“Leave? So’s he can catch us in the open?” Jeka pulled her ragged brown cloak around her more tightly.
“If we stay here, he’ll follow whatever that cord is until he knows where you are. You want to stay and be cornered?”
“Got a little bread left,” Jeka offered. “Let’s eat first.”
Two chunks of bread took little enough time to eat.
Then Kharl took the rag-covered black staff and his pack and carried them farther along the space between the walls, hiding them-and his jacket-as well as he could beyond the stone-circled hole that served as a necessary, before using the crude latrine.
“Why’d you move that stuff?” asked Jeka.
“So if the wizard or his guard looks, they won’t know someone else is here.” Kharl’s head throbbed faintly at the misstatement. He donned the ragged beggar’s cloak.
“Better get on.” Jeka turned and scrambled over the wall.
By the time the sun was rising over Brysta on what promised to be a bright fall day, one warmer than the light morning frost indicated, the two stood in the serviceway, flanked by long shadows on one side and the flat light of sunrise on the other.
Kharl looked at Jeka. “Can you feel where the tugging’s coming from?”
“No.”
Kharl held in the harsh words he felt at Jeka’s rebellious tone. “We’ll go up the street, say fifty cubits.”
The two walked south on the cross street, and Kharl tried not to look back.
“Stop.” Kharl waited, then looked at Jeka. “Does it feel stronger?”
“No…feels weaker…maybe closer…” She looked puzzled.
“We go the other way.”
“Other way?”
“No pull when a fish on a line swims to the fisherman,” Kharl said.
Jeka paled.
Kharl wished he’d used different words. “Come on.” He turned back north.
Jeka scrambled to catch up to him. As they walked in the shadows on the east side of the cross street, Kharl wished he’d brought the staff rather than his crude stick. At the end of the block, the cross street ended in a stone wall, and they turned westward, taking the walk on the south side, downhill toward the harbor. Jeka darted ahead, then froze for a moment.
Kharl peered toward the harbor. At the end of the next block, there were three Watchmen and an officer-one whom Kharl recognized even from that distance as Egen. He was certain, although he didn’t quite know why. Jeka slipped back toward Kharl.
“Watch ahead,” mumbled Jeka.
“And the wizard’s somewhere behind.” Kharl looked to the serviceway to his left, which connected to an east-west alleyway. “Into the serviceway.”
“Be Watch at the harborside end of the alley.”
“Can’t be any worse.” Kharl hoped it couldn’t be worse, but he wasn’t counting on that, not the way the last few seasons had been going.
In a few moments, they reached the point where the serviceway joined the alley. Kharl peered around the corner formed by two brick walls. As Jeka had predicted, there were Watchmen at the end nearer the harbor.
Kharl studied the alley, noting the thin line of shadows on the southern side. He looked at Jeka. “We turn and start uphill on the sunny side, but we move toward the shadows. Once we’re in the shadows we crouch down, then come back to the serviceway right across from us.”
“It might work.” Jeka sounded less than convinced.
“Might not. Got a better idea?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll try it.” Kharl stepped out of the serviceway and began to walk up the alley at a slight angle.
So far as he could tell, the Watchmen below did not move. At least, he heard no steps on the stones, those that were high enough to stand out above the lower muddy stones. They covered close to a hundred cubits before they entered the shadows. Kharl took several more steps before he began to crouch as he slipped to the southern side of the alley. He ducked into a recess formed by a loading dock, then peered around the corner and down the alley. The Watchmen had not moved.
“The cord thing’s stronger,” Jeka muttered from behind him.
“We need to slip along the shadow here. Keep low.”
“You keep low.”
Kharl tried to keep low, crouching as he made his way back down the side of the alley.
After fifty cubits, they had to duck behind a refuse bin as a loading door opened.
Rats skittered and rustled in the bin as they waited. It seemed like a glass passed before the heavyset man in brown went back into the shop and closed the door. Finally, they slipped into the serviceway and walked quickly to where it ended short of the next street. Kharl halted.
“Now what?” asked Jeka.
“We run across the street and into that serviceway, and we keep moving south until we get to the fountain. Then we head back uphill.”
They sprint-scurried across Wellman Street, and down another serviceway…then another, and a third. In time, they turned down the alley south of Cargo Road and made their way to the fountain. There they waited for a teamster to water his pair of mules, then slipped in ahead of a laundress to drink.
After they had drunk, Kharl turned to Jeka. “Can you feel the cord thing?”
Jeka paused. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Good. We’ll keep moving along Second Cross toward the river.”
“The river? Can’t swim.”
“We aren’t going to. White wizards have trouble with streams and running water. Leastwise, that’s what they say. We’ll circle back later today.” At least, Kharl hoped that they could, but he didn’t know what else to suggest. He also didn’t like the idea that the Watch seemed to be helping the wizard.
He had to wonder what Egen had to do with the white wizard. Was the wizard working for Egen? Or did Egen owe something to the wizard?
XXXIV
On threeday night, they did not go back to Jeka’s hidey-hole between the tannery and the renderer’s yard. Neither did they reach the river or the river road. Instead, they curled up inside a hedgerow beside the road headed southeast from Brysta-the same road that led to the orchards held by Merayni and Dowsyl. Where Kharl hoped Warrl was safe.
Huddled inside the thick wall of brush, shivering at times, Kharl swallowed at that thought, but there was nothing he could do. Trying to see Warrl again would only make matters worse, and, if the wizard was working with Egen, the lord might well now have spared a guard or two to watch the place. More important, with each passing day, Kharl could offer Warrl even less.
“I’m cold,” mumbled Jeka.
“So am I.” Those were the last words Kharl said before he drifted into a troubled sleep.
He woke in the gray before dawn. The way his body ached when he tried to uncurl, he decided there were worse places to sleep than between renderer’s and tanner’s walls. Much worse.
“You snore,” Jeka said. “Loud.”
“So do you. Soft.”
“Soft’s better ’n loud.”
“Probably.” Kharl crawled out through the brushy tunnel onto the field side of the hedgerow. The wheat had already been harvested, and the brown stubble jutted skyward from the dark ground. The air was chill enough that Kharl’s breath was like fog, and the ground crunched underfoot. The shutters of the hut beyond the small woodlot appeared to be closed. Kharl shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to loosen tight muscles.
Shortly, Jeka followed him, glancing toward the cottage, then at Kharl.
After a moment, he asked, “You feel the cord thing tugging at you?”
“A little.”
“Frigging wizard,” Kharl muttered. “Moved south. We need to circle around Brysta and get back to your place.”
“So why’d we leave?”
“So that he didn’t catch us there, so he didn’t find out that was the only place you sleep.”
“It is.”
“Not any longer.”
“We can’t keep moving. We can’t get food.”
“You want to end up like Enelya’s sister?”
“No. We can’t keep doing this, either.”
Kharl nodded. She was right about that. “Need to get back and pick up your stuff…if we can. Somehow.” He looked back toward the cottage. At one side of the woodlot, there was a tree, one that looked to be an apple, and despite the thinning leaves, Kharl thought he saw a few fruits hanging. Probably rotten, but they might have good spots.