back toward the Maze and safety. Moonlight caught a youthful outline arching
from one rooftop to the next and Thrusher’s crablike scuttle as he followed.
“Not for the likes of us,” Walegrin decided, judging the weight of the leather
armor he and Strat wore. “We go below. It’s our only chance.”
He led the way, crashing through the rubble and needing Strat’s help more than
once to shoulder through a crumbling door or wall that threatened to block their
way.
“Lost ’em,” Strat muttered when they burst through a flimsy gate to find
Lizard’s Way deserted.
Walegrin cupped his palms around his lips and emitted a passable imitation of a
hawk. “Gave it a good try, though,” he added between gasps. “Worth a jug between
us.”
Strat was nodding when a hawk cried and a face appeared in the gutters above
them.
“Round the alleys and back. Captain. We caught her.”
“Her?” both men said to themselves.
Kama glared at the night from the calf-deep stench of a Maze rooftop rain
cistern. Stupidity and bad luck. Another fifteen steps and she would have been
so deep in the Maze they would never have found her, but not this time. This
time the damn shingle had to give way and take her sliding down a rain trough.
That was the bad luck. Stupidity was not knowing the trough ended in a cistern
when she had taken this exact route a dozen other nights. She would have ignored
the makeshift rope Thrusher dangled above her if survival weren’t more important
than pride or if her ankle weren’t already swollen from the fall and her hands
abraded by her efforts to free herself on her own.