wiped her face with a silken sleeve and tried to stand up. The pain wasn't so bad now. She listened. A man's voice filtered through the room's only door.
must've been killed right before I arrived," the speaker said. A moment later, he added. "No, this was a real slick job. No broken windows. No blood trail."
Josey couldn't make out any other speakers. As quietly as she could, she stole up to the door and pressed her ear to the peeling wooden panels. She heard a little better, but still only the one voice.
"I can't yet, Kit," he said. "Mat was a friend."
Who was Mat? Or Kit? Josey tried to follow the conversation.
"I don't know," the voice continued. "She's part of this somehow, or the old man was. Either way, she knows something and I intend to find out what."
Josey stepped away from the door with her heart pounding in her throat. It had to be the man in black. He was crazy, talking to himself. From the sound of his ramblings, he meant to interrogate her. Imaginings of torture popped into her head. She wrapped her arms around her body, shivering. I have to get away!
She took another look around the room. At the foot of the cot sat a heavy locker bound in bands of old bronze. A full-length mirror, actually a very nice piece she wouldn't have minded owning herself, stood beside a wooden cabinet opposite a narrow window. She hurried to the window and threw back the shade. There was no glass in the casement, just two heavy shutters secured with a slide-lock. She pulled the lock's handle, but it refused to open. The darkness seemed to deepen around her. There was something in the room.
She yanked harder, biting her bottom lip as the shutters rattled. Her fingers encountered something wrapped around the lock, a piece of wire tied around the slide to keep it from opening. A shadow moved in her peripheral vision. She clawed at the wire with her fingernails as a tide of fear swelled inside her. She had to get out.
She screamed as a brutal grip seized her from behind.
The sun had begun to set as Caim turned onto the street of his apartment building. All day he had scoured Othir's backstreets and alleyways for information about Mat's murder. Nothing happened in the Gutters without someone hearing about it. For the right price, or faced with the proper motivation, the denizens of Low Town could be very forthcoming. Caim had plied both coin and intimidation with every street hood and gossipmonger he could find, but no one knew anything. He hadn't believed it, not until he'd bared his knives and seen the truth in the stark eyes staring back at him.
About the only thing he'd learned were vague whispers about a new player in town, but nothing solid. It was all just rumors and gossip. People had turned up missing, not an unusual thing in the Gutters, but some were people who knew how to survive, like Molag Flat-Nose, an exmercenary and one of the prime suspects on Calm's list. Now that list was shorter and he was out of leads.
As he entered the front door, Caim considered his situation. He could always cut and run. Kit would be thrilled. But it didn't sit right with him. This had gone far beyond a botched hit. Somewhere along the line it had become personal for him. He'd never had many friends, not besides Kit. Mathias had treated him well, better than he'd expected when they first met at a dingy tavern on the west side. The tavern was gone, replaced by a newer establishment that catered to a better clientele, and now Mathias was gone, too.
Caim took a taper from the pot in the foyer, lit it from a tiny lamp set aside for late-night arrivals, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. A small shape huddled in the unlit hall. Caim started for a knife with his free hand until he recognized the shape and let it fall back by his side.
The child sat on her haunches against the wall across from his door. Her large eyes watched him while her spindle-thin fingers traced the wall's discolored plaster. He paused at his door for a moment. A woman's soft crying issued from across the hall, punctuated by loud, angry shouts. Suddenly uncomfortable, he fumbled with his locks and ducked inside, closing the door to the sounds and the little girl's eyes.
He lit