passages then, and she didn’t like them much now.
She turned a corner and let herself through a small door into a dusty old cellar beneath a cobbler’s workshop, then climbed a flight of stone steps back up to the street. Carefully she shuttered her lantern and set it by the upper doorway, waiting a short time to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Then she drew a simple sackcloth mask over her face before letting herself out into the cold night again.
The stairs emerged in a dark alley behind Gold Street, not far from the compound of the Iron Ring Coster. Several hooded figures waited in the shadows, their faces covered by masks like hers. She knew them all anyway, of course: Brun Osting, the strapping brewer who owned the Troll and Tankard; his cousin Halla Osting, a tall young woman who could bring down a rabbit with a slingstone at fifty paces; Senna Vannarshel, a half-elf woman of sixty years who was the best bowmaker in Hulburg; Rost Therndon, a carpenter and shipwright almost as big as Brun Osting; and the dwarf Lodharrun, whose smithy was the largest in Hulburg not owned by one of the foreign merchant companies. They tensed in sudden alarm as Mirya made her appearance, steel glinting in their hands before they recognized her.
Mirya looked about the dim alleyway, and allowed herself a humorless smile. “I thought you all had more sense than to carry on with this,” she murmured. “Well, first things first—were any of you seen? Were any of you followed?”
They all shook their heads, but Brun spoke softly. “There are more of the gray guards by the Harmach’s Foot and the Middle Bridge,” he said. “I counted eight more of ’em tonight on the way here. They didn’t see me, but if more of them show up in the streets, it’ll be hard to avoid them.”
“I’ll make a note of them,” Mirya replied unhappily. The gray guardians were some work of Rhovann’s, she was sure of it. A month before the first of the tall, silent things had appeared on the battlements of Griffonwatch, armored warriors seven feet tall with thick, powerful limbs. Their faces were covered by black helms, and strange magical sigils were written in their gray flesh. Sometimes they accompanied the Council Guard on patrol, and other times they simply stood watch at street corners or doorways. Figuring out what they were and how Marstel’s wizard was making them was clearly becoming more important every day … but that wasn’t her mission tonight. As far as she knew, none of the gray guardians were nearby, and she and her small band of rebels had different work ahead of them. “Any word from Darsen?”
“Aye,” Halla answered. “The Jannarsk sellsword’s in the Black Gull, with two more mercenaries. Darsen’s there.”
Mirya nodded. It was one more foe than she’d hoped for, but she meant to carry things through anyway. Two days previous, one of the House Jannarsk sergeants and his squad had wrecked the shop of Perremon the cheesemaker, beating him severely when the Hulburgan had objected to their crude overtures to his daughter. It was time to draw some boundaries for the foreign mercenaries occupying Hulburg. She slid out to the mouth of the alleyway, looking up and down the street; a handful of passersby were still about, but no one nearby.
“Should we head for the Black Gull?” Rost Therndon said. “We could take them from the front and the back in one rush—”
“No, we’ll wait for eleven bells,” Mirya answered. That was the plan they’d worked out before, and she didn’t want to throw it out over simple impatience. The night was cold and damp, with a thin wet fog brooding over the streets. She drew back into the alley’s shadows, and wrapped herself more tightly in her cloak. The others in her small band did likewise, and they waited in silence for a time. Finally, the bell in the Council Hall struck eleven; Mirya shivered and straightened up, as did her companions.
Out of sight down the street, she heard a sudden distant burst of laughter and music as the taphouse door opened up. A few moments later, a single slender figure hurried by the mouth of the alleyway—Darsen Ilkur, the son of Deren Ilkur. The younger Ilkur worked as a clerk in the mercantile compounds, and was well placed to watch the foreigners’ comings and goings. “Three right behind me,” he murmured as he walked past, careful not