Local kidnappers would have known that. Bold kidnappers would have agreed anyway.
I suspected these kidnappers were neither. And as such, I wondered-might they suggest, as a meeting place, the very spot in which they’d held their victim the entire time?
It was a daft thing to do. A thing so daft Lethway was almost certainly unlikely to even consider it. And if Pratt was right, Lethway hadn’t.
But there’s one thing that can be said about Mrs. Markhat’s favorite son.
He’s no stranger to daft ideas.
It had its advantages. No movement across an unfamiliar town. No shuffling of guards. No searching out a meeting place for hidden ambushes.
No, instead, they’d just hunker down, out of sight, and watch. If fresh new faces started showing up, they could always pull back and vanish. If Lethway did try to set up an ambush, the kidnappers would be able to watch it take shape.
And then there were the dogs.
It was a small thing. Half-Hand always dropped a couple of stale biscuits by a ruined doorframe in the Spook Timber’s north end. He’d spied a mama dog in the dark chamber beyond, nursing half a dozen spotted puppies, and like me the old man had a soft spot for dogs.
He’d left the biscuits every day for a month, that is, until the day he’d passed to find the doorway filled with chunks of brick and the mama dog and puppies gone.
He’d found her, a block away, nestled under a porch with her pups in tow.
Half-hand was worried that gangs might be moving back into the Timbers, because, as he noted, even busted bricks don’t stack themselves in street-side doorways overnight.
It was a long shot.
But Carris Lethway was being held somewhere in Rannit. The Spook Timbers seemed ideal-abandoned, derelict and big enough to serve as a hiding place for half a dozen secretive thugs and one reluctant guest.
Maybe, just maybe, they’d been daft enough to waggle the name right under Lethway’s nose.
Disengaging from my gaggle of newfound friends took perhaps an hour. I’d been nursing the same beer for twice that time, so the wobble in my walk was just there for show.
I stumbled outside, bracing myself on the wall. I wasn’t in view of the Timbers but it never hurts to assume keen eyes might be watching. I stumbled into the nearest alley and proceeded to make my way toward the Timbers.
It took me two hours to make what was probably three blocks. I stuck to whatever cover I could find-heaps of trash, leaning fences, the narrow, filth-choked alleys between bars and stores and Angels know what. There’s a trick to moving slowly. I hadn’t done much of it since the War, but I hadn’t quite forgotten, either.
The sun sank so low it might as well have been midnight there among the alleys and the narrow places. There was no wind, not even a breath, and the stench from the tanneries and the slaughterhouses settled heavy upon me. My clothes were soiled and wet. I dabbed mud below my eyes, so my cheeks wouldn’t shine, and my transformation from upright citizen to foul creature of the sewers was sadly complete.
It was only then that I dared a direct look at the Timbers from behind a heap of rotting hides dumped in an alley in clear defiance of the Regent’s new refuse statutes.
The place rose up three stories. Most of the roof was gone. Portions of the north wall had been consumed in a fire that burned so long ago the soot was weathered white.
Nothing stirred. Nothing sounded.
I pulled up something sticky and malodorous and slowly, slowly, laid it beside my face. Couldn’t show the outline of a head if a sudden light should shine behind me. Rats scampered at the movement. Two fled across the back of my legs, heavy as cats, and probably as large.
I waited. Counted my breaths. I flexed my muscles, toe to head and back again, to keep my limbs from going stiff.
A bell clanged out Curfew.
The sounds of traffic and reveling stopped. Some streets in Rannit treat Curfew as a tired old joke.
This wasn’t one of them.
I hadn’t stuck my Avalante pin to my lapel. I didn’t move to do so. No halfdead I’d ever met would stoop to feed on anyone who stank as I did. But from the silence and the tightly shuttered windows and the streets that didn’t serve even a single absent-minded drunk, I suspected the halfdead had fed in this neighborhood, and recently.
I waited, and waited, and waited some more. I fought off sleep by reminding myself what the rats were likely to do if they thought I was unconscious.
No more bells rang. The Square was so far away the Big Bell could be struck all night and I’d never hear it.
I’d decided it was nearly midnight when a tiny brief light flared in a gap in the Timber’s second floor wall.
It flared and hung there for a single heartbeat. Then it died in a sudden brief wave.
A match. Someone had lit a fancy newfangled match.
And that tiny red pinprick of light that flared and dimmed and flared again was a smokestick, being sucked and puffed to life.
I let out my breath. The tiny red glow persisted.
Smokesticks are an affectation of the rich and the near rich. So are matches.
Both are likely beyond the means of any poor derelict reduced to hiding in the dubious shelter of the Timbers after Curfew.
I could have danced.
Long shots do pay out, every now and then.
And if my tobacco-fancying friend in the Timbers was who I thought he was, then Carris Lethway was there too.
Almost in sight. But well beyond my reach.
They’d be doubly vigilant, after Curfew. Not necessarily against Lethway or the Watch, but against the halfdead. Which meant men and adequate weapons and all the means to repel creatures far more dangerous than any band of do-gooder humans.
It probably also meant the kidnappers had a day crew and a night crew. I wondered how many men the Timbers might conceal. Twenty-five? Thirty?
Easily, if the basement was intact. And I was betting it was.
I weighed my options. There weren’t many. I could lie here until dawn, and then sneak away while the teams changed shifts.
I could grab a rat in either hand and storm the place alone, as would the heroes of old.
Neither plan resulted in a freed Carris.
I cussed silently and settled in for the evening. Fleas invaded my britches and began to feast. I cussed more, but didn’t dare scratch.
The huldra had lain silent, just as the Corpsemaster had promised. But amid the stench and the biting fleas, a third idea presented itself.
Why not simply call upon the huldra, it asked. Why lie here in filth?
Why not rise up and simply crush them?
Why not take what you want?
If it is true the huldra slept, then what I heard next came from within myself.
All you have to do, said a voice, is tell the huldra your name, once more.
Just speak it. And then you may call upon the same magics you knew just last night. Who are these puny men, that would deter you?
Who are they?
They are nothing.
“I won’t do that.” I spoke aloud, in a ghost’s whisper, but it seemed vital that I give the words my voice. “I am my own. The price is too great. Leave me be.”
Someone tapped on my shoulder.
A face drew up close to mine.
“Well spoken,” it whispered.
It was Mills. Blood still oozed from his dark blue lips.
“You may speak and move about. They will neither see nor hear.”
I gobbled for air, wordless.
“Forgive me. I have startled you.”
“I just pissed myself, sir. That’s a few hundred yards past startled.”
The Corpsemaster shrugged. “Did you know there is a sorcerer among their number?”
Damn damn damn. I hadn’t even considered that.
“I took measures to conceal you. They are unaware of your presence.” Mills turned his dead eyes toward the Timbers. “I assume these are persons of interest to you?”