to be sure of its efficacy. He knew how groggy and listless it would leave them, and how unable to defend themselves.
Still the hay rustled as they tried to rouse themselves and escape. Malden sighed and said, “If I tell you to be quiet, I expect you will try to shout. It’s what I would do in your situation. Allow me to point out one thing, however. If I wished to kill you, I could have done so quite easily, hours ago. Instead I did you a very great favor: I saved you from the hangman’s noose. I’d like to do you another favor, but it depends on my getting to my destination without incident. You may therefore remain silent, and keep your groans to yourself. Or I can stop your breath right now, while you’re still too weak to fend me off. Do we have a deal? Cry once for yes, or twice if you wish to die.”
“Oooh,” one of them moaned.
“Pluh-pluh-pluz,” the second begged.
“Gah,” the third one muttered. That must be the one he’d struck in the tongue.
“Very good. Lie still, then, and you’ll live, for now.” Malden got his horse under way again and headed for the Ashes.
That ancient district of the Free City of Ness was named for a calamity that happened well before Malden was born, the Seven Day Fire that claimed half the city. There was very little evidence of the conflagration left in Ness, save for a small zone of houses that had been so decrepit before the fire—and their owners so desperately poor—that they had never been rebuilt. The Ashes had become a section so desolate no one ever wanted to live there again. It was a grim place of streets that verged on nothing but charred ruin, all of it hid during the day by the shadow of the city’s towering wall. It was a place decent folk—and thus the city watch—never ventured.
Malden had come to know it well. He could find his way through the labyrinth of vacant lots and piles of rubble, through the lanes where weeds grew up through the soot-stained cobbles and moonlight soaked everything a sodden gray. He knew just where to turn, and, more importantly, just where to stop.
He stood his horse in the middle of a street and leaned forward on the reins. The horse snorted in the cold air, mist making twin plumes from its nostrils.
He did not wait long. Glancing over at a collapsed house to his left, he saw a flicker of motion, and then a boy no more than seven years old stepped out into the street. The boy lingered in a door frame that was warped out of true by fire and time. He wore a tunic made of patched-together rags, and his face was filthy with ash. In his hand he held a stick, no longer than his diminutive forearm, with a twopenny nail driven through its end. A poor urchin’s eye-gouger, that weapon. Malden had no doubt he was well drilled in its use. The boy, one of a small army of orphaned children with nowhere else to go, worked for Malden’s master. The children made sure no one entered the Ashes without being seen, and, if they were unwelcome, made sure they didn’t leave again.
Malden nodded at the boy, then made a complicated gesture with his fingers. The boy nodded in return, then stepped back into the darkness and was gone.
The entire interchange took five heartbeats to complete, but it spoke in an elaborate and eloquent vocabulary. The message was plain: Malden had three new recruits with him. He had not been followed. He needed to speak with the boss. The boy had understood, and would see to everything.
Malden jumped down from the seat of his wagon and walked around to the back. He shoved the straw away and let the three men sit up. As they rubbed at their numb faces and shook out their deadened legs, he studied them carefully. They were scrawny, shortish men dressed in dirty clothing. They didn’t look like much at all. He knew their type all too well. Men broken down by poverty until they were willing to take the risk of being hanged rather than go another day without coin. Men who labored at menial jobs when they could, or relied on their families for a few coppers to keep them from starving to death when no work was available. Men who had spent every day looking at