I’ll just stop by for a quick look to ease my mind, and then be on my way.
Coming around a corner, he pulled up quick. Something warned him to drop behind a row of dirty snow mounds. A dozen heartbeats later, a group of armed men passed through the intersection. Soldiers this time, and moving like they had a purpose. Caim rubbed his aching thigh as he crouched on the frozen cobblestones. They were headed deeper into this ward. Liana had said her uncle’s shop was in that direction. It could be a coincidence…
Caim stayed low as he moved. He didn’t believe in coincidence. Maybe Keegan and his outlaw friends deserved whatever trouble they stirred up, but Liana was there. Damn the girl. Why couldn’t she have stayed with her father?
As Caim turned onto a crooked lane, he spotted three lookouts; two loitering on the street and one perched in a second-story window across from the shop with a hammer-and-nails placard. Spotters. And if they knew what they were doing, the man up top would have a bow…
What are you doing, Caim? Just turn around and walk the other way .
But he dipped into an alley three doors down from the shop and followed it to another backstreet behind the storefronts. Peering around the corner, he saw a fourth lookout huddled behind a snowbank. Caim considered his knives, but then put them away. Instead, he reached out to the shadows. They crowded around him as if eager for his summons. He wove a few around him in a cloak and dismissed the rest, who drifted away slowly.
Hugging the wall, Caim moved down the narrow alleyway. The sentry continued rubbing his hands together and blowing into them, but he didn’t make a sound as Caim passed him.
When Caim got to the back of what he thought was the right shop, he looked for a way up. One of the second-story windows was cracked open. Despite protests from his leg and arm, he started climbing. The bottom half of the shop was faced with rough river stones interspaced with deep groves, which made it easier. The shadows stayed with him, concealing his efforts as he reached the windowsill. He eased open the shutters and climbed inside.
Caim sent the shadows away as his feet touched down on the dusty floor of a small room with a sloped ceiling. The shop was quiet. Nudging the door open with his toe, he stepped out into an L-shaped hallway. A cool draft blew across the back of his neck as he slipped around the corner. Voices wafted from the downstairs. A man and a woman. He didn’t recognize the male, but he knew Liana’s voice at once. He went down the steps without any pretense at stealth.
The ground floor was occupied by a long shop area. All manner of wooden furniture-chairs, tables, wardrobes, chests-crowded the floor. Two shaded windows were set in the front wall on either side of the outside door, with another door in back. Liana and a man about twice her age looked up from a desk in the corner as Caim came down the steps. Liana jerked upright as if she’d seen a ghost. Her hair was damp and glossy in the low candlelight. The man stepped in front of her with a frown.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Caim looked past him to the girl. “Where is Keegan?”
“Look-” the man started to say, but Liana stepped from behind him.
“It’s all right. He’s a friend.” Then to Caim, “What’s wrong?”
“This place is being watched. And there are soldiers on the way.”
Liana looked to her uncle. “They’re down in the cellar. Keegan and a few of the others. I can’t say they’ll be glad to see you.”
“They don’t have to be. Collect whatever you need. We’re leaving.”
Caim went to the rear door. The back room was a work area cluttered with tables, vises, sealed barrels, and racks of tools. Unfinished pieces hung from hooks in the ceiling over a floor covered in sawdust and hardened puddles of beeswax. There were no other ways out except the doorway where he stood and a single window high up on the wall. Liana brushed past and showed him the trapdoor to the cellar. Trying to ignore the sweet scents of soap and fresh flowers about her, he pulled on the iron ring in the center.
Murmurs wafted up through the square hole. Wooden steps descended between walls of mortared stone blocks. Liana watched as he started down. The stairs came to a short landing before turning into a low cellar that ran the length of the shop above. A few more than a dozen men gathered in the chamber, some sitting on piles of lumber and old crates. They wore city clothes-long tunics and baggy breeches, heavy winter cloaks thrown back over their shoulders. One man was clad in a thick brown robe. Keegan was addressing them.
“-on the way we saw other signs of plundering by the duke’s men.”
“We saw the same thing coming down from Prond’s Cross,” someone said from the back of the group.
Several others added what they’d heard, painting a picture of destruction all across the region-homes burned, livestock killed, people driven off or butchered. Caim shifted around a wooden support beam, staying out of sight. A board creaked behind him as Liana came down the steps. He motioned for her to remain quiet.
A slight, balding man with a halo of thin gray hair around his oily pate slouched forward. “Where is Ramon? He said he would be here.”
Keegan clutched his hands together behind his back. “He was at the meeting spot, but I didn’t see him leave.”
“That’s no surprise, unless you’ve grown eyes in your backside.”
“I’m no coward, Grendt,” Keegan mumbled.
His interrogator, Grendt, combed his fingers through the wispy goatee covering his weak chin. “Just passing strange how you always escape with your hide intact, boy, while others do the dying.”
“What are we going to do about Caedman?” Keegan asked. His voice had a plaintive whine that made Caim wince.
The robed man puffed out his whiskered cheeks. “He’s as good as gone, locked up in that hellhole. If he’s not dead already.”
“Caedman,” Grendt said. “Another good man who stood his ground and fought while you ran off, boy. And now you spin us tales of shadow-men and the Hunt.”
“I’m telling you the truth!”
That’s enough.
Caim stepped out of the shadows. Keegan jumped back, his hand fumbling with his weapon. A couple of the men in the audience looked over and then scrambled to their feet. Caim didn’t move as they produced an array of knives and cudgels; one man brandished what looked like a boat hook. Caim didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This was Keegan’s insurrection? At least the woodsmen had seemed somewhat capable, if disorganized and undisciplined. The men confronting him now were clerks and shopkeepers who didn’t look like they could overthrow a produce cart.
Caim showed his empty hands. “I come with a warning.”
“Caim!” Keegan said. “You shouldn’t be here.” Then he saw Liana behind him. “Li! What were you thinking?”
“She’s helping to save your life,” Caim replied.
The others shouted, some threatening to throw him out and a couple demanding to know who he was.
Grendt looked to Caim. “You two know this man?”
“This is the one I told you about,” Keegan said.
“He doesn’t look like much. If he’s so dangerous, why didn’t he stand and fight beside our brothers?”
Caim met the man’s gaze. “Why weren’t you out there alongside them? Maybe it’s easier to sit in another man’s basement and complain rather than put your own life on the line.”
Grendt poked a finger in Caim’s direction from ten paces away. “I don’t need to answer to you. I’ve done my share.” He looked around at his fellows. “We’ve all done our share and more. I say we bind up this strutting cock and throw him out in the street with the other night leavings. Who’s with me?”
Caim dipped his left hand beneath his cloak and produced a suete knife. His right hand twitched, wanting to go to the sword at his shoulder, but he kept it by his side. The men shuffled about, but no one made a move. Just as he suspected, they didn’t have the heart for a scrap against someone who would fight back.
Keegan looked around, and then back to Caim. “You said you had a warning.”
“Soldiers,” Caim replied.
That set all the men to talking among themselves. Only Keegan kept his composure.
“Coming here?”
