Krondor: The Assassins. Raymond E. Feist

to fall, he’d have been out of there by now!’

      The boy recognized the voice of the leader. ‘Head back up to the next level and spread out! There’s a bonus for whoever kills him! I want that rat dead before morning!’

      Limm moved upward, one hand, one foot, another hand, another foot, by inches, slipping down an inch for every two he gained. It was slow going and his muscles cried out for a pause, but he pressed on. A cool whiff of air from above told him he was close to the next level of the sewers. He prayed it was a large enough pipe to navigate, as he had no desire to attempt another passage downward and back through that grate.

      Reaching the lip of the shaft, he paused, took a deep breath and turned, snatching at the edge. One hand slipped on something thick and sticky, but the other hand held firm. Never one for bathing, nevertheless he looked forward to scrubbing this muck off and finding clean clothing.

      Hanging in the silence, the boy waited. He knew it was possible that the men who had pursued him might appear in a few moments. He listened.

      Impulsive by nature, the boy had come to learn the dangers of acting rashly in dangerous situations. Seven boys had come to Mother’s, the Mockers’ safe haven, at roughly the same time, within a few weeks of one another. The other six were now dead. Two had died by accident: falling from the rooftops. Three had been hanged as common thieves during crack-downs by the Prince’s magistrates. The last boy had died the previous night, at the hands of the men who now sought Limm, and it was his murder the young thief had witnessed.

      The boy let his racing heart calm and his straining lungs recover. He pulled himself up and into the large pipe, and moved off in the darkness, a hand on the right wall. He knew he could negotiate most of the tunnels hereabout blindfolded, but he also knew it only took one wrong turn or missing a side tunnel in passing to become completely lost. There was a central cistern in this quarter of the city, and knowing where he was in relationship to it provided Limm with a navigational aid as good as any map, but only if he kept his wits about him and concentrated.

      He inched along, listening to the distant sound of gurgling water, turning his head this way and that to ensure he was hearing the sound coming down the sewer and not a false echo bouncing off nearby stones. While he moved blindly, he thought about the madness that had come to the city in recent weeks.

      At first it had seemed like a minor problem: a new rival gang, like others that had shown up from time to time. Usually a visit from the Mockers’ bashers, or a tip to the sheriff’s men, and the problem went away.

      This time, it had been different.

      A new gang showed up on the docks, a large number of Keshian thugs among them. That alone wasn’t worth notice; Krondor was a major port of trade with Kesh. What made this group unusual was their indifference to the threat posed by the Mockers. They acted in a provocative fashion, openly moving cargo into and out of the city, bribing officials and daring the Mockers to interfere with them. They seemed to be inviting a confrontation.

      At last the Mockers had acted, and it had been a disaster. Eleven of the most feared bashers – the enforcers among the Guild of Thieves – had been lured into a warehouse at the end of a semi-deserted dock. They had been trapped inside and the building set afire, killing all eleven. From that moment on, warfare had erupted deep in Krondor’s underworld.

      The Mockers had been driven to ground, and the invaders, working for someone known only as the Crawler, had also suffered, as the Prince of Krondor had acted to restore order to his city.

      Rumour had it some men dressed as Nighthawks – members of the Guild of Assassins – had been seen weeks before in the sewer, bait to bring the Prince’s army in after them, with the final destruction of the Mockers as the apparent goal. It was a foregone conclusion that had the Prince’s guard entered the sewers in sufficient numbers, everyone found down below the streets – assassins, false Nighthawks, or Mockers – all would be routed out or captured. It was a clever plan, but it had come to naught.

      Squire James, once Jimmy the Hand of the Mockers, had foiled that ruse, before vanishing into the night on a mission for the Prince. Then the Prince had mustered his army and moved out – and again the Crawler had struck.

      Since then, the two sides had stayed holed up, the Mockers at Mother’s, their well-disguised headquarters, and the Crawler’s men at an unknown hideout in the north docks area. Those sent to pinpoint the exact location of the Crawler’s headquarters failed to return.

      The sewers had become a no-man’s land, with few daring to come and go unless driven by the greatest need. Limm would now be lying low, safe at Mother’s, save for two things: a terrible rumour, and a message from an old friend. Either the rumour or the message alone would have made Limm huddle in a corner at the Mockers’ hideout, but the combination of the two had forced him to act.

      Mockers had few friends; the loyalty between thieves was rarely engendered by affection or comity, but from a greater distrust of those outside the Guild and fear of one another. Strength or wit earned one a place in the Brotherhood of Thieves.

      But occasionally a friendship was struck, a bond deeper than common need, and those few friends were worth a bit more risk. Limm counted fewer than a handful of people for whom he would take any risk, let alone at such a high price should he be caught, but two of them were in need now, and had to be told of the rumour.

      Something moved in the darkness ahead and Limm froze. He waited, listening for anything out of the ordinary. The sewer was far from silent, with a constant background noise made up of the distant rumble of water rushing through the large culvert below that took the city’s refuse out past the harbour mouth, a thousand drips, the scrabble of rats and other vermin and their squeaky challenges.

      Wishing he had a light of any sort, Limm waited. Patience in one his age was rare outside the Mockers, but a rash thief was a dead thief. Limm earned his keep in the Mockers by being among the most adroit pickpockets in Krondor, and his ability to calmly move among the throng in the market or down the busy streets without attracting attention had set him high in the leadership’s estimation. Most boys his age were still working the streets in packs, urchins who provided distraction while other Mockers lifted goods from carts, or deflected attention from a fleeing thief.

      Limm’s patience was rewarded, as the faint echo of a boot moving on stone reached him. A short distance ahead, two large culverts joined in a wade. He would have to cross through the slowly-flowing sewage to reach the other side.

      It was a good place to wait, thought the boy thief. The sound of him moving through the water would alert anyone nearby and they’d be on him like hounds on a hare.

      Limm considered his options. There was no way around that intersection. He could return the way he came, but that would cost him hours of moving through the dangerous sewers under the city. He could avoid crossing the transverse sewer by skirting around the corner, hugging the wall to avoid being seen, and moving down that passage to his right. He would have to trust that darkness would shelter him and he could remain silent enough to avoid detection. Once away from the intersection, he could be safely on his way.

      Limm crept along, gingerly placing one foot ahead of the other, so as to not dislodge anything or step on an object that might betray his whereabouts. Fighting the impulse to hurry, he kept his breathing under control and willed himself to keep moving.

      Step by step he approached the intersection of the two passages, and as he reached the corner at which he would turn, he heard another sound. A small scrape of metal against stone, as if a scabbard or sword blade had ever-so-lightly touched a wall. He froze.

      Even in the dark, Limm kept his eyes closed. He didn’t know why, but shutting his eyes helped his other senses. He had wondered at this in the past, and finally stopped trying to figure out why it was so. He just knew that if he spent any energy trying to see, even in the pitch black, his hearing and sense of touch suffered.

      After a long, silent, motionless period, Limm heard a rush of water heading towards him. Someone, a shopkeeper or city worker, must have purged a cistern or opened one of the smaller sluices that fed the sewer. The slight noise was the only mask