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C
HAPTER

16

I
woke up in the cellar of the chimney swifts' house, surrounded by charkids. A lantern was in the middle of the floor, and one of the kids was passing around their dinner from a basket. A swift must've brought it down; the thump of his feet on the stairs had woken me up.

After I'd stolen Periwinkle's locus magicalicus, Sootle had rowed us back to the Sunrise. I'd only managed to snatch bits of sleep for the past couple of days, so when we arrived at Sootle's house I stumbled down to the cellar and into my blanket. I'd slept the whole day away. My stomach growled.

I sat up with the prickly blanket wrapped around me. Beside me, Pip-cat uncurled itself, got to its four paws, and stretched.

Like me, the charkids were skinny and covered with soot, barefoot and dressed in black. One of the chargirls edged up to me and handed me a hard roll with cheese in it. “What's your name?”

“Pip,” I said. “What's yours?”

“Emm,” she said. “You Sootle's new charboy?”

I nodded and took a bite of roll-and-cheese.

Another charkid came over, a boy with hair shaved short and eyes rimmed with red, as if he'd been crying. “He's mean, is Sootle,” he said.

I shrugged. He wasn't that bad.

“The boss is meaner,” said the girl.

The boss? “Sootle's the boss, isn't he?”

“Shhh,” whispered the boy, with a quick glance at the ceiling, as if somehow the boss could hear him. He shook his head. “The boss is somebody else.”

“Who?” I asked.

Emm glanced toward the ceiling, too. “He's upstairs. In the attic. That's where he stays.”

“They keep him in a cage,” the boy leaned in to whisper.

A cage?

“'Cos he's so mean,” Emm said.

“No, it isn't a cage,” another chargirl put in. “It's a room, a metal room.”

“Whatever it is, he's out of it now,” the boy whispered, “'cos they're having a meeting up there.”

A meeting? I got to my feet, swallowing the last bite of my dinner. Maybe at the meeting they'd talk about why the swifts were stealing the locus stones and what they were going to do with them. I started toward the stairs.

The charkids stared. “We're supposed to stay down here,” Emm said, grabbing at my ankle. “Drury said so.”

I shook her off. “I won't be long,” I said.

With Pip following, I went up the stairs and padded through the dark kitchen, then up the even darker stairs, pausing to listen at each door. When I got to the door to the room where I'd first met Sootle, I heard the sound of low talking. I pressed my ear against the keyhole, but couldn't make out the words. Hm. I'd have to take a chance.

Quick as sticks, I cat-footed back down to the kitchen, where I found a scuttle full of kindling, a striker, and a shovel and broom, and lugged it all back to the door. Taking a deep breath and keeping my head down, I went in.

The room was the same as before, blank walls and empty fireplace, and it was chilly. Six chimney swifts and Sootle were sitting around the table. They all stopped talking and looked up as I came in.

“Drury told you charkids to stay in the cellar,” Sootle said sharply.

I shrugged. “I was asleep.” I held up the scuttle. “D'you want a fire?”

Sootle glanced at the empty hearth, then nodded. “Be quick about it, Pip.” Then he hunched over the table and spoke in a low voice to the other swifts, and they leaned forward to listen.

I went to the hearth. Since the last time I'd been there and climbed the chimney, somebody had lit a wood fire and let it burn down to ashes. Slowly, keeping my ear on the conversation at the table behind me, I unloaded each piece of wood from the scuttle, then swept up the ashes in the hearth.

The swifts kept talking, but they kept their voices too low for me to hear. They kept somebody in a metal room upstairs? At my side, Pip twitched its prickly cat tail and then climbed up to my shoulder. Hmmm. If I did the seeing-and-hearing spell, Pip's sharp ears would let me hear what the swifts were talking about at the table. I was about to whisper
Tallennar
when the door banged open.

The swifts at the table jumped to their feet. I stayed crouching by the hearth, and peeked over my shoulder to see. Two big men lumbered into the room. My heart gave a sudden jolt of fright. I recognized them. They were the men who'd beaten the fluff out of me at the Heartsease courtyard and then tried to kidnap me. The men stepped aside. A wizard came in the doorway—Nimble, smiling his secret smirk. Nimble? What was
he
doing here?

And then came the boss.

Oh. Oh, no.

The boss was Crowe.

 

 

C
HAPTER

17

C
rowe, here in the city. My stomach clenched with icy fear.
He
had sent the minions to kidnap me. He was behind the locus stone thefts. The anstriker spell had gone wrong somehow, and he'd been here all along. I
had
to get away before he saw me.

Crowe stepped smoothly past his minions, past Nimble, his cold gaze probing the room.

I kept my head down. Let him not see me. Please don't see me.

His gaze swept right past me at the hearth and came to rest on Sootle. “I see you've started without me,” he said.

His voice was just like I remembered from when I was a scared little kid. Flat, quiet. He made the room feel colder just by stepping into it. I risked a quick glance. He looked just the same. Middling height, not very big, not very old. Neat black suit and neatly combed and oiled black hair. He didn't
look
noticeable, but everyone in the room knew he was there. As if he took up a lot more space than most people.

Maybe he wouldn't see me at all. If I stayed crouched and quiet and looked like a charboy sweeping out a hearth. My hands shaking, I swept up a bit more of the ash from the fireplace and put it into the scuttle.

“We were just talking, sir,” Sootle said, stepping quickly aside from the head of the table.

“So I see,” Crowe said. He moved to the table and stood there. He had his back to me, but I knew Crowe, I knew he was aware of everything and everyone in the room. He crooked a finger and his minions stepped up beside him. Crowe whispered something. The minions nodded and went to stand in front of the door, burly arms folded across their chests. Nimble stood next to the table, still wearing his smirk; he'd glanced around the room, but he hadn't recognized me, I didn't think. Moving carefully, I got some soot from the hearth I was sweeping and rubbed it over my face. Not much of a disguise, really.

Sootle lifted the knapsack from under his chair and pulled out one of the rag-wrapped packages. “Here it is, sir,” he said, setting it on the table.

“Ah.” Crowe unwrapped the package. The tourmalifine cage with Periwinkle's locus magicalicus in it. The wires of the cage glinted silvery green in the room's dim light. “Very good,” Crowe said, handing the cage to Nimble, who stowed it in a pocket of his wizard's robe. Crowe glanced at the minions at the door and nodded. Then Crowe turned away from the table and said something to Sootle in a low voice. Sootle nodded.

I edged deeper into the shadows by the hearth. Pip-cat crouched on my shoulder as if it was ready to leap on somebody. I kept my head down. My breath came fast and my hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists to make them stop.

Crowe's footsteps sounded loud in the quiet room. They came around the table.
Step,
step,
step.

Keep going. Walk past me, just walk past.

The footsteps stopped in front of me. Black leather shoes, black trousers. A hand reached out, grabbed my arm, and jerked me to my feet, and then I felt his cold fingers under my chin, lifting my head so he could see my face. His pale eyes looked me up and down. His minions loomed up behind him.

“It is a good disguise, Connwaer,” Crowe said in his cold, flat voice. “But as you grow up you look more and more like your mother.” He smudged his thumb across my cheek. “And the soot can't hide that from me.”

I stepped out of his reach, my back against the fireplace. Pip, on my shoulder, snarled, and its cat tail bristled.

“Take him,” Crowe said over his shoulder to the minions.

As the minions' big hands reached for me, I squirmed sideways. If I could just get to the door—

The minion came after me. I shouted the dazzler spell. The magic worked perfectly—a gust of sparks exploded from Pip's mouth and whirled into the minion's eyes; he flinched away and threw up his arm to block the light. The sparks buzzed around him like angry bees. The chimney swifts were shouting and running to block the door. The other minion lunged after me.

“
Anafinaloth!
” I shouted, the dazzler spell again. Pip leaped up, and a bolt of light shot into Crowe's eyes.

“Shut him up!” Crowe said, backing away, his eyes streaming. “Don't let him use the magic!”

The other minion leaped for me. He grabbed the front of my sweater and slammed me against the wall, and I gasped out the needle-prickler spell; he shrieked and let me go, slapping at his arms and legs as if he was being stung all over by wasps. I scrambled away from him and headed for the door.

Nimble, gripping his locus stone, blocked my way. Two swifts loomed up beside him.

Not that way, then.

As the swifts reached for me, I scrambled under the table, dodging reaching arms, and came out next to the hearth.

“Come on, Pip,” I gasped, and, kicking firewood out of the way, darted to the chimney. Swifts tried grabbing my legs, but I was too quick for them, climbing up the narrow chimney. Pip climbed after me, its cat paws clinging to the bricks. At the top, I stuck my head out and felt the cold air of night and saw the lights of the city and the dark sky overhead. Quickly I climbed out of the chimney and raced across the roof, Pip bounding after me. I got to the edge of the roof. A dark alleyway lay below, and then the roof of the house next door. A long way to jump, but not too far. From below, I heard the front door of Sootle's house bang open, and a chimney swift's shout.

Taking a deep breath, I jumped, landing with a splat on the slate rooftiles. I listened for a second, and didn't hear a shout from below. On stealthy feet, I padded across to the next house and made the alley jump again.

When I'd been a thief, it had been easy to get into houses to steal things. I'd just find a gutter drain that led up to the roof, and then I'd climb in a high window, because often enough people left them unlocked. Soon I came to a house with a gutter drain, and shimmied down it to the ground. With the cobblestones cold under my feet and the sound of shouts and pounding feet behind me, Pip and I fled into the night.

 

Crowe, Crowe, Crowe, I kept thinking. Crowe here, in the city. Crowe after me. The thought made me run faster. I couldn't let him catch me.

With Pip-cat bounding after me, I rounded a corner, my bare feet silent on the cobblestoned street. I ducked into a dark alleyway. Leaning against a brick wall, panting, I closed my eyes; the sound of chasing footsteps faded. Pip crawled up the wall beside me and clung to the bricks over my head.

I edged to the corner and peered around. Pip leaped from the wall onto my shoulder and poked its whiskery cat nose around the corner, too. A few werelight streetlamps glowed, but the houses and shops along the street were dark. All was quiet.

Grrrr
, Pip growled.

I slipped back into the alley and slid down the wall to sit on the cold cobbles. “Come here, Pip,” I whispered. Pip hopped onto my knees and fluffed its tail. Time to turn it back into a dragon. Putting my hand on the prickly place between the cat-Pip's ears, I whispered the reverse-embirrimer spell. As the spell flashed, I shoved Pip under my black sweater so the sparks and white-bright light wouldn't show every minion in the Sunrise where we were hiding. I hunched over as the light flared out.

Pip squirmed. I lifted my sweater, and dragon-Pip crawled out, sneezing sparks and rubbing at its snout with its claw-paw.

“All right?” I whispered.

It cocked its head and gave me a glary look with its ember-red eye.

Step-clatter-step
, I heard, the sound of running feet. I snuck a look 'round the corner. Chimney swifts, racing down the middle of the cobbled street, coming straight toward my hiding place. A hooded, cloaked figure glided along a few steps behind them. One of the swifts pointed. I ducked back into the dark alley, and with Pip swooping after me on its golden wings, skiffed away. I took a couple of quick turns until the sound of chasing footsteps faded.

I caught my breath. Now what?

It is not a bad thing to ask for help now and then
, Nevery had said.

Right. He was right. I couldn't fight Crowe alone. It was time to find help.

I headed for home.