Sir Arach continued, “Having gained entrance to the house by following your daughter through the door while the guards looked the other way, he made his way upstairs, as I have already described. Now, you didn’t mention that three weeks ago you replaced the iron bars protecting the small fourth-floor window above the front door.”
“Yes. How did you-”
“The space between those bars is greater than at any other window, wide enough in fact to admit a grown man, if he is nimble enough,” Sir Arach said.
“Yes, well, it would be impossible-”
“Wide enough also to allow a man to escape. That itself is a clue, as the thief probably had knowledge of the replacement and its wider bars. Probably, we shall find him in the employ of the blacksmith who wrought them, or else a close friend of said blacksmith-a dwarf named Kharzog Hammerfell, I believe.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Gaeord croaked.
Sir Arach continued, “The thief exited through the window, then used the ledge to make his way around the house until he could drop down onto the cage protecting the loft door.”
“But the spikes.”
“He avoided them somehow.”
“Impossible!”
“Master Gaeord, that word comes too often to your lips,” Sir Arach remonstrated. “Once all other possibilities are eliminated, what remains must be true, no matter how remarkable it seems.”
“I see,” Gaeord said, still unconvinced.
“The rest you know. He entered and found the room already held by your inside-job thief. A scuffle ensued in which the inside thief was killed and the first made off with the loot. He then dived into the pool, swam through your water gate…”
Gaeord opened his mouth to make some exclamation, then clamped his teeth shut before uttering a sound.
Sir Arach continued, smiling, “… and made his way to shore less than a bowshot beyond the north wall. I found his boot prints in the sand, again backward as though he had entered the water there. Now it is simply a matter of following these clues to our man. The name of the thief, and his imminent capture, are only a matter of time.”
Chapter Four
An elf hobbled out of the alchemist’s shop at the corner of Trade and Truth Streets, pausing to watch as the owner, a small round man with a small round face baked brown and leathery from years of bending over his cauldrons, locked the door and propped a sign in the window that read, “Closed for the Spring Dawning Festival.” The elf turned, and, smiling, he patted the coin-fat purse dangling at his belt. Long strands of fine hair the color of burnished copper framed his narrow elven face and offset by the richness of their color the brilliance of his laughing, sea-green eyes. Narrow lips smiled slightly beneath a proud nose. His cheeks showed no hint of downy hair, for no elf upon Krynn could grow a beard. He wore a white tunic, somewhat blowsy at the sleeves and breast, and a pair of loose-fitting trousers of brown homespun. A pair of hard-worn, dull black boots completed his attire. He held a gnarled staff of polished black wood gripped firmly in his left hand.
Across the street, a pair of drunken sailors stumbled from an alley and squinted in apparent surprise at the sun, already well up in the eastern sky. The elf turned right and slipped into Gravedigger Alley-a close, dusty lane lined along one side with stacks of empty caskets. Many of the city’s undertakers had their shops here. The noises of hammering and sawing resounded against the walls, drowning out all other sounds, even the click of his staff against the cobblestones. The work of this alley’s denizens never ceased, it seemed, not even on a day so full of hope and joy as the Spring Dawning Festival.
The elf limped along, leaning heavily on his staff. Behind him, the two drunken sailors staggered into the alley. One bumped into a stack of coffins and sent the gruesome boxes crashing to the cobbles. A man appeared in the door of Mauris and Sons Caskets and began to curse at them loudly enough to be heard even over the constant hammering and sawing.
While the elf watched them over his shoulder, someone bumped into him from in front. Instinctively, his hand grasped at the heavy coin "purse at his belt, while he spun, fist clenched. A young girl staggered back from him, her basket of laundry spilling onto the dusty cobbles at her feet.
A string of shocking oaths escaped her lips as she angrily brushed a hand through her mop of long, dirty blonde hair.
“Why didn’ya look where you’re going?” she swore. “Didn’t see you me stannnn…!” Her gray eyes grew wide as they met his. Her jaw dropped.
The elf smiled, his green eyes sparkling. “What’s your name?” he asked the girl.
“Claret,” she whispered, her eyes still round as saucers.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Sixteen,” she answered, then started as though stung. “Nineteen!” she corrected herself with a shout. “I am nineteen.”
“Almost nineteen,” she amended in response to the elf’s skeptical glance.
“Do you live in this place, Claret?” he asked.
“Yes. My father-” she began.
“I have lost my way. Can you tell me how to reach the Palanthas Trade Exchange?” he interrupted.
“I’ll do better than that. I will show you,” she said suddenly, grasping his hand.
“But your laundry,” the elf said.
“It’s not mine. I was only doing it as a favor.” She hurriedly collected the spilled laundry and dumped it into the basket and before shoving the whole affair into an open doorway. “Come along, I’ll take you there,” she said. Clutching him by the hand again, she pulled him along, but he stumbled, unable to keep up.
Seeing him hobbling madly to keep pace with her, a little cry escaped her lips. “I’m so sorry,” she whimpered. “Your foot.”
“It’s nothing,” the elf consoled her. “Pay it no mind. But walk a little more slowly, if you would.”
They continued on their way. She led him past more under- takers’ and cabinetmakers’ houses, a stonecutter’s shop with finished marble headstones crowding the doorway, and an inconspicuous door that proclaimed the occupant to be a dentist and surgeon. They reached the end of the alley and stepped into the sunlight, turning right onto Horizon Road just east of the gate. The elf looked back and spotted the two sailors, still staggering along behind him.
“What’s your name?” Claret asked.
“Caelthalas Elbernarian, son of Tanis Half-Elven,” he answered.
“Son of who?” the girl asked over her shoulder.
“Never mind,” he said with a smile. “You may call me Cael.”
“I’ve never met an elf before, nor anyone so handsome. But handsome isn’t the right word, is it? Beautiful. Yes, that’s it. Beautiful. Are you married?” she asked in one long breathless string.
“You seem to have got over your shyness,” Cael noted.
“I’m not really shy, you know. You surprised me, that’s all. It isn’t every day that you meet someone like you in that alley. How did you hurt your foot?” she rambled. “My father is missing a hand. He used to be a fine carpenter, but he accidentally cut his hand off with an axe, and now all he does is sleep and drink wine and yell at my mother.”
With Cael in tow, Claret led the way down Horizon Road toward the Great Plaza at the center of the city. Before they’d gone a stone’s throw, she turned left onto Palisade Lane, so named because of the balconies shading both sides of the street. Cafe waiters were already setting out tables and iron chairs beneath the balconies or hanging clean white tablecloths along the decorative rails above in preparation for the crowds that would soon be filling the city for the celebration of the festival.
Two score paces down this lane, the girl pulled him beneath a pillared arcade and into a doorway where a flight of stairs led up into darkness. He twisted his hand free and stared at her in surprise, but found that she was looking past him. Turning, he saw the sailors stagger past, arm in arm. Neither looked his way. The girl breathed a sigh of relief.