Read Online Mortal Consequences by Clayton Emery - Free Book Online Page B

Quarter.”
    “How do you know there is one?”
    She laughed, low and melodious. For all the aggravation, Sunbright was glad to hear her happy. It had been a long time since she’d laughed. Regrettably, that was his fault. He’d have to make up for the grief he’d caused her. For now, he plodded along without complaining.
    It was dodgy, though, to stay calm. He was a creature of the earth, a groundling, and being a mile in the air unnerved him. Too, he couldn’t banish the picture of Ioulaum shattering to fist-sized chunks from his mind’s eye. True, the island wouldn’t be destroyed for over three centuries, but still he felt it hung by a thread.
    Through the warehouse district they tripped, avoiding city guards and night crews and dogs, sometimes skirting so close to the city’s edge that Sunbright felt the yawning gap kiss his quaking knees. But finally they turned inward where lights and roistering marked taverns and food shops where workers wended after hours. Knucklebones told Sunbright to sit tight while she scouted. The barbarian propped his rump in a niche, folded his arms, but left his ears awake, and napped.
    Cat-quiet, Knucklebones faded through shadows, circling buildings, and hunting the darker spots. Her part-elven night vision was sharper than a human’s, and since mostly humans inhabited the enclaves, she had an advantage. Sure enough, she spied prime targets, two sailors drunk and lurching. They passed an alley perfect for ambush and, as she expected, were hooked into the shadows like dazed trout. Scanning for onlookers, Knucklebones skittered along a building front, down the side and around, to catch the assailants in the rear.
    The thieves were good, she noted. They’d dumped the sailors in the alley, smacked them with sacks of wet sand just hard enough to stun them—killings roused the city guard—rifled their purses and boots in seconds, then charged down the alley, quick to flee before anyone sought missing comrades.
    Knucklebones would have been plowed under if she hadn’t hissed from the dark, “Heads up, fasthands!”
    “Eh? Split, Littledark.” The thieves, a husband-and-wife team, plastered themselves against the walls lest this was a trap and crossbow bolts came flying. They rattled Thieves’ Cant so fast Knucklebones could barely grasp it.
    “Just hatched, turtles,” Knucklebones whispered. “Where pillow?”
    The thieves exchanged the lowest murmur, then decided to entrust Knucklebones—whose cant was correct—with the location of a den, but warned her not to follow. “Toe to Elkan’s, hooks and hods, Blue Cobbles, west, two, one, two, Kibbe. Fog.”
    “Misted.”
    And like fog, Knucklebones faded away in the dark, stamping unnaturally loud so they heard her leave.
    Sunbright jerked awake at her touch. “Whoa!” he grumbled. “I didn’t hear you.”
    “Piffle. If I were noisy, I’d have died at two. Come, I know where to go. Elkan’s, hooks and hods, Blue Cobbles, west, two, one, two, Kibbe.”
    “Those are directions?”
    “Elkan’s must be an ironmongery, selling pothooks and bricklayer’s hods, in the Street of Blue Cobbles on the west side. Knock twice, then once, then twice, and say Kibbe sent you.”
    Sunbright scratched his sore ear and asked her, “How do we know we won’t drop through a hole in the earth? Or as a joke we’re sent to knock on the city guard’s barracks?”
    “We don’t,” she said casually. “That’s what makes thieving so exciting.”
    Sunbright straightened his tackle and followed her tiny, dark form through more alleys. They traveled light in summer, with Knucklebones in her laced leather vest and breeches and no shoes, her black elven blade at her waist, and only a thin blanket roll with her comb and such tucked inside. Sunbright wore a long yellow shirt and iron-bound boots of moosehide, his back scabbard holding Harvester and a longbow and four arrows beside, a blanket roll and canteen and haversack of rations. Ever since