His hand was stayed, however, at the last possible moment. There was a flash of light that was instantly swallowed up by a thick cloud of yellow smoke. Croy’s lungs filled and he was overwhelmed by a powerful reek of rotten eggs that made him gag and cough. He tried to stay upright and maintain his composure but the stench was just too great. He worried he might vomit—not exactly what the people would expect of a knight of the realm, not in public—
“Hold still, you freakishly large livestock copulator,” someone hissed in the midst of the yellow cloud. The noose was lifted away from his throat, then a knife cut through the rope holding Croy’s hands together. Small hands pushed him from behind. He went staggering forward and over the edge of the gallows platform. It was all he could do to land on his feet. Down at ground level the yellow smoke was rarefied and he could breathe again, but still he could see nothing.
Fortunately a figure with a cloth across its face was there to guide him. He was dimly aware that the figure was only about four feet tall. A child? Some magical sprite, with the appearance of a child?
“Stop standing there manipulating yourself in an erotic fashion. We don’t have much time before the feces-smelling watch is upon us!”
Ah. No child. There was only one sort of creature in the world with such a vulgar tongue, yet such an academic grasp of human language. “Murdlin?” Croy asked. “Is that you?”
“It won’t be either of us in a moment, if we’re both dead as horse urine!”
They wasted no more time. Using the melee as cover, the man and the dwarf hurried out of the square. Once they were clear of the yellow smoke, Croy was able to understand why Murdlin had covered his face with cloth. It must have filtered out the worst of the stinking smoke and allowed the dwarf to breathe easy even in its midst. Was there no end to the cleverness of the diminutive folk?
“Murdlin, I am deep in your debt now,” Croy said as he was led around a corner into Greenhall Street.
“Considering what you did for the dwarf king’s daughter, the debt is crossed out,” Murdlin told him.
“I only did my duty, as bid by my king,” Croy pointed out. A year earlier the dwarf princess had been traveling to Helstrow, to be received at the royal court of Skrae. Along the way she’d been abducted by bandits who intended to hold her for ransom. Croy had spent six weeks tracking the bandits down and eventually rescued the princess. The dwarf king offered him anything he desired—steel, gold, even the princess in marriage—but Croy had never considered there might be a reward. A crime was committed, and someone had to put it right, that was all.
Clearly Murdlin felt some recompense was still owed.
“This way, most hurriedly, like a rabbit making love,” Murdlin called.
Even as they dashed across the cobblestones, a wagon full of hay pulled up beside them. The driver was a dwarf with a hood pulled low across his face to keep out the sun. The wagon rolled to a stop as soon as it reached them.
“By the Lady, you work fast,” Croy said.
“The moment I realized it was you on the gallows, I knew what course things must take. I sent one of my servants at once to fetch this conveyance. Now please, get into this body-odor stinking hay. It will hide you from view. The wagon will take you outside the walls. By the time you arrive I’ll have a horse waiting for you, so you may run off like a goblin that has fouled its own pants.”
“You make escape sound less sweet that I would have thought it an hour ago,” Croy admitted.
“It’s only a figure of speech. A common expression in my first language,” Murdlin told him. “I am taking a great risk doing this, Croy. Now, please! Into the hay that itches like pubic lice.”
Croy rubbed at his chafed wrists. Then he started walking backward, away from the dwarf, almost breaking into a run. “You have my eternal thanks, envoy. But I’ve work to do yet, here in the Free City. My lady is still enslaved. What is freedom to me when she is in chains? Fare thee well!”
The dwarf cursed him and shook his small fists in the air, but Croy was already on his way, turning a corner into Brasenose Street and back into danger.
Just the way he liked it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For a while Malden’s world was only a terrible ringing, as if a bell were struck right next to his ear, and darkness, a kind of darkness that hurt. He could feel his body being moved about, but only from a distance, as if he were watching some other poor bastard being carted around. The pain he felt made no sense, really, and he kept probing at it with mental fingers, trying to remember what had happened.
Eventually he heard sounds over the ringing in his head. Gasps and shouts, and then the shriek of chairs being pulled back. His poor body was dumped without ceremony on a flat surface, and suddenly he rushed back into it, though that just made things hurt more. Gradually he managed to tease out voices from the noise all around him.
“—might have killed him with a punch like that. And we’d be back where we started. You really ought to learn some discipline.”
“What? That little tap? I’ve hit flies harder than that. Look, he’s already waking up. I couldn’t possibly have done more than jiggled his brains a bit.”
The voices were vaguely familiar. Malden couldn’t quite place them, though. He was having a lot of trouble stringing thoughts together, even though the horrible ringing noise had faded away from his ears. He attempted to make a catalog of the things he knew for sure. He was certain, for instance, that he was lying on a very hard surface. Also, that his face hurt.
Suddenly his face hurt a very great deal.
“Oh,” he moaned. “Oh, by the Bloodgod. Oh …”
“Open your eyes now, boy,” Bikker said. “There’s a good lad.”
Malden looked around without sitting up. He was in a tavern, lit by smoking oil lamps. The few patrons present at that time of day were all staring at him. The alewife, a heavyset woman of middle age, was coming toward them with a tankard full of beer.
“Which one of you is paying for this?” she asked. “This isn’t a sickhouse.”
Slowly, Malden got his elbows under him and sat up. He had been laid out flat on a long table, a slab of oak that felt as hard as stone. It was patterned with old dark rings where tankards had overflowed, and was held together with strips of iron that dug into his back and legs.
Cythera—the tattooed woman—handed the alewife a farthing and passed the tankard to Malden. It was of the kind that had a lid on a hinge, to keep out flies, an earthenware vessel sealed at the bottom with pewter. An expensive bit of crockery. That told Malden roughly where he had to be—on the Golden Slope, the region of rich houses and expensive shops just downhill from the Spires. Had to be, as there were no taverns in the Spires, while if his two strange captors had carried him any farther downhill, the tankard would have been made of leather sealed with pitch. Knowing that was important. When he made his escape from this place, he would need to know where to run to first.
Wherever he was, though, he had to admit he was very thirsty. He lifted the lid and sipped carefully at the contents, thinking it must be some medicinal draught—but in fact it was only small beer. A drink fit for children.
“You like that, boy?” Bikker asked.
“I’m not an infant,” Malden said, taking a long drink. “I’m almost twenty. Please stop calling me ‘boy.’”
Bikker smiled broadly, showing off the gaps where some of his teeth used to be. “You going to try to run off again, boy, as soon as you can stand? Or are you going to talk to me now?”
Cythera glanced around the room. Whenever her blue eyes passed over one of the staring patrons, they flinched and looked away. “Bikker,” she said, “we need more privacy than this. Where should we go?”
“I’m tired out after chasing this cur,” Bikker told her. “I like this place just fine. You lot, out now. Barkeep, you can go, too.”
“By Sadu’s eight elbows, I will not,” the barkeep told him. “Just run off like a scolded brat, and leave you here with my till and all my stock?” She snorted in derision.
Bikker shrugged hugely. Then he reached behind him and drew his sword.
It made a strange slick sound as it came out of its scabbard, and when revealed, was not the shiny length of steel Malden had expected. Instead it looked like a bar of iron, three feet long, with no real edge. The iron was pitted and rough, like something that had been left in a tomb for centuries before it was picked up again. It looked a little slick, too—and as Malden watched, bubbles formed on its surface, then congregated in thick clots until it looked like the sword was drooling. A drop of the clear fluid ran down the sword’s edge and dripped on the dirt floor, where it hissed and smoked on the packed earth.
“You may wish to move aside,” Bikker said to Malden, who jumped off the table quickly, ignoring the throbbing pain in his face and head. Bikker swung the sword around in a wide arc that brought it crashing down on the oak table. With an explosive hiss like a dozen angry snakes striking at once, the blade sank through the thick wood and through the other side. The table fell in two halves, split clean down the middle, against the grain of the wood. The wetness of the blade—it must be vitriol, Malden realized, of some very potent type—gave off foul vapors that stung his nose. For a moment he could do naught but look at the sundered table. It was still bubbling and dissolving wherever the acid sword had touched it. Then he looked up and saw that everyone—patrons and barkeep alike—had fled the room.
“There,” Bikker said. “Privacy.”
Cythera sighed deeply, though there was an affectation to the sound that made Malden think she was accustomed to being annoyed with Bikker’s antics. “They’ll be back soon enough. And they’ll probably bring the watch.”
Bikker shrugged. He sheathed his sword. Malden saw that the interior of the scabbard was lined with glass, no doubt to keep the acid from burning its way through. The big man said, then, “So let us speak quickly to the boy, and then we can all be on our way. Boy,” Bikker called.
“Malden. At least use my name.”
“Boy,” Bikker said, walking over behind the bar and pouring himself a pitcher full of strong ale, “you are a thief, is that correct? This wasn’t the first time you ever cut a purse. Judging by the way you scampered up those rooftops, I imagine you’ve done this sort of thing before.”
“Listen,” Malden said, “the silver I took from you, it’s all—it’s here somewhere.” He reached down across his chest and realized that his sling and his fake arm had been removed. Looking up, he saw that Cythera held them—and his bodkin, too. “I’ll give it back, right? And everything else I took today, you can have that as well. Just let me go.”
“Bugger the silver! There’s plenty more where it came from!” Bikker shouted. He lifted his pitcher and drank lustily from it until foam drenched his beard.
