Fish came across as Smeds rose to test the window. He was not surprised to find it tightly secured. Fish went to the house door, achieved no better result. Smeds crossed behind him and checked the second front window. Solid. He slid around the corner of the house.
Fish was crouched in front of the office door, which he had pushed open about three inches. Smeds joined him, his knife sliding into his hand. “It was unlocked?”
“Yes. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe it’s so clients can get in anytime.”
Fish ran his hand up the inside of the door. “Maybe, but there’s a heavy latch catch. Let’s be careful.”
“Careful is my middle name.”
Fish pushed the door open, looked inside. “Clear.” He slipped in.
Smeds followed, headed for the door connecting with the house. It was unlocked, too. It opened toward him. He pulled. It swung smoothly, soundlessly. He heard a faint snick behind him as Fish closed the latch. He saw nothing suspicious in the room before him. He stepped inside.
Maybe it was a whisper of cloth in motion. Maybe it was a little intake of breath. Maybe it was both. Whatever, Smeds spun down and away.
A line of fire sliced across his shoulder blade.
He landed on his knees facing the office, watching a shape collide with Fish. Fish said, “Shit!” At the same moment the shape squealed. Then it threw itself sideways and floundered through the leaded-glass window a step ahead of Smeds.
Fish came to the window. “That was him.”
“He was expecting us.”
“Too damned smart. Figured too much out. Can’t let him get away.” Fish jumped through the window.
The physician was going for all he was worth, legs and arms flailing. That fat little hedgehog was no sprinter.
Smeds followed Fish. He passed the older man moments later, and gained steadily on his prey, who had gotten a sixty-yard head start. The physician glanced back once, stumbled. Smeds gained ten yards while he was getting his balance. Fear lent him renewed stamina and speed. He stayed the same distance ahead for half a minute.
The physician knew he was not going to outrun anyone. Smeds knew he knew that. Unless he was running in a blind panic he had developed a strategy, had chosen an ultimate destination...
The physician zigged right, into a narrow alleyway.
Smeds slowed, approached cautiously.
Footfalls pounded away in the darkness.
He went after them. He was just as careful rounding another corner, again without need. Gods, it was dark in there! Third corner.
He stopped dead. There were no sounds of flight. He tried listening for heavy breathing but could not be sure he heard anything because his own intruded too much.
What now?
Nothing to do but go forward.
He dropped down and advanced in a careful duck walk. His muscles protested. He was grateful for the toughening they had gotten in the Great Forest.
There! Was that breathing?
Couldn’t tell for sure. The echoes of Fish’s approach overrode it.
Scrape! Swish!
What must have been a foot missed his face by a fraction of an inch. He flung himself forward but the physician was already moving again. Smeds’s knife ripped along his hip.
Smeds went down hard but caught hold of a heel and managed to hang on. He snaked forward, stabbing at the man’s calf, his target invisible in the darkness. The man squealed like an injured rabbit.
Smeds was so startled he let go. Then he realized he was letting his man get away. He got up and charged ahead, smashed into the man.
“Please! I won’t tell anyone! I swear!”
Pain slashed along Smeds’s ribs on this left side.
He flailed away with his knife, hitting anything he could. The physician tried to scream and fight back and ran away all at the same time. Smeds held on with one hand, kept hacking with the other. The physician pulled him out into a street.
Smeds kept hacking.
The physician collapsed.
Fish arrived. “Shit, Smeds. Shit.”
“Got him.”
“You sure he didn’t get you, too?”
Smeds looked at himself. He was covered with blood. Some of it was his own.
Somebody yelled up the street. People had begun coming to stoops and windows.
Fish bent, slashed the physician’s throat, said, “We’ve got to get out of here. There’ll be soldiers here in a minute.” He looked at the dead man’s hand. “Unh. A mess. He touched you with that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on.” Fish offered him a hand. “You make it?”
“I’m all right for now.”
Fish headed back into the alley.
Smeds began feeling it as soon as the excitement began to go out of him. He knew he would not be able to get away if a chase developed.
Instead of making for the Skull and Crossbones Fish headed into the West End.
“Where we going?” Smeds asked.
“Reservoir. Get you cleaned up. We take you home looking like that the gray boys are going to be around to ask what happened before you can get your boots off.”
XXXVIII
I don’t know what I expected to see when we got to Opal. Maybe nothing changed from my last time there. I sure wasn’t ready for the mess we found. I gaped incredulously as we glided over the ruins, where a few survivors scurried around like frightened mice. I went and told Darling, “Don’t look to me like there’s much chance we’ll find the people you want.”
Odds never bothered Darling.
Raven and Silent now had especially black feelings for me. I’d had the gall to tell Darling who she had to find if she wanted to force Raven to face his past. Neither of them wanted that to happen.
Both of them was so busy thinking about themselves they didn’t have time to wonder what Darling really thought or felt about anything.
We crossed most of the city. Up north we spied several large, neatly arranged camps. The tents were too numerous to be all army, but they showed us that the imperials were there, responding to the destruction of the city in a quick, orderly fashion. Below, soldiers and civilians were at work leveling way for the new. Though they stopped to gawk, these people did not run away.
Darling ordered us to watch for the standard of the military commander. She figured that was the place to start since the city was obviously under martial law. I couldn’t figure why she thought she’d get any cooperation, though.
I asked, “What do you feel about old Raven these days?” I was real careful to keep my hands hid from him and Silent both.
I figured she wouldn’t understand what I meant. I was wrong. She signed, “Once I had a child’s love for a man who saved me and nurtured me and risked everything to protect me when, long before I could believe it
