Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick Read Free Book Online

paper. Likely both.
    “How about someone named Ioclaudia?” I said.
    “Who?” said Baldezar.
    I turned back to the master scribe. Had he been peering at me? “Ioclaudia,” I repeated.
    “Outside of some of the more obscure histories, no, I’ve never heard of anyone by that name. Lyconnis?”
    Lyconnis shook his head. “No,” he said. He smiled timidly at me. “Not anyone living in the last three centuries, anyhow.”
    “The way my morning has been going,” I said as I rose, “that doesn’t surprise me.” I nodded to Baldezar, gave a respectful bow to Lyconnis—mainly to irritate his master—and headed out of the shop.
    On a normal day, it was a short walk from Baldezar’s to my home; today, it took just as long, but felt like five times the distance. The sun seemed brighter, the crowds denser, the streets dirtier. I didn’t have the energy to deal with any of them.
    By the time I arrived at the apothecary’s shop I lived above, I was little more than a shambling mass of dulled senses. I let out a small sigh of relief. For a moment, I considered going into the shop to pester Eppyris for some ahrami, but the thought of my disheveled, lumpy mattress won out. I began moving toward the stairwell.
    “Nose.”
    The voice came from somewhere far, far away—maybe ten whole feet behind me. Turn around? No, ignore him instead; he’d go away.
    “Hey, Nose!”
    Still there? Angels, this person couldn’t take a hint! I made an eloquent, sincere, and highly profane gesture without turning, and continued on my shuffling way.
    “Dammit,” said the voice. Something heavy laid itself on my shoulder and spun me around.
    Habit and adrenaline kicked in. As I turned, I let the small dagger (the poisoned one) drop from my wrist sheath into my left palm. At the same time, my right hand sought out my rapier.
    There were two of them and they were big—obelisk big, blot-out-the-sun big—and they were good.
    One blocked my left arm and took away my dagger, a bored look on his face. The other put his hand on my right wrist and stopped the rapier in middraw.
    I knew them.
    “Niccodemus wants to see you, Nose,” said Salt Eye. “Now.”

Chapter Four
     
    I n the “argot of the underworld,” as Baldezar would no doubt call it, I am what is referred to as a Nose. This means I make a living by sticking myself in where I don’t belong, sniffing around for dirt, and generally making a nuisance of myself. I’m an information broker, and I gather what I can by almost any means I can: paid informants, bribes, eavesdropping, blackmail, burglary, frame-ups . . . and even, on rare occasions, torture—whatever it takes to get the story.
    That’s what sets a Nose apart from a run-of-the-mill rumormonger: We not only collect the pieces; we also put them together. Any Mumbler can sell you a rumor for the right price; but if you want to know the why behind the rumor, when and where things are coming together, and how it got started in the first place, you go to a Nose. Noses don’t just gather whispers off the street—we sift and assemble them, putting together the pieces most Kin miss. We don’t just find out something is happening—we find out why it’s happening in the first place.
    And then, we sell the information.
    Whom you sell it to depends on what kind of Nose you are. If you’re a Wide Nose, you work the street and sell what you learn to the highest bidder, pure and simple. It’s dangerous work, since not everyone wants you sharing what you learn, but a smart Nose knows how to hold just enough information back to keep people from bothering him.
    Long Noses, on the other hand, keep their heads down and their information tight. They ply their trade by infiltrating a rival crime lord’s organization and feeding information back to their real boss. Being a Long Nose takes that special mixture of guts and stupidity usually reserved for mongooses and imperial tax collectors. You typically don’t find out someone’s doing