a wall and talk sense to him. But there was no one to do that for him. Not for
years.
* * *
Mor-am flung off down the street, striding along with purpose none of the
sleepers in doorways challenged, getting off the main road as quickly as he
might.
But something stirred another way. A beggar dislodged himself from his doorway
near an alley and shuffled along until he reached shadows, then moved quite
differently, hunker-ing down when he thought it might serve and running spryly
enough when there was need.
Then other beggars began to move, some truly lame, but not all.
And one of them had already gone, scuttling along alleys as far as a shack near
Mama Becho’s, at the back of which the White Foal river flowed its sluggish,
black-glistening way beneath the bridge.
Guards dozed there, about the walls, unlikely as guards as he was unlikely as a
messenger, in rags, one a little urchin-girl sleeping in the alley, who looked
up and went back to her interrupted nap, a huddle of bony limbs; and one a one
legged man who did the same; but that hulk nearest the door got up and faced the
messenger.
“Got something,” the messenger said, “himself’d want to hear.”
The guard rapped at the door. In a little time it opened on the dark inside, and
a shutter opened, affording light enough to someone who had been inside all
along.
The messenger went in and squatted down in a crouch natural to his bones and
delivered what he had heard.
So Moruth listened, sitting on his bed, and when the messenger was done, said:
“Put Squith on it, and Ister.”