Scuffle…scurry.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, Leif thought. Nineteen, twenty…
Out in the open country, there was a brief, distant, astonishing burst of sweet-voiced song. A nightingale. It ran its descant through to its end, almost making Leif forget where he was in his counting. For a moment, the scurrying stopped. Then it started again.
— twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty—
Leif stepped out into the street and began walking calmly down toward the gate. He was not particularly calm. Errint was a city where it was permissible to carry weapons within the walls, so he had a knife. He was good enough with it to make serious trouble for anyone who tried anything, and he had enough general self-defense training to make him feel comfortable in any large real-world city. But this was not any large real-world city. This was Sarxos, and you never knew when someone was going to jump at you out of a dark alley carrying a loaded cockatrice…against which front snap-kicks would do you no good at all.
Leif walked on, resisting the temptation to whistle. It might make you feel better in the dark, but it also pinpointed your location for someone whose night vision might be no better than yours. He strolled, as calmly as he could, and passed the square of moonlight on the left-hand wall, just a thin ray of it passing between two taller buildings on the east side. The gate Megan had mentioned was maybe another twenty yards on. Very, very quietly, Leif reached down and started loosening his knife in its sheath.
Behind him, very softly, something went scuffle.
He didn’t stop to look behind, though he was sorely tempted. Leif kept walking. His mother’s voice said in his head, No common thug ever sneaks up right behind you. They always break into a run, those last few steps. If it’s a professional stalking you, you don’t have a hope. You’re probably dead already. But if it’s just a thug, so long as you can’t hear those last few steps, you’ve still got at least a few feet between you and him or her. When you hear those steps, though, they’re in reaching range. Do something quick—
Leif just went strolling on.
Scurry. Scuffle—pause—scurry, pause—
He kept walking.
There was the gate, a faint, wide, arched dimness in the darkness of the left-hand wall. Leif walked innocently past it, not turning his head to look through it, just taking his time: though he could see by peripheral vision that no one was there.
Scuffle.
Footsteps. Soft shoes on the stones. Much closer now.
Leif swallowed.
Scurry, scuffle—
— and someone breaking into a run—
Leif whirled, whipping the knife out, going forward just enough on the balls of his feet to jump or run.
He never had a chance to do either. A dark shape shot out of the gateway and got jumbled up with the very small dark blot that had been running at him. Leif was uncertain what happened next, except that the two dark forms seemed to consolidate…and then one of them flew away from the other, and into the wall opposite the gate, with stunning force. There was a shriek, cut off suddenly as the smaller form slid down the wall and hit the cobblestones.
Leif hurried over. Megan was standing there, not even looking particularly winded. She was standing over that smaller shape now, her hands on her hips, looking down with an expression that was hard to make out in the darkness, but it looked thoughtful.
“He weighs nearly as much as my number-three brother,” she said mildly. “Interesting. All right, Gobbo, get up off your butt, it wasn’t that bad.”
The dwarf lay moaning and sniveling on the ground. “Don’t hurt me, don’t do that again!”
Megan reached down and hoisted Gobbo up by the front of his motley, and briefly held him straight-armed against the wall at nearly eye level. She and Leif studied his face. It was that of a middle-aged man, much collapsed together because of his dwarfism: a nasty face, eloquent of much troublemaking.
“I’m a very important person, I can get you in a lot of trouble!” the dwarf squealed. “Let me go!”
“Oh, yeah,” Leif said, “we’re shaking, the two of us. Was that dwarf-chucking?” he said to Megan.
“Very incorrect,” she said, in an abstracted tone of voice. “But you could get used to it.”
The dwarf’s face spasmed with fear. “Don’t!”
“Why were you following us?” Leif said.
“And why have you been following us since Minsar?” said Megan. “Answers, quick — or I’ll chuck you right over this wall, honest, and we’ll see how important gravity thinks you are when you come down.”
“What makes you think—”
Megan lifted him a little higher.
“Your arm getting tired?” Leif said. “I could take him. I can press almost one-fifty these days.”
“No,” Megan said, “no need. I won’t wait much longer. Gobbo, this is your last chance. I saw a lady get hurt today, and it’s put me in a real bad mood, and made me short-tempered with people who don’t answer reasonable questions.” She started to lift him higher.
The dwarf looked at her, a strange expression. “Put me down,” he said, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Megan looked at him for a moment, then put him down.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”
The dwarf began feeling around in his pockets. Megan was watching him like a hawk. Leif was wondering what those pockets might conceal—
“Here,” the dwarf said, and reached up, holding out something for Megan to take.
She reached down her hand and took it, curious. She lifted it close to her eyes, turning it over and over in the dimness. It looked like a coin, except that its edges were smooth, not milled. It was not made of metal either. It was a circle of some dark mineral, with a design engraved on it. Megan held it up toward another of the squares of moonlight high up on a nearby wall, and looked at it, through it. So did Leif. He caught a wink of the darkest red, even in this silver light. The thing was made of pigeon’s blood ruby, and deeply engraved in it, in an old uncial font, was the letter S.
Megan looked at Leif with an odd expression on her face. “Game intervention,” she said.
“Listening.”
“Identify this object.”
“Object is identified as the Creator’s Token,” said the computer voice. “The Sigil of Sarxos — positive in-game identification of the game designer and copyright holder.”
Both of them looked down at the dwarf in complete astonishment.
“Yes,” Gobbo said, in an entirely different voice. “I’m Chris Rodrigues.”
4
They finally wound up in the Scrag End again. It was closed when they got there, empty except for a young man who took care of the door.
A slit in the door came open. “Show him what I gave you,” said the dwarf.
Megan held up the ruby token for the doorman to see. His eyes, seen through the slit, widened. The slit closed, and the door opened for them.
Inside, as they went in, the young man was looking with utter astonishment at Megan. “You?”
“No, no, him,” she said, indicating the dwarf. Except that he wasn’t a dwarf anymore.
Suddenly a tallish guy was standing there, in jeans and a T-shirt and somewhat beat-up-looking sneakers: a big-boned man, somewhere in his early middle years, with curly unruly hair and a curly beard and brown eyes, the kindliest eyes Megan thought she had ever seen. “Listen,” said Rodrigues to the young man, “I know you’d love to talk to me, but I need to talk to these people just now, and it’s urgent. Can I come back and see you next week — would that be okay?”