Honor among thieves

Chapter One Hundred Twelve

As soon as Malden could stand on his own two feet, Cutbill disappeared into the shadows without so much as a parting word of advice. Perhaps, Malden thought, that suggested the guildmaster of thieves had such confidence in him that Cutbill thought he no longer needed guidance.

Or perhaps Cutbill went to make his own exit from the city, just like Velmont, while the getting was still good.

Malden clenched his hands, released them again. His fingertips burned as the blood rushed into them. Cutbill had warned him there would be pain when “Gaah!” he shouted, unable to stop himself. A violent cramp had run up and down his whole left side, as feeling returned to his trunk. He felt a vein in his temple curl and spit venom like a snake, and he cried out again.

The agony was enough to drive him to his knees.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for pain just then. His cry had drawn attention from the nearby streets. A man with a torch came hurrying around the corner, leading a half dozen curious citizens. One of the six was dressed all in red, like a priest.

If the priests caught him now, he knew better than to expect them to apologize for seizing him and threatening him with human sacrifice.

“Blast,” he muttered, looking around for a convenient shadow to hide in. But the torch-bearer was already shouting that he’d found the Lord Mayor. Malden glanced over at the wagon that had brought him this far, and the three dead bodies lying around it. He looked intently at the horse, still standing there, waiting patiently in its traces.

The horse turned its head to look back at him with impassive eyes.

Malden knew how to ride, if just barely. He’d never mounted a horse before without someone to give him a leg up, but he decided it didn’t matter now.

There was no time to get the animal unhooked from the cart, so instead he looked up, his natural instinct when being pursued to climb. He ran at a half-timbered wall that offered so many hand- and footholds it might as well have been a ladder and leapt to catch a particularly thick beam.

The drug Velmont had given him was still at work in his blood, however. His leap was more of a lopsided hop, and when his fingers latched onto the side of the house, he was barely able to cling to it without falling.

Looking back, he saw his pursuers were only seconds away. “Hold, damn you,” he grunted at his own hands. They’d never failed him before. He managed to swing one arm up and grab the ledge of a second story window. Cramps ran up both his ankles and made him gasp for breath. When the muscles there relaxed again, he swung his right leg up to get purchase on the top of the door frame.

“Lord Mayor!” someone shouted below. “Please-your people need you! We need you at the Godstone!”

“He’s slaughtered this crew,” someone else said in a hollow voice. A woman screamed. “They were Sadu’s ministers-what has he done?”

“Please,” a third voice shouted. “Think of us! Think of our safety!”

Malden didn’t have the breath to waste on a reply. Pain wracked his arms but he managed to pull himself up onto the shingles of the house’s roof. He lay there gasping for a moment, staring up at the sky, while the entreaties continued from below.

The sky was a peculiar shade of purple. He turned his head and saw orange clouds on the horizon. No, it can’t come so soon. But he could not deny the evidence of his senses. Dawn was about to break.

He had to get to Ryewall as quickly as possible, to lead the counterattack.

He rolled over onto his side, then painfully rose to his feet. He was halfway across the city and could barely trust his legs. What if he had a cramp in the middle of leaping from one rooftop to another?

There wasn’t anything he could do about that, though. He would have to take his chances.

Moving as quickly as he dared on feet still half numb, Malden scurried over a roof ridge and down the other side. The street beyond was blessedly narrow, and he managed to hurl himself across and roll along the shingles on the far side. Bits of wood, brittle from the cold, broke away underneath him and pattered down into the road, but he managed to get his footing. Ahead of him lay a long row of rooftops, the houses all attached to one another. He kept low as he ran from eave to eave, even as cries went up all around him.

“His blood! He demands His blood!” they shouted.

Malden scowled but kept running. There was no time to convince the people of Ness that he was worth more to them now alive than dead.

Up ahead lay a broad street-Crispfat Lane, where a dozen butchers had their shops. The gap between the rooftops was too wide to jump, even if he’d been in a condition to do so. He ran to the edge and looked down.

The snowy street was almost deserted-but not quite enough. He saw women holding candles peering into every alley, every alcove. No doubt looking for the appointed sacrifice of their god. The priests must have put out a general hue and cry to find him. The damn fools didn’t seem to understand that every able-bodied citizen of Ness was needed to repel the invaders-these women looked strong enough to hold polearms.

There was nothing for it. He would have to scramble down into the street and up the houses on the far side. If the searchers tried to stop him, he would have to fight them off. He hurried down a gutter pipe as quietly as he could, praying the dark of night would be his ally as it had so many times before.

Halfway down a searing pain burst through his stomach and his hands turned to spasmodic claws. He lost his grip as he screamed in agony and fell the last ten feet into a snowdrift. For a while he could do nothing but curl around his midsection and blink sweat out of his eyes.

The pain felt like it would never let him go. He could not move, could not even think as the agony wracked his body. It was all he could do to keep breathing. As the snow melted on his face and hands, paining him still further, he tried to force it away, tried to unclench his closed eyelids.

Eventually it worked.

When he looked up, a small crowd had gathered to peer down at him by candlelight. “Lord Mayor,” one woman said, “you’ve come to your senses. If you’ll just come along with us now. We want no trouble.”

Malden rose carefully, the pain in his stomach still making it impossible for him to stand up straight. He reached for Acidtongue’s hilt with a hand that barely obeyed his command.

It would have gotten ugly just then if Slag hadn’t come tearing down the street, screaming, “Make way! Make way or get fucking crushed, you pissants!”