“You see. If you can anticipate, you can stay beyond harm’s reach.”
“You sound like a man of experience,” suggested Jimmy.
Malar’s eyes narrowed. “More than most men know, young sir.”
Jimmy looked around. The shadows had deepened as the sun had lingered in the west, and now the sky above was turning a stunning shade of violet as night approached. “It’s dark enough we won’t be noticed, I’m thinking.” He led Malar into the rear of the old inn, having to carefully pick his way across a section of timbers, what was left from a collapsed doorway and wall section, as well as part of the ceiling above. The roof was gone, and blackened timbers above showed starkly against the darkening sky. They moved cautiously, then Jimmy said, “It’s around here somewhere.”
He knelt and looked around. He moved some smaller debris covered in thick soot, raising a stench of wet charcoal. “Some of the wood is rotting.”
Malar said, “There is a ring of iron there, young sir.”
“Give me a hand,” said Jimmy as he cleared the top of the trapdoor.
As the two men pulled, Jimmy said, “This used to be the back room at an inn controlled by the Mockers.”
“Mockers?”
“Thieves,” said Jimmy. “I thought their fame reached into the vale.”
“The only thieves with whom I had contact were those who used quill and parchment, not dagger and guile. Businessmen.”
Jimmy laughed. “My brother would agree; he used to work for the worst of the lot, Rupert Avery.”
“That’s a name I have heard, young sir. My late master had cause to curse him more than once.”
They got the trap moved and swung it back, letting it fall. The opening yawned at them like a black pit. Jimmy said, “I wish we had some light.”
“You expect to travel in such gloom?” said Malar, a note of incredulity in his voice.
“There is no light on the brightest day down there.” He found what he was looking for, the ladder down, and as he swung himself down onto the topmost rung, he said, “There are lights down there if one but knows where to look.”
“If you know where to look,” Malar muttered under his breath.
They carefully descended into the darkness.
Dash winced, but not from the cold; rather he flinched at the sound of a lash striking a man down below. He, Gustaf, Talwin, and a few other men he had come to know were laboring atop the wall just to the north of Krondor’s main gate. Dash glanced over at Gustaf, who nodded, indicating everything was all right. Suddenly they both turned. A man screamed a few yards off as he lost his footing; in that brief instant, the man knew with dread certainty he was going to fall and no amount of will or prayer would keep him alive. His anguish and terror filled the afternoon air as he toppled sideways and fell to his death on the cobbles below. Gustaf flinched at the sound of the body striking the unyielding rock. They were repairing the battlements and the footing was treacherous, made doubly so by loose stones and constant fog in the mornings and evenings.
“Keep your wits about you,” said Dash.
“You don’t have to tell me that twice,” said Gustaf.
Dash chanced a look over the wall and saw the usual confusion of the foulbourgh, soldiers milling around, street vendors, and the other human flotsam drawn into this eddy of the previous year’s war. Somewhere out there, he fervently wished, his brother Jimmy was getting the information needed to alert Owen Greylock that something strange was taking place in Krondor.
Given the lack of resources, General Duko was doing an admirable job of restoring the city to its earlier status, at least from a military point of view. The merchants and other residents of Krondor would see years pass before the city came close to returning to its former prosperity. Too much damage had occurred for that to be anything but a distant dream. But from a soldier’s point of view, Krondor would be close to its previous level of defensibility in less than a year’s time, perhaps as quickly as nine or ten months.
Dash wished mightily he could get loose of this work gang, scout around, and find out what was going on, but the reality of the situation was that any man who wasn’t an invader was a slave. Whatever Dash’s father had been thinking, it would have made more sense to have sent along one of the men who had traveled to Novindus with Erik von Darkmoor, someone who spoke the language and had a fair chance of passing for one of the men from the continent across the sea.