A surge of alarm brought me upright, loose clothing in my arms and my bare feet planted on the beam slippery with pigeon droppings.
I heard a cry from behind me as Greyson glimpsed me through the window, and I launched myself for the roof across the street. My foot slipped in the droppings, and fear clutched my vitals as I realized I was going to fall a little short. I threw my long arms out wide to seize as much of the thatch as possible, and I landed with a great crackle and thump as my clothes spilled from my grasp. My legs kicked out over the abyss, and I grabbed great fistfuls of straw to keep from plummeting to the brick lane below.
“Thief! Thief!” Greyson’s voice boomed out into the street, roaring the word that was most likely to bring the neighbors awake—if he’d shouted “Seducer!,” the result might have been laughter, plus of course the besmirching of his daughter’s name. Greyson was at the window, pointing at my bare legs and buttocks visible in the light of his lantern. There were cries from the apprentices below, the sound of clattering hooves as they wrenched their horses about.
I had lost my clothing. I considered myself fortunate that Greyson was unlikely to recognize my backside, heaved myself to safety, rose to my feet, and ran.
“Catch him!” Greyson bawled. “Break his ribs! Then bring him to me!”
I took flight. By the time the apprentices’ horses jangled into life, I had vaulted to another building and sprawled on tiles with a clatter. Heart leaping in my chest like a mad animal, I scrambled to my feet and ran over the ridgepole to the next roof. Jumping from one roof to another was a sport I’d enjoyed when I was younger—I would race across rooftops with my friends, trying first to reach the gun platform on the North Gate, or ring the bell on the roof of the Pilgrim’s monastery, and all without setting foot on the ground.
Though it had to be admitted, I’d always done this in full daylight, and that I was long out of practice. I’d let my rooftop adventures lapse after I’d become apprentice to Lawyer Dacket—it wouldn’t do for a lawyer’s apprentice to be taken for trespass.
Out of practice I may have been, but pursuit lent me inspiration. Hurling myself over lanes and alleys, landing on my feet or hands and knees or flat on my belly, I outpaced my pursuers until I came to Royall Street, a grand thoroughfare too wide to leap. There, a shadow behind another shadow, I took shelter behind an elaborate carved brick chimney, caught my breath, quelled my hammering heart, and listened for the sounds of pursuit.
I heard horses gallop through the streets, and then the sound of hoofbeats slowed as the pursuit failed to find its quarry. One horse came trotting down Royall Street, but I stayed motionless behind the chimney, and the horse passed on its way. Eventually, the sound of pursuit died away altogether.
The rising sun began to gild the chimneys and rooftops of the city, and I again considered my situation. There was vast Scarcroft Square and too many wide, un-jumpable streets between me and my father’s house, and at least some time on the ground was inevitable. And if I had to descend, it was best to do it now, before it was full daylight.
Three sonorous strokes on a bell sounded through the still air. The Dawn Bell from the Harbor Gatehouse, the signal for Ethlebight’s gates to open.
There was little time to lose. I plotted a route that involved the least amount of time on the ground, rose from my hiding place, and made two leaps across narrow streets, leaps that were much easier in the dawn light. Making the second leap, I dislodged a colony of kitlings that had been perched on the eaves. You have perhaps not heard of these, as they have but recently flown over from the Land of Chimerae, but they are plump, furry, and winged creatures that have appeared in Ethlebight in just the last few years. They are a little larger than rats, and they like to perch above the street until they observe a mouse, a bird, or some other small animal below, and then they glide down on their furry wings and pounce.
The name “kitling” is misleading, as the creatures best resemble a large dormouse, but they kill vermin as cats do, which may account for the name. As they are small and useful, we have made no effort to eradicate them, but we are wary. I am told that dragons too start small.
As I made my leap, I heard Greyson’s call of “Thief! Thief!”—the surveyor had waited silently in the street below, hoping to see me flying overhead, and the pack of dislodged kitlings had warned him to look up, so there was another mad scramble over the roofs until pursuit again died away.
By now it was full daylight. The only advantage of the sunrise was that the wan autumn sun was warmer than the chill autumn night, and I placed myself against the eastern side of a chimney, where the sun might warm me, while I recovered my breath and my wits.
At least Greyson was chasing me through the city, and not at home thrashing his daughter. I preferred not to think of Annabel trapped at home with the old roaring tyrant.
Soon there would be people on the streets, and to blend with those people, I would need clothing. I decided to make a search, leaped to a large building, landed in a rattle of roof tiles, and looked down into a courtyard. No laundry waved in the shadowed court, so I jumped to another building, rose in a cloud of straw dust, and then saw my opportunity below: laundry strung on lines, an empty washtub lying on its side in a pool of water, and no laundress visible.
Employing fingers and toes, I used a crow-stepped gable, a cornice, a soffit, a bull’s-eye window, an architrave, and a trellis to lower myself to the ground. Shaking a cramp from my fingers, I walked barefoot across crumbling old brick and plucked a tunic, hose, and a doublet from the lines. I pulled on the hose, and was about to draw the tunic over my head when I considered the state of my shirt. There was nothing wrong with it, other than its being soiled by sweat, chimney soot, straw dust, and pigeon droppings, but its condition would have degraded my new wardrobe, so I exchanged it for a clean shirt from the line.
I would find a way to pay for the clothes. Stealing, I reassured myself, was beneath me.
Renewed, I began to walk toward the large gate that opened onto a lane behind the house, but stopped when I saw I was observed by a boy-child who stared at me from a door. The boy was dressed in a dirty smock and a single stocking on the left foot, and he gazed at me with vast blue eyes. I approached him.
“Who is your mistress?” I asked.
The child wiped his streaming nose on his sleeve. “Mum’s name is Prunk.” At least to my ears it sounded like Prunk.
I opened my purse and did some calculation. The hose were worth sixpence when new, and the shirt perhaps a whole crown, save that I’d exchanged my own shirt, which was of finer cloth. The doublet was battered, the tunic worn thin in places. And then of course there was the trouble I’d put the household to. Say a crown.
I gave the child a crown. “Give this to your mother,” I said. I added a halfpenny. “And this is for you.”
The child stared at the silver in his palm. “Apple-squire,” he said, and wiped his nose.
I had been called thief, which I was not, and now I had been called a pimp by an infant. I decided I’d had quite enough abuse for the day. “For your mother,” I said with finality, and walked briskly to the gate, oaken-beamed and twelve feet tall. I climbed it easily and rolled over the top, then dropped down into the lane.
In two minutes I was in Royall Street, walking at my ease.
* * *
As I walked along I gloried in my home city of Ethlebight, the great jewel at the mouth of the River Ostra. The houses were built on the same pattern, with upper floors jettied out over the street. Gables were crow-stepped, or rose in gentle curves to pediments or wooden towers or belfries. Bull’s-eye windows or narrow leaded glass panes glittered in the rising sun. Half-timber beams were carved in the shapes of jesters, acrobats, gods, and fanciful animals, or with the solemn, respectable faces of the burgesses who owned the buildings. The city was built on the soft ground of the delta, and the houses tended to tilt or lean against one another, or rear up over the street like a bear about to fall upon its prey.