Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,84

to being well connected.” She flashed her heart-melting smile one last time, as if confirming to the stricken Luthien that she had more than a thieving agreement in mind. Then, with a nod to her departing companions, she started across the street toward her impromptu rope.

Luthien never blinked as he watched her graceful movements, and Oliver just shook his head and sighed.

CHAPTER 19

IN HALLOWED HALLS

FEIGNING INTEREST, Duke Morkney leaned forward in his wooden chair, his skinny elbows poking out of his voluminous red robe, hands set on his huge desk. Across from him, several merchants spoke all at once, the only common words in their rambling being “theft” and “Crimson Shadow.”

Duke Morkney had heard it all before from these same men many times over the last few weeks, and he was truly growing tired of it.

“And worst of all,” one merchant cried above the tumult, quieting the others, “I cannot get that damned shadow stain off of my window! What am I to reply to the snickers of all who see it? It is a brand, I say!”

“Hear, hear!” several others agreed.

Morkney raised one knobby hand and thinned his lips, trying to bite back his laughter. “He is a thief, no more,” the duke assured them. “We have lived with thieves far too long to let the arrival of a new one—one that conveniently leaves his mark—bother us so.”

“You do not understand!” one merchant pleaded, but his face paled and he went silent immediately when Morkney’s withered face and bloodshot amber eyes turned upon him, the duke scowling fiercely.

“The commoners may help this one,” another merchant warned, trying to deflect the vicious duke’s ire.

“Help him what?” Morkney replied skeptically. “Steal a few baubles? By your own admission, this thief seems no more active than many of the others who have been robbing you of late. Or is it just that his calling card, this shadowy image, stings your overblown pride?”

“The dwarf in the square . . .” the man began.

“Will be punished accordingly,” Morkney finished for him. He caught the gaze of a merchant at the side of his desk and winked. “We can never have too many dwarvish workers, now can we?” he asked slyly, and that seemed to appease the group somewhat.

“Go back to your shops,” Morkney said to them all, leaning back and waving his bony arms emphatically. “King Greensparrow has hinted that our production is not where it should be—that, I say, is a more pressing problem than some petty thief, or some ridiculous shadows that you say you cannot remove.”

“He slipped through our trap,” one of the merchants tried to explain, drawing nods from three of the others who had been in on the ambush at the Avenue of the Artisans.

“Then set another trap, if that is what needs be done!” Morkney snapped at him, the duke’s flashing amber eyes forcing the four cohorts back a step.

Grumbling, the merchant contingent left the duke’s office.

“Crimson Shadow, indeed,” the old wizard muttered, shuffling through the parchments to find the latest word from Greensparrow. Morkney had been among that ancient brotherhood of wizards, had been alive when the original Crimson Shadow had struck fear into the hearts of merchants across Eriador, even into Princetown and other cities of northern Avon. Much had been learned of the man back in those long-past days, though he had never been caught.

And now he was back? Morkney thought the notion completely absurd. The Crimson Shadow was a man—a long-dead man by now. More likely, some petty thief had stumbled across the legendary thief’s magical cape. The calling card might be the same, but that did not make the man the same.

“A petty thief,” Morkney muttered, and he snickered aloud, thinking of the tortures this new Crimson Shadow would surely endure when the merchants finally caught up to him.

“I work alone,” Oliver insisted.

Luthien stared at him blankly.

“Alone with you!” Oliver clarified in a huffy tone. The halfling stood tall (relatively speaking) in his best going-out clothes, his plumed chapeau capping the spectacle of Oliver deBurrows, swashbuckler. “It is very different being a part of a guild,” he went on, his face sour. “Sometimes you must give more than half of your take—and you may only go where they tell you to go. I do not like being told where to go!”

Luthien didn’t have any practical arguments to offer; he wasn’t certain that he wanted to join the Cutters anyway, not on any practical level. But Luthien did know that he wanted to see