The crowd became like a forest around him. All he knew was the Mercelian was now just behind him. Like the sky and sun, the blue and gold of his vestments shone through occasionally through the drab browns and greens and stained whites of the peasants and occasional merchants.
"Thief! The boy tried to give me a stolen gold coin."
How did they know? How did they always know?
All at once, the crowd was turning against him. The sea of faces and hands now were thorns and brambles and branches. Everywhere his voice fell, the people changed.
Jallin had been in the Deshik vin Sluska, the Market of Fruit, one of the markets on the southern edge of the Sarkoshian main island, where most of the fruit imports took place. He'd found some foreign girl, pretty, who looked around too much. But that was a week ago, and the Mercelian had not been there then. When Jallin's mother had not worked for nearly two weeks, Jallin tried to get better help than a prayer to the dubious Trochaya.
His friend Stasser, the boy who taught him to steal warned him about the Mercelians. "They have some magic," he said. "They won't accept anything stolen for their services. They'll take almost anything else." The coin Jallin offered had loitered in his pocket for months, as he tried to find a way to exchange it without suspicion. It was his best grab, a coin worth nearly a month's wages. When his mother became too sick to work, when she stayed in bed for almost two weeks, Jallin finally found something to spend it on. But just as Stasser suggested, the Mercelian knew immediately. The welcoming smile buried in his beard turned downward. The coin dropped from his hand, went 'tinging' along between people's feet. Then, someone scooped it up and was away.
Now, Jallin's feet sloshed through the slimy, slimy, stinking droppings of korriks, the massive serpentine creatures used for pulling heavy loads. The big loaf-shaped things only grunted at his passing by behind them. He knocked over barrels of fish and squisks, tripped over feed sacks. He hit a wrack of cheap jewelry, sending polished stones clattering over cobblestones. He allowed some of the necklaces to tangle in his fingers, as he righted himself and ran on.
The knight stopped for a moment. He hastily picked up some of the scattered goods and shoved them into the hands of one of the merchants, hopefully its owner.
It was to Jallin's advantage the Mercelian order did not encourage their members to sneak around the city, finding hiding places or knowing the ways of thieves and criminals. They were not putrights or police. They were healers, protectors, helpers.
The knight followed him up Chu-Kabra Street, one of the streets connecting the market place to the kinto-shah district; his shouts followed much further.
Now Jallin was free of him. He ducked into a small alleyway. Like the tapestries hanging in the dusty air of a church or palace great hall, people's laundry hung from strings above Jallin's head. To either side of him a few makeshift shanties, largely pieces of cloth on sticks or empty boxes stacked head high.
Jallin knew these narrow places, these rat tunnels and rain gutters, and he chose one dark, beggar-infested way among at least twenty. Now, he could stop just around a corner and breathe for a moment. It was only a short walk from here to his home, but Jallin waited. He allowed himself a short glance back down the alleyway behind him. He saw no blue and gold, not even from the sky above. The knight had not followed. Why should he anyway? Jallin lost the coin he had stolen.
No one was in the alley, not even the inhabitants of the little lean-to huts clinging like barnacles to the sides of the buildings. Jallin brought out the various pieces of jewelry he'd managed to get. Pieces of shells, polished semi-precious stones, not much really. The metal used to link these trinkets and sparkling pebbles together was probably the most valuable bit. Maybe a couple skets or, if he went to the right people, a mark and a half, but only if he managed to put the necklaces back together.
He pocketed his take and went home.
The Mercelian was there. His mother and Eja were nowhere to be seen, but he could hear Eja coughing somewhere, or maybe it was his mother coughing. The knight had his sword out. In the darkness of the house, the knight's blue and gold seemed to glow, or at least his clothing, his head was hidden in shadows. He stood in a beam of light, the only light through cracks in the 'ceiling' above. His sword bit the light and chewed it, flashing back and forth, and then suddenly the reflection was red. Jallin felt nothing, but knew he had just been disemboweled. What worried him was not pain or fear of death, but the horrible rasping sounds behind the knight, where he could not go. Eja was dying now, dying like Jallin's and her mother, coughing herself to death, and the knight killed him.
"Trochayabite. Thief. Little street rat."
Jallin woke.
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