A Thief in the Night

chapter Fifty-seven

“There!” one of the dwarves shouted.

Balint spun around, her eyes wide in surprise. “You survived that trap? How?”

“Did you leave a trap for me?” Malden asked, his face a mask of nonchalance. He blew out the candle of his lantern, since there was plenty of light to see by now. “I didn’t notice.”

Balint turned to her confederates. “Make sure he doesn’t get past the next one,” she told them.

Malden started to rush forward, intending to grab Balint and force her to give him the antidote. It was the best plan he could come up with, having no time to think anything through.

It nearly got him killed.

The law said Balint could not use any weapon, even in her own defense. Over the centuries the dwarves had found more than one creative loophole in the treaty. Before Malden even got up to speed she took a glass flask from off her belt and smashed it against the floor between them. Pungent liquid splashed across the flagstones. She must have drilled her men in what to do next, as one of them tossed a lit taper into the midst of the puddle thus formed.

Malden reared back as a wall of flames leapt up at him. He overbalanced and fell on his posterior, his hands stretched out behind him to catch his fall. Scuttling like a crab, he raced backward, away from the spreading fire.

In a moment the fuel was all consumed and the fire died, but it left a thick bank of greasy smoke hanging in the air. By the time Malden batted away the fumes the dwarves and the knocker were nowhere to be seen.

Cursing silently, he jumped to his feet and raced for the few remaining shadows in the dormitory level. He had no doubt the dwarves had done the same. They could be anywhere around him, hiding perhaps in one of the drab houses of their ancestors—or they could be even now running down a side passage, away from him. There were far too many such avenues to choose from. The dormitory was a maze of narrow lanes with nothing to recommend one or another.

He tried to think what Balint would do next. Retreating was certainly what he would have done—he was an expert on running away from trouble. Though he had always felt most comfortable running along rooftops, high above his pursuers, up where he could observe them without being seen himself—

He clamped his eyes shut and listened.

Yes.

He could just make out the faint tapping of the knocker. The creature was blind, Slag had said. Its only method of sensing its environment was to listen to the echoes of its own drumming.

After a split second the tapping stopped—perhaps Balint had silenced her creature to better hide her escape—but Malden knew where to head next. He raced up a ladder, heading to the top of one of the towers. When he reached its highest level, he grabbed the edge of its flat roof and pulled himself up to catch a glimpse over the edge.

Immediately he dropped back, as a mouth full of peglike teeth and two white, blind eyes came screaming toward him. The knocker wasn’t constrained by the law. It came scampering over the edge of the roof, its long fingers reaching to grab and rend Malden’s face.

He swung aside, balancing all his weight on one foot on the top of the ladder. The knocker went hurtling past him, gibbering horrible curses Malden couldn’t understand. It fell nearly all the way to the flagstones below before catching a rung of the ladder and bouncing there like a ball on a string.

Its momentum shook the ladder and Malden nearly fell himself. His arms out wide, wheeling for balance, he felt his foot begin to slip on the rung. It was all he could do to get his other leg jammed between two rungs so he didn’t slip and fall to his death.

When his heart stopped hammering in his chest he took a deep breath and started up again. This time when he got his eyes above the edge he saw what he’d been looking for—Balint’s back, running away from him at speed.

He hauled himself over the edge of the roof and ran across its flat expanse. There was no rain in the underground city, and no snow, so the dwarves had built their houses without sloped rooftops. Malden found the going much easier than what his legs were trained for: the shingled roofs of Ness. His legs were much longer than Balint’s as well. It wasn’t long before he reached the far side of the roof and saw her crossing a rope to the next roof over. He looked down and saw she’d thrown a grapple to make herself a bridge. As small as she was, it was easy for her to swing across, hand over hand.

“You won’t get away that easy,” he called.

Balint glared at him over her shoulder and spat out a curse in a language he didn’t know. Exactly as he’d hoped, his taunting had slowed her down. He reached the near end of the rope before she was even halfway across.

This end of the rope was tied to a narrow chimney pipe. It would be child’s play to cut the knot and let her fall. It was a good forty feet down. He doubted even a dwarf as tough as Balint could survive a plummet like that.

Of course, the antidote she carried was probably held in some fragile bottle. If she fell it might shatter. He left the knot alone. Instead he danced forward along the rope, one foot in front of the other. As easy as breathing, he thought, making sure not to look down. I can do this, I can—

Balint got to the far side and started cutting through the rope while he was still running on air between two buildings.

Malden felt the rope twang and shudder beneath him, knew that he only had a split second before he fell himself. At this height he wouldn’t just break his neck when he hit the ground. He would splatter.

He had no choice but to jump. He timed his leap just as the rope went slack beneath him. His hands shot forward and grabbed the ledge of the far roof, and he pulled himself over, rolling away in case Balint had any more traps waiting for him. When no metal jaws clamped shut on his face and no bursts of fire singed his eyebrows, he leapt to his feet and found her cowering away from him, her eyes hard as she waited for him to attack. “You have something I want,” he told her.

She looked him up and down. “Do I? But what’s in it for me? I doubt you could satisfy a bedbug.”

It took him a moment to work out what she was saying. Then he growled in anger and stepped toward her—

—and right into a rope snare lying before him on the rooftop.

Malden threw his hands out to his sides, expecting the rope to close around his ankle and haul him up into the air while Balint made a clean getaway.

Instead he just stared down at a length of rope that didn’t move at all. He didn’t understand. It was an obvious trap. He’d fallen for it like a novice at this game. Yet for some reason it hadn’t triggered.

Balint’s eyes burned with fury. Ignoring him, she ran to the side of the rooftop and stared down at the street. “Murin! I told you to secure that f*cking line!”

There was no response from below.

“Murin! You answer me right now!” She ran to the other side of the roof. “Slurri! Get your thumb out of your arse and come up here!”

“They don’t seem to hear you,” Malden said, stepping toward her. “Perhaps they grew tired of listening to your curses. Or maybe something else found them. Something in bronze armor. Something that isn’t bound by any laws or treaties.”

Balint turned and glared at him. Then she looked behind her. She had very little room to back up, and no more grappling hooks to throw. Her trap had failed—and now she was snared herself. She had nowhere to go. Malden took another step toward her.

“They’re probably already dead,” he said, thinking revenants must have come down to this level. Thinking that even if they were still alive, he had to keep her thinking she was out of options. “Come, Balint. The antidote. And then we can go our separate ways. Maybe you’ll even make it out of here alive.”

She took a half step backward and nearly fell off the roof. He saw her teetering, her arms flying outward, and he rushed forward to grab her and pull her back.

“F*cking get off of me,” she said, batting at his hands as soon as she was steady on the roof again.

“Damn you, Balint, I just saved your life! Be reasonable!”

“No human gets the better of me! I’ll suck your eyes out and f*ck your skull!” she shrieked.

Then she drew the wrench from its scabbard at her hip, and smacked him across the jaw with it.