Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the polder said.  He padded forward and shooed the man out of the way.
    “Are you here to kill us?” Cole asked, as Pinwhistle stuck his head down into the open window.
    “What’s going on down there?” the polder’s voice was muffled and echoed in the room below.
    He pulled his head out.
    “Why’s it smell like deathless?” Pinwhistle asked.
    “Can I, ah,” Cole pointed to the nail. “Can I have one of those?”
    The polder shrugged, pulled out a nail, fired it off his, and offered it to Cole.
    Cole looked at the offered nail, embers in its tip glowing red, and took a deep breath. He was committed to taking the nail, and smoking it, without his hand shaking.
    He reached out and took the nail, dragged it. Let the smoke escape from his nostrils. Acted relaxed. Acted like someone who might smoke out here in the night air with the infamous polder fixer from the Cold Hearth.
    “Your men are dying down there, you know that right?” the little man said.
    Cole said nothing.
    “Figure that’s why you’re up here,” the thief continued. “You’ve got a good sense of self-preservation, I’ll give you that.”
    “There’s rats down there.”
    The polder took another drag on his nail, and waited for Cole to elaborate.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Radenwights.”
    “Yeah,” the polder said. “Their warren goes right under here.”
    “There’s a girl down there.”
    The polder nodded. “So?”
    Cole shrugged. “He wants her. I think she…she’s someone’s daughter or something.”
    Cole took another drag, tried to talk about what happened without thinking about it. Without thinking about why Pinwhistle might be here. “The rats tried to kill us.”
    “Uh-huh. What’d you think was going to happen?”
    “I didn’t know. I didn’t case the place. I didn’t think….”
    “Yeah.”
    “Shit, you’re going to kill me aren’t you?”
    The polder frowned. “You got a one track mind.” He took another drag.  “So the count sends you here to get the girl and gives you what, four scarves? Five? Blue? Green?”
    “Green,” Cole said. “Five Greens.”
    “You try to bust into this place with five green scarves?” Pinwhistle smiled and looked up at the black circle in the sky where the Dusk Moon hid late at night. “Count’s getting sloppy. You’re lucky it’s just ratmen.”
    “He gave me these…” Cole pulled four of the small marbles from a pocket under his leather chestpiece. He stared at them, thinking he could see the black dust inside swirling, striving, seeking a way out of its glass prison. Probably just a trick of the eye.
    The polder took a long drag on his nail and peered at the small black orbs in the mid-level thief’s hand.
    “Ok,” he said. “What are they?”
    Cole was staring at the glass spheres in his hand, then he came back to the world and snatched his hand behind his back.
    “Nothing,” he said.
    “Uh-huh,” Pinwhistle nodded.
    Cole reminded himself he was a blue scarf in the Guild of Blackened Silk. He was important. Men feared him.
    “Why are you here, Pinwhistle?” he asked.
    The polder shrugged. “Just keeping an eye on things.”
    “What?” Cole frowned.
    “Same thing the rats are doing,” the polder said cryptically.
    Cole didn’t know what to make of that.
    “How many of those little black things you got?” the polder asked.
    Cole sagged a little.
    “Why?”
    “Lemme have them,” the polder said, as though asking for a nail in return.
    “I don’t think…the count wouldn’t….”
    “Come on, don’t be dense. Tell him you used them all. Tell him anything, how’s he going to know?”
    “I don’t know,” Cole said, shaking his head. He pulled his hand from behind his back and looked at the horrible glass beads again.
    “Must have been fun down there,” the thief observed. “Rattle you so much.”
    “Huh?”
    The polder shrugged. “I’m just saying, lot of action down there. You’re shaken. You’ve seen some shit and it rattled your