The top flight of stairs was closer to being a ladder of rough poles than a proper staircase. There was no railing, but the wall was worn and slimed by the hands of a decade of beggars. The lantern-bearer following Lycon cursed and stumbled and cursed again: some of his obscenities, at any rate, were Greek. The remainder of the group, especially Vonones and the heavily-armed patrolmen, were also having difficulties. N’Sumu, though graceless, mounted the stairs without actually touching the wall over which his open hand glided in readiness to brace him.
Lycon moved up the steps on his tip-toes, only the faint creak of the wood beneath his hobnails betraying his ascent. The beastcatcher held his net in both hands, swinging it waist-high and ready for an underarm cast in an emergency. It wouldn’t stop the lizard-ape for long, but anything that would slow the beast down was worth trying.
The door beyond the topmost landing was a solid one, out of keeping with the upper levels of this or any other apartment block. If the sauropithecus had chosen this particular place for its lair, the choice was either a very lucky one for it—or else luck had nothing to do with it.
It’s nearly as human as you are, N’Sumu had said.
“We may have to cut this down,” Lycon whispered toward the men behind him. “Didn’t expect anything this sturdy, or I’d have brought axes.”
There was scant room for three on the landing proper. Lycon had half expected N’Sumu to squeeze aside and let pass the Watch members with their swords. Instead the Egyptian himself stepped to the door and ran his palms over its framework. The gesture was not casual, but rather a precise survey of the edges of the panel where they butted against the jamb and where, presumably, the bar or bolts were engaged. So far as Lycon could tell, N’Sumu did not actually touch the heavy wood.
The slave with the lantern cowered aside with a look of rigid fear—directed at N’Sumu rather than what might be beyond the door. Neither of the Ethiopians had a good grasp of what was going on—they were present to carry lights, and nobody had bothered to explain the business further. It was reasonable enough that the slave would not regard their quarry with the taut anxiety of those who knew what they were seeking—but why the fear of N’Sumu? It was almost as if the slave, who might well know the Egyptian peoples of the Nile south of Elephantine Island as familiarly as Lycon did Thracians, nonetheless found N’Sumu both unique and unpleasant.
“It’s wedged in place,” N’Sumu decided. “Not firmly at all. If you want, I think that I can . . .”
Lycon shook his head in negation. A drop of sweat from the climb stung his eye and made him blink. Vonones panted two steps down from the landing. Behind and below him on the stairs, the backlighted bronze helmets of the Watch patrolmen gleamed like halos. One of the men had drawn his sword and was trying to brace himself upright against the wall with his elbow.
“You,” said Lycon, pointing over the rolled and ready net at the lantern-bearer. He spoke a sort of bush dialect that worked well enough in the field and which the Ethiopian understood as much through Lycon’s tone as his words. “Jump in and put your back to the wall to the left side of the doorway, while I go to the right. Any delay, any foul-up, and I’ll feed you to a hyena. Believe me. One bite at a time.”
The slave nodded with his lower lip sucked between his teeth. It would be worth any unknown danger to get away from N’Sumu.
“All right, then,” said Lycon. He kicked in the door and it fell with a crash like that of a catapult firing.
The lantern-bearer followed orders with an alacrity that impressed Lycon himself. N’Sumu was inside as abruptly, his eyes blank as marble, and his palms again outstretched.
Lycon spun within to the right, because he was right-handed and his direction of movement would aid a cross-body cast of his net. The shadows cast by the lantern slid across walls and beams in a counterfeit of activity, but for a moment only the newcomers themselves moved in the low-ceilinged attic.