Chapter 10: The Chase Through the Streets

They hadn't covered half the distance from Veyra's smokehouse back to the docks when Hasso suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, grabbing Mira and Tobb by the sleeves.

"Stop," he whispered. "Don't turn around fast, but at the mouth of the alley behind us — two men. Uniform cloaks. Not open Inquisition, but the same bearing exactly."

Mira forced herself not to turn too sharply, just cutting her eyes sideways as if admiring a shop window full of ship's tackle. Two men were indeed standing at the alley's mouth — idle-looking, apparently just chatting, but their glances slid toward the three of them too often, and too much in sync.

"Think it was the fishmonger?" Tobb asked quietly.

"It doesn't matter who. What matters is they found us faster than I hoped." Hasso quickened his pace, steering them in the opposite direction from their pursuers. "No shortcut to the docks from here. We'll have to cut through the upper town."

"It was that fishmonger," Mira hissed through her teeth, remembering the vendor's pale face, the dropped knife at the mere mention of singers. "Couldn't have been anyone else."

"Could have been him," Hasso agreed, not slowing. "Could have been the charm-seller too, or someone who was just standing nearby and heard more than they should have. In a town where half the people inform on something to somebody, it hardly matters who exactly sold the word. What matters is that it's already sold."

Keraven's upper town turned out to be a tangle of narrow staircases climbing between houses built so close together that in places the neighboring roofs nearly touched. Mira had never been anywhere like it, and now, weaving after Hasso up steep steps slick with evening damp, she could only marvel at how fast the old man moved for his age when necessity demanded it.

"Behind us," Tobb gasped, glancing back. The two men had stopped pretending to stroll idly — they were running now, and a third had already joined them, emerging from a side alley.

"Faster!" Hasso shouted, ducking into an even narrower gap between buildings, barely wide enough for shoulders to pass.

The chase spat them out onto the flat roof of a warehouse, overhanging the alley below in dangerous proximity to the next building — close enough to jump, if one dared, and far enough to break every bone in a failed attempt. Hasso froze at the edge, breathing hard, clearly aware that at his age such a jump was more likely to kill him than save him.

"Go without me," he rasped. "I'll hold them off as long as I can."

"Don't even think it, old man," came a familiar voice from below, and Mira watched with relief as Captain Darnveil himself scrambled up onto the neighboring roof, Gretta right behind him with a cutlass drawn. It turned out that while the three of them had been threading through the upper town, word of the chase had somehow already reached the rest of the crew waiting at the ship.

"How did you—" Mira gasped.

"Harbor boys run fast for a coin," Gretta said curtly. "One of them came sprinting up the gangplank shouting about men in uniform chasing a girl and an old man over the rooftops. Wasn't hard to guess who they meant."

The pursuers appeared from the alley below — no longer two, but four, and one of them shouted something resembling an official order to halt in the name of the Royal Inquisition. Instead of complying, Captain Darnveil grabbed Mira's hand and pulled her toward the very edge of the roof.

"We jump," he said firmly. "All together, on three. Don't think, just jump."

Mira had never jumped between rooftops before and, frankly, had hoped never to have to, but the choice facing her now was brutally simple: jump and possibly break something, or stay and certainly fall into the hands of men whose superior had already favored her twice with that same polite, far-too-interested look. She jumped.

The landing was hard — Mira came down on one knee, scraping her palms on the rough tile — but she was alive, and beside her the others landed, breathing hard. Hasso hesitated at the edge a half-second longer than the rest, and in that moment one of the pursuers, closest of the group, hurled something — not a weapon, but a weighted rope that caught the old man's leg.

"Hasso!" Mira screamed, lunging back toward the edge of the roof.

Captain Darnveil reacted faster — one stroke of Gretta's cutlass, snatched up at the last instant, severed the rope, and together with Barro, who'd somehow appeared beside them out of nowhere (the cook, it turned out, had joined the chase as well, armed with nothing but a kitchen knife and sheer determination), they hauled the old man onto the roof a heartbeat before the pursuers reached the same spot.

"Down to the docks, now!" the captain commanded, and the whole group bolted for the fire ladder on the far side of the roof, leading straight down into an alley barely a hundred paces from the pier.

They reached the Gray Current at the very moment their pursuers finally spilled out onto the waterfront behind them — too late to stop the departure, but soon enough for Mira to catch one of them shouting orders to the rest, clearly intent on passing word further up the chain.

"Cast off! All sail!" the captain's voice thundered as the crew frantically threw off the mooring lines, and the Gray Current began, slowly, agonizingly slowly, to pull away from the pier.

When the ship finally gathered speed, leaving their furious, powerless pursuers behind on the shore, Captain Darnveil, breathing hard, leaned against the rail beside Mira.

"Well," he said, with the grim amusement of a man who'd just grasped the full scope of his own recklessness, "I'm now officially a fugitive from the Royal Inquisition who's used force against its officers. My trading license, I imagine, just became a rather entertaining story for a courtroom, should they ever catch us."

"I'm sorry," Mira said quietly. "I didn't want you to—"

"Don't apologize," he cut her off firmly. "I made this choice myself, with my eyes open. And honestly, for the first time in twenty years, it feels like I chose right instead of just chose safe. It's a good feeling, you know. Frightening. But good."

Hasso, having caught his breath after the chase, settled onto a coil of rope beside them, rubbing a bruised ankle — the pursuer's rope had left a deep, darkening mark on it after all.

"Jumping between rooftops isn't the wisest occupation at my age," he grumbled, though there was more amusement than complaint in his voice. "But I'll confess, I haven't felt this alive in thirty years. Thank you for that, captain. And you too, girl, though it's hardly your fault directly."

Barro, still gripping the kitchen knife he'd never had occasion to use, snorted, tucking it back into his belt.

"Next time I'll bring something more serious for rooftop excursions," he said. "Though, honestly, the mere presence of this knife seemed to scare them nearly as much as Gretta's cutlass did."

Mira couldn't help smiling despite her exhaustion and stinging palms — the cook's simple, warm joke made everything feel a little less frightening, a reminder that even in the middle of a chase by the entire Inquisition, she had people willing to turn fear into a reason to laugh, just to ease her worry.