NaVarre tapped the handle of his cane on the roof and the cab started forward.
I sat up and brushed my hair out of my face. "I can't believe I'm doing this," I muttered. "You're used to it, though, right? Skulking about in corners, passing messages on tea mugs... does it get better with practice?"
"Did you get anything?" NaVarre asked, calmly. To the point.
"2200 tonight, bench on Lagrossa, he'll find you," I provided. "When will it stop feeling like someone is secretly aiming a pistol at my back?"
NaVarre shrugged. "I've found that to be a healthy concern in my line of work."
"Well you can keep your line of work. I can't wait to go back to being little old boring me."
A small, humorless smile crossed NaVarre's lips before he glanced out the window.
3. Run, Hide, Seek, Find
25th of Nema, Continued
I should have guessed what that smile meant.
Twelve hours later I was sitting on a bench on Lagrossa Avenue.
The streghtlimmer was walking along on his stilts, lighting the gas lamps that lined the boardwalk. The wooden thunk...thunk-thunk...thunk of his unnaturally long strides echoed off the stone fronts of the warehouses across the street. He was nearly finished, and the light of the gas flame bathed everything in a weird, greenish cast, all of it made even more sickly by the mist rising between the ancient trees in the park at my back.
The Captain slouched in the shadows of the alley across from me. He was supposed to be a drunk sleeping off a bender, but all I could see of him was a large, dark lump huddled against the wall of the Fousten's Wools warehouse. At least, I assumed the lump was Arramy. Perhaps it really was a drunk. Maybe I was really as alone as I felt —
A man sat down next to me as suddenly as if he had materialized from the fog.
I froze, my heartbeat leaping into a full-on gallop. I started to glance at him when his frantic whisper stopped me cold: "Don't look at me! They aren't far behind. When I leave, go the other way down Lagrossa for two blocks and turn right on Pazhstreght. There's a metal sign on the wall of the Moonflower Motel. Look behind the second M." He paused and scooted to the edge of his seat as if he were about to leave, but then stayed just long enough to murmur, "I wish we could have met under better circumstances. Your father was a good friend. Best of luck, my dear."
And then he was gone, a short, stocky figure hurrying off down the boardwalk. I didn't even get his name.
I took a breath and then another, forcing myself to think. I was going to have to relocate, which meant this had just become exactly the sort of unpredictable mess Arramy had predicted it would. I shot a look at the drunk in the alley but couldn't tell if he was watching me or not. NaVarre was supposed to be up on the roofline with a handful of his men. I just had to hope that they would all be able to follow me. There was no time to find out.
I got up and began moving down Lagrossa. I wanted to scream, to pelt away like a frightened rabbit and hide in the nearest bolt hole.
They aren't far behind, they aren't far behind, they aren't far behind.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a large, blessedly familiar figure come out of the alley: Arramy, making swift progress for a drunk, keeping even with me on the other side of the street as I walked along the boardwalk that followed the perimeter of Inderkynde Park.
They aren't far behind; they aren't far behind.
My blasted knees were shaking.
I passed a side street. One block down, one to go. All I had to do was this one last thing. Then I could go back to the Island. Help the Doctor translate for her patients, and work on case records for the Director. Read about Roghuari Emperors... Eat llinfa...
Heavy footsteps sounded behind me just before I reached Pazhstreght, and rational thought fled. I broke into a mad run, dashing to the right around the building on the corner. Golden lamplight and bawdy music poured out into the night through a set of swinging doors a few yards down the boardwalk. And there, just a few paces beyond the pall of tobacco smoke, was a big gaslit metal sign: The Moonflower Motel.
But instead of going straight to the sign, I darted through those swinging doors.
~ This is the end of the excerpt. ~
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Shadow Road Page 27