the rich citizens were generous with these unfortunates; others simply averted their gaze, or looked through the beggars as if they weren’t there. There was no doubt that their sort wasn’t welcomed here, as Alec soon discovered.
Before he’d collected the price of a cheap meal, rough hands hauled him to his feet and he found himself surrounded by five blue-coated men of the City Watch. One of them ran his hands down Alec’s sides and gave him a nasty grin as he felt Alec’s perfectly good arm hidden beneath his dirty peasant’s smock.
“By the Flame, look what we have here,” he exclaimed loud enough for some of the well-dressed passersby to hear. A few even stopped. One of them was Lady Mallia, a good friend of theirs, on the arm of some blond nobleman Alec didn’t recognize. Alec kept his head down, heart hammering in his chest.
The bluecoat tore the shoulder of Alec’s smock open and yanked his arm out. “You know what the penalty for false begging is, my boy?” he asked, giving him a hard shake.
“Pity, your honor!” Alec mumbled.
“Twenty lashes in the Tower,” one of the other bluecoats informed him, as if Alec didn’t already know. “And the pillory. Let’s see what we have here.”
He reached for the bandage shrouding nearly half of Alec’s face. Mallia was looking on with evident pity, murmuring something to the gentleman with her. One of the bluecoats still had Alec by the arm. The other four had him hemmed in pretty well, and most of them were a good deal taller and heavier than he was. Before the one reaching for his face could touch the bandage, Alec twisted his arm free, dropped
into a crouch, and sprang between two of the men at knee level, taking them by surprise. One still managed to grab the flapping tail of his torn smock, but what was left of the side seam let go and Alec sped on shirtless through the evening crowd, dodging the grasping hands of those trying to heed the bluecoats’ calls for help as they pursued him. If he’d been tackled it would have been the end of him, but Alec was fast and agile, and he knew the back alleys and low roads of the city as well as the lines on his own right palm.
Outdistancing the shouting, he turned into Gannet Lane at a dead run, narrowly missing collision with a pair of young ladies and their escorts. Screams and curses followed as he ran on, searching his memory and Seregil’s lessons for the right combination of turns. He rounded another corner, and another into a narrower street. He’d left the fashionable neighborhood behind. Respectable merchant folk filled the streets here, enjoying the cool of the evening. He earned plenty of disapproving stares as he stopped to get his breath, sweat clammy on his skin. His head rag and bandage were still safely in place, but a half-naked young man was notable in any street. This was borne out all too quickly when he heard someone shout, “There he is. Down there!”
The bluecoats hadn’t given up the chase after all. Before any well-intentioned citizen thought to grab him, Alec bolted for a narrow alley one street over, barely wide enough to walk down without turning sideways. At the end of it was a locked gate that led down into the sewers. Reaching into his head rag, he took out one of the picks buried in his braid for just such an occasion and quickly worked it around in the heavy lock. This one was well maintained and gave in a moment. Slipping into the reeking darkness beyond, he locked it behind him and felt his way down the steep, narrow stone staircase, following the faint sound of running water and squeaking rats.
Tamir the Great had laid down these vaulted channels before the first building was erected, and made her new capital the cleanest, least plague-prone city in the Three Lands. Stone walkways ran along the sewer channels, and the high-arched ceilings trapped the evil humurs overhead, allowing
the Scavengers to go about their business in relative safety. Grates made of metal bars crossed the channel in places, each with a locked gate that only the Scavenger crews had the right to open. But that didn’t stop footpads called gate runners from using this as their private refuge and highway.
Alec was acutely aware of the possibilities, and the fact that his current disguise had forced him to go out unarmed. Reaching into his head rag again, he pulled out a small lightstone and by its soft glow navigated his way along the stinking channels, back toward Emerald Street. Fortunately, it proved an uneventful journey. He came across only a woman and two young children-some gate runner’s family, or just a poor woman and her children seeking what shelter they could find. She swore at him and brandished a rusty knife, but he jumped the channel and gave her a wide berth.
Another stairway let up to a street near Emerald. He jiggered the gate and crept up to the door at the top to peer through the large keyhole. Night had fallen, and there didn’t appear to be anyone about. He left the sewer and found himself in a side street between the back gardens of large houses. Being half naked was just as much of a disadvantage here, for someone who wanted to go unnoticed. The street was deserted, so he scaled a few walls until he found an unattended clothesline and helped himself to a shirt. It was too fine and too clean for a beggar, so he rubbed it around in the gutter until it was suitably filthy. Dressed again, he checked his head rag and bandage, then made his way back toward Marquis Kyrin’s villa.
It was too dangerous to show himself in Emerald Street again. Keeping his distance from the guards at the marquis’s gate, he found the lane that ran behind the house. The walls surrounding the back courtyard weren’t impossibly high, but they were too smooth to scale without help. There was a gate wide enough for a wagon, but it was securely locked. Of course no one had conveniently left anything as useful as a ladder or rope lying around. Walking up and down the street, he finally found an empty barrel and lugged it back. Upending it, he climbed on top and stretched his arms toward the top of the wall. He was still a foot too low, so he sprang as
high as he could and managed to grasp the edge. The barrel fell over and rumbled away down the street, leaving him hanging there.
At this point, a less stubborn person might have given up, but Alec was tired of coming home empty-handed every night. With the edge of the stonework digging into his palms, he managed to pull himself up until he could see the house and the large garden below. The waxing moon cast just enough light for him to see the holes spaced evenly along the top of the wall, and the uneven remains of broken mortar. There had been iron spikes here originally, pulled out and sacrificed to the war effort. It was a common sight and made a nightrunner’s job a bit easier, too.
The garden was laid out in a pattern of formal paths composed of crushed oyster shell. There was no sign of a dog. A balcony spanned the back of the house, and lamp- or candlelight showed at two of the five upstairs windows. Through one he could see a small group of fashionable ladies playing cards in an elegantly furnished parlor. Through the other window he could see what appeared to be a library. While he watched, a man walked past the window and the room brightened as he lit another candle.
Just then two servants, one of them with a lantern, came out a back door of the house and headed toward the gate.
“I know I heard something,” the man with the lantern, presumably the watchman, was saying to his companion. Alec heard the rattle of a heavy chain being undone.
There was no time to drop and run. Instead, he pulled his legs up as far as he could and hung there, praying silently
The watchman and his companion found the barrel lying in the gutter across the street.
“Probably a dog, or a drunkard,” the companion said.
The watchman held his lantern high, looking this way and that but thankfully not up. Sweat ran into Alec’s eyes and slicked his palms as he struggled to keep still. At last they went inside again and chained the gate shut.
Alec’s arms were shaking with the strain, but he managed to pull himself up and balance precariously on top of the wall.
There was still no sign of a dog in the garden, so he carefully lowered himself and dropped into a bed of fragrant flowers. From here, it was a simple matter to scale a wooden drainpipe to the balcony. The first lighted window was the room with the ladies. The casement stood ajar to catch the breeze, and he could hear them laughing and talking over the game. There were five of them, including Lady Mallia. She must have been on her way here. He didn’t recognize the others, but a stately woman with silver-white hair seemed to be presiding, and she sent a servant for more wine as Alec watched from the shadows outside.
“Really, it’s too hard,” said Mallia. “I haven’t had a new piece made this year.”
“Pearls are the only reliable jewel these days,” their hostess replied, touching the long heavy strand she wore.
“Only because no one’s discovered a way to make them into a weapon, Marquise!” another woman exclaimed.
“At least silk is still available,” said Mallia. “But what are we to do this winter, if the wool route is still
