The low, feminine voice was just on the edge of Van Gast’s hearing. He didn’t stop, not to look or question or wonder who or why. He’d picked this corner to watch for a reason. The ancient stucco walls of the Godsquare just here were studded with the ends of rafters, handy foot and handholds that had saved him before. He scrambled up, his boots slipping but his hands sure. Forn’s bells jangled as he climbed, a counterpoint to the swearing that drifted up from below, followed by the thud of someone else climbing, the click of pistols being cocked. A shout of his name. Shit.
He reached the flat roof and risked a glance down. Guards, Yelen guards. He was in deep shit, and it felt good. He grinned wildly into the dark and scudded over the roof, checking that his pistol was loose and ready as he ran. His little-magics burned like a well-stoked fire. Trouble was everywhere, following him, ahead on the roof, to either side.
Yelen guards probably weren’t going to care overmuch if he was alive or dead, as long as they caught him. But they weren’t going to catch him, because he was good, better than good. He was Van Gast, uncatchable, and he was going to win. His grin stretched his cheeks, his heart thudding with the thrill as he ran, skipped around the guard who appeared from behind a chimney, slipped, rolled past another, scrambled back to his feet and on.
“Andor Van Gast!”
A shout behind, but he didn’t turn to look. A fizzing bang, and then a bullet took a chunk of roof by his feet. Dead was apparently fine.
That wasn’t what made him stumble, or shot fear through him. They knew his secret name. It was all over, they knew. His secret name, a woman giving him away…Josie, it couldn’t be but it had to be. His feet defied his brain, didn’t stop but carried on.
The roof dropped away in front of him, almost sheer and with no guards to bar his way, no guards that stupid probably. He hurtled down the slope, letting the ridge hide him from the following guns. Tiles clattered under his boots, making him slip and slide ever faster toward the edge and a dark drop. Just as he was about to tip over into the unknown, he dropped to the tiles and twisted, grabbing the eave as he turned. His bells jounced to a halt two dozen feet in the air over a narrow alley. High enough it might give the guards pause.
Tiles fell over the edge and crashed to the ground, followed by cursing as the guards followed him, though slower, more cautious than he’d been. Damn it, and he hadn’t even stolen anything. Today anyway.
The alley was empty except for two drunks trying to punch each other and missing by half a yard. No one to hide among, no stalls to cover him. Double shit. He dropped to the packed earth and rolled, jarring his knees and making his bells protest too loudly. He recovered and ran right, toward the drunks and what hopefully might turn out to be an inn where he could lose himself in the crowd. A house would do, a door to anywhere off this empty alley where he was the only target.
No such luck—no doors, only blank walls. Another bang, the sting of shattered stucco on his ear and a hole appeared in the wall next to his head. This was getting just that bit too close for comfort. He picked up speed, his bells rattling faster than his heart. He laughed at the dread of it, the joy of it as he leaped a barrel, careered between two men ducked low as they rolled a drunk for money, and shot out of the alley like a cork from a bottle.
The square he found himself in wasn’t much of an improvement over the alley and he didn’t recognize it in the torch-lit dark. A few stallholders packing up, one or two dawdling shoppers and what seemed like acres of open space. Footsteps, hurried, scuffed, tripping as they encountered the muggers, were only heartbeats behind him.
A dark space, an alley so narrow he could hardly see it, opened between two stalls and he dived in, ignored the alarmed shouts of the stallholders and a woman’s surprised shriek. Better, much better. Dark and secret, and full of debris just right for climbing, up onto the drunken roofs of the houses