually taciturn and quiet, a man given to deep thoughts, but he nodded and smiled and greeted Wick.
At the far end of the hallway, Tyrnen and Zelnar, twin dwarven pickpockets, kept watch through a window overlooking Kulik Broghan's house and the harbor.
“See?” Zelnar, or maybe it was Tyrnen, asked, slapping the other twin. They were young and usually in one trouble or another. “I told you I thought Wick was with Craugh.”
Tyrnen, or maybe it was Zelnar, rubbed his shoulder and frowned. “I didn't say he wasn't.”
Wick exchanged greetings with both of them, got their names sorted out, and was pulled into the nearest room by Sonne.
“Wick!” Cobner bawled as soon as he saw him. The dwarf thundered across the floor and grabbed Wick up in a bone-breaking embrace.
“
Can't breathe
,” Wick said with what little breath remained to him.
“It's good to see you, too, little warrior,” Cobner said. He was a little shorter than Hallekk but broader across the shoulders. Scars creased his broad face, running into his sandy-gray beard.
“
Can't breathe
,” Wick repeated, growing desperate and slapping Cobner on the back in an effort to get him to loosen his grip.
Cobner slapped Wick on the back as well, mistaking the effort. “You're a sight for sore eyes, you are.”
Just before he was about to pass out from not breathing, Wick was released and stood on unsteady legs. Black spots danced in his vision.
“You feel like you're getting stronger,” Cobner said, pinching Wick's bicep. “Have you been working out? Doing the exercises I told you to do?”
Wick thought about all the running he'd been doing for the last month or so. “Yes.”
“Well, it's been working wonders on you,” Cobner said. He was bound and determined to turn Wick into the fiercest dweller warrior who ever lived. “Whatever you're doing, keep it up.”
Spotting a chair, Wick stumbled over to it and sat. He gazed around the room and spotted Brandt sitting behind the big desk littered with small wooden models. At the same instant he saw they were models, Wick figured out what they were models of.
Kulik Broghan's house was reproduced there, down to the gargoyles on the high retaining walls.
“Greetings, little artist,” Brandt greeted. He sat at ease in the chair on the other side of the desk. Dressed all in black, even down to kidskin gloves, he cut an imposing figure at a glance. But only when he wanted to. When he wished to disappear in a crowd or even alone in a street at night, it only took him a heartbeat to do so.
When he was playing a role for some con or scheme or theft he'd dreamed up, Brandt oftened passed himself off as nobility. He came by the title honestly. His father had been a baron in the Sweetgrass Valley before being murdered by the current self-styled king. Brandt's black hair was carefully coiffed and bangs hung down over his close-set black eyes and thin nose. His black eyebrows turned his eyes into hollows of black fire. His black goatee jutted arrogantly.
Little artist
was the nickname Brandt had first given Wick when he'd met him back in the slave pens of Hanged Elf's Point. Brandt had been there casing a possible job and had happened to catch Wick working on the homemade journal he'd fashioned while aboard
One-Eyed Peggie
after being shanghaied in Greydawn Moors. The master thief had flipped through Wick's journal and thought him an artist at first, but had reasoned that there was more. At the time, Brandt had needed someone who knew art, and he'd purchased Wick and set off the adventures that had led them to the Broken Forge Mountains and the deadly encounter with Shengharck.
“Greetings, Brandt,” Wick replied, leaning in with interest and studying the model. “Kulik Broghan's home?”
“It is,” Brandt said, smiling. “A close approximation, at least.” He regarded Wick with keen interest. “And how is it you're here in Torgarlk Town? I wasn't informed that you were going to be coming.” He glanced up at Craugh.
Brandt was the one person Wick knew that was almost as innately curious as he was. “It was a last-minute decision.” Wick pushed himself up from his seat. Now that he was puzzled, his shortness of breath and dizziness were of secondary importance. “So Kulik Broghan is the target?”
Smiling lazily, Brant flipped over a hand and said, “The man does appear to have what we're after. And we're determined to change that.”
“How?”
“Cake!” Brandt said enthusiastically. “That's what this will be!”
Wick brightened a little at that, but he'd been around Brandt and the Band of Thieves long enough to know that even the best of plans didn't always turn out well.
“Speaking of cake,” Cobner said, rubbing his big hands together briskly, “Lago said something about the food being almost ready. Let's have a look. See if Wick can still come close to eating me under the table.”
“We've been here for six days,” Brandt said. “As soon as we could get here after getting the offer from Craugh.”
“Offer?” Wick sat in the dining room they'd arranged in one of the rented rooms. The thieves had brought in two long tables and they now stood laden with food that Lago had prepared.
Lago stood nearby, a smile beaming on his ancient, seamed face. He wiped his big hands on an apron. As long as Wick had known Brandt, Lago had cooked and baked for them, always preparing meals wherever they ended up. Age had bent his body and robbed it of strength, but he still knew his way around a kitchen. Part of their leasing arrangement had included use of the kitchen, whichâLago had informed Wickâwas nothing to be proud of. But he'd turned out a fine meal. Wick had seen the old dwarf do the same thing with nothing more than a camp cookfire.
“An offer,” Brandt affirmed. He shrugged a little, enjoying the telling of the tale. “Knowing that his adversaries partially consisted of the Razor's Kiss, Craugh knew he would have to eventually have thieves.”
“It did,” Craugh added, “seem prudent.”
“And it was. Since Craugh knew that Boneslicer was probably in the Cinder Clouds Islands, and that Sokadir still held Deathwhisper somewhere in the Forest of Fangs and Shadows, he had us on hand in Calmpoint.”
Wick chewed a delightful raspberry-nut cake covered with hickory-honey and sweetened peppers that burned just enough to tantalize the palate before the cake extinguished the flames.
Calmpoint made sense. It was at the other end of the Steadfast River. The Never-Know Road crossed the river twice early on and ran parallel at other times. A fast, determined rider could make the distance between Torgarlk Town and Calmpoint in less than three days, but a trade caravan would take weeks to negotiate the rough terrain.
“Once Craugh discovered the weapons had been brought here,” Brandt said, “he asked us to come. And here we are.”
“The weapons are there?” Wick asked.
“They are.”
“You've seen them?”
“I have.”
“How?”
Brandt smiled. “Why, I was invited, of course. After all, I'm Baron Lorthord, a collector of fine and unusual weapons.”
“Baron Lorthord?” Wick repeated.
Brandt sipped his wine and picked at a piece of turkey breast. “Yes. A very rich and influential man. From the Spoonhorn Pass.”
“A good choice,” Wick said. “Spoonhorn Pass is on the other side of the Broken Forge Mountains and is supposed to be a gathering place for the rich and indolent. I knew you'd gone there because you told me tales of the city. But who is Baron Lorthord?”
A wide smile split Brandt's face. “Why,
me
of course. I am Baron Lorthord. After we looted what we could of Shengharck's treasure and retreated from the Broken Forge Mountains, we went to Spoonhorn Pass and lived extremely well for a few months. With all the gold at my disposal, becoming Baron Lorthord was
an easy task. A lot of people who live there were someone else before they arrived. Most of the gold they bring to the city wasn't originally there. In fact, while we were thereâas I have doubtless told youâwe saw two blackhearts get their just desserts. One was overtaken by a group of men he'd robbed, and the other was robbed by good-hearted thieves who stole back the money he'd taken that had left a poor town behind.”
“I take it you charged a commission?”
Brandt laughed. “Of course. No one does that kind of business for free. Not even good-hearted thieves. Trust me, those poor people were grateful to see their treasures returned to them. Even after subtracting the commission.”
“So you entered the premises as Baron Lorthord,” Wick went on.
“You should have seen it, Wick,” Sonne gushed. “It was one of Brandt's most masterful performances. He played every inch the fop and had Kulik Broghan eating out of his hand.”
“Tell me about Kulik Broghan,” Wick requested. Giving up after finishing his second big piece of cake, he leaned back in his chair and took out his writing utensils. As he talked and listened, he drew the faces of his friends and some of the details they brought out regarding Kulik Broghan's estate.
“Kulik Broghan is a collector at heart,” Brandt said. “A greedy man by nature. He fancies himself something of a wizard as well, I suppose, because one of the things he collects are spellbooks from dead wizards.”
“A very dangerous preoccupation,” Craugh said, frowning.
“Perhaps,” Brandt agreed. “But every safeguard can be beaten. Provided the proper motivation and the right tools.” He cocked an eye at Craugh. “Even yours.”
Craugh sniffed in disdain. “We'll see.”
“When that day comes,” Brandt said, “
you
won't be here to see. If there's anything too dangerous to be left lying about, any spells or secrets, you'd be better served taking them to the grave with you.”
“Duly noted,” Craugh said.
“Why is Broghan interested in the weapons?” Wick asked.
“Primarily,” Brandt said, “I think it's because they are a set. A trilogy of known death-dealers, if you will. They were all carried by fallen heroes.”
“Sokadir hasn't fallen,” Wick pointed out.