Salma caught her outstretched hand and heaved. He could not have lifted her from the ground, but she was already in motion, and he threw all the force his wings could muster into pulling her onto the roof.
She shrieked as her arm nearly came out of its socket, but a moment later they were up there, all of two storeys up, and he was still pulling, forcing her to run.
There was a Wasp coming after them, the one she had wounded. He was fighting mad, his wings a blur, and she and Salma had nowhere to go but over other exposed roofs.
‘What now?’ she demanded — and he shoved her off.
She fell onto a shop awning on the other side of the roof, and ripped through it immediately, landing with enough force to knock the breath out of her.
The shopkeeper, a Fly-kinden, was glaring down at her angrily. ‘Beetle-kinden!’ he spat. ‘You’re never going to learn that you just don’t belong up there!’
She got to her feet, looking up, watching out for the Wasps. There were none to be seen yet. She looked along the street: there was no sign of Tynisa, or Totho either.
A hand fell on her shoulder and she whirled round, her sword up ready. Salma caught her wrist in time, and for a moment they just stared at each other.
She let her breath out from under bruised ribs. ‘The soldier. .?’
‘No more.’ She was pleased to see that even he, even Salma, seemed shaken by the episode. ‘Come on. We have to find the others before the enemy does.’
As soon as he reached the next alley mouth Totho turned, expecting to see Tynisa coming after him. If she was there, the crowd hid her. Eyes wide, he stared, trying to find one friendly face amid so many.
He found something, but not what he wanted. There were two serious-looking men, cloaked and hooded, forging their way towards him. The glimpse he caught of one’s face suggested Wasp-kinden to him.
What were they going to do, stuck here in a crowded street? His mind furnished plenty of options. A swift knife-blade, a sagging body. The heedless citizens of Helleron would not pause in their steps to tend to an ailing halfbreed foreigner.
They were closing in now, like fish through shallow water, and Tynisa was nowhere to be seen. With a cold feeling in his heart he turned and began running again. He heard the commotion behind him as they picked up speed as well, while he had a heavy bag to haul and knew that he was no great runner.
And he did not know Helleron well, but he did not let that stop him. He took the first street left, hurtled down it as fast as he could manage, ignoring the shouts, the curses, the occasional drawn blade, as he barged past anyone who got in his way. He left a trail of confusion that any fool could follow, but his followers had to wade through it too.
‘Stop, thief!’ one of them shouted, and abruptly the crowd ahead of him was turning, all eyes fixed on the halfbreed and his bag. Totho gritted his teeth and tried to pick up speed, but his legs were already giving it their all. A solid-looking Ant-kinden tried to bar his way, and Totho ducked low, rammed a shoulder into the man’s chest and knocked him flat. Totho stumbled over the falling man, somehow kept his feet and took a right turn the moment it was offered him. Another dirty little alley, and a short one too. Then there was a crossroads with one even smaller so he turned left.
At first he feared there was no way out. Then he spotted an even narrower passage, roofed over by the overhanging walls of houses. It was now his only way out.
There was someone lurking in the mouth of it, a twisted figure shrouded in a cloak. Totho lowered his shoulder again. At the last moment the figure fled on before him, and he saw that it was now beckoning.
‘Duck, boy, duck!’ the voice yelled, and without thinking he went down, jarring his chin on the tools in his bag as he landed in an inch of filthy water.
Something sped over his head. He looked back quickly to see his two pursuers silhouetted against the tunnel mouth, one halted and one already falling. When the black shadow of his body hit the ground, Totho recognized the sharp spine of a crossbow bolt standing proud of it.
The second man charged forward, and the tunnel was suddenly lit by the fire spitting from his hand. He must have guessed he could get to the mystery assailant before the crossbow was recocked, but another bolt struck him straight in the chest even as he loosed his sting. The harsh impact told Totho that the victim had been wearing armour and that it had not helped. Another two missiles zipped overhead, taking the Wasp in the shoulder and the gut, and he staggered back, sword falling from his fingers. At last he fell.
Totho’s own sword was in his hand, and he crouched behind his bag and waited, peering into the darkness.
‘Who are you?’
‘Good question,’ rasped the voice of the stranger. ‘I’m the one who just saved your life. That good enough for you?’
‘No,’ Totho said firmly.
‘Does the name Stenwold mean anything to you?’ the stranger asked.
‘And if it did, why should I trust you? I’ve. . relying on the word of strangers. . hasn’t turned out so well recently,’ Totho finally got the words out. In truth he was terrified because he could not see the man at all, but he himself would be silhouetted, just as the Wasps had been.
‘Founder’s mark, boy!’ the stranger snapped impatiently. ‘All right, moment of truth. Blink and you’ll miss it. The name’s Scuto. Did Stenwold at least tell you that much?’
‘Scuto?’
‘Ringing a bell, is it?’
It was, but there was more to consider than that.
‘All right,’ he said, standing up wearily. ‘I’ve got a sword here. I’m not giving it up. If you’ve got somewhere. . a bit drier to go, then. . well. .’ Wearily he shouldered his dripping bag.
‘Good boy,’ came the voice of the stranger. ‘Now you just follow me.’
‘I can’t see you.’
‘Then just walk straight. Ain’t no way out of this alley but the way we’re both going.’
The taverna went by the name of the Merraia, just like the one in Collegium where Stenwold had outlined this ill-fated errand to them. Inside it were three low-ceilinged storeys, with a central open space for the airborne and a rope ladder for the rest. The bottom storey was open to the street on one side, and there Che and Salma took a table where they could watch the traffic.
Unlike the Collegium place, which had been a haunt of the locals, a good half of this taverna’s clientele were Fly-kinden, as though they really had set up a little slice of their warren-city of Merro here in Helleron. Most of the surrounding buildings also seemed to be adapted to that diminutive people’s stature and practices, with ground- floor doors and windows boarded up, high windows added into walls, and probably fallback hatches opening in the roofs.
The other patrons of the taverna were not the sort to ask questions of a pair of fugitives, lest they themselves become the subject of questioning in return. Che saw Beetles, Spiders, halfbreeds, and a few others who must have belonged to kinden she had never encountered before. Each table was the hub of a little business deal, over food and wine and the music of a zither.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked. Salma shrugged. His customary smile was absent.
‘We have to look for the others,’ she insisted.
‘It’s a big city,’ Salma said. ‘I didn’t even realize cities this big existed. Shon Fhor, heart of the whole Commonweal, isn’t this big. I could fly over this place every day for a year and I’d not see them if they were on a rooftop waving a flag.’
Che opened her mouth, shut it again immediately.
‘Not that I won’t,’ he said. He downed the shallow bowl of wine and refilled it from the jug their host had
