Sulun found himself on his feet. In his mind he saw the ravening creditors running through the house. "They'll strip the laboratory," was the first thing he thought of.
"Nine hells, they'll do worse than that," Zeren said, grabbing his helmet. "They'll seize all the household slaves, too—and gods help the servant who can't prove he's a freeman. I've seen it happen!"
"Oh, gods!" Omis howled, diving for the door. "Vari! The children!"
"And his forge," Yanados exclaimed, scrambling after him. "He can't carry that away and hide it! All his tools—"
"Save what we can," Doshi gasped, hiking up the long skirts of his tunic and following. But Sulun was out the door in front of him.
CHAPTER THREE
Only Arizun remembered to latch the door behind them. Their little party went skittering up the street, right turn at the main avenue, up the hill toward Shibari's house at the best speed they could make. Zeren led the pack for the first few streets, but by the time they reached Shibari's walls, Sulun passed him.
They scrambled to a halt as they sighted the front doors and saw the small but noisy mob gathered there—assorted moneylenders, peddlers' agents, even a cloth merchant or two, all waving pieces of parchment and yelling angrily at the closed wooden doors, while a pair of city guardsmen were glumly hammering on the panels with the butts of their swords.
"Gods," Zeren muttered. "Let me get to the guards, and I can hold off the looting for a while." He turned to face the rest of the interrupted party. "There must be a back door. Take it. Get in, grab everything you can, get out again, and hide until the vultures are gone. And hurry." He turned back toward the crowd at the gate, spread out his cloak so that it flapped behind him like vast red wings, and marched off at his best parade ground strut toward the guardsmen at the gate.
Sulun and Omis traded glances, then turned back and slipped around the corner of the wall. The three apprentices tiptoed after them.
Beyond the corner lay a narrower street, fronted with small shops that backed against Shibari's wall. A dozen shops down, a narrow alley zigzagged between the outer buildings and appeared to end at the wall. Little light reached here, even by day, and in the deepening dusk the whole alley was clotted with shadows, but Sulun's pack knew the way. Down to the wall they ran, quietly as they could, and ducked under the side eaves of the offside shop. A blank wooden door stood there, almost invisible in the dark, featureless save for a knothole close to the top. Sulun reached up, poked two fingers through the hole, and scrabbled for the latchstring beyond it, choking off a curse as he missed. Arizun glanced about to see if any of the neighbors had noticed, but the surrounding buildings were silent. In the desperate quiet they could hear the yattering noise from the front gate, topped off by Zeren's voice bellowing about "—must prevent unlawful disposal of property and any possible bloodshed." The crowd howled furiously in return.
"Hurry!" Omis whispered, dancing from foot to foot.
Sulun's fingers found the latchstring, and pulled. The unseen latch released and the door creaked open. Sulun almost fell through, onto the rising stairs. He felt for the uneven plank steps in the dark and scrambled up them, the others crowding close behind.
The stairs opened out onto the shop's flat roof, beside the peeling wall. A few steps further on, a line of hand- and footholds climbed to the wall's top, some ten cubits higher.
Someone was already up there. A small, curly-headed child in a smudged tunic straddled the top of the wall, feeling for a toehold on the near side.
"Tamiri!" Omis shoved Sulun aside and reached up for the little girl. "Come to Papa, darling."
Tamiri squeaked with joy, dug her toes into the footholds, and scrambled down the wall as nimbly as a monkey. "Daddeee!" she squealed, throwing herself into Omis's burly arms. "Mommy's down there trying to get Mido to climb up, but he won't 'cause he's too scared, and Mommy's got her hands all full of the baby, and there's all the bundles of our clothes and things—"
Sulun was already clambering up the wall, Arizun and Yanados right behind him.
"Vari!" Omis wailed below them. "Help her! Get the -children!"
Doshi plucked Tamiri out of the blacksmith's arms. "I'll watch her," he promised. "Go on over. Bring back a rope, and we'll pull up the bundles from here."
"Good thought!" Omis levered himself up the wall after Sulun's party.
At the top of the wide wall, each of them paused in turn to look down into the grounds below. Directly ahead lay the tall hedge that cut off all sight and reach of the kitchen garden from the main formal gardens; under its shelter scurried house slaves and free servants, running for boltholes, trampling the planted onions in their haste. The formal gardens on the other side of the hedge stretched empty and silent save for the drifting noise from the front gate. Further ahead loomed the whitewashed bulk of the house, equally silent and empty, like a fresh corpse awaiting the descent of the blowflies. Brief flickers of firelight from the front windows gave the only hint of life remaining inside.
"But where's Shibari?" Sulun wondered. "Where's his family?"
"Who knows?" Yanados grunted, swinging off the top of the wall onto the hand- and footholds below. "Let's get down and grab what we can."
"Sulun!" wailed a familiar voice directly below, over the sound of a baby squalling. "Come help! And where's Omis?"
They looked down, and saw Vari standing at the foot of the wall, buxom and pretty as ever, but more flustered and disheveled than they'd ever seen her. She was surrounded by lumpy bundles tied up in hastily knotted sheets, clutching the baby, with two-year-old Mido clinging to her skirts like grim death and whining to be picked up. Sulun wondered how on earth she'd managed to get this far with all that, and how she'd expected to get everything over the wall once she reached it.
"Vari!" Omis shouted. "Wait right there, love! I'm coming."
He started climbing down the wall after Yanados. Sulun and Arizun scrambled after him.
At the wall's foot, Omis managed to clutch and kiss Vari for only a moment before she shoved the baby into his arms and ordered him back up. Yanados and Sulun grabbed up bundles. Arizun ran to the gardeners' shed and came back with a small coil of thin rope. Omis carried the baby and the rope's end up the wall, handed them over to Doshi, and scrambled back down while Yanados tied on the first bundle. Vari took up the howling two-year-old and climbed the wall with him. Omis would have followed, but Sulun grabbed his sleeve.
"The equipment!" he panted. "Your tools, mine, everything we don't want the creditors to get—"
"Gods, gods!" Omis groaned, "How do I carry off a forge and an anvil?"
"Take what you can. I have to get—"
"Sulun!" Doshi yelled down from the top of the wall. "Look at the house! The front windows—look!"
They all turned, looked, and froze.
The second-story windows toward the front of the house flickered with far too much firelight for lamps, torches, or braziers. Thickening smoke rolled out of them, followed by a cloud of sparks. The first tips of flames peeped above the window ledges, too widespread, far too many.
"Oh gods, my books!" Sulun ran for the house. "My patron!"
The others pounded after him, dodging fleeing servants, trampling more rows of onions.
At the kitchen door they had to fight their way through a mob of escaping cooks and scullions to get in. Once past the kitchen they split up, Omis running for his forge, Sulun and his apprentices heading for their workshop. The fire hadn't reached this part of the house yet, but the smell of smoke grew heavier in the air. Arizun and Yanados yanked the curtains off the wall brackets and spread them on the floor. Sulun grabbed armloads of books and threw them onto the curtains.