Deception, speech, and mouths that speak without truth.
The thing about Kasdim during the Festival of Lying Mouths was that you couldn’t trust anyone—which, as the Grey Ratter pointed out while picking the lock on Lord Vashtar’s wine cellar, was hardly different from any other night in the City of Seven Score Thousand Smokes.
“The difference,” Phaphhrd replied, holding the lantern at an angle that was marginally less useful than no lantern at all, “is that during the Festival, lying is mandated. At all other times, it is merely customary.”
“You’re blocking my light.”
“There is no light to block. This lantern produces approximately as much illumination as a consumptive firefly.”
“Then hold it closer.”
“If I hold it closer, I will set your hair on fire.”
“My hair,” the Ratter said, working the third tumbler with a pick so slender it might have been a thought given metallic form, “has survived worse indignities than your navigational incompetence. Last month it survived the Singing Eels of the Temple of Tranquil Drowning. The month before that, it survived Illyria of the Silken Cord, who turned out to be neither silken nor cordial. Your lantern is the least of its concerns.”
The lock clicked. The door swung open. Beyond lay darkness and the sweet, complex smell of wines that had been aging since before either of them was born.
“After you,” Phaphhrd said, with the elaborate courtesy he reserved for moments of maximum danger.
“After you,” the Ratter countered. “You’re taller. Any traps will hit you first.”
“That’s not how traps work.”
“How would you know? You’re from the Cold Waste. Your idea of a trap is a hole in the ice.”
“My idea of a trap is considerably more sophisticated than that.”
“Name one trap you’ve ever set.”
Phaphhrd considered. “I once convinced a she-bear that I was her long-lost cub.”
“That’s not a trap. That’s a delusion.”
“It trapped the bear in a state of maternal confusion long enough for me to escape.”
“And this is why I do the planning.” The Ratter slipped through the doorway, moving with the liquid grace of someone who had learned to walk silently before he had learned to walk at all. “Light. Now. And try not to illuminate anything that might kill us.”
The wine cellar of Lord Vashtar was legendary in Kasdim, which meant it was legendary in a city where legends grew like mushrooms in a plague-pit—abundant, varied, and often toxic. It was said that Vashtar had wines from every kingdom that had ever existed, including several that existed only in the dreams of mad cartographers. It was said that one bottle, the Tears of the Weeping Emperor, could grant visions of the future. It was said that another, the Blood of the Forgotten God, could resurrect the dead—though only for the duration of the hangover, which was reportedly eternal.
It was also said that Vashtar protected his collection with traps designed by Ningaudrelle of the Eleven Eyes, which was why the Grey Ratter was moving through the cellar with the exaggerated caution of a man walking through a field of sleeping vipers.
“There,” Phaphhrd whispered, pointing with the lantern. Its feeble glow caught the edge of a web so fine it was nearly invisible—a thread of silver spanning the gap between two wine racks, positioned precisely at throat height for a man of average stature.
“I see it.”
“And there.” Another thread, this one at ankle level.
“I see that too.”
“And there’s a pressure plate beneath the third flagstone from the left.”
The Ratter paused. “How do you know that?”
“Because there’s a pressure plate beneath the third flagstone from the left in every trapped wine cellar I’ve ever entered. It’s traditional.”
“You’ve entered many trapped wine cellars?”
“In the Cold Waste, we have very little wine. What we have, we protect with great enthusiasm.” Phaphhrd stepped carefully over the ankle-level thread, ducked beneath the throat-level one, and avoided the third flagstone with the ease of long practice. “This way. I can smell the Tears of the Weeping Emperor.”
“You can smell a specific wine through sealed bottles?”
“I can smell legend. It has a particular bouquet. Notes of impossible promises and the regret of kings.”
The Ratter followed, matching Phaphhrd’s steps with the precision of someone who had learned long ago that his larger companion’s instincts for danger were as reliable as his instincts for romance were catastrophic.
They found the Tears on a pedestal at the cellar’s heart—a bottle of crystal so clear it seemed to contain not wine but captured moonlight, resting in a depression carved from a single piece of obsidian. The pedestal was surrounded by a circle of silver dust, which was surrounded by a circle of salt, which was surrounded by a circle of something that looked suspiciously like ground bone.
“Three circles,” Phaphhrd observed. “That’s more than traditional.”
“Ningaudrelle doesn’t do traditional. He does excessive.” The Ratter circled the pedestal, studying the arrangement from every angle. “The silver’s for binding spirits. The salt’s for purification. The bone...” He crouched, sniffed. “Human bone. Female. Young. That’s for anchoring the curse.”
“What curse?”
“The one that will activate the moment anyone touches the bottle.” The Ratter smiled, and the smile was not pleasant. “Ningaudrelle has a sense of humor. The curse doesn’t kill you—it makes you tell the truth. Permanently. For the rest of your life, you can never speak anything but absolute, unvarnished honesty.”
“That doesn’t sound so terrible.”
“This is Kasdim, Phaphhrd. The city runs on lies the way the Sea of Stars runs on salt. A man who can only speak truth would be dead within a week—killed by everyone whose secrets he accidentally revealed, whose schemes he inadvertently exposed, whose marriages he unintentionally dissolved.”
Phaphhrd considered this. “Then how do we get the bottle?”
“We don’t.” The Ratter straightened, dusting off his knees. “We let someone else get it for us.”
The Festival of Lying Mouths had transformed Kasdim’s Plaza of Dark Delights into something that resembled the fever dream of a theatrical designer who had consumed too much black lotus and not enough common sense.
Paper lanterns hung from every surface, their light stained red and gold and a peculiar shade of purple that existed nowhere in nature. Masked figures crowded the cobblestones, their costumes ranging from elaborate to obscene to elaborately obscene. Street performers juggled knives, flames, and small venomous reptiles. Food vendors sold skewers of meat that might have been lamb or might have been something more exotic—during the Festival, asking what you were eating was considered poor form.
And everywhere, everywhere, the lies.
“I am the Duke of the Western Reaches,” announced a man in rags, to general applause.
“I have never loved anyone but my wife,” declared a woman whose arm was draped around someone who was decidedly not her husband.
“The taxes are fair and the Overlord is just,” shouted a street crier, to roars of laughter.
This was the tradition of the Festival: for one night each year, Kasdim officially acknowledged what everyone knew to be true the rest of the time. Lying was not merely permitted but required. The only sin was sincerity.
Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter moved through the crowd with the ease of men who had long ago learned that the best way to be invisible was to be exactly as visible as everyone else. Phaphhrd wore a mask of white silk that covered the upper half of his face and a costume of black leather that covered very little else. The Ratter wore a mask of black velvet and a costume of grey silk that managed to be both modest and suggestive, a trick he had learned from a courtesan in the Pleasure Quarter who had later tried to kill him.
“There,” the Ratter said, nodding toward a figure near the wine fountain.
The figure was Lord Vashtar himself—a thin, nervous man with the face of someone who spent too much time with his books and not enough time with sunlight. He was surrounded by sycophants, as wealthy men in Kasdim always were, and he was drinking heavily, as wealthy men during the Festival always did.
“The plan?” Phaphhrd asked.
“Simple. We tell him the truth.”
Phaphhrd blinked. “During the Festival of Lying Mouths, we’re going to tell the truth?”
“The only way to lie on the night when everyone lies is to tell the truth.” The Ratter’s smile widened. “Watch and learn, my frost-brained friend. Watch and learn.”
“Lord Vashtar!” The Ratter pushed through the sycophants with the confident rudeness of someone who belonged exactly where he was. “I have terrible news!”
Vashtar looked up, his eyes already glazed with wine. “News? During the Festival? Don’t be absurd. During the Festival, there is no news, only stories. Tell me a story, masked stranger.”
“Very well. A story, then.” The Ratter’s voice dropped to a theatrical whisper. “There are two thieves in Kasdim tonight. Dangerous men. Desperate men. They seek your wine cellar, my lord—specifically, they seek the Tears of the Weeping Emperor.”
Vashtar laughed. “An excellent lie! The Tears are protected by Ningaudrelle himself. No thief in Kasdim would be foolish enough to attempt it.”
“And yet these thieves are exactly that foolish. One is a giant from the Cold Waste, nearly seven feet tall, with a sword longer than most men’s legs. The other is a small man, quick and cunning, with fingers that can pick any lock ever forged.”
“You describe legends, not men.”
“I describe Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter,” the Ratter said, and the name fell into the conversation like a stone into still water.
The sycophants went quiet. Even in Kasdim, where names were weapons and reputations were armor, those two names carried weight. Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter. The giant and the thief. The romanticist and the cynic. They had robbed the Thieves’ Guild itself and lived. They had stolen the Crown of Night from the Temple of Tranquil Drowning. They had, it was whispered, once played dice with Death himself and won—though what they had won and what it had cost them was a matter of considerable speculation.
“You jest,” Vashtar said, but his voice had gone thin.
“I never jest about professionals. And I tell you truly, Lord Vashtar—these men are in your cellar at this very moment.”
Vashtar’s face went pale. He surged to his feet, scattering sycophants and wine cups. “Guards! Guards to the cellar! Ningaudrelle! Where is Ningaudrelle?”
The wizard appeared from the crowd with the unsettling suddenness that characterized all his entrances. He was a thin figure draped in robes of midnight blue, his face hidden behind a mask that showed not a face but a constellation of eyes—eleven of them, arranged in no pattern that made geometric or anatomical sense.
“You called, my lord?”
“My cellar! The Tears! Thieves—”
“I am aware.” Ningaudrelle’s voice was cold and distant, like wind through a tomb. “I have been aware since they entered. My traps are not merely defensive—they are observational. I know everything that happens in your cellar, Lord Vashtar.”
“Then stop them!”
“I cannot stop what has not yet occurred.” The eleven eyes moved independently, each one focusing on something different. “The thieves have not yet touched the Tears. They stand before the pedestal, contemplating the circles of protection. They are clever enough to have deduced the nature of the curse.”
The Ratter felt a chill run down his spine. Ningaudrelle knew. The wizard had been watching the entire time, which meant he knew that the Ratter was here in the plaza and not in the cellar where he was supposed to be.
Except—the eyes were focused elsewhere. All eleven of them, looking at things the Ratter could not see. If Ningaudrelle knew the Ratter was here, he gave no sign.
“Then we must go to them,” Vashtar said. “Confront them before they can—”
“An excellent idea.” Ningaudrelle extended one thin hand. “Come, my lord. Let us inspect your cellar and ensure that your treasures remain unviolated.”
The wizard and the lord departed, sycophants trailing behind like remoras following a shark. The Ratter watched them go, counting heartbeats until they vanished into the crowd.
Then he turned to find Phaphhrd, who had appeared beside him with the silence of a very large man who had learned the value of not being noticed.
“We have perhaps ten minutes,” the Ratter said.
“Until they reach the cellar and find it empty.”
“Until they reach the cellar and find it occupied.”
Phaphhrd’s eyebrows rose. “By whom?”
“By two thieves who match our descriptions exactly. I hired them this afternoon—a tall northerner and a small, quick man. They think they’re stealing the Tears for a collector in the Merchant’s Quarter.” The Ratter’s smile was sharp as a blade. “They’re actually stealing the curse.”
“You set up decoys.”
“I set up victims. When Vashtar and Ningaudrelle arrive, they’ll find two thieves who have already touched the bottle and activated the curse. Two thieves who can now only speak truth.” He paused. “And truth, during the Festival of Lying Mouths, is the greatest crime of all.”
“What happens to them?”
“Nothing pleasant. But nothing that will happen to us.” The Ratter began moving through the crowd, heading for the secondary entrance to the cellar—a route he had scouted three days ago and paid handsomely to ensure would be unguarded during the Festival. “Come. While Ningaudrelle is distracted with the false thieves, we take the real prize.”
“The Tears?”
“Better. The Tears are worth a fortune, yes, but they’re famous. Identifiable. Difficult to sell without attracting attention.” They had reached the shadow of the cellar entrance now, a narrow door half-hidden behind a tapestry of dubious taste. “No, while our decoys were distracting Ningaudrelle, I had them place a small gift on the pedestal. A talisman that disrupts magical observation for exactly one hour.”
“You planned this.”
“I plan everything.” The Ratter was already working the lock, his picks moving with the confidence of intimate familiarity. “The Tears are valuable, but the other bottles in Vashtar’s cellar—the less famous ones, the ones no one will miss immediately—are collectively worth ten times as much. We take those. We leave the Tears. We disappear into the Festival.”
“And the decoys?”
The lock clicked. The door swung open.
“They knew the risks when they took the job.”
“Did they?”
The Ratter paused, his hand on the door frame. In the dim light, his face was unreadable.
“No,” he admitted. “They didn’t. But that’s not my problem.”
He vanished into the darkness, and after a moment, Phaphhrd followed.
They filled three sacks with wines worth more than most men would earn in a lifetime. The Ratter selected with the precision of a surgeon, choosing bottles that were valuable but not irreplaceable, rare but not unique. Bottles that Vashtar might not notice missing for months, if ever.
All the while, they could hear sounds from the cellar’s main chamber—voices raised in accusation, protests of innocence that no one believed, the particular wet sounds that accompanied Ningaudrelle’s preferred methods of magical interrogation.
“They’ll kill them,” Phaphhrd said quietly, hefting the last sack.
“Probably.”
“Because of us.”
“Because of their own greed. They took the job. They made the choice.” The Ratter tied his own sack closed with practiced efficiency. “Kasdim doesn’t reward the innocent, Phaphhrd. It doesn’t even acknowledge they exist.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Right has nothing to do with it. Survival has everything to do with it.” He gestured toward the secondary exit. “Move. The talisman’s effect will fade soon.”
They emerged into the Festival’s chaos, two figures in masks carrying sacks that might have contained anything—costumes, supplies, the sorts of pleasurable substances that the Festival officially prohibited and unofficially celebrated. No one looked twice at them. In Kasdim, during the Festival, everyone was carrying something they didn’t want examined too closely.
They made it three blocks before the screaming started.
It came from the plaza, sharp and raw and terrible—the sound of men who had lost the ability to lie and had discovered, too late, what truths they had been carrying without knowing it. The Ratter’s decoys, stripped of their masks, stripped of their deceptions, stripped of the comfortable untruths that made existence in Kasdim bearable.
Phaphhrd stopped walking.
“No,” the Ratter said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I know that look. It’s the look you get before you do something noble and stupid.”
“Those men are dying because of us.”
“Those men are dying because of themselves. Because they chose to steal. Because they chose to take a job without asking enough questions. Because they’re thieves, Phaphhrd, just like us, and in Kasdim, thieves die.”
“Not like that. Not stripped of everything that protects them.”
The Ratter’s jaw tightened. “What would you have me do? Go back? Confess? Tell Vashtar and Ningaudrelle that it was us all along, that those men were just decoys, that we’re the real thieves?”
“I would have you not set them up in the first place.”
“Then we wouldn’t have the wine.”
“Then we wouldn’t have the wine.”
They stood there, two figures in masks, as the screaming continued in the distance. The Festival swirled around them, oblivious, indifferent, as Festivals in Kasdim always were. Pleasure and pain were neighbors here, separated by nothing more substantial than a curtain of silk or a veil of lies.
“There’s nothing to be done,” the Ratter said finally. “They’re cursed. Even if we saved them from Ningaudrelle, they’d die anyway—truth-tellers can’t survive in this city. The kindest thing anyone could do for them now is give them a quick death, and that’s not something I’m willing to risk my neck to provide.”
Phaphhrd said nothing. But he reached into his sack, pulled out a bottle at random, and uncorked it with his teeth.
“What are you doing?”
“Drinking.” He tilted the bottle back, swallowing wine that was probably worth more than the building they were standing beside. “It’s what we came here for, isn’t it? Wine? Wealth? A good time during the Festival?”
“Phaphhrd—”
“You made your choice, Ratter. You made it when you hired those men, when you set them up to take our fall, when you decided their lives were worth less than our profit.” Another long swallow. “I’m not going to fight with you about it. We’ve been partners too long for that. But I’m going to drink, and I’m going to remember their faces even though I never saw them, and tomorrow when I wake up with a headache that could fell an ox, I’m going to remember why.”
The Ratter opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again.
After a moment, he reached into his own sack and pulled out a bottle.
They drank in silence, the two of them, while the Festival raged around them and men died in the distance because of choices they hadn’t made and traps they hadn’t set and lies they could no longer tell.
The wine was extraordinary. The Ratter had to admit that much. Whatever else could be said about Lord Vashtar, the man had excellent taste in vintages.
They were on their third bottle when the shadow fell across them.
“Well,” said a voice like honey poured over broken glass, “this is not what I expected to find.”
The Ratter looked up. Standing before them, eleven eyes gleaming in the Festival’s light, was Ningaudrelle of the Eleven Eyes.
“Wizard,” the Ratter said, and his voice was steadier than it had any right to be after three bottles of wine worth more than a ship. “Lovely evening for curses and interrogations, isn’t it?”
“You seem unconcerned for men in your position.”
“What position would that be?”
“The position of thieves who have just robbed my client’s cellar while I was distracted by decoys they themselves arranged.” The eleven eyes moved, independent and unsettling. “Yes, I know. I knew from the moment your false thieves touched the bottle. The talisman you had them place was clever, but not clever enough—it blocked my observation of the space, but it did not block my observation of the talisman itself. I have been watching you since you entered the secondary passage.”
The Ratter carefully set down his wine bottle. “If you’ve known the whole time, why didn’t you stop us?”
“Because I was curious.” Ningaudrelle moved closer, and his robes seemed to absorb the light around them, making the shadows deeper, more absolute. “Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter. I have heard stories of you for years. The giant and the thief. The romanticist and the cynic. I wanted to see you work. To understand how you think, how you plan, how you survive in a city that devours most who attempt what you attempt.”
“And now that you’ve seen?”
“Now I am... impressed.” The word seemed to cost the wizard something. “Your plan was elegant. Your execution was flawless. Your willingness to sacrifice others for your own benefit was entirely appropriate to this city and this profession.”
“Then you’re not going to kill us?”
“Kill you? No.” Ningaudrelle’s lips curved in what might have been a smile. “I’m going to hire you.”
Phaphhrd, who had been drinking steadily throughout this conversation, lowered his bottle. “Hire us for what?”
“There is an object I desire. An object in the possession of my rival, Sheemba of the Devoid. An object that she protects with traps far more sophisticated than anything in Lord Vashtar’s cellar.” The eleven eyes all focused on the same point—a disconcerting effect, like being stared at by a constellation that had developed opinions. “I need thieves capable of retrieving it. Thieves who are clever, ruthless, and willing to sacrifice others if necessary.”
“The curse on those men,” the Ratter said slowly. “That wasn’t just protection for the wine, was it? It was an audition.”
“Everything in Kasdim is an audition. Surely you know that by now.” Ningaudrelle produced a small purse from within his robes and tossed it to the Ratter. “Consider this a retainer. Half now, half when the job is complete. The object I seek is called the Tongue of Silent Screaming. Sheemba keeps it in her tower in the Swamp of Forgotten Sorrows.”
“The Swamp of Forgotten Sorrows is three weeks’ journey from here.”
“Then you had better start soon.” Ningaudrelle turned to leave, then paused. “Oh, and Ratter? The men you sacrificed tonight? They’re not dead. I removed the curse before it could kill them—it was, as you suspected, designed for observation rather than punishment. They’ll wake tomorrow with headaches and no memory of the evening’s events.” He smiled, and the smile was worse than the frown. “I wanted thieves who were ruthless, not murderers. There is a difference, you know. The ruthless make useful tools. Murderers make only corpses.”
He vanished into the Festival’s chaos, leaving behind nothing but the echo of his voice and a purse heavy with gold.
The Ratter and Phaphhrd sat in silence for a long moment.
“He played us,” Phaphhrd said finally.
“He played everyone. That’s what wizards do.” The Ratter weighed the purse in his hand. It was heavy—heavier than it looked. “But he’s paying well. And if the decoys are alive...”
“You were willing to let them die.”
“I was willing to let them face the consequences of their choices. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
The Ratter opened the purse, counted the gold, and sighed. “Probably not. But it’s the kind of lie I need to tell myself to keep doing this job.” He offered the purse to Phaphhrd. “Half for you, half for me. And tomorrow, we start planning how to rob a swamp-dwelling eyeless wizard’s tower.”
Phaphhrd took the purse, weighed it in his own hand, and tucked it into his belt. “You know this is probably another trap.”
“Of course it’s another trap. Everything in Kasdim is a trap.” The Ratter retrieved his wine bottle and raised it in a toast. “To traps, then. And to the fools who walk into them with open eyes.”
Phaphhrd raised his own bottle. “To fools.”
They drank, the two of them, as the Festival of Lying Mouths continued around them—a celebration of deception in a city built on deception, where even the truth was just another kind of lie.
Somewhere in the distance, men who had briefly been forced to speak only truth were waking up with headaches and no memories, and a wizard with eleven eyes was already planning his next move, and the vast machinery of Kasdim’s endless intrigues continued to turn.
But here, in this small pool of shadow, two thieves shared wine and silence and something that might have been friendship, if friendship were the sort of thing that could survive in a city like this.
Which it probably wasn’t.
But they drank anyway.
THE END
◊ᴹᴱᴹᴼᴿʸ⁻ᶜᴼᴹᴾᴸᴱᵀᴱ
Published by Centaurus Press · Universitas Scholarium · All rights reserved.