The Hidden Illusionist (Thieves of Chaos Book 1) Read online

  “Who’s the mark?” he had asked. “And what are we stealing?”

  “There’s this trader. He’s rich as hell, but he doesn’t keep gold in his house. We’re after something else. He has a soul gem…”

  “A soul gem! Are you crazy? They’ll hunt us for the rest of our lives.”

  “And that’s different to our current lives? I know a guy who can fence it.”

  “I don’t know. Soul gems are nasty stuff. Trapping souls inside jewelry seems a little inhumane.”

  “We can talk about the ethics of it all day when we’re rich. This is our chance.”

  That was how they found themselves in the yard of Rogar Hawksby’s estate two days later. Hawksby, according to the Thievery Rules of Conduct they’d once written when they were drunk, was a bad guy. Under his public façade of respectability lay a trail of murder, slavery, and human trafficking.

  Dantis didn’t lose sleep about the morality of their job, but more with the execution. No innocents and no murder. Words to live by. Words to steal by. Hawksby was fair game.

  He usually needed five days to plan a robbery without hitches, but Redmayne would have left by then. He’d cobbled together a plan, but there was a problem; they could ride alongside the beetle, and climb over a wall easily enough, but how could they get inside the vault.

  Once Dantis had shown Ethan the blueprints, his brother grinned. “Easy. We don’t sneak into the vault. We make them take us there.”

  “Evening, lads,” said a voice, shaking him from his thoughts. “Didn’t know we were getting visitors.”

  Ethan drew his sword and held it in a stance he spent hours practicing every night. Dantis turned so fast he felt his neck crunch. A guard was standing behind them, tall, and silhouetted by the glow of a watch tower light. His leather armor looked too heavy, but he didn’t seem hampered. He held a leash in his hand, and a smooth-skinned wyrm strained at the end.

  When the wyrm faced him, Dantis felt a presence in his head, turning the pages of his thoughts.

  “Time to go. Now,” he said. He grabbed Ethan and sprinted away from the guard.

  “Hope you know where you’re going!” said Ethan.

  He did, but even if he didn’t, he would have still run away. Faced with a mind-wyrm, you had three seconds. One to see it, two to realize how screwed you were, and three to surrender your mind to it. By then it was too late; it’d tweak your nervous system and leave you gibbering on the ground.

  Footsteps followed them; the hurried one-two of the guards’ boots, and the patters of the wyrm’s four smooth feet.

  A metallic bell ring cut through the silence. Other, smaller bells joined it until the entire yard rang with them, like an out-of-tune orchestra. Torch beams swept across the bleached stone ground and over the extravagant spice gardens. Guards called across to each other from their watchtowers.

  “I think,” said Ethan, running beside Dantis, “They’re not too happy with us stealing the gem.”

  Dantis tried to remember the plan of the trader’s estate he’d stolen from Wolfpine town hall. It was hard matching it up, but he got his bearings.

  He cut a sharp right. It’s down here. Come on, it has to be…

  They came to a ten-foot-tall wall.

  Ethan tapped the wall. “Smoother than a eunuch’s arse,” he said. “How are we supposed to climb it?”

  The guard shouted behind them. The mind-wyrm, eerily silent through its lack of a mouth, sent out waves of thought-probes. Even thirty feet away, Dantis felt their touch rippling toward him. Any closer, and it’d rip apart his brain, seizing control. Victims of mind-wyrms lost all semblance of their minds, and spent their lives as mute, paralyzed, dribbling husks.

  Ethan didn’t seem worried. Did he feel the same thing, or did Dantis’s talents make him more aware of it than his brother?

  “Give me a boost,” said Dantis. “I’ll pull you.”

  Ethan flexed. “You’ll pull me? You sure about that?”

  Dantis sighed. Ethan was right, something which happened annoyingly often. He kneeled by the wall and boosted Ethan, grunting when he took his weight.

  The guard’s boots sounded closer. The wyrm’s probes were less like ripples, and more like a tide.

  “Come on slow-arse.”

  He grabbed Ethan’s outstretched hand and scrambled to the top of the wall. He dropped down the other side and heard an “oof” as Ethan landed next to him.

  “How the other half live,” said Ethan.

  The bleached walls and fragrant gardens disappeared, replaced by a dirtier-looking courtyard that must have been used by employees. The ground was a mix of dull stone and mud, and urine and sewage odors wafted in the air. It wouldn’t have killed Hawksby to plant a few lavender bushes here. The trader must have hated his workers.

  There were three wooden sheds, each of them padlocked, with a large stone building on the west. Dantis pointed at it. “There.”

  They didn’t seen any employees as they crossed the yard, but the shouts of guards were never-ending. A heavy clink-clank signaled a cogman approaching, but he couldn’t see it. Ethan’s sword would be useless against the men in their round, ocean diver-like suits of armor.

  At the stone building, he ran along the wall until he found an opening. “Here,” he said.

  “Looks like a cellar. Are you sure this is the way. Maybe we took a wrong turn.”

  Ethan was second-guessing him, and Dantis knew why. This was his fault; if there were cogmen and mind-wyrms, he should have picked up on it when he was planning the robbery. He’d failed them both.

  Dantis gulped. A semi-circle hole gaped from the base of the building. There were no iron bars, no glass. Only darkness lay beyond it.

  He struggled to breathe, and sweat drenched his forehead. The darkness laughed at him, wafting out of the cellar opening and into his mouth, clogging his throat.

  “Down, here right?” said Ethan.

  Dantis tried to answer but his throat was dry sand, his lips paralyzed. Snap out of it, damn it!

  “Dantis?”

  Cellar openings led to basements. Basements meant darkness, silence, rats. Even looking at the opening made a shiver creep down his spine.

  It had been that way for years. Ever since their parents died, a terror grew in Dantis whenever he saw a basement, a cellar, or even a set of steps that led into darkness.

  He’d seen everything that night. He’d been there while their parents met their end. Only, his brain protected him from revisiting it. He couldn’t remember a single thing about what happened or who did it. The only thing left was his fear of underground darkness.

  Ethan gripped his shoulder. “You can do this,” he said.

  Can I? I’m not so certain. Sure, he’d known the cellar, and the tunnels, existed. In the plans, they ran through the beetle itself, emerging at its rear end. He’d made a note, setting it aside as an emergency escape he hoped to hell they wouldn’t have to use.

  The cogmen clanked loud enough to echo in the yard, and mind-wyrms scratched across the ground. Guards ordered each other around while watchtower lights danced left and right in sweeps across the estate.

  The lights wouldn’t reach them here in the employee’s quarters, but that didn’t matter. Across the yard, silhouetted through the grime and darkness, were five guards, and five mind-wyrms.

  Ethan wrenched his arm so hard it hurt, then pushed him toward the cellar. Dantis breathed in as much air as possible as if filling his lungs would push the fear out of his mind.

  What am I doing?

  He dropped eight feet onto the ground. Standing in the pitch black, he lost all sense of spacial awareness. He knew it was a small cellar that led to hidden tunnels, but with adrenaline pumping through him, the darkness could have stretched out for miles.

  He turned to where he thought the cellar opening was. “Ethan?” he said.

  “Got you, you little bastard,” said a voice.

  Chapter Two

  Ethan

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nbsp; Ethan peered into the darkness of the cellar. “Dantis?” he said.

  He became aware of someone behind him. Years of thievery had developed a sixth sense in Ethan; he knew when he was being watched. Drowning out that sense was the sound of boots scraping. He turned, but too late.

  “Got you, you little bastard.”

  The guard dug his fingers into his shoulder blades. Ethan shrugged him off and punched him in the gut. The guard wheezed and let go of the leash, and the mind-wyrm, the disgusting, smooth sack of skin, reared.

  “Woah, boy. Easy now,” Ethan said.

  Pain exploded in Ethan’s skull, worse than a thousand hangovers. The goddamn thing was in his head! It burrowed through his mind, clouding his thoughts.

  Everything went silent. He couldn’t see or hear; he floated in nothingness, nobody around but him and the wyrm, until the pain drifted away.

  Stop¸ the wyrm said. Fall to the ground. Give yourself to me.

  “Give myself to you? That sounds a little…”

  Agony lashed his head. He pressed his hands to his temples. Can’t give in to it.

  It took every ounce of strength to pull his sword from his sheath. Gritting his teeth through the agony, he swiped in an arc, severing the wyrm at the neck.

  The pain left him, and the sounds of the yard flooded back. Guard swore, called to each other, barked orders. The man behind him recovered from his winded stomach. At the back of the yard, a cogman clunked into view.

  What the hell were cogmen doing here, anyway? Their metal armor was so expensive to make, that even the emperor only had a dozen in his army. Maybe the soulgem was worth more than he thought.

  He hated himself for it, but a small part of him blamed Dantis for this. How could he have missed something so big? He stopped the thoughts in their tracks, hating himself for thinking bad of his brother.

  He dropped to the ground and rolled into the cellar opening. He had one thought now; gotta help Dantis.

  His little brother had a thing about cellars. Hell, about anywhere dark and below ground. That was why they never broke into basements to sleep, even on the wettest, most miserable nights. Now, everything had gone wrong, and the cellar held their chance of escape.

  Guilt mixed with the adrenaline in his veins. This is all my fault.

  The robbery was his baby. Dantis showed his usual skepticism, but Ethan played his brother like a puppet at an art fair.

  He didn’t want things to be like this. He hated running as much as Dantis. God, what he would have given for a log cabin in the woods, far away from everyone. But they couldn’t settle. Dantis wanted to put down roots, but Ethan wouldn’t let him. The bastards who killed their parents were following them.

  The robbery was risky, but if they pulled it off, this one score would be enough to get his kid brother off the streets. Ethan planned to use his cut to pay for Dantis to go to college. To get him a fake identity and put him somewhere safe. If it meant Ethan had to be on the run on his own, so be it. Now, everything had gone tits up.

  The cellar was impossibly dark, layers and layers of black lashed on by a painter with only one color on his pallet.

  “Dantis?”

  No answer. Damn it, where are you? His guilt hit him like a cogman’s fist in his stomach. He wanted a better life for Dantis, and he couldn’t even give him that.

  “Dantis? Where are you?”

  Tendrils of worry crept into his mind worse than the touch of a mind-wyrm. He waited for his eyes to adjust, but the darkness forbade it. Had they caught Dantis? Were guards lurking in the darkness?

  A cry came from his right. He put his arms in front of him as if he could push away the black, and crossed the room. He touched a wall. Stone crumbled at his fingertips.

  He heard the voice again. Closer this time. He kept one hand on the wall and walked left until he hit empty air. The tunnel.

  He called Dantis’s name as he ran through the cramped tunnel. The roof was so low it brushed his hair. A draft wafted toward him, and a cry echoed back.

  “Ethan!”

  “Dantis?”

  “I’m over here!”

  Ethan’s scar burned. He touched it, feeling it grow. Although it looked like he’d spilled oil on his wrist, it was more than an unsightly splodge.

  He’d gotten it eight years ago when he broke into their father’s alchemy lab and drunk half of a potion he found on the table. It was a stupid thing to do, but he was a kid, and it had looked like orange juice. It hadn’t tasted like juice, and in fact it had almost killed him. Dad had forced him to throw most of it up, and he’d spent two days recovering in bed. After that, the black splodge had appeared on his arm, and since then, his oil-black scar burned and grew whenever hostility was in the air.

  He’d tried to persuade Dad to recreate the potion. They could sell it to the mages guild and make a fortune, but Dad’s ethics got in the way. He said it was too dangerous, and he wouldn’t sell something that almost killed his son.

  The patter of feet echoed in the tunnel behind him. A foreign presence poked his mind, rougher than a horny teenager fondling his first tit.

  More guards. More mind-wyrms. They’re in the tunnel.

  He ran until he bumped into a solid object.

  Dantis groaned. “Watch it!” he said. “Pull me up.”

  Ethan grabbed Dantis’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “You okay?”

  “Better than ever,” said Dantis, though his wavering voice told Ethan it was a lie.

  Cellars, basements, and tunnels; they were enough to send his brother into a shock of fear. Ethan knew why. Dantis witnessed everything that dark night when their parents met their end, but his mind blocked it out. Poor kid.

  Ethan tried to get him to remember what happened, but the effort made Dantis vomit. Ethan eased off out of concern for his brother, no matter how much he wanted the names of the people who he’d gut like fish.

  “This way,” said Dantis.

  “How do you even know where we’re going?”

  “I memorized the tunnels from the plans. There’s only two paths. One leads out, the other…”

  “Leads to the Copper Dragon, where two pints of Rolling Amber and Rosaleigh’s tits are waiting for us.”

  “I wish.”

  “Are you sure this is the way, though?”

  “Fine – you choose.”

  Ethan knew he’d gone too far. Dantis loved to plan every job they did, and he never let Ethan in on it until the plan was complete. Truth be told, it had Ethan feel a little inadequate. Sure, he could swing a sword and pick a lock, but he was dumb as rocks. Okay, maybe not rocks. Pebbles.

  “Down here!” a voice echoed behind them. Boots and wyrm feet scraped further down the tunnel.

  Dantis ran ahead, and Ethan followed him. The guards got closer and closer, without ever catching them. Soon, Dantis stopped. Ethan bumped into him, then righted himself.

  “A hatch,” said Dantis. “This should lead outside the walls, and then we run like all the demons in hell are chasing our arses. If we follow the river, we can lose them.”

  Dantis strained against the hatch above him, but it didn’t budge. Ethan leaned his muscles into it, and this time, the metal slid aside. Ethan inherited their mother’s ex-warrior muscles, while Dantis was cut from their father’s more studious frame.

  “I loosened it up for you,” said Dantis.

  As he slid the hatch further, light flooded in. Not the glow of the moon, nor the sweep of a watchtower light, but darkness.

  “This doesn’t seem like the right hatch,” he said.

  Shouts resounded behind them.

  “They’ve cut us off,” said Dantis. “We can’t go back now. Up we go.”

  They both climbed through the hatch, emerging into a pitch-black room. A chill settled over him, coating his shoulders and back.

  Once they were out of the darkness of the tunnels, Ethan looked at his brother. His hair was shaved to his skin on the back on sides of his head, but he’d let
the hair on top grow out. He wore a pair of mismatched boots, one black and the other blue. They looked ridiculous, but he’d never say that to him. They were the boots Dantis had grabbed the night they fled their home, and he knew that for Dantis, the boots were a part of their past that he couldn’t bear to throw away.

  Despite how scared Dantis was, Ethan couldn’t help but feel proud of his little brother. Sure, he had sausage fingers when it came to pickpocketing, and he couldn’t hold a sword without cutting himself, but the boy had brains. He was always reading, always taking things in. Ethan wished he had half the brains of Dantis.

  “Where was the hatch supposed to lead to again?” he said.

  “Outside. Beyond the wall.”

  “I get the feeling we’re not outside, Dantis.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit indeed. They’ve caught up to us. Close the hatch.”

  Dantis slammed the hatch shut. Ethan stood on it.

  “I’ll look for a door,” said Dantis, with a tremor in his voice.

  Guards pounded on the hatch. His body weight was enough to keep shut, but they’d be free to climb up when he had to run.

  The walls shook. Somewhere beyond, a cogman clanked. Cobwebs detached from the ceiling, and cups and plates clattered from a shelf on the wall. Ethan’s eyes adjusted to reveal an old kitchen that had fallen into disuse.

  “This way,” said Dantis.

  “Still got that jelly ball thing?”

  “I only have one. Need to use it when we really need it.”

  Ethan followed him out of the door and through a corridor, taking a dizzying array of twists and turns. The further they went, the grander the decorations became, turning from the style-less, drab plaster walls, to exotic wallpaper with intricate, hand-drawn patterns. The aroma of jasmine mixed with wafts of hot meat.

  “We’re in Hawksby’s house now?”

  “The kitchen we came from used to be a serving kitchen,” said Dantis.