10. Escape by Broom Closet

27th of Nima, Continued

Arramy kept me in front of him as gunshots erupted above us. The windows in the front doors shattered and splinters flew from the frame as Arramy hauled one of them open. He grunted and stiffened, but then pushed me out onto the boardwalk, his grip tightening on my left arm as he maneuvered us into the heavy foot traffic headed for the street festival. 

Behind us, there was a stir, and a gap opened up as the crowds began bunching, trying to get out of the way as Coventry men came pouring out of the hotel, brandishing their weapons. 

Arramy hissed out a curse through his teeth as a group of clothbadges came around the corner of North-South ahead of us, and for what felt like the thousandth time in a single day, I thought I was about to die like a cornered rat. I choked on a sob. This was it. This was the end. There wasn't any way out. We had put up a good fight, but I had failed. I had failed my father, and all those women, and Obyrron, and NaVarre... and Arramy. Arramy was going to die because of me —

Arramy glanced around, then pulled me with him down a loading ramp and across the street, somehow managing to keep us both from being run over by heavy drays and horseless delivery vans. On the other side, he took a set of access stairs back up to the boardwalk and ducked into an open-front Lodesian bazaar set up in the space between two buildings where a row-house used to stand. 

We didn't have a chance to blend in. A shot rang out in the street and Arramy started moving faster, shoving his way through groups of people haggling over the items the Lodesian salvagers were selling, his grip bruising my wrist as he yanked me along behind him. We rushed past piles of junked metal and mismatched chairs, faux Meirsadduan rugs, fresh fish in cold-boxes full of ice, mounds of spices and pyramids of fruit on tarps, angry shouts following on our heels as Arramy started deliberately overturning baskets and knocking over crates, wreaking havoc, creating chaos. 

The shouting turned to screaming as another gunshot tore through the air behind us, the bullet dinging off a kettle hanging from the roof of a pan man's stall just ahead of me. 

The poor pan man. Arramy skidded to a halt, took hold of one of the corner posts, and brought the entire stall crashing down behind us, tools, racks, pans and all, everything landing in a din of bouncing, clanging metal. 

"I'm sorry," I tried to say in Lodesian as the wizened old pan man sat up straight on his little three-legged stool and gaped around at all of his things in shock, but Arramy was hauling me toward the wall of the building. 

No. Toward a door in the wall that was now partially hidden by what was left of the pan man's torn awning. 

Then we were in the back end of a restaurant, dodging through a bustling kitchen and frightening the sous-chefs, before zigzagging between tables full of startled patrons in the dining room, and shooting straight out the front doors and onto the boardwalk. 

Arramy slowed immediately, turned left, and headed for North-South Street at a rather sedate stroll. I understood what he was doing. The street festival was in full swing, the music thumping and sawing away, wildly dressed performers swirling through an even wilder crowd, plumes of brightly colored neffi-alli powder hanging in the air. It was only a few hundred yards away at the end of the street. If we could only get there, get swept up in it... 

Breathless, I tried to fall into step with him, but the sudden change in pace had me reeling, my heart pounding too hard for what my legs were doing. I staggered. Immediately, there was an excited yell behind us. 

Arramy swore. Instead of making a breakneck run down the boardwalk again, he shouldered open the door to the nearest shopfront. This one was a mercantile, with goods arranged in neat lines on white shelves, and sweets in glass jars on the counter. Arramy walked straight up to the teenage boy at the cashbox and asked, calmly, "Does this place have an exit to the alley out back?" 

The boy blinked at us through a pair of thick spectacles, then raised a hand, aiming it toward a hallway at the far end of the room. 

"Thank you," I rasped, giving him a smile as Arramy let go of my arm and set off down an aisle with bolts of fabric on one side and shiny new shoes on the other. 

I fell behind a little as we entered the back hallway, and with a few meters between us I finally got a good look at him.

My stomach promptly knotted up. He was holding his left side and leaning slightly to the right, his limp decidedly worse. 

I was about to ask what was wrong, but he reached out and brought me to a stop in the utility room. He held a finger to his lips and motioned for me to stay put while he opened the back door and left it ajar. Then he unlatched a narrow door in the corner, quietly pulled a mop and bucket out of it, and gestured for me to go in. 

I stared at him, not quite believing he was telling me to hide in a broom closet. 

Then the tinkle of the door chime had me darting forward, pressing myself against the shelves at the back to make room for Arramy, while praying it wasn't already too late. 

To my relief, Arramy stepped in after me, reaching around the closet door for a moment. I heard the subtle scrape of the mop bucket on the floor, and then he drew his arm in and eased the door shut, latching it an instant before swift footsteps came pounding down the hallway, and a young male voice cried, "They've gone out the back! Come on!" 

I bit my lip, holding perfectly still as a whole herd of clothbadges went filing through the utility room and into the alley behind the store, following that first one. 

Surely it couldn't be this easy. Could it —

A lone set of footfalls hesitated in the utility room. 

Arramy breathed a silent curse and carefully took hold of the latch pin on the inside of the door as a slow, stealthy tread came toward the closet instead of continuing on outside. 

The latch-lift rattled, and Arramy's fist clenched tight, keeping the lift from slipping the pin as that last Clothbadge deputy took the time to make sure the room was actually empty. 

There was a soft, "Huh," followed by a murmured, "All this stuff in the way... and they couldn't exactly lock it from the inside, now, could they? It's a closet." He tried the latch one last time, then gave up and walked out, closing the alley door behind him. 

I deflated, all the air leaving my lungs in one long sigh of relief. Oddly, it wasn't because we had finally... maybe... escaped. Mostly, it was because Arramy hadn't had to pop out of that closet like some sort of hellbeast to kill a boy barely old enough to shave. The Coventry men were one thing. They were older, harder, experienced thugs, intent on bringing us in and finding the binder. The clothbadges were another matter. Most of them were young street toughs just trying to earn quick money by rounding up a pair of fugitives. It didn't seem fair that one of those fugitives was a battle-ready soldier who had already survived the border wars.

I swallowed, staring at Arramy's shoulders silhouetted by the sliver of light coming in under the door.

Arramy let go of the latch pin. Then he swayed. It was barely more than a shift of his weight from one leg to the other, but it was enough. 

"You were hit," I said under my breath. It wasn't a question. 

"I'll be fine." He reached out and put a hand on the wall. 

"You're not bleeding everywhere are you?" 

"Don't worry," he muttered, annoyed sarcasm thick in his brogue, "I won't get any on you." 

"That's not what I — How much blood have you lost?" I snapped, my voice breaking with the strain of whispering so much. 

"Shhh. The shop boy will hear." 

Not wanting to find out what Arramy would do if that happened, I pressed my lips together and bit back my objections. If he wanted to bleed to death, then so be it. Stubborn old wyrhonde. 

Several more seconds passed.

I sagged against the shelves behind me, trying to take the pressure off my feet and ease myself away from Arramy's back, which was little more than an inch from my front. 

I bit my lower lip. He smelled like sunlight and hot metal and fresh sweat and tar. 

I didn't actually mind. 

I wondered if it was strange to think a sweaty man didn't smell bad at a time like this. I took a surreptitious sniff. I didn't smell much better. My blouse was sticking to my skin, and the pins in my borrowed wig were digging into my scalp.

I tipped my head back and looked up at the ceiling, trying hard not to think about how many things had gone wrong at the Stalwart, and what the consequences would be. 

Finally, Arramy moved, slipping the latch pin and easing the door outward just enough for his hand. He grabbed the mop handle, keeping it from falling to the floor as he opened the closet far enough for him to squeeze out. 

I had to choke back the insane urge to giggle. The whole world was hunting for us, and we had escaped by hiding in a cleaning closet.

My giggle died as I got a better look at Arramy while he snuck over to the corner to check the hallway. 

He had been favoring his left leg the entire time we were running, but now there was a glossy stain oozing through his grey denim pants. Worse, there were two small, neat holes in the back of his leather vest, one above his left shoulder blade, the other just below his ribs. Both were wet and glistening. 

He turned to give me a nod, but instead of walking behind him, I came up to his left side, slipped my right arm around his waist, and brought his left arm around my shoulders. "Lean on me."

He let out a gasp of a laugh, his eyebrows going up. "I've got at least ten stone on you, kid." 

"Fine. Don't lean. Act like you're enjoying my company, and I'll hide the mess," I hissed. "Stop being dense."

He looked down at me, then gave me a reluctant nod.

The shop boy seemed mildly intrigued to see us coming back through the shop, but he didn't say anything. He stood there wiping down the counter and watched us walk out the front door. 

Again, we joined the stream of people on their way to the street festival, disguising Arramy's bullet wounds and my blistered feet by acting like we had already been celebrating heavily. 

A parrot-dancer threw a handful of indigo neffi-alli powder at me, and someone got Arramy with purple, then red. We popped in and out of several shops, wove our way through different acting troupes, split up twice, bought a cloak and a jacket from a mendings seller and traded them for a different jacket and a longwrap at another vendor's stall. By the time we reached the southern end of North-South Street, both of us were nearly unrecognizable. Our clothes and hair were splattered with brightly colored powder, our faces were painted with clay-white, streamers were draped liberally around our necks; we looked like every other festival celebrant, and if there were any Coventry agents still on our trail, I couldn't tell. 

Which meant we needed to stop running. Arramy had been putting more and more weight on me in spite of the fact that he had sworn he wouldn't, and he was limping heavily. I glanced up at him as we neared the last of the performing troupes on the corner of North-South and Gunderoodt. 

"So," I said, slowing. "Where to now?" 

He had been watching his feet, but he brought his head up and looked around, squinting in the late afternoon sun. "Keep going south." 

I cleared my throat. "That would be straight, then?"

He gave me a sidelong glance. "Yes. That would be straight."

I nodded and hefted his arm more firmly into place over my shoulders. Then we started across Gunderoodt to the opening of the much narrower, much plainer and much dirtier South Street, heading into the squalor of the low-district slums. 

I could think of one sort of place that might offer a modicum of privacy and a cloak of anonymity, if not actual security. Halfway down a nameless side street I found what I was looking for. Arramy allowed me to lead him up the dilapidated steps of the wastrels' inn, his only objection a small grunt when I opened the front door and pulled him inside.