The Harper saw its deadly flicker out of the corner of his eye and flung up his arm to ward it away from his face. It bit deep into his shoulder and banged harmlessly away off his scalp rather than laying open his face or cleaving his skull in twain.
Rhauligan roared out his pain, not daring to slow, and the vomit-covered cook sagging on the counter took one look at his furious face and the streaming blood and fled, sobbing a frantic way aside.
Bleeding-again. Oh, this little hunt just gets better and better.
The Harper burst out of the cookshop door into the wet mists in time to see Narnra halfway up the wall of the building, clinging to a drainpipe. She was slipping often in the wet and going slowly as she tried to work her way past a balcony jutting out from the floor above the cookshop-but she was already well out of his reach, and he couldn't climb any faster than she could. To say nothing of whether or not any drainpipe would prove sturdy enough for the weight of two, all the way to the roof. . . .
Just inside the cookshop door, in the open space in front of the serving-counter, was a side door. It would be the way up some cramped, dark stairs to the loftier levels of this building.
Rhauligan turned and raced back inside, frightening a fresh howl of alarm from the kitchen. The side door proved to be locked, but Rhauligan carried a prybar-good as a cudgel, stouter than a sword and boasting some saw-teeth besides-sheathed to one leg, and he took out the frustrations Narnra was building in him on that door.
The defenseless wood offered little resistance, and the Harper boiled up the stairs like a storm wind and put his shoulder to the door on the first landing.
It cracked like a thunderstroke, broke in half, and gave way inward, spilling him onto a half-asleep man and his only-slightly-more-awake wife who lay on a straw mattress on the floor. Their sons were already awake and peering out the lone, filthy window at the gloomy mists of slowly brightening dawn. They whirled, wide-eyed, as Rhauligan's stumbling boot came down on their father's stomach. The winded man sobbed for breath, flinging out his arms convulsively-one of them across his wife's throat, silencing her in the first meeping moment of an emerging scream.
"Morning!" the Harper rapped grimly, never slowing in his charge across the room. "Balcony door! 'Way in the name of the King!"
One boy gawked mutely, and the other, eyes shining, shot a bolt and flung wide the balcony door. Rhauligan thanked him with a fierce grin and plunged out into the mists, whirling to face the drainpipe in time to see Narnra's boot lifting just out of reach.
He grabbed for it anyway, knowing as he did that he was going to be about a fingerlength short. He was.
Well, he'd almost laid a hand on her. He slapped it onto the pipe instead and swarmed up it after her, grunting at the pain each pull stabbed into his cloven shoulder. He had to get close enough that she wouldn't have the time to turn on the rooftop and dagger his face or hands-aye, he had to be that close to her, or …
Narnra glanced down, hissed out a curse-he was close enough to almost feel her breath, as he clawed his way hastily upward-and wasted no time on trying to kick at him or deal him any wounds. Instead, she fled up the pipe like a little girl running from all the nightmares life could muster, panting and clawing with almost frenzied speed, and raced across a roof of loose and shifting tiles to spring out and down onto the roof of the next building.
She landed hard, knocking her breath from herself, and spun around on one knee to keep an eye on her pursuer as she panted to get her wind back.
Rhauligan was hauling himself up onto the roof she'd just left. Narnra snarled 'wordlessly, fought her way to her feet as he straightened-then thought of something and bent to her other boot to snatch another knife to hurl at him. Its sheath was empty.
Either she'd lost it during this chase, or he'd taken it while healing her. Hissing a curse at him instead, she spun around, ran, and leaped onto the next roof through the thickly rising, scented steam of someone's laundry, coming up from a skylight.
Beyond, the roof was flat, all of metal sheets sealed and patched with thick pitch, ankle-deep in slippery, bird-dung-dotted water- and . . . and Narnra found herself with nowhere she could safely leap to, on a building with wide streets on two sides, Rhauligan grimly approaching on the third, and a barge heaped high with spear-like, jagged salvage-wood on the last side that it would be sheer suicide to jump onto. She glared around at treacherous Marsember for a moment in the lightening dawn, then spun around and raced back to the open skylight.
Rhauligan was just launching himself at her over its billowing murk. Narnra sat down in her run and skidded over the edge moments before his boots crashed down through where she'd just been.
Her fall was a short one, onto stout metal poles draped with someone's damp tapestries. They gave way like a sling, dropping her down through a roaring stream of air. Chains were clanking all around her as racks of clothes hanging from them were rocked forward and back, forward and back, by levers that vanished down through the floor. By the loud, rhythmic hissing, the Silken Shadow guessed that there was a gigantic bellows in the room below, presumably being worked by the same grunting, sweating coin-slaves who were tugging on the levers and feeding the fire that was warming all this rushing air. My, but the world of laundry was an exciting place. . . .
Or certainly would be, if she didn't get out from under where Rhauligan was sure to land in the next few moments. She debated drawing her belt-dagger and plunging it through the tapestry when he landed in it … but no, she wasn't here to slay Harpers, just to get away from them. Yonder was a row of trap-doors that must offer access to the levels below-probably through shafts nearly dry clothes would be pushed down.
Someone shouted at her as she raced between the swinging racks of garments, and she had a glimpse of a startled old man whose bare arms were a riot of varicolored tattoos waving angrily at her. She gave him a nod and a smile and kept right on running to the trap-door at the . . . right end.
Flinging it back, she smelled hot fabric and saw light far below-and in it, neat stacks of what looked like folded cloaks or blankets. It was the work of but a moment to launch herself feetfirst down to join them.
Behind her, she heard another shout followed by a grunt and a thud. That would be Rhauligan paying his respects to old Many-brands. It seemed she'd been right: the world of laundry was an exciting place.
Narnra plunged past a room full of all the noisy, sweating activity she'd envisaged and landed gently in a large, brightly lit room below that, toppling and scattering hot, fluffy cloaks in all directions. No one was near, and Narnra rolled enthusiastically, trying to get herself mostly dry ere she waded out to find footing and run on.
Along the way, she snatched up a cloak, shook it open in her hands-and when Rhauligan crashed down into view, she flung it over his head, managed to tug him over into a cascading fall of piled laundry to where she could get a hard knee into his blinded and muffled head, then sprang away, not daring to stay and try to smother him because enraged launderers were approaching at a run from various directions now, all shouting furious curses she couldn't tarry to hear properly. She left them closing in on the thoroughly entangled Rhauligan, sprang over some sort of sorting table where women cowered away from her behind wicker baskets . . . and found another handy, waiting door. This one was even open.
Still, she was losing count of doors she was having to blindly rush through and had long since lost her patience with being hunted all over this strange city. It was waking up now, and soon she'd be dodging frequent Watch patrols and carters in the streets and watching eyes, watching eyes everywhere. She doubted there even was such a thing as a dry rooftop to try to sleep on in Marsember, even if she knew this grim, tireless Harper was safely taken away from his hunt. Narnra was beginning to think the only way to do that was to make sure he was dead.