doors behind them, and peeked out between the nailed boards or rickety, crooked shutters on their windows.
At last the Uskevren staggered into a malodorous little courtyard, where beady-eyed rats rustled through piles of festering trash. Three other alleyways led away from this spot, and, by now thoroughly disoriented, Shamur had no notion which one to take. Since for the moment, none of the Quippers seemed to be right on their heels, she paused to take her bearings and catch her breath.
Thamalon slumped against a soot-stained wall. 'We did better fleeing through the woods,' he wheezed. 'The daylight and these closed-in spaces are killing us. We may have to try to fight, and the odds be damned.'
'Perhaps,' she said, shivering and drawing her cloak about her. Now that she'd stopped running, the wind was doing its best to freeze her sweaty tunic. 'If we have to make a stand, let's do it somewhere they can only come at us from one direction, and only one or two at a time. But I consider that the option of last resort.'
'Agreed. And wife, whatever happens, I want you to know one thing.'
'What's that?'
'I blame you for our predicament. If you recall, I suggested we go home.'
For a moment, she bristled, then realized he'd made a joke. 'Don't be a spoilsport,' she said, grinning. 'Home is dull compared to this.'
She still hadn't managed to figure out what direction they should take, but she could hear hunters calling to one another, stalking closer, and knew they shouldn't remain in the courtyard any longer.
'How about this way?' she said, pointing to an alley at random.
'It looks as good as any,' he replied. 'Let's move.'
In fact, when they crept to the other end of the crooked passage and peeked around the corner, she decided their selection might be quite good indeed, for it had brought them back almost to the point at which they'd entered the Scab. The graffiti-blemished arch was about sixty feet to their right, and no one appeared to be guarding it.
'It looks too good to be true,' Thamalon whispered.
'I know what you mean,' she replied, 'but in my experience, people don't always hunt you in the most effective way possible. Perhaps the Quippers really didn't leave any sentries here.'
'Or perhaps not enough of them,' he said, 'and so far, this is as close as we've come to escaping this maze. Let's try to make a run for it.'
They charged out into the narrow street and dashed toward the gate. Four bravos scrambled from their places of concealment to cut them off.
To the Pit with it, Shamur thought. She'd overcome worse odds in her day. Grinning fiercely, she drew her sword and ran on. Beside her, Thamalon did the same.
Something hummed, and she heard the distinctive smack of a sling bullet slamming into flesh and bone. Thamalon made a choking sound and fell.
She lurched to a halt, spun around, and saw the half dozen toughs rushing up the street behind her. Another sling bullet whizzed past her as she crouched beside her husband.
The back of his head was bloody, and he was clearly dazed. 'Get up!' she said, tugging on his arm.
'Can't,' he croaked. 'You run. Maybe you can still get away.'
Perhaps she could, particularly, it suddenly occurred to her, if she took to the rooftops. Certainly it would be prudent to make the attempt. But she couldn't find it in her heart to leave him lying helpless in the street when, for all she knew, the bullies meant to slay him out of hand.
'We're both going to get away,' she said. 'I'm going to kill every one of these bastards, and then we'll stroll on out of here.'
She leaped to her feet, screamed, and charged the larger of the two groups of toughs. They clearly hadn't expected that, and for an instant, they froze. One of the slingers was still trying to fumble his short sword out of its scabbard when she cut him down.
Pivoting, she dropped a second ruffian with a thrust to the throat, and took a third out of action with a slash to the sword arm. The remaining ones fell back.
She could hear the four who'd been lurking near the gate pounding up behind her. She had only seconds to kill the men in front of her so she could whirl and fight the others. She advanced, the broadsword low, inviting attack in the high line. A scar-faced man in a red doublet took the bait and slashed at her face. She parried and drove her point into his chest.
At that same instant, another ruffian attacked. Since she was still yanking her weapon from his comrade's body, she had to slap his dagger out of line with her unweaponed hand. Then the broadsword pulled free, but the bravo had lunged in too close for her to readily use the blade. She smashed the pommel against his temple, and he dropped.
One left! She pivoted to engage him, and then her time ran out.
Pain blazed in the center of her back. Certain that someone had stabbed her, she snarled and tried to pivot around to maim him in turn, but lost her balance and fell. The surviving toughs surrounded her, striking and kicking, until she no longer had any strength to resist.
Chapter 16
Wyla found Magnus and Chade loafing in their usual hidey-hole in the loft, at the far end of the warehouse from her own cluttered little office. She often wondered that they didn't find a new haven in which to hunker down and shirk, someplace she hadn't yet discovered, but perhaps they were too lazy even to bother with that.
'Come on, sluggards,' the thickset woman with the graying ponytail said. 'There's work to be done.'
'I guess,' said Magnus, a stooped, middle-aged man with jug-handle ears. To her surprise, he didn't sound sheepish or put-upon, but instead, somber and worried as if he and his fellow laborer had been having an uncharacteristically serious conversation.
'Is something the matter?' she asked.
'You must have heard about the trouble,' said Chade. A swarthy, rather handsome young man with a mellifluous baritone voice, he was as usual rather too well dressed for his job of lugging bales and boxes about. 'The Uskevren heir and cadets were attacked yesterday. Captain Orvist and Master Selwick died in the fighting. What's more, it's rumored that Lord Uskevren himself hasn't been seen for a couple of days.'
'Certainly I've heard about it,' Wyla said. 'What I don't understand is what it has to do with you two gentlemen of leisure stacking crates onto wagons.'
'I know how things used to be,' Magnus said. 'Back when Lord Uskevren first came back to town. Enemy Houses attacked his caravans, shops, manufactories, and warehouses to try and ruin his family a second time.'
'Those days are over,' Wyla said. 'Besides, if any rogues showed up here to make trouble, don't you think the three of us could show them off?'
She fingered the well-worn hilt of the long sword hanging at her side. She'd owned the blade since her youth, when she'd served the House of Uskevren as a warrior. Eventually a lamed leg had ended her martial career, whereupon Lord Thamalon, who'd realized her talents from the beginning, had made her one of his factors. She had little use for the weapon these days, and sometimes its weight made her bad leg ache, but she would have felt undressed without it.
'We'd damn well try to drive them off,' said Chade, 'and failing that, I suppose we could run away. But I'm not worried about us so much as Lord Uskevren himself. Do you think he's all right?'
'Absolutely,' Wyla said, 'and since I rode with him through the hardest and most dangerous of times, and saw firsthand what a cunning and doughty warrior he is, I'm in a position to know.'
'I hope so,' said Chade. 'He's a good man to work for, not like some. Remember how he invited us all to Storm-weather Towers for that feast, and helped when Fossan-dor's mother was going to lose her cottage?'
'I do,' said Wyla, 'and I tell you again, whatever it is that's happening, he and his family will be fine. Unless all his workers shirk their tasks, and his trading empire collapses.'
Magnus rolled his eyes. 'All right, we get the point.'
He and Chade clambered to their feet, stepped from behind the rampart of crates upon which they relied to
