Malden drew his bodkin, then stepped carefully over a spearpoint until he was directly above the boy’s head. The young footpad didn’t even look up. He was too busy watching the common, looking for any poor shepherd who might have come late to collect his sheep. The take would be piss-poor, but for a certain class of desperate criminal no score was beneath plucking. Even shepherds had clothing, and there were places in the city where you could sell clothes in the middle of the night where no questions would be asked.

Without a sound Malden dropped down onto the footpad’s back. The robber struggled and started to cry out, but he placed the point of his bodkin in the join between the boy’s jaw and neck.

“If I wanted to slit your throat, I’d have done it already,” Malden said. “Now, will you be quiet? I want a word.”

The boy started to nod—and stopped when he realized that doing so would impale him on Malden’s weapon. “Certainly, milord,” he sputtered out. The alcohol on his breath was enough to make Malden’s head spin. He supposed that lying-in-wait was thirsty work.

“You’ve a chance to earn some coppers tonight, lad,” Malden said, and moved his knife a fraction of an inch away from the boy’s jugular vein. “But first you must answer me a question true. Who do you work for?”

“My own self! That’s all! I swear, your honor, I’m a good fellow, I say my prayers as often as I remember, and I’ve never done anything like this before, I—”

“You don’t report back to Cutbill? He doesn’t take a share?”

The boy squirmed violently. Perhaps the lad thought he’d been sent by Cutbill to kill him for unauthorized thieving.

“That answer’s good enough,” Malden said, easing up a little more. “Now let us converse like gentlemen of fortune.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

The boy’s face was freckled and his chin weak, when the scarf was removed. Malden held onto his cudgel and his jug while he conveyed the message. Walking like a man on the way to the headsman’s block, the boy crossed the common and went right up to Hazoth’s gate. He gave one last look over his shoulder—even though he couldn’t possibly see Malden so far away in the dark—and then stepped inside the open gate.

The effect was immediate, and startling.

A crackling sound rustled through the grass, and then the boy lifted into the air, as if he’d been snatched up by some invisible hand. Inside the sorcerer’s laughable fence all was suddenly action. Guards rushed out to see who the intruder was, and Malden heard dogs barking in their kennels and horses stamping in their stalls.