The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung

life you offered. But it wasn’t the life for me. Not anymore. Not for a long, long time. But as I slipped out of Alain’s work yard and into the night, I remembered the laughter and the amused squabbling that floated up from the kitchen table as I’d come down the stairs. And I realized there was a hole in my life, a place where a family was supposed to fit. Like a missing tooth. Or a severed limb.

 
     
    Chapter Eleven
     
     
    The next couple of days were spent recuperating. I didn’t go home, or anywhere near my usual haunts. Instead I stayed in one of my bolt holes, a third floor garret way the hells and gone across the river in Markgie’s Rest, not even in Lucernis proper. It was a sleepy little community of fishermen and caraveners perched on the north shore of the Bay. People minded their own business, and were used to comings and goings at odd hours. And it got a breeze off the ocean most of the day.
    The first day was pleasant enough. I was just too sore to want to move. By the end of the second, I was bored out of my skull. So I went down to the neighborhood pub to have a drink and be alone, in company. It was pleasant in the late afternoon, sunlight pouring in through real glass windows, surrounded by dark polished wood and red and green painted tables. I’d been there once or twice before. The few customers were mostly old men, telling amusing lies about fish and women.
    I’d been there maybe half an hour when the door opened and three men walked in, bringing a Kerf-damned lot of trouble with them.
    Two were your typical toughs; hard men, armed with short swords and dirks. Their clothes were clean and of good quality, and they were both clean shaven. Hard eyes scanned the crowd, and their hands never strayed too far from weapon hilts. Maybe a cut above the typical tough. Armsmen. Hired blades.
    The third man was something else altogether. Slightly hunchbacked, with long, greasy black hair and a sparse beard, he wore cloth of expensive cut, but there were old stains and new on his velvet tunic. One foot was twisted in, and every step looked like it pained and exhausted him. And it looked as though he’d been walking all day. In one hand he carried a fine knife; black handled and silver pommeled, the bright blade about a hand span long and three fingers wide. A knife I knew very well. I’d commissioned it, after all. It was the knife I’d lost at the Elamner’s villa.
    I’d sat at a bench in the corner, back against the wall. Now I was trapped. 
    Hunchback slapped the knife flat onto an empty table and stared at it. The two toughs gripped the hilts of their swords. I slipped knives into both hands and quietly pushed myself back from the table.
    Nothing happened for a moment. Then the knife began to tremble. Slowly it began to turn, to spin, until the tip pointed directly at me like a Kerf-damned compass pointing north. Hunchback looked me in the eye and smiled a nasty, yellow-toothed smile that spoke volumes, all of it to do with eminent harm coming my way.
    I threw both blades simultaneously, one at each bully-boy, vaulted onto the table, and threw myself through the glass of the window, arm across my face. Before I hit, I heard one of the men yelp in pain. Then I was rolling on the cobbles outside. I heard a horse neigh shrilly, looked up as a shod hoof came down towards my face. I rolled aside just in time. I’d come crashing out just as a hack was passing.
    There were two more sell-swords waiting outside, but it took them a second to react. I wasted no time. I was on my feet and down the street. I didn’t bother to look back. I could hear the heavy slap of boot leather on cobbles behind me.
    Maybe I could have outrun them. Probably I could have. But to what point? They’d follow me wherever I went. My knife would point them the way. My three knives, now. Damned magic. For once the phrase ‘you can run but you can’t hide’ actually had some meaning. So I turned three right corners in quick