03 - Death's Legacy Read Online Free Page B

life, and made for
the jetty he’d indicated. After a moment the wooden hull grated against stone,
and he scrambled out, his feet slipping slightly on the weed-grown surface
beneath his boot soles. Hanna followed nimbly, and turned to push the boat off
again with her foot as soon as she’d gained the sanctuary of the steps. “Why did
you do that?”
    “You told the boatman we were heading for Luydenhoek,” Hanna
pointed out. “Your little friend with the unbecoming hat will have had the bridge
closed again as soon as she reported in, and messages sent to every watch house
this side of the water.”
    Rudi nodded. He knew enough of how the watch worked to know
that this was true. If anything, the Suiddock Caps would have been relieved at
the news that they’d stolen a boat. Closing the Draainbrug wouldn’t be popular,
and the last thing the watch needed was a large and restive crowd getting more
angry and frustrated by the minute. Time was money in Marienburg, more literally
than anywhere else in the known world, and they’d be under pressure from the
mercantile guilds to get the lifeblood of commerce flowing again as soon as
possible. “No point making it obvious where we’ve come ashore.”
    “Good point,” Rudi said, suspecting he ought to feel a little
more sympathy for the boatman whose livelihood was beginning to drift slowly
upstream with the swelling tide, but unable to summon any. Someone would
probably find it and sell it back to him anyway. That was how things were in
Marienburg. The abandoned craft was moving surprisingly quickly, and only a
handful of the steps above them bore a thin coating of weeds and mud, indicating
that they were still below the high water mark.
    As he turned his head to watch the drifting boat he could see
the first flush of red marking the sky beyond the rooftops of the Rijkspoort,
the easternmost ward of the city, where the mighty river entered its precincts.
The sight galvanised him: they had even less time to reach safety than he’d
feared. “We’d better get moving.”
    “Right,” Hanna agreed. Cautiously, they made their way to the
top of the steps, finding a row of warehouses facing the waterfront. Even at
this hour several of them appeared to be busy, but none of the carters or
stevedores spared them so much as a glance, engrossed as they were in their own
concerns. “Which way?”
    “East,” Rudi said, as decisively as he could. His only
previous trip to the candle wharf, where the Reikmaiden was berthed, had
been the previous afternoon to arrange passage with Shenk, but he remembered
enough about the layout of Luydenhoek to know that they were still too far to
the west. Once they got closer, with any luck, he’d be able to recognise a
landmark. He was still a skilled tracker, he reminded himself, even in an urban
environment so different from the forest he’d grown up in, and his old instincts
hadn’t let him down yet.
    He led the way through the bustling streets, trying not to
worry about the way the crowds were thickening all the time, and how the thin
grey light was growing brighter. It was hard to be sure beneath the snow clouds,
but he had an uneasy feeling deep in his gut that the sun had risen already, and
that the riverboat would be under way by now. He forced the thought away
irritably. The last thing they needed was to be sapping their confidence with
unfounded speculation.
    “Down here.” With a thrill of relief, he recognised a tavern,
the Mermaid, where he’d bargained with Shenk the previous afternoon. The wharf
he sought was only a few streets away, and he hurried them along as best he
could, trying not to slip on the freezing slush beneath their feet.
    As they made their way through the growing press of bodies,
packages, and barrows flowing into the streets, Rudi kept turning his head,
looking out for the distinctive headgear of the Caps, but luck, or one of the
gods, was still with them. The thoroughfares