When they moved their search upstairs, he pulled himself back up into the attic and listened from there.
Adults might have been disappointed, even angered, by the lack of things of real value—what the Guards hadn’t taken, he suspected that the pair of killers had carried away—or by the fact that garments had been ripped up and things taken apart. But these little fellows were not dismayed—and he certainly felt kinship with them when they discovered a pile of warm stockings and exclaimed in glee to find that not one had a hole in it. He remembered a time when finding a stocking of any sort was cause for rejoicing.
Eventually they staggered out, laboring under the burden of two full packs apiece, one carried on the back and one in the front, with whatever else they thought salable tied on the outside. It made them ungainly and ridiculously easy to follow, and they were so concerned with their burdens that they were not paying any attention to their surroundings at all. He was even able to follow them down on the ground, ghosting along behind them near enough that he could still overhear their occasional mutterings.
But such disregard for their surroundings was not only to his advantage. It also made them targets.
He spotted the thief about the same time that the thief spotted them. A ragged youth in his teens, he was lounging in a doorway near what Mags figured was an ale shop when he saw the two children. Mags sensed his greed and glee as soon as he spotted the easy targets, and knew then what the fellow was. He was probably a little younger than Mags, but he was several years older and much taller and heavier than his potential victims. In fact, he was not at all unlike—
The flash of memory overcame Mags for a moment.
Mags sensed the cutpurse who was hiding in the alley ahead; then sensed that the thief had spotted the assassin that Mags called Temper. The surface thoughts of the thief, desperation crossed with greed, alarmed Mags, and he stopped, bending over to fumble with a shoe while he tried to figure out what was going to happen and if he could do anything about it.
The would-be thief was a boy, not a man, a boy no older than he was. A boy with a master to answer to, and who, so far today, had nothing to bring back to him. Coming back meant a beating or worse, and no supper. The boy looked at Temper with the eyes of a hunter and saw good clothing, a man well fed, with no obvious weapons. That was enough; the thief made his decision. Before Mags could even think of something to try to stop him, the boy was moving.
His was the cut-and-run style, rushing at the victim from under cover, cutting the bands of the belt pouch, and dashing off with it. Effective only when conditions favored a swift escape, it was well suited to a night thief and to thefts where crowds thickened and thinned again, hampering pursuit.
The boy thought he had such conditions—night, the alley, and a half a dozen escape routes on the other side of the street.
He was wrong.
The man heard the running footsteps; his instincts all came alive, and an unholy glee came over him.
The rest was a blur to Mags, caught as he was between the thoughts of the cutpurse and the thoughts of Temper. Temper threw off such violence that it rocked Mags back on his heels, but it was precise and calculated violence, and an acute pleasure in what he was about to do that was very nearly pain in and of itself.
The man moved at the last minute; the boy’s outstretched hands missed the tempting purse. There was a moment of anger and bewilderment on the part of the thief as his hands closed on air.
Then a flash of terrible pain and incredulity.
Then nothing.
And in the street ahead, all that anyone would have seen was the thief make a rush, the man step aside, and the thief falling to the ground as if he had stumbled. Except the thief didn’t get up again.
Temper passed on, leaving the cooling body of the boy in the street. It happened that quickly. One moment the thief was alive, the next, dead.
Mags shook off the unwelcome memory, and this new thief faded back into the shadows and waited for the two laden boys to pass, figuring to take them from behind. Burdened as they were, they wouldn’t be able to run or fight effectively.
Mags swarmed up a drainpipe and got onto the roof; he waited for the older boy to come out of the shadows and paced him while he followed the children, making sure that they didn’t have an adult protector anywhere about. When the thief was positive they were alone, he made his move.
That was when Mags dropped down on him from above.
All that training at the hands of the Weaponsmaster culminated in a move so perfectly executed that he thought his mentor would probably be beside himself with pleasure if he could have seen it. Mags managed to knock the boy cold without damaging him too much, and do it so silently that the children up ahead of him were not even aware that anything had happened.
Mags dragged the young thief into the shelter of an alley, pulled him behind a pile of garbage, and left him there. Bad luck, tosser, he thought, as he resumed tailing the children. Mebbe that’ll teach ye not t’rob kiddies.
The children staggered into what looked like an enormous abandoned building; it was hard to tell in this light, but part of it looked fallen in. Burned out, perhaps?
::I believe so,:: Dallen told him. ::There was a building around about there, a big building that held several apartments. There was a fire there four or five years ago. No one could sort out who it belonged to afterward—probably the actual owner didn’t want to come forward, thinking he’d be up on charges for letting it get into that state. So it’s been abandoned, and no one can do anything about it until an owner is found or the city confiscates it. I suppose there are all manner of squatters in it now.::
They plunged into the warren; he followed only far enough to determine that their “home” was an intact part of a cellar—and that the little girl who had fled was already there. He left them then, as the oldest of the boys sorted out some of the things that were likeliest to sell and hurried off with them to get some money and buy them all the food they had been promised as the reward for—whatever it was they had done for the assassins.
::What are you thinking?:: Dallen asked curiously.
::Tryin’ t’think how t’get at ’em,:: he said briefly, as he headed back to the Weasel’s shop at a trot. ::Reckon I’ll sleep on’t. I dun’ think they’re gonna go anywhere soon.::
It had been a very long night, full of exertion, and once he got back to the shop and Nikolas’ congratulations, he was yawning. And starving. He didn’t say anything about the latter to Nikolas; after all, he would be getting food soon enough.
If he could stay awake for it.
He managed to have a coherent conversation about the Special Guards with Nikolas, anyway, once they got the Companions and headed back up the hill. It was quite enlightening; evidently there were more suspicious deaths in Haven over the course of a year than he had dreamed.