The Shadow at the Gate (7 page)

A crowd of people had gathered at the intersection of several rows of stalls. Jute could smell the raisins close by, and he slipped through the people, helping himself to pockets as he went. He emerged beside a confectionery’s barrow, from which a delicious steam rose. Biscuits studded with raisins and glazed with honey cooled in a wire basket. A griddle sizzled over a brazier glowing with coals. Behind him, a cheer went up from the crowd. He looked to see what had roused them, but he was too short. At any rate, the growling in his stomach rated more attention than a crowd cheering and he turned back to the confectionery.

“Run along with you,” said the old woman behind the barrow. She shook her wooden paddle at him.

“But I’d like to buy,” protested Jute. “I’m not a thief.” He jingled the coppers in his pocket and felt virtuous.

“One for half a copper,” said the old woman, “and let’s see your metal first. I’ve had enough of you scamps today.”

“I’ll take two,” said Jute grandly, and he tossed a copper piece on the griddle. The old woman scraped the coin off with her paddle.

“All right, then,” she said.

“Of course, my good woman,” said Jute, trying to recall how the Harthian lord had spoken. She whisked two of the hot confections into a twist of cotton and handed the lot over. Jute ruined the lordly effect by taking an enormous bite and nearly choking on the hot dough. The old woman smiled.

“She’s about to start again,” she said, unbending a little.

“Who?” managed Jute. He gulped for air and licked honey from his lips.

“The Mornish girl. The singer.” The old woman gestured toward the crowd. “Been singing on and off all morning. Got a throat on her like a bird.”

The singer started before Jute saw her, for the people were standing toe to heel and it took some doing to work his way through. The voice had a confiding quality to it, as if the singer sang for Jute alone. Each person in that crowd probably thought the same. Despite such intimacy, her notes soared up into the sky.

She sings like the hawk flies
, thought Jute.

He edged between a stout couple dressed in the commonsense weaves of Hull. They made grumbling way for him and then closed up behind him like a sturdy wall fed on pork and potatoes. The Mornish girl was no girl, for the old confectionery woman would have regarded any woman under the age of fifty as a girl. The singer had the solid features of the mountainfolk, as those people, when along in years, tend to look like they have been carved from the stones of the Mountains of Morn. But the beauty of her voice overwhelmed all other senses. A man sat on a stool near her feet and played accompaniment on a lute. The singer stood unmoving, her arms at her side. Only her mouth and throat moved, buoyed by the slow bellows of her breast.

“Hanno Col rode from Lascol forth

on the first of summer’s day.

The earth was green and tasseled gold,

corn heavy with the rain.

The wind blew him west, along the plains,

toward an unseen shore.

Where the keep of Dimmerdown stood,

the sea knocking on its door.”

The air around the singer seemed to shimmer, almost as if the sunlight had been caught by the woman’s voice and was coaxed to slow and thicken in attentiveness to her sound. Jute tasted honey in his mouth and was not sure if it came from the biscuit or the song.

An arm clamped around his neck, nearly wrenching him over.

“Jute,” said a voice.

He yelped in fright. The arm tightened and a small face insinuated itself against his own.

“Shh!”

And then he recognized the livid burn and the tangled brown hair falling down around her face. She frowned and smiled in delight at the same time.

“Lena!”

“Quiet,” she said. “That old Demm is standing not three feet away and he’s allus been a nasty one.” She nodded. A gaunt rail of a man was standing in the front of the crowd. With one step, the man could reach them and grab Jute by the scruff of his neck. But the singer sang on and Demm stared at her with glazed eyes. Sweat slid down Jute’s back. Demm was one of the bashers who ran the docks for the Guild.

“C’mon.” Lena’s hand slipped into his own. They threaded their way back through the audience until they were in one of the less crowded byways of the square.

“Shadows, Jute,” she said, rounding on him. “Where you been at?” She stuck her small fists on her hips and glared at him.

“Not here,” he said. His heart was beating fast, as fast as the heartbeat of a sparrow he had picked up once. The silly thing had broken its wing and had been flopping about the cobblestones. He had picked it up and felt the tiny hammer of its life knock faster and faster until it was gone and there was only a bundle of feathers and bones in his hands. The heartbeat had been so fast. At that moment, his heart felt the same. Demm had been so close. Almost close enough to touch.

“You tell me, cully!” she said furiously.

“Not here, Lena.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her along. There were too many people, too many twists and turns, too many carts jammed into hodgepodge lines and angles, too many canopies blocking out the sky. He felt as if he could not breathe. He needed empty spaces and silence. Too many hands that might reach for him, too many faces, and too many eyes. Surely they were all watching him. Too much noise and babble hiding the gossip surely being whispered behind hands and stalls and hanging drapes.

They hurried through a fading fringe of people and scattered carts, right on the edge of the square, and dove into the alley skirting the university ruins. The wall loomed up next to them and shrouded the alley with afternoon shadow.

“Jute!” said Lena, “You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry.”

She perched on a pile of rubble and glared at him.

“Now where you been? And this better be good. Better than being dead, for that’s what the fat old Juggler was allus telling us. I cried, and he just smiled all over his fat, greasy face.”

Jute laughed, for the little girl had twisted up her own face into an approximation of the Juggler’s leer.

“Don’t,” Lena said crossly.

“Sorry.” He sat down next to her. She laid a hand on his arm.

“Are you going to have that?”

“No,” he said. He handed her the remaining biscuit. He wasn’t hungry anymore. Besides, the thing had long gone cold.

“So then?”

Jute was half of a mind to tell her the whole story. After all, he had known Lena for years, ever since she had shown up at the back door of the Goose and Gold, a tiny, frightened girl. The innkeeper had put her to work in the scullery, scrubbing the endless grease of pots and pans. The deftness of her hands had caught the Juggler’s eye, and it wasn’t long before he had her. She had learned under the tutelage of the older children. Jute had taught her a fair bit himself.

He winced at the memory, looking down at the burn scar blooming on the side of her face. It covered one cheek and reached up into the scalp. Luckily, her hair had grown back.

“I got caught.” He shrugged. “There’s not much to the story. The job went bad and got me nicked.”

“As if you’d get nicked.” she said, spraying crumbs. “That’d be the day.”

He shook his head, secretly pleased at her praise. “Plenty of things out there that shouldn’t be tried for. You know that. No matter how quick you get, there’s always a bit that’s gonna be quicker. And those are the bits you have to leave be—only I tried for one of ‘em.”

She scowled, but he saw her touch her face, fingers drifting unconsciously across the burn scar.

“It were for the Knife, weren’t it?” she said.

“Aye.” And he saw the man’s face again, floating pale and ghostly above the chimney’s mouth.
Nothing personal, boy.
His hands clenched. Stone and shadow. He hadn’t thought of the man for several days now.

She licked her fingers clean of honey and then wiped them on her shirt.

“Ain’t no reason to worry about the Knife,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he said, startled.

“Oh, nothing,” she said, smiling in triumph. “Just that, me ‘n the other—we jumped the Knife behind the Goose ‘n Gold.”

“What?”

She told him, waving her hands about for emphasis and grinning.

“You could’ve been killed,” said Jute, angry and jealous and amazed all at the same time.

“Well, I weren’t. What’s more, I heard the Knife ain’t the Knife any longer. He been kicked outa the Guild or something. All in disgrace, cuz of you, cully. Everyone’s talking about it.”

“Kicked out?” he said in amazement.

“On his rear. So, what was it? What were you trying to swipe?” she said.

His mind cast about for something suitably impressive. “An old book. Something filled up with magic spells and things like that. Real expensive and rare.”

“Must have been a real swoop,” she said, “else the Silentman wouldn’t have put out such a price on you.”

“The Silentman? A price? What are you talking about?”

“Stone,” she said, wide-eyed. “You hadn’t heard?”

“No. I’ve been—I’ve been busy. Tell me then.”

“Maybe I’d like another biscuit first.”

“Maybe you’ll tell me.” He poked her in the ribs.

“A hundred pieces of gold.” She wriggled away. “Who’d have thought your ugly mug’d be worth all that?”

“A hundred pieces of gold,” he breathed. “You should turn me in yourself. You’d be rich.”

“There’s plenty would turn you in for a lot less than a hundred, Jute. Word’s gone out around the city. Every kid in the Juggler’s lot is dreaming of gold. Oh, not Wrin and the twins. They’ll allus be true as can be. But every member of the Guild has word to take you if they’ve the chance—alive. The Silentman wants you alive. You’ve the shadow’s own luck to be out on the square today and nobody seen you.”

“It was stupid of me.” He shook his head in disgust. “I need to disappear. Don’t tell anyone you saw me, will you?”

“Course not,” she said indignantly.

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Here, you better take this lot.” He forked over his pickings from the square. The remaining copper from the blacksmith’s apprentice, a silver coin embossed with the ducal crest of Hull, and an opal no bigger than his thumbnail but black as night. Lena’s eyes bulged and she squeaked.

“I won’t need ‘em,” he said. “Not where I’m holed up. Give the opal to the Juggler. That should keep him in a good mood for days.”

The little girl looked at him blankly for a moment.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” he said.

“Bout the Juggler. He’s been gone more’n a week now. He must be dead or something, ‘cause the Guild’s moved a new one in. Old man who just sits and smokes his smelly pipe all day and take our swoop. He’s not half bad, an’ he don’t beat us hard at all.”

“The Juggler's dead?”

Joy trembled inside him, but then it was swept away by anger. His vision blurred. Someone else had killed the fat man. He had wanted that pleasure himself—somehow—to watch the life go out of those beady eyes. To extinguish him, just as a wick would be blown out.

A breeze blew down the alley.

What are you doing? Beware your mind, fledgling.

The hawk.

Instantly, his sight cleared. Lena was watching him curiously. He forced a smile.

“I have to go,” he said.

She nodded. He grabbed her arm.

“Could you do something for me, Lena?”

“Of course.”

“There’s a man named Nio who lives near Highneck Rise. An old manor at the end of the Losian Street. A tall garden wall and a tower. Find out if anyone in the Guild is talking about him. But be careful. He’s dangerous. More dangerous than the Knife. Quiet as a mouse, all right?”

“But how’ll I tell you what I find?” she said.

He wondered guiltily about the hawk and glanced at the sky.

“Three nights from now,” he said. “Meet me here at dusk.”

“All right,” she said, and then she scampered away down the alley, back toward the cheerful clamor of the square.

After a suspicious look around the alley—he was alone except for a little gray cat washing itself in a pool of sunlight—he climbed back up the wall. He swung over the eave and lay for a moment on the edge of the slate tiles. The noise of the day and the memory of the crowd drained from his mind, displaced by the slow warmth of the sunlight and the silence of the sky. And then, when he was still within, he walked across the roof and the slate tiles remained slate tiles.

The copper pipe remained a copper pipe, for that was all it had ever been. He tried not to think about how he was going to get back up to his window as he clambered up the pipe, but it was no good to put off the problem off much longer. A fair amount of Mioja Square was visible from where he was and he marveled at how small it had all become. There was an odd enjoyment in seeing the crowd drifting about, eddies of people as tiny as ants all a variety of color but no longer short and tall and fat and thin. They were all tiny. Remote. He wondered if that’s how it always was for the hawk—a constant remoteness that never necessitated involvement on its part except for whenever it wanted to fall from the heights and then climb back up with its prey.