launched himself across the narrow gap of the Needle’s Eye, an alley that curled around the back of the university cloisters. The cloisters had a nearly flat rooftop running a hundred yards away from him, an easy place to gain some time in case he was still being pursued. Of course, that was impossible. There was no way a man wearing thirty pounds of chain mail on his back could—
“Oh, that’s unfair,” Malden breathed.
A puffing, roaring noise like the bellow of an exhausted bull chased him across the roof, and then the clanking noise of chain mail slapping on shingles. The swordsman clambered up on top of the customs house, dragging himself upward despite all the weight he carried. The bastard must be as strong as a warhorse, Malden thought.
“Just—want—to—talk,” the swordsman grunted, hauling himself up onto the steeply peaked roof, staring at Malden across the alley between them. “Listen, thief,” he said, “you needn’t run—any further. I just—just want to talk.”
“Is your tongue as sharp as your sword?” Malden asked. “Come no closer.” Witty banter wasn’t coming as easily as he’d hoped. Maybe he was too terrified to crack jokes. Well. Never mind. He drew his weapon. “This,” he said, “is a bodkin.”
“So it is,” the swordsman replied, the way a tutor might speak to a student who had just mastered the first declension of a regular verb.
Malden sneered. “It may not look like much. But it’s designed for one thing, and one alone. It has a wickedly sharp tip so it can punch right through chain mail and into an armored man’s vitals.” Of course, of the hundred odd uses Malden had come up with for his knife, that was the one he’d never actually tried. He imagined it would take a lot of strength to push it through the fine mesh of metal links. He would have to get his back into it. Assuming the swordsman hadn’t cut his own spine in half before he had a chance to try. “If you attempt to follow me further—”
“I don’t want to follow you over there. Bloodgod’s armpits! That’s the last thing I want to have to do today. I just want to talk to you. Truly.”
Malden pointed the weapon directly toward the swordsman’s midsection.
The swordsman responded by getting a running start and then leaping over the gap between the customs house and the roof of the university cloister. As the enormous man came flying toward him, Malden let out a yelp and broke into a run. Behind him the swordsman came down hard on the lead tiles of the cloister’s roof and landed altogether wrong on his leading foot. He slipped and twisted around and fell with a great clanging noise that must have alarmed every student and scholar inside the cloister—unless they were all up in the square. The students of the university famously loved a good riot. The swordsman’s legs and then his lower half slid over the edge and dangled in space, while his hands scrabbled at the roof tiles, looking for any kind of purchase. It was all the swordsman could do to keep from rolling over the edge and dropping into the Needle’s Eye. From that height the impact would almost certainly break bones.
“Blast,” the swordsman said. Then he shouted, “Cythera! Stop him!”
Malden was already running down the long lane of the cloister’s rooftop. At its far end, he knew, was the Cornmarket Bridge, which was lined in allegorical statues. If he launched himself off the edge of the roof and angled it just right, he could easily snag the top of the Bounties of Harvest Time. That particular statue had wide hips and a cornucopia full of fruits and grains, which would give him plenty of handholds to climb down to safety on—
Malden had to stop short when a woman in a velvet cloak materialized out of thin air, directly in his path.
He gawped like a fish on a pier, from the shock of her appearance, of course, but also—also—from the nature of her appearance. His mind felt like it had slammed into a brick wall, and his eyes felt pinned to the spot. He could not look away from her.
The woman was astonishingly beautiful, though it was hard to tell. Dark, complicated, disturbing tattoos covered her cheeks and forehead and the bare arms she revealed as she swept the cloak back over her shoulders. Her eyes were very large, very blue, and altogether too heartbreakingly sorrowful to look at for more than a moment.
She smelled of some perfume Malden had never smelled before. Her hair looked softer than sable, and despite the circumstances, he took a moment to imagine what it would be like to bury his face in her curls.
It would be … very pleasant, he thought.
“Are you Cythera?” Malden asked, because he could think of nothing else to say to this bewitching woman. He knew he should be running, knew that the swordsman would be right behind him. Yet if he ran away now, that would mean tearing his eyes away from her exotic beauty.
She smiled. It was the single least mirthful smile Malden had ever seen. “I am.” She took a step closer. That was when he realized what was so disturbing about her tattoos. They were moving. The complex patterns of interweaving tendrils, leaves, briars, thorns, flowers, and the like were slowly rearranging themselves on her face, seeking out new arrangements and complications, forming arabesques and elegant knots that resolved themselves while he watched into wholly new patterns, which … it was quite mesmerizing, really, just watching them. Just—
Malden tore his gaze away. He’d felt entranced, and well he should have. Something about the tattoos had dazzled him, clouding his mind. He never enjoyed being tricked—he was the one who was supposed to trick other people. He roared as he brought his bodkin around, the point angled toward her throat.
“That,” she told him, “would be a singularly bad idea.” It was not a threat. Somehow the tone of her voice conveyed the sense that she wanted nothing less than to see him hurt, that she really didn’t wish him ill, but that he was playing with fire all the same. Or was that just another illusion? Perhaps she was some kind of witch and was quite happy about leading him to his doom.
Best, he thought, to break the spell and flee.
Slowly he lowered the bodkin. “I don’t know what manner of creature you are,” he told her, “but I really must be going.”
“Oh no you don’t,” the swordsman said, coming upon Malden from behind. He grabbed Malden’s head under one massive arm and squeezed. Apparently the swordsman had recovered from his stumbling fall. There was no way for Malden to break the hold: the oaf had the strength of a bear. He rather smelled like one, too. “You and I,” the swordsman said, giving Malden’s head another squeeze, “are going to have our talk now. All right? Promise me you won’t,” yet another squeeze, “run off?”
“I promise, of course, how could I have been so rash as to—as to—I promise! Just stop that! Your mail is digging into my neck.”
“Very good,” the swordsman said. He let Malden loose to stagger around on the roof, grasping at his throat. “My name, by the way, is Bikker. We weren’t properly introduced before.”
“I’m Malden.” The thief bent over double for a moment. “Well met.”
“Indeed. So. Malden?”
“Yes?” Malden said, lifting his head.
“This is for the melon,” Bikker said, just before punching him right in the face with one massive mailed fist.
CHAPTER TEN
Approximately three hundred yards to the northwest, Market Square had erupted into
