I let my smile fade into hard-faced threat. The man gave the darkness under the bed one last look before sliding down the ladder, helpfully drawing the trap shut after him.
I raised a finger to shut Temar’s opening mouth and, kneeling, lifted the trapdoor a fraction. There were too many voices asking puzzled questions for me to pick out the words clearly and then a door below shut them off.
I scowled. “Do you reckon they’ll let us just walk out of here with his loot on your belt?”
“I somehow doubt it.” Temar looked down through the crack of the trapdoor. “We fight our way through?”
I sat back and looked round the garret. “If we have to. I’d rather try and go round them and just run.”
“Almost certainly safer,” Temar said dryly. He bolted the trapdoor, which would give us a little more time to consider our options.
The tiny window was thick with soot, decaying round the frame, and it didn’t look as if it had ever been opened.
Knocking it out would take time, make noise; I wasn’t sure Temar could get his shoulders through it, let alone me, and in any case I didn’t fancy trying to race thieves over the rooftops.
“Gag him.” Gesturing at Jacot, I went over to the chimney breast. A flimsy wooden wall on either side was all that separated this garret from the next house. I looked more closely. The aging stonework had shifted over the generations and pulled away, leaving the flimsy crosspieces none too deep in the walls. The cheap planks were rotting where last winter’s rain had found a way through the coarse stone slates and most of the wood looked worm-ridden. I looked over at Temar, who was tying a thick knot in a stained rag to wedge into Jacot’s mouth.
“Let’s use him to weigh down the trapdoor.” I lifted one side of the chair. Temar took the other and we carried Jacot carefully over, fury choking him almost as effectively as Temar’s gag. Temar took a deep breath, held it and then carefully moved the chamber pot to stand on the crack by the trap’s rope handle. I nodded my amused approval as I stripped the pallet and greasy blankets off the bed and lifted up the frame.
“We smash through that wall and get clear as fast as we can.” Even if the thieves below thought we were just beating Jacot up, the noise would give them an excuse to interfere so we wouldn’t have much time.
Temar swung the bed frame with me. “On three?”
“On one.” I put all my strength behind the blow, Temar with me. The bed frame twisted and splintered but the wall buckled more, cross pieces ripped out of the chimney breast. We hit it again, and again, as hurrying boots came charging up the stairs. One last shove sent the ineffective partition crashing down and we forced our way through the gap. The garret next door was a mirror image of Jacot’s and we raced to its trapdoor. Finding the bolt took a few unpleasantly tense moments in the half darkness, but then we were through and sliding down the ladder. Temar tried to pull it away but it was too securely fixed to the wall. I shoved him towards the stairs.
Shouts sounded in the room we’d just left, mainly of disgust as whoever tried to come bursting up through the trap was covered in Jacot’s ordure.
I drew my sword and spared a breath to hope no innocents appeared and tried to stop us. Those runes rolled our way; this house was dark and we reached the ground floor unopposed. Temar cocked his head like a listening hound. The roar of pursuit from above didn’t quite cover the shuffle of feet in the street outside the front,
“The back.” I was betting my hide and Temar’s that there’d be an alley to match the one Eadit had used to get back to Charoleia.
This house had a door to its kitchen and we bolted it behind us as we ran. Once through the outer door, we found ourselves in a pitch black yard. Scrambling over the chest-high wall, we dropped into a narrow alley with an open sewer running down the middle. We ran on, swords in hand, eyes fixed on a spill of moonlight where the terrace gave way to a lane. Our footfalls echoed back from the walls on either side, rousing dogs from their kennels, hounds barking until doors opened on warning shouts. As we reached the open space we heard running feet to match our own and naked steel shone bright as three of the thieves came skidding round the corner.
The first one made a wild swing for my neck. This was no time for the niceties of a formal bout. I parried with a block hard enough to send him staggering. Grabbing his hilt with my free hand, I curved my sword down to rip it up the back of his calf. He dropped his blade to clutch at the wound as he fell crippled to the floor and I kicked it away into the darkness. The other two had both gone for Temar, each thrusting cuts that the younger man’s ancient sword skills competently swept aside. One tried a vicious hack at his wrist but Temar saw it coming and pulled back. The thief leaned a hair’s breadth too far forward and Temar had him, cutting down to the bone in the angle of his elbow. I was moving to take the last man but a shadow stepped up behind him, grabbing his head to draw a dagger across his throat in one practised movement. Temar and I recoiled but I still got spattered with hot sticky blood.
“Come on.” Eadit dropped the corpse and we followed him to the street. Charoleia was waiting, Arashil beside her, the gig barely pausing as we three grabbed the sides and back, scrambling to cram ourselves aboard. The whole neighbourhood was rousing by now, cries raising lights in curious windows. The thieves who’d pursued us down the alley came running after us and two men appeared from nowhere to grab at the horse’s head. Charoleia ripped into their hands and faces with her metal-barbed whip and they fell away. The bay sprang forward but, hampered by the unevenly weighted gig, was hard put to outpace our pursuers. Charoleia wrenched the reins to turn it first round one corner, then another. We hit a wider road and she lashed the beast to a reckless canter, leaving the sounds of the chase fading behind us.
I stared backwards until I was satisfied we’d left anyone after our blood behind. “What do you know of Fenn Queal, Charoleia?”
She kept her eyes on the road. “If he paid that thief, someone is paying him ten times as much.”
“Would he have lied to us?” Temar asked. “The thief, I mean.”
“Not and risk Queal finding out and skinning him for it.” Charoleia slowed the pace a little as we reached a street with ordinary people going about innocent Festival business. “We’ll discuss this indoors.”
“Where are we going?” I checked my bearings and it was clear we weren’t heading either back to D’Olbriot’s residence or north and west to Charoleia’s house.
“Somewhere safe.” Charoleia glanced back at the three of us with a frown that still couldn’t mar her beauty.
“D’Olbriot’s is safe,” I protested.
Charoleia ignored me. I reached to touch her shoulder but Eadit held my arm back. “You asked for her help, you take it.”
I gave him a hard look but he met my gaze squarely.
Charoleia turned down another back street and then another. She took a lane that ran right beneath the solid bulk of the old city walls and finally steered the weary horse into a tidily swept street where we drew up outside a respectable merchant’s house. Eadit got out to take the horse’s head while Arashil sorted the keys chained at her girdle. “I’ll need to wash that blood out at once,” she said, suddenly seeing the gore spattered all over me and Temar. “Or you’ll be going home in your drawers.”
“Sorry about that,” said Eadit perfunctorily, leading the horse away.
We went inside to find a small hall with a single lantern burning low on a table. Arashil lit a candle from it and opened a door on to a sparsely furnished parlour where she lit another lamp. “Don’t get blood on the furniture.”
Temar and I looked at each other and at Charoleia. “I’ll get some blankets,” she said with a faint smile as she turned to disappear up the stairs.