had studied them with all the care with which in other days he had studied
broader terrain, and now he stalked this shanty maze, knowing just when his step
might sound on harder ground, when his quarry, turning a corner, might chance to
see him, and where he might safely lag back or take a shorter way. He had not
known which way this man might go; but he had him now, and knew every way that
he might take, no matter which way he might turn. It had been a long wait
already-for this man, this current hope of his, who visited Becho’s with money,
who also liked his wine, and bought krrf in the back room.
He knew this man-who did not know him. Knew him from a place across the river,
in the Maze, in a place where he had courted Jubal’s employ, once in better
days. And if there was a chance left to him, it was this. He had tracked this
man on another night and lost him; but this night he knew the ground, had set
the odds in his own favor in this hunt.
And the man-youth-was at least some part drunk.
The way crossed the main road, past a worse and worse tangle of hovels, past the
flimsy shelters of the hopeless, the old, the desolate, and now and again a
doorway where someone had taken shelter against the wind, eyes that saw
everything and nothing in the dark, witnesses whose own misery enveloped them
and left only apathy behind.
Down a side track and into an alley this time, and it was a dead end: the quarry
entered it and Mradhon knew-knew the door there, as he knew every turn and twist
of this street. He thrust himself around the corner, having heard the steps go