The Shadow at the Gate (10 page)

It seemed like one of the children smiled at her, and then the shadows were only shadows. The house was empty now except for its own memories.

She closed the front door behind her and walked away. It was raining harder now, and she was glad for it. She turned her face up to the sky, eyes closed, and let the rain wash away her tears.

CHAPTER EIGHT

BOOKS CAN BE DANGEROUS

For the past three years, Ronan had kept a room on the second story of a house near the city’s south gate. An elderly couple lived in the place and made their living from the husband’s work as a scrivener. They were happy to get the silver piece he gave them every month for rent. It was a stiff price for a single room in such a poor part of Hearne, but the place pleased him, as there was access across the roofs, as well as by a set of rickety stairs that mounted up from a walled courtyard behind the house. The old couple gave no heed to his comings and goings but were careful to tell him of any strangers who appeared on their street.

Not that he had much to fear from enemies when he was on his own ground. Only one attacker at a time would be able to manage the stairs and the narrow door. And he’d yet to meet his match in a swordsman. When he slept, and when he was away, one of the cleverest wards gold could buy maintained a tireless watch, spelled into the stone and timbers of his room. Money well spent.

Ronan woke that morning and washed away an uneasy night of dreams with a basin of water. Sunlight angled along the top of the rickety stairs. He perched there a while in thought, letting the light warm his face.

At first, he had been afraid that the creature from the Silentman’s court would haunt his dreams, but his sleep, though uneasy with old memories and shadows, was thankfully devoid of the thing’s gaunt face. Whenever he thought of that strange meeting in the Silentman’s court, he could still hear the thing’s whispering voice and feel the invisible band tightening around his chest. He had never been so terrified in all his life. Facing an enemy over blades was never a concern, for he had learned how to fight from the best swordsman in all of Tormay.

He sighed at the thought.

“Sword skill or not,” he said, “I’m no longer the Knife.”

For a while, he paced about the room, scowling. Not that he cared what the Silentman thought, but to be cast off after so many years of faithful service? The Silentman was a bloodsucking tick. A swamp leech, a drooling idiot, the dullard offspring of a goat. And he owed him money.

Ronan slammed his fist on the table.

He didn’t care about any of it at all. Not the Guild, not Hearne, not any of the thieves that he had come to know over the years. All he wanted was his money. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to leave the city. To leave and lose himself in the north, in the islands and the sea.

But the Silentman would not let him leave Hearne without finding the boy.

There were two possibilities, other than whatever fate might choose to deal out. The house that had been robbed or the little girl. If the boy was alive then his trail would lead from the house. The scent might be picked up there. Doubtful at best, after all the days that had passed. But it would be instructive to find out who lived in the house. A rich scholar. That’s what Dreccan Gor had told him when he had been given the job. An idle scholar with too much money and learning. He had said it with no expression on his fat face, the Silentman gazing on them in silence from his dais. A scholar with the habit of collecting ancient oddities that were no use to anyone. But there had to be more to it than that. There always was. Usually, it didn’t matter, but it might now. Not just a scholar.

Ancient oddities that were no use to anyone. Except the white-faced creature whispering its threats while the three most powerful men in the Guild stood before it in utter terror. The Silentman. Dreccan Gor. And the Knife. Ronan frowned. Except he was no longer the Knife.

The little girl. Of anyone in the whole city, knowledge and luck would be on her side to catch the first glimpse of the accursed boy. If he was still in the city. Shadow take the thought. A city boy raised and schooled in the streets wouldn’t be likely to leave the walls. No. Hearne was his world.

How many children were in that fat fool’s clutches—two dozen, three, more? He didn’t know for certain. But they’d be sharing whatever they had with each other, whether it was food or information, everything used as a common bulwark against the Juggler. And if one had seen the boy Jute, then all had seen him. Though maybe not. Not with a hundred gold pieces on Jute’s head. At any rate, the girl was probably his best bet.

He smiled sourly. That would be a trick. She would turn and run, the first sight she caught of him. He would have to win her over somehow. There would be time enough later to wring her neck.

He stood up, checked the ward guarding his rooms with one flick of his mind—it was whispering peacefully to itself—and then hurried down the stairs.

It was still early morning, but the city was bustling. Every tavern, every boarding house and hostelry was bursting at the seams with travelers and traders come for the Autumn Fair. The streets were crowded with barrows, fast-talking hawkers, hucksters cajoling the foolish to their dicing and chance games, vendors buying, selling, and trading. A contingent of the city Guard marched by, stepping smartly and stern in their blue-black cloaks and gleaming armor.

Ronan bought some fried dough from a cart and munched on the honeyed bread. A child ran past; he eyed the boy, but then turned away after he saw him scooped up by a stout matron. He strolled on and came to Mioja Square. He sat down on the fountain’s edge, washed his sticky hands in the water, and considered. It seemed as if the entire city was out in force, judging from the busy square around him. But the Fair would not properly start for another three days, and then the city would become even more crowded. In three days. That would be the evening of the regent’s ball and when he would have to see to the strange bargain struck with Liss Galnes. He shivered and then glanced around, shamefaced, to see if anyone was watching him.

Throughout the morning and the afternoon, he walked the city, down streets and back alleys, crisscrossing the expanse of the square so many times he lost count. He saw street urchins everywhere, with the knowing, sly look about them marked in their furtive eyes and quick hands. The Juggler’s children were out in force. He saw them stealing purses and wallets from traders, prosperous farmers, nobles. Most people from the duchies and lands beyond Hearne were not accustomed to the harsher realities of the city. They were easy marks for the industrious children. Once he almost laughed aloud at the sight of several little boys standing on each other’s shoulders to filch a fine saddle blanket from the top of a camel towering over them. The snatch was made with only seconds to spare and then they were pelting off into the crowd with a cursing Harthian merchant in pursuit. The camel looked on in disdain.

As the merchant from Harth quickly learned, the children were not easy to follow in the crowded streets. Even for one as skilled as Ronan, he found he could not trail any of the children for long. He attempted this several times throughout the day and ruefully discovered that even his abilities were not up to the task. The children could move quicker than he among the press of the crowd. They could dart between legs and under carts, while he had to content himself with elbowing people aside. He gave up the idea as impractical. It wouldn’t do to collar one of the little wretches in passing, for then the word would be out. Not once did he see the girl Lena.

He skulked around in the neighborhood of the Goose and Gold for a while, hoping to discover where the Juggler kept the children. He was certain the place would be nearby, for the fat man had never stirred far from the tavern before his recent disappearance. But he didn’t see any children, though he loitered there for an hour. The day was passing. He moved on, gloomy and lost in thought.

Ronan found himself walking along the narrow street behind the scholar’s house—the same street where he and the boy had stood that night. It was a quiet place, a neighborhood for those who had money enough to buy security, far from the bustling quarters of trade or the dirty boroughs of the poor. He could hear the wards woven into the place. They whispered to him as he passed. They were harmless, as long he did not intrude, but decidedly aware of him. He admired them. He could sense the care and cost that had gone into their spelling. And he smiled, for he and the boy had beaten them that night. That was certainly something not many in the Guild would have been able to do.

At one place in the wall, there was a small passageway cut in the stone, closed by a gate of iron bars that rose up into sharp points like spears. He could see through them into a large, enclosed garden. It looked a lovely place—the little he could make out—filled with flowers, bushes, and fruit trees growing in unkempt profusion.

Perhaps it was the boredom and frustration of the day that made him do what he did next. Trying to track slippery street urchins was enough to try anyone’s patience, and it had already been a bad enough week as it was. A moment of careful listening, listening with every nerve ending alert, left him certain there was no one in the house, or at least in the half of the house closest to him. Oddly enough, the iron gate only had a rather insignificant ward woven into its pilings and hinges. There was a convenient space between the sharp points and the stone ceiling arching above them.

He touched the iron and willed himself to silence. The ward stirred slightly and then subsided back into dormancy. He hoisted himself up and edged over the sharp points crowning the gate. As soon as one leg was straddled over, the gate came alive. Another ward, he thought frantically, masked by the first. The iron bars were lengthening, the points were shooting up toward the stone above at an alarming rate. With a frenzied heave, he was over and through, sprawling painfully on the ground. He froze, senses prickling and quivering out in every direction. But there was nothing. No footsteps hurrying near. No cries of alarm. Not even the whisper of other wards contracting and focusing on him. He shivered, remembering the iron moving and growing underneath him and the unyielding stone above his head. A bird trilled cheerfully in the garden and, on top of the gate, the iron points retracted to their normal height.

Wetness slid down his arm. His fingers came away sticky with blood. He hadn’t even felt the iron point slice through him. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it could have been worse. He tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and tied it tightly around his arm.

For a long time, Ronan stayed beside the gate, examining the garden and the inner walls of the house standing around it in sunwashed stone. The bird whistled and sang within the branches of a rowan tree in the center of the garden. Oddly enough, there were sprigs of red berries on the tree, even though it wasn’t yet autumn. Selia bushes bloomed around the rowan, and the ground was littered with their white petals. Crickets scraped and sawed in the grass. But beyond their droning and the careless notes of the bird, there was only the silence of an empty house.

The ward in the gate had been beyond his skill. He had been lucky. If there were one such ward, there would be more. But he could not go back. The thought of climbing over those iron points again brought sweat to his brow. He would have to get out through the house. Of one thing he was now sure. No ordinary scholar lived here. The gate ward had been meant to kill, not merely warn off, and wards that killed were expensive and rare.

The bird went silent when he ventured across the garden. The sun was almost overhead. There were no shadows to hide in. Quickly, he walked to a door in the nearest wall and tried the handle. It was unlocked and seemed to have no warding. He slipped inside and, as he closed the door, heard the bird burst into song behind him.

He found himself in a pantry. Shelves lined the walls. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling. Another door opened into a kitchen. The place smelled unpleasantly dank, as if it had been unused for days. A pile of carrots on the counter was covered with mold. Two other doors led out of the kitchen. When he eased the first one open, he saw stone stairs descending into darkness. Obviously a basement. He considered going down, for basements usually meant some sort of access to the city sewers—a mode of exit and entrance that he had used in other parts of Hearne—but at that moment he heard the soft rasp of something dragging slowly across a stone floor. He silently shut the door and backed away.

A great horror came over him, for even though the door was closed, he could hear a faint squishing sound, almost as if a handful of wet clay was being pressed repeatedly against stone.

Shhhs.

Shhhs.

Shhhs.

The noise was getting louder. It was ascending the stairs. A slow, shuffling movement.

Ronan turned and almost ran from the kitchen. Out the other door. Into a long hallway, lined with door after door and floored with a thick carpet that deadened his footfalls. No windows. No sunlight. Only shadow. Which way was he heading? Which door? His arm ached and he felt dizzy.

One day, your luck’ll run out
, said a tiny voice inside his mind.

No. Never.

Soon. You’ll break.

Not even when they beat me bloody.

They were going to hang you that morning in Lura.