Ah, there, a shadow moved of itself, and Lalo knew that his enemy was here.
So soon! Shock tingled through his veins and set every hair on end. I must run ... the man moves too subtly-before those who would attack him for the silk he wears can note him, he is away. I am a dead man if I cannot trap him somehow. The glory he had tasted seemed now as inconstant as the moon. In a moment Zanderei would reach his hiding place.
And yet it was almost as if he had done all this before-he remembered a time in his boyhood, when he had come with his mates into the Maze in search of excitement and been set upon there. He had escaped by-he looked up and saw that this house too had an external stair. Without allowing himself time to think of failure, Lalo launched himself upward.
The wooden structure swayed alarmingly. Lalo clutched at a railing and nearly fell when it gave way beneath his hand. He could hear loud voices inside-a window opened and then slammed shut as he was seen, and for a moment the quarreling was stilled. Then he was on the roof, leaping over trays of drying fruit and ducking under clotheslines. He saw the dark shape behind him and jerked one end of the line free so that the hanging clothes clung damply to the man who was following him.
Something flashed by his cheek in the moonlight like a line of white fire. Lalo threw himself across the gap between two buildings, clutched at the ledge of a parapet and lay across it, gasping, staring at the quivering blade that matched the one he had seen in the throat of the slain guard. He hauled himself the rest of the way into the dubious protection of the gable end.
Two Hell-Hounds trotted down the street below, paused momentarily at the corner and gave a whistle which was answered from two streets away. Lalo wondered what had happened to the mercenaries. Then a shadow rose from the opposite rooftop, glimmering like silver as it came into the full light of the moon.
"Limner!" Zanderei called, "The soldiers will kill you if they catch you before I do-give yourself up to me now!"
Lalo thought of the blade which he had wedged uncomfortably into his sash and gritted his teeth. They call us Wrigglies, he remembered, Well, I had better do some quick wriggling now? Cautiously he squirmed across the tiles. A quiver beneath him told him that Zanderei had also crossed the gap, and he scrambled for the opposite stair.
But there was none. Unable to stop, Lalo leaped to the balcony in a crash of
breaking crockery, and swung himself from the railing to the street below. The upper way would not save him, but as he had lain gasping he had remembered an alternative, darker and more dangerous both to the pursuer and the pursued.
Shards of terra cotta smashed and rattled in the street behind him as the owner of the balcony glimpsed Zanderei and pelted him with his broken wares. Lalo sped down the street and past a group wavering along from the direction of the Vulgar Unicorn.
I wanted to be a hero-he thought, forcing his legs to more speed, but how do you tell the difference between a dead hero and a dead fool? The singing behind him faltered and someone screamed. Zanderei-for a moment Lalo saw the assassin clearly in the moonlight-he had shed his grey silk and his shirt was torn-he looked as if he had been bred to the streets of Sanctuary. And as if he had felt Lalo's gaze, he turned, and his teeth flashed in a brief smile.
Lalo took a deep breath and stared around him-he dared not move too quickly now lest he miss the spot, though every sense was clamoring to him to flee. There, at the end of the alley-a wooden cover that capped a circle of crumbling stones. Lalo pulled it free-the covers were usually left unbolted in hopes that people would throw refuse directly in-then, gritting his teeth, he lowered himself down the shaft.
It was not so deep as a well. Lalo landed with a splash in a sluggish stream slippery with things he would rather not try to name. Fighting his stomach, he realized that the Prince's garbage had been fragrant compared to the sewers which were his last hope against his enemy.
He slogged grimly forward, counting his steps and putting out a reluctant hand to the slimy walls to guide his passage, listening behind him for the small sounds that would tell him that Zanderei had followed him even here. Catching his breath, he felt for the knife, but in all his scrambling it had been lost.
Just as well-he told himself, I would not have known how to use it anyway/
"You-Limner, you've done well, but what made you think you could win this game against me?" The voice echoed dankly from water-scoured stone walls. "I'll catch up with you soon-wouldn't you have preferred to have died cleanly?"
Lalo shook his head, though the other man could not see. He had reckoned his achievements and found them wanting, but if he died now at least he had tried to act like a man. He forced his way onward, fingers questing for the next break in the stone. What if he was wrong? Had he misremembered, or had the tunnels changed in thirty years?
"You will die, you know. This is the last bolthole. Your end is here."
An end for both of us then, Lalo thought numbly. I will not mind-Then his trembling fingers found the crack. He moved his hand along the wall, lips whispering the numbers that had become a litany-sixty-six, sixty-seven steps... Please, Lord Ils, Jet it be here... sixty-eight... Shalpa help me, sixty nine, seventy?
His fingers closed on a rusting semicircle of iron, and stifling a gasp of relief he hauled himself upward, though his fingers slipped on the rungs. The splashing behind him slowed as if his enemy had paused to listen, then became a tumult as Zanderei began to run.
Lalo gained the top, shoved the wooden cover aside, and heart bursting, rolled over the edge into the clean air. But he could not rest now, not yet, not until the trap was sprung. Summoning strength where he had thought there could be no more, he hauled the cover over the shaft and drove home the wooden bar. And without waiting to see if it would hold, he staggered back to the first shaft and did the same thing there.
Then he sank to the cobbles beside it, pulse hammering, knowing that this last, god-given strength was gone and he could do not more. This was the only place in the network of sewers where two shafts entered the conduits so close together. Zanderei was trapped there now.
How sweet the air was to his lungs. From some upper room Lalo heard the tinkle of a gittem and a woman's low laughter. A soft wind comforted his burning cheeks-a sea wind. And then Lalo remembered with mingled satisfaction and horror that Zanderei was doubly doomed. With the sea wind would come a rush of dark water from the Swamp of Night Secrets, propelled by the tidal bore.
"You-Assassin-you've done well-but what made you think you could win this game with me?" Lalo whispered through cracked lips. Laughter rasped his throat, and he sat shaking by the locked well-mouth while the slime of the tunnel dried on his skin. A stray pickpocket, passing by, made the sign against madness and scuttled away. He heard a whistle and then the clink of a sword as a Hell-Hound passed the mouth of the alley, but he supposed he looked like nothing human, crouching there.
"Limner, are you there?"
Lalo jumped, hearing the voice so close to him. The wood of the shaft-top shuddered as it was struck from below, and Lalo leaned on the bar. Hanging from the rungs by one hand, there was no way Zanderei could gain enough leverage to break free. That was what Lalo had heard in dark tales whispered by childhood friends, and later, overwinecups in the Vulgar Unicorn. If he lived, he too would have a tale to tell. ...