hiding.’
‘If that’s where they are,’ said Arutha.
Cook said, ‘I doubt if the Upright Man would even mention it had he not a good notion that they’re down there somewhere.’
Hull nodded agreement. ‘That’s a fact. I can’t think of any place else in the city they could be hiding. The Upright Man would’ve pinned down the location as soon as a Mocker caught a glimpse of the first Nighthawk. Even though the thieves use a lot of the sewers to skulk about in, there are parts they don’t pass through much. And Fish Town is worse. The older fisher families are independent and tough, almost clannish. If someone took up residence in one of the old shacks near the docks, kept to himself … Even the Mockers only get silence from the Fish Town folk when they ask questions. Should the Nighthawks have infiltrated slowly, no one but the locals might have a hint. It’s a regular warren there, little streets all twisted about.’ He shook his head. ‘This part of the map’s useless. Half the buildings shown here are burned down. Shacks and hovels built anywhere there’s room. It’s a mess in there.’ He looked at the Prince. ‘Another name for Fish Town is the Maze.’
Jimmy said, ‘Trevor’s right. I’ve been in Fish Town as much as anyone in the Mockers, and that’s not much. There’s nothing worth stealing in there. But he’s wrong about one thing. The biggest problem isn’t blocking escape routes. It’s locating the Nighthawks. There are a lot of honest folk living in that part of town and you just can’t ride in and kill everyone. We’ve got to find their hideout.’ He considered. ‘From what I know of the Nighthawks, they’ll want some place that’s first of all defensible, then easy to flee. They’ll probably be here.’ His finger pointed to a spot on the map.
Trevor Hull said, ‘It’s a possibility. That building is nestled against those two walls, so they’ve only two fronts to cover. And there’s a network of tunnels below the streets there, and those tunnels are all small and difficult to navigate unless you’ve been there before. Yes, it’s a likely place.’
Jimmy looked at Arutha. ‘I’d better go change.’
Arutha said, ‘I don’t like the need, but you’re the best equipped to scout.’
Cook looked at Hull, who nodded slightly. ‘I could come along.’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘You know parts of the sewers better than I, Aaron, but I can slip in and out without making the water ripple. You haven’t the knack. And there’s no possible way you can get into Fish Town unnoticed, even on a noisy night like this. I’ll be safer if I go alone.’
Arutha said, ‘Shouldn’t you wait?’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘If I can locate their warren before they know they’ve been discovered, we may be able to clean them out before they know what hit them. People do funny things sometimes, even assassins. It being a festival day, their sentries will probably not expect someone nosing around. And, with the city in celebration, there will be lots of noises filtering down from the streets. Odd and out-of-place sounds will be less likely to alert anyone below the buildings. And if I have to poke around above ground, a strange poor boy in Fish Town isn’t as likely to be noticed this night as much as other nights. But I need to go at once.’
‘You know best,’ said Arutha. ‘But they’ll react should they discover someone’s seeking them out. One glimpse of you and they’ll come straight after me.’
Jimmy noticed Arutha didn’t seem troubled by that fact alone. It seemed to Jimmy the Prince wouldn’t mind an open confrontation. No, Jimmy knew what bothered him was his concern for the safety of others. ‘That goes without saying. But chances are excellent they’re coming after you tonight anyway. The palace is crawling with strangers.’ Jimmy looked out the window at the late afternoon sunset. ‘It’s almost seven hours after noon. If I were planning an attack on you, I’d wait about another two or three hours, just when the celebration is at its height. Performers and guests will be going in and out of the gates. Everyone will be half-drunk, tired from a day-long celebration, and feeling very relaxed. But I wouldn’t wait much after that or your guards might notice a late arriving guest entering the grounds. If you stay alert you should be safe enough while I snoop around. I’ll report back as soon as I have a hint.’
Arutha indicated permission for Jimmy to withdraw. Quickly Trevor Hull and his first mate followed, leaving a troubled, seething Prince alone with his thoughts. Arutha sat back, balled fist held before his mouth as his eyes stared off into nothing.
He had faced the minions of Murmandamus near the Black Lake, Moraelin, but the final contest was yet to come. Arutha cursed himself for becoming complacent over the last year. When he had first returned with Silverthorn, the key to saving Anita from the effects of the Nighthawks’ poison, he had been nearly ready to return at once to the north. But the affairs of court, his own marriage, the trip to Rillanon to attend his brother’s wedding to Queen Magda, then Lord Caldric’s funeral, the birth of his sons, all these had come and gone without his attending to the business north of the Kingdom. Beyond the great ranges lay the Northlands. There lay the seat of his enemy’s power. There Murmandamus marshalled his forces. And from that seat far to the north he was reaching down again to touch the life of the Prince of Krondor, the Lord of the West, the man fated by prophecy to be his undoing, the Bane of Darkness. Should he live. And again Arutha found himself struggling within the confines of his own demesne, the battle carried to his own door. Striking his palm with his fist, Arutha voiced a low, harsh curse. To himself and whatever gods listened, he vowed that when this business in Krondor was finished, he, Arutha conDoin, would carry the struggle northward to Murmandamus.
The darkness hid a thousand treasures amid a million pieces of worthless garbage. The waters in the sewers flowed slowly, and often large clumps of debris would gather in a jam called a tof. The tofsmen who picked over such floating refuse earned their living gleaning valuables lost into the sewers. They also kept the refuse flowing by breaking up the jams of garbage that threatened to back up the sewers. Little of this concerned Jimmy, save that a tofsman was standing less than twenty feet away.
The young squire had dressed all in black, save for his old, comfortable boots. He had even purloined an executioner’s black hood from the torture chamber. Beneath the black he wore more simple garb, needed to blend into the Poor Quarter. The tofsman looked directly at the boy several times, but for all his peering, Jimmy did not exist.
For the better part of half an hour, Jimmy had stood motionless in the deep shadows of an intersection, while the old tofsman picked over the smelly mess passing by. Jimmy hoped this wasn’t the man’s chosen location to work, otherwise he could be there for hours. Jimmy even more fervently hoped the tofsman was real and not a disguised Nighthawk lookout.
Finally the man wandered off, and Jimmy relaxed, though he did not move until the tofsman had had ample time to vanish down a side tunnel. Then, with stealth bordering on the unnatural, Jimmy crept along the tunnel toward the area below the heart of Fish Town.
Down a series of tunnels he travelled silently. Even as he stepped into water, he managed to disturb it only slightly. The gifts of nature – lightning-fast reflexes, astonishing coordination, and the ability to make decisions, to react nearly instantaneously – had been augmented by training from the Mockers and forged in the harshest furnace: the daily life of a working thief. Jimmy made each move as if his life depended upon remaining undetected, for it did.
Down the dark conduits of the sewers he journeyed, his senses extended into the darkness. He knew how to ignore the faint sounds coming down from the streets above and how the slight echoes of rippling water rebounding from the stonework should sound; the slightest variation would warn of anyone lurking out of view. The noisome air of the sewer masked any potentially warning
