“Why did you decide to give this thing to me to carry?” he asked in a low voice, turning his head slightly toward the Magistrate, who stood at his right hand. “Not that I am unwilling-but I should have thought you’d prefer to have it in hand yourself.”
“At the most crucial moments of negotiation,” said Wen Chang, “I prefer to have both hands free. Also I chose you because I consider you-after myself-the most quick-witted person available . . .ah. Here, if I am not mistaken, comes our next contact.”
An urchin only a little older and bigger than the child who had carried Natalia’s message was approaching them steadily through the random traffic of bodies in the bazaar. His eyes were fixed on Kasimir, who held the sword-shaped bundle in his hands. In a moment, as soon as the boy was sure that Kasimir was watching him, he turned sharply and led the way down Leatherworkers’ Street.
“Slowly and calmly,” said Wen Chang. “After him.”
Moving single file with Kasimir in the lead, his bundle held tightly under his left arm, the three men followed.
They were led beneath the flaring oil-lamps of Leather-workers’ Street, and into another bazaar at the other end of the short, crooked thoroughfare. Kasimir, glancing up just as they reached this second marketplace, saw something that almost made him stumble-a small, dark shadow flitting just above the brightness of the nearest lamp. It had to be one of Komi’s-or someone’s-winged messengers. The lieutenant must be nearby, and must be somehow trying to use one of the creatures to follow their progress through the maze of streets.
On entering the second bazaar their youthful guide had suddenly turned aside, darted under one of the vendors’ carts, and in an instant disappeared from view. It was not to be thought of that men of affairs carrying a Sword would follow him in this maneuver; the trio came to an uncertain halt, watching and waiting for further instructions.
The smells of dough frying, and of meat and peppers roasting on a skewer, enlivened the air here. Somewhere in the background, men clapped hands to the rhythm of a drum, and female dancers whirled in torchlight. A small caravan of laden load beasts urged other traffic momentarily out of the way of their slow progress.
Then, unexpectedly, their guide was back, walking out of the kaleidoscopic churn of moving bodies, coming from the direction of the dancers. This time the urchin moved past the three men purposefully, and walked straight on through the outer gateway of a low stone building at the start of the next street. Once inside the gate he paused, looking back just long enough to make sure they were following. Then he walked on into the building’s courtyard.
The Firozpur sergeant, hand on his sword hilt, followed. At Wen Chang’s gesture Kasimir followed two or three paces behind the sergeant; and he could hear Wen Chang’s soft footsteps coming along at an equal distance behind him.
The open passage leading into the courtyard went round a right-angled corner, so that now the busy street was out of sight. The torchlit enclosure in which they found themselves was small, no more than five meters square, closed on three sides by the mortared stone walls of a low building, each wall containing one or two heavily barred windows. There was one door, even more impressively fortified, in one of the walls. Save for themselves, the courtyard was empty. Kasimir caught only the briefest glimpse of their guide, small bare feet vanishing onto the roof at the top of a fragile-looking drainpipe.
“Now,” said a sepulchral voice, moderately loud, speaking from within the darkness inside the barred window on Kasimir’s right. Nerves triggered by the sound, he spun that way.
“Show us,” added a tenor from the window that was now behind him. He turned again, seeing Wen Chang and the Firozpur sergeant at his sides turning more slowly.
“The Sword,” concluded a voice that Kasimir had heard once before, in the courtyard of his own inn. This time it came from within the window Kasimir had originally been facing.
Kasimir held up the weighty bundle. “Unwrap it,” ordered the central voice, its owner still invisible behind a protective grille.
“Not so fast,” interposed Wen Chang. “We should like to know who we are dealing with. And that our path of retreat out of this courtyard is still secure.”
“Stay where you are,” said the Juggler’s voice. “Show me the real Sword, and you will be able to retreat fast enough.”
“First you will identify yourself somehow.” The voice of the Magistrate sounded as firm as that of a judge seated on the bench. “Or else this dealing proceeds no further.”
There was a pause. Then something, a small, harmless-looking object came flying out of the darkness of the barred window to bounce at the feet of Kasimir. Looking down, he saw it was a juggler’s ball. The energy of the small sphere’s bounces died away, and it came to a full stop almost touching the toe of his right boot.
Kasimir glanced at Wen Chang, who shrugged and with a confident small gesture seemed to indicate that Kasimir should undo the bundle he was carrying. Kasimir hesitated marginally, then set one end of the wrapped sword on the ground, and pretended to be trying to untie the cord that held the wrappings together. He could only assume that
Wen Chang would manage some interruption at the last second.
The sounds of the bazaar, the music of people blithely indifferent to villainy, drifted into the three-sided enclosure.
“Hurry, get on with it!” the voice of Tadasu Hazara urged, from out of darkness.
“I’m trying,” Kasimir protested, endeavoring to sound irritated rather than frightened. “These knots-”
“Cut them!”
>From somewhere, almost lost in the noise of the open street behind Kasimir, a low whistle sounded. In the next instant, as if coincidentally, Wen Chang stepped forward to give Kasimir a hand. “Here, let me.”
Kasimir let go and stepped back-and recoiled as from the murderous lunge of a madman. Wen Chang had grabbed up the bundle, still tied shut as it was, and lunged with it straight against the white stone wall in front of him.
There was a minor thunderclap of impact. Wen Chang drew back his arms and thrust again with the concealed blade, slashing and sawing with demonic energy. Stones and their fragments burst from the wall, showering and bruising the astonished Kasimir, while the hammer like sounds of Stonecutter rose into the night.
Inside each of the three dark rooms behind the window bars, pandemonium burst out. Someone fired a crossbow bolt out of the window at the right, a dart that by some sheer good luck missed the Firozpur sergeant, who was near its line of flight. Kasimir was not quite so lucky. The impact, just under his right armpit, felt like that of an oaken club swung in a giant’s fist, and for a moment he staggered off balance.
Now there were cries and the clash of weapons in the rear of the central room, from which the Juggler’s voice had sounded. Someone was beating down a door back there, and torchlight shone through, even as a section of the front wall went down before Wen Chang’s continuing assault with the Sword. The inside of the room was suddenly open to inspection, but Valamo was gone.
Kasimir looked down at the pavement near his feet; the crossbow bolt was lying there, a wicked-looking dart whose needle point was barely tipped with red. His own red blood. The physician put a hand under his outer shirt and felt the fine mesh of the heavy mail beneath; there in one place the perfect pattern of the links was slightly strained and broken. There was a wound in his bruised flesh, but it was superficial.
And how armed men were swarming everywhere. It appeared that most of Valamo’s support had evaporated on the spot. An outcry went up; that gentleman himself had just been spotted trying to get away over the rooftops.
Inside the otherwise barren room from which the Juggler had been speaking, there was a ladder and a trapdoor. Kasimir, halfway up, saw Wen Chang, still on the ground, throw the Sword, still wrapped, up on the roof ahead of him, where presumably some trusted figure was waiting to take it in charge and keep it safe.
And now the Magistrate was on the roof himself, leading the pursuit, shouting: “We must not let him escape!”
The pursuit led in the direction of the river.
The buildings in the neighborhood were mostly low, the streets more often than not mere pedestrian alleys, narrow enough for an active man moving at rooftop level to leap them with a bound. Kasimir’s wound did not much trouble him, and he forgot about it once he was caught up in the excitement of the chase.
The moon, perversely from the point of view of the fugitive, was now out, near full and very bright. The broken clouds that would have dimmed its light seemed to avoid it wholly. The figure that must be the Juggler was moving on, leaping arid running, in the direction of the river, keeping half a roof ahead of the nearest pursuer.