THE CARNIVAL JOB

THE CARNIVAL JOB, by Mark Finn, artwork by Miguel Santos

 

The city-state of Alvara (also called Highgate) wasn’t known for its hospitality, nor its charity. For the past several hundred years, swords and soldiers were its primary export; the standing army, fifteen thousand strong, routinely strained the coffers and kept the legion of tax collectors overworked, and ironically, underpaid. All of this martial fervor only increased the desirability of living within the city-state’s broad reach. Consequently, the miscreants and shitheads of the realm were actively discouraged from plying their trade in the area, lest they be rounded up and pressed into service, sent to maintain order at the Kavir Pass, or worse, inveigled into paying off their debt to society by working for the very people bankrolling the war effort. Plenty of Old Money families needed a cook, a wetnurse, or some other more menial member of the household staff. More than one convicted thief had been known to beg for mercy by being thrown into prison to serve out their sentence, to no avail. The prisons in Alvara were famously empty.

Well, mostly. There were some people who could not be trusted with a commission in the infantry, and they weren’t fit for hard labor behind the lines. The very idea of ensconcing them into a noble household to buttle or work the scullery would have caused far more problems, for they were political prisoners; spies, organizers, and couriers caught red-handed in the fulfillment of their duties, namely, the weakening of the strength of the glorious City-State of Alvera. Thievery or assault might earn you a year’s hard labor, and you may even die defending the border, but fomenting unrest…ah, now there was a truly heinous act. Anyone caught sowing the seeds of such dissent and chaos quickly learned that the only thing to be gained from such activities is that one was never seen again. Saboteurs and spies were never given the chance to do anything except tally the passage of days by watching the sunbeam crawl across a stone floor and think on what it was that put them there in the first place.

I had been in captivity for just under three months when I received my first visitor. He arrived with a brace of city guards and two lickspittles dressed in scribe’s robes who kept their eyes on the floor at all times. It was Relaggio, the Regent’s righteous right arm, and if you can say that three times fast I’ll tickle your unmentionables. He was the person they sent when it wouldn’t do to get blood on any of your political heroes’ hands.

The guards unlocked my cell and came in first, their crossbows leveled at my chest. Relaggio followed them in, and we pretended that I wasn’t a sudden, violent sneeze away from a slow and painful death from a couple of sucking chest wounds. He stared at me, his arms crossed, looking me up and down, while his left index finger tapped absently on the boiled leather vambrace that he wore on his right arm. A duelist’s rig. It’s how he got the job in the first place.

I decided to break the silence first. “Would it help move this along if I protested my innocence?”

Relaggio’s lip curled and he said, with quiet composure, “Don’t be fatuous, Larcen. You know damn well why you’re here.”

I felt like smiling but I managed to stop myself. “Yes, I know, but I wanted to hear you accuse me, just the same.”

Instead, Relaggio nodded to the door and dismissed the guards. He shut the door behind them and then turned back to me with murder in his eyes. “You stupid fool!” he hissed.

Chains or no chains, I was ready to throttle the fastidious little prick. “Back up. Start over.”

He retreated to just outside of arm’s length before continuing. “You and your merry band of ne’er-do-wells had one job. One! And thanks to your team’s incompetence, my plan came apart at the seams, and the assassination failed. Now he’s tripled the guards around him!”

“Not my fault,” I said, “it was a shit plan. You don’t have the head for this.” I waited until he cued up a pithy rejoinder to deliver and cut him off. “And I told you so at the time. Now, here we both are. Me in chains and you no closer to your stated objective.”

He stopped, his mouth open, and then he sagged for one second, but it was a satisfying second. Relaggio would never admit to my face that I was right; that slump of the shoulders is as good as I was going to get.

“So, what brings you down here?” I asked. “Come to let me out? Apologize for my wrongful imprisonment?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said. The smile returned and I realized he had another cunning plan, and that it involved me.

“My dear cousin is the worst kind of political idiot,” Relaggio said. “He’s incredibly lucky, and he attributes that luck to cunning strategy and skill. Now that the Regent has thwarted his would-be assassins…” he didn’t even pretend to hide the fact he was talking about me and mine. He continued, “… he’s not only convinced he’s making the right decisions, but he’s doubled down on his military cutbacks.”

I waited. Very soon, he would give me the chance to say ‘no’ to whatever was rattling around in his pointed little head, and then I could go back to marking time on the flagstones.

“The people love him, especially the nobles. He’s easy to influence. So, any public act of violence or an accidental death, will only make a martyr of him.” Relaggio gave me a knowing smile. “But a political fuck up? A grievous error in judgement that reveals a cavalier lack of statecraft? He won’t be able to recover from that. They will have to remove him from his position.”

“You’d wager war with the other four city-states just to get your cousin out of office?” I asked. “To what end?”

“Not that I’d expect you to understand the intricacies of politics, but if we continue to make nice with the Rockjaw Dwarves in the north, we will have to thin the ranks of the military. If we’re the primary power in the realm, it keeps everyone else in check. If we aren’t, then one of the other city-states will try to fill that position. And then there will be bloodshed, with us caught in the middle.” Relaggio shook his head. “Highgate may be overbearing, but we are the devil they know. And they pay us well to be their first line of defense in the Kavir Pass, among other places.”

I knew where this was heading, but I wasn’t going to make it any easier for him. “Get to the point, dammit.”

“Very well,” Relaggio said, reaching into his square belt satchel. He withdrew a folded sheaf of paper and handed it to me. “Look that over,” he said.

I looked. Pardons. Signed by the Regent. All they lacked was some proper names and the royal seal. “Okay,” I said, “I’m assuming this is for me and my crew?”

“Something like that,” Relaggio said, “but you’ve got to make good on your promises this time. Steal the treaty papers. Replace them with the pages I will give you. Get out without being seen. Do this for me and you go free.”

“With a full pardon,” I added. “That’s the important part.”

“Yes, yes, with the pardon.”

“The full pardon.”

“Damn you, Larcen,” Relaggio said. “This is why no one likes you.”

“Shows what you know. I’m a fucking delight.” I handed the papers back. “But you’re not doing me any favors, you know. Gods Week is a month away, and the treaty will be signed at the end of it. In the meantime, there will be layers upon layers of security, all looking for trouble. How do you propose I thread that particular needle?”

“I have no idea. As you say, I don’t have the head for this.” Relaggio’s smile was full of ‘fuck you.’

I sighed. “How about a starting place?”

Relaggio pulled a leather-wrapped glass flask from his belt and took a healthy swig.  He offered it to me and said, “Well, Castus was always a really big fan of the circus.”

 

***

 

I had some conditions. We needed coin. And I needed a crew. And we needed a bankroll in order to set everything up. Relaggio gave in way too easy. I knew this was going to blow back on me like piss in the wind, but I didn’t care. Anything to get me out of the dungeons.

We walked, with me still in shackles, to another part of the prison. Nicer, less shitty-smelling. Where they keep the better class of assholes who break the law. We stopped in front of a wooden door with iron bands. I held up the manacles and he unlocked them. “I’d better go in alone,” I said. He didn’t argue; just gave me the key to the door.

Ferrah was standing to the left of the door as I opened it. I saw her shadow and let her come; she threw the chain between her wrists around my neck and yanked me backwards. The door slammed shut as we rolled to the ground, her knee jammed into my lower back. I tried to wave her off, but she was locked in. With the tunnel closing in on my vision, I threw up one of our hand signals and she stopped trying to break my neck long enough to say “Larcen?’ It wasn’t much of an opening, but I got my fingers under the chain and pulled her off me, heaving her sideways. I’d hoped she’d cracked her skull on the stone floor, but she rolled into a crouch and planted her back legs, readying a three point lunge. Three months in the hoosegow hadn’t dulled her wits.

“You sonofabitch,” she hissed between gasps of breath. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Locked up same as you, you little asshole,” I gasped back. “Was that tumbling routine your idea of a jailbreak?”

“Well I couldn’t rely on your tactical expertise,” she said, standing up and dusting herself off.

“And then what? You’d get ten feet down the hallway and end up with so many arrows sticking out of your ass, you’d look like a porcupine.”

Ferrah sat down on wooden lattice that served as a bunk and folded her arms. “Let’s just skip all of this and get to the part where I tell you to go fuck yourself.”

I forced myself to smile at her. “I once thought as you did, about a half an hour ago.”

“Yeah?” She sniffed and spat on the floor. “What changed your mind?”

“Full pardons. Traveling coin. And a chance to do the job right. My way. Our way,” I amended.

“It’s not an action?” she asked.

“No,” I told her, “It’s just a piece of work.”

Ferrah stood up and stretched. “Okay, I’m in,” she said.

“Like you had another option,” I said.

Ferrah smiled that smile that said ‘I know something you don’t know’ as she walked by me. “You smell like old ass, by the way.”

That’s Ferrah. If I didn’t need a mummer for this crazy scheme, I wouldn’t have bothered.

 

***

 

Relaggio gave Ferrah and myself an Imperial purse; one hundred gold each. Every coin stamped with the official crest of Alvara, long may the Regent Reign, and so on and so forth. We cleaned up, bought new clothes, ate a decent meal, and discussed my plan, all under the watchful eye of a trio of guards, loyal to Relaggio, who held their ashwood crossbows like a lover. They were under strict instructions to hold back and not engage with us unless we tried to run away. Then they could shoot us. Relaggio wasn’t taking any chances. He needn’t have bothered. We weren’t going anywhere. He still had the pardons to hold over us, after all.

“I don’t like it,” Ferrah said, after I’d explained it all to her. “You’re relying on Relaggio’s intel and look where that got us last time.”

“No,” I said, “we were hired hands for Relaggio’s overly-complicated and clumsy assassination attempt. There’s a difference. This is us, doing what we do best, and able to improvise if things get cocked up.”

“When things get cocked up,” she corrected.

“The trouble with you is that you don’t believe in anything,” I said.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” She spread her arms wide. “So, you know we’ll need more people. Who do have in mind?”

“So far, only you and Thurl.”

“Thurl?” Her eyes widened and she chuckled. “That figures. What’s he going to be?”

“The strongman,” I said.

“Of course,” she said.

“Of course.”

 

***

 

Thurl wasn’t hard to find. Whenever he wasn’t indulging his larcenous impulses, he was always able to find work lifting and toting things. It was what he did. We strolled down to the docks, with the cordon of guards trailing behind. The Mad River ran down from the mountains surrounding Highgate and made its winding trek south and east. The docks were built on the widest part of the river, and included a wide, tall footbridge that spanned the length of the waterway for troop movements. It was impressive engineering, made less interesting by the amount of gold it cost and the number of lives it took to build.

Thurl was working the South End stables, tending to the drayage teams. He picked up a bale of hay in each of his tremendous hands and dropped them over the five-foot-high stone enclosures, whistling as he did so. Between the stable stink and the fish sweat coming off of the flat barges offloading their catches, the air was stifling.

“Thurl!” I called out.

He turned, saw me, and broke into a run., Thurl at a dead run is a terrifying thing to have coming at you. I never asked him who the giant was in his family tree, but there was definitely some kind of firbolg in the mix, to be sure. Thurl scooped me up in a hug and lifted me two feet off the ground so he could look me in the eyes. “Larcen! You’re not dead!”

“Not yet, buddy. Can you please…?” I nodded at the ground and he obligingly dropped me. He shook Ferrah’s hand, firmly, but coldly. They got along, mostly for my sake.

“You got something for me?” Thurl’s voice was pleasantly deep. “We going back to work?”

“Can you get out of this?” I asked, nodding at the horses.

“Oh, yeah, it’s not a problem. I’m ready to work again.” His expression turned serious. “But not like last time. Last time was bad. You got caught. It was a dumb plan.”

“It won’t be like last time,” I told him. “I promise.”

“What are going to do?” he asked.

“We’re going to join the carnival.”

Thurl grinned wide enough to swallow a chicken. “I like the carnival.” He turned around and yelled out to someone we couldn’t see, “Thorson! I quit!”

 

***

 

Warren Street was a seven-block long collection of shanties, dilapidated buildings, and gods-awful cooking smells. It was as close you could get to the Western Gates without being in the barracks, and about as far away from Market Street, the City Well, and legitimate business as they could be. Highgate was just as cavalier with the gobs and hobs as the other city-states; maybe a little more up front about the open disdain the upper crust maintained for anyone they perceived to be beneath them.

Ferrah knew this neighborhood better than me, so I let her take the lead. We looked dangerous enough that none of the goblins giving us the side eye tried any of their usual gambits they reserved for trespassers. I couldn’t be sure, but a few of them seemed to catch Ferrah’s eye and give her a nearly imperceptible nod. Professional courtesy. I kept my hand on my purse, all the same.

We turned left into a narrow alley, dark as midnight, the buildings so close together we had to turn our shoulders once or twice. There were sounds up ahead, and dim light. We walked until it became claustrophobic and then the stink of goblin-saturated air greeted me. I breathed in deeply, and briefly considered turning around and going back down the alley again. Ferrah said something in Gob, and the crowd of goblins playing dice by the light of a barrel fire stopped their cackling and stared at us in unison.

“Ah, shit, Ferrah, what are you doing?” I murmured, my hand straying to the pommel of my Jassiri dagger.

Ferrah stepped closer to the brace of gobs and they parted from the middle, revealing two goblins with shit-eating grins. They did that thing goblins can do where they move between the blinks of your eyes and leapt into her arms, laughing as she embraced them both.

I waited for the reunion to die down. It took a minute. The three of them were talking a mile a minute, in gob, no less. The rest of the goblins went back to rolling bones, now that our bona fides had been established. I watched as their conversation turned to include me, with the goblins staring at me with accusing eyes. The red-haired goblin with the mohawk asked Ferrah a question. I can’t really speak their language, but I’ve picked up a few things here and there, as an occupational hazard, but even if I didn’t know any of the vocabulary words, his tone was universal: “Who’s this asshole?”

Ferrah stepped up and back to properly introduce me. “Larsen, this is Clork and Pliff Punchsack. Clork, Pliff, this is Larsen. The guy I told you about.” She caught Pliff’s wrist as he reached for his knife. “Nope. We’re all good, now.”

“Charmed,” I said.

“Back atcha,” Clork replied, his voice a raspy croak.

Pliff, the one with a receding hairline and a ponytail, hadn’t quite forgiven me for past transgressions; he addressed his question to Ferrah. “So, this is about a job?”

She nodded. “Larsen has a gig put together. We need your specific skill set, and then some.”

“What’s our share?” Clork asked.

“If we do what we’re asked, we’ll end up with around a thousand royals each.” Clork’s eyes widened. “And if we do it smartly, we can pull down ten times that.”

“Each?” Pliff said. Apparently, we were suddenly square.

“Each.”

“We’re in,” Clork said.

“Don’t you want to know what we’re doing?” I asked.

“No need,” Pliff said. “For that much gold, we’re up for anything.”

Clork nodded. “Anything,” he repeated. They disappeared into the darkness of the alley without a backwards glance.

Ferrah punched me on the arm. “Didn’t I tell you?”

The punch hurt. I held it in. “Would Pliff really have drawn on me?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “He’s had a thing for me for years.”

“Great,” I said. “I’m not going get any sleep during this whole week, am I?”

Ferrah pursed her lips. “Personally, if I were you? No, I wouldn’t risk it.”

 

***

 

The Theran calendar is a real piece of work. Each of the twelve months is thirty days long, and in between Growmoth and Longsun there are five extra days called Gods Week; ostensibly a long religious holiday to honor all of the sevenscore religions in the Five Great City-States. Everyone participates, even those from whom the gods hold no fascination. Five days of rituals and ceremonies, promises renewed, and followers gained and lost as Gods Week is considered the only time it’s theologically acceptable to change one’s patron deity without fear of celestial reprisals.

It’s also an excuse to feast every day, throw elaborate parties every night, and justify all kinds of questionable decisions on the bacchanalia. The very least of these transgressions was an uptick in marriages, followed just as quickly by lots of church-sanctioned annulments. Other, more questionable and less legal endeavors are ofttimes carried out as most thieves, assassins, and grifters operate under the delusion that their luck is demonstrably higher during Gods Week. I’ll save you the mental anguish and answer that imponderable for you right now: it’s not.

Castus Vex, the Regent of Highgate, was known for his Gods Week parties and not much else. As politicians go, he was little better than a spoiled rotten man-child, and his popularity amongst the citizenry was a constant source of speculation in the songs and poems penned by the minstrels. And yet, as ridiculous as he was, to miss Castus’ Gods Week party, or worse, not get invited, was seen as an unrecoverable slight, a social throttling that some noble houses never came back from.

That was our in.

Relaggio added our names to the roster of traveling carnivals and troupes of performers that ringed the octagonal courtyard in front of the Mayoral mansion on the last day and night of Gods Week. Getting through the gates and into the private and exclusive carnival was by invitation only. Vex spent a shit-ton of gold setting up a simulated cul-de-sac behind high walls and guard towers so that the stinking rich swells could pretend to be normal people and get their palms read, play games, and drink in public, just like the commoners.

Getting us installed with the rest of the talent was the end of Relaggio’s actual usefulness. I managed to convince him to call off the watchdogs, as it wouldn’t make any sense for a troupe of performers to have heavily armed guards bird dogging our every step. Once we could all operate in relative anonymity, everyone got to work.

Thurl was in charge of setting up the wagon and the horses. I started a whisper campaign about Captain Argento’s Cavalcade of Wonders and implied that they were the quite renown in both Farington, and Dimnae, where tastes were more rarified and discriminating. Pliff and Clork were put on procurement duty, and they proceeded to filch and pilfer everything they couldn’t buy for silver. Ferrah was tasked with intelligence gathering, so she stayed in the city.

We relocated to one of the abandoned mining camps north of the city. There was a lot to do, and we needed privacy to do it. The set-up exhausted our bankroll at the end of the first week, which send Pliff and Clork in search of coin or food for the rest of us. Using most of the random smattering of ingredients they brought back, Thurl set about to making a large pot of sack stew that turned out surprisingly well.

That evening, Ferrah returned to camp, her expression grim. “We’ve got a problem,” she said.

Thurl shot me a worried glance. I said, “What’s the deal?”

Ferrah helped herself to a bowl of stew before answering. “Your timeline won’t work. And we need one more. And we may not be able to do it, even then.” She sat down heavily on the rough-hewn slabs of stone we were using for furniture. “Basically, we’re fucked.”

“No, we’re not fucked. You just can’t see a solution to our problem. Yet,” I said, poking the air with my finger for emphasis. “Lay it out for me.”

Ferrah inhaled the stew, set the bowl aside, and wiped her chin on her sleeve. “Okay, where to start?” She started ticking points off on her fingers. “First off, the Regent doesn’t spend but one hour in the carnival, sometimes less if he’s bored.”

“Second, while he’s touring the little carnival, the guards man the turrets on the wall and security basically doubles, both inside and out. Getting in is going to suck.”

“And thirdly, the lockbox is stored in the safe in Castus’ study, and said safe stinks of magic.” She sat back, smug in her assessment of things. “So? As you can see…we’ve got a problem.”

“See, this is why you’ve got those lines around your mouth,” I said. “All this negativity.” I sat back on my boulder and rubbed my eyes. “Okay, from the top. One hour or less is simple if we change the timing. It’ll be more work, but it’s manageable.”

Ferrah looked skeptical. “Second…the guards? Pfft. Forget about it. The Punchsack brothers can sneak by any guards with their famed and revered goblin quickness.” Clork and Pliff beamed. I had been kissing their asses all week in the hope of staving off being murdered in my sleep. So far, it was working. “It’s not a problem unless we make it a problem.”

 

 

I gave her “the look” and glanced over at the gobs. She knew what I was asking. Could they be trusted not to drop any bodies? Her shrug made it clear I was going to have a sit-down with them and explain to them the difference between cooling your heels in jail for a while because you stole something, and getting tortured and executed for murdering soldiers in the line of their duty.

“Number three,” I continued. “We knew the lockbox can only be opened with his ring which is some kind of special key. The plan was to make a…but now I guess we can’t do it that way. I’ll come back to that.” My brain was working overtime and my forehead had broken out in a sweat. “But now we’ve got a box within a box…and did you say a magic vault?”

“I did,” she said. “I did indeed mention that the vault was magically protected.”

I sighed. “Dammit.” I stared at the fire, saying nothing.

Ferrah finally broke the silence. “We’re going to need a mage, aren’t we?”

“Yes, dammit. We need a mage.”

***

 

Finding a spell slinger took all of the following week while we ran down someone with the very specific set of skills I needed. Standing outside of a tavern called The Shark’s Nest, located at the edge of the shipyards, I had my doubts. Ferrah made a disapproving noise in her throat and walked in front of me through the door.

It was midday and there was only one person in the place; he was leaning heavily back in his chair, like a corpse. On the table in front of him was a loaf of half-eaten bread and a wedge of cheese. The tankard next to it was empty, but it wasn’t hard to figure out why.

I kicked his foot. “You Zalthis?”

He was younger than I was expecting. Zalthis stirred and then leaned forward, letting his head drop forward and then he righted himself. He regarded me through one squinted eye and said, “Do I owe you money?”

“No, you don’t,” I said.

“Then I’m Zalthis.” He rubbed his eyes, flailing for consciousness.

“Are you looking for work? Probably not,” I said. “You know what? Forget I said anything.”

“No, wait,” Zalthis said. He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it back. “If you’ve got a job for me, I’ll take it.”

He was too young; he wasn’t a wizard. But there was something a little off about Zalthis. Like whoever put him together left out a couple of pieces. “Just out of curiosity, do you by chance owe someone a sum of coin you cannot currently repay?”

Zalthis curled his lip, not sure if I was asking a serious question or if I was trying to be funny. “Yeah, I owe a few people.”

“If this job goes well, you’ll make enough to pay off all of your debts, and then some.”

Zalthis sat back. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “What kind of assurances do I have you’re on the up-and-up?”

“I don’t know,” I said through gritted teeth, “What kind of assurances have I got that you’re actually an elemancer?”

Zalthis held out his hand and ice crystals formed on the palm and quickly turned to steam as fire replaced the ice. “I got you covered,” he said.

“Can you do it sober?” I regretted it the instant I said it.

Zalthis took a step back. “Go pound salt up your ass,” he said.

I turned back to him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just got out of the dungeons for the exact same thing I’m about to ask you to help me with. I want to make sure you can deliver so I don’t end up back in those same dungeons.”

Zalthis stroked the scruff of his beard, trying to decide if he was still angry. “Okay,” he said at last. “Okay. Yeah. So. Tell me about this job.”

 

***

 

The fifth day of Godsweek found us in a line to enter the city at the crack of dawn, loaded into the wagon Thurl had secured for us and spent a week painting and aging to look like something that had visited all five city-states. We were mid-point in the line of traveling troupes and peddler wagons being slowly admitted to the city. All of this for a party. A one-day party.

Thurl and Ferrah were up front, and the rest of us rode in the back of the wagon. It was hot and uncomfortable, and to make matters worse, Ferrah kept talking over her shoulder at me, questioning every facet of the plan in detail, over and over. Talk about trust issues. Just because the last thing we did together got us thrown into dungeon for three months, suddenly, it’s like I’ve never had a good idea in my whole life.

We paid the tax at the gate and made our way through the partying throngs to the Mayoral Manse, where we presented our invitations and joined the other acts setting up shop. The courtyard was a vast tract, with a guarded gate opposite the mansion and surrounded on either side by three-sided diagonal walls, held up with six guard towers. Inside the walls was a manicured lawn that the wagons and horses were methodically destroying. Our plot of the makeshift midway was in the left row at the end closest to the house itself. One last favor from Relaggio. This way, we’d be the first act he’d see, when his interest and attention were their most sharp.

The brothers Punchsack secured the front of the wagon while we set up shop behind it. Tarps and tents had to be placed carefully, so that the campsite looked open to the casual observer, but actually concealed our workspace from prying eyes. Zalthus went to work, setting up his tools and accoutrements while we changed into our costumes.  They were a rush job, but conveyed the right amount of shabby chic for a traveling troupe. We wouldn’t blend in for shit at court, but at an outdoor festival, we looked perfect.

Thus disguised, proceeded to fleece those rich nobles for every half-penny we could squeeze them for, using every trick in Ferrah’s impressive catalogue of grifts, cons, and sucker bets. Anything to keep us from thinking about the upcoming big show.

By the time Castus appeared in the doorway, with an entourage of six following along, we were meshing like chainmail. I tried not to stare at him. He was older and hadn’t bothered to take care of himself; his skin was loose and sallow, and he moved with ponderous inefficiency. His boyish face wore a perpetually surprised expression, and his wide eyes gave the impression of innocence. Castus was, in fact, one of the most corrupt noble in a group of already terrible people. But he looked like he was fresh off of the turnip wagon, and that made politicians careless and over-confident. It was a mistake many had made, but only once. I knew better. He walked down the rounded marble steps and over to a small retinue of dwarves, led by their ambassador to the city-states. They exchanged greetings and fell into step together. As they strolled towards us, I spotted Relaggio at the back of the procession, affecting an air of casual indifference.

Ferrah spied him, too. “Showtime,” she murmured.

I took a deep breath and stepped out into the lane, beaming. “My lord, you honor our humble troupe with your very presence!” I turned around. “Troupe Front and Center!”

Thurl came running around the wagon where he’d been crouching. “Aye Aye, Captain!” he cried. He was shirtless, wearing loose pants and no shoes. He stopped short right next to me and held his arms out. Clork and Pliff ran across each arm from behind Thurl’s back and plopped themselves down in his shovel-sized hands, breathing heavily. Thurl’s arms were shaking. All three of them looked hung over. Not our finest hour.

As Castus and his sycophants clapped politely, Ferrah stepped out from behind Thurl and joined me as I walked forward, arm outstretched in greeting. Castus clasped hands with me as I said, “May I introduce you to our little troupe? This is Levram Den, our mystic and spiritual advisor?”

Ferrah took Castus’ other hand and squeezed it with both of hers. Once, twice, three times, never breaking eye contact with Castus, murmuring deferentially. “Such an honor, my Lord,” she cooed. “May your reign be unceasing! And I think I’d know!” She giggled politely, and Castus smiled back, charmed by her attentions.

“You don’t say?” Castus said. “Well, that’s very, ah, fortunate for me, isn’t it?”

They laughed together. I crossed behind her as she took over the rest of the introductions. I took the small brick of clay she’d passed to me to the back of the wagon, out of sight, and handed it to Zalthus. He made some quick, precise cuts in the clay with a small knife.

I grasped the clay firmly with a set of tongs. Zalthus picked up a round ball of iron. He muttered some words and waved his other hand over it, and the solid metal was now a glob of molten liquid. He quickly poured the metal out over the clay brick and it filled every crevice and flowed over. I shook the tongs quickly to settle the iron in the mold. Zalthus reached for the clay, his hands now sparkling with a layer of frost. In seconds the iron was cool to touch.

“Get back out there,” he said. “Send me Pliff.”

I dashed around the wagon just as the goblins finished their tumbling routine, Pliff stacked on top of Clork, arms raised in triumph. I stepped in front of them and said, “And that’s just a sample, my lord, of their impressive acrobatics. Now, if you’ll just—”

“Perhaps later,” Castus said, turning away. “I want to see everything first, and then I’ll maybe come back.”

“Such a pleasure to see you! And long live the Regent!” I cried as they slowly made their way down the row. The procession moved past, with the dwarves casting hard stares at the brothers Punchsack. The last noble in the procession was Relaggio, ignoring us with exaggerated indifference.

As soon as they were out of sight, I nudged Pliff. “Okay, you’re up.”

Pliff nodded and goblin-ran into the throng of people, following Relaggio. I ducked back behind the wagon. “Is it ready?” I asked Zalthus.

“Here,” he said, passing me the iron ring. “And don’t forget this.” He handed me a stoppered miniature clay jug. Clork handed me the coil of climbing silk and the grapple, and I slung it over one shoulder.

“How long do I have?” I uncorked the jug and swallowed the dark green oily liquid in three breathless gulps.

“Uh…about nine or ten minutes…something like that.”

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘something LIKE that?”

Zalthus bristled. “Alchemy isn’t an exact science, you know!”

“Yes, it fucking well is! It’s exactly that!”

Zalthus stuck his finger in my chest. “Don’t talk to me that way! I do good work!”

I tried to grab his finger and break it, but when I glanced at my hand, I was staring right through it, and my whole body was now a shimmering haze, like the way that heat ripples the air around it. I was invisible.

“Yes, you do,” I said. “Okay, I’m off. Good luck.”

“Luck is an artificial construct, man,” he replied.

I really didn’t like that guy.

 

***

 

All of the increased security around the party worked in our favor. The council chamber on the first floor had been in use all week. There were guards posted at all four entrances, and they changed shifts every four hours. It would have been suicide to try harrowing that many swords.

But the lockbox containing the treaty the two peoples had spent the week crafting was moved at the end of yesterday’s session, up to Castus’ private study. On the second floor, away from all of those guards downstairs. There was even a window. I threw the grapple onto the roof and used the intersection of the tower and the main building to effortlessly scale the edifice. The window wasn’t even locked.

Castus’ study looked like he spent very little time in it. The books were dusty, the air stale-smelling. Castus held his meetings downstairs, in the more impressive room. He didn’t read. This room was practically a mystery to him.

The hexagonal room had books on four of the six opposing walls. The window I climbed in was behind the desk, which faced the door.

I ignored the lockbox on the desk. I knew it was an illusion.

Instead I walked to the large painting to the left, between the bookshelf and the window. A hidden catch behind the frame clicked, and the whole thing swung out on hinges. Behind the painting was a metal door, and I could see the twinkling green-blue sheen catch the light as I moved my head. As soon as my hand broke the plan of the sheen, the magic rippled out and knocked the invisibility right out of me. The potion expelled itself from the surface of my skin in a steaming sweat cloud that left me with a stabbing headache. But the enchantment on the safe was gone, having attacked my alchemical condition. I twisted the dials on the door and set the numbers in a deliberate sequence. The door swung open.

I ignored the pouches gold and gems on the top shelf. The lockbox was on the second shelf, made of banded iron and silver with copper banding. There was a lock on the front of the box, but that’s a trap for amateur thieves. The real keyhole is on the back, concealed in the circular decorated border. I pressed the cast iron signet ring into the circular carving and turned. The lid popped open, revealing a rolled and sealed sheaf of parchment. I replaced it with the duplicate from my boot and put the stolen scroll in the opposite boot, in a special sheathe, along with the cast iron ring, and turned to leave.

“That’s far enough.” Relaggio came strolling into the office as if it was his own.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I hissed. “You’re gonna blow this whole thing.”

“I’m counting on it,” he said. There was a black oak crossbow in his hands. He leveled it at my chest.

“What are you doing!” I yelled. “Are you crazy?”

“No, but I am a lot smarter than you think.” He pulled the trigger, and the bolt split down the middle, ruined. I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. Thank you, Pliff.

“You treacherous little catch-fart,” I said. “You gonna shoot me?” I crossed the distance between us with murder in my eyes.

Relaggio cross drew his rapier and flicked it out in front of him. “Not necessarily. Stabbing works, too.” He lunged.

I turned sideways and the point caught on my sleeve and punched through. Damn lucky. He stepped back to lunge again and I got my Jassiri dagger up just in time to parry the thrust.

Generally speaking, I’m useless with a blade when it comes to dealing damage. On the other hand, my incentive for not wanting to be stabbed is through the roof, and so I’m really good at parrying attacks. Relaggio tried several different thrusts, from different angles, but I was able to catch them on the flat, curved blade and turn them away. I even got a few desperate slashes in, but nothing landed. He was too smart for that.

I couldn’t keep this up. He was stronger than me and more skilled. I stepped into his next thrust and hooked my blade down, sliding the dagger forward on his thinner sword. I stepped into his guard and brought a short, sharp punch to his jaw that staggered him.

Relaggio tried to step back, beyond my reach, and create some distance between us. I was close enough to kick him, so I did. He stepped on my foot and tried to skewer me again. The sonofabitch was strong. It took both of my hands to keep his wrist at bay, and I had to drop my knife.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I gasped.

“Sorry, Larcen, but you’re a criminal. I can’t trust that you wouldn’t sell me out if it served your interests. And since I’m on the outs with my idiot cousin, offering up your corpse with incriminating evidence on it ought to be enough to buy me back into his good graces. Two birds, one bolt.”

I could hear multiple footsteps thundering up the stairs in the hall. Guards came pouring into the room. Without taking his eyes off me, he yelled out, “Guards! Here! I’ve caught an intruder!”

More crossbows blossomed about the room, pointed at me. I was starting to get a complex. One of the guards, a middle-aged man in a dress uniform, stepped through the others. “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

Relaggio stepped back, sheathing his rapier. “Captain, I’ve apprehended a thief,” he said. “Shoot him.”

“I surrender!” I cried, throwing my hands up. “I’m unarmed! I demand a hearing!

“He tried to kill me!” Relaggio said. “Feather him!”

“If you slay an innocent man during Gods Week, you’ll never claim your own reward in the afterlife!”

“Oh, horseshit!” Relaggio said. “Kill him now!”

But the guards had lowered their crossbows. The captain of the guard held his hand up. “No, wait, I think I heard that before,” he said. He didn’t, in point of fact. I’d just made it up. But I was content to let the lie stand between us. The captain of the guard turned to one of his men. “Send a runner to fetch the Regent, quickly.” Seeing the look on Relaggio’s face, he added, “If he’s guilty, you can shoot him yourself.” He glanced down at the broken pieces of the split crossbow bolt on the floor and said, “Do you need to borrow some ammunition, my lord?”

Relaggio scowled again, and moved the crossbow up to aim at my face. I decided to keep quiet and let this theatrical performance play out.

Not long after, the Regent and his entourage appeared, followed by the dwarf ambassador and two of their military escorts. The room was very crowded at that point, and they all spent several minutes cross-talking and trying to figure out who would stay and who would leave. They eventually settled on Castus, Relaggio, the captain of the guard, the ambassador, whose name was, I shit you not, Gunterveldt Rockbottom, the Lesser, and his two bodyguards. Everyone else had to wait in the hall while it got all sorted out.

“Now,” said Castus, “What’s all this about, then?”

“Dear cousin,” Relaggio began, “I warned you, didn’t I? That someone would try to sabotage the signing of the treaty? And here he is!”

“You did warn me, Relaggio,” Castus said. “That you did.” There was a lot unsaid in Castus’s flat inflection. “Lucky for you that you were in the right place at the right time.”

“You wound me, cousin,” Relaggio said, in a tone that suggested Castus was anything but that. “I was enjoying the day, same as you, when I saw this one creeping around the shadow of the north west tower. He had a rope with him. I saw what window he was headed for and ran up here to stop him and found him there.”

Castus walked a few steps closer to me. “Is this true, sneakthief?” He did have a certain charisma, now that I was in the same room with him. Easy to see how he could get the better of so many people.

I shook my head. “I’m afraid not, your grace,” I said. “I observed this man, who I’ve never seen before, climbing the rope affixed to the tower window outside. I knew that no one entered through windows when perfectly acceptable doors will do fine. I thought maybe he meant to do some mischief. When I got to the window, I climbed in and he was walking out of the room through that door. I said for him to stop and he pulled that crossbow on me. And here we are.”

“Dear cousin,” Relaggio said, “clearly, this miscreant is lying. Look, there’s the false treaty in the box, there. I saw him put the real one from the safe into his boot sheath.”

Castus shooed me aside with his hand, and I obligingly took two steps to the right. He plucked my handiwork from the safe and broke the seal. “Well, Relaggio, perhaps you were right after all…” I saw a flicker of doubt and confusion in his wide, trusting eyes. He unrolled the papers and frowned. “Blank. All of them.” He fanned the parchment pages at Relaggio, who stared at them, uncomprehending. I started counting. When I got to “five,” his expression changed from confusion to shock. He’d finally caught up.

“His boot!” he cried, pointing. “Check his boot!”

Castus waved the captain of the guard over. He made a “gimme” motion with his hand. I took my boot off and handed it over. The captain peered inside, and poked at something. “There’s a pocket here, but there’s nothing in it.”

“The other boot, you dolt!” Relaggio frothed. The captain of the guard shot him a warning look. I handed the other boot over.

“Nothing here, either,” he said. “Another sheath, empty.”

“Your grace?” I said, quietly. “May I speak a word or two on the subject of my innocence?” Castus didn’t say no, so I continued. “I noticed when I came in that the gentleman there was putting something into his leather satchel.”

Relaggio started to protest, but suddenly the dwarves had their axes out and had positioned themselves between him and the door. This distraction was long enough for the captain of the guard to cross the floor and snatch Relaggio’s bag open. He started, and then he grabbed Relaggio, wrapping him up in both arms.

“Unhand me!” he yelled. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Your grace,” the captain of the guard said, “look!”

The satchel was hanging open, and there was a rolled and sealed sheaf of parchment. Also, a crudely fashioned signet ring made of iron.

Castus grabbed Relaggio’s crossbow and turned it on him. “My Dearest Cousin,” he said, and this time, his tone made it was clear what he meant.

Relaggio was looking at me, his eyes burning, trying to figure out how the real and actual treaty papers ended up in his satchel. More guards came in, and the Captain of the guard barked orders. “If I may,” I said, “there’s one cell four down on the left that is particularly uncomfortable.”

“Don’t worry,” Castus said. “He won’t be in it long.”

“Your Grace,” I said, “as grateful as I am to play even a small role in defending the Great City-State, I wonder if I might take my leave of this situation? It’s all been a little too nerve-wracking for one day.”

“I quite agree,” Castus said. He pulled out a prize pouch full of gold royals. He tossed it to me. “For your troubles.”

“You honor me with this gift,” I said, stepping into my boots. “And may the gods grant you much wisdom in the coming year.”

 

***

 

By the time I got back to camp, everything was packed in the wagon and Thurl was covering it all with tarps. We were the first troupe out of the gate, and we rode as casually as we dared back to the abandoned mine to divvy up our spoils.

Clork and Pliff were fast asleep in the wagon. They’d earned the nap. We were up all night last night, stealing the real treaty papers and replacing them with blank parchment, when security was most relaxed in anticipation of the coming day.

Thurl lobbed both of them up to the second story easily enough, using the deep shadows of the guard towers closest to the mansion for cover. They were across the roof and inside the window before the guards could turn their head.

The safe was easy to bypass: they were hiding in the room when Castus used the special phrase to turn the magic shield on and off. They also knew the box was goblin-made, and were able to whisper into the box’s ear and convince it to open for them. That’s what they said, anyway. I think it’s a poetical way of saying they disarmed the trap. Either way, they replaced the box, re-activated the magic ward with the code phrase Castus thoughtfully blurted out to them, and they left the room as they’d found it.

Then they skulked down into the basement and, using every bit of their considerable thiefcraft, slipped past the guards stationed on the first floor, dropped sleeping powder on the security detail, lifted the keys that opened the vault, and made off with several uncounted bags of collected taxes and one of the official coffers full of gold bars, each bearing the Seal of Highgate stamped on top. They couldn’t go out the front door, so they trekked the bags all the way back up to the second floor, went out through the window, and dropped the loot and then themselves down into Thurl’s waiting arms.

While the gobs and Thurl moved the loot out to our camp at the old mine, Ferrah and I took the coffer to Relaggio’s villa and slid it under the bed with deliberate carelessness. Now the only evidence of any wrongdoing was in Relaggio’s possession. The special sheath I’d stuck the bogus peace treaty into, along with the crude signet I used to open the box, was lined with a special solvent that dissolved the parchment and melted the ring into a metal smear. That bit was Zalthus’ idea. Maybe he wasn’t all bad.

By sundown and the end of Gods Day, the incident was the talk of the city market. The guards who were on duty that day did most of the heavy lifting, telling and retelling the story of Relaggio’s treachery and his attempt to discredit the Regent in front of the Dwarves. The innocent thief in the story was inevitably replaced with whichever guard was telling the story to a group of disbelieving pub patrons. All in all, if everyone who claimed to be in the room really was in the room, they would have had to stack themselves like cordwood in order to accommodate the number of vigilant guards on hand that day.

A few days into the scandal, someone, I have no idea who, let it slip that there was tax money missing from the city treasury. When guards searched Relaggio’s villa, they found the coffer full of gold bars and that alone would have been enough to hang him, but when it was compounded with the theft and the charges of fomenting unrest, that was it. They executed him by full moonlight nine days after. We didn’t bother attending.

The dwarves were impressed with Castus’ handling of the family squabble. To them it was both a declaration of strength, and a warning not to break any of the finer points of the complicated trade agreement they’d drawn up. With the dwarves back in the city’s good graces, the merchants and the nobles decided to honor Castus with a cash honorarium. Talk about thievery in plain sight.

We had other matters to attend to. When Pliff planted the real treaty and the iron signet ring in Relaggio’s satchel at the carnival, he’d also managed to nick the blank pardons. I forged the Regent’s signature and we used the third cast of the signet ring that Ferrah pressed into clay when she shook his hand to make a royal seal for the pardons, and then we filled out one for each of us, and a few other folks we knew. As long as we carried them, they were armor plating against prosecution in Highgate.

After we counted up the taxes we’d stolen, paid off the expenses of pulling the gig, and split everything evenly, we were all up a few thousand gold each. In the course of these events, the idea floated around that maybe we could use this carnival idea as cover for doing the real work. It wasn’t the worst idea. Everyone agreed to an equal share of whatever we pulled down, and we agreed to keep Zalthus on as a retainer and technical assistant for a second share of the proceeds. It was expensive, but in the end, we’d come out on top when his little trinkets and concoctions saved our lives in one sneaky fashion or another.

And that’s how I became the ringleader of a traveling carnival. I worked better when I had a whole crew to plan around, and Ferrah needed someone else to talk to besides me, or our relationship would quickly disintegrate into a fistfight. I was a little surprised to discover that even Thurl and the gobs were on board for the cover story.

I convinced everyone that we should invest in a second wagon and a few more horses. When we weren’t pulling jobs, we could actually be a troupe. Ferrah could teach the others her games. The gobs could run the games of chance. We even agreed to pay wages for the weeks of honest busking we put in.

The whole idea was a big risk; the traveling carnival set-up was loud, colorful, and pulled all kinds of focus onto us. I mean, you couldn’t miss us coming a mile away if your eyes were closed. But there was something useful about just rolling into the courtyard gates and setting up shop right under the guards’ noses. Maybe the whole act was a shell game. A distraction. Misdirection. If they were watching the juggling gobs, they weren’t noticing who was picking their pockets, now, were they?

Unfortunately, that meant we were stuck with Captain Argento’s Cavalcade of Wonders, a name I put no thought into. The wagon was already painted, for fuck’s sake.

What the hell. It’s growing on me.

 

________________________________________

 

Mark Finn is an author, an editor, and a pop culture critic. He is a nationally-recognized authority on Robert E. Howard and has written extensively about the Texas author. His biography, Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, was nominated for a World Fantasy award in 2007 and currently available in an updated and expanded second edition. He podcasts with The Gentlemen Nerds, the 42Cast, and RPG Ramblings, among others. When he is not waxing eloquent about popular culture, he writes comics and fiction, performs community theater, and writes role-playing game zines. He lives in North Texas over an old movie theater with way too many books and an affable pit bull named Sonya.

 

Miguel Santos is a freelance illustrator and maker of Comics living in Portugal.  His artwork has appeared in numerous issues of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, as well as in the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 2.  More of his work can be seen at his online portfolio and his instagram.