Every night in the darkest and quietest hours before dawn, Crope slipped out of the Quartercourts to walk the streets. He knew what he risked, yet he could not stop himself. For seventeen years he had been chained inside the mines and he had a hardness in him now that would not bow to anyone in matters of his freedom. Going outside each night was his sign to himself that he was a free man and that his comings and goings were his own.
As a precaution against detection he had taken to wearing the special cloak Quill had commissioned from the tailor who created clothing for the Surlord's secret intelligencers known as darkcloaks. Gray for day. Brown for sundown. Falling all the way to his feet, it was longer than he liked in a cloak, and its wool was unaccountably itchy, but if it could help him steal across the main courtyard in Mask Fortress without raising an alarm it probably wouldn't do any harm to wear it on his outings around the Quartercourts. Crope had an inkling that it made him more … shadowy than he normally was. Not invisible or anything fancy like that, just a tiny bit more difficult to see, like a brown lizard on a brown wall.
He didn't like to put the hood up—itchy arms were one thing, itchy ears quite another—but forced himself to do so during those tricky moments leaving and returning to the Quartercourts. Ingress and egress, that's what Quill would have called it The thief knew many fine and impressive-sounding words. To leave the Quartercourts, Crope had to open the door to the ice house where big blue blocks of lake ice were stored between bales of hay and pass through to the other side. Next he had to climb the steps to the servants' level that was used by the Quartcrcourts staff in the daytime to service the finely dressed lords. This was the tricky part, for sometimes potboys and scrubbers would hide from the night warden during his rounds so they could stay in the courts overnight.
Crope aimed for stealth when crossing the servants' level. He aimed, but suspected he fell short. A woman had screamed at him once, and he'd very nearly screamed back. She'd been sleeping on the bench near the door, covered by a scrap of blanket, and had woken when he'd stepped on a creaky board. Crope had hightailed it up the stairs and out of the Quartercourts, and had then spent an anxious hour walking the streets wondering how on earth he was going to get back As it turned out, the night warden had heard the commotion, informed the woman that she was drunk and had seen a ghost and turfed her from the building. Crope knew this because Quill had scolded him about it the next day. "Warden gave me a real fishwifing, I can tell you. Next time you ignore my excellent advice make sure no one is around to see you do it."
Crope felt bad about that, but it didn't prevent him from going out. Most nights he took Town Dog and it was their great mutual pleasure to walk the streets of Spire Vanis side by side, Town Dog taking eight steps to every one of Crope's.
The night when the strange thing had happened, Town Dog wasn't feeling up to going out though. Crope thought she may have eaten a bad rat, for her tummy was swollen and she'd refused food. He left her with some water and a stem warning about being a good girl. When he returned two hours later she wasn't in her place and the length of string that bound her to an iron ring on the wall had been severed. Crope checked the strange warren of rooms that Quill had secured for them; the peat cellar that still held the moldering remains of ancient bricks of turf, the star-shaped servants' chapel with its six stone mortars for grinding amber, the cold room for hanging game that still had hoists and brain hooks suspended from its ceiling, the room with the bathing pool sunk into the floor that was filled with crusty black water, and the cavernous space with the iron racks, iron wheels, and iron tables whose purposes Crope had no wish to guess.
Town Dog was nowhere to be found. Crope worried about the bathing pool, wondered how a man would set about dredging a body of water. Deciding he'd better check on his lord first, he headed back to the stockroom.
The door was open. The door was never open. He had closed it himself on the way out. Immediately Crope felt the bad pressure behind his eyes as the giant's blood moved at force through his brain. Muscles engorged and his sublungs which normally lay dormant beneath his major lungs sprang open to suck in air.
Baralis.
Crope threw himself through the doorway. Head whipping around to take in the details of the room, he saw his lord lying quietly on the bed, his body curled in its normal position, his broken and swollen-jointed hand resting on Town Dog's neck.
"Calm yourself," came Baralis' beautiful smoky voice. "We have been here all along."
Crope had stood there, heart thudding like a hammer against an anvil, his entire body vibrating with power that needed to be discharged, and stared at his lord and his dog. Town Dog raised her head a little and stared back, but quickly losainterest. Tucking; herself against Baralis' arm, she headed off to sleep.
Baralis' darkly distorted gaze was steady, though his skin had that sheen to it that meant the poisons he was taking to kill the pain were sweating out. "I called her. She is not to blame."
She had chewed through the rope to get to him. And what of the door? Crope glanced back at it accusingly. His lord could move himself, but very slowly and at great cost, using his arms and shoulders to drag his weight. Crope did not believe he could have made it across the room.
"You did not close it," Baralis said, perfectly tracking Crope's thoughts. "It was ajar. The dog pushed through."
Crope took the door in his hand and tested its swing. Yes, it did catch a little at the last moment. Pushed without an extra spin offeree it would not close. Crope nodded, satisfied. It had always been easy to agree with his lord.
That had been about five days back, and it had now become habit for Town Dog to spend a portion of her day sleeping or lying quietly on Baralis' bed. After the first shock of it, Crope was glad. They were three now, and there were times when they were all in the stockroom together, when Crope was mending a piece of clothing or mixing up a batch of medicine or just sitting under the window shafts to get some light that he felt content. If the moments could be caught and spun out they would make an agreeable life.
Baralis had grown stronger since they had moved from Quill's house. Some of it was the superior medicine, foods and comforts now brought regularly by Quill. The most expensive medicines were those that dulled pain—blood of poppy, skullcap and devil's claw—and Crope had been sparing in their use. Now his lord could be given sufficient skullcap to insure he slept through most of the night. Better rested, his health had improved. The open wounds on his back and shoulders were slowly drying up as flesh knitted itself into puckered ridges. Bedsores had been eased by the new mattress, and now that Baralis' muscles were a little stronger he could shift his weight when they began to bother him. The damp air of the stockroom appeared to suit him better than the dryness of Quill's attic and his breaths were less labored, and there were fewer panics brought on by his failure to take in sufficient air. He had started to eat a little solid food—oatmeal with marrow butter, and raw eggs and that made him more robust. Even his sensitivity to light had improved, and he no longer called for blankets to cover the window shafts at midday. Not that it was ever bright in the stockroom—sunlight rarely found a way in.