Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (20 page)

Not, as it happened, a very good lock. A few moments with his picks, and he felt the lock give. Was there an interior bar as well? He paused to pour oil from his flask onto the hinges and then pushed. Slowly—for it was thick and heavy—the old half door moved. Arvid clambered over the tall sill into a long, high room that ran the full length of the building from street to wall. High round windows let in dim light along the left side, and a single tall window at the front let in more. Toward the front, sacks that smelled like wool formed an irregular mound, but much of the floor was covered with a jumble of old furniture, boxes broken and whole, and a layer of thick dust. To his right, the floor slanted down abruptly … a ramp that led down into dimness.

Arvid chose the ramp; he suspected that the front had either a staircase beyond the wool sacks or a crane arrangement over that window for lifting heavy loads. The window would be visible from the street below—someone might look up, then they all would, and watchers within the warehouse would guess someone was above.

The ramp, dust-covered and unobstructed, revealed to his sensitive feet linear gouges … tracks? Wheel marks? They might have used a cart or barrow to move things up and down. A single thin rail marked the inside of the ramp; Arvid stayed near the back wall.

The ramp ended a scant two armswidths from a wall. Around the turn, the floor was flat … but he suspected another ramp led down
another level. The space he came into was darker than that above … it would have, he recalled, common walls on both sides. Two small narrow windows at the back, opening into that shaded space between the back wall and the city wall, gave little light, just enough for dark-adapted eyes to see that a cross-wall closed off any view to the front. In this space, he saw more sacks of wool and also stacks of hides with cropped fleece still on. He could smell both distinctly.

“Mmrow?”

Arvid started, almost allowing a gasp to escape, before he realized it was a cat. Of course a warehouse would have a cat to keep down mice and rats … but a cat might reveal him to those he wished to evade. He felt the cat—a dim shadow—swipe against his legs. He reached down; a damp nose touched his hand, then withdrew.

He had killed cats to prevent discovery in his days as a thief, but he had no desire to kill an animal now just for his own convenience. Experience told him, however, that finding a sack or box to shut the cat into would only increase its noise and lead to investigation by those holding the children. That might be useful if he had a way to set up a trap for them … but at the moment he was simply exploring, learning what was and was not possible.

The cat moved away—dimness moving in dimness, more visible when it crossed the paler dimness of the two small windows, then jumped up onto a stack of hides and down onto whatever lay behind them.

What lay behind them let out a gasp, then a small sound more like a tiny moan or whimper. Soft-footed, Arvid eased across the floor to the same stack of hides. That did not sound like someone left to guard this floor but like … a child?

He leaned on the stack of hides and pitched his voice to carry no more than a handlength or two. “Are you hurt?”

Nothing but a silence so full of meaning it could not be anything but a person in hiding, trying not to breathe or move.

“I am not one of those below,” Arvid said. “I came by roof, hoping to keep children safe. Can you help me?”

A shaky whisper then, more carrying than his own practiced voice: “They’ll kill me! Da said run hide.”

“Quiet voice,” Arvid said. The cat jumped back up, landing on
the hides with a tiny thump, and rubbed itself on Arvid’s arm. “I am Arvid. You hurt?”

“N-n-o.”

“Good. Tell me where in the building they are.”

A rustle of clothing, of someone uncoiling … the faint scrape of a shoe on wood as the child stood—hardly as tall as the stack of hides. Arvid could make out nothing of the face except the smudge of eyes, nose, mouth, and a shock of dark hair.

“I—think—in our—where we live.”

“You are?”

“Cedi.” The voice was steadier answering a familiar question.

“Your da’s the wool merchant?”

“Yes, and Grandda.” A faint glow appeared; the boy gasped. “No!”

“Quiet voice,” Arvid said. His skin prickled; two of the boy’s fingers gave off a rosy glow even as the boy shoved them into a pocket. A mage child; no wonder his father had sent him to hide. “Don’t burn yourself,” Arvid said. “I won’t hurt you.” But why would the boy believe him?

“I can’t stop it,” Cedi said. “I try—”

He needed to get the boy to safety … that light would show almost anywhere in this room. Up the ramp? It might not show in that top room, but could the boy hide there? Get out the little door and over to the other building? At least in daylight, in the back of the building, no one would see his glowing fingers.

“You need to be where it doesn’t show,” Arvid said. “Can you go very, very quietly up the ramp to the top floor? There are wool sacks there to hide between and more light from the windows. Or there’s the door out onto a ledge.”

“Da said that door don’t work.”

“It does now,” Arvid said. “If you could wait in that top room … maybe I could free the other children and they could come up—you could let them out, lead them across the roofs to where they can climb down.”

The child blinked. He was younger than Arvid’s son, a head shorter at least. “Da said don’t move, stay hid.”

“Your hand betrays you,” Arvid said. “Even down there behind the hides. If someone comes up here—”

“They did. Didn’t see me.”

“But your hand wasn’t glowing, was it?” This was taking too long; he could feel time passing. What was happening to the other children? What was happening outside? And yet this child was no less valuable … Arvid argued with himself. Of course the child wanted to do what his father said …

“I have a fleece down there—I put my hand under—and then it went out for a while.”

So maybe he would be safe, with the glow hidden. “How old are you?”

“Seven winters.”

Seven winters … for some, old enough to have sense and accomplish a lot … for others, not. Too young, Arvid finally decided, to be expected to go out alone and make his way across the roofs.

“Stay hidden, then. If your hand lights, be sure it’s under the fleece, but don’t start a fire. Now tell me how the rooms are arranged—and what’s behind the wall to the front on this floor.”

The boy was able to do that in a controlled quiet voice. Arvid started down the next ramp, directly under the first, knowing he would emerge in another such room, with a hall extending forward through a wall that cut off the front—that hall opened into the family apartments on either side. He was just starting down the ramp when he heard the slam of a door and voices coming toward the foot of the ramp.

“We can’t go anywhere as long as they’re there,” said one.

“Well, we can’t stay here forever. There’s got to be a back door.”

“There’s not. Back wall’s solid to the city wall.”

“Donag said there was a window up the next floor—so it can’t be solid, really. I’ll show you.”

The sounds of two men walking … shoes, not boots. Were they armed? Where best to meet them? If someone had already been up this ramp, then his own foot marks wouldn’t draw attention.

He chose his place, shielded from immediate view by a stack of wool sacks, readied his materials, and listened to the footsteps coming
up. The men continued to talk; Arvid hoped they’d say something he could use.

“You think that red-haired girl is one of ’em?”

“We’ll find out when Goram tests her. Admit I’m surprised we only found three so far … I thought sure there’d be more of ’em here in the city.”

“Goram—you see the look on his face when he killed that third one?”

“Bin—you can’t let it bother you. They’re mages. Doesn’t matter how Goram looks—”

“Does to me. There’s killin’ evil and there’s evil killin’—”

“You want to be careful, Bin—that’s soundin’ a bit too much like the old lady.”

The Marshal-General, that must be. The footsteps came on, slower now up the ramp.

“Lighter up there,” said one.

“Windows in the wall got to mean there’s an outside.”

“Did Donag go all the way up?”

“Dunno. Just said windows but no door.”

“Well—I can see those is too high to get out of … and there’d be a drop.”

“We should go all the way up—maybe the top one has a bigger window or something.”

Arvid wished he’d gone back up—ambushing these two would be easier up there and quieter, too. But he would not have left the child behind.

Now the footsteps were loud, on the same floor; they did not immediately head for the next ramp but approached the south wall … and he had to make his move.

A bolt from his crossbow took the first one in the neck; before he hit the floor, Arvid was on the second, a choke hold and the tip of a dagger laid under the man’s nose. “Come quietly,” he said. “Or die.”

“Grrhgh—”

“Quietly.” He let the dagger tip dig into the sensitive point under the nose, and the man made no more noise. Arvid manhandled him around the corner, into the angle of the wool sacks, and shoved him
facedown into the sacks, where any cries would be muffled. He moved the knife point to below the man’s ear “Quiet and still,” he said again. The man obeyed, but his muscles were stiff with either fear or anger.

No matter. Arvid had dealt with such men before. Soon he had the man trussed so he could not kick the floor and gagged so he could not yell, braced in a cradle of wool sacks, held down by more, but with a small space for air … if he did not move and tumble another sack down to close it. Arvid explained this quietly, watching the eye he could see go from terror to fury to terror and, finally, to resignation.

The other man’s body presented a dilemma. Hide it? Drag it to the top floor? Surely someone would come to find out where those two had gone, why they had not returned. He pulled the bolt free of the neck, swiping blood from the grooved shaft thieves used for inside work instead of fletching. He stripped the man’s pockets and pouches, looking for anything that might help him, then lifted the corpse, grunting at the man’s weight, and carried it carefully around the piles of wool sacks to lay it out of sight; he pulled another wool sack down on top of it.

Now. Up or down? If he could get the child killers to come to him in ones and twos, it would be easier, but his stomach churned at the thought of three children already dead and a man—Goram—who seemed to enjoy killing them. The longer he waited … the more children would die.

You know what to do
.

“Gird … Father Gird … help the children.” A pause in which he felt pressure like a weather change. “And me.”

He had to go down. If he could identify Goram … kill the one who wanted to kill children, because clearly some of them weren’t that eager …

He paused a moment to tell Cedi what he’d done, wondering as he did why he hadn’t killed the second man—once, he would have, without a doubt or a thought—then went down the ramp, silent as the thief he had been.

Down there, he could see the door into the hall the boy had spoken
of, shut as he’d expected, and the room off to his heart-hand, much like the one above but even darker. Another ramp continued down to the ground floor, and he heard voices from there, men’s voices, and vague distant noise that might be the crowd outside.

He moved to the door of the hall, standing to one side, and applied a donkey’s ear. No sound … then a thin wail, as of a child. He eased the door open; it swung silently. No one was in the passage, much lighter from a window at the front, and showing two doors to one side and one to the other, just as Cedi had said.

Arvid moved through, closing the door behind him. It would not be just one person in the room with the children … not merely the killer … they would need another one, at least. But two had left … and a lot of scared children, maybe tied up or shut in a closet …

Go on
.

That voice. It steadied him now instead of shaking him to the core as it had at first. He reached for the bow to span it, and something pinched his arm. Gird? Probably. Maybe. He hoped. He reached for his throwing knife instead and felt a little warmth on the back of his neck.

A burly man with thinning dark hair held a child down on a table, his hands around the child’s throat, squeezing. To one side, another man watched, lips pressed tight. Arvid’s throwing knife took the first man in the face, just missing his eye; the man gasped, letting go of the child’s neck, and grabbed for the knife hanging from his cheekbone. Arvid’s edged disk took the second in the neck with a left-hand throw; he was across the room to finish that one with a slash of his dagger, and then, as the man near the child turned with Arvid’s knife in his hand, Arvid moved in, grabbed the man’s elbow, and twisted, forcing him down and into the point of his dagger.

He had expected the third man but not that he’d have a crossbow; the bolt sliced his ear and thunked into the wall behind him. He had nothing left to throw but a chair, and grabbed it up. Another bolt split the chair seat; Arvid rushed the man, pinning him against the far wall before he could span the bow a third time. All he could think—as the man whacked his ribs with the crossbow stock and opened his mouth to yell, and Arvid stuck the dagger in it, but the
man didn’t die, not then—was how much noise they were making and how long it would be before the men downstairs noticed. Finally he wrestled the crossbow away from the man and hit him over the head with the stock, then yanked his dagger free and cut the man’s throat.

The child. He whirled and saw a gaggle of children—all in blue shirts, barefoot, all wide-eyed but silent, watching him. One, sitting up on the table, had darkening bruises on his throat. Another was the red-haired girl the men upstairs had mentioned, the mark of a hand clear on her pale skin where someone had slapped her.

“All of you?” Arvid asked. He felt breathless and off balance, and the stench of blood and death seemed unnaturally strong. He looked around the room. A pile of children’s shoes, of children’s small daggers. One of the children pointed down, under the table. Arvid leaned over to look and almost gagged. Three children lay there, obviously dead.