"It's no trouble. You're welcome. I'll come, uh, soon. As often as you wish."
Something sparkled in her eyes. Amusement? Mirth? Was she laughing at him? He couldn't tell. He finished his tarts, wishing there were more so he might linger, but finally excused himself.
The page girl had to take his hand to lead the way back. Candlemas couldn't understand why he was befuddled. Had she potioned his tea? Cast a spell on him? Clouded his mind with some illusion?
"What a remarkable woman!" he told the page girl as they walked, really speaking more to himself than to the servant. "Keenly intelligent, conscientious, noble, sacrificing, handsome in an unadorned way, with not a speck of decadence! It's like finding a flower growing in a rubbish heap! Imagine…"
The page girl was only ten, and said nothing, but she hid a woman's smile as they passed up the gravel path.
Grunting, shifting his groaning burden while his shoulders were rubbed raw, Sunbright followed the ragtag thieves deeper and deeper. To where, he had no idea.
Trotting down an alley, they'd taken an abrupt right through a broken wall into blackness, dropped into a cellar beneath what smelled like a disused tannery, scurried behind a mound of dirt and dropped to their knees-the blind giant barely fit, and Sunbright had to push the injured man before him-to clamber through another broken wall, then turn tightly and drop beneath even the cellar. Stooping, Sunbright tripped down a sloping tunnel until they reached a natural cavern.
A blue-white light came from their leader, the woman with the eye patch, who'd set aglow her leather vest with strokes of her hands. A thief's cantra, Sunbright assumed, in a city where even dung shovelers used spells.
As the cavern narrowed, they passed through a cleft, then walked a rounded pipe that would accommodate a coach-and-four inside. And so on, twisting and turning until the barbarian was thoroughly lost. There were pipes, drains, tubes, caves, cracks, shelves, platforms, iron staircases, troughs, tunnels, pits, stone steps, and more.
Eventually they passed from a tunnel onto a sheer drop-off like a square cliff. Fifty feet down winked oily wetness reeking of sewage. All of the party panted except Sunbright, so the leader called a halt, silenced them while she listened (cupping her ears in a queer way that suggested another cantra) then demanded to see Lothar, the yellow-haired man with the broken leg. He had gone limp from pain and Sunbright laid him down, straightened his limbs, and untangled the weighted chain wrapped around his arm. The blind giant, the tiny girl, an old crone, the twin girls, and a boy all ate, digging out stolen corn cakes, breaking, and sharing them.
The one-eyed woman striped her hands around, causing leather and stone and even flesh to glow eerily, then ordered the giant to hold Lothar down while she worked on his leg. Even unconscious, the man groaned in pain. As she sweated over the leg, probing the break and hissing under her breath, Sunbright studied her.
She wore only leather: a tightly laced calfskin vest and breeches, and she went barefoot. Her only jewelry was the knucklebone cradled between her small breasts. The jewel-like glitter of metal came from the solid brass knuckles with cruel serrated edges that she wore on her right hand. Scars told the story of her life. Dozens of them crisscrossed her arms, striping her dusty feet, and spotting her face like chalk marks. One deep scar split her right temple, no doubt the slice that had ruined her eye and necessitated the leather eye patch. Her chin and nose were small, her dark hair unkempt and cut short, and when she tilted her head, Sunbright noted the slight points at the top of her ears. That, and a hint of slant to her eyebrows, told of elven blood. In only the short time he'd been in this city, he knew how people of mixed blood were treated. Short and slim, she barely came to his breastbone, not that he could stand upright in these tunnels.
Her examination of her comrade's leg complete, the leader instructed Sunbright to pull Lothar's leg while the giant held on. Tugging the leg muscles straight, then the bone ends into line, they got the limb splinted with rags and fragments of wood they'd picked up along the way. Only then did the leader sit back and accept some stolen food.
Sunbright could contain himself no longer. "Who are you people? Did you lead that raid on the marketplace, or was it just an unplanned uprising? Where are we? Where are we going? What are all these passages down here?"
The leader sat back on her heels and glared with her one good eye. It was green, Sunbright thought, though the confusing glowing light made it hard to say for sure. Blank faced, she studied him. Sunbright doubted she'd ever seen anyone like him before: tall and tanned and topknotted, dressed in far northern clothes, laden with a sword almost as big as she was. But he could read nothing in her face; it had been schooled to reveal naught. Instead she shot back, "Why did you help us?"
Her voice was surprisingly low for so small a thing. The others munched.
Sunbright waved a hand and said, "You needed help. I haven't been here long, but I don't like the city guards."
"Where are you from?" She shot the questions like darts, her good eye boring into his face.
"The tundra, though lately the high sierra."
"What are those?"
"Eh?"
"What are those places?"
"Oh, uh…" He'd been asked about his distant homeland before. "The tundra lies in the far north, where the land is flat to the horizon, with no trees, and cold most of the year. The high sierra is the slopes of the Barren Mountains. Pine forest, red pines, and chert."
The woman glanced at her comrades. Reaching in the crone's pouch, she withdrew a thawing fish and skinned it with a long knife plucked from a back sheath. The crone croaked, "Down on the ground."
"Yes," he said, then suddenly it struck Sunbright. "Haven't any of you ever been on the ground?"
The leader asked, "So you only followed us to escape the guards?"
"Wait a moment!" Sunbright growled, spreading a broad hand, outlined darkly against the blue-white eldritch light. "Why do my questions go unanswered? Who are you people? What're your names? And where do they get frozen fish in the height of summer?"
The leader sliced fish into raw strips, handed them around. Sunbright took one absently, munched the cold, rubbery flesh. It sang of sea salt, another mystery, for they were easily a hundred leagues from the ocean.
The woman said, "We'll lead you to a pipe that leads outside. You can return to your friends above."
"I don't have any friends in this city!" he snapped. "Well, one, perhaps, but he's caught up with Karsus."
Silence crashed down. They even stopped chewing.
"You're a friend to Karsus?" asked the leader, her voice low.
Sunbright swore under his breath, then said, "Would someone answer my questions? Who are you? Why do you wear these knucklebones around your necks? I see you all bear them. I've got one too!"
Digging in a belt pouch, he produced the polished knucklebone drilled as a pendant. "I found it on the body of a fellow who swung a weighted chain like this man's. I wondered…"
Sunbright let his words trail off. The silence that had fallen over the strange band seemed to thicken, though the barbarian never would have thought that possible. One of the children-the little girl-took a step back, glancing meaningfully at the leader. The little girl was afraid. A cold chill went down Sunbright's back. Now what had he done?
'You're the one!" shrilled the leader. She exploded to her feet like a startled cat, blade outthrust. "Rise and draw, you bastard! Defend yourself!"
Chapter 8
Hunkered on his heels, Sunbright snapped up nearly as quickly as this hellcat. He held out both hands, fingers spread, saying, "I don't have a knife. And I'm the one who did what?"
The one-eyed woman lunged. Her knife-the black blade was a foot long and tapered to nothing-stabbed for Sunbright's middle. Instinctively he slapped to knock her arm wide. But she'd anticipated that and, dipping her hand under his, whipped in close. Surprised by the catlike riposte, Sunbright jumped back, but his back rapped a projection of the tunnel corner and his head banged a pipe in the ceiling. He felt a bee sting. Her blade had pinked his red shirt and belly.