“I need to get the blood out of your shirt, first.”
“Where’s Jeremid?” he asked.
“The last I saw, he was running toward the patrol. Probably to draw them off.”
Macurdy’s face was stiff with tension. He’d hoped to pull this off and get over the wall without an uproar. But now . . . Now the whole damned police force would be out, and any soldiers garrisoned there. The gates were already closed, and the guards in the watch shelters would be wide awake now, alert as hawks. “Where’s Tossi?” he asked.
“Right here.” The dwarf had come in behind him from the front room.
“Will your cellar hole hold six men?”
“If they don’t mind dark and discomfort.”
“Anything will be better than what they’ve just been through. But they’ll need air and water.”
Tossi frowned. “I can leave the trapdoor open most of the time. If someone bangs on the door, one of us can answer it while another closes the trapdoor and slides the anvil block over top of it.” He paused, peering intently at Macurdy. “How long will we be stayin’, with the six of them under the floor?”
“I’ll try taking one or maybe two out with Melody and me tonight. And Jeremid, if he gets back in time. Police and soldiers will be searching house to house tomorrow—maybe even later tonight—and it’ll look suspicious to have tallfolk here, even if they’re not the prisoners. But these men need to stay somewhere, until things quiet down or I get them out somehow.”
“One or two tonight, you say. The danger’s great, I’m sure ye know. It’ll be buzzin’ like a beehive out there.”
“It’ll be worse a little later, when the confusion settles and they get organized. Let me trade shirts with someone, to wear while this one dries. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Ten minutes later, Macurdy was out in the night again, with Melody and a rebel named Verder. Macurdy carried twenty-five feet of slender, knotted rope wrapped around his waist, concealed by a tunic the canny Tossi had bought for the purpose. He carried the grapnel in his hand for lack of a better place. At the first corner, not a hundred feet away, they turned down an alley, moving at an easy jog.
It took a minute for the sound to register on Macurdy, but when it did, he stopped. The night, the town, held a diffuse droning. Melody and Verder were listening, too.
“What is it?” Verder asked.
“People,” Melody said in a hushed voice. “People off south.”
Then it struck Macurdy. He knew as if he’d been there and heard it happen! Striding to a shutter, he banged on it with the grapnel, shouting: “Have you heard?! The guards were killed in the square, and the prisoners cut free!”
Melody and the rebel stared shocked. “Macurdy!” she hissed. “What—”
“The people you hear,” he answered. “They know! It must have been Jeremid. He must have run through the streets yelling what happened, and people are coming out. They don’t like their rulers here; that’s why there’s a curfew. And if enough people come out, it’ll keep the street patrols tied up.” He turned and trotted off, still shouting, pausing now and then to bang on shutters. Melody and the rebel trotted after him, both of them shouting too. Voices answered from indoors, some questioning, some angry. When the alley opened onto a street, they turned east on it and trotted three more blocks shouting, before they saw five youths run into the street ahead of them from an alley. They were shouting too.
“The guards in the square are killed!” Macurdy yelled again. “The prisoners are freed!” Just ahead was a broken fence enclosing a weedy garden, and abruptly he stopped to yank staves loose from it. The youths watched, uncertain but alert. Melody realized at once what he was up to, and began piling the staves in the middle of the street. Verder helped, and now the youths, catching on, kicked and shoved on the supports of a rickety porch till the roof fell. Macurdy ignited the pile of fence staves, then ran on. They’d gone hardly more than a block before they heard shouts of “Fire! Fire!” behind them.