Rallick entered the main room, then stopped dead in his tracks. 'Damn,' he muttered. The black man was gone. Now what? He shrugged. 'Front door it is.' He made his way through the crowd.

In an alley, on one side of which ran a high stone wall, Crokus leaned against the damp bricks of a merchant's house and gazed steadily at a window. It was on the third floor, beyond the wall, and behind its shuttered face was a room he knew intimately.

There'd been a light on inside for most of the two hours he'd stood below, but for the last fifteen minutes the room within had been dark. Numb with exhaustion and plagued with doubts, Crokus pulled his cloak tighter around him. He wondered what he was doing here, and not for the first time. All his resolve seemed to have drained into the gutters along with the rain.

Had it been the dark-haired woman in the Phoenix Inn? Had she rattled him that much? The blood on her dagger made it obvious that she wouldn't hesitate to kill him just to keep her secret intact. Maybe it was the spinning coin that had him so confused. Nothing about that incident had been natural.

What was so wrong with his dream of being introduced to the D'Arle maiden? It had nothing to do with that killer woman in the bar.

'Nothing,' he mumbled, then scowled. Now he was talking aloud to himself.

A thought came to him that deepened his scowl. Everything had begun its mad unravelling the night he'd robbed the maiden. If only he hadn't paused, if only he hadn't looked upon her soft, round, lovely face.

A groan escaped him, and he shifted his feet. A high-born. That was the real problem, wasn't it?

It all seemed so stupid now, so absurd. How could he have convinced himself that such a thing as meeting her was possible? He shook himself. It didn't matter, he'd planned this, now it was time to do it.

'I don't believe this,' he muttered as he pushed himself from the wall and headed down the alley. His hand brushed the pouch tied to his waist. 'I'm about to put a maiden's ransom back.'

He came to the stone wall he'd been looking for, and began to climb. He drew a deep breath. All right, let's get it done.

The stone was wet, but he had enough determination in him to scale a mountain. He climbed on, and did not slip even so much as a single foothold.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There's a spider here

in this corner in that –

her three eyes

tiptoe in darkness,

her eight legs

track my spine,

she mirrors and mocks

my pacing.

There's a spider here

who knows all of me

her web my history full writ.

Somewhere in this strange place

a spider waits

for my panicked flight ...

The Conspiracy

Blind Gallan (b. 1078)