While taking the steps three at a time, Skate caught a glimpse of the blue-trimmed tabards of the Guard blowing past and below her. In the fading light, they managed not to see her ascent.
Skate crested the landing and found herself facing a family sitting under an awning. The father of the group shouted “Hey!” and Skate knew she couldn’t stay still. She leapt to a neighbor’s roof, and then the next neighbor’s roof as well.
Skate was on the roof of a fourth house when she heard a Guardsman call out for her to stop again. She spared a glance backward, which proved a mistake: she missed her footing on the slanted roof and went tumbling. As she neared the ground, Skate tried to roll with the fall, but couldn’t manage it. She landed wrong on her hand and cried out in pain.
Rattle clicked behind her. It did not sound like its laughter, but she was engrossed in the pain and could not register what Rattle was trying to tell her.
Skate found herself standing somehow, leaning against the building from which she had fallen. Her wrist was either sprained or broken, neither of which was good news. Taking a deep breath, she took off into the night.
Twitch had been the one to teach her how to throw off a pursuer. “You’re going to end up r-running in a straight line unless you try not to, you know?” he had said, explaining the purpose of the constant changing, “Nothing’s easier to catch than somebody r-running straight ahead.”
As she was taught, so did she put into practice. It took but a few minutes after hurting her arm to throw the Guards completely off.
Skate was not completely sure where she ended up. She was not near the docks, since the smell of fish was very distant—only detectable whenever the wind blew north. It was possible she was still in the Old Town, but she had no idea where in that district she might be. If she could get to a roof, she would be able to find landmarks among the sleepy old buildings. However, the prospect of getting that high with one arm led Skate to decide that was not going to happen. She was not sure she could even climb one-handed, much less from street level to the top of a building. Her only hope was to walk the streets at dusk and try to determine where her soon-to-be-satisfied patron’s house was.
Skate’s arm shook with barely contained torment at each step. She focused on the street and its occupants to take her mind off of the incredible discomfort. She saw no vagrants or Guards. That told her she was neither in the slums nor in the Baron’s district. Certain areas tended to attract certain occupants, and the absence of these two groups was enough to tell her that she was likely still in the Old Town.
The Old Town had one major avenue, and it was the only part of this section of the city that was consistently visible throughout the night. The lampposts had been lit well before the onset of the evening, the lampmen wanting to be done with their work before the cold became unbearable. It was approaching that point now for Skate as she made her way toward the orange lamps; her skin felt like it was on fire every time a piece of threadbare clothing moved across it, and her feet were numb. “Rattle,” Skate whispered behind her, “do you know where we are?”
Before she reached the street, Skate grunted as she was yanked into a crevice between two buildings. The space could not rightly be called an alley; a person may have been able to comfortably walk between the sturdy wooden walls if he were not terribly large, but that was all the space available.
Skate was currently pinned against one of these walls, her feet suspended about two feet from the ground, her dropped bag on the ground. She stared into the cruel lean face of one of the last people she had wanted to see again that day: Kite, who held her against the rough wood with one of his forearms across her chest. His other arm was bent as his hand rested jauntily on his hip. His blades were out of sight. “Evening, girlie,” he said with a sneer.
When Skate didn’t respond, he contorted his sharp face into a mockery of pain and continued, “Aw, now don’t be that way. I’s just trying to help, kenit? You was doing pretty good running from the Guards, but that fall looked pretty nasty.” He pointed his free hand toward the dropped bag.
He knows the tricks, Skate realized. He was able to follow me.
“Wassin there?”
Skate gave him no answer but a forward-jutting jaw and a look that she hoped could curdle milk.
Kite smiled his vicious smile. “I toldja not to be that way once already, didn’t I? Come on, girlie, and tell me wassin the bag. If it’s Ink business, I got a right to know.”
“Not a lieutenant,” she muttered, finding it harder to breathe as he increased the pressure on her. “Don’t gotta tell you nothing.”
Kite still smiled. “I’ll make ya tell me, you little snot,” he said as he leaned into her. She gasped and coughed; he had brought his free hand straight into her stomach, and hard. Between the pain in her arm and not being able to breathe, she was worried she might lose consciousness. Stay awake. Stay awake. She repeated that to herself as her swimming vision came to rest on the singularly unpleasant image of Kite sneering at her.
His face no longer smiled; it was twisted in hate. “What’s in the bag, girlie?” His voice was low and dangerous, and she knew he’d continue to hurt her—but never actually draw any blood from her or kill her; even Kite was not that stupid—until she let him in on what she was doing. He had done it to Twitch before, and she knew he had done it to everyone he had ever worked around who was smaller and weaker than he was.
Then Skate saw something over his shoulder that gave her a great idea.
“If you’re not going to spill ink, lemme go,” she said, pretending to plead. She let her voice turn into a whimper. “Please, Kite, come on.” When she saw the familiar look in his eye (the one like a snake about to strike a cornered mouse), and he was about to speak, she kicked her foot straight forward as hard as she could and connected lower than his stomach—which was exactly what she meant to do. Kite’s arm loosened. “Now!” Skate said and dropped down to the ground, crying out as the movement hurt her arm.
A whirl of black lines and flapping wings filled her vision. Rattle’s white “body” bobbed in the air as it brought its legs to bear, slapping and stabbing the young man, who could not understand what he was seeing, much less fend it off.
“Get off!” Kite yelped several times, his voice slightly higher than normal. Rattle slapped him across the face, drawing a thin red line and sending him twisting against the wall. The thin legs poked through Kite’s clothes, pinning him up against the wall. It had a leg pulled back to strike at his throat when Skate yelled, “No!”
Rattle paused, and twisted slightly toward her, its eye shifting to the right and left in a quizzical gesture. “Don’t kill him,” she said, grabbing the backpack off the ground. “No killing,” she added emphatically as it turned its attention back to Kite.
“What…” he muttered, his arms dangling uselessly off to his sides as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. “Wassis?”
“Get outta here, Kite; I dunno if it’ll kill you or not if you don’t.”
Rattle pulled its legs out of the wall behind Kite and let him settle back on his feet. Skate saw with relief that the blow to the face hadn’t actually drawn blood, though it had broken the skin.