The back streets were nearly empty, likely due to the commotion in the tea shop, and it played in my favor. I cursed the fact that I didn't know these particular streets better, but this was the newer part of my territory. There was a certain sameness about the back streets and spaces between buildings though - rough sandy brick that had been scored and marred by decades of wind and rain.

Turning a corner, I saw the tiniest flutter of cloth disappearing around an uninteresting wall ahead and to my left. He'd definitely been faster when we were on the rooftops, and no longer appeared to possess any of the superhuman speed he'd displayed the night previous.

It occurred to me to wonder if he was still able to jump from rooftops and float softly to the ground.

I continued to run, feeling as though I were catching up.

Turning another corner, I caught a good long look at his quickly retreating form, some twenty yards distant, rags twitching back and forth in time to his frantic footfalls. He didn't have glowing eyes, but the rags were the same. Identical. Even a different color, I knew they were the same. Same rags, same posture, same in every way save for the fact that he didn't look like a wraith so much as a frightened, skinny kid.

But it was him. I had him.

The street we were running down did some creative winding to the left and right before turning abruptly, and he risked a quick wide-eyed look behind him with a flick of his head just as he was turning. His gaunt cheeks were flushed with effort, though blind panic could also have been a contributing factor. He looked scared, terrified..

He disappeared from view once more. Once more, I followed him around the corner and . . .

I stopped.

Chasing someone is very hard work if the person you're chasing is clever, or knows the area you're both running around in better than you do. The one doing the chasing needs to see through whatever deception is being thrown their way every single time an attempt is made to lose them. The one being pursued, on the other hand, only needs to successfully employ a diversion once in order to get away cleanly.

So as I stared down the empty street, I knew that this was the first of what might be many attempts to lose me.

Even considering how fleet-footed he'd seemed last night, the narrow alley was too long for him to have run all the way down it, judging from how far away he'd been moments ago. I quickly looked at the available items nearby.

There were a couple of boxes and some furniture that was past its prime, all huddled up against either side of the corridor as if out of deference, leaving exposed cobbles down the middle. None of the furniture looked sturdy enough to stand on, and nothing was large enough to hide someone, even someone as skinny as him.

A collection of brick fragments that had fallen away from the wall lay in an disorderly pile ahead and to my right, next to a plank that lay propped diagonally against the wall-

There was a hint of noise coming from the second floor ledge there.

Running towards the plank, I leaped up onto it and ran along its length to its highest point before jumping upward. I cleared the edge of the building wall, no more than seven feet high, but kept my arms out before me just in case I fell short and had to grab something. My boots scraped the sandy stone bricks along the very edge, and I pushed forward while keeping my balance, landing on the narrow ledge that served as a precarious walkway between various windows on the second story.

There was a scuffling noise. A fast moving shadow flitted around the corner to my left, catching my attention, and I tore along the wall after it.

As I flew past the windows I noticed they were all closed and of a type that would definitely make noise when closed in a hurry. He hadn't gone inside the building.

I wanted to keep him moving, uncertain. A kid that young was probably not savvy enough to think on his feet in these situations. When people panic and find themselves exposed, their first thought is to head somewhere they know. Blind panic was my friend. If I could keep him moving and afraid, he might just lead me right to where he lived. All I had to do was make sure I didn't lose him.

The ledge wrapped around the outside of the building, and I passed several more windows until I ended up at another corner. There being nowhere else to go, I rounded the corner, confident I would see the kid frantically running away from me.

I stopped quickly enough not to run face-first into the brick facade that had been built where the ledge came to an abrupt end. A dead end . . . two stories above the street. A startled bird flapped in protest at me before flying skyward and disappearing.

There was nowhere for him to hide up here, not enough space and no refuse or hiding spots whatsoever.

Maybe this kid was better than I thought.

I spun around and went perfectly still, controlling my breathing and becoming silent, my eyes tracking the surrounding alleyway furiously. I'd been right behind him, so he couldn't be too far away. Panic often caused someone to hurry, make noise when they shouldn't. I listened carefully.

Nothing. Not a sound, except for the everyday sounds of people making their way down some of the nearby streets.

Had he already dropped to the ground? Maybe he'd managed to get inside the building after all. What other tricks did he have up his sleeve? Had he perhaps gone up, utilizing some other mystifying method of bending gravity to his will?

Here it was, his first attempt to escape me . . . and he'd done it.

He was gone.

I punched the stone wall, adrenaline and anger making it seem like a fine idea at the time.

“Ow,” I said through gritted teeth a few moments later.

Was nothing going to go right for me? My territory had been one big managerial headache this past half year, half of the city's Lords wanted me dead, a priceless and irreplaceable heirloom had been stolen from me, and now a mere stripling of a boy had out-foxed me at an activity I excelled at. It seemed like the gods themselves were lining up to take cheap shots at me. Why, the only thing that had gone right was Talia managing to plant the tracking gem in the first place, and even that-

I stopped everything, actually taking a moment to slap my now injured hand against my forehead in disgust, my other hand reaching into my tunic for the green lens that I'd put there when the chase had first began.

Gods, I can be stupid sometimes.

Holding the lens up to my eye, I surveyed the now green-tinted alley carefully. I saw the small beacon of light almost immediately, and crept carefully along the ledge back around the corner, towards it.

The bright green dot was coming from one of the many pieces of furniture that littered the alley, a desiccated couch down below me, right near the plank I'd climbed up. My stomach fell a little – the gem had probably fallen off during the chase, when he'd vaulted up the plank himself.

Then I looked closer, without the lens.

I'm not sure what it was exactly that caught my eye, but while I was looking at part of the badly damaged couch I caught the barest suggestion of movement.

A moment later, an entire section of the couch tore itself away from the larger section, and a figure dressed in blackened couch-colored rags was running like a madman back down the alley back towards the entrance we'd both came through, the kid's unkempt, lanky brown hair jumping from shoulder to shoulder as he fled.

“Hey! Wait!” I cried.

Yeah, like that ever works.

I leapt down to the pavement, landing on some old and rotting blankets, and began running after him once again.

As soon as he heard the clack of my boots hitting the hard packed ground of the alley, he looked over his shoulder to glance at me briefly, putting on a burst of speed a half-second later as he changed direction. He began running directly towards a nearby wall, where it intersected a second wall, like he was intent on slamming himself into it.

Before it even registered how odd his actions were, he jumped up. His leg extended towards the wall as though he were hopping onto a ledge, despite the fact there was nothing there but relatively smooth brick.

Somehow, his foot managed to find purchase in the mortar between bricks, or . . . something, and he bounced. His first leap was followed by a second as he used his outstretched foot to spring upwards and away from the wall, the additional height achieved from the maneuver allowing him to easily reach out and grab the top of the furthermost wall, which was at least nine feet high.

As I watched his rags of various color slip over the top of the wall, I became aware of two things more or less simultaneously.

First – there was no way I'd be able to do what I'd just seen him do. There was no point to even trying.

Second – his rags were different colors. Several different colors at once, in fact, and they'd been changing and shifting right before my eyes.

Normal thoughtcloth doesn't do that.

I filed that thought away as I ran, pulling a small metal rod from my belt near the small of my back, swinging my arm mightily while depressing a small button on the handle with my thumb, hoping I'd actually grabbed the instrument I wanted.

The mace-like head of the rod sailed over the wall, a metal weave cable trailing behind it. Once I could no longer see the spiked grapple I'd thrown, I lifted my thumb from the button and gripped the rod firmly before it had a chance to yank itself out of my hand.

My shoulder was wrenched unpleasantly, and after flying through the air for about two seconds, I was laying with my midriff atop the wall the kid had just jumped over. I attempted to keep my forward momentum, quickly straddling both legs over the brick and rolling to the other side.

If not for a bit of luck, that stupid mistake might very well have been my last.

An old water trough full of some evil-smelling substance had been shored up against the wall in the exact place that someone might land if they were vaulting over the brick wall in a hurry. Sharpened bits of wood, rings of broken bottles, and other angry, pointy bits of refuse pointed up from the muck and towards me in a threatening manner. It's a very unpleasant sort of thing to become aware of just as you're letting go of a wall, suddenly realizing where gravity plans on dropping you.

I attempted to curse loudly at precisely the same moment my cloak caught on a makeshift handhold constructed from a wooden peg that had been stuffed between two bricks on the other side of the wall.

“Shi-urk!” was what I believe I managed to cry out just as my cloak began to choke me. Something like that.

I spent a few seconds gazing downward at the deadly-looking collection of refuse below, desperately gasping for breath, conflicted as to how I felt about this wooden peg that had caught on my cloak. On one hand, it had just very likely saved my life. On the other, it may have simply done so in order that it might do a more thorough job of killing me.

My fingers hooked under the leather strap that was pulling against my neck, allowing me to gasp for breath and chase away the shadowy tendrils that had appeared at the fringes of my vision. Struggling against my own weight as I sought to pull myself into a less precarious position, I saw the kid in rags about twenty feet down the side alley to my left, backing away from me.

The panicked look on his face gave me the impression that it had been a rather smug look up until a few seconds ago.

I flicked my small skinning knife disguised as a belt buckle from its holster and quickly cut through the strap that had wrapped itself around my neck, fingers of my other hand clinging tightly to both the strap and the shoulder portion of my tangled cloak.

There was a snap of sundered leather, and I maintained enough of a hold on my cloak to prevent myself from falling too quickly. Soon, one of my boots was resting gently on one of the more blunt stakes that was within reach.

By the time I hopped to the ground a few seconds later, all that I could see of the kid was the familiar sight of rags fluttering their way around a corner and out of view. I followed quickly, intent on rounding the corner after sprinting a dozen steps or so.

I don't know what possessed me to glance through my lens right at that moment.

There was no sign of the gem anywhere in the direction I'd seen him head. I panned to the right, up and down, eventually holding the lens directly over my eye so that I might be able to catch some hint of green that would betray his location. It was as if he'd gone around the corner and simply disappeared.

Gone again. I spun in a slow circle, lens held out before me, looking for a flash of green.

“Son of a bitch. Nobody moves that fast!” I muttered.

As it turns out, I was correct. A fiery green dot came into view.

I was sure I'd seen him round the corner and disappear to the right. Instead of being where I expected him, the bright green dot was down the corridor to my left, probably within view of the exit out of the alleyway. If it was still attached to him, he wasn't moving at all. He was probably waiting for me to burst into view and run the other way.

I'd been positive he turned right. Maybe I'd discovered another impossible thing this kid could do.

And that's when I came up with a crafty notion.

Storming into view, I rounded the corner and looked down the corridor opposite the direction the tracking gem was telling me the kid was. I cursed loudly and began running to my right, the direction I'd initially thought he'd run, ducking into another side-alley as if giving chase and hot on his trail.

Once safely around the corner I turned and held the lens up, eyes fixed on the green spot of light in the distance, despite the wall that was in my way. To the casual observer, I might have looked as though I were looking at a particularly interesting patch of brick through an inspecting glass.

He was a cautious bugger, I'll give him that. I waited nearly three full minutes before I saw any sort of movement from him. When he did start moving, it was slow and casual, like someone who was in no rush to get to where they were headed. He turned two corners somewhere perhaps a block away, and then his pace quickened to a jog.

I began to follow from a distance, always keeping a wall or building between us.

When people are scared, one of their first impulses is to get to familiar territory . . . something I had been counting on as soon as I'd started giving chase. However, the cleverly improvised trough-trap suggested that he was already quite familiar with this territory, which likely meant that he lived somewhere nearby.

After successfully losing someone who's chasing you, another impulse you get is to return somewhere you consider safe. It was unlikely in the extreme that this kid actually owned a flat or room of his own, given how he was dressed, which meant that where he was squatting was either hard to get to or well hidden. Or both. If he was collecting valuables from other Lords, he'd need to keep them somewhere . . . and if he was comfortable enough with any place that he actually slept there, chances were good that's where he'd stash them.

I watched him wind his way through several more alleys for a few minutes, climbing either a ladder or a wall about three stories up somewhere along the way. After another minute, he dropped back down to street level and stayed there.

Roughly five minutes later, I was looking up at the abandoned monk's tower that he'd likely made his home, inspecting the bricked-off entrance and wondering how I was going to get up to the third floor window. Five minutes after that, I was perched on the stone ledge just outside the window, attempting to see inside of it without letting the kid know I was there.

He was there, inside. I'd watched the white-green dot pace back and forth along the wall for the last little while.

Guess I'd freaked him out a little. He'd seen me that one night on the roof with Talia, and it must have been quite a shock to stumble upon me in the streets the next day. Maybe he suspected that I was closing in on him.

There was a series of wooden beams just inside the window, an indication that there had once been a floor there, but it appeared that most of the timbers had been ripped out and used for some other purpose, likely when this building had been abandoned.

No floor, but just as well, really. I reached behind me and fumbled through the collection of items in my hip-sack, drawing forth a coil of dark fibrous rope that was attached to a similarly colored glove. I put it on and wrapped my gloved fingers around the rope. After taking time to apply oil to the hinges of the window, I carefully pushed it open with my free hand. The base of the wood frame apologetically scraping against the dust and stone was quiet enough that I could barely even hear it myself, mere feet away.

I backed away from the window for a moment, looking into the gloom of the room for the best place to hook my rope to. There was a center beam running through the middle of what had previously been a floor, and it looked as though it would hold up just fine.

Taking a deep breath, I threw myself through the open window and landed silently with both feet on a stray wooden beam, moving quickly towards the center beam.

I managed maybe two steps.

There was a sudden violent creaking, and something club-like slammed painfully into my shins with a sharp crack, tripping me up and knocking me to the right.

Without thinking, I threw the coil of rope whip-like towards the beam I'd just been standing on. It unfurled itself, went absolutely straight, made a snapping noise, and then wrapped itself smartly around the rectangular piece of wood. I made a fist as I fell, tensing my arm and preparing myself for the sudden jolting sensation that I knew I'd be feeling shortly.

I didn't really expect to feel that sudden jolt in my legs and hips.

Before I'd fallen more than ten feet, I found myself twisting mid-air and turned upside-down, suspended by both legs. The rope in my hand was still slack, and hadn't tightened in the slightest. The entire world was a gigantic blur in every direction, and I desperately tried to determine if I was still falling.

I wasn't. A snare trap had looped a noose of unremarkable, dirty rope around my legs and cinched it tight.

A high pitched and urgent cry of alarm sounded below me, quickly followed by the sound of several wooden bowls and other items being knocked to the floor in surprise.

Inverted, I tilted my head back and looked down below me. The kid was half-sprawled on the dirt floor, staring up in bewilderment.

The very next moment, he was a blur.

“No, wait! Kid! I don't-”

There wasn't really any point to finishing the sentence, I decided, as I watched him somehow fly up the wall to a completely different window above me and hurl himself out of it.

I sighed, long and hard.

Of course he'd have booby-trapped the place where he lived. I cursed my own stupidity and rattled off at least half of all the foul-mouthed words I'd ever heard, reaching up and pulling a knife from my boot so that I might engage in the gymnastics necessary to cut myself down.

At least this chase wasn't over. I still had the lens, after all.

The dry rope was severed so easily that I had my doubts as to how long it would have been able to support my weight even if I hadn't cut it. I only fell a few feet before I was dangling by one gloved arm from my own rope, managing to lower myself to the ground without incident.

Once there, I pulled out the lens and held it up to my eye, and was instantly assaulted by bright green light.

Coming from the ground.

Stomach tightening, I tilted my gaze towards the dirt floor and pulled the lens away. A small, much abused tracking gem lay on the floor, right where the kid had been pacing a few minutes ago.

I let loose a streaming curse composed of every other foul-mouthed word I'd ever heard, kicking a wad of nearby blanket that looked like it served as part of his bedding.

My toe registered pain just slightly behind the metallic clang of my boot striking metal, and I spontaneously invented several brand new foul-mouthed words for the world to enjoy, reciting them loudly through clenched teeth while hopping awkwardly on my uninjured foot.

And then I stopped.

Clang?

Scarcely daring to hope, pain in my toe forgotten, I carefully dropped to my knees near his bedding and took hold of the blanket there by a frayed corner, tossing it aside. There was the sound of metal clunking against metal, followed by a muffled “bong” and other noises as several items came to rest on the dirt floor.

The first item that caught my eye was a remarkable sword, a howling wolf sculpted into the magnificent jeweled guard.

Theo's sword.

All of the frustration, all of the dismayingly bad luck I'd been subjected to lately, everything poured out of me in that instant, and I let loose a tremendous whoop of victory. I'd found where he lived, obviously, and I was right about where he kept his stash. Several other items were on the floor in addition to Theo's sword, and I was pretty certain that many of them would match the descriptions of items stolen from other Lords. I didn't have a greyberry candle on me to check, but I knew. There were three other items that had been bundled with Theo's sword, and they looked sufficiently important and precious.

I picked up the tracking gem and put it in a pocket, thinking that it would make a nice souvenir. At the same time I began trying to figure out how I was going to be getting the hoard of stuff back to Tucat Keep.

The grin wasn't leaving my face. I laughed out loud.

Finally, something went right. I'd hit the mother lode. The biggest part of this nightmare was over.