Locklear said, Ill be good.
See that you are, instructed James.
He left his friend and hurried to his own quarters. Being a member of the Princes court merited James a room of his own, but since he was only a squire, it was a modest one; a bed, a table for writing or eating a solitary meal, and a double door wooden wardrobe. James closed the door to his room, locking it behind him, and undressed. He was wearing travel clothing, but it was still too conspicuous for what he needed to do. Opening his wardrobe, he moved aside a bundle of shirts in need of laundry, and beneath those he found what he was looking for. A dark grey tunic and dark blue trousers, patched and mended and looking far dirtier than they actually were. He dressed in those, pulled on his oldest boots and slipped a well-made but plain-looking dagger into his boot-sheath. Then once again looking like a creature of the streets, he slipped out through the door of his quarters, avoiding servants and guards as he made his way down into the palace cellar.
Soon he was moving through a secret passage that connected the palace with the city sewers, and as night fell on Krondor Jimmy the Hand once more moved along the Thieves Highway.
The sun had set by the time James reached the transition point between the sewer under the palace and the city sewer system. The sky above might still be light for a while, but beneath the streets it was as dark as night. During the day there were places in the sewer where illumination filtered down from above, tunnels close to the surface where culverts had broken through, others below streets where missing stones or open drains admitted daylight.
But after sundown, the entire system was pitch-black, save for a few locations with light sources of their own, and only an expert could move through the maze of passages safely. From the moment he left the palace, James knew exactly where he was.
While a member of the Guild of Thieves, the Mockers, James had learned every trick of survival that harsh circumstance, opportunity, and keen native intelligence had presented to him. He moved silently to a stash he had prepared and moved a false stone. It was fashioned from cloth, wood, and paint, and in light far brighter than any likely to ever be present here, it would withstand inspection. He set the false stone down and retrieved a shuttered lantern from the stash. The hidey-hole held an extra set of picks, as well as a number of items unlikely to be welcome inside the palace proper: some caustic agents, climbing equipment, and a few non-standard weapons. Old habits died hard.
James lit the lantern. He had never considered keeping a lantern in the palace, for fear someone might observe him making the transition between the palace sewer and the one under the city. Guarding the secret of how the palace could be reached through the sewers was paramount. Every drawing on file in the palace, from the original keep through the latest expansion, showed the two systems as entirely separate, just as the citys sewer was divided from the one outside the city walls. But smugglers and thieves had quickly rendered royal plans inaccurate, by creating passages in and out of the city.
James trimmed the wick, lit it, and closed the shutters until only a tiny sliver of light shone, but it was enough for him to navigate his way safely through the sewer. He could do it with no light, he knew, but it would slow him down to a painful near-crawl to have to feel his way along the walls the entire way, and he had a good distance to travel this night.
James did a quick check to ensure he had left nothing exposed for anyone to chance across. He considered the never-ending need for security which created this odd paradox: the Royal Engineers spent a lot of time and gold repairing the citys sewers and just as quickly the Mockers and others damaged them to have a furtive passage free of royal oversight. James often was the one responsible for identifying a new breach. Occasionally he was guilty of hiding one, if it suited his purposes more than it compromised the palaces security.
Thinking that there was a great deal more to being a responsible member of the Princes court than he had imagined when he had first been put in the company of squires, the former thief hurried on towards his first appointment.
It was almost dawn when James started looking for his last contact. The squire was having trouble keeping his concerns in check. The first three informants he had sought were missing. The docks were unnaturally silent, devoid of even the boisterous noise usually marking the areas inns and taverns. The poor quarter was clearly a no mans land, with many of the Mockers usual bolt-holes and accesses blocked off and sealed.
Of the Mockers, James had seen nothing. That alone was not completely unusual. He wasnt the only one adroit at travelling through the sewers and streets unnoticed. But there was something different about this night. There were others who used the sewers. Beggars who werent Mockers had places where they could sleep unmolested. Smugglers moved cargo short distances from secret landings built into the larger outflows into the harbour to basements farther in the city. With such activities came noises: small, unnoticed unless one was trained to recognize them for what they were, but usually they were there. Tonight everything was silent. Only the murmur of water, the scurrying of rats and the occasional rattle of distant machinery, waterwheels, pumps, and sluice gates echoed through the tunnels.
Anyone in the sewers was lying low, James knew. And that meant trouble. Historically, in times of trouble, the Mockers would seal off sections of the sewers, especially near the poor quarter, barring the passages to Mockers Rest, the place called Mothers by members of the Guild of Thieves. Armed bashers would take up station and wait for the crisis to pass. Others not belonging to the guild would also hole up until the trouble passed. Outside those enclaves and safe areas, anyone in the tunnels was fair game. The last time James had remembered such a condition had been during the year following the end of the Riftwar, when Princess Anita had been injured and Arutha had declared martial law.
The more he had travelled through the sewers below and the streets above, the more James was convinced something equally dire had occurred while he had been out of the city on the Princes business. James looked around to see that he was unwatched and moved to the rear of the alley.
A pair of old wooden crates had been turned towards a brick wall to offer some shelter against the elements. Inside that crate lay a still form. A swarm of flies took off as James moved the crate slightly. Before he touched the mans leg, James knew he wasnt sleeping. Gingerly he turned over the still form of Old Edwin, a one-time sailor whose love of drink had cost him his livelihood, family, and any shred of dignity. But, James thought, even a gutter-rat like Edwin deserved better than having his throat cut like a calf at slaughter.
The thick, nearly-dried blood told James he had been murdered earlier, probably around dawn the day before. He was certain that his other missing contacts had met a similar fate. Either whoever was behind the troubles in the city was killing indiscriminately and Jamess informants had been exceedingly unfortunate or someone was methodically murdering off Jamess agents in Krondor. Logic dictated the latter as the most likely explanation.
James stood and looked skyward. The night was fading, as a grey light from the east heralded the dawns approach. There was only one place left he might find answers without risking confronting the Mockers.