Shield of Stars

by Hilari Bell

  When they reached the other side of the roof, Weasel looked down. One of the guards, already looking up, shouted, “There! There he is!”

  Weasel stepped back from the edge. “A master of the obvious if ever I heard one. We have to wait till they open the trap door before we lay the ladder across.”

  Arisa snorted. “And that’s not obvious?”

  Weasel grinned. “All right, it is. But you’ve got to admit, it’s going pretty well so far.”

  “I admit it. Actually, I’m impressed. How did you know how the guards would react?”

  “I’m pretty good at reading people,” Weasel told her. “A pickpocket has to be. So does a lawyer. Justice Holis says that people are all that matters. I’m beginning to think he’s right, though I use my knowledge of people more … profitably than he did.”

  “He sounds like a good man,” said Arisa. “But soft.”

  “He’s not soft,” said Weasel defensively. “All right, he is, but that’s … Never mind. I like soft in a justice. Particularly one who might be judging me.”

  “Your law-clerk coating is beginning to wear thin,” Arisa told him. “The pickpocket’s showing through. Shouldn’t they be coming through that trapdoor?”

  “Any minute,” Weasel confirmed.

  A minute passed. And another. Another. By the time the hatch banged open, Weasel had begun to think they’d given up and gone, but the guardsman’s face that appeared in the opening was as triumphant as he’d expected.

  “Got you!” the man shouted. Then he saw the ladder and swore.

  “Now,” Weasel murmured. He and Arisa swung the ladder in a controlled fall over the alley. It ended in a not-so-controlled crash, but this was no time to fret over details.

  “Go!” Weasel cried, and Arisa started scrambling across the ladder toward the next roof.

  The guard was still heaving himself out of the hatch when Weasel started after her. The view from the ladder to the alley floor would have been terrifying if he’d had time to be frightened, but the guard had emerged from the hatch and was climbing over the slippery slates. If he reached the base of the ladder before they got across … If he was angry enough that he’d rather see them dead than escaped … Weasel was all but crawling on Arisa’s heels when she rolled off the ladder and onto the warehouse roof. And she hadn’t been slow.

  Weasel scrambled to safety and spun around.

  “Watch out below!” he shouted, and shoved the ladder off the edge.

  It made a horrifying crash, but looking down, Weasel saw that the guard still stationed there had taken his warning to heart and gotten out of the way.

  He grinned and ran after Arisa, who was already on the other side of the warehouse roof. The side that faced the docks, where the big crane rested, its ropes trailing all the way down to the street. To escape.

  Fortunately, no one was using it now—though the crane ropes were only one of several ways Weasel had found to descend from the warehouse. The fastest way.

  “After you,” he told Arisa politely.

  Her face was alight with excitement as she grabbed the rope, wrapped her boots around it, and slid swiftly down. Weasel wondered again about her past. He knew why he’d learned to climb from a tree to a building, and slide down a rope, but she was a seamstress’ daughter!

  This wasn’t the time to speculate. Weasel twisted his ankles around the rope and slid down, just slowly enough to avoid burning his hands.

  Several people on the street were staring, but no one moved to stop them. Weasel smiled at them and took Arisa’s arm, setting off at a brisk walk. With any luck, they’d have disappeared before the guards even—

  “Halt, in the name of the law!”

  “Run,” Weasel commanded, and set the example. He’d delayed them for fifteen minutes already—there was no reason to hold back now. The cobbles flew under his racing feet, and Arisa ran beside him. They’d give up in just a minute. Any time now. But the thundering boots behind him weren’t growing fainter.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. The three men who chased him wore town guard uniforms, but their faces weren’t familiar, and the lean bodies in those uniforms belonged to younger men. They were running easily, at the same pace he was. And they hadn’t run a chase already this morning.

  “They’re not … the same ones,” Arisa panted. “Got … reinforcements.”

  Alarm raced through Weasel’s veins, but he was already running as fast as he could. This was why they’d been so slow getting up to the roof! The exhausted guardsmen had sent for help. For someone who was fit enough, fast enough, to chase a couple of kids over a rooftop. And they’d just had time to get down through the leather shop and around to the warehouse before he and Arisa escaped.

  “Come on!” Weasel grabbed her arm and swung her, skidding, down a side street toward the docks. The chaos there might give him a chance to lose them.

  He yanked a crate of chickens off the top of a stack as they ran by, but the crashing crate, the sudden burst of clucking, flapping birds, barely slowed their pursuers.

  He had looked at the guardsmen’s girth and underestimated their intelligence. He’d been arrogant. He’d been stupid, in a way that Weasel-the-pickpocket never would. And if he didn’t get lucky, he was going to pay the price.

  The bushel of potatoes he cast across the road delayed them no more than a moment, though Weasel heard one of them swear as his feet rolled out from under him.

  The wagon he and Arisa darted under, when it blocked the road, gained them a bit more time—they were shorter, and flexible enough to keep their feet as they scrambled under the wagon’s wide bed. The guardsmen were forced to drop to their knees and crawl, but they didn’t hesitate to do it, and the distance Weasel and Arisa gained wasn’t enough.

  He wondered again why she had taken this risk. She’d be regretting it now.

  Weasel’s breath came in gasps, and a muscle in his side was beginning to cramp. He couldn’t run much longer, and the guards behind them showed no sign of tiring. He fought down a surge of despair.

  It was then that Arisa grabbed his arm and dragged him into a narrow side street … leading up a steep hill.

  Weasel’s feet slowed. “Can’t!” he wheezed.

  But a shout from his pursuers proved that he could, and he drove his aching legs upward.

  Through vision blurred with sweat and exhaustion, Weasel saw that they were trapped. There were no side streets off this hill, no alleys, not even a narrow gap between the buildings. The only way out was at the top. His lungs fought for air and couldn’t find enough.

  Arisa grabbed his arm as he stumbled, pulling him up, and up.

  The guardsmen’s boots echoed in the confined space.

  Weasel tried to run faster and couldn’t. Not even for Justice Holis. Not even the thought of capture and hanging could push him farther.

  When Arisa let go of his arm he fell to his hands and knees, head bent. Colored lights swam in the darkness behind his eyes. He felt sick. He would have passed out if he’d dared, but the guards were still coming.

  Over the thunder of his own pulse, he heard a series of wooden clacks and thuds. He opened his eyes and looked.

  Arisa crouched behind a wine keg that lay on its side, ready to roll. Her face was hard and intent as she twisted the barrel, aiming it with the concentrated intensity of a master gunner bent over his cannon. Then she gave it a push.

  It didn’t roll straight. A barrel’s curved surface isn’t designed to roll in straight lines, and the uneven cobbles sent it bouncing this way and that as it crashed downward. But it was heavy enough, and the hill was steep enough, that it picked up speed quickly, and its unpredictable course was to their benefit. It swerved at the last second, into the shins of a guard who had stepped to the side, hoping to avoid it, and sent him flying like a toppled tenpin.

  He sat up, clutching his leg, and when one of his comrades spoke to him he shook his head.

  “Got one!” Weasel gasped. He wanted to laugh,
but he was panting so hard he thought laughter might kill him. Still, the surge of delight brought him to his feet in time to help Arisa lift the next keg off the pile.

  The two guardsmen who were coming up the hill eluded that one, and they put on a burst of speed after it passed. If a slow, upward stagger could be called a burst. They looked to be almost as winded as Weasel, but they were still climbing.

  “Two at once!” Arisa commanded, sounding like the master gunner Weasel had dubbed her.

  “Yes’m,” he said, and stole a second to snap off a crisp salute.

  Two kegs, rolling down together, were almost impossible to avoid. One man crammed himself into a narrow doorway at the last minute. The other leaped desperately over the first barrel only to land on the second, which rolled him down and then rolled over him. He stood up after it had passed, but slowly. And his companion waited for him before going on.

  The man with the injured leg had found a slightly deeper doorway and was standing there.

  Weasel and Arisa sent the next two kegs rolling down, and when both of them missed they launched the next pair, and the next, and the next. The man who’d lit on the barrel was knocked down a second time, and when the remaining guardsman finally fell, three barrels rolled over him before he could regain his feet. One keg took a lucky sideways bounce and knocked the man with the injured leg out of his doorway. He limped down the hill as fast as he could, peering back over his shoulder.

  His surrender decided the others, who turned and ran, clinging to the buildings and avoiding the tumbling kegs as best they could.

  Arisa harassed them with ongoing fire, but used only one keg at time, so the guardsmen managed to elude most of them. Weasel wanted to cheer, but he was too busy catching his breath to waste any.

  When the guardsmen finally vanished around the last of the buildings, he actually managed a slow jog down the street that led them away.

  “That was brill’ant, that bit with the kegs,” the old man chortled.

  The crowd at the Empty Net had greeted them with a cheer when they walked in that evening. Weasel was starting to feel right at home there—it was definitely time to move on.

  “That was Arisa’s idea,” Weasel admitted. “And it was. Brilliant, I mean.”

  Arisa blushed with embarrassed delight, like a girl being complimented on her ball gown. “I saw the kegs stacked in the alley and thought it might work.”

  “Well, it did,” said the old man. “And so did your plan, m’boy. Was over twenty minutes ’fore those guards came back to the warehouse, and by that time the goods was in and we was out. No way for them to prove what we carried wasn’t legal. They didn’t even try.”

  “So you’ll be paying us,” said Weasel firmly.

  “Yes.” The man heaved a sigh. “I’ve no choice, for you surely did the job. Come along with me.”

  He rose and tottered out of the tavern, acting even older tonight than he usually did. Weasel might have felt sorry for him, but by now he was fairly certain that “acting” was the proper word in every sense.

  “Where are we going?” Arisa asked, looking around the dark street uneasily. “Why couldn’t you pay us in the Net?”

  “The coin, I could have,” said the old man. “if I was carryin’ it. But for the special part of your payment, you’ve got t’ meet your guides. So I figured I might as well pay all at once. We’re here, anyway.”

  “Here” was a dilapidated warehouse. Not surprising, since this was a district of warehouses, and other businesses that served the docks, but something about it made the back of Weasel’s neck prickle. And judging by Arisa’s worried expression, she felt the same.

  “Why couldn’t we meet them at the Empty Net?” Weasel asked. Or any other well-lit, public place. Not a sliver of light showed beneath the door the old man was unlocking. He snorted.

  “These are road bandits, boy! Sketches of their faces are tacked to the courthouse door. With rewards posted under ’em. You’re lucky they agreed t’ meet with you.”

  The door swung open. A couple of small windows cast squares of moonlight on the floor inside, making the shadows by the walls even darker. Weasel heard the soft rustle of cloth, a scuff of leather on wood, that told him men lurked there.

  Oddly enough, that reassured him. A road bandit, in a town where he was wanted, would avoid the light. He followed the old man into the room, Arisa coming after him.

  “Close the door,” the old man said. “I’ll light the lamp.”

  Arisa hesitated for a moment before she turned and did as he asked.

  The click of the latch was followed by the rasp of a striker. The sudden flare illuminated the old man’s wrinkled face and the lamp in his hands. Then the lamp’s wick caught and light welled out, touching the men who stood in the shadows.

  Four men, wearing the green and white uniforms of the palace guard.

  Weasel cried out, in furious betrayal.

  Arisa didn’t waste even that much time. She ran at the nearest guard before he could move, ramming her head into his stomach. He doubled over, just as the guardsmen beside him reached out and grabbed Arisa’s arm and shoulder.

  Weasel, frozen in the incredulous paralysis that always held him when she did something like this, saw her boot heel rise and then smash down on the guard’s foot.

  Bone snapped. Weasel was wincing even before the man screamed.

  “For the God’s sake, she’s only a girl.” The voice was an officer’s, cool, impatient. “Grab her and hold her!”

  Weasel didn’t move. It was the first law of hiding in shadow—in any place, really. The human eye is drawn to motion.

  The old man looked at Weasel, then his eyes went to the fight. Clearly, he felt his job was done. Bastard.

  The guard with the broken foot was on the floor, clutching it, swearing. But the third guard was moving behind Arisa, and the other was straightening up.

  “Draw your truncheons and take her!” the officer snapped.

  “But sir, she’s … she’s a girl.”

  They didn’t want to hit a helpless female. Weasel fought down a hysterical urge to laugh.

  Arisa drew her knife.

  The guards were armed for patrol, with clubs instead of pistols. And she was still a girl. They hesitated.

  “Oh, for—” The officer pulled his truncheon out of his belt, stepping forward, and Arisa turned to face him. He swung at her shoulder, a solid stroke that would have broken her collarbone had it connected.

  Arisa darted to the side and then in, slashing the officer’s arm with her blade. Blood spurted, scarlet in the glowing light.

  At the sight of blood, the guards’ training kicked in. This wasn’t a girl, but an enemy. The one on Arisa’s right grabbed her wrist, twisting till she cried out and the knife fell. The other swung his fist at almost the same moment, crashing into her temple. She dropped limply to the floor.

  “About time,” the officer snarled. He clutched his bleeding arm.

  No one was looking at Weasel.

  Two long, silent steps took him to the door, and he opened it and fled, slamming it behind him. It wouldn’t delay them more than a second, but in the dark, in a neighborhood where he had learned the streets, Weasel had no doubt he could elude them.

  But then what?

  CHAPTER 9

  The Three of Fires: the lost messenger. Important information missing or unknown.

  How could I have been so stupid!

  He’d known the old man’s gang didn’t want to pay them. What better way to avoid it than to turn them over to the guard? They probably earned a reward! The Hidden had told Weasel that the palace guardsmen were spending bribe money—they’d have put out posters, offered a reward, as soon as they realized they’d lost Weasel’s trail Why hadn’t that occurred to him?

  Because he was stupid. Because he had gone soft, working for Justice Holis. Not only soft in body, soft in the head. Soft in his heart. He had to be hard now. To be ruthless.

  That resolve falter
ed instantly, for the first act of a ruthless man would be to abandon Arisa.

  Weasel sat down on a darkened step and rubbed his face wearily. He’d eluded the guard even more easily than he’d hoped, turning a corner and then squirming into a narrow gap between two buildings. A grown man couldn’t have fit in that narrow slot. Weasel had only to wiggle into the deeper shadows and hold still—the guardsmen had run right by.

  Only two of them, the man with the broken foot and one other, had stayed to guard Arisa. But that had gained Weasel nothing, for two trained fighting men could take him out with ease. As easily as they’d finally taken her out, once they got over their shock.

  In fact, Weasel realized, the reason she’d previously beaten opponents who were so much larger and stronger was mostly because her willingness to fight took them by surprise. Didn’t she know that?

  Of course she did. She probably relied on it—but this time, in a drawn-out fight against four men, it had failed her. It would fail in any fight that lasted more than a few minutes—and she must have known that as well. So why had she attacked them?

  Because if she hadn’t, they’d both be prisoners now. She’d worked with Weasel enough over the past week to know that if she created a diversion, he’d use it.

  But she was relying on him to rescue her. Which made her almost as stupid a chump as he’d been. Weasel had told her that the criminals in the Empty Net were his kind of people. And they were. What an idiot he’d been to trust them. She knew he had to rescue Justice Holis, too. Every day he spent trying to free her lessened his chance of finding the Falcon in time. Lessened his chance to save a man whose chances were too slim already.

  His eyes stung and he pressed his hands against them. Pressed back the memory of a warm study, and a laughing voice telling him he had “no social conscience.”

  Fools. Both Arisa and the justice. Marks for the plucking.

  And Weasel was worse than either, for he knew better. He had just resolved to be hard, and ruthless, and survive….

  He sighed and rose from the step. If he was going after Arisa, he needed to change his appearance—those posters would carry his description. Perhaps even a sketch. As for Justice Holis … Maybe some miracle would draw the trial out for a few days. As he walked down the dark street, looking for an apothecary to rob, Weasel gave some thought to learning to pray.