Hanse put up his knife and started towards Athavul. 'No! Please plehehehease!' On his knees, Ath clasped his hands ; and pleaded. His eyes were wide and glassy with fear. Sweat and [ tears ran down his face in such profusion that he must soon have i salt spots on his black jerkin. His shaking was wind-blown wash on the line and his face was the colour of a priming coat of whitewash.
Hanse stood still. He stared. 'What's the matter with you, Ath? I'm not menacing you, you fugitive from a dung-fuelled stove! Athavul! What's the matter'th you?' 'Oh please pleoaplease no no oh ohh ohohohono-o-o...' Athavul fell on his knees and his still-clasped hands, bony rump in the air. His shaking had increased to that of a whipped, starved dog.
Such an animal would have moved Hanse to pity. Athavul was just ridiculous. Hanse wanted to kick him. He was also aware that two or three people were peering out of the dump still called Sly's Place though Sly had taken dropsy and died two years back.
'Ath? Did she hurt you? Hey! You little piece of camel dropping - what did she do to you?'
At the angry, demanding sound of Hanse's voice, Athavul clutched himself. Weeping loudly, he rolled over against the wall. He left little spots of tears and slobber and a puddle from a spasming sphincter. Hanse swallowed hard. Sorcery. That damned Enos Y - no, he didn't work this way. Ath was absolutely terrified. Hanse had always thought him the consistency of sparrow's liver and chicken soup, with bird's eggs between his legs. But this - not even this strutting ass could be this hideously possessed by fear without preternatural aid. Just the sight of it was scary. Hanse felt an urge to stomp or stick Ath just to shut him up, and that was awful.
He glanced at the thirty-one strands of dangling Syrese rope (each knotted thirty-one times) that hung in the doorway of Sly's. He saw seven staring eyeballs, six fingers, and several mismatched feet. Even in the Maze, noise attracted attention ... but people had sense enough not to go running out to see what was amiss.
'BLAAAH!' Hanse shouted, making a horrid face and pouncing at the doorway. Then he rushed past the grovelling, weeping Athavul. At the corner he looked up Odours towards Straight, and he was sure he saw the vermilion cloak. Maroon now, in the distance. Yes. Across Straight, heading north now past the tanners' broad open-front sheds, almost to the intersection with the Street called Slippery.
Several people were walking along Odours, just walking, heading south in Hanse's direction. The lone one carried a lanthorn.
All six walkers - three, one, and two - passed him going in the opposite direction. None saw him, though Hanse was hurrying. He heard the couple talking about the hooded blind woman with the white staff. He crossed well-lighted Straight Street when the red clay cloak was at the place called Harlot's Cross. There Tanner's Row angled in to join the Street of Odours at its mutual intersection with the broad Governor's Walk. He passed the tiny 'temple' ofTheba and several shops to stop outside the entrance of the diminutive Temple of Eshi Virginal - few believed in that -and watched the cloak turn left. Northwest. A woman, all right. Heading past the long sprawl of the farmers' market? Or one of the little dwellings that faced it?
Heading for Red Lantern Road? A woman who pretends to be blind and who put a spell of terror on Athavul like nothing I ever saw.
He had to follow her. He was incapable of not following her.
He was not driven only by curiosity. He wanted to know the identity of a woman with such a device, yes. There was also the possibility of obtaining such a useful wand. White, it resembled the walk-tap stick of a sightless woman. Painted though, it could be the swagger stick of ... Shadowspawn. Or of someone with a swollen purse who could put it to good use against Hanse's fellow thieves.
He looked out for himself; let them.
Hanse did not follow. He moved to intersect, and could anyone have done it as swiftly and surefootedly, it must have been a child who lived hereabouts and had no supervision.
He ran past Slippery - fading into a fig-pedlar's doorway while a pair of City Watchmen passed - then ran through two vacant lots, a common back yard full of dog droppings and the white patches of older ones, over an outhouse, around a fat tree and then two meathouses and through two hedges - one spiny, which took no note of being cursed by a shadow on silent feet - across a porch and around a rain barrel, over the top of a sleeping black cat that objected with more noise than the two dogs he had aroused - one was still importantly barking, puffed up and hating to leave off- across another porch ('Is that you, Dadisha? Where have you been?'), through someone's scraps and - long jump! - over a mulchpile, and around two lovers ('What was that, Wrenny?'), an overturned outhouse, a rain barrel, a cow tethered to a wagon he went under without even slowing down, and three more buildings.
One of the lovers and one of the dogs actually caught sight of the swift fleeting shadow. No one else. The cow might have wondered.
On one knee beside a fat beanberry bush at the far end of Market Run, he looked out upon the long straight stretch of well-kept street that ran past the market on the other side. He was not winded.
The hooded cloak- with the walking stick was just reaching this end of the long, long farmers' market. Hanse crimped his cheeks in a little smile. Oh he was so clever, so speedy! He was just in time to-
- to see the two cloakless but hooded footpads materialize from the deep jet shadows at the building's corner. They pounced. One ran angling, to grasp her from behind, while his fellow came at her face-on with no weapons visible. Ready to snatch what she had, and run. She behaved surprisingly; she lunged to one side and prodded the attacker in front. Prodded, that Hanse saw; she did not strike or stab with the white staff.
Instantly the man went to his knees. He was gibbering, pleading, quaking. A butterfly clinging to a twig in a windstorm. Or ... Athavul.
Swiftly - not professionally fast, but swiftly for her, a civilian, Hanse saw (he was moving) - she turned to the one coming up behind her. He also adjusted rapidly. He went low. The staff whirred over his head while his partner babbled and pleaded in the most abject fear. The footpad had not stopped moving. (Neither had Hanse.) Up came the hooded man from his crouch and his right hand snapped out edge-on to strike her wrist while his other fist leaped to her stomach. That fist glittered in the moonlight, or something glittered in it. That silvery something went into her - and she made a puking gagging throaty noise and while she fell the white stick slid from her reflexively opening fingers. He grabbed it.
That was surely ill-advised, but his hand closed on the staffs handle without apparent effect on him. He kicked her viciously, angrily - maybe she felt it, gutted, and maybe she did not - and he railed at his comrade. The latter, on his knees, behaved as Athavul had when Hanse shouted at him. He fell over and rolled away, assuming the foetal posture while he wept and pled.