“His name’s Queal, Fenn Queal.” He stumbled over the name. “He works out of the Copper Casket, over near the limekilns on the bay.”
“What did he tell you?” demanded Temar. “What did he promise?”
The door on the ground floor below rattled. Our luck had just run out. “Hush, both of you.” I put my sword to the man’s throat to ensure his silence.
“Jacot? Jacot, you putrid pig?” An indignant voice yelled up the stairs. “You left the door unlocked, shit for brains!”
“Are you up there?” A second voice sounded faintly suspicious.
“Answer him.” I prodded the thief. “Say sorry.”
Jacot managed a hoarse shout. “Right, sorry about that.”
I cursed under my breath as I heard heavy boots on the stairs. “You’ll be more than sorry if anything’s been lifted, dungface,” a halfway drunken voice threatened.
There was no time to untie Jacot, and anyway, if it came to a fight I didn’t want him free. Whoever was wanting to pick an argument threw back the trapdoor and the indignation died on his lips as he realised Temar was standing there, naked blade ready to top his skull like an egg.
“We’ve no quarrel with you, pal,” I said with pleasant menace. “We’re just about done with Jacot here and then we’ll be leaving.”
The newcomer was a tall man with a weeping sore on his cheek that looked suspiciously like the scald to me. He was cleaner than Jacot, from what I could see of his shoulders, wearing a dun broadcloth jerkin over a plain shirt. All the better to go unnoticed about his thievery, doubtless. His dark eyes were red-rimmed and crusted but alert enough as they scanned the room; first the bed, the bound Jacot, myself and finally Temar, who smiled nastily at him.
“Whatever you say, you’re the man with the sword.” He looked unconcerned at Jacot’s reddened and bleeding face. “Never was good for his rent, anyway.”
I’d been half wondering about taking the thief with us to give Messire a matched pair for the gallows, but bilked for his rent or not I couldn’t see this bully letting us take Jacot with us. No matter. We had the Kellarin artefacts back and I’d wager gold against copper that Jacot would get his neck stretched soon enough.
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.