At the back of the plateau the mountain was bisected by a
thundering waterfall. The water vanished underneath the terrace, and Nan
figured it somehow powered the fountain. The perimeter of the terrace was
crammed with a rainbow-hue of flimsy tents, each with its vendor hawking wares.
It was hard to move because the crowd here was worse than ever. Joe plugged
along grimly behind the others, his breath hissing sharply every now and then.
Shor quietly scanned the various stalls, every so often
pointing to something and looking back at them in question. Nan shrugged. She
didn’t care what she wore. Everything seemed wonderful on this world—and it was
even greater to be away from ugly, cheap polyester and rayon. But Joe kept
shaking his head, making faces. Nan wondered if he was trying to find jeans and
tee shirts.
After a time Mican began shifting his dirty looks from Nan
to Joe as they worked their way steadily around the market.
Nan never saw how Mican got the last outfit she’d okayed. She
was only aware of him stepping next to her and thrusting something into her
hands. He moved away and took Joe’s arm to point out a man on a prancing black
stallion who was just entering the market area. The man wore a tall plumed hat
and glittering chain mail. He looked about with a supercilious air as the crowd
scurried out of his path.
Nan looked down at the cloth in her hands, wondering what to
do with it. Shor said, “Why won’t Joe wear pink? Or yellow? or mauve? Are these
colors forbidden on Earth ?”
“He’s just being an idiot,” Nan said. “Just pick something
out and he’ll have to—”
“
There’
s my goods! Stop the thief! Thieeef!”
Nan looked up—into the purple face of a fat man who was
pointing straight at her. The crowd between them started fading back.
“Stupid,” Mican hissed. “Why didn’t you hide it—”
“Run.” Shor elbowed Nan.
They ran. Nan veered away from a knot of merchants, and
nearly smacked into a pair of patrolling soldiers.
“THIEEEF!” The cry echoed behind her.
The soldiers, a man and a woman, both started toward the
screaming merchant. Nan might have made it had not a whistle and crack startled
her into stumbling. A sharp pain struck her shoulder, and she fell to the dusty
ground.
The man on horseback seemed to tower twenty feet above her.
One of his gloved hands held his reins, and the other brandished a whip.
“There’s your thief,” he said haughtily, pointing the thong
down at Nan. “Get this vermin out of my path.”
Nan froze. She’d dropped the tunic Mican had thrust into her
hands—but one of the soldiers picked it up as the other closed five hard
fingers around her arm.
“You’re under arrest.”
Joe stared helplessly at Nan. In two seconds the fun had
turned to nightmare. “What’re we gonna do?” he muttered.
Mican shot him a weird look, then bent down. Straightening
up fast, he slung a handful of dirt and pebbles straight at the nobleman. The
man’s horse reared, driving the crowd back. People screamed and shouted,
shoving violently in order to avoid the thrashing hooves. Mican dove through
the tangle of writhing arms and legs and rammed into one of the soldiers,
knocking her into the other. He snatched at Nan’s arm as Shor let fly with more
dirt, this time at the soldiers.
Unfortunately Todan had trained his forces well. Despite the
chaos around her, the soldier spun about and thumped Mican across the face, and
with the same hand smashed Mican’s grip free of Nan. Her partner made a grab at
Mican, who rolled back into the surging crowd. Joe watched, aghast.
“Come on,” Shor whispered in Joe’s ear. She tugged him
farther back into the crowd.
Joe followed her, glancing back. The nobleman cursed loudly
as he fought his panicked horse. One of the soldiers plunged into the crowd,
shoving people left and right—looking for Mican.
“It’s all right,” Shor whispered urgently. “He’ll get away,
and meet us at the inn. We’d better get out of here before someone remembers we
were all together.”
Joe choked against something horrible in his throat. “But —
Nan—”
“They’ve got her.” Shor pointed over Joe’s shoulder. More
soldiers had appeared from somewhere, surrounding Nan. “We’ll just have to get
her out,” Shor promised. “Blackeye will know how. Don’t worry.”
Joe allowed her to pull him away, and soon Nan and her
captors were swallowed in the noisy crowd. Joe’s last glimpse of the scene was
the bobbing plume of the nobleman’s hat as he forced his mount through the
crowd.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no.” And then, as reaction-anger
burned through him, “Why did Mican have to make us steal?”
“We always have.” Shor opened her hands, thin as her
brother’s. “Ever since they killed our family. We
always
try to steal
from anyone who consents to Todan’s rule, just as they stole our lives from
us.” Shor’s eyes were sad but her voice was firm.
Joe remembered what he’d read in Kevriac’s book about Mican
and Shor, and he shook his head, his anger dying. Unfortunately, that just made
him feel worse. “This is horrible,” he muttered, his head feeling like a bomb
about to explode
. We’re the heroes. We’re the good guys. It’s supposed to be
fun. We’re supposed to win. Not them.
“We’ll get her back.” Shor squeezed his fingers
comfortingly.
Joe realized she was still holding his hand, and
embarrassment pushed away all the other feelings.
Shor dropped his hand, and pointed up a narrow side road.
“We’ll just go on to the meeting place. Maybe they’ll be done with paying the
harbormaster and whatever else they had to do.”
Joe did as he was told. He kept his head down in case any of
those soldiers had seen his face and were looking for him, and also because he
wanted to watch the road. His feet ached. He wished he was at the meeting
place—in fact, he wished they were back on the island, running about and
practicing swordplay.
No way I’m ready for this kind of stuff
. He sighed,
rubbing his eyes, until he remembered Shor’s words “Blackeye will know how.” That’s
right. Her gang seemed to know how to handle everything. Maybe they’d have Nan
out by nightfall, and then they’d all laugh about it, back at the hideout.
o0o
Nan stumbled behind the soldiers, her hands tied painfully
behind her and a rope around her neck. Her mind refused to work, and her heart
pounded somewhere near her throat.
“Hope you swing, you filthy thieving brat!” a shopkeeper
shouted at her, and she looked up in time to get a face full of something
squishy and nasty-smelling — some kind of rotten fruit.
Two or three more rotten tings thumped on her body before
the soldiers yelled, “All right, clear off. This prisoner’s ours.”
Nan shook her head violently, trying to clear the mess off
her face, but it didn’t work. Her eyes stung and her stomach heaved when some
of the nastiness seeped inside her mouth.
“This way, thief,” a curt voice said. A yank on the rope
round her neck nearly pulled her off her feet.
Gasping for breath, she lurched after the soldiers. Angry
shopkeepers yelled horrible things after her. Some of the gathering crowd
laughed.
Sudden darkness startled her; she looked up from the cobbled
stones at her feet just in time to see an iron-fanged gate close behind. They
were inside some kind of tunnel. Soldiery clanked back and forth in both
directions. Nan scurried forward, walking close to the side the soldier holding
her rope so it wouldn’t pull at her neck. Unfortunately that put her in the
pathway of passing soldiers. Twice in a row she got a hard elbow in her ribs,
knocking her out of the way.
Nan’s breath burned in her throat when they finally stopped
in a small room before a big desk. Torches on either side of the desk did
nothing to ease the harsh features of a huge man who fixed squinty eyes on Nan
then said, “What’s this?”
“Thief, sir,” said the woman at Nan’s right.
“Evidence, sir,” said the man on her left, dropping the
cloth onto the table. “Vendor in Little-Moon Square. He’ll be here sundown to
get his goods. Said he wants full justice.”
“So do I,” the man sneered. “I’d like nothing better than to
clean this filth off our streets. You.” He glared at Nan. “Which gang you
belong to?”
The word
gang
called up horrible connotations from
Earth, and Nan said, “None! I hate gangs!” Then she remembered Blackeye’s
group, and that fact that she really did belong to a gang, but she pressed her
lips firmly together. She would not, not, NOT tell them Blackeye’s name.
“Liar,” the man said. “Good. We’ll have some fun finding
out, but later. Put her in somewhere nice and quiet. So she can think about
what’s going to happen.” Her jerked his thumb behind him.
And so she was yanked along a narrow, dank passage into a
dim, musty-smelling dungeon. Outside of a cell she was hauled abruptly to a
stop, and the ropes were pulled off her before she was shoved inside a dark
cell. The door slammed behind her as she fell onto the uneven floor of stone.
o0o
Joe followed Shor into the White Twig Inn’s warm, thick air.
He breathed in the scents of wine, spiced food, and people. Noise flowed around
them, almost as thick as the air: voices laughing, talking, arguing, yelling,
and singing. Joe realized the singing was accompanied by people playing some
musical instruments—a couple of flute things, and something that sounded like a
cross between a guitar and a harp.
Shor looked about quickly, then nudged Joe with her elbow. He
followed close behind her, intimidated by the loud, pushing patrons, most of
whom were adults.
At least some of these guys are dressed even dorkier than
I am.
Wide sashes with long fringes, embroidered trousers and vests and
shirts with voluminous sleeves, and big hats seemed popular. Bright colors were
worn by both sexes, and to add to the brightness, some of the clothes had beads
and glittery things sewn on.
As Joe followed Shor around the perimeter of the room, he
realized he was actually dressed kind of boring for this place.
I wonder
what they would see as sissy clothes
?
Jeans and tees?
They reached the booth where Blackeye, Warron, Sarilda,
Tarsen, and Kevriac sat wedged in.
Blackeye’s eyes moved from Shor to Joe, and narrowed. Next
to her, Warron looked up consideringly.
Shor bent close to Blackeye and talked into her ear.
Blackeye rose. “Pay up,” she said to Kevriac. “Then meet in
the room. No one will be in it now.”
She disappeared into the crowd. Warron got to his feet,
jerking his chin at Shor and Joe in an unmistakable command to follow.
They threaded their way out a back exit, and across a
courtyard busy with arriving and departing carriages and horse-riding guests,
chickens, and small children racing about. Warron did not look back as his long
stride made a path through this muddle to a narrow wooden stairway.
The inn was built in a square around the court, in a crazy
jumble of additions that didn’t quite match. Ordinarily Joe would have loved to
explore, but one look at Shor’s worried face signaled something bad was about
to happen.
Warron led them up the stairs to a narrow door, then into a
long attic room under a steeply slanting ceiling. Rows of hammocks hung from
hooks, and below each was a little bench with a shelf under it. After the noise
of the inn and courtyard, the quiet was startling.
Shor dropped onto a three-legged stool like a collapsing
doll. Warron strolled to a window and looked out, still without speaking. Joe
wandered to another window, and stared out at a patchwork of roofs and little
streets. Some of the roofs had tiny gardens in colorful pots.
The door to the attic banged open and in came Kevriac and
Tarsen, and a moment later Blackeye and Mican followed, the latter
crimson-faced and breathing hard. Shor jumped to her feet and stood beside her
brother.
“Bron and Tarly won’t be back until after sundown, so it’s
just us,” Blackeye said, dropping onto the stool that Shor had just left.
Warron moved away from the window and lounged over to stand
behind Blackeye, his arms crossed.
This is kind of like a court
, Joe thought, as
Blackeye turned to Shor. Once again his heart thumped painfully against his
ribs.
With a quick look at her brother, Shor said, “We tried to
steal some clothes. To save our money for a good eat. Nan got caught by the
toads.”
“Told you to buy duds,” Blackeye said, unsmiling. Then her
dark, slanted eyes flicked Joe’s way, and she went on, “What happened?”
Joe described the sequence of events as well as he could. Some
of the details were already a blur, but certain things he said drew reactions
from the others, and Blackeye made him go back and describe it all again.
When he was done, his throat felt dry and he sank down onto
one of the benches.
Blackeye turned last to Mican. “You set her up.”
Mican hesitated, then he gave a sharp shrug, his mouth
twisted sarcastically. “I just wanted to give her a lesson in what real life is
like,” he said. “Let your
prin-cess
buy her way out.”
Blackeye shook her head. “You’re thinking with your grudges,
not your head,” she said flatly, and jerked a thumb in Joe’s direction. “Those
two are the only chance we have to get rid of Todan. I don’t care if they’re
the heirs to the evil emperor of Sveran Djur—they’re here to help
us
.”
She glanced up at Warron, who made a brief gesture with his
hand. Blackeye nodded, turned to Mican, and said, “You come back with Nan—or
you don’t come back.”
No one spoke or moved; Shor gave a choking gasp. Joe stared
as she flung her hands over her face, then the meaning of the words penetrated:
Mican was out of the gang.
Somehow this was just as terrible as Nan’s being captured,
which still did not seem quite real. But the way Mican’s thin face blanched,
the way he stared, his eyes pleading—and Shor’s crying—those seemed very real.