From the middle tunnel entrance burst the plainly dressed bravo who they had seen earlier. His sword was drawn. His expression was unpleasant.
'Stop!' cried the thief, unconsciously echoing Sophraea.
'Not likely!' yelled back Gustin, pulling Sophraea along at a clip of long legs that left her shorter strides nearly flying off the ground.
Over his shoulder, Gustin muttered a string of foreign words. Their pursuer faltered. Then with a growl like a wounded dragon, he pressed after them.
'That one never works on the run,' gasped Gustin. 'I've really got to stop trying it in situations like this.'
'Are… you… often…' Sophraea panted.
'Yes. That's why I can talk and run. Keep going!'
They sprinted to the door, the burly fighter barreling behind them.
Sophraea and Gustin crashed into the door. Sophraea beat out the Carver's secret knock in rapid haste with her small fists, still clutching the old shoe.
'Hurry, hurry, hurry!' she whispered. -.
She could see their pursuer in her mind; imagine the slash of his sword's blade.
His outstretched hand brushed her shoulder.
Gustin swung around, his clenched fist crashing into the thief s face. That didn't stop their attacker. He fell back with a snarl, then lunged toward them, his sword slashing. Sophraea ducked, throwing herself against Gustin to knock him out of the way. As they fell sideways, the sword's blade hit the door at the height where her head had been.
She was sprawled against Gustin with her arms outspread. He tried to free his hands, caught between them. She struggled to get off him so he could use his wand.
Sophraea pushed her hand into Gustin's chest for leverage, then swung backward with her arm extended. She tried to close her fingers tightly around the lantern's handle, felt the jolt as it hit the thief. The lantern clattered to the floor.
This time the thief shrieked in pain. He wiped blood from his face and lunged toward her.
Sophraea screamed. Feeler and Fish flung open the door and Gustin tumbled inside the room. She fell toward their outstretched arms, almost reached them.
Seeing a tall man with writhing tentacles for hair and another with a double row of shark teeth, the thief hesitated. Then he saw the glitter of the gold shoe in Sophraea's out-flung hand.
The thief lunged at Sophraea, grasping her wrist and pulling her to him. Gustin, just as firmly anchored on the other wrist, pulled her toward the open door.
Feeling like the battered ball in one of her brothers' games, Sophraea let out a shriek higher than any since earliest childhood, when Myemaw had said 'That child is small but she has champion lungs!'
All the men winced. Sophraea took advantage of the thief s momentary distraction to stamp hard on his instep with one pointed heel. He gasped and for a moment, froze with shock. Sophraea twisted around, turning as much as possible with the two men still hanging onto her wrists. A second kick, with her equally sturdy and pointed boot toe, caught the thief on the side of the knee, where his armor didn't cover the side of the tender joint.
The man let out a yell, much as Leaplow once did when a younger Sophraea had shown him the maneuver taught her by Cadriffle.
Dropping Sophraea's wrist, Gustin secured a firmer hold on her waist and lifted her away from the thief, even as the frustrated and furious man swung down his sword.
Feeler came flying out of the door to tackle the thief. The blade missed Gustin's head by a breath as he ducked and rolled away, but the pommel clipped his crown.
Sophraea and Gustin rolled together into the center of the basement.
The thief fought free of Feeler's grasp and sprinted away.
Once again sitting in a tangle of the wizard's long limbs on the basement floor, Sophraea found herself being examined in a concerned way by Feeler and Fish.
'Are you all right?' asked Feeler.
'Fine, fine,' said Sophraea as she started to scramble to her feet, but stopped when Gustin swayed against her. She dropped the shoe that she had clutched so tightly throughout the chase to steady the young man.
'He hit my head,' said the wizard in a blurry tone. Blood trickled down from the brown curls. 'It hurts,' he confided to her.
'Oh no,' said Sophraea, recognizing these symptoms all too clearly from various mishaps in the Carver household. She waved one hand in front of Gustin's glazed expression. 'How many fingers do you see?'
'Pretty ones,' replied Gustin and promptly passed out on the cold floor of the gravediggers' room.
NINE
The first thing upon waking any morning, Gustin always noticed the smell of his room. Long before he cracked his eyes open or stretched one hand out from under the covers to grope for his boots (he kept them under his pillow in a cheap tavern or under the bed if the door had a good lock), the scent of his current resting place would worm into his nose.
In Cormyr, his room stank like a stable, more specifically like the part of a stable usually carted away in the early morning. Not surprising as that room overlooked a large pile used for fertilizing the inn's vegetable garden.
' In Waterdeep, his room on Sevenlamps Cut always reeked of fried fish, which was odd as the tavern owner never fried anything, as far he knew. That man preferred to boil his stews until everything was pale, mushy, and tasteless.
On the road from Cormyr to Waterdeep, when Gustin could find a room and didn't have to sleep outdoors in the back of the carter's wagon (which always smelled damp and just a bit moldy under the canvas), his various rooms had smelled of unwashed travelers.
But this room in Dead End House! Ah, he took another deep sniff even as he snuggled under the feather quilt. This room smelled wonderful. Clean linen on the bed, beeswax polish on the chair by the door and the table set under the window, and, oh truly fantastic, the whiff of something baking straying up from the kitchen. This room smelled exactly the way that he always thought a room should smell in the morning.
Gustin Bone sat up quickly so he could get a better sniff of whatever his first meal of the day would be. His head swam and he clamped his mouth shut to hold back a moan. He tenderly probed the three expert stitches that Reye Carver had sewn in his scalp the night before.
His memory of the previous night was confused.
Going up the stairs out of the basement remained a bit of a headachy blur, his clearest recollection being a too close, upside down view of Feeler's tentacles after the big gravedigger had slung him over his shoulder.
In the kitchen, there'd been lots of chatter. Lots and lots, so he had let his eyes slide out of focus and slumped in the-chair where Feeler had dropped him, waiting for the noise to subside. At some point, he heard Sophraea babbling on about how she just opened the basement door a crack to show Gustin the tunnels and this horrible man had tried to break in.
He had heard men's voices outshouting the women's protests.
'We'll get the rat, twist his scrawny neck!'
'Leaplow, I don't like that language in my kitchen.'
'Sorry, Mother. All right, come on, we'll catch him and then decide.'
'I know what you'll decide. And you know he'll have an army of his friends down there by now,' answered Reye Carver. — 'So we'll clear them out!'
'And start a war in the tunnels? I think not!' That had been Myemaw, Sophraea's tiny grandmother, the one that made him laugh at supper with her descriptions of what people actually ate in Waterdeep.
'So what do you want us to do?' Leaplow shouted and the floorboards reverberated under his feet as he danced up and down. Like his sister, Leaplow always seemed to be moving fast, impatient for the next step. Only, he went thud, thud, thudacross the floor rather than the distinct tap, tap, tap of Sophraea darting away to get him a
