The Dreaming Void (76 page)

“He's right,” Kanseen said. “It is him, the bastard. I can just farsight him.”

“There are two others with him,” Edeard told them. “And he's nervous about the ge-eagle, so they're not here for anything legitimate. Let's spread out and surround them. Keep a street between yourself and them the whole time. I'll track them with farsight. I don't want to risk him seeing the ge-eagle again; that'll scare them off.”

They all smiled at one another, edgy with nerves and excitement.

“Go!” Macsen cried.

After five minutes of steady jogging, Edeard wished he had paid more attention to keeping fit. As before, Makkathran's citizens were reluctant to give ground to anyone in a hurry, least of all a red-faced, sweating, panting young constable. He dodged and shoved and wiggled his way along streets and through alleys, glaring at anyone who voiced a complaint. His uniform made it worse with its hot, heavy fabric restricting his movements.

Eventually he got into position a street to the west of the trio. His farsight showed him his squadmates taking up positions all around them.

“Got them,” Dinlay's longtalk announced as he slowed to a walk.

“Me, too,” Boyd reported.

“What do you think they're here to steal?” Macsen asked.

“Small enough to carry easily, valuable enough to be worth the risk,” Dinlay replied.

“Another one been paying attention during our lectures. But unfortunately that covers about ninety percent of the shops around here.”

“Could be something in one of the storerooms, too,” Boyd suggested.

“Or a house,” Kanseen added.

“Let's just keep watch on them,” Edeard told them. “When they go into a building, we close in. Remember to wait until the crime has been committed before arresting them.”

“Hey, never thought of that,” Macsen said.

Edeard let his farsight sweep through the buildings around the trio, trying to guess what they might be interested in. Hopeless task.

The suspects turned off Sonral Street into an alley so narrow that one person could barely fit. Edeard hesitated. They were heading towards his street, but it was a blind alley, blocked by a house wall twenty feet high. His farsight probed, revealing a series of underground storerooms beneath one of the jewelry shops on Sonral Street. There was a passage leading up to a thick metal door in the alley.

“At least they're consistent,” he remarked. “That's a jeweler's shop on top.”

“On top of what?” Boyd asked.

“There's some kind of passage leading off the alley,” Kanseen told him. “It leads downward somewhere. Edeard, can you actually sense what's there?”

“A little bit,” he admitted reluctantly. “Just some kind of open chamber, I think.” For a moment he wished everyone had his ability; life would be a lot easier.

“So now what do we do?” Macsen asked. “We can't rush them, not down that alley.”

“Wait at the end,” Dinlay said. “They can hardly escape.”

Edeard's farsight was showing him a whole network of interconnecting passages and rooms running under the row of shops. The passages all had locked doors, but once the thieves were inside, there was a chance they could elude his squad within the little underground maze.

“The rest of you get into Sonral Street,” he ordered. “I'm going around the back to see if I can find another way down there.”

“You're going in alone?” Kanseen asked. “Edeard, there's three of them, and we know they carry blades.”

“I'm just going to make sure they don't have an escape route, that's all. Come on, move.”

He was faintly aware of his squadmates hurrying to the broad street beyond the alley. One of the thieves had bent down beside the small door, doing something to the first of its five locks. From what he could sense of the locks, Edeard knew he would not like to try to pick them open. He concentrated hard, pushing his farsight through the city's fabric to map the buried labyrinth of rooms and passages. In truth, there were only three exits in addition to the one the trio currently was trying to break through.

Below that level, though, Edeard sensed the web of fissures that wove the city structures together. Several twisted their way up past the storerooms, branching into smaller clefts that laced the walls of the buildings above. He tracked back, finding a convoluted route that led to the street in which he was standing. His third hand reached out, probing the fabric of the wall at the back of a tapering alcove between two shops. Nothing; it was as solid as granite.

Please,
his longtalk whispered to the mind of the slumbering city.
Let me in.

Something intangible stirred beneath him. A flock of ruugulls took flight from the roofs above.

Here.
His mind pressed into the rear of the alcove. Something pushed back. Colorful shapes rose into his thoughts, swirling much faster than the birds overhead. In his dazed state he thought they resembled numbers and mathematical symbols but much larger and more complex than any of the arithmetic Akeem had taught him. With these equations the universe surely could be explained. They danced like sprites, rearranging themselves into a new order before twirling away.

Edeard gasped, struggling to stand up as his legs shook weakly. His heart was pounding far harder than it had been from his earlier run through the streets. He felt the structure of the wall change. When he peered forward, it looked exactly the same as before, a dark purple surface with flecks of gray stretching all the way up to where the curving roofs intersected three stories above him. But it
gave
when his third hand touched it.

There were people on the street around him, strolling along. Edeard waited until a relatively clear moment and stepped into the little alcove. Nobody could see him now. His hand touched the section of wall at the back and slipped right through. The skin on his fingers tingled, as if he were immersing them in fine sand. He walked into the wall. It was a sensation his brain interpreted as a wave of dry water washing across him. Then he was inside. He opened his eyes to complete darkness. His farsight cast around and showed him that he was suspended in a vertical tube. Even without visual sight, Edeard instinctively looked down. Farsight confirmed that his feet were standing on nothing.

“Oh, Lady!”

He started to descend. It was as though a very powerful third hand were lowering him gently to the bottom of the fissure that snaked away horizontally under the buildings. Yet he was convinced it wasn't a telekinetic hold. He could not sense anything like that; some other force was manipulating him. Oddly, his stomach felt as though he were plummeting even though he was moving relatively slowly.

His feet touched the ground. That was when whatever force had gripped him withdrew, leaving him free to sink into a crouch. When he touched the wall of the fissure, he felt a slick of water coating it. A rivulet was trickling over the toe of his boots; he could hear it gurgling softly.

“It's a drain,” he said out loud, astonished that anything so fantastical could exist to serve such a mundane purpose.

Despite perfectly clear farsight, he patted around with his hands. The drain fissure was slightly too small for him to walk along it upright. Its side walls were about five feet apart. He took a breath, none too happy at the claustrophobic feeling niggling at the back of his mind, and started to move forward in a stoop.

The thieves had gotten through the locked door at the top of the passage, an impressive feat in such a short space of time. Two of them were descending the curving stairs to the door that sealed off the bottom while the third stood guard outside. Edeard moved faster, navigating several forks along the drain fissure. He observed the thieves manipulate the locks on the second door and go through. Then he was directly underneath the storeroom they were ransacking. The layout was distinct, the wooden racks laid out in parallel. Small boxes were piled on the shelves. A large iron box stood in one corner, with a very complicated locking mechanism. They were ignoring that.

Edeard looked up as his farsight pervaded the city's substance above him, a solid mass of rocklike material five yards thick. He concentrated. Closed his eyes—stupid, but, well—and applied his mind. Again the equations rose from nowhere to pirouette breezily around his thoughts. He began to rise, slipping though the once-solid substance like some piece of cork bobbing to the surface of the sea. Once again his stomach was convinced he was falling to a degree that brought on a lot of queasiness. He had almost reached the floor when he realized the thieves would sense him the second he popped up. Quickly, he threw a concealment around himself. Then he was emerging into the storeroom with a weak orange light shining all around. The floor hardened beneath his boots.

“What was that?” a voice asked.

Edeard was standing behind the rack at the back of the storeroom, out of direct sight. He held his breath.

“Nothing. Fucking stop panicking, will you. There are only two doors, and the other one is locked. Now help me find the crap we came here for before someone senses us down here.”

Edeard slowly walked around the end of the rack. He could see the pair of them moving along a rack, taking boxes off the shelf and prizing them open with some kind of tool. A quick look inside, and the box would be tossed aside. Most of them seemed to contain little bottles. Dozens of them were clinking as they rolled about on the floor.

“Here we go,” the one in the hooded jacket announced. He'd just forced open a box full of tiny packets. One was opened to reveal a coil of metal thread. Edeard wasn't sure in the storeroom's low orange light, but it might be gold.

“I'll check out the rest,” the other one said.

The one with the hooded jacked began stuffing the packets into an inside pocket.

Edeard dropped his concealment.

“What the fuck—” Both thieves swung around to face him.

“Hello again,” Edeard said. “Remember me?”

“Edeard!” Kanseen's panicky longtalk reverberated in his skull. “Sweet Lady, where've you been? We've been going frantic. How did you get in there?”

“It's the little shit from the market,” the thief in the hooded jacket spit. “I fucking knew that ge-eagle was on the prowl.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a long blade. At the same time his third hand tried to push into Edeard's chest for a heartsqueeze.

Edeard laughed as he deflected the attack. Then his third hand slipped out and crushed the blade the thief was holding. The metal rippled, then warped into a slim bent spike. Edeard twisted the tip into a U shape. “You're under arrest for theft and attempted assault on a constable.”

“Fuck!” the other one yelled as he raced for the door.

“One coming out,” Edeard's longtalk told his squadmates.

“Are you all right?” Dinlay demanded.

“Never better.” He had not taken his eyes off the hooded thief. The man held up the ruined knife and gave it an admiring grin. “Tough guy, huh. Are you smart along with it? There's enough precious metal in here to make everyone happy.”

“You want attempted bribery added to the charges?”

“Idiot.” The thief turned his back on Edeard and walked casually toward the doorway out to the passage.

“Stop right there,” Edeard ordered.

The thief's third hand lifted one of the small bottles into the air behind him. Edeard frowned uncertainly. Another bottle rose, accelerating to crash into the first. Glass shattered.

A fireball spewed out, dazzling white in the gloomy storeroom. Edeard twisted away instinctively, his shield hardening. Flaming globules spattered against it.

“Edeard!” the squad longtalked in unison.

“I'm all right.” He was blinking his eyes furiously, trying to get rid of the long purple glare blotches. An acrid smell was growing strong, yet his farsight revealed just a few flickers of flame on the racks closest to the fireball. His third hand swatted them, snuffing the flames before they posed any danger. Then he noticed the black holes in the boxes scattered across the floor, as if flames had burned through them very quickly. The raw edges still were smoldering. When he looked closer, he saw they were coated in some kind of tar that was bubbling away. He shook his head in bewilderment.

“Got them,” Macsen announced victoriously. “Lady, that last one's an arrogant bastard. You sure you're okay, Edeard?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.” He started to walk out of the storeroom. Some deep instinct made him tread carefully around the patches of hot liquid glistening on the floor. Thin wisps of vapor were layering the air close to the ceiling, producing a stench that made his eyes water. When he passed the bulky metal door, he trod on some of the packets containing metal thread. The thief had thrown them all away. Edeard picked one up, frowning.

Why did he do that?

Mystified he hurried up the passage and out into the alley where his squad was waiting with the subdued prisoners. Now that he had time to think about what he had done and what the squad had achieved, his elation was rising with the potency of a dawn sun.