Jute made his way along the foot of the cliffs until he came to the sweep of beach curving along the city walls toward the harbor. He hunkered down behind a boulder and thought for a while. At least he tried to think, but this proved to be difficult, as he was shivering with cold and growing hungrier by the minute.
It was some help, though, to think about the hawk. The whole affair was so strange that it diverted his thoughts from his miserable state. He had a memory of someone saying there were certain animals that could talk—beasts that had been enspelled. Perhaps it had been one of the older boys. Some of the Juggler’s children had come from privileged backgrounds, children who had run away from families wealthy enough to have afforded schooling.
What had the hawk meant?
Things wake that should not have been disturbed. You would do well to avoid their attention.
Did the hawk mean things like the horrible creature in the cellar? Even though he was already shivering, this thought made him shiver even more. For now, be content with staying alive, youngling. He might be able to manage that, if he could somehow get warmed up. Some food would help too.
Several fishing boats were drawn up on the beach. Fishermen were stretching out their nets to dry on the sand. Others carried wicker baskets of fish from the night’s catch to the wharves further along the beach. Bigger boats were tied up along the wharves, prows in and crowded for space. Costermongers sold the fresh catch from their stalls. Housewives, cooks from the city’s inns, stewards, even the blue-liveried servants from the regent’s household prodded and poked and sniffed their way through piles of bass, snapper, and flounder, along with buckets of oysters and baskets of eels twisting about themselves like tangled black velvet ropes. Someone had caught a pair of sharks, and the brutes hung by their tails at the side of a stall, seawater and blood trickling from their jaws.
Past the wharves, an immense pier on stone pilings extended out into the harbor almost to the breakwater that sheltered Hearne’s port from the sea. Larger oceangoing vessels were moored along the pier. Slim, double-masted ketches, sturdy schooners from the northern duchies of Tormay, and huge galleons from Harth flying the golden flag of the house of Oran. Even now, a brigantine with square white sails running up was coming about, turning toward the gap in the breakwater and the sea beyond.
Jute stood and discovered his legs were trembling so badly he could hardly walk. Hunger drove him forward, however. He slunk down the beach toward the wooden arch named Joarsway, or the Fishgate, as it was called by the locals. One of the fishers, an old man mending a torn net, called out to him, but Jute flinched away at the sound of his voice.
The Fishgate neighborhood of the city was a warren of inns, shops, and dwellings, built in a hodgepodge fashion of stones and thatch and timbers and plaster. In places, the narrow streets were cobbled, but this was rare. Most streets were merely dirt packed to the hardness of stone by years of traffic and weather. Due to the night’s rainfall, the alleys and shadows were slick with mud. Jute made his way through the crowded streets. His stomach hurt.
He did not know the Fishgate neighborhood well. It was one of the poorer parts of the city and the Thieves Guild did not waste time robbing poor people. The Juggler’s children never worked the Fishgate streets. It was not that the Guild had sympathy for the poor; rather, they preferred to go where the money was.
Within the shadow of an alley, Jute paused and looked around. The back of his neck prickled as if someone was watching him. But there was no one there. The alley was heaped with rubbish. Other than that, it was empty. Three children ran past the mouth of the alley, threading through the crowd and shrieking with laughter. A stout woman trundled past in pursuit. With a grunt, she lunged and caught the smallest boy by the ear and hauled him off.
“But Mama, I don’t want to go!” Jute heard him squeal before the two vanished out of earshot. He felt nauseated and tired. His stomach spasmed. Sunlight angling over the wall fell on his face and he looked up toward the sky. It was empty and blue.
Jute let himself drift out into the crowd. The street opened up into a small market square bustling with life. An open-air butchery stood on one corner, with haunches of beef, pork, and mutton hanging red and fly-speckled from a crossbeam. Links of sausage glistened in looped piles alongside folds of rubbery tripe and stacks of muttonchops. The thwack-thwack-thwack of the butcher’s cleaver on the chopping block could be heard. At another stall, cabbages and wilted lettuces lay heaped on canvas. Shriveled potatoes sat mounded in baskets. The stink of fish filled the air, and a board slung across two barrels gleamed with piles of their slick silvers and blues and blacks. A small boy sloshed water onto the fish from a bucket and scratched himself, yawning. Flies buzzed around his bare feet.
A spicer stood guard in front of his wares and eyed the crowd. Jute could smell the pepper and cinnamon from where he stood, and he drifted toward the man, his nose twitching. The smell was pungent, even amidst the stench of fish and the butcher’s goods. Strings of dried chilies in green and yellow and red dangled from the awning next to braids of garlic. Behind the man were bowls of spice: chunks of rock salt, peppercorns, tiny green cardamom seeds, golden ginger, paprika in dusty shades of scarlet and orange, and brown cinnamon. Jute sniffed, his mouth watering.
The spicer scowled at him. “Are you going to buy my spice or just stand there, smelling it up? Run along, you wretch.”
Reluctantly, Jute moved away. At the far corner of the square, a baker did business. His oven exhaled the fragrance of yeast and salt. Jute edged closer and stared. What happened next would have been normally unthinkable for a boy of his abilities. Filching a loaf would have been child’s play for any of the Juggler’s children, but the past few days had taken their toll. His hand trembled on a loaf of bread and the baker glanced up.
“Thief!” yelled the baker, lunging for him. Flour billowed in the air around him. He missed, but the woman standing next to Jute did not.
The baker beat him soundly with the wooden paddle he used for shifting loaves in the oven. A crowd of people gathered and called out advice. Business picked up, and the baker’s assistant scurried about with armfuls of bread. Concerned the paddle would not hold up, the baker dropped Jute onto the cobbles and kicked him. The boy tried to crawl away, but the baker danced around him like a fighting rooster.
“This is what we do to your sort in the Fishgate!”
“Tsk—you’d think Hearne was run by thieves these days. How much are the large ryes?”
“Two for a copper! The baker’s assistant waved a loaf in the air. “Fresh an’ hot from the oven!”
“That’ll teach him!” said a crone.
“Aye, Mistress Gamall,” said the baker, his boot connecting with the boy’s ribs. “We should be concerned with the schooling of our youngsters.” He stepped on Jute’s hand and smiled in satisfaction as he heard the bones crack. The boy blacked out and then came to, gasping, as the baker kicked his stomach. He caught a glimpse of sky spinning overhead, empty and blue.
“Hold, baker!”
Dimly, Jute remembered the voice, but he could not place it. He heard a brief, angry exclamation from the baker. And then the sky was blotted out by a face peering down into his own. Brown eyes, faded, dusty clothing, a ragged cloak. The old man. Severan. The crowd drifted around them, the man kneeling next to the crumpled boy. The baker stomped back to his stall.
“Can you get up, Jute?” asked Severan. The boy shivered from his touch.
“I’m sorry for that,” said the old man.
“Sorry!” spat Jute. His voice cracked. Tears tracked down his muddy cheeks.
“I can’t fault you for judging me on the company I keep,” said the old man. “I fault myself! But trust me for now. You must be away from here immediately.”
“Back to the house and that basement?” said the boy.
“Darkness take me, boy, if I lie. I didn’t intend you any harm and you won’t be going back there. Not if I can help it. We’ve both learned a thing or two these last days.”
Jute tried to pull away from him once he was on his feet, but he was too weak and Severan held onto his arm. The old man seemed to know the neighborhood of the Fishgate well and led Jute through a maze of alleys and twisting streets. He moved fast for an old man. The boy was soon stumbling on his feet, barely able to keep up, but the man would not release his hold on him.
“Leave go,” gasped the boy. “Let me go. You’d take me back to him and—and that thing!”
Severan hustled him down an alleyway and did not stop until they had rounded a corner. He glanced around before he spoke, but there was no one in sight.
“Hear me out, boy. I mean you well. I never dreamed he would do such a thing. Such sorceries are forbidden!”
“Then you saw it?! That, that—”
The old man shivered. “You can know someone—think you know them—and then in one instant what you hold true is discovered to be false. The mask is peeled away and a strange visage is revealed. A chance trick of the light and suddenly a stranger is looking back at you. Last night, I happened to be at Nio’s house. Questions had arisen in my work that only Nio could answer. When I walked in the door, I sensed something strange. A scent in the air made me uneasy. The place quivered with the vibration of unseen magic. Somewhat similar to what you hear, boy, when you are about your thievery and listen for ward spells, but this was a tremble in all material at hand, as if something of the Dark had been recently near. Echoes, if you will. A kind of footprint peculiar to the Dark.
“I had uneasy dreams last night,” continued Severan. “When I awoke, I determined to go and confront Nio with my fears. Perhaps the thing, whatever it was, had crept into his house without his knowledge? I would not damn an innocent man with assumptions. But I saw him in Mioja Square this morning. He was oblivious to my presence. Something in his demeanor changed my mind and I did not approach him. What if the evil was in the house by his design?”
“He did it,” said the boy, shuddering. “He spoke and something came up out of the sewer in the basement! Darkness and water all mixed together. It felt like ice when it touched me!”
“You should have died there. Luck was on your side. The thing you speak of is called a wihht. The essence of darkness married with some item of our world. Such creatures cannot be created except through an evil will, for they can only be used for evil. This sort of magic is forbidden. It is accursed. When you use the Dark for your purposes, it uses you as well.” The old man sighed. “Whatever possessed you to rob that house of all others?”
The image of the Knife stooped over the chimney sprang to Jute’s mind and again he heard the whisper floating down through the darkness. Come up, boy. Come up. And the long arm reaching down for him. The Guild had a long arm indeed, and it could still reach him in this city. He stared at the old man and did not answer.
“I decided to investigate for myself while the house was empty,” said Severan, “for Nio was heading in the opposite direction when I saw him. The place was silent and filled with shadow. All the windows were shuttered. The air smelled of decay. It grew stronger as I entered the kitchen. The door to the cellar was ajar, and I eased it open to look down the stairs.”
Jute clutched his hand.
“And you saw it?” he said, his voice shaking. “Did you see it?”
“Not at first. It was dark inside. I crept down a few steps and thought to call forth a flame to aid my sight. I’m not a wizard, but one needn’t be a wizard to attempt certain modest things. But at that moment, below me in the darkness, I saw two dim points of light. Perplexed, I thought them a pair of candles. But then, to my horror, they slowly moved my way. I heard a wet, whispering noise as of sodden flesh pressing against stone. A form gathered shape out of the darkness. I turned and ran up the stairs with my heart pounding so painfully in this old chest of mine I could hardly breathe. I did not stop until I was out of the house and halfway down the street. I had to see the thing, to prove to myself—but for you to have been in that house . . .”
“It was a job.” A spark of defiance flared in Jute’s eyes. “The Guild needed the Juggler’s best for that chimney, and I’m the best of his lot.”
“But why that house?” Severan shook his head. “I don’t know much about wihhts. However, creatures of the Dark all share certain similarities. One is that they do not easily forget a scent. The wihht will remember your smell and it’ll sniff its way through this city in search of you.”
Jute sat down on a wooden crate. His face was white.
“I’m as good as dead,” he groaned.
“Not if we act fast. We have some time, I think. I’m no tracker, but I think any scent would get confused in the Fishgate. The stink of fish is nauseating. Even a wihht, let alone a bloodhound, will have trouble here finding your scent. You’d be a sight safer if you hadn’t tried your luck with the baker. People remember that sort of thing. It gives them something to talk about over their ale. Wihhts do have ears.”
“But where can I hide?” said the boy. He looked up at the sky. “Where can I hide?” Severan got the odd impression that the boy wasn’t speaking to him.
“I have the perfect place,” said Severan briskly, “but we must be quick. The more time you spend in the streets, the more chance the wihht will pick up your tracks.”
He urged Jute to his feet and they hurried off. They made their way through the back alleys of the Fishgate, avoiding the busy streets. After a while, they came to a narrow passage that emptied out into a crowded square.
“Mioja Square,” gasped Jute.
Severan grabbed his arm. “But, look you beyond the square.”
“There are so many people! I might escape the wihht, but what if someone from the Guild sees me? They think I’m dead. I’ll really be dead then!”
“We’ll have to risk it,” said Severan. “This is our best chance. You see, just beyond the square? That’s where we’re going.”
Mioja Square teemed with life before them. Market stalls, barrow vendors, jugglers, musicians, a throng of humanity. Looming above it on the other side of the square was a massive edifice of black stone spires, squat towers, arches, and crazily angled roof planes that gleamed ancient green copper in the sunlight, rimmed with balustrades and festooned with every manner of gargoyle, glaring and grinning down at the city.
“That’s the old university,” said Jute. “No one goes there. It’s full of magic and death and all sorts of ghosts.”
“True to a point,” said the old man, smiling. “However, the place is so steeped in magic that the wihht would have immense trouble finding your scent there. Besides, the Guild would never set foot in the ruins, so we’re killing two birds with one stone. We don’t need them and the wihht both hunting you. You should be safe within the walls. Reasonably safe. Oh, you needn’t look like a frightened sheep, Jute. Most of the stories you’ve heard about the university ruins aren’t true, and the ones that are true—well, you step carefully once inside those walls and you’re safe enough.”
Here, Severan paused, as if unsure as to how he should proceed. “I’m a scholar of sorts. Some years ago, several of my colleagues and I were granted permission by the regent of Hearne, Nimman Botrell, to conduct a search of the university grounds. It’s been unoccupied and locked up since the end of the Midsummer War, more than three hundred years ago.”
“Yes,” said the boy, remembering stories told late at night by the older boys. “And for good reason!”
“Oh, piffle. Worn-out reasons from long ago. Perhaps in the years following the war—the first hundred or two hundred years—there was wisdom in that. I’ll be the first to admit that, er, not just anyone should wander about the university. There are some interesting wards within the grounds that have survived the years intact. Some of the most deadly wards ever spelled. But don’t worry, boy,” he said hastily, for Jute’s eyes were widening. “My colleagues and I are well suited for what we do. If we weren’t, the regent would have never given us permission. Besides, he’s gambling he’ll have his cut out of whatever we find—a greedier man I’ve yet to meet.”
“If I take one step out into the square,” said Jute, “the Silentman will know instantly. Half the barrow vendors are in the Guild’s pay. Pickpockets and cutpurses everywhere. Worse still, we, the Juggler’s children, always considered the square as our play field. They know my face. I’m sure to be seen!”
“Wait here,” said Severan.
The old man hurried off across the square and disappeared among the vendors and the crowds eddying about the carts and stalls. The boy hunkered down behind some garbage and stared out at the square. The thought of his old playmates worried him. Would they turn him in for a copper coin and a kind word from the Juggler? He wasn’t sure, and the uncertainty was worse than the hunger in his belly. Lena wouldn’t squeal on him, but she was only one among dozens. The twins. They probably wouldn’t say anything either.
Mioja Square was the proving ground of the Juggler’s children. It was where the children honed their skills at picking pockets in hopes of graduating to the richer pickings of the Highneck Rise district. His first lift had been a wallet filched from a fat man inspecting bolts of silk at a draper’s stall. But he had been too eager, and the man had whirled around. Jute had sprinted away, the wallet clutched to his chest. The fat man could not keep up for long and stopped, gasping and hurling curses after the boy. Jute had collapsed in a fit of nervous giggles, once safe, and the Juggler had been pleased later. Three gold pieces as shiny bright as butter.
The Juggler.
Shadows.
It felt like a hundred years ago.
The Juggler. The Knife. The man’s face swam into his mind and he saw his lips move, forming the words: Remember, boy. Don’t open the box, whatever happens. If you do, I’ll cut your throat open so wide the wind’ll whistle through it. He shivered, remembering too well the man’s hand drifting down, the needle prick on his shoulder, and the night sky receding away as he fell down the chimney. Something tight and hot congealed within his chest, a point of almost physical obstruction that made him swallow convulsively. And for the first time in his life, Jute hated.
A breeze rustled down the alley and blew across his face, waking him from his reverie. Footsteps sounded and he looked up to see Severan.
“Here,” said the old man, handing him a folded up cloak. “Put this on. Pull the hood down over your face.”
There was one bad moment when they crossed the square. Right next to Vilanuo’s barrow—he sold fried bread—Jute looked up from within the shadow of his cowl to meet Lena’s glance. Lena, of all people. She was turning away from the barrow, gnawing on a slab of greasy bread dripping honey. Her eyes flicked up, blue against the ravaged, ward-scarred skin. An uncertain frown drifted across her face, followed by blank eyes and dismissal. But Jute had already turned away, steeling himself from breaking into a run. Sweat trickled down his back. Lena was his closest friend among all of the Juggler’s children. Had been, said part of his mind. Trust no one.
He hurried to catch up with Severan stalking through the crowd. Some beggars sat lazing in the sun on the steps of the old university. They scattered like a flock of ragged starlings as Severan and the boy came toward them, shambling to the outer edges of the steps and down to the square.
“Your precious ruins are safe, scholar,” jeered one old man as they passed. “We’ve been hard at guard.”
“Aye,” said Severan. “I warrant your smell’s enough to do the job.”
This elicited a chorus of cackles from the other beggars, and they drifted back to their spots in the sunlight pooled on the steps. The front doors were massive, ironbound affairs, with chains wound through the double handles. They were secured by a rusty lock. As Jute stepped closer, he felt his skin prickle and go cold.
“This is warded,” he said. “Heavily warded.” He could feel the curious stares of the beggars behind them.
“Yes, yes,” said the old man, not paying attention to him. “Ah, there it is.”
Jute blinked in astonishment. Where there had only been a stone wall before, a small, dark opening yawned.
“Hurry,” said Severan. “It’ll only stay open for a moment. We can’t have one of these old fellows sneaking in after us. One of them did that several months ago. Never saw him slip inside. Didn’t find him until later. What was left of him. He didn’t survive much more than an hour.”
Jute snorted. “I can be a lot quieter than a beggar.”
“I’m sure you can,” said Severan. “But an alarming number of the ward spells here aren’t attuned to noise. The university isn’t a safe place.”
“I thought you said it was safe,” said Jute, but they were already through and there was only stone behind them where the opening once had been.
“Safe?” echoed the old man. “Did I say that? Well, yes, of course it’s safe. In a relative sort of way, perhaps. Safer than the streets of Hearne! The wihht won’t find you in here. Er, at least, that’s my hope.”
It was dark inside after the morning sunlight, and at first Jute was aware only of an echoing space before and above him. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw stone pavement stretching out in front of him for a great distance. Rubble lay scattered across it. Pillars rose up in rows running along either side of the floor. Some of them were shattered and broken off at different heights. Shafts of scarlet, gold, and azure light slanted down through clerestory windows of stained glass. It was a place of shadows, despite the light falling through the stained glass.
“Come,” said the old man. “Food and a bed for you, and then later we’ll talk of what must be done. For now, however, walk behind me and don’t speak unless I speak to you. There are certain wards within this place that are disturbed by the sound of human voices.”
The boy wondered why Severan had bothered to say human voices instead of just voices. At the end of the row of pillars, there was a series of doors. These led into a maze of corridors and stairways so full of twists and turns that Jute was soon hopelessly bewildered as to their direction. Dust lay over everything and stirred in their wake.
From time to time, the old man stopped and mumbled a sentence or two. He spoke so quietly, however, that Jute could never make out what he was saying. But he knew the old man was disarming wards, for he always stopped in places where the air quivered with expectancy, and whenever the old man finished, the quivering sensation was stilled. The expectancy was everywhere—that listening quality every ward has, regardless of its function. The air rustled with it. Jute prided himself on never having yet encountered a ward he could not lull into complacency through his own silence. Here, however, the coiled, listening expectancy of the ward spells was different than anything he had ever known. The back of his neck prickled. He imagined eyes watching from every dark doorway and from behind every pile of rubble they passed. Once, he whirled, sure he had heard footsteps, but there was nothing except the empty corridor behind them.
It seemed as if they walked for hours, through shadows and archways, down long malls and past stairways twisting away in every direction. They picked their way through gaping holes in crumbled walls. They crossed a hall filled with light so bright it made his eyes ache. The roof, high above them, was shattered and open to the sky. The wind moaned through the broken ribs of stone overhead and Jute looked up, thinking of the hawk. They came to a warren of corridors relatively untouched by ruin. Severan opened the door to a room furnished with a bed, a wooden chest, and a table and chair.
“Wait here,” said the old man.
When he returned with a plate of bread and cheese and a withered summer apple, he found Jute snoring on the bed. The boy had fallen asleep on top of the blankets. It was chilly in the room, and the old man rummaged in the chest for a woolen blanket. He laid it over Jute and then left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Jute lay on his back under a night sky. He had the strange sensation that he could feel the entire earth pressing up underneath him. Mountain ranges, plains, long ribbons of river shining silver in the moonlight. Distant lands. Deserts chilled and shrouded in darkness. Forests lost in shadows of green midnight. The whole of the earth pushed up against his back, as if he were on the prow of a gigantic ship rushing through the night, propelling him through a vast darkness in which only a few stars gleamed. The wind touched his face. He heard in it the echo of a mighty tempest blowing toward him from an impossible distance away, blowing and howling among the far-off stars and spinning dusts of space.
He wanted to reach the sky, to hurl himself up into it. To unravel into the night until there was nothing left of himself. To be freed from the hold of the heavy earth. The breeze whispered to him of the older winds roaming free, far above the plodding earth. A tremor shook him as he strained upward, but he could not lift a hand from the ground. The blades of grass growing from the earth under and around him held his body fast in their gentle embrace. Stone shifted beneath him like bone scraping on bone. The earth held him close, whispering to him with the sounds of rustling leaves and the mutter of worms as they pushed their patient way through the loam.
No. It cannot have thee, said a worm.
No, agreed another.
It hath nothing to give thee, rustled a leaf. Nothing except the emptiness of sky.
Nothing.
Thou must not forsake the earth.
Thou will wither like this leaf, said a worm in satisfaction.
Aye, said a leaf. The best and truest of fates.
He will wither like thee.
Aye, agreed the leaf.
The worms murmured together in lines that moved so slowly and smoothly he thought he could feel the damp earth eaten and left in the wake of their tiny passage.
He will fade into worn hues.
Muted from last year's bold spring.
He will tatter in the wind.
Teeter on a shivering branch.
And lose his breezing balance.
He will fall to drift on down.
And so lay with the whole of earth.
Pressed against his crinkled back.
Aye, rustled the leaf.
“But the sky,” he said. “It’s so perfect and clear. I wish. . .” He could not say what he wished. The worms had nothing more to say either. The leaf, however, rustled one more time.
Aye. I have seen the sky before. Before I fell.
He cried out in longing and awoke. The dream faded from his mind, as dreams do, and he was conscious only of regret and the memory of sky.