He slammed it shut, and Moria stared at him open-mouthed in shock. But Gorthis was a little crazy about security. He always had been. She was willing to think it was that.
Until he turned the key and took it.
"It's my damned gold, Gorthis, I'm not going to steal it!"
"You ain't going nowhere," Gorthis said, and went and pulled on the cord that rang a bell somewhere way up on the roof, a thief-bell, that called the watch.
"What are you doing?" she yelled at him. She shook the bars of the gate, hopeless, because Gorthis's locks were always sound. "Gorthis, have you lost your mind?"
"I'm respectable," Gorthis said. "I been respectable ever since the Troubles started. I ain't getting into it any more, I got too many uptown clients." Another series of tugs at the bell rope. "Sorry, girl. Truly I am."
"I'll tell them! I'll tell them who you are!"
"Who are they going to believe, huh, girl, when I turn over you an' that great lump of gold to the watch? No, missy, this is going to be better fer me than fer you. I prove to 'em I changed my ways, that's what this'll do."
"I have friends uptown."
"No, you don't. I know what yow friends are, girl, the neighbors done talked, the neighbors what got burned out around Peres, uptown. They got a warrant out fer you, hiring mages and all, arson and murder-you know the law doesn't come down on mages, ain't no way the watch is going to arrest them. now, is they? But them as hires 'em, now, they're responsible, ain't they? You go burning the whole town down, come in here with a lump of witched gold-"
"It ain't witched!"
"It come from the burnin'! Ever'thing up there's witched! And I ain't makin' no jewelry out of it and sellin' it to my clients' You're goin' to the watch, girl, an' you can explain to your neighbors 'fore the magistrate what you done up there on the hill, / ain'tl"
"Let me out of here! Damn you, damn you, I got friends, Gorthis, I got friends'H fry your insides, you damned snitch! I got wizard friends!"
"No way," Gorthis said, pale-faced and sweating, and still ringing the bell for all he was worth. "No way you got friends like that, missy, or they'd melt that there gold for you and not need no furnace- I ain't no fool! And you're going to hang, that's what's going to happen to you-"
An alarm was ringing in midtown, and Crit stopped the gray to listen. Not particularly his business: the watch and the guard responded to that sort of thing, and his own mind was on personal problems-a partner who had had a run-in with the watch last night, and who had been let go because the watch did not know what to do with him-and a PrinceGovernor whose orders were getting more and more arbitrary-now the damned be-curled and perfumed prig wanted a barrel tax and wanted all the taverns in town to pay a head tax ... per customer. And he was supposed to break the news to Walegrin, whose men were supposed to make the thing work.
An alarm was not the kind of thing the city commander took for a personal responsibility. But he was in a mood to crack heads. He debated it a moment, then, set the horse off at a good clip-no run, counting the slick cobbles, just a businesslike jog that cornered well enough in the twisting streets, with their ghostly drift of cloaked, hooded figures themselves heading toward the trouble-daytime reflexes, the more so that the watch was surely on the way and folk figured there was some kind of entertainment to be had, watching the guard putter about after a thief who had probably run like hell when the bell went, and listening with delicious smugness to the shopkeeper tearing his hair and wailing ... a morning's worth of gossip, at least- And more of them would come, when they saw the city commander involved in it.
Damned busybodies.
He had an idea where the bell-ringing was coming from when he found the right street, about the time the bell went silent and he had an idea the watch had gotten there ahead of him. There was a jeweler hereabouts notorious for his eccentricity-and a shady past; and he saw the crowd and the waiting horses that said that matters were tolerably well under control.
He almost turned the gray about to go back about his business, back to his troubles with Strat and with the Prince-Governor, figuring there was nothing here that needed intervention.
But the crowd ohhhed and aaaahed to a great deal of shouting, and pressed close upon the door, where there was evidently something going on. A guardsman was trying to keep spectators out.
Maybe, he thought, someone had cut the jeweler's throat.
But the place was supposed to be a real obstacle course. So the rumor ran. Real crazy man.
Curiosity drew him, since the morning's business was not that attractive. He nosed the gray on through the crowd, figuring the guard could use a little help-might well be a few neighbors there hoping for free samples, if there had been some fracas inside and some stuff scattered.
"Get out of here!" the beleaguered guard was yelling, shoving with his sheathed sword at a clutch of women who wanted to get their noses in the door. The crowd booed that, and guffawed when a fat man appeared behind the guard and screamed at them to get out of his door.
"What's going on here?" Crit asked the guardsman, forcing the gray into service as a living barrier, and its teeth and the stamp of its feet made a little room.
"Dunno, sir," the guardsman said. "We got a woman and a laundry basket and a damned great lump of gold old Gorthis says is witched and stolen and he locked 'er up and called the watch." The guardsman looked doubtful a second, then: "Woman looks Rankan, sir, and old Gorthis says she's a thief named Moria who lived in the Peres house, and we got a warrant out on her. The corporal don't know. We got a lot of warrants.
But she talks uptown."
"Moria. Out ofPeres." Crit drew in a deep breath, all at once awake in this slow and nuisanceful morning. He slid down and threw the gray's reins at the guardsman as he ducked under the horse's neck and put his
head into the jeweler's shop.
The damn place looked like the city jail, it had so many bars. And in the clutches of a trio of guardsmen was a blonde and distraught young woman, answering questions, shaking her head furiously, no, no, and no.
"Hey," he yelled, interrupting it all. The woman looked at him, and gods, it was for certain Moria, who had hosted the whole Sacred Band at the truce-feast in the Peres house.
Before it ended up a pile of blackened sticks and tumbled stone.
"Moria?" he asked. And listened to the whole thing over again, from the jeweler Gorthis shouting in one ear, the guard corporal shouting at Gorthis to shut up, the woman sobbing and shouting that she was innocent, that Gorthis was a crook who wanted her gold, which was hers, and Gorthis her enemy who had lured her here with promises of help.
"Gold might be hers," Crit said slowly. "Ease up a little. Let's just all be calm, can we? Ma'am, I think you and the gold and Gorthis here better plan to spend the morning uptown and get this straightened out. They say there's a warrant out on you- I don't know about that. I know I've got a few questions. Where are you staying?"
The woman's face might have been a waxen mask. An honest woman might have answered. There would not have been that desperate dart of the eyes, like something trapped. Crit had had a lot of experience, judging reactions like that. He pulled out his kit and rolled himself a smoke, giving her time to answer, if she would. Then, finally, lighting the smoke from the lamp by the door.
"Well, sergeant, I think you might as well take the whole damn mess uptown. You can have Gorthis. Woman goes to my office. Gold goes to your captain and it damn well better stay accounted for. Hear?"
"Yessir," the sergeant said, and Crit nodded, puffed on his smoke to calm his nerves and walked as far as the door. He had a rare impulse to chivalry, and turned back to the sergeant.
"Don't take her through the streets like that. Put a wrap on her and don't bruise her up any, all right?"
"Yessir."