welled up from the crowd.
Still, he had not come to see the knight’s final distress, but only to do a little hard labor and reap a harvest of coin. He looked away from the scene on the gibbet and moved through the boisterous crowd, now looking for a final victim before he retired for the day. It would be easy to take a purse at the moment the hanged man dropped. At that moment every eye in the square would be turned to the same place. Few easy marks presented themselves, however, and suddenly Malden was in danger of being trampled. Some among the crowd had begun to shout for the prisoner’s release, raising their fists in the air. They drew closer to the gallows, as if they might storm it and save the man themselves. The bailiff waved for the watch. The town’s policing force, dressed alike in cloaks patterned with embroidered eyes, rushed into the throng and pushed back with their quarterstaffs until the crowd gave some way.
Knowing it would be folly to try to take another purse right under the noses of the city watch, Malden shrank back, away from the gallows, and stumbled backward directly into what felt like a wall of jangling iron.
He whirled about, a curse on his lips, but this he forestalled as he saw whom he’d tripped over. A man much broader and taller than himself who loitered at the back of the crowd, aloof from it as if immune to its bloodlust. He wore a hauberk of chain mail covered by a jerkin of black leather. His head was covered in a wild tangle of brown hair that didn’t end until it wrapped around his chin in a full and glorious beard. The man peered down at him as if from a considerable height. A jagged scar crossed the bridge of his nose, nearly bisecting his face.
“Steady on there, boy,” the big man said. “Are you hurt? Ah, but now I see you are. I’m a blasted pillock for not seeing you there.”
Malden licked his lips. He’d been ready to call the man far worse than that until he saw the massive sword strapped to his back. So instead he kept his mouth shut, because he had a brain in his head. He never argued with a man wearing a sword. He held his peace for another reason as well. Under his sling, his long thin fingers had touched a fat purse on the swordsman’s belt. By the way it hung low and heavy, it must contain something more precious than copper.
Up on the viewing platform the dwarf Murdlin was trying desperately to get the Burgrave’s attention. Malden was barely aware that anyone else in the square existed. He was too busy running his fingertip across the milled edge of a coin inside the swordsman’s purse. It must be silver, he thought, just based on how it felt.
It was folly to steal from a man so heavily armed, recklessness of a sort Malden never permitted himself. Yet the oaf had bruised him. Malden feigned unsteadiness and let the swordsman grasp his left arm. With his right hand he made a quick pass with his shears and felt the weight of the coins that dripped from the cut purse. They were heavy enough to be gold, even though he wouldn’t know until later when he could examine them in private.
“The fault was mine, and I will beg your pardon, rather than insult you further,” Malden said. He reached up and touched the cowl of his cloak in salute, then twisted away and pushed into the crowd before the swordsman could say another word.
Up on the gallows, the hangman draped the noose around the knight’s neck, then pulled it fast. Better you than me, Malden thought. Best to get away now in the noise when the poor fool dropped. He took no more than a few steps into the comforting anonymity of the throng, however, before the swordsman behind him spoke the two words Malden dreaded most.
“Hold! Thief!” the man shouted.
From no more than five strides away, a watchman in an eye-covered cloak looked up and right into Malden’s eyes. The watchman took a step toward him—but then something miraculous happened.
“Wait!” the dwarf envoy bellowed, up on the viewing platform. “I cannot let this go on. This man is beloved by the king of my people. Lord Burgrave, I demand you spare his life!”
It was enough to turn the square into a bedlam. The watchman had all he could do to hold the crowd back from tearing the gallows down with their own hands. Long before he and his fellows had the mob under control, Malden was off and away, his scrawny legs flashing under his cloak. It was the best chance he would get to make good his escape, and he planned on milking the opportunity for every drop of grace. Yet his luck was not unalloyed at that moment. As he fled he glanced behind him only once—and then only to confirm what he dreaded. The watch had lost sight of him, but the swordsman had not. The big man was right behind him.
CHAPTER NINE
Malden pushed through the crowd, which tried to push back. He was a slippery fish, though, and ducked easily under raised arms or around fat bellies and even between skinny legs. His small size was an asset in a life spent always running away from something. He ducked around a party of student scholars too drunk to react as he whipped past them, then clambered on top of a cart full of fruit before the vendor could grab him. He plucked up a skinned melon, overripe and bursting with juice after being out in the hot sun all day, and waited for his moment.
“You there,” the vendor began to shout, “come down and—”
Malden flipped the vendor a thruppence and the hawker turned away as if he’d never seen him. It was a dozen times what the melon was worth.
The bearded swordsman shoved his way through the students, knocking half of them down like ninepins. “Thief, hold, I only want to—”
Malden hurled the melon with pinpoint accuracy. It exploded across the swordsman’s face and chest, the pulp forming great yellow clots in his beard and across his eyes. By the time he recovered from his shock and started scraping the mess off his face, Malden was off and running again.
Market Square was a central location from which one could reach anywhere in the Free City of Ness. Malden chose none of the half-dozen streets that led away from the square. He knew a better road, a kind of highway, where he could make much better speed: across the rooftops, where few could follow.
First, though, he had to get up above the crowd.
Along the south edge of the square there was a massive multitiered fountain, a gift from the third Burgrave to the people. It was in the shape of a series of bowls held by the handmaidens of the Lady, the Burgrave’s favorite deity. Malden dashed for it and then leapt up one tier after another, his feet barely getting wet as he stepped on the stone rims of the bowls. Balanced precariously at the top, one foot on a handmaiden’s cocked elbow, he looked back to see if his ascent was drawing the ire of the watch. He needn’t have bothered. The people had mobbed the gallows en masse and were busy cutting down the imprisoned knight, while the Burgrave and the dwarf envoy bellowed conflicting orders at their various servants and retainers. Malden easily made the leap from the top of the fountain to a pitched roof beyond, dropping to all fours to get a better grip on the slick lead shingles. He had landed on the top of the civic armory, which normally bristled with guards, but they were busy rushing out to join the general melee in the square. He clambered over the roofline of the armory and up one of its many spires to leap over to another roof, this the top of the tax and customs house.
It wasn’t the first time he’d climbed these heights. The district around Market Square was full of old temples, public buildings, and the palatial homes of guildmasters and minor nobility. It was called the Spires for its most common architectural detail—all of which were so heavily ornamented, carved, and perforated they were easier to climb than a spreading oak. Combined with how close the buildings pressed to one another, Malden could move through the Spires almost as easily as he could walk on flat cobbles.
Arms spread for balance, he hurried down the roofline of the customs house, one foot in front of the other like he was walking
