Sanctuary Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilog

  Copyright Page

  For the readers and fans

  of

  Thieves’ World

  Acknowledgments

  Thieves’ World would not have been reborn and Sanctuary would not have been written without a lot of support and encouragement.

  My thanks go first to Brian Thomsen, who believed even when I didn’t, and to everyone at Tor Books, especially Jim Minz, who was very patient, and Tom Doherty, who thought it was a good time to bring Thieves’ World home.

  My thanks, too, to my agent, Jonathan Matson, who did all the things I could never do, and to my close friend, Elaine, who deduced that I wasn’t getting enough pizza and, despite the thousand miles separating us, arranged to have it delivered regularly.

  And, last but not least, to the super-cell tornadoes that ripped through Oklahoma on May 3, 1999. For ten years I’d insisted that I’d return to Sanctuary “when pigs fly”; that night, the swine, along with everything else, were airborne.

  Chapter One

  A full moon shone over Sanctuary, revealing boats in its harbor, dwellings within and without its coiled walls. The city appeared prosperous, but Sanctuary always shone brightest at night. In sunlight, a man standing on the eastern ridge overlooking the city would see that the largest boats tied up along the piers were rotting hulks, that roofs were missing all over town, and the great walls had been breached by neglect in several places.

  Sanctuary could have looked worse and had many times during the half century that Molin Torchholder had—however reluctantly—called it home. Gods had fought—and lost—their private wars on Sanctuary’s streets, but the city went on, resilient, incorrigible, just possibly eternal. Its citizens repelled catastrophe as readily as they squandered prosperity. Time and time again, Molin had watched fire, storm, plague, invasion, and sheer madness sweep through the city, carrying it to the brink of annihilation, only to ebb away, like the tide shrinking from the hard, black rocks wrapped around its harbor.

  And should Molin Torchholder call himself a citizen of Sanctuary?

  In the morning years of his ninth decade, no one would deny Molin the right to call himself whatever he wished. He preferred to think of himself as Rankan. Born in the Imperial capital, raised by priests of the war-god, Vashanka, and risen to the heights of their hierarchy before his twenty-fifth birthday, Molin Torchholder had been marked as a man with a glorious future. Then he’d come to Sanctuary, a city on the edge of nowhere, a city so far removed from the Imperial Court of Ranke that an insecure emperor had thought it a safe place in which to exile an inconvenient half brother when a sudden attack of conscience stopped the fratricide the Imperial advisors—including the high priests of Vashanka—had suggested.

  I’ll be here a year, Molin had thought the first time he’d ridden down this road. One insufferable year, then he’d be back in Ranke, accumulating power, wealth, and a legacy for the ages. His god had had other ideas. Molin’s god had a taste for blood and chaos and once He’d gotten a taste of Sanctuary’s particular squalor, Vashanka couldn’t push the plate away.

  Vashanka had amused Himself with children, thieves, and the pangs of lust. The war-god of the mightiest empire in the world had made an immortal fool of Himself for years. Spurred by immortal embarrassment, divine powers both great and small had allied to erase Vashanka’s name from the white-marble lintel of His own temple—from the temple Molin himself had raised in His honor. Reduced to little more than an itch on the world’s behind, the great Vashanka had slunk out of Sanctuary on a night very much like this one more than forty years ago.

  Molin hadn’t felt his god’s departure until the next morning when he’d encountered an indescribable absence during his daily prayers. Vashanka’s come to His senses and returned to Ranke; Molin had thought, little realizing that Vashanka had gone not home, but into exile. Worse—the divine powers that had run Vashanka out of Sanctuary had condemned him—him!—to remain within its walls.

  From the beginning Molin had loathed everything about Sanctuary: its wretched, soggy climate; the brackish taste of its water; and, especially, its citizens. He swore he could never be reconciled to an unjust fate; then the moon would rise and he’d be drawn to the roof above his palace apartment—or find himself delayed on the East Ridge Road. His thoughts would wander, and Sanctuary would take his soul by surprise, flexing its claws, reminding him of what he tried so hard to forget: This place, and none other, was home.

  Footfalls drew Torchholder’s attention away from the rooftops of Sanctuary. He turned in time to see his escort, a man scarcely a quarter his age, climb out of the roadside ditch. Atredan Larris Serripines’ face was paler than the moon and shiny with sweat but, on the whole, he looked a good deal better than he had when he’d staggered into the grass.

  “Better now?” Molin asked pleasantly.

  Atredan favored him with a scowl. “So much for Father’s Foundation Day Feast.”

  In another time and place, Lord Serripines’ second son might have amounted to something. He had the golden hair and hazel eyes of a true Rankan aristocrat, an amiable personality, and the sense not to get caught when he succumbed to temptation. Lesser men had ruled well in Ranke. But in Sanctuary, a generation after an eastern horde had brought fire, rape, pillage, and death to the Empire’s heart, Atredan was doomed to ambition without prospects.

  No commemoration of the Imperial Founding, however precisely observed, could change that.

  Molin dug into his scrip and found a sprig of mint twisted with other herbs, which he offered to the younger man. “I think you’ll find it settles what’s left and takes the taste away.” When one indulged as the Imperial court in its prime had indulged, one never forgot its remedies and kept them forever close to hand.

  Atredan had refused the digestive when Molin had first offered it, but took it gratefully now and chewed hard. Within moments his face had relaxed.

  “Gods all be damned, Lord Torchholder, I can’t believe any emperor has ever sat through a meal like that! The food. The wine—especially that wine. Anen’s mercy, what did my lord father put in it this year?”

  Never mind that Anen was the Ilsigi god of vineyards and anathema to the Rankan pantheon, Atredan had a valid argument.

  “Honey,” Molin replied with an honest sigh. “A comb of Imperial honey, straight from the Imperial hives, the Imperial garden, and the Imperial pantry. The genuine article—or so he told me. Very rare these days.”

  “Very expensive,” Atredan corrected. “Very old, very spoilt, and fit only for swine or my lord father’s Foundation Day table.”

  “That is not for me to say,” Molin said diplomatically and—because he was, among many other things, an accomplished diplomat—he made it clear that he would have agreed with the young man, had it been necessary to do so.

  Diplomatic nuance was wasted on the Serripines’ cadet heir. “Did you actually drink that swill?”

  “I’m an old man, Lord Larris, and my palate is as old as the rest of me. Swill or ambrosia, it all tastes the same now—Yet, I am sure the wine we drank in Ranke was not so sweet … or gluey. An
d neither did we ferment it ourselves. Truth to tell—we seldom drank Imperial wine, with or without Imperial honey. All the best vintages came by ship from Caronne. They still do, I suppose, but not to Sanctuary. Have a care for your lord father. He was a babe-in-arms when Ranke fell. He dreams of Rankan glory, but he doesn’t remember it.”

  Atredan muttered words too soft and slurred for Molin to catch. The indignities of age! His reputation had been built on his eyes and his ears. Time was when no word or gesture had escaped his senses; that time was gone. It was true that younger men still complimented him and relied on his advice, but they had no idea how much of his edge he’d lost.

  Or how tired he had become.

  “Come,” he urged his escort, “it’s time to get me home to my bed.”

  “You could have stayed at Land’s End. My lord father loves nothing better than to have the Lord Torchholder sleeping beneath his roof. A veritable hero and not merely of Sanctuary—as if Sanctuary could nurture a true hero—but of the Empire.”

  “For all the good my heroics have done me.” Molin chuckled. “After two nights beneath your lord father’s roof, I’ve told all the stories of Imperial glory that I can remember. I’ve drunk his wine and lit his bonfire. The Imperial ancestors have been properly honored, a new Imperial year is safely begun, and I’m ready to go home.”

  Atredan cocked his head in the moonlight. “You think we are all fools, don’t you, Lord Torchholder? My father, the Rankans he shelters at Land’s End … me.”

  “All men are fools, Lord Larris—you, me, your lord father, and all the men and women beneath his roof. The nature of men is foolishness. Never forget it.”

  “But the Serripines more than others, because Father believes Ranke will be mighty again, and that will never happen.”

  “Only a fool says ‘never’ when speaking of the future.”

  “There’s no future for the dead. There is no future, not for us, not for Ranke. We’re like fish in a weir. We sing praises each time it rains, but the fact is, we’re trapped, and if the rains don’t come, we die. Only sooner, rather than later.”

  Molin gave Atredan a second look—he’d never before suspected that the young man had a bent for philosophy, and although he generally agreed with Atredan’s dreary assessment of Rankan prospects, he offered up a scrap of encouragement: “Sanctuary’s a coastal town, my boy. The tide comes in twice a day, no matter the rain. A man may drown, but he’ll surely never shrivel.”

  “My lord father has shriveled. He hasn’t set foot in Sanctuary since the Bleeding Hand killed my mother. He lives in his own world at Land’s End with his back to the sea, waiting for an army that will never come to take back a city that was never his.”

  Molin didn’t like to talk about the years when the Dyareelan fanatics had ruled Sanctuary. Neither did anyone who’d managed, somehow, to survive. The Serripines had gotten off lightly, retreating behind the walls of their fortresslike estate. But Molin would never say that to a son who’d seen his mother disemboweled, nor to her shattered husband. He temporized instead. “Your lord father feels obligated to comfort those whom the emperor has abandoned.”

  And, in truth, it wasn’t Lord Serripines who made each Land’s End visit feel like an early trip to the boneyard. If the sack of Ranke had been the most unexpected event in Molin’s lifetime, the transformation of the Sanctuary hillsides from scrubland to fields and meadows should be counted a close second. The Serripines paterfamilias might have his head in the clouds where the Imperial past and future were concerned, but in the present he was a shrewd man who knew what to plant and when and—most important—who would pay the most once the fields were harvested.

  Lord Serripines would have preferred to sell his harvest to Ranke—for a profit, of course—but there was no one along the eastern coast who could match the bids made in the resurgent Ilsig Kingdom to the north and west. Lord Serripines practically, but reluctantly, listened to his head, not his heart, and sold his harvest to Ilsigi sea captains, who sold it again to men who no longer paid tribute to the emperors in Ranke. Then, to assuage his guilt, Lord Serripines opened his estate to an ever-growing community of Imperial exiles and freeloaders.

  The irony was not lost on Molin. With few exceptions, the elder Vion Larris Serripines was the most successful Rankan to dwell in—or near—Sanctuary in decades. He was also the unhappiest man Molin had ever met—which was a dubious accomplishment all by itself—but worse, to Molin’s jaundiced eye, was Lord Serripines’ willingness to shelter any noble-blooded Rankan who washed up in Sanctuary’s harbor.

  Indeed, two nights at Land’s End were more than enough. Molin almost pitied young Atredan and his elder brother, Vion, coming of age in their father’s bleak shadow.

  “You should thank me, Lord Larris.” Molin changed his tone and thirty years dropped from his bearing.

  “For what?”

  “For giving you an excuse to leave before the bonfire was burnt down to ashes. Lord Serripines would never have agreed, and a son must obey his father.”

  Atredan grimaced. “My lord father doesn’t understand—our future, what there is of it, is bound up with Prince Naimun, and tonight the prince will be in need of a friend’s ear. Better it were my brother escorting you back to the palace and Naimun’s table, but there’s no escape for Vion.”

  Molin couldn’t resist a jab at the youth’s defenses. “Naimun’s table or his upper room at the Inn of Secret Pleasures?”

  The young man contrived to keep his pale cheeks from darkening, but his darting eyes gave his secrets away quicker than his tongue. “You are mistaken, Lord Torchholder.”

  “I think not, and I care not. The Inn’s whores are clean enough, but not tonight, Lord Larris. If you have Naimun’s ear, tell him to stay at home. There’s apt to be trouble, and the Inn’s guards won’t withstand a visit from the Dragon.”

  “Pox on Arizak per-Arizak,” Atredan said boldly, giving the Dragon his proper name. “Sweet Sabellia’s tits—what brings the Dragon and all the rest of the Irrune to Sanctuary today of all days?”

  “The Irrune are a gathering people,” Molin answered mildly. “They’re entirely unlettered. How else are they to communicate amongst themselves if they do not gather?”

  “But not in Sanctuary and not in such numbers. I woke up yesterday morning, looked over the wall, and saw the whole damned Irrune nation riding down the road.”

  “The Irrune come together around their chief. Arizak’s their chief, and this year Arizak’s in Sanctuary because this year Arizak’s leg is rotting and he can’t sit his horse. As long as Arizak was out in the hills, the Dragon was confident of his inheritance, but since Arizak’s butt has settled on a silk cushion instead of a saddle, the Dragon began to worry. His mother, his uncle, and the rest of the riders are worried, too, so they’ve followed their favored son here in number to make certain that Chief Arizak doesn’t forget who he is, or more importantly, which son he’s named to succeed him.”

  “Prince Naimun doesn’t give a fig for the damned Irrune. He wants Sanctuary.”

  “So does the Dragon, just not in the same way. The Dragon wants the city’s wealth, its wine, and its women—” Molin paused for effect. “Well, perhaps the half brothers do each want Sanctuary for the same reason, but Naimun is so much easier to distract.”

  “It is not a crime, Lord Torchholder, to drink with a prince,” Atredan asserted, showing more spine than Molin had expected.

  “No, indeed it is not. Nor is it a crime to call Naimun a prince when he is no more than the eldest son of his father’s second wife—unless the eldest son of Arizak’s first wife is about and your man gets himself killed in a whore’s bed.”

  Atredan had the sense to look embarrassed. “His friends look out for him.”

  “And that, of course, is why you want to be in Sanctuary to-night—to look out for your friend. So be it. Naimun’s weak and biddable and you think that makes him an ideal ruler. You’re wrong in more ways than I can count, so be
that, too. But think, if you dare, about loyalty—”

  “I am loyal, Lord Torchholder.” Atredan lowered his voice then raised it as his indignation swelled. “I am loyal to my father, to my brother, to my family, to my emperor—should he come to claim my service—and I’m loyal to Naimun.”

  “Of course you are, Lord Larris—but to whom is Naimun loyal? And why?”

  “Don’t play with questions, Lord Torchholder,” Atredan bristled. “If you suspect Naimun can’t be trusted, say so.”

  Molin waved the young man’s anger aside. “Did I say that? Did I say that Naimun can’t be trusted? Did I say he wasn’t loyal? What I am saying, Lord Larris, is that while you may, indeed, be Naimun’s friend and, no doubt, loyal to him, do not think for one moment that you are the only man—or woman, for that matter—in Sanctuary who’s figured out that our Naimun follows flattery. Trust Naimun, if it pleases you, cultivate his love and his loyalty, but be damned wary of your companions within his charmed circle.”

  Atredan could not have looked more displeased if he’d had a plate of worms set before him and his father’s undrinkable wine to wash it down. “Is that what this is about—the great Lord Torchholder dispensing advice on the road to Sanctuary? You’re wasting your time, old man. I know everything I need to know about Naimun and the Dragon, their father, and every other Irrune who matters, and I learned it without your help or my lord father’s, either.”

  He’d hoped for a better response, but Molin was too much the diplomat to reveal his disappointments. “Then, forgive an old man who’s seen too many men fail because they forgot to watch their backs.”

  “When Arizak’s gone, Naimun will bring Rankan rule to Sanctuary—without the emperor, of course, and without the Dragon. It’s all been settled. I’d think you’d be pleased, Lord Torchholder. Isn’t that what you had in mind all along?”

  “Of course,” Molin agreed, and the words weren’t utter falsehood.

  The laws of Ranke, when wielded by a strong, yet subtle, ruler were worthy of admiration. Molin would like to see Rankan law return to Sanctuary, but Naimun was neither strong enough nor subtle enough to do so. There was a man in the palace whom Molin liked better for the task—a boy, actually: Raith, Naimun’s brother and the youngest of Arizak’s sons. Raith had it all—the strength and comeliness, the quickness of mind, the flair for leadership and decision. What Raith lacked was experience. He was all of sixteen and needed another four years, three at least, before he could lay claim to the palace.