I drew my dagger and hurled myself up the stair, stumbling over the body as I went. The top of the stair reeked of powder, but that scent was fresh and wholesome compared to the other smells of the place. I got to the top and saw gray light at the end of the passage, and I lurched toward it, stumbling over rubbish that people had left in the corridor.
I burst through the low doorway at the end of the hall, and found myself outside, at the top of another steep stair, made of weathered planks, that dropped onto the narrow path that ran alongside the sewer-ditch behind the Ramscallions. A dark, sinister muck thicker than treacle oozed down the ditch. Dead dogs floated belly-up in the mire, and the place stank worse than a charnel house, worse than the slop tub in Sir Basil’s dungeon when I upended that slope-shouldered knight.
Burgoyne was fifty feet down the path, loping comfortably along as he looked over his shoulder at me. Even at this distance I could see that he retained that thoughtful expression with which he had viewed me from the top of the stair. If my blood hadn’t been burning hot in my veins, if I hadn’t been half mad with the frenzy of pursuit, I would have understood that look for what it was, the calculating glance of a professional as he evaluated his foe.
Burgoyne had taken out the lever used to rewind his pistol, and he was cranking the wheellock as he hastened down the path. Even in my state of excitement, I calculated that he couldn’t possibly have had time to pour powder and ball down the barrel, or prime the pistol to fire, and I knew that I had to catch him before he could reload.
I dived down the steep, rickety stair three steps at a time and charged after him. Apparently, he realized the futility of reloading, and he turned away and began to run faster. “Stop!” I shouted. “Stop!” The words “hue and cry” flashed through my mind, and I realized that “Stop!” and “Stop, thief!” were probably heard twenty times a day in the Ramscallions, only to raise laughter and derision on the part of the inhabitants.
“Stop, murderer!” I shouted. “Reward for the murderer!”
I guessed that the promise of reward might well bring more aid than a plea for help, and indeed as we ran along, I saw windows opening, and faces peering past shutters.
“Reward!” I cried. “Reward for the murderer!” At the words Burgoyne cast a choleric look over his shoulder, but kept running.
The path was slippery and choked with rubbish and a truly astounding array of dead animals, and we both had trouble keeping our feet under us. Still I closed the distance. Looking ahead, I could see a broad gray expanse of water, the Saelle swollen at high tide and backing the water up into the ditch, and I realized that Burgoyne was going to have to turn left, to run along the river’s bank, or else wade across the horrid ditch, which I could not imagine him doing if he had a choice.
And indeed, he went neither left nor right. At the end of the path he turned, drew his rapier, and directed its point at my breast.
My blood went from scalding hot to frigid cold in an instant. I stopped in mid-career, my feet sliding in the mud fifteen feet away. I stared at the weapon, which seemed long as a lance. My dagger now seemed preposterously inadequate as a weapon.
“Thus, boy,” said Burgoyne, “your chase is brought to an end.” His accent was that of northern Bonille.
I gasped, my heart thrashing in its cage, then drew in a breath and called out. “Reward for the murderer!”
He snarled at me, his teeth flashing yellow in his beard. “Pursue me further and I’ll murder you in truth.”
I saw an old bottle lying by the path, and I bent and flung it at him. He dodged it with an easy, contemptuous shift of his hips. Next to me was a tumbled-down stone wall, once a part of a shed, and I bent to pick up a stone. Burgoyne turned and vanished down the Saelle embankment.
For an instant, I readied myself to chase again, and then I thought that he might lurk just around the corner of the last building before the embankment, waiting for me to run into range of his rapier. I looked at the old shed on my left, with its broken wall and half-fallen roofbeams. I put my dagger in my teeth—an expedient I would have found ridiculous had I seen it in one of Blackwell’s plays—and I jumped atop the half-fallen wall, and hoisted myself from thence to the roofbeams. I jumped along the beams, the shed shaking under my weight, and then leaped from there to the moldy old thatch of an ancient, decrepit house. My footfalls nearly silent on the straw, I rustled across the roof’s ridge, then down the other side.
I saw that my shouts and the promise of reward had brought out some of the more enterprising inhabitants of the district, men rough and dubious, and some of these stood at the end of Ramscallion Lane, looking along the side of the building on which I stood. It was no great deduction on my part to conclude that their neighbor Burgoyne stood there.
I ventured to peer over the edge of the roof, and I saw from above Burgoyne’s broad hat at the corner of the building. He was, as I suspected, at the corner, waiting for me to come dashing around to be skewered like a capon. I disappointed him, apparently, because the hat bent as he peered around the corner and failed to see me. Then he turned and appeared in plain sight, walking toward Ramscallion Lane with his rapier still in his hand.
He called to his neighbors. “D’ye see that troublesome urchin anywhere?” Some of them looked up at me on the thatch, and I knew he’d follow their glance and realize I was above him; and so I snatched the dagger out of my teeth and leaped.
I landed behind and to his left side, near enough that I fell into him and knocked him toward the river, but more importantly, I’d brought the pommel of the dagger down on top of his head as I came down. His hat protected his crown somewhat, but he was dazed, and when I rose from the crouch into which the fall had sent me, I was on him, my left hand clutched around his coat collar while my right struck again with the hilt of the dagger. As long as I stayed close, he couldn’t use the rapier.
I did not want to stab him. It was clear Burgoyne was a hireling merely, and I wanted to haul him before a magistrate for interrogation, and have him reveal the source of the conspiracy.
As I pummeled my quarry, I could hear shouts of joy from the Ramscallions in the lane. I’m sure they loved nothing so much as a fight.
Burgoyne managed to fend off most of my blows as I wrenched him around by his collar, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat. He tried to strike with the hilt of the rapier, but I parried with my own weapon, and cut a gash in his overcoat sleeve. I smashed at his head again and was warded off. I know not what happened next, but somehow he twisted under me, I felt a hand grasp my left wrist, and suddenly I was tumbling through the air.
I landed on my back with some force, but panic picked me from the ground and rolled me forward to my feet. Plain murder gleamed pale in his eyes. My heart sank as I realized that he could now use his rapier, and I leaped back and parried with the knife as the narrow blade sprang for my vitals. He charged on and I skipped away, out into Ramscallion Lane, with our audience scattering as the blades gleamed in the day’s dull light.
Burgoyne paused in his pursuit as he gasped for breath. I pointed at him.
“Reward!” I cried. “Reward for the murderer!”
Burgoyne snarled and lunged at me again, and I danced away. We were in a growing half circle of observers, men and women and laughing children. Anticipation, cruelty, and greed shone in their eyes, as if we were dogs fighting in a pit for their entertainment. I pointed again.
“Knock him down!” said I. “Throw rocks! Throw bottles! Trip him up! There’s a reward!”
“How much?” asked some pragmatist. A young man hurled a bottle, and it whistled past Burgoyne’s head. He glared at his neighbor and mouthed a curse.