As the last time... Temper’s main emotions were immediate irritation with the people around him, layered over loathing. He really, really hated Haven and Valdemar, and the people who called Valdemar home. He desperately wanted to leave. Mags got glimpses this time of the place that the man considered home, proper, secure.
It was... nothing like he had expected. It was like a huge Guard barracks, if the barracks themselves had been run by a fanatic for order and rules and had been the size of a city; very regimented in every way, very disciplined. Rigid. There were few recreations, and those few were strictly controlled. Every aspect of life, from infancy to old age, seemed to be dictated by the handful in power, and the one aspiration that everyone had was to rise to become one of those that made the rules. You were told what to do, what to believe, what to learn and what to think, and no deviations were permitted.
That was the impression that Mags got, anyway. Small wonder the cheerful chaos that was life in Valdemar revolted this fellow to the core. To his mind, to live without a rule for everything was to live like an animal.
He was moving off, and soon he would be out of Mags’ mental reach. No hope for it. Mags would have to follow.
It was dark enough that Mags felt safe in discarding his disguise altogether, pulling off his eye-wrap and the wax, leaving his bowl and staff behind so that he could hurry to catch up to the man before he got out of the distance at which Mags could keep picking up those surface thoughts.
At first, Mags thought that he was going to return to wherever it was he and the others were hiding. That thought was uppermost in his mind, although Mags got no sense of where that might be, and he was walking away from any of the areas that Mags had thought likely.
But then, something else, another goal began leaking out.
The object. The thing he had lost. Now Temper knew exactly where it was. Tonight he was going to get it and he was only killing time until he reckoned it was safe enough to go after it.
Just as he thought that, Temper turned his head to look over his shoulder and his eyes fell directly on Mags—who fortunately, was limping along, looking not at the man, but at the ground, the better to concentrate on following Temper’s thoughts. He fought the urge to freeze or hide and kept on walking, as if he, too, had a place to go and wanted to get into it.
He saw himself through the man’s eyes. Sensed instant analysis.
And, while he tried not to cringe in fear, he sensed instant dismissal. To this man, the wretched creature that was limping along the street behind him posed no sort of threat. This was one of the poorest of the poor, in rags, filthy. Undersized, and carrying no weapons. Of no consequence.
Mags heaved a sigh of relief as the man went on to examine, analyze, and dismiss everyone else around him. He hadn’t recognized Mags from the Collegium, and he didn’t realize he was being followed.
That was when Mags sensed the cutpurse who was hiding in the alley ahead; then sensed that the thief had spotted Temper. The surface thoughts of the thief, desperation crossed with greed, alarmed Mags, and he stopped, bending over to fumble with a shoe while he tried to figure out what was going to happen, and if he could do anything about it.
The would-be thief was a boy, not a man, a boy no older than he was. A boy with a master to answer to, and who, so far today, had nothing to bring back to him. Coming back meant a beating or worse, and no supper. The boy looked at Temper with the eyes of a hunter amd saw good clothing, a man well-fed, with no obvious weapons. That was enough; the thief made his decision. Before Mags could even think of something to try and stop him, the boy was moving.
His was the cut-and-run style, rushing at the victim from under cover, cutting the bands of the belt-pouch, and dashing off with it. Effective only when conditions favored a swift escape, it was well-suited to a night-thief, and to thefts where crowds thickened and thinned again, hampering pursuit.
The boy thought he had such conditions—night, the alley, and a half a dozen escape routes on the other side of the street.
He was wrong.
The man heard the running footsteps; his instincts all came alive, and an unholy glee came over him.
The rest was a blur to Mags, caught as he was between the thoughts of the cutpurse and the thoughts of Temper. Temper threw off such violence that it rocked Mags back on his heels, but it was precise and calculated violence, and an acute pleasure in what he was about to do that was very nearly pain in and of itself.
The man moved at the last minute; the boy’s outstretched hands missed the tempting purse. There was a moment of anger and bewilderment on the part of the thief as his hands closed on air.
Then a flash of terrible pain and incredulity.
Then nothing.
And in the street ahead, all that anyone would have seen was the thief make a rush, the man step aside, and the thief falling to the ground as if he had stumbled. Except the thief didn’t get up again.
Temper passed on, leaving the cooling body of the boy in the street. It happened that quickly. One moment the thief was alive, the next, dead.
Mags could scarcely believe it; shaken to his core, he sought for Dallen, but found only that haze that meant Dallen was heavily drugged, and nothing would rouse him.
He recoiled from Temper’s thoughts, as the man savagely reviewed the three steps he had taken to break the boy’s neck with the pommel of his hidden dagger, so as to leave no obvious signs of violence on him for the Watch to find. Temper lingered lovingly over each move, each sensation, culminating with the climax of the weighted pommel striking exactly the precise point where the skull joined the spine, the single point that would kill the cutpurse instantly—lingering over the feel of the butt-heavy dagger in his hand, the solid impact with the skull, the sight of the boy sprawling just a little ahead of him, momentum taking what was already a corpse into a slide on the street. It was a perfect kill. Nothing could have been better—except, perhaps, if he’d had the leisure to strangle the thief with his bare hands.
Temper loved this. This was how it should be. This was what he should be doing, not skulking around, trying to find the—to find the—to find the—
Book! Mags realized as he finally “saw” what the man had been looking for all this time. He recognized it. He’d handled it himself, all unknowing.
It was the book of poetry with the pictures of flowers in it that had been left behind when they vacated, kicked under a couch and forgotten in the haste to depart.
The book of poetry. But—why?
Temper had been working for moons to discover who had it, what had become of it. Without the book he couldn’t—he couldn’t—
Before that thought could emerge, Temper’s goal swam to the forefront of his thoughts. The Palace. No... the Guard Archives. That was where their possessions had gone when everything possible had been gleaned from them. Temper had finally determined this, after weeks of finding where the Palace Guardsmen went on their nights off, and pouring wine down willing throats to lubricate them. Now he was heading for the Palace to get it back.
And there was no way for Mags to alert anyone, not this far away. Dallen was sleeping like the dead.
Now Temper’s thoughts were overlaid with agitation and anxiety, born out of the fact that the man knew he had orders, yet did not know what those orders were. In his world, following orders was of absolute importance, yet he could not follow the ones he had been given, because he didn’t know what they were. How could he not know what they were? That didn’t make any sense.
The book—the book—
What did the book have to do with all of this?
Mags tried to think what on earth there was about the book that had escaped everyone. Every single soul that knew how to look for such things had examined it. There were no false covers, there was no invisible ink. There was no way for packets of orders to be hidden in it.