She crossed the intersection with Straight Street, pausing just long enough to glance in both directions. Straight Street was not level, but it was straight; to the right she could see right up the slope to the east door of the Fortress, the massive structure's gray stone walls blocking out the western sky at the end of the street. To the left she could see down past houses and shops and warehouses into the shipyards.
She saw a few people going about their business on the shipyard side, but no ambulatory bench. She continued on down Steep Street without stopping-until she heard a sudden clatter behind her and felt the rope go slack.
She turned to see that the chair had tumbled down several steps, dumping the spriggan. The little creature now yelped, "Sorry sorry sorry!"
Kilisha couldn't be sure what had happened, but she supposed the spriggan had moved at the wrong time and thrown the chair off balance on the steep steps. She hurried back up and righted the chair, petting it on the back.
"There, there," she said. "I'm sorry. These steps must be hard for you!"
The chair tapped a leg, just once.
Then she looked for the spriggan, and spotted it two steps up.
"Hop back on," she said, gesturing toward the chair.
"Don't want to," it said, thrusting out what would have been its lower lip if spriggans had actual lips. "Too bumpy!"
Kilisha glared at it. "Get on the chair!" she growled.
The spriggan took a step back, but crossed its arms across its chest and said, "No."
Kilisha glowered, hoping that Ithanalin wouldn't remember any of this when he was restored to himself.
"All right," she said. "Get back on my shoulder, then." She held out her arm.
The spriggan cheered up instantly and hurried up her arm, settling comfortably on her shoulder, one hand clutching her hair. Once it was securely in place she once again headed down Steep Street, being careful not to go fast enough to overbalance the chair again.
The odd little party reached the corner of Old Seagate Street without further incident. Kilisha hurried across to the far side, where the land dropped away to the sea.
At the moment the tide was mostly in, so most of the rocks at the foot of the fifteen-foot drop were partially submerged. Waves were breaking noisily across the exposed stone, sending plumes of spray into the air, and a few stubborn tufts of seaweed washed back and forth across the broken rock.
If the bench had plunged down there it would have landed on rocks, not open water. It might have survived such a fall and scrambled on to open water, but Kilisha doubted it would have any reason to…
And then a thought struck her. The bench was wood. Heavy oak, yes, but still wood. It wouldn't sink to the bottom, out of sight; it would float.
She shaded her eyes and peered out to sea, and saw no sign of a drifting bench or anything like one. She could sec ships at the piers of Seagate, and another at sea rounding Seagate Head, and in the distance beyond the headland, almost lost in haze and spray, she thought she could see the masts of more ships docked in South-port-though those last might have just been her imagination.
But she didn't see the bench.
She looked down Old Seagate Street, where it wound its way down the rocky verge toward the Fortress Docks and the shipyards; for once the curvature of the road favored her, so that she could see past the two docks and almost to the Throat. A crowd of men was hauling on ropes, securing a barge to the nearer of the docks, and a few other people were watching this labor, but she did not see the bench.
A guardsman was coming up the street past the docks, the mustard yellow tunic and blood red kilt unmistakable even at this distance, but she wasted no time trying to determine whether this was Kelder or someone else. She turned the other way, to where Old Seagate Street zigzagged up the rocky slope toward the Fortress.
The cliffs loomed above her, and the Fortress loomed above the cliffs. From her current position most of it was hidden behind the shops and warehouses that lined the inland side of Old Seagate Street, but the southern end thrust out from behind the other buildings, a sheer wall of sunlit gray stone that seemed to tower impossibly high into the western sky.
She did not see the bench-but because of the twisting course of the street, that did not mean much. The bench could easily be somewhere around one of the several curves.
She turned to the spriggan on her shoulder. "The bench went that way, up toward the Fortress, didn't it?" She had to shout to be heard over the crashing of the waves.
"Don't know," the spriggan said.
"Why don't you know?" Kilisha demanded.
"Just don't," the spriggan said unhappily. "Don't smell it, don't feel it."
Kilisha hesitated, and threw a glance down the slope. That guardsman was still approaching, striding toward her quickly, and it did look like Kelder. The bench was probably farther up the hillside, and she ought to pursue it-but she couldn't be sure it had gone that way, rather than ducking into a shop or alley, or dodging around a corner somewhere.
And she was so far behind it now that another moment's delay could scarcely matter; she waited for the soldier where she was.
Chapter Sixteen
What happened?" Kelder demanded as he came within earshot. "How did you get the door open?"
"The spriggan did it," Kilisha shouted back, struggling to be heard over the pounding of the surf. "They can pick locks with their fingers!"
Kilisha did not hear Kelder's reply to that, but she was fairly certain she wasn't meant to; he appeared to be cursing vigorously. When he had finished he called to her, "Well, that explains a few things, doesn't it?"
"Yes," she agreed, "it certainly does."
"So the furniture got out, and you chased after it and caught it?"
She started to nod, then realized what he had said. "I caught the chair," she said. "The bench is still missing."
"Oh, for…," He began cursing under his breath again, and by the time he had completed this round he had reached her side. He looked along the rope to where the chair was pacing back and forth across the bottom two steps of Steep Street, then asked, "Do you know which way it went?"
"I think it went up that way," she said, pointing. "I followed it up Shipyard Street and down Steep Street, but I lost its trail. If you didn't see it go back down toward the shipyards, then it must have gone up."
"So it would seem," Kelder said. "Now what? Do you have some magic we can use to track it and capture it?"
"I didn't bring any magic," Kilisha admitted.
This was not literally true; she had her athame, and the pouch on her belt, much smaller than the elaborate one Kelder wore, held the ingredients for a lew very minor spells. However, it was quite true that she had not brought any magic that would help in their present situation. She could see no way to use Fendel's Spectacular Illusion or Thrindle's Combustion in finding an escaped bench.
Kelder looked at her. "I thought wizards always carried magic," he said.
"I'm just an apprentice," Kilisha said, annoyed.
"Still…"
"Fine, I should have brought a few useful spells, but I didn't, all right? I do have some magic, but nothing that will help."
"All right, all right." He looked around. "You think it went that way?"
"I think so, yes." She looked at the spriggan on her shoulder. "Do you think so?"
"Don't know," the spriggan said.
"You can't tell?"
"Can't tell," it confirmed.
"You're asking spriggans?" Kelder said. "How would it know?"