ON THE FIRST day of his investigation, Marick was in no trouble at all. He had walked out into the Wards, going from one to another looking for friendly ears in which to whisper his questions. Who are the Masks? Where can I find them? Do you know of any Duelists still free?
Despite his charms, which he knew to be many, and his guile, those questions went unanswered, and those he thought to be friends and admirers turned cold and bid him be off.
One, an old woman of foul temper and fouler language, threw a cabbage at him.
“Go on, you clawed beast! Heaven smite you! Stop bothering a poor, defenseless woman and go away. Try the Twelfth, if you want your throat cut, and good luck to them.”
Marick made an elaborate bow and ran off. Old Reebat might be unpleasant, but there wasn’t a rumor in the city that didn’t find its way into her hairy ears. He had no idea why she suggested the Twelfth Ward—it was the Trader’s Ward, one set aside to hold the many, cross-related families of the great trading houses that existed long before Shirath was built. They had a hand, or at least a few fingers, in every trade that went on within the Walls or with the other cities of the South. Marick knew little about them, for they had always seemed too dull to attract his attention.
It was late now to repeat his questions in the Twelfth. Yawning, he went back out into the city to find a place to sleep—anywhere but the Banehall. He had several nooks and corners set in his memory, each one convenient to some kind of scam or plot, and sneaking away to one gave Marick a feeling of freedom that was as precious to him as air.
Lately, he had begun to question his life as a Bane. They made little use of his talents, the Hallmaster thought him a pest, and even Garet and Salick were beginning to sound like the others in their criticisms.
He smiled. Let them snore, pressed down by tradition and stupidity!
The sun in his eyes woke him. He rolled off the bench set in the corner of a courtyard in the First Ward. A small girl with a large bucket of water stood nearby, staring at him. He smiled and waved, and she ran away, water sloshing out onto the stones. A neck-cracking stretch, a yawn and a scratch, then he was on his way. He hoped the day would be a busy one.
First, he snuck into the Banehall and left a note for the still-sleeping Dorict. He looked down at the Blue as he slept and wondered at their friendship. They had nothing in common except their shared experiences. Dorict hated adventures. He scolded Marick whenever he tried to have some fun, and worse, he loved reading and studying.
Marick shivered. Their friendship must be Heaven’s Fate, for there could be no other reason. Sneaking out of the building again, he dropped into a stall in the Palace Plaza market and traded the cabbage he had kept from yesterday’s investigations for the loan of a set of patched clothing: trousers, tunic, and a faded green cloak that were never likely to sell. The merchant, a one-eyed occasional thief from the Fifth Ward, accepted the trade wordlessly. He and Marick had done business before. The Bane’s shield and uniform were stuffed under the shop’s counter and covered with a basket.
So disguised, Marick went back across the bridge, avoiding the patrols of his Hallmates and skirting the Banehall by following the inner wall. At the Twelfth Ward gate, he slipped in between ox carts piled high with bolts of cloth.
He loped along, past Lord Sharock’s house and up the main avenue dividing the houses of the rich from the tenements of the poor. Marick had never liked this Ward. It was too ordered, each building placed as carefully as a piece on a game board. On his left were the square towers of the Trading Families, with warehouses on the first floor and luxurious rooms above. Each was a uniform size and four stories tall, and each had an elaborate clan crest carved over the door. Unlike buildings in the rest of the city, there were no windows on the first floor, only massive, iron-studded doors, as if each family suspected their neighbours of plotting theft and murder.
Not an unlikely prospect, Marick decided. In the early days of the city, or so Garet had droned on about, there had been feuds over many issues: trading rights in certain Wards, the chance to lead lucrative caravans to the east and west, and even how much a pound weighed, if one could believe it. Knowing the stupidity of his fellow citizens all too well, Marick had decided he could.
Across from these commercial fortresses, three story tenements were lined up along the east wall. Here lived the workers who labored for those trading houses. These men and women lived in cramped conditions and ate poor food, but they lived. Some had been born in the Ward and expected no better, though many had come because of bad luck in their home Wards. A debt that couldn’t be repaid, a brawl that left another badly injured, even a broken heart could send one here to work in a warehouse or scrub as a servant for a rich trader’s clan.
Marick shuddered. It was too much like the city of his birth, Old Torrick, situated at the top of the Falls on the River Ar. The Ward Lords there had grown wealthy by squeezing the trade moving from the rich Midlands to the other cities of the South. They had treated the whole population as their servants, and only now, with demons in the Midlands and an iron-willed Hallmaster named Corix as their conscience, had the Lords of Old Torrick reformed themselves.
He paused to let a pack of thin children run from the corner of one tenement to another, chasing a ball made of scraps of cloth. Before killing his first demon and being scooped up by the Torrick Banehall, Marick had been a thief and beggar, living on the streets after his mother died. He knew first hand how gnawing hunger could be when you saw the rich eat like pigs.
No, Marick did not like this Ward.
“Make way! Move, you brat!”
Marick jumped aside as a cart’s wheel missed him by inches. There was a snap, and pain crackled across his back. He looked up to see a drover with a cart full of men and women turn his whip back to the horses. Fire danced in the Bane’s mind, and he began to devise a suitable revenge when he caught sight of someone he recognized. One of the men in the cart was a Duelist, or an ex-Duelist, for all knew that group no longer existed. The man had a long face and a scar across his prominent nose, making him easy to place.
Marick followed the cart, careful to keep himself hidden in the shadow of buildings or behind taller workers carrying goods back and forth. The cart soon came to the outer edge of the Ward. Here, large warehouses lay in the same irritating order. These held the goods meant to travel outside the city in Bane-protected caravans, and the cart should have stopped there, but it didn’t.
This was interesting. The Twelfth Ward had little in the way of fields and orchards outside the wall, preferring to make their profit from trade and buy their food with coin. Marick wondered where the bully with the whip intended to take these people, who might all be ex-Duelists and, perhaps, the mysterious mask wearers he wanted to find.
There was, of course, only one way to find out.
The cart went through the gates and out into the fields surrounding Shirath. When Marick tried to follow, the guards stopped him. The oldest, a woman with thin lips and a cold eye, blocked his way with the butt of her spear.
“Where do you think you’re going, beggar?”
In another Ward, Marick might have played that part and tried to whine his way through, but the Twelfth Ward outlawed all forms of begging, and those who tried ended up in the warehouses, working for bread and water.
He straightened and pulled out a piece of paper from deep within his tunic.
“Trader Fairlock sent me to take this note to the Thirteenth Ward. It’s a long walk to the other gate, so I want to go through here,” he told the guard.
Drawn to his full height, he barely made her shoulder, but confidence made the lie believable. She took a cursory look at the note and tossed it back to him.
“Go on then, and stop bothering us,” she said.
Marick strode out, ostentatiously placing the paper in his tunic, well, actually in a vest of many pockets he wore next to his skin. The paper had been torn from one of Dorict’s books, something he hadn’t discovered yet, and Marick trusted to the fact that guards were rarely literate. He stuffed it back in its pocket and checked to see if his other tools were still there. Thin knife for windows, lockpicks for the rare locked door in Shirath, cloth mask, coil of rope, ah, and there, a piece of bread and a crumb of cheese he had filched from the kitchens that morning.
Chewing as he walked, he found a drainage ditch, bone dry, that he could use to keep parallel to the cart. There were many in the fields today, using the dry weather to prepare the quiltwork of plots for planting or cleaning up after winter storms. Marick pulled up the hood of his cloak, lest someone call out to him and reveal his presence to those in the cart.
After much walking and occasionally jumping up to make sure he hadn’t lost them, they came to the edge of the orchards. The newly-leafed trees made it easier to escape detection, save that he still had to bend down to catch sight of the wheels.
The groves were not as wide as the fields, so Marick was only breathing moderately hard when they came to the wood lots that were the last sign of habitation surrounding Shirath, save for the river road. He expected them to stop for some secret meeting, but they continued on, deep into the woods. Now Marick had to make sure he lost not just the cart, but himself as well, for the trees were set in identical rows in all directions, leaving no landmark save the road he needed to avoid. At last, he was forced to let the cart pass out of sight and then follow it on the track as it rumbled deeper into the woods.
He was footsore and thirsty when he heard voices calling ahead. He slipped into the trees, just beside the road, and made his way forward as quietly as possible. Being Marick, that was very quiet indeed.
There were wooden walls ahead, thick poles fixed upright together to protect a logging station, one of many that lay scattered through these woods. This was a small one, and should have been deserted at this time of year while all turned their attentions to the fields. Winter was the time for cutting and trimming, or so Dorict had told him, and he should know, since his family were all loggers save him.
This station was humming with activity. The cart was emptied of its human cargo plus bags and casks of supplies that must have lain at their feet during the trip. None wore masks, and there was no taste of demon fear, which meant the stolen jewels were not here, unless they were safely locked in silkstone boxes somewhere nearby.
The cart started back to town. From behind a stout tree, Marick glared at the driver as he passed. He would leave that man, and his whip, for a more appropriate time. The gates of the station closed, and Marick creeped closer. Scaling the wall was a possibility, but there was a Bane’s tower in the centre of the station, built up above the level of the walls. If it was occupied by a watcher, any attempt to get over the wall in daylight would lead to capture, or worse. If Shirin was there, she might try cutting his throat again, and she would have plenty of help this time.
He found a crack between the timbers of the gate and looked within. The tower stood in the middle of the square. There was a gap between the loggers’ barracks at each corner. The gate Marick peeked through stood in one. Directly across from him, the far gap held a well. The people from the cart, and others, stood near the gap to his right, a space hidden from view at this angle. In all, about thirty people stood in the square, all of them crowded near that corner, save for one inconveniently still in the tower. They had tossed aside the clothes they wore from the city to reveal close-fitting black garments. A path of sorts had been laid out with whitewashed rocks. Marick could not see where it led, but every person in the station was looking in that direction, and they all wore stone masks.
Marick smiled at his luck then flinched. Something had tweaked his muscles, invisible claws that entered his body to pluck and pull at them. When he got his eye back to the crack, he saw a masked woman backing out of the hidden corner, spear in one hand and a small, open box in the other. She kept going until she stood behind the first three of the other Masks. When she spoke, Marick heard her voice quite clearly.
“You feel it still, don’t you? Well, the silkstone doesn’t block it all out, just enough so that we can stand it, as long as you face towards the demon.”
One of the three raised a finger to her ear to flick the unlucky word away, but Shirin, for Marick thought it must be her, slapped the hand down.
“Don’t do that! We make our own luck here. Now, advance, just as if you were dueling. The trick is to keep in mind what you want to do. You want to kill demons, right? You want those clawed Banes to eat dust, don’t you? Hold those thoughts like a fire between you and the fear. Build that fire, stoke it with hate, and you’ll get close enough to put a spear in some demon’s throat.”
Marick frowned. He didn’t care to admit it, but Shirin was right. Most Banes held a counter-thought to the fear. His own was imagining the anger of the demon when it realized Marick had tricked it. He held that image of them choking on their frustration in front of him now, so that the fear he felt in his bones loosened enough so that he could act. That was how he had killed the Rat Demon that made him a Bane and how he had dealt with his enemies forever after.
This was interesting, he decided. If Shirin had discovered a way to help these clawed Duelists actually kill demons, maybe they should make a pact with them. He fingered the scar below his neck. It came from the knife Shirin once held against his throat. Well, maybe not allies, he thought. And who knew if the city would be big enough for both Banes and Masks?
The first three advanced and backed up several times before Shirin released them. Now archers stepped up. Keeping their faces pointing directly forward, they loosed arrows towards the source of the fear, though some went wide of the mark and hit the nearby buildings.
Shirin stepped forward and took a bow, nocking an arrow and pulling the string back to her stone-covered cheek.
“Here’s where breathing is most important,” she told them. “Don’t try to see everything, just the centre of the target, the spot on the demon you’re aiming at. Then breathe normally, in and out as if you were walking down a street with not a care in the world. Focus on one spot and breathe. When you’re ready, hold the in-breath and release.”
The string twanged, and there was a solid thunk as the arrow hit the hidden target. The others took up their bows again and improved under her guidance. Then three more took the bows, then another group, until all had tried, and Marick began to suffer from boredom. He considered his next move.
Well, if it’s all archery practice from now on, I’ll learn nothing new, but I’m sure Branet and Andarack want to recover the silkstone, so telling them about this will get me into their good graces, even the King’s, and wipe away a multitude of present and future sins!
Perhaps he should have been thinking of his retreat rather than imagining his triumph, for he failed to notice Shirin walk out of sight with the box in her hand. The thrill of fear vanished, and all the trainees took off their masks, including the man in the tower who began to scan his surroundings in a depressingly thorough way.
Claws! Better to run than think, so remember that next time. Claws and jaws both! Some are coming to the gate. Time to find a hole to hide in!
Running around the wall would get him no closer to safety with that man in the tower, but a drying shed was nearby. He jumped across a saw-pit and managed to squeeze between the stacks of green lumber before the gate opened and disgorged a group of unmasked Masks.
“That was tough,” a woman said. She was answered by a deep voiced man.
“It gets easier. I nearly wet myself the first time, now it’s nothing to split open a demon’s skull with this axe!”
The voices paused near the entrance to the drying shed.
“That was closed when we came in the cart,” the woman said.
“Get the others,” said the man.
The door Marick had squeezed through, and not quite closed, creaked wide. A huge figure stood there, a man of prodigious proportions who held a large axe in one hand. His face was as blunt as stone, with heavy brows, a chin like a ship’s prow, and small eyes that raked the stacks of boards and drying beams.
Marick eased back, trying to find a gap in the piles to slip into when disaster struck. His foot came down on something that snapped, and an avalanche of lathing slid down the stack to come to rest at the feet of the searcher. Others came running up behind him, the first bearing a bow.
“Something or someone’s in here,” the giant said. “It’s no demon, so find it and kill it.”
Marick tried stepping backwards again, but the pile shifted alarmingly. He took a deep breath and kicked out. The boards flew towards the door, sending his pursuers scuttling to safety. Marick climbed spider-like up the next pile, then the next, trying to reach the rear of the shed. Something cut the air next to his ear and an arrow slapped between the roof supports to knock down a shingle. The light shone right upon Marick as he crouched beneath, trying to pull slivers out of his hands. He gave up and returned to climbing and cursing as quickly as he could. More arrows followed, but the lumber that had given him away now protected him. The big man picked up the archer nearest him and threw him up up onto the stacks.
“Get him. If he talks we’re all dead!”
No further incentive was needed, and soon the piled lumber was crawling with black-clothed figures.
Shouts coming from ahead alerted him that some had run around the shed to enter from the other side, a problem, since that was the way Marick had intended to escape. Pausing for breath, he crouched low to avoid another arrow that, like the first, merely killed a few shingles. He looked up and grinned, for his enemies had shown him the best way out. With a dangerous leap across the gap, Marick reached the tallest pile of lumber. In moments, he was lying on his back and kicking at the roof. When he’d made a big enough hole, he reversed his efforts and kicked downward, shifting the top of the pile over and onto at least one of his pursuers, whose cry of dismay was cut off by an avalanche of oak.
Marick ran along the roofline of the shed, teetering until he got to the middle and slid down the slope. He swung over the edge of the roof, held onto the jutting eaves until he could will himself to let go. The drop was bad enough, but he knew to roll when he hit the ground, and came up more or less functional.
He whirled around. They had not found him yet, but soon would. He had no wish to meet that monster with the axe face-to-face, since the meeting would likely be a short one and end with him in two parts: a bodiless head and a headless body, neither of which would suit him. Where could he go that they wouldn’t look? After a moment that seemed as long as a season, he slapped his forehead, yelped when the newest slivers were driven deeper, and ran into the station. If what he needed was still here, he might make it back to the Banehall to prove his story. He found the place deserted. From the shouts outside, they were still searching around and inside the shed.
He ran past the Bane’s tower and stopped. There, the corner he couldn’t see into before. He skidded into it. The space held an archery target with the arrows already pulled out and a stack of weapons pushed to one side. Yes! In the angle of the wall there was a tree stump cut low for a seat and on it was a small stone box. He picked it up and hugged it to his chest, just as he heard running feet announcing the return of his murderous hosts.
He peeked around the corner and dodged back as an arrow zipped by. Unhospitable, he decided, but like a good guest he now had a gift to bring to the festivities. Marick opened the box he held, revealing the rough, pebble-shaped demon jewel within. The cries of anger turned to groans, and he stepped out of his hiding place, protected by the circle of fear that now surrounded him. With the box held high and the lid raised, Marick felt the effect the same as the others, but he was a Bane after all, and demon jewels were nothing new to him.
“A shame you all took off your masks,” he squeaked, though none appeared to hear him. “I must be going now. You know a Bane is always busy, but I hope we meet again some day, Shirin. Perhaps if I ever pass the King’s prison I’ll stop by and say hello!”
Stiff-legged, he walked past all the crouched and writhing figures on the ground, until he came to the gate. One figure stood there, not the axe man, for he was as blasted as the rest, but a woman, one Marick recognized.
“You,” Shirin said. She was gripping her spear so hard the wood squeaked, yet she stayed, standing, in his path.
“Me,” replied Marick. He waved the box at her.
The point of her weapon trembled like a leaf in the wind, but if she didn’t attack, neither did she fall down.
Marick was forced to edge around her, feeling the heat of her gaze track him like shooting stars. He knew she would be the first after him and backed away, trying to keep them frozen with the jewel for as long as possible, for the moment they were free, they would put on their masks and run him down.
When Shirin shook herself and started running, so did he.
Marick kept to the road, depending on speed to make it to the fields and maybe lose himself in the work crews. He briefly debated dropping the jewel on the road and hoping it would delay them, but realized that they would probably be wearing their masks by now and would be able to bypass that particular obstacle, especially if they had another silkstone box. He closed the one in his arms and ran all the faster. He needed no demon fear to spur him on. Human fear was enough. The oaks and ash trees turned to apples before he heard any sound of pursuit. Now was the time to dodge into the fruit trees, swerving between cherries and pears and hoping that they hid him long enough for Marick to reach the fields unseen.
He didn’t. An arrow cut the leaves off a branch next to him, and a shout went up from the frustrated archer.
“He’s here! I almost got him.”
Almost doesn’t help anyone, my friend, Marick thought, and laughed as he remembered Dorict’s jibe. His own life had revolved around “almosts” since he was a child running on the rooftops of Old Torrick and stealing his suppers. He had been the best thief in the city, uncatchable, save by the Torrick Banehall, and he had escaped even that prison within a year to come to Shirath.
He would not be caught again.
He changed the pattern of his weaving to confound the next arrow, and the next, until he broke out into the fields and groaned. No one was nearby.
He took a breath and sprinted for the nearest crew, a group of weeding women, half a league away. He hoped he was as fleet as the vegetable seller in Garet’s story, for the noise of the pursuing Masks was getting louder.
He was nearly there when the first arrow hit the ground ten feet in front of him. He swerved, the wrong way as it turned out, for his leg spouted fire, and he looked down to see a black arrow, the needle point dripping blood, sticking through the fabric of his tattered pants.
Keep running, Marick told himself, or you’ll be caught. It’s painful but not crippling, not yet. The women in the work party were shouting and pointing, and one went running off towards a Bane riding a horse several fields away.
“Leave the boy alone!” a stout woman shouted, and picked up a stone from a pile on the edge of the furrows and threw it at the Masks.
It fell woefully short, but Marick appreciated the impulse, especially when the rest of the women copied her. A cry from behind him told the Bane that somebody found their target.
“Keep running, lad,” the first woman shouted at him as he passed. “We’ll hold them back!”
She picked up her hoe and swung it at the nearest pursuer, who raised his bow, arrow nocked.
“No!” Shirin cried out. She batted the bow aside, and the arrow wobbled harmlessly into the air.
“They aren’t our enemies. Circle around, get the boy!”
The Masks tried to disengage from the field workers, but found it difficult as stones and hoes rained down on them. Bruised and pursued, at least until the women stopped, they took after Marick again, trying to cut the lead the Bane had achieved.
The pain in Marick’s leg grew from a burning to little lightning shocks at each step. He made for the Fourteenth Ward’s outer gate, for he had come out of the orchards to the east of where he had entered. The gate was open, and he ran through under the startled gaze of the guards.
“Bandits, robbers, murderers!” Marick shouted, but he had little hope the two could keep out the mob chasing him.
He found an alley to hide in and examined his leg. The arrow had pierced through the outer edge of his thigh. Marick tore off a strip of his tunic, wishing he was wearing something cleaner. With the small knife hidden in his vest, he cut his trousers between the two holes and pulled out the arrow.
That he didn’t faint was proof of Heaven’s regard, for the pain was worse than anything he had ever felt before. He tied the strip of tunic around his leg and tossed the arrow under a doorstep. After a moment’s appreciation of his agony, he considered his next move.
The problem was that there were enough people wanting to kill him to sweep every alley in this Ward. He looked up at the rooftops and then down at his leg. He would have to try. His youth had been spent above the city of his birth, looking down on the fools and villains who thought themselves better than a little thief and beggar. He had proved them wrong often enough, and now he had to do it again or die.
The courtyard provided stairs, and he climbed as fast as he could. The bandage helped, as did the cries of the Masks when they found his blood in the alley. On the rooftop, he looked towards the inner wall. It was at least ten buildings away. He would never make it.
This made him grin, then laugh, then start running. He cleared the narrow space between the first two buildings, landing in a painful roll but getting up again and running faster. So he went, from building to building, while some of the Masks ran below and two tried to copy his rooftop progress.
A long cry and painful thump sounded behind him, and he turned to see only one Mask left, and he was clinging to the edge of the roof, legs dangling in the air. Marick bowed and kept going, jumping the next building and avoiding the arrow that was shot up from below. The next gap was impossible to jump as the facing building was a story higher than the one he was on, so he looked at the distance across the street instead. After a moment, he grabbed a plank from a half-built summer shelter, a rough construction of poles, plank flooring, and colorful awnings. It bounced on his shoulder as he ran to the edge. Sticking the end of it under a water tower, he waved at his pursuers and ran out to the end, using the spring in the wood to bounce up and out. He cleared the wide street and fell onto a rooftop to the west. Shaken, he staggered to his feet and looked back. The remaining Mask on the rooftop was waving and shouting, trying to signal his change of direction to his friends below. Marick grinned. If it wasn’t for the pain in his leg, he might actually have enjoyed this chase.
A deep breath and then running again. There was a gap ahead that was narrow enough to take him to his goal. After the jump, he climbed the ladder of a water tower, then pulled the ladder up and set it again. In a moment, he stood on the wall between the two Wards.
Now he had to rest for a moment. He retied the bandage and was shocked to see it soaked with blood. Another torn strip served to reinforce it, but he wished he was in the Banehall, being tended to by Banerict and fussed over by Vinir. Cheered by that thought, he looked over the wall into the Fifteenth Ward below. He had been there but a day ago, getting a cabbage thrown at his head by old Reebat. He balanced on the wall and pulled up the ladder, then stopped.
Tottering on the top of the wall, death by Masks on one side and death by gravity on the other, he began to dance, despite his leg, capering about in an ecstatic vision of how he was going to fool them all.
He hopped along the top of the wall until he found a place he could let down the ladder and slip into the nearest lane. Now was the difficult part. He twisted his torn pants around until his bandage was covered, and concentrated on walking as normally as possible. This slow pace grated on his nerves, for he knew the Masks would be searching for a way to follow him, even if it meant going all the way around to the Fifteenth Ward’s inner gate.
At last he came to Reebat’s hole-in-the-wall shop. Besides vegetables and dubious meats, she sold used clothing and small articles, providing a useful enough service that the Ward ignored her horrible personality.
“You again!” the old woman cried when Marick entered the shop. She rose off her stool and looked about for another missile.
By the time she had settled on a chipped flowerpot, Marick had taken out the silkstone box and held it up in front of her watery eyes.
“Easy there, grandmother! I need your help. I’ve got to hide this, and you’re the only one I trust.”
Reebat looked at the box suspiciously, weighing the pot in one hand.
“What is it?” she asked.
Marick made an exaggerated shushing motion of a finger across his lips.
“Shhh, I can’t tell you, though you’d faint if you knew how valuable it was. Now, I need you to keep this for me, for say an hour, and I need a cart to get me away from here, something I can hide in. When I sell it, I can pay you very well indeed.”
The old woman put down the flowerpot and rubbed the hairs of her chin. The light in her eyes was not kindled by generosity or simple human kindness.
Marick smothered a grin. The hook was set. Now to pull in the line.
“Listen mistress, there’s some after me that want this back. If you can get your son to take me across the bridge and away from them, I’ll cut you in for, say, five percent.”
“Fifty percent!” Reebat screeched. She looked around for where she had set the pot.
“Ten, no more!” Marick shouted, and so it went until thirty percent was agreed upon, and Reebat called her son to come out from the back room.
“Get the cart and pile some clothes on this wretch. Take him to, where are you going, scamp?”
Her son, whose name Marick didn’t know, nor even if he had a name, nodded. He was a florid, middle-aged man who rarely came out of the back room where he sorted the flotsam and jetsam that came into the shop. Now that Marick thought upon it, he probably didn’t need a name.
The Bane presented Reebat the box. “The Fifth Ward, Grandmother. Now, I must warn you not to open this while I’m gone. If there’s any trouble on the way, I’ll come right back and retrieve it, at the agreed upon split. Otherwise, I’ll get it tomorrow, and we’ll divvy up the profits then. On your life, don’t open it. Agreed?”
The old lady attempted a smile. It did not suit her face, and even her son shuddered, sending ripples of fat dancing over his jowels. He led Marick to his cart, dumped a smelly assortment of clothing and trash over him, and set off, pulling it himself like a draft horse.
Marick held his nose and tried to calculate several timelines, any one of which could spoil his wonderful plan. The Masks might find him too soon, and his two-legged horse wouldn’t say a word against them searching his cart, of that Marick was sure. If that particular disaster did not fall, then he might not make the bridge gates before the alarm went up, and that depended on a third interval, that of Reebat’s volcanic greed. The bump accompanying each cobblestone was like the ticking of one of Lord Andarack’s clocks. To quiet the pain in his leg, Marick plucked slivers from his hands with his teeth and counted the wheel’s bumps, trying to guess how far they had come.
He felt a new smoothness to the road and decided they must be in the Banehall Plaza. He almost jumped from his hiding place to make a run for the Hall, but restrained himself. He feared there would be an archer or two in the surrounding gardens, waiting for him to try so they could finish him off and then disappear into the mid-day crowds.
The distance between the Hall and the bridge gates seemed to stretch into forever. Finally, they slowed down and stopped.
He pulled apart a peephole in the pile of smelly clothes and looked out. Ten or more Masks were ranged in front of the gates, including Shirin with her spear and the giant with his axe. The guards had been disarmed and were glaring at their captors.
The Hall was sounding like the better plan now, though it would be a dangerous dodge, and he couldn’t count on any help against such odds. Now he wished he had found a way to disguise his shield instead of leaving it at the shop in the market. That might have given him a chance against the arrows.
He was coiling himself up for a sudden springing escape when cries went up on the far side of the Plaza. A thrill went up his spine, half fear and half exhultation. Reebat had done it! She had opened the box, unable to keep her greedy fingers off whatever treasure she imagined was inside. At this distance, the effect was only apparent to a Bane and, it seemed, to a Mask.
Shirin ran back from the gate, past the line of carts and waiting people, to stand and search, turning her head back and forth.
“It’s a demon, probably in a Ward behind the Banehall. Let’s go!”
The big man grabbed her shoulder. He towered over her, shouting. “You’re mad! We have to find that brat. If he tells what he knows, we’re done!”
Shirin whipped around, and the other felt the point of her spear at his throat, just under the stone chin of the mask.
“Listen very carefully,” Shirin said. She walked forward, forcing the big man back. “We fight demons. That’s why we exist, whatever your master thinks. If you want to leave, do so, but first give me your mask.”
The man stumbled away from the point, a trickle of red running down his neck.
The other Masks ranged themselves behind Shirin. Nine Masks looked at one, and the one gave in.
“All right,” the axe-man said. “But you heard that Bane. He knows who you are. Soon, the Hall and Palace will too. After this, you should hide out on your own for a while, lest you draw attention to the rest of us.”
“Don’t worry. Tell your master that I’ll stay with a relative I trust until things calm down,” Shirin said. “Now follow me. It’s time to kill a monster.”
They turned and ran off towards the southern Wards, the big man still grumbling and taking up the rear.
The guards took some time to recover their weapons and pride before allowing anyone through. One ran off towards the palace while Marick followed at his cart’s leisurely pace.
He had actually fallen asleep by the time they stopped. Light hit his eyes as Reebat’s son pulled off the pile of clothing.
“Fifth Ward,” the man said, and turned the cart around when Marick got out.
“Thank you, my friend!” Marick said. “Tell me your name, so that I might ask Heaven to guard you.”
The man just shrugged and pulled the cart away with all the calm resignation of a nameless beast.
Marick made it to his goal step by agonizing step. He had treated his leg very badly today, and now it was returning the favor. At the steps leading up to his hopeful refuge, he paused and looked down at the bandage. Soaked again. He hoped Alanick wouldn’t mind him bleeding all over her expensive carpets. With a smile on his face and that thought in his head, he fainted, and the great astrologer came down the stairs herself to order him carried up to her couch.