Where could she hide? The steep ground beside the track was bare rock save for a few miserable bushes that would not conceal her for a minute. She had no choice but to follow the track, though every breath was burning in her throat and a pain in her side was getting worse with every step. She had never run down such a steep slope before. Her knees were already wobbly.
Tali looked over her shoulder, stumbled and crashed to the rocky ground on her knees and outstretched hands. Pain pierced her right palm; she staggered to her feet and lurched on. Both palms were bleeding and so was her left knee. She could feel the blood trickling down her leg.
“She must have gone down!” a man roared. “Get horses and go after her!”
The searchers were at the top, waving lanterns. They would have to ride carefully down the steep track but they would be faster than her.
She reached the base of the cliff, caught her breath for a second, then plodded on. Houses sprouted on both sides of the track, mostly shanties and lean-tos, though in this miserable weather the doors were all closed and the streets empty. Alleys meandered between the shanties. In the distance she could see taller buildings. She headed in that direction.
The streets of Rutherin were poorly lit, only a lamp every fifty yards or so, and the alleys were dark, stinking tunnels through a maze of filth. Tali followed a random path through them, stumbling on broken cobbles, slipping on greasy clay and, more than once, on human waste dumped in the street. She moved into the middle of the alley and sank to mid-shin in a pot-hole filled with muck that oozed into her boots, squelching with every step.
She struggled out again, her heart racing; each step was like climbing a mountain now. Several streets away she heard horses galloping, men and women shouting, and someone roaring at the townsfolk.
“Light the lanterns. An escaped prisoner. A small, blonde girl. Big reward. Huge reward!”
Lights blossomed behind Tali. She headed away down another series of mean alleys, each fouler and darker than the one before. As she turned a corner, someone caught her arm and a blast of grog breath made her reel.
“Bin waitin’ all night for you, dearie. Right here’ll do.”
She reacted without thinking, using Nurse Bet’s favourite defence, and this time it worked. A knee to the groin doubled the man over onto her fist, which she drove hard into his throat. He fell backwards against a shanty wall, the impact rattling the flimsy boards, and swayed there, gasping for breath. From inside, a high voice cursed him. Tali ran.
She zigged and zagged through the alleys, following an instinct that told her to go towards the sea, but could not shake her pursuers. There must have been dozens of them, all mounted. It felt as though they were driving her into a corner, trapping her — but against what?
The old docks, where for centuries uncounted the fishing fleet and the merchant vessels had moored to unload their cargoes. The timbers loomed above her and along the old shoreline in either direction as far as she could see, but the docks were derelict now, and rotting. It took a while to remember why. As the ice had spread, the level of the sea had dropped, and now it was a mile offshore.
Tali assumed that the odd tingling in her nose, a combination of salt and rotting weed, was the smell of the sea. She could also smell the tarred wharves and decaying wood.
Not that way, not that way! It was Rannilt, screaming into Tali’s mind.
Tali stopped. “Rannilt?” she whispered. She had no idea how to speak back to her, one mind to another. She could not comprehend how the child had done it in the first place.
I’m sorry, Rannilt wept. I’m sorry, Tali. I didn’t mean it.
Tali tried to reach her but the connection was gone.
She crouched in the shadows and looked back for her pursuers. They were making no effort to conceal themselves; she could see riders to the left, riders to the right, and more ahead, coming out of the alleys with their bright lanterns held high.
They seemed to know which way she had gone and they weren’t hurrying any more. They were methodically searching every street, every alley, making sure she could not slip through their line. In five minutes, ten at the most, they would know she wasn’t in that quarter of Rutherin, and equally well that she had not escaped them. Only one place would remain to be searched.
The docks.
There was nowhere else to go. Tali clambered up onto the empty docks, praying for a miracle. The effort took the last of her strength; she had to lie on the icy boards with her pulse pounding in her ears and little bright flashes going off in her eyes for several minutes before she could raise her head.
A broad boardwalk ran off the seaward side of the docks, out across mudflats and marshland in the direction of the distant sea, but on it she would be visible for a hundred yards. She might take to the marshlands, she supposed, though they looked treacherous. No, she was bound to be trapped there.
The first of the riders were approaching. It was hopeless but she could not give in. She was never giving in. Unable to stand up, she crawled in among the myriad crumbling storerooms and little warehouses. Wherever she hid, they would find her and drag her back to the fortress and the bloodstained cell, and the cannula that would take her blood until there was nothing left of her but a dried-up husk that would blow away in the wind.
Someone was walking along the docks, a slow, careful tread. She crouched down, heart crashing and breath burning in her throat. She could not run any further; she had nothing left.
He approached, looking left then right. She tried to shrink into a tighter ball but it was no use. She could smell her sweat, her terror. He must be able to smell her too.
He turned, walked past, then back. She prepared to defend herself, though she could barely lift her arms. Past he went, came back, then lunged, caught her by the shoulder and dragged her out into the light. He looked like an old man of sixty, with that grey hair and beard, though he had such strong fingers that he might not be as old as he appeared. Fingers crisscrossed with little white scars.
“Kroni,” she whispered. “All along I knew you were a spy.”
He blinked at her for a few seconds, frowning. He had not seen her true face clearly on her way out. He knew her as the older woman the chief magian’s glamour had made her into.
“Then all along you knew wrong.”
CHAPTER 20
“What are you doing?” said Tali. “Where are you taking me?”
Kroni did not answer. She tried to dredge up her magery, anything at all, but exhaustion would not allow her to focus.
He dragged her into the shadows between two storerooms, then out onto the seaward side of the docks, down twenty steps and onto the boardwalk that led to the distant boats and the sea. Before they had gone a hundred yards the riders clattered onto the docks, shining their lanterns about and roaring at one another.
“Don’t move.” Kroni pulled her down onto the boards and cast a grey cloak over them both. “Don’t look towards the lanterns.”
From the corner of an eye she saw a tall fellow come to the top of the steps and shine his lantern along the boardwalk. It cast a bright light and she was sure it would pick them out. He waved it back and forth, evidently watching for moving shadows, then turned away.
Tali was about to stand up when Kroni crushed her shoulder. His fingers were hard as brass. “I said, don’t move!”
The tall man turned suddenly and shone his lantern down the boardwalk again. Tali’s heart slammed into her ribs. He would have seen her. He studied the boardwalk, the mudflats on the left and the marshlands to the right, then turned back to the search of the docks.
“Now,” said Kroni.
He heaved her to her feet and led her down towards the sea. She stumbled; his arm went around her shoulders and held her up.