The Fall of Ventaris by Neil McGarry, Daniel Ravipinto, Amy Houser Read Free Book Online Page B

have forgotten more about getting into forbidden places than most people ever learned, and he must know something that could help her.
    Finally, she reached the far wall and lowered herself slowly down the last rope to the floor. Duchess shook out arms that felt as loose and floppy as a stuffed toy’s. “Then maybe you have some wisdom about how to get into places you don’t belong. Since I did such a bad job and all.”  
    Tyford squinted at her. “So you want a story, eh? Well, I’ll give you one. You rest those chicken arms and I’ll pour some wine.” She blinked. The crotchety old man rarely offered her even a sip, but she followed him back to the table where he handed her a cup. “I’ll give you one about a fine old break- out . Those are always more interesting.”
    She said nothing, trying to conceal her disappointment. She’d have preferred hearing about break- ins , but she dared not press him lest he forget the story and set her to climbing again. Maybe she’d get something useful out of him anyway.
    Tyford settled back into a chair. “The moral of this story comes at the beginning: always know who the fuck you’re working for . And I’m not talking about just names either.You have to know whothey are, what they are, and what they want. Anyone who hires a thief’s a liar to the core, and most anyone in this city’s playing at least two games at once.
    “I took the job because I was young and stupid. Like you, come to think of it. A pretty simple bit of business: steal some jewels belonging to a certain lady while she and her lord were at some party up the hill. Simple it wasn’t, though. The man that hired me was on the council, you see, and a friend to the sheriff of the district – his name was Bellis or Bellin or some such – and he’d decided to help out his friend by setting up a thief for him to catch in the act. Bellis-or-Bellin gets a nice collar, and the friend gets a boost for putting him in his job. Everyone makes out.
      “Except no one knew anyone. The friend didn’t know Bellis wouldn’t just be happy with a collar. Bellis didn’t know that catching me was just too easy and that his friend had set up the whole damned thing. And when I took the job I didn’t know that these two were going to bungle the whole business and leave me caught in the middle.”
    Duchess drank some wine and grimaced. She had been right; it was awful. “And I suppose that’s how you ended up getting backstabbed and wound up in jail?”
    He snorted, but didn’t dignify the question with a response. “Bellis turns me over to the Whites, who plant me in the imperial dungeons to wait for the inquisitor to get to me. This friend on the council nearly pisses himself, because when they hang me up by the thumbs the first name I’ll give them is his. Later I found out that he had something on the inquisitor, and he trades his silence for a delay in putting me to the question. None of that got me out of that cell, mind you, so there I sit. My hair’s full of lice and my stomach’s in knots because every godsdamned morning I wake up thinking that’s the day they put me to the question and next’s the one they hang me. That goes on for weeks.” He drank from his cup. “Either my employer couldn’t figure out how to spring me, or he decided the best thing was to just leave me to rot. I didn’t know any of this, of course, but after a few weeks I realized the only one getting me out of that cell was me .  
    “As you can expect, I was thinking about escape before they’d even closed the door. Getting out of the cell was the easy part, but how to get out of the dungeon once I did? The door to the whole area was locked from the outside and guarded day and night not by some damn fool blackarm but a White. You don’t want to mess with a White and that’s for sure.
      “I sat in that cell long enough to see that there were about two jailors for every prisoner, and there were a lot of prisoners. Back in