‘Jad rot his eyes!’ roared the red-bearded fellow, first to react, leaping to his feet. Morax rushed out of the kitchen in the next moment, hurrying for the stairs. But the artisan, ahead of him to the archway, went the other way, inexplicably. Seizing a stout stick from by the front door, he stormed out into the black night.
‘Mice and blood!’ Linon had gasped. We’re jumping!’ The inner words came right on the heels of the girl’s cry.
‘Where?’ Crispin demanded as he scrambled to his feet downstairs and snarled a curse for the benefit of the others in the room.
‘Where do you think, imbecile? Courtyard out the window. Hurry!’
The wretched girl’s scream had frightened him almost out of his head, that was the trouble. It was too loud, too . . . piercingly terrified. There was something raw in it that went far beyond spotting a thief in an upstairs room. But Thelon had no time at all to sort out why; only to know, almost immediately after he did the wrong thing, that what he ought to have done turn calmly to her and, laughing, order her to bring a light so he could more easily fetch the Imperial Permit for the Rhodian to show his uncle, as promised. He’d have so easily been able to talk his way through an explanation of how, on an impulse, a desire to be of assistance, he had come up to the room. He was a respectable man, travelling with a distinguished mercantile party. What else did anyone imagine he was doing? He ought to have done that.
Instead, panicked, stomach churning, knowing she couldn’t see him clearly in the dark and seizing that saving thought, he’d grabbed the leather satchel lying on the bed, with papers, money, and what felt like an ornament sticking out halfway, and darted for the window. He’d banged the wooden shutter open hard, swung his feet out and jumped. It took courage in the darkness of night. He’d no idea what lay below in the courtyard. He might have broken his leg on a barrel or his neck when he landed. He didn’t, though the blind fall drove him staggering to his knees in the muck. He kept hold of the satchel, was up quickly, stumbling across the muddy yard towards the barn. His mind was racing. If he dropped the satchel in the straw there, he could double back to the front of the inn and lead the chase out onto the road in pursuit of a thief he’d glimpsed on his way back from the latrine after the girl screamed. Then he could reclaim the satchel-or the worthwhile parts of it-before they left.
It was a good strategy, born of swift thinking and urgent cunning.
Had he not been felled by a blow that knocked him senseless and nearly killed him as he angled across towards the shadow of the barn under scudding clouds and a few faint, emergent stars, it might even have worked.
‘Imbecile! You could have hit me!’
‘Learn to duck,’ Crispin snapped. He was breathing hard. ‘I’m sorry. Couldn’t see clearly enough.’ There was only a faint spill of light from the shuttered windows of the common room.
He shouted, ‘Over here! I’ve got him! A light, rot you all! Light, in Jad’s name!’
Men calling, a confusion of voices, accents, languages, someone rasping something in an unknown dialect. A torch appeared overhead, at the open shutter of his own room. He heard footsteps approaching, the loud voices nearing as men from the common room and the servants from the other side streamed out the front door and rushed over. Some excitement on a wet autumn night.
Crispin said no more, looking down in the light of the single overhead torch, and then in the gradually brightening orange glow as a ring of men surrounded him, some with light in their hands.
The merchant’s nephew lay at his feet, a black flow that would be blood seeping from his temple into the mud. The strap of Crispin’s satchel was still looped through one of his hands.
‘Holy Jad preserve us!’ Morax the innkeeper said, wheezing with exertion. He’d raced upstairs and then back down. Robbery in an inn would hardly be unknown, but this was a little different. This was no servant or slave. Crispin, dealing with complex emotions, and aware that they were only at the beginning of what had to be done here, turned and saw the innkeeper’s frightened gaze shift quickly from his own face to that of the merchant, Erytus, who was now standing over the body of his nephew, expressionless.