“Blood for rain!” boomed a deep voice as Locke reentered the crowd. Bearing down on him came a procession of men in black-and-gray robes. Their mantles bore emblems of crossed hammers and trowels, marking them as divines of Morgante, the City Father, the god of order, hierarchies, and harsh consequences. While none of the Therin gods were ever called enemies, Morgante and his followers were undeniably the least hospitable to the semi-heresy of the Nameless Thirteenth. Morgante ruled executioners, constables, and judges, and no thief would willingly set foot in one of his temples.
The black-robed procession, a dozen strong, was pushing along an open-topped wagon holding an iron cage. A slender man was chained upright inside it, his body covered with wet red gouges. Behind the cage stood a priest holding a wooden switch topped with a claw-like blade about the size of a finger.
“Blood for rain!” hollered the leader of the priests once again, and initiates behind him held baskets out to the passing crowd. It was a mobile sacrifice, then. For every coin tossed into a basket, the caged prisoner would receive another painful but carefully measured slash. That man would be a resident of the Palace of Patience, worming his way out of something harsh (judicial amputation, most likely) by offering his body up for a few weeks of cruel use. Locke had no further thoughts to spare the poor fellow, for the two girls in dark red dresses were vanishing around the far left side of the procession. He ducked wide around the opposite side, just in case another ambush was in the offing.
The girls weren’t troubling themselves; they were headed straight for the Bridge of Seven Lanterns, and were close enough that Locke dared not close the gap. While the bridge was wide enough for two wagons to pass without grinding wheel-rims, it was narrow indeed compared to the plaza, with nowhere to duck and dodge if the girls tried anything clever. Locke matched their pace and trailed them like a kite, fading back to a distance of about thirty yards. Halfway to the end of the contest, and he hadn’t actually gained a foot!
The Bridge of Seven Lanterns was plain solid stone, no unnerving toy left over from the long-vanished Eldren. Its parapets were low, and as Locke moved step by step up the gentle arch he was offered a fine view of dozens of boats moving sluggishly on the canal below—a view he ignored, focused as he was on the slender red shapes of his two rivals. There was no wagon traffic at the moment, and while Locke watched, the dress-wearers separated, moving to opposite sides of the bridge. There they paused, each one turning her body as though she were gazing out over the water.
“Hell shit damn,” muttered Locke, trying for the first time in his life to emulate the lengthy chains of profanity woven by the few adult role models he’d ever had. “Pissing shit monkeys.” What was the game now? Stall him indefinitely and let the sun cook them all? Looking for inspiration, he glanced around, and then back the way he’d come.
A thirdgirl in a cinnamon-red dress and gray veil was walking straight toward him, not twenty yards behind, just at the point where the cobbles of the plaza met the bridge embankment. Locke’s stomach performed a flip that would have been the highlight of any court acrobat’s career.
He turned away from the newcomer, trying not to look too startled. Crooked Warden, he’d been stupid not to check the whole area where Sabetha had picked up her first decoy. And now, yes, his eyes weren’t merely playing tricks—the two girls in front of him were slowly, calmly, demurely edging in his direction. He was trapped on a bridge at the center of a collapsing triangle of red dresses. Unless he ran like mad, which would signal to Chains and Sabetha alike that he’d broken character and given up, one of the girls would surely manage to count his buttons.
Sweet gods, Sabetha had outwitted him before he’d even woken up that morning.
“Not done yet,” he muttered, desperately scanning the area for any distraction he could seize. “Not yet, not yet.” His vague frustration had flared up into a sweat-soaked terror of losing—no, not merely losing, but failing by such an astounding degree in his first contest against a girl he would have swallowed hot iron nails to impress. This wouldn’t just embarrass him, it would convince Sabetha that he was a little boy of no account. Forever.
As it happened, it wasn’t fresh and subtle inspiration that saved him—it was his old teaser’s reflexes, the unsociably crude methods he’d used to create street incidents back in his Shades’ Hill days. Barely realizing what he was doing, he flung himself down on his knees against the nearest parapet, with his brass buttons scant inches from the stone. With every ounce of energy he possessed, he pretended to throw up.
“Hooouk,” he coughed, a minor prelude to a disgusting symphony, “hggggk … hoooo-gggghhhhkkk … HNNNNNN-BLAAAAAARGH!” The noises were fine, as convincing as he’d ever conjured, and he pushed hard against the parapet with one shaking arm. That was always a great touch; adults fell hard for it. Those that were repulsed would back off an extra three feet, and those that were sympathetic would all but tremble.
He stole quick glances around while he moaned, shuddered, and retched. Adult passersby were swinging wide around him, in the typical fashion of the rich and busy; there was no profit in attending to someone else’s sick servant or messenger boy. As for his red-dressed nemeses, they had all halted, wavering like veiled apparitions. Approaching him now would be suspicious and dangerous, while standing there like statues would rapidly invite needless attention. Locke wondered what they would do, knowing he had merely succeeded in restoring a stalemate, but that was certainly better than letting their trap snap him up.
“Just keep retching,” he whispered, and did so. As far as plans went, it was perhaps the worst he’d ever conceived, but it now it was up to someone else to make the next move.
“What goes?” A woman’s voice, brimming with authority. “Explain yourself, boy.”
That someone else was, as it turned out, wearing the mustard-colored jacket of the city watch.
“Lost your grip on breakfast, eh?” The guardswoman nudged Locke with the tip of a boot. “Look, just move along and be sick at the end of the bridge.”
“Help me,” whispered Locke.
“Can’t stand on your own?” The woman’s leather fighting harness creaked as she crouched beside him, and her belt-slung baton tapped the ground. “Give it a minute—”
“I’m not really sick!” Locke beckoned to her with one hand, concealing the gesture from everyone else with his body. “Bend down, please. I’m in danger.”
“What the hell are you on about?” She looked wary, but did come closer.
“Don’t react. Don’t hold this up.” In an instant, Locke had his little purse of silver coins, thus far unspent, transferred from his right hand to her left. He pushed the woman’s fingers gently closed over the bag. “That’s ten solons. My master is a rich man. Help me, and he’ll know your name.”
“Gods be gracious,” the woman whispered. Locke knew that bag of silver represented several months of her pay. Would she bend for it? “What’s going on?”
“I’m in danger,” Locke muttered. “I’m being followed. A man wants the messages I carry for my master. Back on the plaza south of here, he tried to grab me twice.”
“I’ll take you to my watch station, then.”
“No, there’s no need. Just get me to the north side of this bridge. Pick me up and carry me, like I’m being arrested. If he sees that, he won’t wait around. He’ll go tell his masters the watch has me, and once we’ve gone a little ways, you can just let me go.”
“Let you go?”
“Sure, just set me down, let me off with a warning, talk to me sternly.”
“That’d look damned irregular.”
“You’re the watch. You can do what you like and nobody’s going to say anything!”
“I still don’t know .…”
“Look, you’re not breaking any law. You’re just lending me a hand.” Locke knew he nearly had her. She had already taken his coin; now it was a matter of notching the promised reward up a bit. “Get me off this bridge and my master will double what I’ve given you. Easily.”