Alone in the Alley

Flynn squatted in the alley, cold mud squishing through his bare toes. He stared at the narrow space beneath the wall, trying to get his nerve up.

The sun wouldn't come up for hours, and the tavern was empty. Most taverns in the city had dirt floors, but this part of the Lowdys had been built over marshland, and not even drunks wanted to drink standing ankle-deep in mud, so the tavern had been raised a few inches on stilts and floored with stout bamboo poles.

Coins sometimes dropped through the gaps in the bamboo, and the crawlspace was too small for most people to go after them.

The guild's bigs were too big and the littles were too scared to squeeze into the suffocating darkness shared with spiders and cockroaches and rats and the wicked half-wild tomcat the owner kept.

Worst was the pressure of the bamboo against your back, flattening you every time a patron walked overhead. It had been Flynn's favourite spot for a year, but he wasn't as small as he used to be. Last time, he got stuck and spent hours panicking until it rained and the ground softened beneath him enough that he could dig himself out.

It was muddy now, and there would be no patrons, and Flynn had seen the tomcat leave. It should be fine. Besides, Rat was collecting guild dues tomorrow, and Flynn didn't have four coppers. He didn't even have one, so there wasn't much choice. Rat wasn't understanding, and he didn't know his strength.

Littles had died from his beatings.

Pushing aside mounds of mud, Flynn lay on his stomach. The dank earth soaked his thin, filthy tunic instantly. He'd have to work fast. He was skinny, and if he caught a chill, the odds of getting better weren't good.

Scooting through the darkness, he began searching for the telltale metallic gleam. A couple of lamps were still burning in the tavern, so light filtered through the gaps, illuminating the mud and standing water in strange rectangles. Heavy marsh mist climbed the shafts of light only to fall over and over again.

Spiderwebs draped across Flynn's face and broke, and he felt a tingle on the back of his neck.

He froze. No, it was his imagination. He exhaled slowly. Something glimmered and he grabbed his first copper. He slithered to the unfinished pine beam he had gotten stuck under last time and shovelled mud away until water filled the depression.

The gap was still so narrow that he had to turn his head sideways to squeeze underneath it. Holding his breath and pushing his face into the slimy water, he began the slow crawl.

His head and shoulders made it through, but then a stub of a branch caught the back of his tunic, tearing the cloth and jabbing his back. He almost cried out and was instantly glad he hadn't. Through a wide space between bamboo poles, Flynn saw a man seated at the bar, still drinking.

In the Lowdys, you had to judge people quickly. Even if you had quick hands as Flynn did, when you stole every day, you were bound to get caught eventually.

All merchants hit the guild rats who stole from them. If they wanted to have any goods left to sell, they had to. The trick was picking the ones who'd smack you so you didn't try their booth next time; there were others who'd beat you so badly you never had a next time.

Flynn thought he saw something kind and sad and lonely in this lanky figure. He was perhaps thirty, with a scraggly blond beard and a huge sword on his hip.

"How could you abandon me?" the man whispered so quietly that Flynn could barely distinguish the words.

He held a flagon in his left hand and cradled something Flynn couldn't see in his right.

" After all the years I've served you, how could you abandon me now? Is it because of Vonda?"

There was an itch on Flynn's calf. He ignored it. It was just his imagination again.

He reached behind his back to free his tunic. He needed to find his coins and get out of here.

Something heavy dropped onto the floor above Flynn and slammed his face into the water, driving the breath from his lungs. He gasped and nearly inhaled water.

" Why Ryan Smith, you never fail to surprise," the weight above Flynn said.

Nothing was visible of the man through the gaps except a drawn dagger. He must have dropped from the rafters.

"Hey, I'm all for calling a bluff, but you should have seen Vonda when she figured out you weren't going to save her. Made me damn near bawl my eyes out."

The lanky man turned. His voice was slow, broken. "I killed six men tonight. Are you sure you want to make it seven?"

Flynn slowly caught up with what they'd been saying. The lanky man was the Rudeboy Ryan Smith. A Rudeboy was like an assassin—in the way a tiger is like a kitten.

Among Rudeboys, Ryan Smith was indisputably the best. Or, as the head of

Flynn's guild said, at least the disputes didn't last long. And I thought Ryan Smith looked kind.

The itch on Flynn's calf itched again. It wasn't his imagination. Something was crawling up the inside of his trousers. It felt big, but not as big as a cockroach. Flynn's fear identified the weight: a white wolf spider. Its poison liquefied flesh in a slowly spreading circle.

If it bit, even with a healer the best an adult could hope for was to lose a limb. A guild rat wouldn't be so lucky.

"Smith, you'll be lucky if you don't cut your head off after all you've been drinking. Just in the time I've been watching, you've had—"

"Eight flagons. And I had four before that."

Flynn didn't move. If he jerked his legs together to kill the spider, the water would splash and the men would know he was there. Even if Ryan Smith had looked kind, that was an awful big sword, and Flynn knew better than to trust grown-ups.

"You're bluffing," the man said, but there was fear in his voice.

" I don't bluff," Ryan Smith said. " Why don't you invite your friends in?"

The spider crawled up to Flynn's inner thigh. Trembling, he pulled his tunic up in the back and stretched the waist of his trousers, making a gap and praying the spider would crawl for it.

Above him, the assassin reached two fingers up to his lips and whistled. Flynn didn't see Ryan move, but the whistle ended in a gurgle and a moment later, the assassin's body tumbled to the floor.

There were yells as the front and back doors burst open. The boards flexed and jumped. Concentrating on not jostling the spider, Flynn didn't move, even when another dropping body pushed his face briefly under water.