The hours passed. The better classes began to wend homeward with their bodyguards and bullies. She began to see a few familiar faces on the edges of the crowd, rufflers and whores and such anticipating the night, which was theirs. Merchants with more expensive goods began folding up and withdrawing with their armed guards and their day's profits.
Nothing—no luck at all, and Sophonisba would not accept a cut of bad luck; Gillian had two coppers in her own purse, purloined days ago, and Sophonisba would expect one. It was the streets and no supper if she was not willing to take a risk.
Suddenly a strange face cut the crowd, making haste: that caught her eye, and like the reflex of a boxer, her body tended that way before her mind had quite weighed matters, so she should not lose him. This was a stranger; there was a fashion to faces in Korianth, and this one was not Korianthine— Abhizite, she reckoned, from upriver. Gillian warmed indeed; it was like summer, when gullible foreigners came onto the docks carrying their traveling funds with them and giving easy opportunity to the light-fingered trade.
She bumped him in the press at a corner, anticipating his move to dodge her, and her razor had the purse strings, her fingers at once aware of weight, her heart thudding with the old excitement as she eeled through the crowd and alleyward.
Heavy purse—it was too soon missed; her numbing blow had had short effect. She heard the bawl of outrage, and suddenly a general shriek of alarm. At the bend of the alley she looked back.
Armored men. Bodyguards!
Panic hit her; she clutched the purse and ran the dark alley she had mapped in advance for escape, ran with all her might and slid left, right, right, along a broad back street, down yet another alley. They were after her in the twilight of the maze, cursing and with swords gleaming bare.
It was no ordinary cutpursing. She had tripped something, indeed. She ran until her heart was nigh to bursting, took the desperate chance of a stack of firewood to scamper to a ledge and into the upper levels of the midtown maze.
She watched them then, she lying on her heaving belly and trying not to be heard breathing. They were someone's hired bravos for certain, scarred of countenance, with that touch of the garish that bespoke gutter origins.
"Common cutpurse," one said. That rankled. She had other skills.
"Someone has to have seen her," said another. "Money will talk, in the Sink." They went away. Gillian lay still, panting, opened the purse with trembling fingers. A lead cylinder stamped with a seal; lead, and a finger-long sealed parchment, and a paltry three silver coins.
Bile welled up in her throat. They had sworn to search for her even into the impenetrable Sink. She had stolen something terrible; she had ruined herself; and even the Sink could not hide her, not against money, and such men.
Jensy, she thought, sick at heart. If passersby had seen her strolling there earlier and described Jensy— their memories would be very keen, for gold. The marks on the loot were ducal seals, surely; lesser men did not use such things. Her breath shuddered through her throat. Kings and dukes. She had stolen lead and paper, and her death. She could not read, not a word—not even to know whatshe had in hand.
— and Jensy!
She swept the contents back into the purse, thrust it into her blouse and, dropping down again into the alley, ran.
2
The tinsel shrine was closed. Gillian's heart sank, and her vision blurred. Again to the alleys and behind, thence to a lower-story window with a red shutter. She reached up and rapped it a certain pattern with her knuckles.
It opened. Sophonisba's painted face stared down at her; a torrent of abuse poured sewer-fashion from the dewy lips, and Jensy's dirty-scarfed head bobbed up from below the whore's ample bosom.
"Come on," Gillian said, and Jensy scrambled, grimaced in pain, for Sophonisba had her by the hair.
"My cut," Sophonisba said.
Gillian swallowed air, her ears alert for pursuit. She fished the two coppers from her purse, and Sophonisba spat on them. Heat flushed Gillian's face; the next thing in her hand was her razor. Sophonisba paled and sniffed. "I know you got better, slink. The whole street's roused. Should I take such risks? If someone comes asking here, should I say lies?" Trembling, blind with rage, Gillian took back the coppers. She brought out the purse, spilled the contents: lead cylinder, parchment, three coins. "Here. See? Trouble, trouble and no lot of money."
Sophonisba snatched at the coins. Gillian's deft fingers saved two, and the other things, which Sophonisba made no move at all to seize.
"Take your trouble," Sophonisba said. "And your brat. And keep away from here." Jensy scrambled out over the sill, hit the alley cobbles on tier slippered feet. Gillian did not stay to threaten. Sophonisba knew her—knew better than to spill to king's-men. . . or to leave Jensy on the street. Gillian clutched her sister's hand and pulled her along at a rate a twelve-year-old's strides could hardly match.
They walked, finally, in the dark of the blackest alleys and, warily, into the Sink itself. Gillian led the way to Threepenny Bridge and so to Rat's Alley and the Bowel. They were notalone, but the shadows inspected them cautiously: the trouble that lurked here was accustomed to pull its victims into the warren, not to find them there; and one time that lurkers did come too close, she and Jensy played dodge in the alley. "Cheap flash," she spat, and: "Bit's Isle," marking herself of a rougher brotherhood than theirs. They were alone after.
After the Bowel came the Isle itself, and the deepest part of the Sink. There was a door in the alley called Blindman's, where Genat had sat till someone knifed him, She dodged to it with Jensy in tow, this stout door inconspicuous among others, and pushed it open. It let them in under Jochen's stairs, in the wine-smelling backside of the Rose. Gillian caught her breath then and pulled Jensy close within the shadows of the small understairs pantry. "Get Jochen," she bade Jensy then. Jensy skulked out into the hall and took off her scarf, stuffed that in her skirts and passed out of sight around the corner of the door and into the roister of the tavern.
In a little time she was back with fat Jochen in her wake, and Jochen mightily scowling.
"You're in trouble?" Jochen said. "Get out if you are."
"Want you to keep Jensy for me."
"Pay," Jochen said. "You got it?"
"How much?"
"How bad the trouble?"
"For her, none at all. Just keep her." Gillian turned her back—prudence, not modesty—to fish up the silver from her blouse, not revealing the purse. She held up one coin. "Two days' board and close room."
"You arein trouble."
"I want Nessim. Is he here?"
He always was by dark. Jochen snorted. "A cut of what's going."
"A cut if there's profit; a clear name if there's not; get Nessim." Jochen went. "I don't want to be left," Jensy started to say, but Gillian rapped her ear and scowled so that Jensy swallowed it and looked frightened. Finally a muddled old man came muttering their way and Gillian snagged his sleeve. The reek of wine was strong; it was perpetual about Nessim Hath, excommunicate priest and minor dabbler in magics. He read, when he was sober enough to see the letters; that and occasionally effective magics—wards against rats, for one—made him a livelihood and kept his throat uncut.
"Upstairs," Gillian said, guiding sot and child up the well-worn boards to the loft and the private cells at the alleyside wall. Jensy snatched the taper at the head of the stairs and they went into that room, which had a window.