He had no sense of change, but suddenly the wrist he held was different. He let go, and Thinal hurtled out in front, heading for cover like a rabbit, with Andor’s overlarge garments flapping around him. No hero, Thinal. Ladened by his pack and the dead lantern, Gathmor couldn’t keep up with him. He watched the little thief vanish into the shadows, heard the hooves grow louder, and saw the leaders wheel around the corner just as he reached the alley also and plunged into the welcome darkness.
It was not an alley, merely an oversized alcove, and he was brought up short by a high, solid fence. Of Thinal there was no sign whatsoever.
Cursing fluently, Gathmor dropped the lantern, swung his pack down to the ground, and began fumbling with the ties—there was a sword inside. But he knew he’d been seen, and one man couldn’t hold off an army. He was a fist-and-boots man, anyhow—he’d never used a sword in his life. He stopped, gasping for breath, knowing it was useless. A prowler near the palace at this time of the morning, running away . . . he was a dead man! Sweat trickled icily down his ribs.
The horses never broke stride. A dozen cantered by his patch of darkness, then a coach, rumbling and bouncing, and a solitary giant of a man on a black stallion, and finally another twenty or so horsemen, riding on inky shadows in the moonlight.
And they were gone. Their clamor died away down the hill, and the silence. of the night returned, broken only by his own hard breathing.
Gathmor jumped as another man dropped nimbly at his side, Thinal coming down from above, having scaled a sheer wall in his inimitable style.
“Funny time of day to be going for an outing,” the thief remarked in a puzzled tone.
Jalon scowled at him. Of all the five he knew Thinal least. The kid’d been busy, these last two days, but he did his work alone. Gathmor had caught glimpses of him, but they’d exchanged few words. Slight and foxy, the young imp was also nondescript and unmemorable.
“Come on, then,” he snapped. “I need my stuff.” Common porter! Snarling, Gathmor set to work on the pack. Then he paused. “What’s the old man’s plan, exactly?”
“Kadolan,” Thinal said, stripping o$ Andor’s fancy robes. “Darad saw her on a balcony. He doesn’t think, of course.”
“So I gathered. Why her?”
“Hurry! Because no one can possibly get close enough to Inos to have a private chat, right? No man, anyway. You know how djinns guard their women.” Stripped bare now, he pushed Gathmor’s hands away and the bundle yielded swiftly to his thieving fingers. “But I may be able to get to her aunt—she won’t be so well guarded.”
“And then what?”
Thinal began emptying the pack, tipping out all the miscellaneous garments and equipment the team had collected for their nefarious exploits. He found the shorts he wanted and pulled them on, dancing round on one foot at a time, then he went hunting for his shoes. Burglars disliked floppy robes.
“Then Jalon.”
“Jalon?” Gathmor didn’t think he was usually so stupid. The occult gang was deliberately trying to confuse him. Sagorn was a schemer and Thinal a sharpie. He was only an honest sailor.
Thinal pulled the sword from the pack and hung it on his back. It was a fine dwarvish blade, but the hilt was so distinctive that it might as well have had Stolen from the Palace of Arakkaran written all over it. Once inside the grounds, he could call Darad to use it anytime there was need of violence. He peered up at Gathmor. “Then . . . then we’ll improvise. Got a better plan?”
“No,” the sailor admitted angrily. “But you have. Out with it!”
“Inos tells Jalon her word. As adepts, we rescue Rap . . . Don’t wait around. This may take all day, or even longer. Look for us. . .” He paused, thinking. “The North Star Saloon, dawn and dusk and noon? If none of us shows in two days we’re dead. All right?”
“Why Jalon? And shouldn’t you find a shadier stretch of wall to climb?”
“Not at this time of night. No one around.” Gathmor opened his mouth to argue, but it was too late. Leaving the sailor standing in the scattered mess of clothing, the kid sprinted across the empty street and seemed to flow straight up the wall on the far side. In moments he had vanished over the top.
Gathmor waited for sounds of discovery, and there were none.
He sighed and bent to stuff all the clothes back in the sack.
Then he straightened. Wait a minute!
Rap was dying—chained to the floor, all his bones broken, his tongue burned out, gangrene . . . Even if Darad or Thinal had become adepts, they wouldn’t be sorcerers. They might rescue Rap, but they couldn’t cure those awful injuries!
But did Inosolan know that Rap had been broken like that? If she thought he was just locked up in a cell, then she might very well believe the gang’s story and hand over her word of power—and it wouldn’t do Rap a damned bit of good!
The stillness of the night was shattered by an explosion of jotunn curses.
Of course they’d duped him! They would dupe the girl! And Rap would still die.
6
“Shandie! Shandie! Oh, my poor baby! Shandie!” The voice came from a long way away, a very long way. It sounded much louder than it could possibly be, because that was Aunt Oro’s voice, and she had a very soft voice, always, and she never shouted.
He was lying facedown. Because.
He was asleep, really. The room was dark, the bed soft. Sleep.
“Shandie!”
He smiled. He was glad she had come, and hoped she would see his smile in the dark and know he was glad, but he was much too much asleep to say anything. The world was all very woozy, and if he tried to wake up then he would feel his sore butt, and he didn’t want that.
“Shandie! Speak to me!”
He mumbled, tried to say he would see her tomorrow. Didn’t think it came out right, because his mouth was all woozy, too. Moms had given him the medicine. To take the pain away.
More than usual medicine, ‘cos it had been a very big beating. He’d been a very bad boy. He couldn’t remember just how, but he had. Ythbane had been very, very disappointed in him.
Sleep . . .
“And what are you doing in my bedroom?”
That was Moms this time. She was shouting. Oh, dear, Moms was angry.
“I’m visiting my nephew! And what is a nine-year-old doing still sleeping in his mother’s bedroom, may I ask?”
That was Aunt Oro again, but it didn’t sound like Aunt Oro, who was sweet and cuddly and never, never shouted. ‘Cept she was shouting now.
So was Moms. “He’s my son and I’ll decide where he sleeps. And I’ll thank you—”
“What’s the matter with him? What have you doped him with?” ”Just a mild sedat—”
“Mild? He’s dead to the world! Laudanum? It must be laudanum! You give your own son laudanum?”
“Mind your own business!”
“This is my business!”
He was starting to cry. He could feel tears. He didn’t like all this shouting, and he wanted to sit up and tell them to stop shouting over him, but he couldn’t even lift his head, ‘cause it weighed ever so much and was so woozy. Dark. Woozy. Sleepy.
“It is not your business!”
“Yes it is! He’s my nephew, and heir to the throne. And who did this?”
Ouch!
“See?” Aunt Oro, shouting louder. “This sheet is stuck to him. Caked blood! No bandages, even?”
“Too swollen. Just compresses.”
“Who did it?”
“He was disciplined.”
“Disciplined? You call this discipline? I call it flogging.”
“He disgraced himself today.”
Yes. Now Shandie remembered. He hadn’t just fidgeted. He’d fallen down and interrupted the ceremony and shamed himself before the full court. Of course he’d had to be beaten for that.
“He fainted! I saw. Grown men faint when they have to stand too long. Shut up and listen to me, Uomaya! Hear me out. I saw. He fainted like a soldier on parade.”
“They get punished—”
“He’s only a child! He shouldn’t even have been there. Certainly not made to stand all that time! Of course he fainted!”
“And I will see my child reared as I choose. I repeat, it is none of your business . . .”
“And I say it is . . .”
The voices came and went; louder, softer. Like waves on Cenmere. Rock me to sleep . . .
“This book? What sort of book is this for a boy of his age? Encyclopedia Hubbana? Is that all he gets to read?”
He did love Aunt Oro, but did wish she would go away now, stop shouting, let him’n’Moms go to sleep. The voices faded . . . then came back loud again.