What do you think the odds are that this isn't related to the Guild hunting for me? Because I don't think numbers actually go that low.”
Scurrying down the rest of the way and slipping unseen into the shadows across the road proved uncomplicated enough. Just as well, really, since Shins had proved utterly incapable of keeping her mind on the task. Even as she vanished into the winding streets, leaving the wall behind, she grumbled and fretted about the mysteries surrounding her, here in this city that was feeling ever more unfamiliar and ever less like home.
Perched on a window ledge that might well have given a cat pause—or at least required cat paws—Shins watched the small squad move on down the street below, their boot heels shouting a peculiar sort of click-splash with every step. She was only vaguely aware of chewing a lock of her hair, a habit she thought she'd shaken a year ago.
“How many patrols is that?”
Olgun indicated there had been six.
“Really?” Shins began idly peeling splinters off the edge of the rough wood beneath her. “Feels like twice that.” But then, six was still three or four more than she'd have expected to see in the brief span since she'd entered the city.
Peering from inside the mouths of alleys or from atop small, rundown buildings, Shins hadn't really gotten a good look at any of them until the fourth such group. Up to that point, she'd been intensely curious as to how the Guard could possibly field so many soldiers at once, especially given how many were stationed atop or along the wall.
Then that fourth patrol had passed directly beneath a streetlamp, answering the thief's question and presenting her with a whole new host of worries.
The light shone, not on the black and silver of the Guard, but on tabards of sky-blue and white, colors Shins recognized immediately as belonging to House Poumer.
Private armsmen. The city government had either called upon house soldiers to assist in keeping the peace, or the Houses had elected to do so and the city had been powerless to prevent them. Either way, it explained the extra manpower but raised a whole legion of additional questions that Shins would really rather not have considered.
Plus, the last time she'd dealt with private house guards, back in the Outer Hespelene, it had not proved a pleasant experience.
“Olgun, what the happy hens is going on here?” And then, “Yes, I am going to keep asking. And you're the one with knowledge of the ages, so you tell me. How many ways are there to say ‘I don't know’?”
Only when the patrol had been lost to sight for a good few minutes did she descend to the street, making her way deeper into the neighborhood. The place deteriorated with every additional step. Staircases sagged; garbage grew thick along the roadway; cobblestones became ever more sporadic, finally giving way to hard-packed dirt; and the air gradually yielded to what certainly smelled like the various internal gasses of a dog's back end.
It didn't turn her stomach any less than it would someone else's, but it was a familiar, homey sort of nausea.
Not that her destination was really “home,” but it'd do in a pinch.
Widdershins had very seriously considered heading straight for the Flippant Witch. That was home, so far as she was concerned, and she was greatly anxious to see old friends. Ultimately, it was vanity that got in her way. She'd been traveling for a very long time, and her clothes were near to demanding that she pay rent. Better to wash up and change first, lest Robin and the others mistake her for a vagrant or perhaps something from beyond the grave.
She'd let many of them go after taking up ownership of the Flippant Witch, but Shins still maintained a few boltholes throughout Davillon: cheap, rundown flats where she could store funds and equipment or spend a few nights where nobody would know to look for her. It was one of those—not directly on her route to the Witch, but only moderately out of the way—that she approached now.
When she reached the building, her eyes only lightly stinging from the local miasma, it looked much as it always had. The external staircase sagged a bit more than it used to, maybe, and even more of the windows were boarded up, but otherwise little had changed. The façade was just as grimy as ever, but that was fine; Shins was pretty sure it was load-bearing