When I finally got to Third District station, I didn’t see either the captain or the lieutenant, and that was fine with me.
Lyonyt was waiting, bouncing from one booted foot to the other. “Master Rhennthyl.”
“Good morning, Lyonyt.”
“A good morning it is, sir. Not a cloud in the sky, and but enough breeze to keep a patroller comfortable on his rounds.”
I hadn’t brought anything with me, nothing to stow in the cubby that was temporarily mine. So I gestured to the doors, and we headed out. As had seemed to be the case in all the rounds in the area of the taudis, we saw very few people on the first round-and none of Youdh’s toughs. Their absence bothered me, because it suggested the time for observation was over, and I resolved to be as alert as I could be throughout the day. I did have to make an effort not to get distracted by worrying about Rousel.
We were finishing the second round, heading down Mando, the unofficial boundary, Alsoran had told me, between Jadhyl’s territory and that of Youdh, or the bad part of the taudis and the really evil section. West of Mando, the ground rose, not a great deal but a good two or three yards over the next block, so that when I looked westward up the alleys opening on to Mando I couldn’t see the end of the alley. This section of the taudis had to be ancient because the alleyways were barely wide enough to fit a single large wagon.
The row houses were all old and weathered, and the faintest odor of elveweed drifted unevenly in the air, an odor that would strengthen with each round in the day. But none of the houses on the east side of the street had empty windows or those that were boarded over. Admittedly, many of them had crude shutters, often only of oiled wood, but they did have shutters. I thought that reflected well on Jadhyl, or at least better upon him than the shabbier conditions of the area to the west did upon Youdh. Youdh was truly an old-style taudischef of the sansespoirs.
We walked down the east side of Mando, and I glanced up the next alley, only to see a large wagon, its wheels blocked in place at the top of the rise, and so broad that there was less than a hand’s width between the wagon bed and frame and the high brick walls of the courtyards adjoining the alley.
“Help! Help!” A frantic high-pitched scream echoed down the alleyway.
We both turned.
A dark-haired woman, scarcely more than a young girl, was pressed against the rough bricks of a second-level terrace by a man in shabby clothing. She struggled to get away, then ducked under his arm, but he grabbed her blouse and ripped it open, leaving her mostly naked from the waist up. I couldn’t help but notice she was well formed and most attractive, before she tried to wrench away from the far larger man once again.
“Help!”
It was too far to image anything accurately, and they were moving about so quickly I might hurt the wrong one if I tried. Even as I hurried across Mando and up the alley, followed by Lyonyt, I kept looking in all directions, although I thought it was probably early for most taudis-toughs. I saw no one anywhere, except for the screaming half-naked woman and the man trying to assault her. Even so, I checked and strengthened my shields.
Lyonyt’s knife was out, shimmering in the midmorning sunlight.
When we reached the courtyard wall below the terrace, a good twenty-five yards from the street, I discovered that the high side wall to the courtyard below the terrace had no gate.
“Help me!”
Up on the ancient roof terrace, the attacker was ripping away the girl’s skirt.
“Help!” Her voice rose into a shriek.
But there was something wrong . . .
At a low rumbling sound, almost like thunder, I glanced up the alley, only to see that the enormous wagon was rolling-more like hurtling-down the stone-paved alleyway at us, less than ten yards away and already moving far too fast for us to outrun it. I could also see that it was loaded with stone and rocks, and that the axles and the wagon bed were too low to dive under the middle and let it pass over.
“Down, flat, against the wall!” I snapped and dropped to the alley pavement, carrying Lyonyt down as well, so that we lay stomach down beside the brick wall. I strengthened my shields and tried to tie them not to me, but to the cracked stone pavement beneath us and the brick wall against which my shoulder and side were pressed.
The rumbling thunder crashed over us, pressing us down, and then passed.
“Stay down,” I hissed, not moving.
The next sound was that of the wagon impacting something, most likely the stoop or the front of a house on the other side of Mando, and wrenching and splintering wood and the diminishing lesser rumbles of stones coming to rest.
“Keep still . . .” I was wagering that whoever had set up the attack would want to check out the carnage, and I wanted them close-very close-before I moved. I was getting very tired of being attacked, especially when I hadn’t even been chasing or investigating Youdh, but Mardoyt.
I didn’t move, but kept my eyes open.
After a time, it could have been as long as half a quint, two figures began to walk down the alley. Both wore the purple jackets.
I wasn’t in any mood for fairness. I just waited until the pair were less than five yards away when I imaged oil and grease under their boots, and a blast of air to unbalance them. They both went down, but not as hard as I would have liked. I scrambled to my feet, glancing around in all directions, but seeing only the two toughs nearby . . . but several near the part of the alley that was the top of the rise.
The taller one immediately did something I didn’t expect, not exactly. Rather than even get up, he just looked at me, and then five rusty knives impacted my shields before dropping to the pavement. The shorter one scrambled to his feet and fell again, then regained his footing and raced away from Lyonyt, yelling something to the two taudis-toughs farther up the alley.
Before I could even think what to do next, another set of weapons slammed into my shields-this time, what looked like iron crossbow bolts. They were followed by flaming oily fireballs.
“Spawn of the Namer!” blurted Lyonyt.
Then came three large spiked objects, so heavy that when they struck my shields, I was slammed back against the brick wall. One of them dropped from my shields and splintered the heavy stone of a paving stone. Another stuck with a point wedged between two paving blocks.
At that point, I’d had enough. Even so, I didn’t want to overdo it, because I wanted the imager alive. I imaged salt and caustic into his eyes, not in the massive amounts that had killed Diazt, but enough, I thought, to blur the imager’s vision or blind him for a quint or so. As I did so, I charged him, putting a knee into his chin and snapping his head back. He just tumbled back onto the ancient cracked and uneven paving stones, mumbling.
“. . . can’t see . . . Ravyt! Ravyt!”
The man who lay there trying to rise and rubbing at his eyes was the tough who had escaped me at Mardoyt’s house, and the same one who had observed me when I walked past the Puryon Temple early in the week.
“Get him tied up, Lyonyt. Quickly.”
At that moment, the imager-tough rolled on his side and then started to rise and lunge away. I dropped on his back with both knees, slamming him into the pavement again.
He was still, or mostly still, while Lyonyt and I manacled his hands behind him. I kept my weight on him while Lyonyt bound his feet at the ankles. Then, I concentrated, as well as I could, enough to image a length of black cloth-not very good wool, but sufficient for my purposes-and I immediately began wrapping it around his upper face and across his eyes.
Only after he was secured did I glance up at the terrace-silent and empty. The two, or at least the man, had been creating a distraction-enough of one that we had not been able to escape the stone-weighted wagon.